Episode 7: In Plain Sight - Surviving the Unthinkable: Jaycee Lee Dugard
An 11-year-old girl is abducted in broad daylight, metres from her front door and in full view of multiple witnesses. Her abductor, a convicted sex offender with a disturbing litany of past violent sexual offences is brazen in his crime. He doesn’t expect to be caught. And he is not working alone. Kept in deplorable conditions and forced to experience things that no child ever should. Jaycee Lee Dugard survived the unthinkable. This is her story.
Jaycee’s Background
Jaycee Lee Dugard was born on the 3rd of May 1980 to Terry Dugard, a single mother. Her biological father, Ken Slayton, was not involved in her life, and was not even aware of her existence until many years later. Terry met carpet fitter Carl Probyn in the mid-80s, and married in 1987 or 1988, when Jaycee was 7-years old. In 1989, Terry gave birth to another daughter, Shayna with her new husband. In September 1990, the family moved from the Californian city of Arcadia to the rural town of Meyers, 16 Km to the south of South Lake Tahoe. One of the reasons cited for the move, was that they thought it would be a safer environment in which to bring up their children.
Day of Abduction
The 10th of June 1991 was a regular Monday morning, but one that would change the course of one family’s life forever. In the community of Meyers in El Dorado County, California, 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, was preparing for school. Dressed mostly in pink, her favourite colour, she glanced in the mirror before placing a silver butterfly-shaped ring her mother had given her on her finger. She made breakfast and checked on her baby sister Shayna, who was still sleeping.
As she left the house, her stepfather, Carl was out of view, working on a van in the garage. Jaycee said goodbye and began walking up the hill to the bus stop, as she did every morning. She watched as a grey car pulled up beside her, temporarily cutting off her route. She stopped and looked at the driver, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t. Instead, he rolled down the window and reached out towards her with something in his hand. There was a crackling sound, followed by tingling sensation, before she fell to the ground in searing pain. She didn’t know it, but the stranger had tased her.
Aftermath of Abduction
Jaycee’s stepfather Carl had seen the entire abduction unfold from his driveway. In a haze of shock and adrenalin, he grabbed a nearby bike and took off after the vehicle. He followed the car for as long as he could but soon lost sight of it. Rushing home, he called the police straightaway. He described how he had seen a grey mid-sized car carrying two people do a U turn at the bus stop at the top of the hill, before a woman bundled his stepdaughter into the vehicle.
Police widened their net in the search for the missing eleven-year-old. They set up roadblocks and began conducting door-to-door enquiries. Terry began speaking to journalists. Soon local, national and international media began reporting on the abduction.
Thousands of flyers and posters were printed and widely distributed around the country. Classmates at Jaycee’s primary school, Meyer Elementary School, began a Pink Ribbon Campaign soon after her disappearance, knowing that pink was her favourite colour. Ribbons were worn and displayed all around her hometown in the hope that she would, one day, safely return to her family.
In the weeks after her disappearance, Jaycee’s case was featured on the TV show, America’s Most Wanted. In October of that same year, her case was also featured on another show called, Missing: Reward. By 1996, Terry and Carl had separated, citing the strain of Jaycee’s abduction as one of the reasons. Despite the best efforts of police, the community and Jaycee’s family, the trail soon went cold.
Abduction
Jaycee’s limp body was dragged into the waiting car. She was placed face down on the backseat. Her face and body were covered in a heavy blanket. It felt as if a weight was pinning her down, as if someone was sitting on her. Her abductor moved Jaycee from the backseat of the car and through the front door of the property on Walnut Avenue, Antioch, California. An innocuous single-story house owned by the man’s mother, with an extensive garden to the rear that stretched far beyond the presumed property line. This would be Jaycee’s prison for the next 18 years.
In Meyers, police and volunteers were furiously searching for the missing child. News bulletins on radio and television, chatter on police radios and hundreds of volunteers searching for her long into the night. But they were looking in the wrong place. Her captors had transported her approximately 240 kilometres, or 150 miles from the abduction site.
According to her memoir, she plead with her captor. She told him that her family didn’t have much money but would pay whatever the ransom was. The man laughed in her face. She said that he later attempted to comfort her but said that it was ‘like a rabbit being comforted by a lion’. Her abductor moved her to a padlocked shed in the back garden, and warned her not to try to escape. He told her that he had two aggressive Doberman Pinscher dogs trained to attack. He said that they would chase and catch her if she tried to run away.
Phillip’s Background
The circumstances that led to Jaycee’s abduction had begun long before Jaycee was even born. Her abductor, Phillip Greg Garrido was born in Pittsburg, California in 1951. His parents were Manuel and Patricia Garrido. Raised in Brentwood, he had one brother, Ron. Garrido was a habitual drug user. At the time of Jaycee’s abduction, Garrido was a registered sex offender, subject to periodic parole inspections and ongoing drug testing.
Garrido first came to the attention of the authorities in the early 1970s. According to the US Parole Commission, he was twice arrested for marijuana possession and received probation. In 1972 an unnamed 14-year-old girl reported being abducted, assaulted and drugged by the then 21-year-old Garrido. She declined to proceed with prosecution, and the charges were dropped. In 1973, Garrido eloped with his nineteen-year-old former classmate, Christine Murphy.
In a 2009 interview with the TV programme, Inside Edition, Christine recalls Phillip as being extremely jealous and controlling. She has since described her former husband as being ‘a monster’. Soon after the wedding, the relationship turned violent. When she tried to leave him, he pulled up beside her in his car and threw her in vehicle, abducting her.
On the 22nd of November 1976, Garrido stalked and abducted 25-year-old Kathrine ‘Katie’ Calloway from a South Lake Tahoe car park. Garrido drove her to a secluded warehouse storage shed in Reno, Nevada and proceeded to beat and rape her repeatedly for 5.5 hours. She said that the shed had been so carefully arranged that it was obvious that it had been planned.
While this was happening, a police officer was patrolling the area and saw Katie’s vehicle parked haphazardly next to the isolated storage shed. As the officer approached the building, he noted the broken lock on the door. He knocked and waited, unsure of what he would find. After a moment, a man came to the door and opened it. Garrido was shirtless and dishevelled. Katie took the opportunity to run and alert the police officer. Garrido was arrested.
Garrido was sentenced to 50 years to life for the rape charges and was given a life sentence for the kidnapping charge. The fact that he abducted Katie and moved her across state lines, meant that prosecutors were able to lay both state and federal charges against him, increasing his sentence. It should have been enough to keep him incarcerated and unable to reoffend for decades. Unfortunately, that would not be the case. Christine, his then wife, used this opportunity to escape her oppressive marriage. In 1977, he began serving his sentence at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.
Phillip & Nancy’s Relationship & Marriage
While imprisoned at Leavenworth, Garrido met Nancy Bocanegra, a 26-year-old nursing aide, who was visiting another inmate at the prison, her uncle. The two soon began a relationship and were married in October 1981 at the prison. In June 1988, Garrido was released from Leavenworth and transferred to Nevada State Prison. Here, he served just seven months of a five year to life sentence before being released. In total, he served just eleven years for his crimes against Katie.
He moved with his new wife Nancy into his mother’s home at 1554 Walnut Avenue, Antioch, California. His mother, Patricia, despite being only in her mid-sixties at the time, suffered from dementia and later Parkinson’s disease. She spent a good deal of her time confined to her bedroom.
Ongoing Abuse
Jaycee was still in the shed where her captor had left her. It was June in California, and the heat was stifling. There was a single barred window in the shed, covered with a towel. Most of the window was covered, so only a sliver of natural light could get through during the day. At night, the room was pitch black. Jaycee was still naked, with only a towel to cover her, blankets to rest on and a bucket for a toilet.
For the first week, her captor visited her every day to bring food. A single meal. She later said that she was almost glad to see him each day, as at least his visits meant she would get some food and wouldn’t be alone. Several days after her captivity began, Garrido arrived with food and an ominous warning. This time it would be different. This is when he raped her for the first time, still handcuffed and naked on the floor of the shed. She was eleven.
Nancy
For the first few months, Nancy had little contact with Jaycee. After seven months of captivity, Nancy was introduced to Jaycee. She brought her chocolate milk and the gift of a stuffed animal toy. She tearfully apologised to Jaycee for the situation she found herself in. Phillip would also apologise to Jaycee at different intervals, before alternating again with threats. Like Phillip, Nancy was also a drug addict. She was able to hold down a job for much of Jaycee’s captivity, until 1999, when she became Patricia’s full-time carer.
Jaycee stated that Nancy was just as manipulative as her husband and oscillated between a seeming maternal kindness and a cruel jealously. We can infer that Nancy grew to view Jaycee not as a child and victim but as a competitor for her husband’s sexual attention. Ironically, the district attorney who later prosecuted the case, stated that he was convinced that at the time, Nancy Garrido had scouted Dugard as a prize for her husband.
Children
In 1994, Jaycee, now known exclusively as Alissa, was informed by Nancy and Phillip that they believed that she was pregnant. Garrido gave her access to limited TV programmes on childbirth and assured her that he had researched childbirth and knew exactly how to deliver a child. On 18th August 1994, aged 14, Jaycee gave birth to her first child, a girl, whom Garrido named Angel. Almost immediately after the birth, Jaycee recalled seeing Garrido holding baby Angel up to the sky and asking God to please don’t let him hurt her. A second daughter, Starlite was born in November 1997, when Jaycee was 17.
Garrido’s religious fanaticism continued to grow. He founded a church, he called God’s Desire, and would preach to his ‘family’ and others in public. Later, he also began a printing business, running it from the home he shared with Nancy and his captives. Phillip looked after sales and recruited customers, and for a time, both Nancy and Jaycee, now known to everyone around her as ‘Alissa’ worked in the business, teaching herself word processing and graphic design.
During the intervening years, Garrido had decided that the girls, Angel and Starlite would refer to Nancy and Phillip as their parents, and ‘Alissa’ would be their ‘older sister’. In summer 2009, Jaycee had just turned 29, and had been missing for 18 years.
Rescue & Reappearance
On the 24th of August 2009, Garrido visited the San Francisco branch office of the FBI to hand deliver a four-page document titled, Origin of Schizophrenia Revealed. In it, he claimed to have discovered a method to prevent those with schizophrenia from becoming violent. He also claimed to be able to control sounds with the human mind. The document also discussed his ideas about religion and sexuality. During this visit, Garrido was accompanied by Angel and Starlite, aged 15 and 11. The trio travelled to the University of California, Berkeley.
Garrido visited the campus police office to apply for permission to hold a church event on campus. Campus staff, sceptical of his account, and concerned for the girls, took his name and asked him to make an appointment for the following day, which he did. They quickly discovered that Garrido was a registered sex offender and a parolee.
On the 26th of August 2009, Garrido, Nancy, Jaycee and the girls presented to the parole office. This is when Jaycee spoke up against her captors and publicly claimed her daughters as her own. The Garrido’s were separated. Jaycee and her daughters were taken to another room. Jaycee, presenting as ‘Alissa’, admitted that she was aware that Garrido was a registered sex offender. After some time, Jaycee was finally able to admit her true identity. Police were called, and Jaycee was reunited with her mother and sister. Phillip and Nancy were promptly arrested and charged. Jaycee was soon reunited with the family that never stopped searching for her.
State Failures
There were numerous opportunities for authorities to discover Jaycee, but they missed every one of them. According to an article by the Daily Mail, parole officers ‘visited the Garridos' house no less than 60 times over the 18 years they held Jaycee’. Garrido was on parole for the 1976 rape and abduction of Katie Calloway. He should have been serving a 50-year sentence but had been released in 1988.
A deputy sheriff questioned Garrido at his front door but didn’t search the property and took the convicted sex offender at his word. The California Office of the Inspector General published a report in November 2009, identifying several ‘lapses’ by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The State of California approved a USD $20 million dollar settlement for Jaycee in July 2010, to compensate her for ‘various lapses by the Corrections Department [that contributed to] Dugard’s continued captivity, ongoing sexual assault and mental and/or physical abuse’.
Court Statements
On the 10th of June 2011, exactly twenty years to the day that she had been abducted, Jaycee’s mother, Terry Probyn read her daughter’s statement in court. Dugard wrote:
‘I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence. I've chosen to have my mom read this for me. Phillip Garrido, you are wrong. I could never say that to you before, but I have the freedom now and I am saying you are a liar, and all of your so-called theories are wrong. Everything you have ever done to me has been wrong and someday I hope you can see that’.
After reading her daughter’s statement to the court, Terry read her own victim impact statement, recalling the day Jaycee was taken from her.
‘For 18 excruciating years, I endured a huge gaping hole in my heart that some evil being had put their hand into and had ripped out. For 18 agonizing years, I guarded what little I had left and lived in hell on this earth’.
‘You are the epitome of disgust and no amount of jail time or even death will cleanse your corrupt souls. You do not deserve to live or die or even exist’.
Sentencing
Phillip Garrido eventually pled guilty and was convicted of one count of kidnapping and 13 counts of sexual assault. He waived the right of appeal. He was sentenced to 431 years to life. Nancy pled guilty to one count of kidnapping and one count of rape by force. She also waived the right of appeal and received the maximum allowable sentence, based on sentencing laws in 1991, at the time the crime took place. She was sentenced to 36 years imprisonment. Both will be eligible for parole in 2034.
Jaycee and her children spent many weeks and months reconnecting with her mother, Terry and sister, Shayna. They engaged in extensive therapy to process all that they had experienced. Jaycee has since written two books, A Stolen Life: A Memoir (2011) and Freedom: My Book of Firsts (2016). In the years since her rescue, Jaycee established The Jayc Foundation (Just Ask Yourself to Care), along with her mother - a non-profit organisation that runs animal therapy and healing programmes for individuals and families who have experienced major trauma.
In 2016, just before her second book was published, Jaycee issued the following statement: ‘There is life after something tragic happens. Life doesn’t have to end if you don’t want it to. It’s all in how you look at it … Somehow, I still believe that we each hold the key to our own happiness, and you have to grab it where you can in whatever form it might take’.
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