Jaycee's Terror as Her Ordeal Began

Information is starting to surface that's painting a clearer picture of what authorities say occurred when Jaycee Dugard's nightmare began and in the first years that followed, reports CBS News Correspondent Ben Tracy.

Immediately before her life changed forever in 1991, Dugard was an 11 year old at a bus stop near her house in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., when she was dragged into a car, allegedly by Philip Garrido and his wife, Nancy.

"Once she was in the car," former San Francisco prosecutor Michael Cardoza told CBS News, "what happened was they pushed her down on the floorboards, threatened her, and then took her straight away to Antioch, Calif.," where the Garridos lived.

Special Section: Jaycee Lee Dugard

Cardoza says police sources tell him it was years before Jaycee was allowed off the Garridos' property. "They put her in the backyard in a tent or one of the outbuildings back there," Cardoza adds. "They left her in the backyard for three-and-a-half years before they let her get out in public."

In 1993, just two years into the ordeal, Phillip spent some time in jail on a parole violation. During that time, Nancy is believed to have been in charge of Jaycee and, when Philip got out of jail is when, it's believed, he fathered the first of Jaycee's two daughters, now 15 and 11.

"When this case proceeds to trial," points out CBS News legal analyst Trent Copeland, "Nancy Garrido will be every bit as culpable as Phillip Garrido."

More recently, Tracy says, Jaycee and her daughters seemed to be allowed to interact with neighbors. But, he notes, nobody knew what was really going on in that backyard for most of the 18 years before Jaycee and the girls were freed late last month.

9 Comments Add a Comment

: linkicon reporticon emailicon
animaltoo says:: Perhaps the death penalty does not apply in kidnapping and rape - although that can take someone's quality of life away like it did for the victim he was found with in the warehouse. But, this man took 18 years of this girls life. Yes, this should be a death penalty case for the man and his wife. Why should taxpayers house and feed these people when there is a young uneducated woman with two of his children to raise?; reply

: linkicon reporticon emailicon
vittoria1 says:: hamiltoningrate, the police seem to have decided relatively early that the stepfather wasn't a suspect. He passed a polygraph, which doesn't necessarily mean much, but apparently the police weren't all that inclined to think he was guilty. It was the relatives and locals who were the most suspicious of him, and they remained so for years.

Unfortunately, there was some real logic in this. He was the only witness to the abduction as best I can tell, and there have been plenty of cases of stepparents (or boyfriends of the mother) abusing and even killing stepchildren. I'm very sorry for this man, but I fear that if I'd known about the case back then, I would have been suspicious, too.

hepburn91, we can't call for execution when no one has died. Garrido may be guilty of crimes in which someone did die -- that remains to be seen -- but it's been decided by our own courts and state legislatures that the death penalty is not to be used in kidnapping and sexual assault cases where the victim survives.; reply

: linkicon reporticon emailicon
hepburn91 says:: I believe that the wife and that pathetic animal should both die by lethal injection. She knew exactly what she was doing and I do believe she is the one who pulled that child in the car..so many years ago..and as the comment above how often does someone else pay for a crime of someone they love . Lots of Lawsuits won in this country for wrongful conviction and imprisonment for years that DNA technology have freed as dna has progressed in this country..; reply

: linkicon reporticon emailicon
willow013 says:: Nancy Garrido knew exactly what she was doing....She had ample opportunity to free Jayce while her scumbag of a husband was back in jail for parole violation...She is as culpable as he is, which makes her a scumbag as well...I hope they both get what is coming to them in prison....; reply

linkicon reporticon emailicon

hamiltoningrate says:

Could CBS go into the step father, and how his life was nearly ruined because the police had him pegged as the bad guy and thank god he was not put in jail for this ... How often does this happen ?


clouburns replies:: linkicon reporticon emailicon; Over 95% of kidnappings are done by family members. That's why they look longest-and-hardest at family members, as they should.

I feel extreme sympathy for Mr. Probyn, Jaycee's step-father. However, I hope he is able to let go of that -- especially related to Jaycee's blood family, some of whom also continued to hold him suspect.

If he does not, it will complicate his and Jaycee's recovery and life going-forward.