Lost and Found

by John Glatt

  “You could always tell there was something funny about him,” recalled Mike Shelton. “One time the lock on the gate was broken, and Garrido appeared to be in a panic until it was fixed.”

  In March 1997, sixteen-year-old Alyssa became pregnant again. And with his second child on the way, Phillip Garrido started enlarging the hidden backyard compound to cope with his growing family. He built another shed and over the next few years would add several more tents, as well as installing a plastic swimming pool, a yellow slide and a set of swings.

  His printing business was flourishing and Alyssa now spent most of her time on the computer, designing clients’ stationery and setting up the printing machinery. The artistic teenager loved designing logos for customers, often adding her own unique, charming touches.

  A childish-looking graphic for a local recycling center had a large picture of the earth lying inside a blue recycling bin, alongside other rubbish. Another graphic for Wayne’s Barbershop in Pittsburg had a smiling face on the end of a barber pole—resembling the Democratic political pundit James Carville—brandishing a cut-throat razor and electric clippers.

  Barbershop owner Wayne Thompson first met Phillip Garrido when he came into his shop for a haircut, and began pitching his print company. Then, after shaking Thompson’s hand, Garrido immediately washed his hands in the sink.

  “He was a germ freak,” explained Thompson. “He looked like he bought his clothes at Goodwill.”

  Garrido handed him a Printing For Less business card, boasting that the beautiful blonde on it was his daughter Alyssa.

  “He told me,” said Thompson, “ ‘I put my daughter’s photo on it to show customers how I can display their photos on their business cards. I got Alyssa all fixed up to look glamorous.’ ”

  Thompson pinned the card on his notice board, and was soon ordering all his stationery from Printing For Less.

  Since being released from his 1993 parole violation, Phillip Garrido had steered cleared of trouble. His federal parole officer visited 1554 Walnut Avenue on occasion, but never saw anything out of the ordinary.

  Once a parole agent had actually been inside Garrido’s secret prison compound behind the house, drawing an accurate diagram of it and its proper dimensions. Even the shed—used to imprison Alyssa—was included. But apparently the agent had not been suspicious, placing the diagram in Garrido’s federal parole file where it gathered dust.

  In fact Phillip Garrido’s only run-in with law enforcement was a traffic citation, issued on February 10, 1997.

  If the convicted kidnapper and rapist was no longer under suspicion, Carl Probyn certainly was. On March 18, 1997, a team of investigators from the El Dorado Sheriff’s Department arrived at his old Washoan Boulevard residence to dig up the front porch of the house. They refused to reveal what they were searching for.

  “We’re going back and trying to put some closure to some leads,” said Lieutenant Fred Kollar obliquely. “Sometimes you want to have someone else come back and look at the case.”

  When the Tahoe Daily Tribune asked Carl Probyn if he was still a suspect in Jaycee’s disappearance, he replied that he probably always would be.

  “There is about one percent of Tahoe who think we had something to do with the kidnapping,” he told a reporter. “And this just gives them fuel for the fire.”

  Terry Probyn brushed off the renewed search, which turned up nothing, saying it did not bother her.

  “We never had any doubt that the family had nothing to do with it,” she said. “But some people in town expressed concern that somehow the family was.”

  Although her estranged husband Carl had now returned to Southern California, Terry said she felt “bound” to South Lake Tahoe until the mystery of Jaycee’s disappearance was solved.

  “It’s hard to move with life,” she explained, “when you are still stuck on the past.”

  But Terry Probyn was determined that something positive should come out of her daughter’s abduction. And in 1997, she donated $3,400 from her Jaycee Dugard search fund to the Soroptimist International chapter of South Lake Tahoe, to launch the Fighting Chance program.

  Terry Probyn was the keynote speaker at that year’s Soroptimist International meeting, where she officially announced the program in Jaycee’s memory.

  “It is really time to tell our children,” she told the meeting, “that at the very moment they are in the grasp of an abductor, it is important to free themselves.”

  Now taught to all fourth through sixth graders in Tahoe schools, the hands-on abduction prevention course instructs kids how to fight back if they are ever abducted. And since the program was launched, thirty-five hundred students have gone through it, and it is credited with preventing the abduction of at least three local children.

  “The whole community was really touched by Jaycee’s abduction,” explained local teacher Charma Silver, who helped formulate the program. “We wanted to do something proactive to make sure this wouldn’t happen again.”

  In the final lesson, under the supervision of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department, students are placed in a trunk of a specially designed training car, and told to fight their way out. Other lessons include kicking out the taillights or ripping out the car’s electrical wires.

  “If a person tried to pull a child into a car,” Terry told the meeting, “that child should try and run in the opposite direction from where the front of the vehicle is pointed. If a person tries to pull a child off a bicycle, the child should hold onto the bicycle as long as possible.”

  In 1998, Terry finally left South Lake Tahoe, moving to Southern California to live with her sister Tina. A few years later she made a self-help video for children with martial arts expert Ken Bowers.

  “If I would have given [Jaycee] the knowledge to help herself,” she told viewers in the video called A Child’s Life, “she would be with me today. Jaycee was caught off guard. She wasn’t expecting someone to come up behind her and cut off her path. She froze. I’d have given her the knowledge to run the other way or possibly help herself find an avenue out after she had been taken.”

  On Thursday, November 13, 1997, Alyssa gave birth to a baby girl, under Nancy Garrido’s helping hand. Phillip Garrido named his second daughter Starlit and it would be their last. Later there would be speculation as to whether Garrido might have disposed of any male children he had sired, thinking of them as possible threats when they grew up.

  Investigators would also explore whether he had been responsible for a series of four gruesome murders around the Antioch/Pittsburg area, officially naming him a “person of interest.” The unsolved murders were all along stretches of Highway 4—the main corridor through Contra Costa County—that Garrido drove up and down every day, making calls for his printing business. One of the bodies was found in a dismantling yard where he sometimes worked.

  On November 6, 1998, fifteen-year-old Pittsburg High School sophomore Lisa Norrell disappeared after attending a coming-of-age party at an Antioch social club. After she was insulted by a boy, the teenager stormed out of the party and was last seen walking along Highway 4, towards her home in Pittsburg. After she failed to arrive home that night the FBI was called in, and later her shoes were found dumped on the dark, lonely stretch of road.

  A week later, Lisa’s body was discovered facedown in an industrial park, just four miles away from Garrido’s house. She had been asphyxiated, and at the time police refused to release any information about the injuries, as they were too horrific. Years later it would emerge that Lisa often visited her aunt Kathy Russo, who lived directly opposite the Garridos in Walnut Avenue, Antioch.

  The murder shocked Contra Costa County, and former California governor Gray Davis put up a $50,000 reward for any information leading to her killer’s arrest. And though several man were charged with her killing, they were never brought to trial, as there was insufficient evidence.

  Four weeks later came the first in a series of savage prostitute killings in the
Pittsburg area, over a two-month period. On December 5, the body of twenty-four-year-old Jessica Frederick was found stabbed and beaten in an another industrial park in Pittsburg. Once again, investigators even withheld the autopsy report from her family, as it was too gruesome.

  Ten days later, thirty-two-year-old Rachael Cruise was discovered strangled to death in a ditch, close by where Lisa’s body had been found. And in January 1999, twenty-seven-year-old Valerie Dawn Schultz, who used the professional name “China,” was found murdered. She had been stabbed and asphyxiated. A few days later, a fifth woman was found barely alive, after being brutally beaten and left for dead.

  The FBI were convinced that a frenzied serial killer was on the loose. Although hundreds of local men were interviewed by investigators, there is no known record that convicted kidnapper and rapist Phillip Garrido was ever questioned.

  Jaycee Lee Dugard should have graduated high school in 1998, and her former classmates were determined to remember her anyway. Now students at South Lake Tahoe High School, they were still haunted by their beautiful friend, who had vanished so mysteriously seven years earlier.

  “Thoughts of Jaycee followed me everywhere through school,” said her old friend Kristina Rhoden. “Her name would come up or I’d read about another kidnapped child, and I’d wonder, ‘Where is she now?’ ”

  So it was arranged that a photo of Jaycee be printed in the 1998 class yearbook, alongside the caption, “Even though you may not be walking with us down the graduation aisle, you will always be walking with us in our hearts—From the Class of 1998.”

  27

  “A PRODUCTIVE CITIZEN”

  In March 1998, Nancy Garrido quit her job at the Contra Costa ARC to look after Phillip Garrido’s mother full-time. Pat Franzen, now seventy-seven, was suffering from the early stages of dementia, requiring round-the-clock nursing. So Phillip had decided Nancy should became primary caregiver, also allowing her to help out with the printing business.

  Phillip Garrido’s old beat-up van was now a common sight doing its daily rounds up and down Highway 4. He and Alyssa worked hard and his printing business was easily turning a profit, with little overhead and no wages to pay.

  To the outside world, the convicted felon now appeared to be successfully rehabilitated back to society, and a fine example of the parole system at its best.

  On March 9, 1999, Phillip Garrido was officially discharged from federal parole, receiving a certificate of early termination from the U.S. Department of Justice.

  “You are hereby discharged from parole,” read the certificate signed by U.S. Parole Administrator Raymond E. Essex. “By this action, you are no longer under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Parole Commission.”

  The letter lauded him for his good behavior and what he had achieved over the eleven years he’d been under federal parole supervision.

  “After a thorough review of your case,” it continued, “the Commission has decided that you are deserving of an early discharge. You are commended for having responded positively to supervision and for the personal accomplishment(s) you have made. The Commission trusts that you will continue to be a productive citizen and obey the laws of society.”

  After his early discharge from federal parole, Phillip Garrido was officially returned to the jurisdiction of the Nevada parole board. The Nevada Department of Public Safety, Division of Parole and Probation now requested that California assume parole responsibilities for Garrido, under the terms of the interstate parole compact—which had only been written into law a month earlier. Under the compact, which runs in all fifty states, the receiving state can take over the parole duties of visitation and supervision if the parolee resides and works there.

  When the interstate compact authority refused to assume responsibility for Garrido, Nevada’s Division of Parole and Probation appealed, urging them to reconsider.

  “Since granted parole,” wrote Julie Johnson of the Division of Parole and Probation, “the subject has complied with parole requirements and displayed a stable lifestyle.”

  She wrote that Parolee Garrido was a “legitimate and successful” self-employed design artist and printer, who had been granted an early release from federal parole because of his “positive” performance.

  “Ordering the subject to return to Nevada to await acceptance from your state,” wrote Johnson, “would be disruptive and unproductive for the subject who has managed to change his behavior. Please reconsider your decision.”

  That same day, Assistant Supervisor David M. Albright sent a memo to Johnson, telling her to have Phillip Garrido report to the Concord, California, parole office the following afternoon at 1:00 P.M. for his first meeting with his new California parole agent, Al Fulbright.

  On June 9, 1999, on the way to meet his new parole agent for the first time, Phillip Garrido finally registered as a sex offender with law enforcement, under penal code section 290. From then on he would register each year without fail, as the law required.

  When he met Parole Agent Fulbright, Garrido angrily complained that a serious mistake had been made. He explained that after the federal government had released him from parole, the Nevada authorities should also have discharged him from all parole supervision. He said he had only signed the official transfer forms to California under duress.

  In his official report, covering that first meeting, Agent Fulbright noted that Garrido was now “seeking counsel of an attorney.”

  Straight after the meeting with Agent Fulbright, Phillip Garrido wrote to the Nevada Parole Commission, demanding to be released from all parole supervision. And he even claimed that continuing parole supervision would prove psychologically detrimental to him.

  This letter is to inform the Parole Commission that I Phillip Garrido was released from the Federal Sentence and all supervision completely.

  The reason for my release 26 years early, was due to the complete recovery and successful reorientation back into the community. Years of hard work went into this recovery. At this point every professional involved in my case recognized any further supervision would no longer be of any benefit to me, and so I was released back into the community under no supervision.

  At this point it is obvious to me and the professionals handling this case that I will receive no benefit from continued supervision, but in fact is nothing more than a poor reminder of what I have been told to put behind me, thus psychologically and realistically is of no benefit to my success.

  I sign under duress, because the threat that Nevada would for no other reason violate my parole.

  Bottom line is if Nevada would have been the one to supervise my parole it is now becoming obvious that they do not have the resources nor the desire to truly help people orientate back into society for under your present system I would have fallen through the cracks. On the other hand the Federal Government has the resources and stayed off my back until they were able to isolate a bi-chemical problem.

  So now after all this you’re informing me the reason for this continued supervision is to help me back into society. Frankly your laws are outdated and need to be reviewed by professional psychologist [sic] and the Federal Government.

  Five days later, Agent Fulbright filed a progress and conduct report for his new parolee, noting he was “stable” and his “prognosis of success is good.”

  Over the next five months, Parolee Garrido kept the parole agent busy with all his objections, so he had no supervision whatsoever.

  That November, the California parole department recommended that Nevada discharge Phillip Garrido from parole. In the five months since taking over the case, parole agent Fulbright noted Garrido had made “good parole adjustment,” advising that he be reduced to minimum risk—the lowest level for a sex offender—until his discharge date.

  But under the California parole department policy, Garrido should have been classified as high control for a minimum of a year, because of his earlier convictions for kidnapping and rape.

  In his November 9 report
, Agent Fulbright noted that Garrido lived with his wife, Nancy, and mother, Pat, and was the self-employed owner of a full-service printing shop.

  “Garrido has completed over 10 years of Federal Parole Supervision,” wrote Fulbright, “and was successfully discharged on 3/09/1999. He is available for supervision and in compliance with his conditions of parole. Recommendation: Discharge from parole supervision.”

  This would be the first of four official recommendations from California over the next nine years that Garrido be discharged from parole. But Nevada turned a deaf ear to all of them, continuing to enforce his parole.

  In late 1999, Phillip Garrido hooked his Printing For Less business computer up to the Internet, allowing Alyssa to deal with their clients online. She was a busy working mother, with Angel now five years old and Starlit two.

  Alyssa had been with the Garridos for more than eight years and felt part of their family. And she had long become used to living in tents outside in the hidden backyard, where she was raising her daughters as best she could.

  Most nights Phillip Garrido would arrive in the back garden and take Alyssa into his soundproof shed, where he would force her to have sex. Often Nancy would babysit the little girls, before Phillip and Alyssa joined them for dinner.

  Printing For Less was doing so well that Phillip Garrido decided to expand, buying new camera and printing equipment. He also took on a number of new clients.

  “All of a sudden he appeared with his business cards,” remembered Cheyvonne Molino, owner of J & M Enterprises—an auto-wrecking yard—in Willow Pass Road, Pittsburg. “And he started doing our printing.”

  Around the same time, Maria Christenson, who owns a recycling center in Pittsburg, happened to mention to a friend that she was looking for a printer.

  “And the next morning,” recalled Christenson, “Phillip was here waiting for me.”