Lost and Found (43 page)

Two weeks later, Maines filed his fourth appeal to be reinstated, this time on the grounds that a judge should not remove an appointed counsel against the wishes of a defendant.

“I don’t have a choice,” he told
Sacramento Bee
reporter Stan Stanton. “Can the court remove appointed counsel at any time it wants to for any reason it wants? My client says she doesn’t see that I’ve done anything wrong, and she wants her lawyer back.”

At the next El Dorado Superior Court hearing on January 21, Judge Douglas Phimister formally removed Gilbert Maines, replacing him with Stephen Tapson. The judge noted Nancy Garrido’s affidavit asking that Maines remain her lawyer, saying that he could remove an attorney if he considered it in the defendant’s best interest.

“This case has been sidetracked by the issues of counsel,” declared the judge. “And that could adversely affect the rights of the defendants.”

Phillip and Nancy Garrido both attended the short hearing, and Tapson immediately asked for his client to be granted bail. Judge Phimister agreed, fixing Nancy’s bail at $20 million, saying he considered her a danger to the community and a flight risk.

After the court hearing, Tapson told reporters that Nancy wanted to send a message through the media to Jaycee and her daughters.

“Mrs. Garrido asked me to tell Jaycee and the kids,” said Tapson, “she really misses them. She would obviously love to see them. I’m assuming the forces of evil won’t allow that to happen. I’ve an old briefcase with tears on it.”

McGregor Scott, who attended the hearing on Jaycee’s behalf, refused to comment about Nancy Garrido’s message.

And Gilbert Maines told reporters that he planned to appeal the latest ruling against him. The following morning, twenty agents from the state Franchise Tax Board arrived at Maines’s home with a search warrant, seeking evidence of nonpayment of state taxes. They then searched his home, removing computer files and his laptop, while he stood in his bathrobe outside in the rain.

“I’ve been doing my taxes the same for thirty-five years,” he told a TV reporter. “Sometimes I skip a few years and then pay them all at once.”

A few days later, he was fired by El Dorado County from his $80,000-a-year position defending clients who can’t get a public defender.

“God has a plan,” he said. “And his timing is perfect.”

At the end of January, the Dugard family quietly took the first steps to sue the state of California for “various lapses” the state parole agents had made with Phillip Garrido. Jaycee, Terry and the two girls each filed claim forms against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for “psychological and emotional injury.”

Family spokeswoman Nancy Seltzer said the family had not decided whether or not they would formally file a lawsuit.

“We are simply preserving Jaycee Dugard’s right to file a lawsuit at a later date,” she explained, “if that is something she decides is in her family’s best interest.”

Under the law, victims have six months to file for personal injury against the state, from the time of the incident. The forms filed by the family did not specify an exact dollar amount, except that it exceeded $25,000.

On Thursday, February 4, Phillip Garrido’s attorney, Susan Gellman, filed two motions—one to allow him visitation rights with Nancy, and the other to find out where Jaycee and his daughters were now living. The first motion described Phillip as the patriarch of a close-knit all-American family.

“The children were raised as the children of Nancy and Phillip Garrido,” it read, “and all five held themselves out to be a family. They took vacations together; they went to the library together; they ran a family business together. The children were home schooled. They kept pets and had a garden. They took care of an ailing family member together. They had special names for each other.

“All of this ended on the day that Phillip and Nancy Garrido was [
sic
] arrested.”

The defense motion asked Judge Phimister to grant the Garridos visitation rights at the Placerville Jail, as they needed to make numerous “family decisions” to prepare their defenses.

“[These] will strongly impact the people they have known and treated as family for the last eleven years,” read the motion. “While the underlying accusations are serious, troubling and sad, there can be no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Garrido acted as parents to two children and raised them for many years, and the decisions they make regarding their course of action in this case will affect those children for many years to come.”

Nancy Garrido’s new attorney, Stephen Tapson, told Fox News that El Dorado County jail officials had refused to allow the married couple to meet, even though they were being housed in the same facility.

“If one of them were out on bail,” he explained, “they could visit each other in jail, just to say hello.”

He also revealed that Phillip’s attorney had now filed papers demanding prosecutors reveal to the defense where Jaycee was then living. Gellman also wanted to know if Jaycee has her own lawyer the defense attorneys can communicate with, to help them prepare his case.

“We would love to talk to her, obviously,” said Tapson, “and they are not telling us where she is and she doesn’t have a lawyer that we know of.”

The following morning, it was reported that Jaycee Dugard and her family had secretly moved to a safe house, not far from Walnut Avenue, Antioch. Associate Pastor Mari Hanes of the East Bay Fellowship in Danville, California—which has a history of helping victims of human trafficking—claimed her church had set up a fund, paying the $2,500-per-month rent on the new house.

In an interview with the
Contra Costa Times,
Haines said that the money the family had so far received from media interviews and photographs was not enough to pay for their housing and long-term counseling.

“People think that once your name is out there,” said the pastor, “you get paid. But unless you have attorneys to broker a deal for you, that’s not really the case.”

Haines said a church member, who had been counseling the Dugard family, first brought their financial plight to her attention.

“[He] just said, ‘Let’s be praying for them,’ ” said Haines, “ ‘It’s as bad a situation as we’ve seen.’ ”

Then the church had started a fund, so far raising about $13,000 of cash and donated jewelry, now being sold on behalf of the family.

“We’re happy to help out for such a good cause,” said jewelry store owner Mark Kahn. “You can’t help but feel for these girls and what they have gone through.”

The next day, after the story appeared in the
Contra Costa Times,
a Dugard family representative called Pastor Haines, asking her to stop talking to the press. The pastor then immediately refuted the story, claiming to have been misquoted.

“I never told anyone Jaycee and her daughters lived in a safe house near Antioch,” she told a local television station. “All I’ve been told is law enforcement found her a safe home somewhere in central California. The church has been financially assisting Jaycee with rent by putting money into the ‘Jaycee Dugard Trust Fund.’ Everyone’s hearts were touched and we wanted to give our support.”

Later Jaycee’s mother would speak out, denying any relationship with the East Bay Fellowship Church.

“I feel like I need to set the record straight,” said Terry Probyn. “We did accept financial support from an undisclosed benefactor and have no affiliation to any church.”

On February 11, El Dorado district attorney Vern Pierson filed the first of two motions, revealing that since his arrest Phillip Garrido had been trying to contact Jaycee Dugard (referred to as Jane Doe) and regain his control over her.

“Defendant Phillip Garrido’s control over Jane Doe was well planned and powerful,” read the motion. “He is still attempting to exert that control. It is time for the court to put an end to those attempts to manipulate and control his victims and the court system.”

In one motion, Pierson revealed that Jaycee had kept a journal during her captivity, quoting three short passages from it, showing the terrible mental power her captor had over her.

“How can I ever tell him that I want to be free,” read one passage, written when she was twenty-three. “Free to come and go as I please. Free to say I have a family. FREE.”

Pierson also revealed that Jaycee had told prosecutors that Garrido, whom he called “a master manipulator,” had instructed Jaycee that if he was ever arrested, she should maintain contact with him through attorneys. The DA pointed out how Phillip Garrido’s last words to her at the parole office, before she had revealed her true identity, were to get a lawyer.

“After Defendant Phillip Garrido is arrested,” stated the motion, “he attempts numerous times to communicate with the media. In one letter sent in September 2009, [he] attempts to assert Jane Doe’s right to an attorney. In another letter, he apologized to ‘every human being for what has taken place.’ ”

Pierson then noted how the wily defendant had mentioned contacting Jaycee in the September 2009 letter “by attorney mail only.”

“It is clear, once again,” stated the motion, “that Defendant Phillip Garrido is very familiar with the legal system and wants to use the attorney-client privilege to conceal his attempted communications to the victim in this case.”

The motion also revealed that on January 28, Phillip Garrido had actually sent Jaycee a letter through his defense attorney.

“Mr. Garrido has asked me to convey,” it read, “that he does not harbor any ill will toward [Jaycee] or the children and loves them very much.”

When Jaycee Dugard saw the letter, she immediately interpreted the phrase “no ill will” to mean that she wasn’t following the prearranged plan.

“[Jaycee] explained,” said the motion, “ ‘the plan’ dictated that should Mr. Garrido ever be arrested, they were to ‘keep in communication through lawyers.’ [Jaycee] further indicated her belief that the referral by her former captor and rapist to not harbor ill will, was ‘another way of manipulating’ her.

“It is clear that the defendant is attempting to use the media and his own attorneys to continue to control [her].”

Pierson wrote that Jaycee had “emphatically stated” that she did not want any contact with the Garridos or their attorneys.

“[She] has further stated,” said Pierson, “that she wants our office to enforce her constitutional rights and protect her privacy.”

Then he asked Judge Phimister to issue a protective order to prevent any contact with Phillip and Nancy Garrido whatsoever.

A week later, DA Vern Pierson filed a second motion, arguing against Phillip and Nancy Garrido’s demands to visit each other. He wrote that longstanding county jail regulations did not allow personal visitations between inmates, particularly if they are co-defendants in a pending criminal case.

“The only justification offered by the Garrido defendants for their extraordinary request to visit with each other,” stated the motion, “is that they need to make ‘family decisions.’ The pseudo-family the Garridos want to discuss was created by the kidnap, false imprisonment and multiple rapes of a young girl, producing two children.

“While it may be argued that a restoration of family values would improve the quality of American life in general, the assertion of family rights in a case where the ‘family’ was the product of 29 alleged felonies is astonishing.”

On Wednesday, February 24—two days before the next scheduled El Dorado Superior Court hearing—public defender Susan Gellman filed a rebuttal motion, claiming her client was suffering from serious mental illness. She claimed that by labeling Phillip Garrido as a “master manipulator,” the DA was making the same mistakes that the parole authorities had.

“It appears that Phillip Garrido has been hearing the voices of angels for years,” she wrote. “[Jaycee Dugard] spoke to investigators about his self described ability to understand the voices of angels, after Mr. Garrido was arrested. One of the children disclosed this as well, describing how the voices would keep him up at night, and how the angels lived underground and spoke to him from this location.”

Gellman cited Garrido’s “Origin of Schizophrenia Revealed” manifesto, and his giving it to the FBI two days before his arrest, as proof of his “serious mental illness.”

The defense motion appeared to set the stage for a mental health defense by Garrido, as he had done more than thirty years earlier in Nevada.

“Mr. Garrido believes he has a story of transformation to be told,” said Gellman. “Mr. Garrido wrongly believes that [Jaycee] is part of his transformation and his disclosure. Mr. Garrido believes that he and [Jaycee] once had a plan to launch a website wherein Mr. Garrido’s ability to speak to angels would be revealed to mankind. He remains confused as to why this has not happened. These are not factors indicating manipulation but something else entirely. They indicate thinking that is delusional, but very real to Mr. Garrido.

“They are not acts of harassment or intimidation or attempt [
sic
] to dissuade a witness. They are demonstrations of mental illness.”

At a hearing on February 26, Judge Douglas Phimister agreed to allow Nancy Garrido to place two five-minute telephone calls to her husband over the next two weeks. His ruling came over the objection of DA Vern Pierson and El Dorado County undersheriff Fred Kollar, who vehemently opposed any contact. Both the Garridos attended the hearing.

“These are two people who are potentially facing the rest of their lives in prison,” said the judge. “To allow them ten minutes to talk to each other is not unreasonable.”

He then scheduled another hearing on April 15, to decide what further communication between the co-defendants to allow. And he also authorized the monitoring and recording of their telephone calls, although he would only make it available to the prosecution if the Garridos did anything illegal.

“We may expand the rights of the defendants,” he said. “But if there’s a problem with the first phone call, then that will be that.”

Judge Phimister also refused to reveal Jaycee Dugard’s address or phone number to the defense. But he appointed two new attorneys to represent her daughters, saying they would probably be witnesses at the trial and should have a say about being contacted by the Garridos’ attorneys.