Lost and Found (38 page)

When Vieira asked if Nancy had explained how Jaycee had first come to Walnut Avenue, Maines refused to answer, saying it violated attorney-client privilege. However, he would be exploring Nancy’s mental condition at the time of the abduction.

“I would be derelict in my duty,” he said, “if I didn’t pursue every avenue that was available, and one of them certainly is to look into her state of mind at the time and prior. And I can’t say right now that she is incompetent to stand trial. I think my plan is sometime in the near future to have her evaluated. To have an expert talk to her and spend some time with her.”

The attorney also revealed that he had received threats since taking the case and planned to hire a bodyguard.

“I just try and ignore those,” he said.

A few hours later, Tina Dugard gave an exclusive interview to the
Orange County Register
about the first five days she had spent with her niece Jaycee and her two daughters. With all the sensational stories out there, Jaycee’s family had decided it was time to take the media initiative.

“There’s a sense of comfort and optimism, a sense of happiness,” the forty-two-year-old teacher told reporter Greg Hardesty in her living room. “Jaycee and her girls are happy.”

Tina said after the emotional family reunion, everyone had bonded and reconnected, as police investigators and counselors hovered in the background.

“People probably want to think that it’s been this horrible, scary thing for all of us,” she said. “[But] the horrible, scary thing happened eighteen years ago and continued to happen for the last eighteen years. The darkness and despair [have lifted].”

Tina, who is thirteen years older than her niece Jaycee, then described how all six of them soon started acting like a normal, ordinary family.

“[There was] laughing and crying and sitting and holding hands,” she said. “All three are very tight.”

She said during their downtime, when they were not being interviewed by investigators or seeing counselors, Jaycee reads mystery novels while her daughters play computer games.

One night Tina and Jaycee watched a DVD of the Disney movie
Enchanted
, starring Julie Andrews. Then they discussed their favorite films and what they had seen recently. Jaycee told her aunt she wanted to see Sandra Bullock’s new movie,
The Proposal
.

She said Angel and Starlit loved playing their favorite game,
Super Mario Smash Brothers,
on Nintendo DS and drawing pictures.

One day, Tina said, she took Angel and Starlit outside the safe house for a nature walk. And as they all lay on the grass watching the clouds float by, the girls told their great-aunt how they loved animals and climbing trees.

“It was a beautiful day,” recalled Tina.

In the media battle for the Jaycee Lee Dugard story, the TV tabloid show
Inside Edition
appeared to be winning. Over the next several weeks the show broke a number of exclusives, including the first and only TV interview with Phillip Garrido’s first wife, Christine Murphy.

“He’s a monster,” said Murphy. “I was always looking for a way to get away.”

She said she was in love with him when they eloped in 1973, after being high school sweethearts. But when they moved to South Lake Tahoe, Phillip started becoming more and more controlling and violent. He spent all day taking LSD or smoking dope, and was always trying to get her to participate in orgies with “multiple partners,” but she refused.

She also accused her ex-husband of stabbing her in the face with a safety pin after another man flirted with her. And she showed the still visible scar to the cameras.

Chris said she had had no idea her ex-husband had been released from prison until hearing he’d been arrested for kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard.

“It made me sick to my stomach,” she said.

Garrido’s first wife also blamed Nancy for allowing it to happen under her roof.

“She knew what she was doing,” said Murphy, “and she knew what was going on. She must have been really in love with him or so infatuated with him that she was willing to do anything.”

A week later, Jaycee’s biological father, Ken Slayton, now sixty-four, was interviewed on
Inside Edition
with his daughters—and Jaycee’s half-sisters—Sarah, twenty-four, and Brittany, twenty-one.

“I’d skin them,” said Slayton, when asked what he would do to the Garridos. “I think they should live as long as they possibly can, and someone should torment them as much as they did Jaycee and those little girls.”

Slayton said he had “mixed emotions,” but would like to be a part of his daughter’s life.

“My girls are asking if [Jaycee] is their sister,” he said. “If Jaycee wants to meet us, we’re here.”

But
the
biggest interview of all would be the first one with Jaycee Lee Dugard. And Oprah Winfrey had reportedly sent a personal letter to Jaycee, inviting her on her show to tell her story for the first time. Also said to be in heated competition for the coveted first interview were Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer.

On Thursday, September 3, Tina Dugard called a press conference at the FBI’s Los Angeles office, reading a prepared statement. She was introduced by the Dugard family’s newly appointed spokeswoman, Erika Price Schulte.

“The smile on my sister’s face is as wide as the sea,” declared Tina joyously. “Her oldest daughter is home.”

Tina refused to discuss how Jaycee and her daughters were treated by the Garridos, or what their life was like in captivity. But she did say that Angel and Starlit knew exactly what was going on, although they had not read any newspaper coverage of the story or watched television.

“Right now it’s about reconnecting,” she explained. “Not only have we laughed and cried together, but we’ve spent time sitting quietly, taking pleasure in each other’s company.”

Dugard said that while in captivity, Jaycee had taught her daughters how to read and write, doing a great job with what little she had available.

“[They] are educated and bright,” she said. “It’s clear they’ve been on the Internet and know a lot of things. Jaycee did a great job with the limited resources she had and her limited education, and we are so proud of her.”

After reading her statement, Dugard refused to take any questions from the media. Then Schulte handed out three new preabduction pictures of Jaycee, saying there would be no further comment from the family for now.

That afternoon, Lieutenant Leonard Orman of the Antioch Police Department also called a press conference, revealing that when Phillip Garrido was twenty-one, he had been arrested for raping an underage girl. He explained that the victim, who wished to remain anonymous, had contacted investigators after recognizing Garrido’s photograph on television. She wanted to be certain that law enforcement knew of Garrido’s April 1972 arrest, but was not interested in pressing the case now.

Lieutenant Orman said that the police did not intend to charge Garrido after all that time, as it was past the statute of limitations. And although the 1972 case file no longer existed, police had records confirming Garrido’s arrest.

“After numerous inquiries from the press,” said Lieutenant Orman, “regarding the 1972 incident, it became apparent to us the press were pursuing these details and also the identity of this victim. We are now speaking about this case in hopes that it will satisfy the press’s curiosity.”

Lieutenant Orman said the girl and a friend had gotten into a car with Garrido and another man outside Antioch Library. After driving around Antioch, Garrido had taken her to a seedy motel on East 18th Street and given her barbiturates. Her worried parents had later tracked her down at the motel, finding her in bed with Garrido.

The parents then summoned the police and Garrido was charged with rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and providing drugs to a minor. Later at the preliminary hearing the girl refused to testify, after threats that the defense attorney would paint her as a “whore” and a “slut,” if she took the stand against Garrido. This left the Antioch Police Department no alternative but to dismiss the case and let him go free.

Lieutenant Orman was then asked if he thought there were other young victims of Phillip Garrido out there, still too scared to go to the police.

“Other victims,” said Lieutenant Orman. “I think there’s a good chance of that. Yes.”

A few miles away, Marc Lister was playing a selection of Phillip Garrido’s music for reporters from the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
Contra Costa Times
and KTVU-TV. He had invited them to his attorney’s Walnut Creek office to listen to samples from the three CDs Phillip Garrido had once given him.

After the listening session, Lister announced he planned to turn the CDs over to investigators, and then use the music to raise money for abused women and children. But he first wanted to sit down with Jaycee to discuss it, ensuring that it would not “impair or slow down” her recovery.

“I think there’s some sort of message here,” Lister told the
Times
. “I think it’s disturbing. It’s a bit twisted. It’s not right.”

Lister said that when Garrido had given him the disks in 2006, he told him that some day his songs would “be heard around the world.”

Lister and his attorney gave reporters transcribed song lyrics and played them short extracts. They also showed one of Garrido’s Printing For Less business cards, claiming the beautiful blonde girl on it was Jaycee. They refused to allow it to be photographed.

That night, the London
Sun
newspaper posted a story on its website quoting a senior investigator on the case speculating that Jaycee may have had more children, whom Phillip Garrido then killed because they were male.

“She was raped continually,” said the detective, “and you would think there would be more babies. Garrido is a self-confessed pedophile and experts have told us he would only want daughters with her, and he would see any sons as a potential threat.”

The detective said this was one of several lines of inquiry, and Jaycee would be asked whether she had given birth to any more babies.

“Is he that much of a sicko that he could dispose of any male babies?” asked the detective, adding that investigators were also talking to Angel and Starlit about whether their father had sexually molested them. But to date no evidence to support these speculations has ever been produced.

On Labor Day, there was a Pink Ribbon Parade through South Lake Tahoe, to celebrate the discovery of Jaycee Lee Dugard. And Jaycee’s stepfather Carl Probyn returned to the town for an interview with the Australian version of
60 Minutes.
Later he joined two thousand people in the grand parade, holding a thousand pink balloons and chanting Jaycee’s name.

“I wanted to come back to support these people,” Probyn told a reporter, adding that he hoped to be reunited with Jaycee within the next several weeks. “They supported us.”

The joyful parade, organized by Soroptimist International, reversed the route of the previous one in 2001, on the tenth anniversary of the abduction, to symbolize Jaycee’s return. The marchers, many of whom openly wept, included Jaycee’s classmates, friends and teachers. And it brought the town to a halt, stopping traffic as motorists spontaneously got out of the cars to applaud Jaycee.

And all over the town were hundreds of Jaycee’s “missing” posters, with a line drawn through the word “missing.”

Two days later, the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department announced that the bone fragment found in the backyard next door to the Garrido house was “probably human.” Spokesman Jimmy Lee said it would now be analyzed by the state laboratory to see if a DNA profile could be developed.

“It should be noted,” he said, “that it is not uncommon to find Native American remains in Contra Costa County.”

With the Jaycee Dugard story still making front-page headlines two weeks after it broke, Oprah Winfrey now publicly requested an interview with her.

“This is the one I want,” the talk show queen emphatically told
The Insider,
a gossip TV show. “I want that interview.”

And she revealed that for the first time ever she had called one of her producers, making sure they were working on a story.

Later there would be reports that Oprah had offered to pay $1 million for the exclusive sit-down interview.

Nancy Garrido was having a tough time inside the Pacerville Jail, where she was being kept in isolation for her own protection. Her attorney Gilbert Maines described her as “very lonely,” and there were rumors that other inmates had threatened to rape and kill her.

There were also reports that the Garridos, who were being housed in the same jail, were both under suicide watch.

El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department lieutenant Pam Lane said the high-profile prisoners received three meals a day and were able to shower every other day. They were allowed outside their cell one hour a day for exercise.

Both had access to television and newspapers, and were reported to be following coverage of their case. And Phillip Garrido had undergone surgery to remove three suspected cancerous growths at the bridge of his nose.