Cops Missed Earlier Chance to Save Jaycee

Neighbors Complained About Sex Offender's Backyard Compound in 2006 but Visits by Authorities Did Not Uncover Child Captive

(AP)  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, had two children by her captor and hidden from the outside world.

But it is becoming increasingly clear 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 to prison 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.

Complete coverage from Crimesider:

Photos: Little Girl Found 18 Years Later
Forensic Psych: Does Garrido Believe Kids Cured Pedophilia?
Why Didn't Neighbors Know?
Exclusive: Reporter Remembers Abduction 18 Years Ago

Garrido: Dugard's Girls "Slept in My Arms Every Single Night"
Legal Analysis: Statute of Limitations Non-Issue in Prosecuting Suspects
God's Chosen Communicator or Plain Old Psycho?

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 a 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.

[tubicha]

Give GPS devices to kids for wear 24 hours a day then there will never kidnaped again

[asdfqwertyui]

Yet another deeply religious pervert. That's what happens when you repress your natural instincts.

Just look at the Republican Party. They're all secretly child rapists or homosexuals or womanizers.

When you leave religion and realize that what your body wants isn't actually wrong, you become normal and healthy, and the really perverted stuff loses all its appeal.

Freedom from your porn addiction isn't found through Christ; it's found through rejecting the lies of religion.

[boyerschefsoncall]

Jaycee did or did not contact the authorities for many reasons. Maybe someone or many people within the local authorities were involved in Jaycees Hell

- They Kidnaps her in 1991 wearing an ankle tracking device
- They Possibly kidnaps Rapes, Injures and Kills many girls and children in the community while wearing an ankle tracking device
- Has a parole officer visit his residence often
- Had perverted parties that which the neighbors witnessed
- The neighbors knew he was a sexual predator
- The neighbors sometimes saw him with young girls
- He was know as Creepy Phil in the neighborhood
- Neighbors called the police about his perverted ways and that people were living in the yard, and a police officer checked it out
- He went to the FBI with the girls to give them information regarding this case

Am I the only one that thinks someone(s) with authority could have been involved in this evil

[babooph]

The police are under too much political pressure ,filling the prisons with drug addicts, to take much time for social investigations.

[Newster1]

by bitterpill2010 August 29, 2009 9:45 AM EDT
Well, there's nothing unconstitutional, or "cruel and unusual," about requiring sterilization as a condition of parole. "

Sure there is, surgery is surgery, besides this isnt about s3x, pedophilia is not about s3x its about POWER and CONTROL, castration has not stopped pedophiles, it simply doesn't work.

[erasmus111]

You seem to have a problem with spelling the word sex.

[Newster1]

And with all that KRAP in the back yard not one idiot from the city, county, state or other local agencies bothered to check into such things as permits, fire hazzards, nuisances, eyesores etc of having all those sheds, tarbs and debris all over the place?

No one complained about all that eyesore krap there either?
Amazing how this girl and the 2 kids never simply walked out over that little fence, after all, the 2 nuts had to sleep SOMETIME.

[erasmus111]

by summarex August 29, 2009 9:48 PM EDT
This man is probably suffering from severe mental illness and needs to be hospitalized, not raped or mutilated.


You could be right. Many are thrown in prison when what they really need is mental help. The problem is they aren't getting it. Of course even if they did get it, it is unlikely it would work. Alternative: raped and mutilation. : ) If you can't cure them, at the very least they should suffer like their victims.

[summarex]

What is it with you people and prison rape?
Who has conditioned you to think on those terms? Might they be
the same animals who feed you your daily dose of opinions and then have you walk around like mindless idiots regurgitating the bits of manure they have planted in your brains as if they were your own thoughts? I think so.

This man is probably suffering from severe mental illness and needs to be hospitalized, not raped or mutilated. Only the leaders of American catastrophe deserve that. (And maybe a few of their mindless followeres on this forum.)

[erasmus111]

by ROBACA August 29, 2009 4:59 PM EDT
Find a tree stump, nail his genitals to it, set it on fire and give him a rusty, dull pocketknife.


Sounds good to me. : )

[summarex]

I saw that police chief on TV. He insulted the guy just enough to allow his lawyers to seek andf perhaps obtain a change of venue. But somethingh else struck me even more. Only these police lowlifes could admit to having screwed up and pat themselves on the back in the same press conference!

END POLICE WELFARE

LET THOSE LAZY GOOD-FOR-NOTHINGS WORK FOR REAL LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.

[RNcutie]

This poor girl was brain washed into thinking this monster loved her. His wife should be put in a cell with 10 rapists so she can see what it feels like. And as far as him, the electric chair would be too good for him. He should be put into general population at any prision because I think all the fathers that are in there would take care of him. Law enforcement in this country better wake up before its too late. This country is going to **** and sick people like this guy are taking over. Cops need to get off their ***** and get to work on stopping this stuff from happening. Our children deserve to live happy lives and feel safe.

[RNcutie]

his guy should've been castrated a long time ago. All sex offenders with children should be. The police really screwed up by not fully investigating the complaints by the neighbors and they should be sued by the girls family. And where was the parole officer? What the hell kind of supervision was he/she doing on this guy if he was able to do all this? Sick people like this guy do whatever they want in this country because they can get away with it. We need to do more serious punishments for violent crime criminals instead of people spending a lifetime in jail for petty crimes.

[cattiej]

I hope the authorities who were suppose to invistigate this case several years ago and to also check on the guy even before that are fired, arrested for endangering the life of this women and her two children. This guy is a monster almost like Jeffery Dahmmer. This sex offender needs to get the electric chair and his wife needs to be in a 6 ft by 6ft cell and on bread and water the rest of her life. I asume that thesee 2 monsters were the ones who delivered the babies when they were born. Why didn't this girl put up a fight, she was brain washed, almost like the water boarding that George Bush and Richard Cheney approved of with the Getmo detainees. There are monsters everywhere. They have always been and you have to be pro active and make everyone aware of them. The neighbors next door didn't do enough, they should feel very guilty they didn't tell someone other than the person they did. They should have told the press or some minister or an attorney or the rest of the neighbors. Didn't the neighbors own a camera to take pictures of these captive people???

[ivehadit9]

See, if the justice system has been inept and incompetent by releasing this convicted sex offender after serving 11 years of a 50-year sentence and failing to monitor his movements over the past 18 years, not to mention the California State Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger contemplating on releasing 37,000 inmates into the streets over the next 6 months, then how can you trust the government as a whole to take care of your health care needs once the gov't takes over the healthcare system??????

[Newster1]

"then how can you trust the government as a whole to take care of your health care needs once the gov't takes over the healthcare system??????"

You are comparing apples and oranges, the fed govt and health care is NOT Gov Schwarzenigger or the state legislature. The state has no money, YOU find money to keep those 37,000 inmates- the money aint there and everything is being cut.

[davebs0]

The problem with the Sex Offender Registries is that "one size fits all." Only about 5% of sex offenders are predators or at high risk of reoffending. One of the reasons that police cannot keep track of the high risk offender is that the Registries include Romeo and Juliet offenders, the 18 year old who had sex with his 14 year old girl friend who said and acted as if she was 16. There are also many sex offenders who are considered low risk and yet they are on the same registry and displayed the same as the highly dangerous predator or the psychotic individual. We need to change the registry nation wide.

[ROBACA]

Find a tree stump, nail his genitals to it, set it on fire and give him a rusty, dull pocketknife.

[dsnj1-2009]

@ comment below-I think you are missing the point-this is not about sex with another person, this person's sickness is about sex with a minor. Remember, this person was married, etc. so they had a sexual partner. This person apparently was ALSO attracted to minors, and played on it. So prostitution is not the answer....



by band3x August 29, 2009 1:13 PM EDT
"There is no cure for pedophilia"

Yes there is. It is called prostitution. Legalize it and you will minimize pedophilia. People turn to children when they cannot get the s s e xual gratification they need. Proven fact. They turn to children because they think children will keep quiet and can be easily manipulated. America's views about s e x need to change. Trying to pretend s e x is not a basic human need only creates situations like this.

[mnguyen4]

18 long years! That was a much longer time than the Dutch Jewish little girl Anne Frank spent hidden from the Nazis. The American public and the World demand to know the whole truth behind the sex slavery which went on behind the abominable backyard compound.

[timothyjo]

Parole paople are padding there selves on back ? Please why was this a registered sex offendef not cheecked reg ? no home visit nothing almost un believeable ..there were complaints filed nothing these people will find a way to prey on our innocent childern these sickos are smatrer than police we need to remove them from society, this is not a alcohol or drug problem they will repeat!if a politation runs on remove sex offenders he will win it is that important to parents .

[IrishWench01]

"by bitterpill2010 August 29, 2009 9:45 AM EDT
Well, there's nothing unconstitutional, or "cruel and unusual," about requiring sterilization as a condition of parole.

The data's been the same since I was a law student: so-called "rehabilitation" doesn't work with sex offenders. The recidivism rate is nearly 100%.

The ONLY thing that works is sterilization; but sterilization is about 100% effective. Once the sex drive is gone, these people seem to lose interest just as one would imagine."

Sex drive is not by any means what motivates this behavior. In this case it would only have served to prevent a pregnancy and birth of these children. These acts are driven by the disturbed and deranged mind.