Phillip Garrido

For the last several weeks we have been covering the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard, primarily from her perspective.  Today we are going to look at the man who perpetrated this crime against her.  Phillip Garrido led a life of cruelty and violence; this is his story.

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Transcript

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For the last several weeks we have been covering the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard, primarily from her perspective.  Today we are going to look at the man who perpetrated this crime against her.

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Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

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Phillip Garrido was sometimes referred to as Creepy Phil, by those who knew the man, these people considered Phillip strange and at times, frightening. 

He was born in Pittsburg, California on April 5th, 1951 and he grew up in Brentwood, here is where Phillip graduated from Liberty High School in 1969.   Phillip was described by his own father as a good boy, but following a pretty serious motorcycle accident, while he was still a teenager, Phillip turned to drugs, it is not clear if Phillip’s drug use was due to him trying to personally manage pain caused by his motorcycle accident, or if he just began using drugs recreationally.  Phillip had a strong proclivity for methamphetamines and LSD.

Phillip would admit during court proceedings that he regularly sat in his car close to grade schools and masturbated while watching girls outside of the school.  In 1972 Phillip was arrested for raping a 14-year-old multiple times after he gave her drugs to incapacitate her.  This young girl declined to testify against Phillip at trial and the DA was forced to drop the charges against Phillip.  The following year, in 1973, Phillip married one of his high school classmates named Christine Murphy.  Christine would later accuse Phillip of domestic violence, including one time when she attempted to leave the relationship and Phillip’s response was to kidnap her so she could not leave.

In 1976 Phillip kidnapped a 25-year-old woman named Katherine Callaway in South Lake Tahoe, California.  He drove this woman to Reno, Nevada and he took her to a warehouse, where he proceeded to rape the woman over and over for five and half hours.  A police officer, who was patrolling the area noticed Phillip’s car parked outside of the warehouse.  This officer got out of his car to investigate the empty car and he noticed that the lock on the warehouse door had been busted open, the officer knocked on the door to the warehouse and waited.  A disheveled looking man appeared in the doorway, he told the officer that nothing was wrong, but just then a distraught woman appeared at the door asking for the police officer to help her.  The officer immediately arrested Phillip Garrido.

The courts ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Phillip and he was diagnosed as a sexual deviant and a chronic drug abuser.  The doctor who evaluated Phillip recommended a neurological examination, because he believed that Phillip’s years of abusing drugs could have caused his sexual deviation.

Neurologist Albert F. Peterman then took on the case.  Dr. Peterman stated that Phillip Garrido showed considerable evidence of anxiety and depression and personality disorder.  Phillip went on trial for the kidnapping and rape of Katherine Callaway and on March 9th, 1977, he was convicted and given a 50 year sentence, to be served at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.

While serving out his sentence, Phillip Garrido met a woman who was at the prison visiting her uncle, who was also incarcerated.  This woman’s name was Nancy Bocanegra, and she liked Phillip Garrido right from the start.  Phillip and Nancy were married at the Leavenworth Penitentiary on October 5th, 1981.

On January 22, 1988, after serving 11 years of his 50 year sentence, Phillip Garrido was released from Leavenworth, but he would not get his freedom yet, Phillip was moved from Kansas to the Nevada State Prison, here he still had to serve his sentence for his state crimes.  Phillip was sentenced to 5 years to life, but he was released from the Nevada State Prison after just 7 months.  After being released in Nevada, Phillip became a federal parolee in Contra Costa County, California.  It was here that Phillip and Nancy moved to the city of Antioch, California to live in Phillip’s mother’s home.  Phillip’s mother was elderly and in poor health, suffering from dementia.  Phillip was ordered to wear an ankle monitor and he had regular home visits from his parole officers.

This is the story of Phillip Garrido, prior to our episodes covering the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, and in our episodes, we told this kidnapping case, from Jaycee’s perspective.  Jaycee did not know what was happening in the outside world, she did not know if anyone was even looking for her.  So now, I am going to tell you more about Jaycee Dugard’s kidnapping and subsequent escape, with all of the details Jaycee had no idea about.

We know that Jaycee’s mother worked as a typesetter and had left early on a Monday morning for work.  Jaycee is 11-years-old and she wakes up and gets herself ready for school.  As she is walking up the hill from her house to her bus stop, she does not hear the car coming up behind her.  Phillip rolled down his car window and used a stun gun to incapacitate the small girl.  Phillip’s wife Nancy then dragged Jaycee into the car.  Nancy covered the girl with a blanket and held her down, as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

Jaycee’s step-father Carl Probyn witnessed the couple abduct his step-daughter from inside of his home, he ran out of the house and attempted to give chase on a bicycle, but he was unable to overtake the car as it sped away.   Some of Jaycee’s classmates also witnessed the abduction while they were waiting on the bus as well.  Police first looked into Carl, and then Ken Slayton, Jaycee’s biological father, but both men were cleared in the abduction.  

Just a few hours after Jaycee’s kidnapping, local and national media outlets began picking up the story.  Within days, many locals had volunteered in the search efforts to find the missing girl.  10,000 fliers and posters were distributed to businesses all over the USA.  And the town blanketed everything that would stand still with pink ribbons, because pink was Jaycee’s favorite color.   Jaycee’s mom, Terry Probyn founded a group she entitled Jaycee’s Hope.  This group directed the volunteer and fundraising efforts to bring Jaycee home.  The group made audio tapes of the song Jaycee Lee to hand out, along with T-shirts, sweatshirts and buttons were sold to raise money to make more posters, to pay for postage and other related expenses.  The groups Child Quest International and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also became involved in the case.  The posters and fliers showed that a reward was being offered in the case as well.

On June 14th, 1991, the Kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard was covered on an episode of America’s Most Wanted.  Jaycee’s mother Terry, would push for continuous efforts in the areas of child safety awareness as she continued to fundraise and hold candlelight vigils marking each anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance.  Terry knew that she had to keep her daughter’s story in the news.

I am not going to recount Jaycee’s years in captivity here, if you missed our 3 part series on her captivity, I would encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes.  What I am going to talk about now are the things that took place during Jaycee’s imprisonment that she was completely unaware of, while still touching on the most pivotal moments of her captivity.

Three years into her captivity, on November 13th, 1997, Jaycee gave birth to her first child.  After this Phillip raped Jaycee less frequently and the last time Phillip raped her was the day when she was impregnated with her second child, by her capture. Jaycee gave birth to her second child on November 13th, 1997.

Jaycee homeschooled her children, even with the little education she had, had after all she had been kidnapped when she, herself was only 11-years-old and she had only been educated in elementary school.  Nancy, Phillip’s wife was quite jealous of Jaycee and her two beautiful little girls, so Phillip made Jaycee teach her daughters that she herself was actually her children’s older sister, rather than their mother and they all called Nancy their mother if they were even in public. 

Phillip Garrido started his print shop and Jaycee acted as the graphic artist for his printing business.  One customer of this business, Ben Daughdrill claimed that he spoke to Jaycee on the phone and that the printing business did excellent work.  Jaycee was allowed, after years of imprisonment and grooming, to answer the door to the house.  Phillip’s mother Pat, who was elderly and in poor health, lived in the house, while Jaycee and her kids stayed in the sheds and tents in the backyard of the house.  In all of the encounters Jaycee had in public, she never willingly revealed her true identity to anyone she had met, after all, she had been held captive since she was 11-years-old and her head was filled with Phillip and Nancy’s lies about the world outside of their home.

I want you to remember that Phillip was still on probation, and this required regular check ins from his probation officers.  Because of this, law enforcement visited the house several times, but they never checked the property close enough to realize that a woman with two children were being held captive in a secluded backyard.  There were a number of close calls, when opportunities arose for others to help Jaycee and her children, but all of these would be failures. 

Police did not put together that Jaycee had been taken from a location south of Lake Tahoe, this is in the same vicinity of the Katherine Callaway Hall kidnapping, also perpetrated by Phillip Garrido.  Police received a call from a concerned citizen on April 22nd, 1992, this was less than a year after Jaycee had been taken.  This man called the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s office from a gas station located just 2 miles from Phillip Garrido’s home and on this call the man clamed that he had been inside of this gas station and he saw a poster for the missing girl Jaycee Dugard, but what was truly bizarre is that this man claimed that standing before him was also the actual Jaycee Dugard, she was standing there staring at the missing persons poster, intently staring at the picture of herself.

After this the caller claimed that the girl left in a large Yellow Dodge van, the man did not get the plate number of the van as it left and he did not identify himself during the phone call.  When police arrived at this filling station, the girl, the van and the mysterious caller were all gone.  What is strange about this entire story is that a large Yellow Dodge van, just as described, was located on the Garrido property; however, Jaycee herself has said that she never left the Garrido property from the time she was taken until just before the birth of her first child.  Was this all a coincidence or not, go to our social media and tell us what you think.

During June of 2002, the Antioch fire department responded to the Garrido’s home, the claim was that a juvenile had suffered a shoulder injury while swimming the pool at the house.  This information was not relayed to Phillip’s parole officer, because if it had been, the parole office knew that there were not any juveniles recorded as living in this home and they also knew that the Garrido house had no pool.  

In 2006 a call came into a 911 dispatch center, this caller stated that they were one of Phillip Garrido’s neighbors and they were concerned because they believed children were living in his backyard in camping tents.  This caller also expressed concerns because they believed that Phillip was psychotic and that he struggled with sexual addictions.  In response to this caller, the Sheriff’s office sent a deputy to the house.  This officer spoke with Phillip Garrido at the front door of the main house for about 30 minutes.  The deputy told Phillip that it would be a code violation if there were people living outside on his property, but that was all, he did not go check the property, he did not look for any erroneous youths lingering around the backyard, he just left.

On August 24th, 2009, Phillip Garrido traveled, with Jaycee’s two young daughters, to the FBI field office in San Francisco, while there he left a four-page essay expressing his own ideas about religion and sexuality.  In this essay he suggested that he had discovered the solution to his past sexual crimes.  He described how he had curved his own deviant behavior and he suggested that the same information could be used to cure other sexual predators.  Phillip’s solution was to control human impulses that drive humans to commit dysfunctional acts.

Also, during this trip, Phillip traveled to the University of California Berkeley, while here he visited the campus police office because he wanted permission to hold an event for his God’s Desire program.  He spoke to the school’s special events manager, Lisa Campbell, who perceived Phillip’s behavior as erratic and she observed the behavior of the small girls as well, she described the girls as sullen and submissive.  Lisa asked Phillip to make an appointment for the following day, which he did and he left his name while making this appointment.  After Phillip had left with the girls, officer Ally Jacobs ran a background check on Phillip Garrido and she discovered that Phillip was a registered sex offender and that he was on federal parole for kidnapping and rape.  

The following day, Phillip arrived back at the campus with the two girls, they had made an appointment for 2:00PM, which was attended by officer Ally Jacobs.  The officer observed the girls, whom she described as pale, as if they had very little exposure to sunlight, their behavior was also unusual to the officer.  After Phillip and the girls left the meeting, officer Jacobs called Phillip’s parole office to report her concerns, no one answered at the parole office, so she relayed her concerns via voicemail.

After the voicemail was heard by the parole office, two parole officers traveled to the Garrido’s home that same day.  When they arrived at the house, they handcuffed Phillip and began searching the house.  The only persons located in the home were, Phillip’s wife Nancy and his elderly mother Pat.  The parole agents then took Phillip from the home and drove him to the parole office.  While in route to the parole office, Phillip told the agents that the two girls who had been with him during his visit to UC Berkeley were the daughters of one of his relatives and that he had permission from the girl’s parents to take them on the trip.

As a condition of Phillip’s parole, he was expressly barred from associating with minors, he was also not allowed to travel more that 25 miles from his home without informing his parole officer, which he had not done for this trip, UC Berkeley is located 40 miles from Phillip’s home, well outside of his travel limits.  Even with both of these parole violations the parole agents reviewed Phillip’s file with their supervisor and then they just drove him back home, they told him he needed to report back to the office the following day to discuss his visit to UC Berkeley in more detail, they also wanted to discuss the two young girls who had been with him on this trip.

So as requested, the following day, August 26th, Phillip and Nancy packed everyone into their vehicle, including Jaycee and the two girls and they headed down to the parole office.  When the group arrived at the parole office, the officers separated Phillip from the women and young girls and they began to try and identify each of the females.  Jaycee was still proclaiming that her real name was Allissa, the name she had been going by for all the years she had been imprisoned.  

Jaycee, or Allissa told the investigators that the girls were in fact, hers and that she knew Phillip Garrido was a convicted sex offender.  She told them that he was a changed man and a great person, he was even great with her kids, the two young girls mimicked these same sentiments.  As the officers pressed her for more details about her identity, Jaycee became more and more defensive and irritated at the questions.  In her mind the only safe place she knew was with Phillip, so she had to fight to keep up the façade they had going.  She told the officers that she was a battered wife from Minnesota and that she was staying with Phillip and Nancy in order to hide from her abusive husband.

Parole officers were interrogating Phillip Garrido, at the same time Jaycee was being questioned and they contacted the Concord police department.  A Concord police sergeant arrived at the office and when he entered the room with Phillip Garrido, Phillip confessed that he had kidnapped and raped Jaycee Dugard.  After this confession, Jaycee’s true identity finally came to light.

It is often asked why Jaycee never made any attempts to flee, there were so many opportunities when she was out of the house in public, or when officers came to the house, but Jaycee said that she did what it took to survive and that her compassion and willingness to participate in life with her captor were her only means of survival, for her and her two daughters.  Jaycee says that she does not believe she had any form of Stockholm Syndrome she stated, “Stockholm Syndrome implies that hostages cracked by terror and abuse become affectionate towards their captors...Well, it's, really, it's degrading, you know, having my family believe that I was in love with this captor and wanted to stay with him. I mean, that is so far from the truth that it makes me want to throw up...I adapted to survive my circumstance." She repeatedly stated that, as a survival mechanism, many victims are forced to sympathize with their captors. 

Phillip Garrido and Nancy Garrido were arrested right there in the parole office.  After Jaycee Dugard was found and freed from her life in captivity, the local Contra Costa County Sheriff, Warren E Rupf issued a public apology to Jaycee and her two daughters during a live press conference.  And on November 4, 2009, the California Office of the Inspector General issued a report that displayed failings by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that had contributed to Jaycee Dugard's continued captivity. The central finding was that Phillip Garrido was incorrectly classified as needing only low-level supervision; all other lapses derived from that one singular mistake. In his report, the inspector general detailed an instance in which a parole agent encountered a 12-year-old girl at the Garrido home, but accepted Phillip's explanation that "she was his brother's daughter and the agent did nothing to verify it," despite the fact that a call to Garrido's brother quickly verified that he did not have any children. 

The two young girls cried when they learned that they father had been arrested, after all, to them they had lived a normal childhood, they did not know their father was a criminal, nor did they know that the way they had lived life thus far was not normal.

This case is extremely important for families of long-term missing children, because it shows that hope has a reason to be kept alive, even in long term cases.  Elizabeth Smart, another long-term abduction survivor as stressed the importance of focusing on the future with a positive attitude as an effective approach to accepting what has happened.  

After Phillip and Nancy had been arrested the police performed a search on their property, or rather Phillip’s mother’s property.  After learning that Phillip also had available access to one of his neighbors’ homes, they decided to search that home as well.  And after all of the police’s initial failings in this case, they did not want to leave any stone unturned, so they even searched the home of one of Phillip’s clients from his printing business.

In July of 2011 the Hayward police department announced that Phillip Garrido had not been eliminated as a suspect and was still a person of interest in the abduction of Michaela Garecht, who had been kidnapped in 1988.  Hayward is located just 55 miles from Phillips home in Antioch.

Phillip was interviewed on August 27th, 2009 by the Sacramento station KCRA-TV.  In this interview from Phillip’s jail cell, he told the reporter, “In the end, this is going to be a powerful heartwarming story” because Phillip claimed “My life has been straightened out.  Wait till you hear the story of what took place at this house.  You’re going to be absolutely impressed, it’s a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning, but I turned my life completely around.”

On August 28th, 2009, Phillip and Nancy Garrido pleaded not guilty to the charges of kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment.  District Attorney Vern Pierson and Assistant DA James Clinchard would prosecute the case.  A bail review was held on September 14th, 2009.  At this hearing, Superior Court Judge Douglas Phimister set bail for Nancy at $30 million dollars.  Phillip was on a no-bail parole hold.  Also at this hearing, Phimister granted a request from Phillip’s attorney for a psychologist or psychiatrist to be appointed in this case and to conduct an evaluation on Phillip.  On October 29th a short hearing was held to set a date for the next pre-preliminary hearing, where they would discus discovery for the case.  This hearing was held on December 11th and Katie Callaway Hall, Garrido’s previous rape victim appeared in the courtroom, she did not speak during the proceedings.  

On November 5th, 2009, the judge ordered the removal of Nancy’s defense attorney from the case, this decision was made in review of confidential evidence which was not disclosed to the public.  One week later the judge appointed an interim attorney for Nancy.  Gilbert Maines, Nancy’s attorney, appealed the decision and received a favorable ruling by the California Third District Court of Appeals on December 15, 2009. On December 22, 2009, the same court gave the El Dorado Superior Court until January 2010 to respond to the ruling. Both Gilbert Maines and Stephen Tapson appeared at the discovery hearing on December 11, 2009. Another hearing was held on January 21, 2010. At that hearing, Maines was removed from the case and Tapson was appointed defense counsel for Nancy.

At a press conference on February 28, 2011, Tapson said that Nancy and Phillip Garrido had both made a 'full confession' in the case. This development came as lawyers for both sides reopened discussions on a possible plea deal that had the potential to prevent the need for a trial. Nancy's attorney acknowledged that she was facing "8 months to life" and that he was working for a reduced sentence in the 30-year range. He stated that the prosecutor had acknowledged that Phillip was a master manipulator and that Nancy was under both his influence and the influence of controlled substances during the period of Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping, the attorney said Nancy should receive some consideration and alluded to parallels between Nancy, and kidnapping victim Patty Hearst (who’s case we covered on Season one of The Secret Sits), he also made mention of Stockholm syndrome. 

During the actual pleading of this case, which took place on April 7th, 2011, both Phillip and Nancy pleaded Not Guilty, which shocked everyone.  Phillip’s attorney made some arguments about improper selection, pertaining to the jury selection, but it did not change the course of this case. 

Ultimately, on April 28th, 2011, Phillip and Nancy pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape by force.  Phillip was given a sentence of 431 years to life in prison.  Nancy was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison.  Both parties would be eligible for parole in August of 2034. Phillip was sent to the California State Prison in Corcora and Nancy is serving her time at the Central California Woman’s Facility in Chowchilla, you can also listen to our episode covering the Chowchilla School Bus Kidnappings, which we also covered in Season one.

Jaycee Dugard declined to attend the sentencing hearings and instead, she penned a letter and sent it with her mother, who read the letter aloud in the courtroom.

Jaycee Dugard sued the state of California, because the state was responsible for monitoring Phillip Garrido while he was on parole for the 1976 rape.  And he was still on parole at the time he kidnapped her.  She sued the state because of the multiple mistakes made by law enforcement officers during her captivity, mistakes that if avoided, could have resulted in her discovery and recovery.  In July of 2010, the State of California agreed to a settlement with Jaycee Dugard in the amount of $20 million dollars.  This payment was meant to compensate her for various lapses by the Corrections Department that contributed to Jaycee’s continued captivity, ongoing sexual assault and mental and/or physical abuse.  This settlement was agreed to by the California State Assembly in a 70 – 2 vote, and what 2 asshats voted against this tortured girl?  The California State Senate also had to hold a vote to approve this settlement and that vote was 30 – 1.  The bill attached to this settlement was signed by then California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger on July 9th.

Jaycee Dugard then went on to sue the United States of America on September 22nd, 2011.  She filed this suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, in this suit she accused the USA of failing to monitor Phillip Garrido when he was a federal parolee, which he had been when she was kidnaped.  Jaycee stated in her lawsuit that the parole officers should have revoked Phillip’s parole and returned him to prison for a myriad of different parole violations that took place even before she was taken on that distant Monday morning.

On March 15, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dismissed Jaycee Dugard's civil claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In a 2–1 decision authored by Judge John B. Owens, the court ruled that the federal government's sovereign immunity was not waived because the U.S. is only liable "in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances" under state law. In this case, because the U.S. would not be liable under California law, Jaycee could not prevail on her FTCA claim. The majority's rationale was that Dugard had not been victimized by Phillip Garrido at the time he was placed under federal parole supervision, and "there was no way to anticipate she would become his victim," and thus, federal authorities in California had no duty to protect her or other members of the general public from him. Chief District Court Judge William Smith again dissented, stating that he believed that the majority misinterpreted California law, as the cases cited by the majority only involved FTCA liability in rehabilitation centers, and there were good legitimate grounds to hold the government liable. 

Today the Garrido’s are in prison, where they belong and Jaycee Dugard is attempting to live the best life, she can with her two daughters, she remains a pretty private person, who wouldn’t be after suffering the unimaginable things she endured in the most formative years of her life.  So, I want to leave you with this, we dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret Sits in the middle and knows.  If you ever see a situation that you think is strange, say something, if your gut tells you that something is wrong, follow that instinct, maybe, just maybe, you can save someone else from the worst day of their lives.