Lost and Found

by John Glatt

  Outside the courthouse, Katie told reporters she had made eye contact with Phillip Garrido during the brief time they faced each other in court.

  “He looked right at me, and I just glared back,” she said. “I wanted to let him know I was there. Maybe I wanted to face my attacker for the first time in all these years.”

  She then vowed to be a “watchdog,” attending as many future hearings as possible, with a mission to ensure Phillip Garrido goes away forever.

  “I’m not going to shut up and go away like the parole board told me to twenty-one years ago,” she said. “I have my own personal reasons for wanting to see him put away.”

  When asked if she had any message for Jaycee, Katie thought for a second before saying, “Be strong, and remember that he did something horribly wrong.”

  A few yards away, Ken Slayton was telling reporters how seeing Phillip Garrido for the first time had angered him.

  “I just wanted to rip his face off,” said the Vietnam vet. “I’m old school. I’m here in case Jaycee Lee Dugard needs a father.”

  His attorney, Gloria Allred, told reporters Terry Probyn had not attempted to dispute that her client was Jaycee’s father but had still not allowed him to contact her.

  The following day, Nancy Garrido’s attorney, Gilbert Maines, and his wife, Ann, lunched at the select Cold Springs Golf & Country Club, where they were members. The corpulent lawyer ordered salad and iced tea in the restaurant, before retiring to the Grille Room bar. There he lingered over two Jack Daniel’s cocktails as he chatted to a couple of other club members.

  Later, it would be claimed that the avuncular sixty-eight-year-old attorney had gotten drunk and started discussing the sensational Garrido case, boasting about writing a book and getting a movie deal after the trial.

  On Tuesday, November 3, after receiving a tip-off from two people in the bar claiming to have overheard the attorney’s conversation, Judge Douglas Phimister summoned them to his chambers for a closed hearing.

  Two days later, the judge summoned Maines to Superior Court for a midday unscheduled hearing, without telling him why. At the secret hearing, Judge Phimister dramatically confronted the attorney with the allegations against him—described in courtroom notes as “confidential evidence”—giving him a few minutes to review them.

  Then Judge Phimister removed him as Nancy Garrido’s attorney, postponing his order to allow Maines to appeal the decision. The judge then sealed all records of the hearing.

  Nancy Garrido, who was present at the hearing, later said she had not understood what was going on.

  47

  “MISSED CLUES AND OPPORTUNITIES”

  At 11:30 A.M., Wednesday, November 4, reporters and TV news crews from around the world assembled in room 1190 of the California State Capitol building in Sacramento. California’s inspector general, David Shaw, was holding a press conference about the results of his independent two-month investigation into exactly what had gone wrong with Phillip Garrido’s parole supervision.

  In his scathing forty-page report, the inspector general found the state parole division, who had supervised Garrido for the past decade, could have found Jaycee Dugard and her two girls years earlier.

  “During the ten-year period that California supervised Phillip Garrido,” Shaw told the press, “the department often failed to follow its own procedures established to supervise dangerous sex offenders. Furthermore, the department failed to utilize available tools, technology and information that could have potentially led to the discovery of Jaycee Dugard and her children.”

  The inspector general said it was impossible to know for certain if Jaycee and her daughters could have been discovered earlier, if the parole agents had done their job perfectly.

  “However,” he said, “our investigation revealed that there were missed clues and opportunities to discover their existence sooner than they did.”

  Among the litany of mistakes he cited was the California Parole Department improperly classifying Phillip Garrido as minimum risk in June 1999, when they took over his case from the federal authorities and the state of Nevada.

  “It’s apparent that this initial mistake,” said the inspector general, “set the tone for many mistakes to come.”

  One major error had been the state department’s failure to read Garrido’s federal parole file. If agents had done so, they would have learned that a federal parole officer had actually searched the hidden backyard, where Jaycee had been held prisoner.

  Shaw said Garrido’s federal parole report contained “a wealth of information” about his hidden backyard, including a diagram that documented the real size of the property. On it were also several outbuildings, in the so-called backyard within a backyard.

  “In fact we discovered,” said Shaw, “that a federal parole agent had actually toured one of the buildings that was behind the fence that concealed the area that Jaycee and her daughters were eventually discovered.”

  California parole agents also never investigated visible utility lines, leading from the house to the secret compound, which were in place when Jaycee was abducted. And Shaw criticized a parole agent for not attempting to check the identity of a young girl he had seen at the house in June 2008. Instead he had believed Phillip Garrido’s claim that she was his niece.

  The inspector general said that these mistakes had resulted “in the continued confinement and victimization of Jaycee and her two daughters.”

  Shaw also revealed that the state parole department only properly supervised Phillip Garrido twelve out of 123 months, a stunning 90 percent failure rate. During one thirteen-month period, parole officers never visited Garrido’s home a single time.

  The parole department also failed to use the available information gathered from the ankle bracelet, which had been fitted on Garrido in April 2008 and updated the following year.

  “In the GPS monitoring system that the department used until June of 2009,” said Shaw, “parole agents established a time zone surrounding Garrido’s house and programmed it to send an alert if Garrido left his residence at night between midnight and 7:00 A.M. System records show that between April 2008 and June 2009, parole agents received fourteen alerts that Garrido had left his residence after the curfew. Disappointingly parole agents ignored each of these alerts.”

  The inspector general also criticized the department for ignoring other alerts in the thirty-two-day period that the new GPS system was in use until Garrido’s arrest on August 26, 2009.

  “System records show,” said Shaw, “that the parole agents acknowledged the first three, but took no action on any of them. Parole agents also failed to establish a restricted travel zone as required as a condition of his parole, which would have alerted them that within a thirty-two-day period Garrido went outside of his twenty-five-mile zone seven different times.”

  He said if the parole agents had been doing their job properly, the GPS signals would have told them that Garrido was spending a lot of time in the secret backyard compound. And between April 2008 and June 2009, there were 335 instances of the GPS monitor losing signal.

  “Parole agents could have also used this information to find out where he spent his time,” said Shaw, “as it can be keyed to time of day. That was almost a nightly occurrence. System records show that parole agents ignored 276 of these alerts altogether. Parole agents acknowledged fifty-nine of the alerts, but apparently took no action.

  “Additionally, we identified that there were more significant abnormalities in his GPS information between July twenty-third of 2009 and August twenty-third of 2009. Almost every night Garrido’s GPS signal was lost for significant periods of time—typically nine hours. And agents took no action.”

  The inspector general also blamed parole agent Eddie Santos, whom he did not name, for the way he handled the case after being contacted by Berkeley campus police.

  “The parole agent was told that the two girls,” stated the inspector general’s report, “were calling Garrido ‘da
ddy’ at UC Berkeley, a statement that the parole agent knew to be untrue. However, the parole agent apparently accepted Garrido’s story that the two children belonged to his brother.”

  The inspector general’s report also questioned why Santos had then driven Garrido home and released him, rather than contacting his brother to verify if the girls were his.

  “Given Garrido’s violent past,” the report continued, “and his increasingly bizarre behavior as documented by the parole agent and observed by the UC Berkeley police officer, it is not unreasonable to fear that the parole agent’s failure to further investigate that night may have placed Garrido’s three captives in greater danger or prompted Garrido to flee.”

  Then Mathew Cate, the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, took the podium.

  “We agree that serious errors were made over the last ten years,” he said. “We obviously deeply regret any error that could have possibly resulted in the victims living under these conditions for even one additional day.”

  Secretary Cate said that Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed bill of parole reform, to become law on January 1, 2010, would prevent many of these mistakes ever happening again.

  “At the end of the day,” Cate said, “[we] have a responsibility to protect the public from this kind of abject evil.”

  As the inspector general’s damning report was being released on his official website, the Dugard family’s attorney McGregor Scott issued a short statement.

  “Ms. Dugard is fully committed to working with law enforcement to ensure Mr. Garrido is held accountable for his crimes.”

  Two weeks later, parole agent Eddie Santos was transferred from Concord to another parole office after threats were made to him and his family. California Corrections Department spokesman Gordon Hinkle said Santos’s children had been taken out of school for their own safety.

  “He had received serious threats to his personal safety,” Hinkle told the Contra Costa Times. “There were threats of several kinds.”

  A spokesman for the parole agents’ union emphasized that the transfer, to an unnamed office, was not disciplinary.

  On November 10, El Dorado Superior Court received a letter from Gilbert Maines marked “Confidential Eyes Only Hon. Judge D. Phimister.” The following day the judge appointed defense attorney Stephen Tapson as Nancy Garrido’s interim attorney, until Maines’s appeal could be heard. In the meantime he gave Tapson permission to read transcripts of the allegations against his predecessor, although he could not make copies.

  He also ordered El Dorado County jail to allow Tapson access to Nancy Garrido.

  “[This] is the most bizarre case I’ve been involved in umpteen years,” Tapson told The Sacramento Bee. “Technically, I guess, she has two lawyers.”

  A few weeks later the National Enquirer ran a front-page story entitled “Jaycee Suicide Shock! The Battle to Save Her Life.” Inside the magazine, the largely speculative story claimed that behind her “cheery public smile” Jaycee Lee Dugard had the potential to become suicidal.

  “While her family insists she’s doing well after 18 years of sexual slavery,” it stated, “experts warn Jaycee is facing severe psychological problems that could drive her to drug and alcohol abuse, or even suicide.”

  Quoting experts, the story warned that depression, paranoia and terrifying flashbacks to her time with “the monster” Phillip Garrido could stop her ever being happy in a loving relationship.

  Dr. Frederick Bemak, a professor at George Mason University and an expert in child and sexual trafficking, told the Enquirer that Jaycee and her family were experiencing a “typical honeymoon period” after her liberation from the Garridos. He warned that when the euphoria passed, Jaycee would have to confront the cruel reality of what had happened to her and her daughters.

  “Now that reality is setting in,” said Dr. Bemak, “suicide and depression are absolutely reasonable.”

  A few days later, Shayna Probyn posted the family’s reaction to the article on her MySpace page.

  “Disgusted by the news articles lately. We are just trying to lay low and enjoy being a family. Looking 4ward 2 the most thankful Thanksgiving of all! MMMM. Mood hungry ”

  48

  “A MASTER MANIPULATOR”

  On Thursday, November 12, Walt Gray of KCRA-TV received a bizarre letter of apology from Phillip Garrido, handwritten on yellow legal paper.

  “First off,” wrote Garrido, “I would like to apologize to every human being for what has taken place. People all over the world are hearing testimony that through the spirit of Christ a mental process took place ending a sexual problem believed to be impossible.”

  After taking legal advice, KCRA-TV decided not to release any more of his letter at that time.

  Defense attorney Susan Gellman said the letter called into question her client’s mental competency.

  “Mr. Garrido is expressing genuine remorse,” she told KCRA-TV. “He would like people to consider the fact that he’s a changed man and his story is best told all at one time, instead of in pieces.”

  The public defender also revealed that she was in the process of establishing whether Phillip Garrido was mentally fit to stand trial.

  “He presents obvious issues,” she said, “concerning whether or not he is competent to be a defendant, and we are looking into that.”

  Prosecutor Vern Pierson strongly disagreed, calling Garrido “a master manipulator.” This new letter, he said, was just his latest attempt to manipulate the system, as he had done so many times in the past. And Pierson vowed to see that Garrido was punished to the fullest extent of the law.

  “We see this as another example of his attempt to control the situation around him and his prior victims,” said the district attorney. “These recent statements are eerily similar to what Mr. Garrido told the judge who sentenced him in 1977, and to the parole board when he duped them into releasing him from prison, after only serving eleven years of a fifty-year federal sentence and five-to-life Nevada State sentence.”

  Five days later, a low-budget adult filmmaker named Shane Ryan announced plans for a movie about the Jaycee Dugard story, to start shooting in December. Its working title was Abducted Girl: An American Sex Slave, but the director of straight-to-DVD movies such as Amateur Porn Star Killer, Sex Kids Party and “Warning!!! Pedophile Released” denied that his film would be exploitive.

  “We want to capture how sad this story is,” Ryan explained. “But also how interesting. We’re trying to figure out a way to do it so it’s not exploitive.”

  Angrily reacting in a statement, the Dugard family’s new high-powered public relations spokeswoman Nancy Seltzer branded the plan “exploitive, hurtful and breathtakingly unkind.”

  Seltzer, whose other clients include Whitney Houston and Garth Brooks, said Jaycee and her family should decide if and when a movie will be made about her life.

  November 19, 2009, marked the twenty-first anniversary of Michaela Garecht’s abduction. And to mark the sad occasion, a crowd of family, friends and supporters gathered outside the Hayward supermarket where she had been snatched.

  Sharon Murch, who had started writing letters to her lost daughter on her blog after Jaycee Dugard was found, addressed the large crowd.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” she said. “All this must be for some purpose.”

  Sharon said everything had changed for her after Jaycee’s reappearance, giving her and so many other parents of abducted children fresh hope.

  “As more and more information came out,” she said, “I started to understand how [Michaela] might be somewhere and have the ability to free herself . . . that she’s with someone she cares to protect, that she doesn’t want to reveal herself.”

  A few days before the poignant anniversary, Murch posted this message for her daughter on her blog, thewonderingheart.blogspot.com.

  “You can write to me without telling me where you are or who you are with. If you did, I would wan
t to trace your e-mail address and run to where you are, throw my arms around you and take you home with me. But if it would mean the difference between hearing from you and not, I would refrain from doing that. I long to hold you in my arms. But at the very least if you are reading my words, talk to me please.”

  One week later, Terry and Shayna Probyn sat down with Jaycee for their first Thanksgiving together in eighteen years. It was a dream come true for Terry, as she played with her granddaughters Angel and Starlit, giving thanks for their true miracle.

  As they were waiting to eat a turkey meal with all the trimmings, Shayna posted a mood hungry message on her MySpace page: “Apparently 22 lb turkeys take a really long time to cook. Dinner pushed to 3 instead of noon so we are all sitting around laughing & eating the pies first. YUMM!”

  The night before Thanksgiving, the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento blocked Judge Phimister’s order removing Gilbert Maines as Nancy Garrido’s attorney. Late Wednesday evening, the appeals court ordered Judge Phimister to make available transcripts of the secret testimony accusing Maines of misconduct.

  Judge Phimister had already scheduled a hearing the following Monday when he would decide whether to execute his previous order to remove Maines, but the appeals court now said it would take the final decision.

  The defense attorney, who had strenuously denied ever discussing the Jaycee Dugard case over drinks at his golf club, now had two sworn declarations to back him up. Bartender Eduardo Bartolome, who had poured the drinks that Friday afternoon, wrote that Maines had never appeared drunk and the alleged conversation had never taken place.

  In a separate declaration, club member Sam Cooper claimed he and Maines had discussed their golf games in the bar, and he had never become “intoxicated, loud, or obnoxious.” Cooper said that if other club members ever asked about the Garrido case, the attorney refused to discuss it.

  “There are some members who are quite vocal,” wrote Cooper, “about the fact that they don’t think people like these defendants deserve to be represented and that anyone taking on their defense are of questionable ethical or moral standards. When these statements are made directly to Gil he sometimes responds. Sometimes with a rather pointed and crude reply, concerning their lack of understanding of the Constitution or the law or something regarding the location of their heads. He comes to the club to get away from all this,” he said.