Lost and Found (36 page)

“Most of America, including myself,” he told the
Los Angeles Times
, “has been trying to figure out how somebody can go to this house and not see any evidence of people there. We’re dealing with a criminal, and he and his wife were being very elusive. They were very deceptive and very stealthy in how they were keeping these individuals hidden.”

Hinkle said his department was proud of the crucial role it had played in breaking the case, calling it “inappropriate to be pointing fingers at any law enforcement agency.”

He then issued a press release praising Garrido’s parole agent for his “diligent questioning and follow-up.”

That morning it was also revealed that the Antioch Police Department had missed several chances over the years to discover Jaycee and her daughters. The
San Francisco Chronicle
reported that in July 2008, Antioch police officers had searched 1554 Walnut Avenue in a multiagency task force exercise to check on sex offenders.

“There were zero signs of kids living there,” Antioch Police sergeant Diane Aguinago told the
Chronicle
.

Far more embarrassing was an interview with former Garrido neighbor Erika Pratt, who said she had dialed 911 after seeing little children living in tents in the backyard. But although a deputy from the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office had come and questioned Phillip Garrido, he left without searching the house, as he did not have a warrant.

The story also reported Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jimmy Lee confirming his department was aware of Phillip Garrido and had had contact with him in the past.

“We need to investigate further,” Lee said, “to determine what that contact was.”

At around noon, Contra Costa County sheriff Warren Rupf hastily called a press conference at his Pine Street, Martinez office, apologizing to Jaycee Lee Dugard for not rescuing her earlier.

“On November the thirtieth 2006,” he began, “we missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure to this situation. A caller to our 911 dispatch offered that there were tents in the neighbor’s backyard, that people were living in them and that there were young children.

“The caller also said that Garrido was psychotic and had a sexual addiction. We made contact with Mr. Garrido in the front yard of his home. The responding deputy determined that there was not any criminal misbehavior, but warned Mr. Garrido that there were code restrictions with regards to living outside in a residential neighborhood. He did not enter, nor request to enter, the backyard.

“This is not an acceptable outcome. Organizationally we should have been more inquisitive, more curious and turned over a rock or two. Our work product should have resulted in a better outcome. We missed an opportunity to have intervened earlier.

“No one knows that we could have found Jaycee or the other children on that day in November 2006, and I cannot change the course of events. But we are beating ourselves up over this and will continue to do so. I am first in line to offer organizational criticism. Offer my apologies to the victims and have accepted responsibility for having missed an earlier opportunity to rescue Jaycee.”

At 1:00
P.M
., Phillip and Nancy Garrido, their wrists shackled in front of their waists, were brought into El Dorado Superior Court for arraignment in front of Judge Douglas Phimister. The Placerville courtroom was packed with more than a dozen TV and newspaper photographers.

Dressed in bright red jail-issued jumpsuits, the Garridos, both holding copies of the sixteen-page charges, each sat in the jury box by their respective newly court-appointed lawyers. Throughout the four-minute hearing, Nancy wept through black-rimmed glasses. Her long black hair hung over her face, and she constantly put her head in her hands, shielding herself from photographs. Phillip looked frail and morose, sitting with his public defender, Susan Gellman, staring into space and totally unresponsive.

Neither of the defendants spoke as each of the twenty-nine charges were read out loud, with Jaycee Lee Dugard referred to only as “Jane Doe.”

The Garridos were both charged with multiple felony counts of rape, forcible lewd acts on a child and kidnapping for sexual purposes. They were also each charged with over a dozen special allegations that could bring the death penalty if they were to be convicted.

Through their attorneys, Phillip and Nancy Garrido pled not guilty to each and every charge.

Before the hearing, El Dorado County deputy district attorney Trish Kelliher had filed a motion in court revealing that a stun gun had been used to “subdue the victim” during the 1991 abduction. It also stated that Jaycee had reported being sexually assaulted on “multiple” occasions.

“I believe Phillip Garrido is a clear danger to the public and children in particular,” stated the motion. “Defendant has no apparent ties to El Dorado County and given the severity of the charges, he is a flight risk.”

Judge Phimister then denied the Garridos bail, remanding them in custody until September 14.

After the hearing, Chief Assistant District Attorney William Clark refused to comment on whether Nancy had also raped Jaycee Dugard or detail any evidence against them.

“She is legally charged with rape,” said Clark, “on the theory she participated in it. We don’t have to prove she physically did a rape. All we have to prove is that she aided and abetted with the knowledge of the crime.”

He told reporters that the twenty-nine felony counts were divided into the various time periods through which Jaycee was held by the Garridos. And they directly related to evidence law enforcement had gathered since Jaycee was found. The periods covered in the charges include the month following Jaycee’s abduction on June 10, 1991, although it did not specify when the first rape happened.

Outside the court, Nancy Garrido’s new lawyer, Gilbert Maines, told reporters that he had only met his new client a few minutes before the hearing, and had not yet reviewed the charges against her.

“You saw her,” he said. “She’s sitting in the jury box crying.”

While Phillip and Nancy Garrido were in court, Pittsburg police began digging up their Walnut Avenue backyard. They were searching for any evidence to connect the Garridos to a string of ten murders of prostitutes in Pittsburg in the early 1990s.

After obtaining a search warrant, teams of Pittsburg investigators moved in with special digging equipment as reporters and news crews watched their every move from the street.

For the last couple of days, investigators had been sifting through the Garrido home and its backyard, looking for evidence in the Jaycee Lee Dugard case. But on Friday evening, they were joined by new teams of forensic science investigators with trained sniffer dogs, searching for evidence that Phillip Garrido was also a serial killer.

A Contra Costa police source told the
San Francisco Chronicle
that one of the dead women had been discovered in a Pittsburg dismantling yard where Phillip Garrido had once worked and occasionally preached.

Pittsburg police investigator John Conaty, who had worked the prostitute serial killings and is still in law enforcement, immediately reopened the investigation after Garrido’s arrest.

“Every law enforcement agent in sight is looking at this guy,” an unnamed investigator told the
San Francisco Chronicle
. “It’s safe to say that the closer you get to where he is or was, the more interest there is.”

Captain Dan Terry of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that Phillip Garrido had already been interviewed about the prostitute killings.

“Pittsburg police,” said Capt. Terry, “for whatever reason decided that he was a person of interest.”

The spate of vicious murders had begun in November 1998, when the body of fifteen-year-old Lisa Norrell, who was not a prostitute, was found in the Pittsburg industrial park that Garrido was reported to have worked in at the time. Over the next three months, the bodies of Valerie Dawn Schultz, Rachael Cruise and Jessica Frederick were found strangled and stabbed around the same rural area. Another woman who had been discovered barely alive was believed to have been attacked by the killer.

Pittsburg police also named Phillip Garrido as a person of interest in the 1992 unsolved murders of two other prostitutes, Sharon Mattos and Andrea Ingersoll.

And as darkness fell, investigators from the Pittsburg and Antioch police departments, as well as the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department, started moving heavy digging equipment into the Garrido backyard in readiness to begin the grim search for bodies.

42

THE SEARCH

On Saturday morning, as temperatures soared past a hundred degrees, a dozen investigators carried out another search of 1554 Walnut Avenue and its almost one-acre backyard. Investigators also focused on the house next door, which Phillip Garrido had taken care of for three years, sealing it off with yellow crime tape.

“This morning,” announced Contra Costa Country Sheriff’s Department captain Daniel Terry at a press briefing, “Pittsburg police have sealed off the house in Antioch to investigate potential connection between a series of murders of prostitutes in the Bay Area in the early 1990s.”

Investigators also revealed that they were searching for evidence linking Phillip Garrido to three missing girls who had disappeared between 1988 and 1991 in circumstances similar to Jaycee Dugard’s. Michaela Garecht, Ilene Misheloff and Amanda Campbell had all been abducted within an hour’s drive from Antioch. Michaela, who was nine when she was snatched in front of a friend at a supermarket in Hayward, California, bore an uncanny resemblance to Jaycee, with her blonde hair and blue eyes.

“If Jaycee can be alive, Michaela can be alive,” her mother, Sharon Murch, told reporters. “It really has my hopes up.”

Investigators spent the day searching Phillip Garrido’s backyard, methodically going through the various sheds and tents where Jaycee Dugard and her daughters had lived. An officer used a metal detector to scan the backyard, while another cleared branches with a chainsaw. Other officers dug holes with shovels before raking through the ground.

Outside the Garrido house, television trucks were parked on both sides of the street. About twenty journalists, many having flown in from England, were pacing up and down in front of the house as photographers with high-power zoom lenses photographed the investigators working in the garden.

The previous night, resourceful Los Angeles–based English freelance photographer Nick Stern had managed to climb over the police barrier, getting into the backyard. He then spent almost an hour photographing the inside and outside of the various tents and shacks.

His seven high-definition color photographs showed the welcome sign at the hidden entrance, as well as the beds and dressers used by Jaycee and her daughters. He also shot the strange collection of books in one of the tents, composed solely of cat books and true crime. There were also pictures of a dirty aquarium with rotting algae and a rack full of clothes, makeup, hairbrushes and various broken toys. One photo showed a yellow stuffed bird toy, lying in the dust outside a tent.

But the pictures did not represent how the backyard looked when police had first arrived. For since then, teams of investigators had been through, literally tearing everything apart in their search for evidence.

On Sunday, Stern’s sensational photographs, for which he is rumored to have received $1 million plus, started appearing in newspapers and magazines all over the world.

Later the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jimmy Lee described the photos as “unfortunate,” but said Stern would not be prosecuted.

Late Saturday night, Shayna Probyn posted a short message about her newfound sister Jaycee and the family reunion on her MySpace page.

“As of this moment,” she wrote, “we are just reuniting and everything is going well. She’s only 29. She has the rest of her life to live and I have a lot of love to share with my sister and new nieces. In due time my mom will make statements and so will I if needed, but you have to understand this time is critical.”

On Sunday morning, August 30, police erected a chain-link fence at the front of the Garrido house, boarding up all the windows to prevent any more photographers entering. And after Contra Costa building inspectors had declared the house unsafe because of its “junkyard conditions,” police warned anyone found on the property would be arrested.

At around midday, a team of FBI investigators arrived with cadaver-sniffing dogs. They spent the afternoon roaming around the backyard next door in the scorching three-digit temperatures.

Later two bags of evidence were carried out of the backyard by officers in hazmat suits, and it was eventually confirmed that investigators had uncovered a bone fragment in the backyard of the house next door.

Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jimmy Lee told reporters outside clamoring for information, “We are taking that bone back for further testing and analysis so we can make a determination if it is animal or human.”

He emphasized that Damon Robinson, who lived in the house next door, was not a suspect.

“We know Phillip Garrido had access to the property,” said Lee. “It looks like he lived in a shed on that property. Right now we’re looking at specific areas.”

That afternoon, Manuel Garrido told the
New York Post
he believed his son was a serial killer.

“He was a sex addict,” declared his father. “I believe my son killed the prostitutes.”

He also speculated that Phillip had wanted children so badly, he had persuaded Nancy to help him kidnap Jaycee Dugard to bear them.

“I believe with all my heart,” he told the
Post
, “that he decided that if [Nancy] couldn’t conceive, he’d find someone who could. So the pair of them hatched the deal and went out to someone who could give them babies. Jaycee was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and Nancy grabbed her.”

Garrido thought his son had deliberately selected a young girl who was easier to control.