by Robert Scott
“Because of the beginning of [the] semester, we take extra care to keep students safe. The work Lisa and Ally did set off a chain of events that will undoubtedly change the lives of the three people involved. We’re pleased with the role UCPD has played in reuniting this family.”
Lisa Campbell started off by giving her take on the events that began on August 24, when a man and two girls walked into her office. And then Ally Jacobs told what had occurred when she became involved. After Lisa and Ally retold the events of August 24 and 25, the floor was thrown open to questions from the reporters. The first question was about the book Phillip Garrido brought with him to UC. The reporter wanted to know, “Was it self-published?”
Ally answered, “It was a book shown on the media a couple of times. It’s about schizophrenia. It had a blue cover and was handwritten. Not a very professional job. I tried to read it, but it was kind of difficult to understand. It was very choppy and didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
The next question was “What were the actions like between Phillip Garrido and the two girls? Were they afraid of him?”
Ally replied, “No, they didn’t seem afraid. Maybe afraid of what they might say. Like their answers needed to be short, clipped, and to the point. They were very rehearsed. That was their dad, and they thought he was God’s gift. That was their world. That was their life. It was like all that they knew.”
A reporter asked, “Didn’t they seem a little young to be his daughters?”
Ally responded, “They seemed a little young. But I have little kids. So I’m not good at gauging the ages of older kids.”
“How were they dressed?” was another question.
Ally said, “Drab and nondescript. They were in dresses. The older one had blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. And she had on a little sundress. It was kind of tan or brown.”
A journalist wanted to know what had tipped Lisa and Ally off about this situation that something had to be done. Lisa responded, “I was a police officer in Chicago. And I worked with youth then. I interacted with children on a day-to-day basis. Just experience and training helped here. And the energy level of those girls was strange. They weren’t vibrant and they were extremely rehearsed. If one moved, the other one immediately gestured toward her. It was if, ‘We shouldn’t be in a certain position.’ The older one—her hands remained on her legs the whole time. She would either look at her dad or at the ceiling. The younger one was a little more engaging, but still there was no activity, no energy level. No response to the environment around her.”
To this, Ally added, “It was very similar when I came in contact with them. And some kind of alarm bell went off in my head. There was something up with those kids. You really couldn’t pinpoint it. It was like something you’d see in a movie or on TV, where these kids were so robotic and not acting like normal eleven-and fifteen-year-olds would act. Trying to investigate why they were acting the way they were acting without their cooperation was really difficult to do.”
There was a question, “So it wasn’t really the girls who tipped you off?”
Ally said, “If he hadn’t come in with those girls, I would have just let him talk.”
A reporter wanted to know, “Did the girls seem brainwashed or emotionally disturbed?”
Ally replied, “The word you used, ‘brainwashed,’ that was the sense we were getting.”
And Lisa added, “They were truly submissive.”
A journalist asked, “What was your reaction to the girls’ reaction to the admission by their father of rape?”
Ally responded, “He threw that out so quickly. . . .” Then her answer trailed off.
Lisa answered, “He continued to talk. He was going through what was in his book. He said, ‘I was arrested, I was convicted, but now I’m doing God’s work!’ And he mumbled right on past that. The girls didn’t have a reaction at all.”
Ally added, “We weren’t that shocked, because we already knew he was on parole for those things. So I wasn’t shocked about that. But I was shocked by the way he said it. So matter-of-fact. Like if he said, ‘I’m wearing a blue shirt.’ The girls didn’t react at all to his comment.”
One reporter asked, “Did he have a GPS device on him because he was on parole?”
Lisa and Ally looked at each other and then shook their heads. Neither one had seen a GPS device attached to Phil Garrido’s ankle. But then they had been so busy with other things, they hadn’t been looking for one.
Another question was “Did he ever get through to you what he wanted to do on campus?”
Both Ally and Lisa laughed, and they both said no. Lisa added, “He said it was all in the book he brought.”
The press conference only fanned the flames of media interest in this case. Soon there were reporters from around the world, scurrying around Walnut Avenue just outside of Antioch, where the Garridos had lived. They were also on the streets of Meyers, near South Lake Tahoe, where Jaycee had been kidnapped eighteen years earlier. And in Southern California, where Terry Probyn and Carl Probyn now lived. By now, Terry and Carl were separated, but still in contact with each other. Their stories were just one more element in this compelling drama that was rapidly unfolding.
When it was determined for certain that “Alyssa” was in reality Jaycee Lee Dugard, a law enforcement officer contacted Jaycee Lee’s mom, Terry Probyn, where she lived in Southern California. If Terry had been struck by a lightning bolt, the effect could not have been more dramatic or unexpected. She was literally floored by the news. And just as earth-shattering was when Jaycee was put on the phone, and the first words out of her mouth were “Hi, Mom! I have babies.”
Not only was Terry once more speaking with her own daughter, who had been missing for eighteen years, she was suddenly told that she was a grandmother! Incredibly, Jaycee recalled an immense amount of her life before the kidnapping. It was if both mother and daughter were thrust directly back into “pre–June 10, 1991” mode. And another thing was very evident, even though Jaycee had been kept away in a secret compound for years, she was very bright, and knew a lot about the world at large.
Within a short time frame, Terry contacted Carl by phone. Carl soon related to reporters, “Terry told me, ‘They found Jaycee! She’s alive!’ We cried for about two minutes. Then Terry said, ‘She remembers everything! ’”
Carl soon told a Sacramento Bee reporter, “You bet it was a surprise! I had eventually lost hope she would be found alive. Then you pray you get her body back so there is an ending. To have this happen when we get her back alive, and when she remembers things from the past, and to have people in custody is a triple win.”
On Thursday, August 27, 2009, mother and daughter were reunited in a secret location in Contra Costa County, not far from Antioch. And for the first time, Terry met her granddaughters, Angel and Starlit. To say the meeting between Terry and Jaycee was emotional was not to do justice to the word. It was as if a ghost had once again returned to the land of the living.
Terry would not speak to the press at that point, but Tina Dugard, Terry’s sister (Jaycee’s aunt), later held a press conference at the FBI office in Los Angeles. Tina gave insights into just how powerful the reunion had been. Tina said that on Wednesday, August 26, an El Dorado County Sheriff’s investigator had called her around supper time, trying to find Terry Probyn. Tina gave the investigator the contact information; and a while later, Tina received a phone call from Jaycee’s half sister, Shayna, who was now nineteen. In total disbelief, Tina heard the words coming from Shayna: “They found Jaycee. She’s alive!”
Tina related, “I don’t know what I felt. I just said, ‘What?’ I’m sure I repeated the word several times. We both started crying hysterically.”
Tina was so wound up that night, she could barely sleep, and almost missed her early-morning flight from Ontario, California, with Terry and Shayna, to the Bay Area. FBI officials met the three women at an undisclosed location. They were all whisked to a secret locale, where
there, before their almost unbelieving eyes, stood a twenty-nine-year-old Jaycee and her two daughters. Immediately Jaycee and her mom gave each other a huge, emotional hug. Tina related, “The smile on my sister’s face was as wide as the sea.” Then Jaycee hugged Shayna and her aunt Tina. Incredibly, Jaycee remembered her aunt, after all these years, and declared, “Auntie Tina!”
Tina Dugard said later, “I went forward and cried and hugged her and held her as tight as I possibly could. It was surreal. It was fabulous. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I can’t even remember what I told her.”
Then Tina recounted, “Jaycee looked like a twenty-nine-year-old woman. She’s fabulous and she’s beautiful. The girls have their mother’s blond hair and bright blue eyes and big smile. They both look healthy.”
As for Shayna and Jaycee, Tina recounted, “They were so happy to meet. Jaycee was a girl that Shayna had only known through old photographs, family movies, and media accounts of her abduction.” That, and the stories that Terry had told Shayna about her elder daughter. In those stories, Jaycee was never older than eleven years old. It seemed incredible that the girl of eleven was now standing in front of Shayna as a grown woman, with two daughters of her own. In fact, the younger daughter was eleven years old, the same age as Jaycee had been when she disappeared from the lives of Terry, Shayna, and Aunt Tina.
Tina told the Orange County Register she had thought back in 1991 that Jaycee would be found within days. When that didn’t happen, Tina thought it would occur within a few weeks. Tina added, “Then it was by Thanksgiving. And then, for sure, by Christmas.” Tina related that never happened, and Jaycee’s present of a Happy Holidays Christmas Barbie remained in its box.
Tina told the reporter, “It’s clear the girls have been on the Internet and know a lot of things. It’s clear that Jaycee did a great job with the limited resources she had and limited education. The girls are educated and bright.”
At one point, Tina said, she was with Jaycee and her girls, and Angel and Starlit pointed up at the sky and told her the names of the constellations. And the next day, one of the girls pointed at a plant in the backyard where they were staying and said, “That’s a nasturtium. It’s edible. Do you want to eat it?”
Tina related, “It was a beautiful day. We stared up at the clouds and saw fluffy cotton shapes.” Then she added, “There was a sense of comfort and optimism. A sense of happiness. Jaycee and her girls are happy. People probably want to think that it’s a horrible, scary thing for us all. But the horrible, scary thing happened eighteen years ago, and continued to happen for the last eighteen years. The darkness and despair has now lifted.”
Even though the gathered media was enthralled by what Tina Dugard had to say, there was the unanswered question of what had occurred during those “horrible, scary eighteen years.” There was also the question of who was Phillip Garrido, and how had he kidnapped and held Jaycee Lee Dugard in captivity for eighteen years, fathered two daughters with her, and kept it all a secret for such a long, long time.
II
IN THE SHADOWS
CHAPTER 6
“HE WAS SPOILED AS A CHILD.”
Phillip Craig Garrido was born in Pittsburg, California, on April 5, 1951. Located at the junction of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, in Northern California, Pittsburg was an industrial city in the 1950s. Not unlike its famous namesake in Pennsylvania, Pittsburg, California’s main industry was its steel mills. Most of the city’s citizens were working-class families, and the preponderance of them worked in one of the mills around town. Besides steel mills, there were also chemical plants and smaller industries that were adjuncts of the large mills.
The nearby city of Antioch was in the same mold as Pittsburg, with its main industry being paper mills such as Fiberboard and Crown Zee. Along with these were other industries such as DuPont Chemicals, Dow Chemicals, and Kaiser Gypsum. In both cities during that era, the local businesses depended on having the mill workers as their customers. And in that era, there were no large retail outlets there, such as Kmart or Walmart and the like. There was a small jcpenney store in Pittsburg and a small Sears store in Antioch, but most of the local businesses were mom-and-pop establishments.
Phil’s dad, Manuel Garrido, was a forklift operator for most of his life, and the Garrido family was definitely in the working class of the area. They eventually moved to Brentwood, a town about twenty miles east of Pittsburg. Brentwood was much more rural, with surrounding farmland, where tomatoes, corn, walnut trees, almond trees, and apricots were grown. In fact, the area had originally been known as “Eden Plain” in the nineteenth century for its rich soils and temperate climate. Ironically, in the background, Mount Diablo (the Devil’s Mountain) dominated the western horizon. When someone wanted to go to the “big city” from Brentwood, they either drove to Antioch, with its population of around fifteen thousand, or the even bigger city of Stockton to the east, with a population exceeding thirty thousand. To get to Stockton, a person had to drive on levee roads through the California Delta.
That was another factor of Brentwood. It lay on the edge of the California Delta, with its thousand miles of waterways. These waterways turned, twisted, and meandered across the landscape, adding to the richness of the soils. Brentwood was at the juncture of farmland, wetlands, and rivers; and farther to the northwest lay the industrial zone.
Phil Garrido had a brother, Ron, who was eight years older than he was, and Phil’s mom, Patricia, became a successful real estate agent in the Brentwood area. She attended school board meetings, and the Garrido family lived a stable, if not extravagant, life in the small town. For most of the people there, it was quiet, not terribly exciting, but a comfortable way of life. Like many in his generation, Phil was raised on television fare of Captain Kangaroo, Davy Crockett, and Sky King.
Phil’s father, Manuel, later said that Phil was a good boy when he was young. “He was never in any trouble. He was well-behaved and polite.” Manuel did indicate, however, that Phil’s mother spoiled him and doted on him. And for that reason, Phil was never disciplined when he acted out, even by Manuel.
Although Phil had a high IQ, he only achieved average grades in school. More than one person later said that Phil had the ability—but not the drive—to accomplish much in school. Ron agreed with his dad that Phil’s mother spoiled him, and Phil never put out much effort in anything he did. Even Phil later on would admit, “I was spoiled as a child.” There’s no record that Phil joined the Boy Scouts, was in Little League, or played any kind of team sports while growing up in Brentwood.
By the time Phil reached Liberty Union High School, his grades did not improve. He didn’t join clubs and he didn’t go out for athletics. The one thing he did do, however, was enjoy playing and listening to music. Especially rock-and-roll music. Phil got a bass guitar and joined a rock-and-roll band with some other local boys. Even though he wouldn’t apply himself to his studies at school, Phil practiced long hours on his bass guitar. And as time went on, he became a fairly good player. His favorite artists, as the 1960s rolled along, were the Jefferson Airplane and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
The “hippie scene” was just starting to take off in nearby San Francisco in 1967 and 1968, and Phil made his way over to Haight-Ashbury as often as he could. There were free concerts in Golden Gate Park, and in the park’s panhandle, put on by the likes of the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and other popular psychedelic rock groups. For a rural boy from Brentwood, it was indeed like Alice going down the rabbit hole into another world inhabited by hookah-smoking caterpillars. And it wasn’t long before Phil was smoking marijuana himself, just like so many other young people who attended the free concerts were doing.
Mike Kelly, a member of a Brentwood band, the Village Drunks, recalled, “Phil was a nice young guy growing up. He was clean-cut and pretty smart. He was just a normal high-school kid. But the hippie scene came along and he really got into it, with the moccasins, fringe coat, and all.”
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br /> Kelly added that they were all partying back then in the late 1960s, “smoking weed.” Kelly related, “I knew when to stop, but I guess Phil didn’t.” Apparently, Phil began using more marijuana, and others attest to his use of hashish, illegal pills, such as uppers and downers, and LSD as well. Even Phil would later write of this period in his life: Marijuana was reaching out to rural California. From that point on my life was slowly changing. He may have been hedging about the “slowly” part. For others around him, he seemed to be changing very quickly into a “stoner.”
Steve Luchessi, another member of the Village Drunks, recounted, “Phil was in the background at Liberty (Union) High School. Not one of the most popular. I thought he was weird, but not that weird. I’m not sure if he was high all the time or just saw things differently. It was almost as if he was trying to keep up with the psychedelic scene, the drug scene. He painted his bedroom black and covered the walls with psychedelic music posters and illuminated them with black lights.”
Unlike Mike Kelly and Steve Luchessi, there were some local girls, who as women many years later, had a different take on Phil Garrido. Not wanting to reveal their identities, one woman told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that there were many girls in high school who thought Phil was cute. One of them told the reporter, “You should have seen Phil in early high school. He was the cutest. Girls wanted to dance with him at all the dances.”
Another woman, who had been a classmate at Liberty Union High School, said, “He had a cute smile. He wasn’t a jock, but a lot of girls liked him. I wouldn’t say he was really friendly, but he wasn’t standoffish, either.”
