This morning People magazine revealed its new cover featuring a photograph of a beaming Jaycee Dugard. The image of the 29-year-old Dugard is the first to be released to the public since she was was freed after spending the past 18 years in captivity and reunited with her family. A quote from Dugard accompanies the cover photo that says simply, "I'm so happy to be back with my family."
Friends and family members close to Dugard, who was not directly interviewed for the 10-page article in the issue hitting newsstands nationwide Friday, spoke to People magazine about her abduction, the years she spent imprisoned inside of a hidden encampment of tents and sheds, and the struggles she and her children, Angel, 15, and Starlet, 11, are having as they adjust to a normal life.
Erika Shulte, a Dugard family spokesperson, told Ann Curry of the "Today Show" that despite all they've been through, the Dugards are "very close and comfortable and happy." She added, "If you didn't know the circumstances, it would just seem like any other family." Shulte said that a therapist is using horseback riding as a way of helping Dugard and her daughters (both of whom were fathered by Dugard's captor, Phillip Garrido), assimilate into modern society.
Whether or not People paid for the cover photo, which was taken by a private photographer, is unknown. In an interview with the "Today Show"'s Matt Lauer, People's managing editor, Larry Hackett, would only say "We have bought photographs in the past ... I don't want to go into the details." Hackett added that Dugard and her mother, 50-year-old Terry Probyn, decided to grant the magazine permission to publish the photo as part of an effort to control the story of Dugard's abduction and release, a story that has garnered intense interest from the media and the general public.
Garrido kidnapped Dugard when she was waiting to catch the school bus near her family's home in South Lake Tahoe, California, on June 10, 1991, when she was just 11 years old. Dugard and her daughters were freed on August 26th of this year after an employee of University of California at Berkeley expressed concern for their safety to a campus police after Garrido and the children visited her office to inquire about holding a Christian event on the school's campus. The campus police then ran a background check on Garrido, became alarmed upon learning that he was on parole for rape and contacted his parole officer, who immediately called Garrido in for a meeting. Later in the day, Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy showed up for the meeting with his parole officer with Dugard and her children, whose true identities were discovered by authorities after being separated from the Garridos. Jaycee Dugard and her children were reunited with her family the next day, while Phillip and Nancy Garrido were taken into custody and remain in jail on charges of kidnapping and various other crimes. Additionally, Phillip Garrido is being investigated for his possible involvement in a string of unsolved murders in the area.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts948
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First Photo: Kidnap Survivor Jaycee Dugard Emerges from the Shadows
After being held against her will for 18 years, much of it in a backyard hell straight out of a horror film, Jaycee Dugard wants the world to know:
"I'm so happy to be back with my family," she tells PEOPLE.
Now living in seclusion with her mom, Terry Probyn, 50, and the two daughters – Angel, 15, and Starlit, 11 – fathered by her alleged kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, Dugard, 29, has begun the slow process of recovery. She rides horses, cooks meals and is thinking of collaborating on a book.
"They live a surprisingly normal life, considering the circumstances," says Terry's stepmother, Joan Curry.
For much more on Jaycee Dugard's new life – including stunning photographs of her family, details of her reunion with the sister she hadn't seen since 1991 and her deepening bond with her mother – pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday
Source: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20312090,00.html
Showing posts with label Jaycee Lee Dugard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jaycee Lee Dugard. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Many missed chances to catch kidnapping suspect
ANTIOCH, Calif. – Jaycee Lee Dugard has been subjected to what police say was nearly a lifetime of torment in a backyard compound set up by a religious zealot with a rap sheet dating to the 1970s. Prosecutors say she was raped and had two children by her captor, who hid her from the outside world.
But it became increasingly clear Friday that this 18-year nightmare did not have to be for Dugard, with new details surfacing that authorities blew numerous chances to catch her alleged captor.
Neighbors complained to law enforcement that a psychotic sex addict was in their midst, alarmed that Phillip Garrido was housing young girls in backyard tents. A deputy showed up to investigate, but never went beyond the front porch.
Probation officers showed up at the home, too, but had no inkling that his back yard was actually a labyrinth of tents, sheds and buildings that were Dugard's prison. They did not even know he had children on the premises.
Garrido also wore a GPS-linked ankle bracelet that tracked his every movement, the result of his sex-crime convictions that sent him away to Leavenworth for a 50-year stint, only to get paroled after 10 years.
"Why is he out and about?" said Dan DeMaranville, who investigated Garrido in the 1970s rape case in Nevada. "If he's on lifetime parole, where was his parole officer? The guy was a sick puppy, and should have been neutered before he was paroled."
The outrage came as a sheriff's department acknowledged that it missed an opportunity to arrest Garrido in 2006 after the neighbor complaint about children in the yard.
"We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure to this situation," Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren E. Rupf said. "I cannot change the course of events but we are beating ourselves up over this and continue to do so."
"We should have been more inquisitive, more curious and turned over a rock or two."
Garrido and his wife pleaded not guilty Friday to a total of 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment. Phillip Garrido appeared stoic and unresponsive during the brief arraignment hearing. His wife cried and put her head in her hands several times.
Garrido gave a rambling, sometimes incoherent phone interview to KCRA-TV from the county jail Thursday in which he said he had not admitted to a kidnapping and that he had turned his life around since the birth of his first daughter 15 years ago.
Meanwhile, Garrido came under suspicion in the unsolved murders of several prostitutes in the 1990s, raising the prospect he was a serial killer as well. Several of the women's bodies — the exact number is not known — were dumped near an industrial park where Garrido worked during the 1990s. Police executed a search warrant at his home Friday in the investigation.
Dugard, now 29, was reunited with her family and said to be in good health, but feeling guilty about developing a bond with Garrido over the years. Her two children, 11 and 15, remained with her.
"Jaycee has strong feelings with this guy. She really feels it's almost like a marriage," said Dugard's stepfather Carl Probyn, who was there when little Jaycee was snatched from a bus stop in 1991.
Probyn has been in constant contact with Dugard's mother, his ex-wife Terry Probyn, since she found out her daughter was alive on Wednesday.
Probyn said both mother and daughter are trying to avoid the public eye for now. After not seeing each other for 18 years, Dugard greeted her mother by saying, "Hi, mom, I have babies," according to Probyn. Dugard had her two daughters with her at the reunion, and it appears she never told them she was kidnapped by their father, he said.
She is now free thanks in large part to two quick-thinking police employees at the University of California, Berkeley who came across a rambling Garrido this week, with Dugard's two daughters in tow. He was on campus because he wanted to hold some sort of religious event.
Garrido seemed incoherent and mentally unstable, and the girls wore drab-colored dresses, were unusually subdued, had an unnaturally pale complexion and appeared robotic and rehearsed when they spoke, said Lisa Campbell. They said they were home-schooled by their mother and had a 29-year-old sister at home.
"They seemed a little out of touch with reality and robotic," said Campbell's colleague, Ally Jacobs. "I just got a weird uneasy feeling."
She ran a background check on Garrido and notified his probation officer. On Wednesday, Garrido arrived at the probation officer's building with his wife, the two girls and a woman who initially identified herself as Allissa. She turned out to be Dugard and investigators said Garrido confessed to the kidnapping.
The authorities say they do not yet know whether she ever tried to escape or to alert anyone of her whereabouts, but she had chances to escape Garrido, who did a stint behind bars during the period of captivity.
Authorities had a chance to catch him, too.
Garrido met with his parole agent several times each month and was subject to routine surprise home visits and random drug and alcohol tests, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Gordon Hinkle said. The last unannounced visit by a team of local police agencies was conducted in July 2008.
"There was never any indication to my knowledge that there was any sign of children living there," Hinkle said.
As it turns out, Dugard and her two children were living there as prisoners, authorities say. The heavily wooded compound was arranged so that people could not view what was happening, and one of the buildings was sound-proofed and could only be opened from the outside.
Damon Robinson has lived next door to the Garridos for more than three years and his then-girlfriend in 2006 told him she saw tents in the backyard and children. Kids on the block called him "Creepy Phil."
"I told her to call police. I told her to call right away," he said.
Garrido was required to register as a sex offender because he was convicted in 1977 of kidnapping a 25-year-old woman from parking lot in South Lake Tahoe, the same town Jaycee Dugard lived in when she was kidnapped.
He was convicted of raping the woman multiple times at a Reno storage unit that the investigator from the case described as a "sex palace." It featured various sex aids, sex magazines and videos, stage lights, wine, and a bed, said DeMaranville.
He served about 10 years of a 50-year federal sentence for kidnapping, and less than a year for a concurrent Nevada sentence of five years to life in prison for sexual assault. He was paroled in 1988, said Nevada Department of Corrections spokeswoman Suzanne Pardee.
A violation of Garrido's parole conditions sent him back to federal prison from April to August of 1993. Dick Carelli, spokesman for the federal Office of Court Administration, did not know what Garrido did to violate parole.
Monica Adams, 33, whose mother lives on their street, said she knew Phillip Garrido was a sex offender and that he had children living with him. Other neighbors knew, too, but they assumed police were keeping tabs on him.
"He never bothered any one, he kept to himself," Adams said. "What would we have done? You just watch your own."
Probyn said he was frustrated to find out that a car matching the description of the one he saw speeding Dugard away in the day she was kidnapped was found in the yard of Garrido's home. Nancy Garrido also fits the "dead-on" description he gave of the woman who pulled her into the car, he said.
"He had every break in the world," Probyn said of Garrido's close encounters with the law.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090829/ap_on_re_us/us_kidnapped_girl_found
But it became increasingly clear Friday that this 18-year nightmare did not have to be for Dugard, with new details surfacing that authorities blew numerous chances to catch her alleged captor.
Neighbors complained to law enforcement that a psychotic sex addict was in their midst, alarmed that Phillip Garrido was housing young girls in backyard tents. A deputy showed up to investigate, but never went beyond the front porch.
Probation officers showed up at the home, too, but had no inkling that his back yard was actually a labyrinth of tents, sheds and buildings that were Dugard's prison. They did not even know he had children on the premises.
Garrido also wore a GPS-linked ankle bracelet that tracked his every movement, the result of his sex-crime convictions that sent him away to Leavenworth for a 50-year stint, only to get paroled after 10 years.
"Why is he out and about?" said Dan DeMaranville, who investigated Garrido in the 1970s rape case in Nevada. "If he's on lifetime parole, where was his parole officer? The guy was a sick puppy, and should have been neutered before he was paroled."
The outrage came as a sheriff's department acknowledged that it missed an opportunity to arrest Garrido in 2006 after the neighbor complaint about children in the yard.
"We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure to this situation," Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren E. Rupf said. "I cannot change the course of events but we are beating ourselves up over this and continue to do so."
"We should have been more inquisitive, more curious and turned over a rock or two."
Garrido and his wife pleaded not guilty Friday to a total of 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment. Phillip Garrido appeared stoic and unresponsive during the brief arraignment hearing. His wife cried and put her head in her hands several times.
Garrido gave a rambling, sometimes incoherent phone interview to KCRA-TV from the county jail Thursday in which he said he had not admitted to a kidnapping and that he had turned his life around since the birth of his first daughter 15 years ago.
Meanwhile, Garrido came under suspicion in the unsolved murders of several prostitutes in the 1990s, raising the prospect he was a serial killer as well. Several of the women's bodies — the exact number is not known — were dumped near an industrial park where Garrido worked during the 1990s. Police executed a search warrant at his home Friday in the investigation.
Dugard, now 29, was reunited with her family and said to be in good health, but feeling guilty about developing a bond with Garrido over the years. Her two children, 11 and 15, remained with her.
"Jaycee has strong feelings with this guy. She really feels it's almost like a marriage," said Dugard's stepfather Carl Probyn, who was there when little Jaycee was snatched from a bus stop in 1991.
Probyn has been in constant contact with Dugard's mother, his ex-wife Terry Probyn, since she found out her daughter was alive on Wednesday.
Probyn said both mother and daughter are trying to avoid the public eye for now. After not seeing each other for 18 years, Dugard greeted her mother by saying, "Hi, mom, I have babies," according to Probyn. Dugard had her two daughters with her at the reunion, and it appears she never told them she was kidnapped by their father, he said.
She is now free thanks in large part to two quick-thinking police employees at the University of California, Berkeley who came across a rambling Garrido this week, with Dugard's two daughters in tow. He was on campus because he wanted to hold some sort of religious event.
Garrido seemed incoherent and mentally unstable, and the girls wore drab-colored dresses, were unusually subdued, had an unnaturally pale complexion and appeared robotic and rehearsed when they spoke, said Lisa Campbell. They said they were home-schooled by their mother and had a 29-year-old sister at home.
"They seemed a little out of touch with reality and robotic," said Campbell's colleague, Ally Jacobs. "I just got a weird uneasy feeling."
She ran a background check on Garrido and notified his probation officer. On Wednesday, Garrido arrived at the probation officer's building with his wife, the two girls and a woman who initially identified herself as Allissa. She turned out to be Dugard and investigators said Garrido confessed to the kidnapping.
The authorities say they do not yet know whether she ever tried to escape or to alert anyone of her whereabouts, but she had chances to escape Garrido, who did a stint behind bars during the period of captivity.
Authorities had a chance to catch him, too.
Garrido met with his parole agent several times each month and was subject to routine surprise home visits and random drug and alcohol tests, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Gordon Hinkle said. The last unannounced visit by a team of local police agencies was conducted in July 2008.
"There was never any indication to my knowledge that there was any sign of children living there," Hinkle said.
As it turns out, Dugard and her two children were living there as prisoners, authorities say. The heavily wooded compound was arranged so that people could not view what was happening, and one of the buildings was sound-proofed and could only be opened from the outside.
Damon Robinson has lived next door to the Garridos for more than three years and his then-girlfriend in 2006 told him she saw tents in the backyard and children. Kids on the block called him "Creepy Phil."
"I told her to call police. I told her to call right away," he said.
Garrido was required to register as a sex offender because he was convicted in 1977 of kidnapping a 25-year-old woman from parking lot in South Lake Tahoe, the same town Jaycee Dugard lived in when she was kidnapped.
He was convicted of raping the woman multiple times at a Reno storage unit that the investigator from the case described as a "sex palace." It featured various sex aids, sex magazines and videos, stage lights, wine, and a bed, said DeMaranville.
He served about 10 years of a 50-year federal sentence for kidnapping, and less than a year for a concurrent Nevada sentence of five years to life in prison for sexual assault. He was paroled in 1988, said Nevada Department of Corrections spokeswoman Suzanne Pardee.
A violation of Garrido's parole conditions sent him back to federal prison from April to August of 1993. Dick Carelli, spokesman for the federal Office of Court Administration, did not know what Garrido did to violate parole.
Monica Adams, 33, whose mother lives on their street, said she knew Phillip Garrido was a sex offender and that he had children living with him. Other neighbors knew, too, but they assumed police were keeping tabs on him.
"He never bothered any one, he kept to himself," Adams said. "What would we have done? You just watch your own."
Probyn said he was frustrated to find out that a car matching the description of the one he saw speeding Dugard away in the day she was kidnapped was found in the yard of Garrido's home. Nancy Garrido also fits the "dead-on" description he gave of the woman who pulled her into the car, he said.
"He had every break in the world," Probyn said of Garrido's close encounters with the law.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090829/ap_on_re_us/us_kidnapped_girl_found
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