In Plain Sight: Jaycee Dugard
Why it took 18 years for a kidnapped daughter to be reunited with family
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'I'm so sorry that he got that little girl' Katie Calloway Hall and her husband, Jim Hill, describe the moment they learned that Jaycee Dugard had been found in the company of Phillip Garrido, who raped Katie in 1976. Dateline NBC |
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How Phillip Garrido got out of jail Former Washoe County Chief Deputy District Attorney Mike Malloy explains how Phillip Garrido was paroled in 1988. Dateline NBC |
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Kidnap witness: 'I'm left with the guilt' Katrina Rodriguez, who witnessed the kidnapping of her then-9-year-old friend Michaela Garecht in 1988, talks about life after the abduction. Dateline NBC |
This report aired on Dateline NBC on Friday, Oct. 2, 2009. See related web-exclusive videos here.
Keith Morrison, Dateline NBC: Would you want to see her now?
Kelly Brosnahan: Oh, I would love to. I'd hope she remembers me and all the fun things we did together. I would love to see her.
Who is Phil Garrido--the man accused of keeping Jaycee and those girls on his property all these years -how did he get to be that way? Are there victims, still to be discovered? And did the law miss repeated opportunities to prevent any of this from happening?
Here's the astonishing record we've uncovered.
This is a story that should never have happened, about a man whose monstrous appetites, once stopped - and they were - should have stayed that way. But that's the trouble with evil intent: It isn't necessarily so simple to see. Peel away that malevolent look on his face, erect a barricade to keep the neighbors and the law at bay, and you have the disturbing tale of Phillip Garrido. Make sense of this if you can.
It began here: San Francisco's East Bay. Garrido was a child of the 60's, a boy whose mother thought he could do no wrong, or so it's been reported. Though, as he himself admits, he did lots of wrong things: as a teenager, he began abusing drugs. He became very fond of LSD. Landed in jail on a drug possession charge. And then, out again, a struggling musician, at the age of 21, was first accused of a sexual attack.
It was 1972. Antioch, California. Garrido and a friend picked up two girls walking to the public library. Or so it was alleged by Lieutenant Leonard Orman of the Antioch Police Department.
Leonard Orman: They started driving around. Apparently Mr. Garrido provided them with barbiturates.
The alleged victim remembers only that she was taken to this motel, was sexually assaulted, and then woke up in the hospital.
Leonard Orman: The victim made a decision not to testify, therefore the case was dropped.
And thus our use of the word "alleged." And thus also perhaps the first opportunity missed. There would be, as you'll see, several more. Garrido soon landed in Reno, married his high school sweetheart, lived, as far as anyone in the world around him knew, an unremarkable life.
And then in November of 1976, Phillip Garrido went hunting. This is where he came: It's just across the state line, in California. Where, in a South Lake Tahoe parking lot, he found what he was looking for.
Katie Calloway: After I got in my car and started backing out, actually, I heard a bang on my window. And it was this tall young man standing there in a denim suit.
This woman's name is Katie Calloway. She was 25 then, a blackjack dealer and single mother.
Katie Calloway: I rolled down my window. And he said, "Gee, I'm-- I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you, but my car won't start. I was just wondering, which way are you going??”
She had no idea of course that another woman would come forward to claim the man in the denim suit tried to abduct her just an hour earlier.
Katie Calloway: He didn't look to me like what i thought a rapist should look like.
Katie Calloway let the man into her car and began driving in the direction of her boyfriend's house.
Katie Calloway: And as I got to the side street I was going to turn on he says, "Well, actually it's just past that porch light right there.” And at that point he slammed my head into the steering wheel. And just overpowered me. He grabbed my keys. Threw 'em on the floor. Had handcuffs out of his pocket. He said to me, "All I want is a piece of ass. If you cooperate you won't get hurt."
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Phillip Garrido had a plan for Katie.
They took a drive, 60 miles, to a storage facility in Reno. He forced Katie into one of the units in which he had crafted a sex palace of sorts: carpeted walls, pornographic magazines, sex toys. He took, by his own admission, 4 hits of LSD.And then, for hour after hour, committed unspeakable sins against his victim.
Katie Calloway: He said to me things like, you know, "Just imagine if you were in Roman times and you had to do everything the man said if you were their slave." You know?
For 8 hours, the horrors continued. Then, 3 a.m., Katie heard a knocking sound. A passing police officer had noticed that the lock on the unit had been opened not with a key, but a crowbar.
Katie Calloway: He banged very loudly on the door. And Garrido went out there to-- see who it was. And he came back in and he said, "It's the heat. Do-- do I have to tie you up or are you going to be good?" And I said, "No, I've been good. No problem. You know, you don't have to tie me up.”
Garrido went back to talk to the cop.
Katie Calloway: I sat there for about-- I don't know, 20, 30 seconds. And I thought, "I've got to try. If this is-- if that's really a policeman out there, I've got to try and I've got to do it now. I just ran out there. I said, "Help me. Help me, please. Help me. He kidnapped me." You know? And-- and I ran over next to him. And the policeman said, "What's going on here?" And Garrido says, "Nothing. This is just my girlfriend. We're havin' a party back here. And I said, "No, i'm not. Keep him away from me. Keep him away!”
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Phillip Garrido was arrested. Charged with kidnapping. Rape. Dan DeMaranville was the police detective assigned to interview Garrido.
Dan DeMaranville: One of the questions I remember asking him is-- is why is a guy that, you know, looks like you just committing a kidnapping and rape. You shouldn't have to do that. And he responded, "Well, I have a little problem. And one of the ways I get sexual gratification is by forcing women."
To a man, authorities in Reno believed they had caught a madman, a sexual sadist who, if, he had somehow slipped through their fingers would never have allowed his captive to get out alive.
Mike Malloy is a former deputy prosecutor in Reno.
Mike Malloy: He-- wouldn't have been able to make a sex slave out of her. So he would've had to dispose of her some other way. So I think the police officer who was on his toes and found that crime in progress because of good police work is the person who saved Ms. Calloway's life.
That is what happened, Thanksgiving, 1976. A predator, caught red handed. Brought to justice. But what happened next, though it rolled out in legal slow-motion, was - as you will see - perhaps the most puzzling chapter of the whole disturbing story.
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