by John Glatt
“Here we are,” he told her. “You can open your eyes.”
He then left, saying he was going to park her car around the side of the building. He promised to unlock her handcuffs when he returned, warning her not to try to escape, as he would be watching.
After he left and rolled down the door, Katie Callaway took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She saw a stack of half-opened storage boxes by the door, with china and other items visible.
Directly in front of her was a wall of Visqueen plastic sheeting, obscuring the rest of the warehouse.
“It was freezing in there,” she recalled. “I didn’t know where I was. I thought I was out in the middle of the desert.”
A few minutes later he returned, locking the door from the inside. As he released the handcuffs he warned Katie there was no escape for her.
He then led her through a succession of three heavy rugs suspended from the ceiling, making her feel disoriented, like being inside a maze.
“I couldn’t see,” she said, “because there were several partitions in the front of the door. I didn’t even know the size of the room, because of the way it was set up.”
Behind the final rugged partition was a room, which he’d carefully prepared like a stage set. Then he turned on the colored spotlights and ordered her to undress.
“I saw a dirty mattress on the floor,” she later remembered, “with a red holey satin sheet and a filthy fake fur blanket. He had colored stage lights focused on the mattress and a projector on the floor with some film in it. I asked him if they were porno films, he said yes. There were also stacks of pornographic magazines.
“And then I saw the three solid walls were covered in carpet, which really scared me because I’m thinking, ‘Oh God, he’s tried to soundproof this room.’ ”
At one end of the shed, she could hear the muffled sounds of a band practicing, assuming they came from another part of the warehouse and were made by her abductor’s friends.
When Katie said she needed the bathroom, he found a little red jar for her to urinate in. Then as she undressed she noticed a gleaming new silver trash can full of water, with an electric heater on the outside, which he used to wash her with warm water. There were also two bottles of cheap wine, a jar of Vaseline, some disposable douches and a vibrator with three attachments, lying by the mattress.
“I took my clothes off,” she later testified, “and it was freezing in there. I got under this filthy, furry, fake fur blanket that he had on this old mattress. It was filthy, but I was freezing. He sat on the mattress and I was shaking so badly.
“I was terrified. I think that he felt sorry for me, and he told me I was the only person that ever made him feel bad for doing this.”
Then Garrido opened a bottle of cheap wine and offered her a glass, saying it would stop her shaking and relax her. She accepted half a glass, but he then started drinking the wine heavily. Later, he would claim to have taken four doses of LSD, to increase his sexual pleasure.
“He was a lot calmer,” said Callaway. “But he would get very distant looks, like he was kind of spaced off. And all of a sudden he would come back to me.”
For the first half-hour, Phillip Garrido sat on the bed fully clothed, chatting to Katie, who was shivering under the covers. He turned on a radio, tuning it to a local Reno rock station.
“He told me I was making him feel bad because I was terrified,” she said. “And that if I fought him it would turn him on more and make him more aggressive.”
He spoke of renting the warehouse under an alias, and preparing it for several weeks. He said he also used it for his band to practice in but expected to be evicted soon.
Garrido then began to explain why he had kidnapped her, and the more he talked the more sexually excited he became.
“He was trying to put me at ease,” said Katie, “by trying to assure me that he wasn’t going to hurt me. It was a sexual fantasy that he had planned. He said things to me like, ‘Just imagine if you were in Roman times and you had to do everything the man said if you were a slave.’ ”
Finally, Garrido stopped talking. Then he began taking his clothes off, neatly placing them on an old battered brown chair. She noticed an ugly burn-type scar on his left shoulder.
He then got into the bed and started rubbing himself against her, before entering her with his erect penis. Katie just lay there very still, praying her nightmare would soon come to an end.
”He pulled out,” she later told detectives, “and ejaculated on my stomach the first time.”
Garrido then ordered Katie to stand over him on the bed and rub her vagina and breasts and keep repeating the words “fuck me, fuck me,” while he masturbated to climax.
“Then he told me to lie on the bed,” said Katie, “and he took a handful of Vaseline, rubbed it on my vagina and his penis and then entered me again.”
He then forced her to have anal sex, but did not ejaculate. He also made her stand by the wall with her hands above her head, moving her hips around as he masturbated. Then he ordered her to sit on a large speaker with her legs up, roughly penetrating her with a clitoral vibrator.
“He was hurting me,” she recalled. “I tried to push his hands away and he knocked my hands away. [He] told me to knock that shit off.”
Next Garrido ordered her down on her hands and knees, entering her from the rear.
“Then he made me masturbate him,” she said. “He made me stimulate his penis with my hand, and if I would slow down at any time because I was exhausted or sore, he would very threateningly say, ‘Come on, come on,’ like if I didn’t I was in trouble. Just do what I say.”
Over a five-and-a-half-hour period, Phillip Garrido repeatedly assaulted and raped Katie Callaway at least a dozen times. Periodically, he would stop to drink wine or smoke hash or marijuana. And the higher he got, the more frenzied and priapic he became.
“He got almost to the point of intoxication,” Katie later told investigators. “He got giggly and saying, ‘Oh, I hardly ever drink.’ He kept insisting that I take a few drinks, because I was shaking so terribly.”
At one point he took some hash from a glass vial and filled his pipe. After taking a large hit, he handed it to Katie, who inhaled.
“[It was] very strong,” she later testified. “It intensified all my paranoid feelings extremely. And I didn’t smoke any more, because I wanted to be fully competent, fully aware and fully alert because of the situation I was in.”
Just after midnight, William Emery arrived home to his warehouse in Mill Street, after a long shift driving his taxi. There was a strange blue Ford Pinto with California plates parked outside Phillip Garrido’s unit next door, and he remembered how his neighbor had asked him to keep an eye on it.
Emery went inside his unit and changed, coming out again to walk his dogs. He noticed Garrido’s Unit 39 was unlocked, so he knocked on the door a couple of times.
“There was no response,” he later told police. “Nobody came out and there wasn’t any noise. But the hasp was down so I knew somebody was in there.”
After writing down the Ford Pinto license plate number, he walked to a nearby gas station, calling the number Garrido had once given for emergencies. When he got no response, he got on his bicycle and pedaled to the Garrido house on Market Street.
“There was nobody at home,” said Emery, “so I turned around and went back to the shed.”
The strange car was still parked outside, but Emery decided there was nothing more he could do, going back inside his unit to sleep.
After hearing the loud bangs on his warehouse door, Phillip Garrido put on his jeans and boots and went to investigate. A few minutes later he returned giggling, saying it was only the guy next door, asking about a tune on the radio. Then he started laughing, saying his neighbor probably knew exactly what he was doing.
He poured himself another glass of wine, ordering Katie Callaway to lie down on the mattress. Then he took a large pair of orange-colored sewing scissors and cut off
her pubic hair, saying it was making him sore.
He then left again for a few minutes, saying he needed some marijuana rolling papers.
“He said he was going to his friends to get papers,” Katie said. “I don’t know whether he meant the band, or the guy that had come by and banged on the door.”
Hour after hour, Katie Callaway focused on the radio and the periodic time checks, which punctuated her nightmare. Phillip Garrido seemed insatiable, as he repeatedly raped her in every way possible. And whenever she tried to resist, he just became more aggressive.
“The more I resisted,” she said, “the more force he used. He just kept doing the same things over and over.”
Katie considered grabbing the scissors he had cut off her pubic hair with and stabbing him to death. But she never got the chance.
7
“PLEASE HELP ME!”
At around 2:20 A.M. on Tuesday, November 23, Reno Police officer Clifford Conrad was on patrol in Mill Street when he saw an out-of-state Ford Pinto parked in front of storage unit 39. He was immediately suspicious, as there was hardly any frost on the windows like all the other cars.
He took a closer look at the warehouse, observing that the door lock had been torn off. As there had been a spate of recent warehouse robberies in the area, he called police headquarters, requesting a plates check on the suspicious vehicle.
While he was waiting for an answer, he walked over to Unit 39 and tried the door. It opened about four inches and when it would not go any higher, he started knocking on the door.
Hearing the loud bangs on the door, Phillip Garrido jumped off the bed and went over to see who it was. Then he came back, telling his prisoner it was the police.
“Are you going to maintain?” he asked Katie. “Are you going to be quiet?”
At first she thought it was a setup, so she promised to stay silent. Then Garrido put on his jeans and disappeared behind the rugs. Katie could then hear him opening the door and being asked his name and a few other questions. She listened carefully to see if it was really a policeman or just a friend of her attacker. Then she heard her abductor coolly explain that he had lost the key and had had to force open the lock.
Then Katie decided to escape. Although she was still naked, she tentatively got off the mattress, venturing out through the hanging rugs toward the sound of the voices. Then she peeked out from behind the vinyl sheet by the entrance and saw her attacker was talking to a policeman.
Suddenly she burst out of the warehouse into the street screaming, “Help me! Help me!”
Stunned by the sudden appearance of a hysterical naked woman, Officer Conrad demanded to know what the hell was going on.
Without missing a beat, Phillip Garrido calmly replied: “This is my girlfriend. We’re having a good time.”
“No, I’m not,” screamed Katie.
Then Officer Conrad asked who the blue Pinto belonged to, and Katie said it was hers.
“Who drove it here?” asked the officer.
“He did,” she replied.
“May I see your license, please?” asked Conrad.
“I don’t have a license,” replied Garrido. “I didn’t drive the car. She drove it.”
When Katie desperately protested that she had not driven her car here, the officer told her to go and dress, while he questioned Garrido further. After she went back inside, the wily Garrido conspiratorially told the officer that he was a married man and lived down the street. He said the naked woman he called “Kathy” was really his girlfriend.
He then asked permission to go back inside and fetch his jacket. And Officer Conrad allowed him to do so, as he called his dispatcher for backup.
Katie Callaway was dressing at the back of the warehouse, when to her horror her abductor suddenly reappeared.
“He let the guy go back in there with me,” she later told police. “I was terrified he was going to take me as a hostage.”
But Phillip Garrido took another tack, pleading with her to tell the policeman they were “sweethearts having a good time.” And he warned that if she gave him up, he would fight her all the way in court. She would never win, he said, as it would only be her word against his.
“My abductor was begging me not to tell on him,” she later testified. “That it would be terribly embarrassing.”
Katie now really felt her life was in danger, as he had nothing to lose.
“It was just he and I,” she said. “He could have done anything to me at the time. His life was in jeopardy. He knew he was caught . . . unless he could convince me not to tell on him.”
As he pleaded with her not to turn him in, Katie suddenly ran outside again half-naked.
“I just wanted to get out of the warehouse,” she said, “and back to the police officer before he tried anything rash.”
She rushed up to Officer Conrad, repeating she had been raped. A few seconds later, Garrido followed her out, and Officer Conrad continued questioning them both in his cruiser’s spotlights, as he waited for more officers to arrive.
Finally, an emotional Katie Callaway asked Officer Conrad to just let her abductor go home, saying she had had enough. She made sure the officer stayed between her and Garrido, matching him step by step.
“My nerves were shot,” she said. “I was almost at the snapping point. It had been a long ordeal. A horrible ordeal. And I wanted the officer to take me.”
Eventually, Officer Conrad realized how terrified she was, telling her to go and warm up in the back of his squad car.
As Katie Callaway waited in his cruiser, Officer Conrad continued questioning Phillip Garrido as to why the warehouse lock was broken. Garrido said he and a friend used the warehouse to play music and store their instruments. He had lost the key and had broken off the lock to get inside.
At 2:51 A.M., Reno Police officer Erick Soderblom arrived, after getting a call over the police radio, to find Officer Conrad interviewing Garrido.
And after consulting with Conrad, Officer Soderblom walked over to the police cruiser to speak to Katie Callaway.
“She appeared to be upset,” Officer Soderblom later testified. “Miss Callaway told me that she was a victim of rape and kidnap.”
When Soderblom asked how she had been taken to Reno against her will, Katie said she had been handcuffed, holding out her wrists for him to see. The experienced officer shone his flashlight on her wrists, immediately recognizing the distinctive red parallel chafes that can only be caused by handcuffs.
Katie Callaway then signed a criminal complaint against Phillip Garrido, as Officer Conrad called his supervisor, Sergeant Saunier, to the scene.
While they were waiting for Sergeant Saunier to arrive, Conrad escorted Garrido back into the warehouse to get his shirt and jacket. Inside the officer noticed a large pair of scissors, as well as drug paraphernalia and a vial containing what looked like hashish.
He started asking specific questions about his alleged victim’s accusations. Up to then Garrido had been “calm” and “rational,” but he suddenly went on the defensive, saying he did not have to answer.
At 3:00 A.M., after Garrido was read his Miranda rights, Sergeant Saunier arrested Phillip Garrido for the kidnap and rape of Katie Callaway. Another officer then found the key to the handcuffs in Garrido’s pants pocket, as well as a set of keys in a black plastic Harrah’s Casino club case, where his wife Christine worked.
Phillip Garrido was handcuffed and taken to Washoe Medical Center to be tested for alcohol and drugs, as well as to have a sample of his pubic hair taken.
At 5:10 A.M. he was moved to Reno City Jail and booked on charges of kidnap, rape and infamous crimes.
“I guess that I should learn to grow up,” he told Officer Soderblom.
8
“IT LOOKED LIKE A SCENE FROM A PORNO FLICK”
At 3:30 A.M. Tuesday morning, Reno Police detective Dan DeMaranville was assigned the Phillip Garrido kidnap/rape investigation. The experienced forty-year-old robbery/homicide detective h
ad been sleeping when he’d received the call. He immediately drove to Reno Police headquarters to be briefed by Officer Clifford Conrad.
“I was called out in the middle of the night,” recalled DeMaranville, “and asked to lead the investigation.”
A few blocks away at Washoe Medical Center, Katie Callaway was undergoing forensic rape tests by Dr. Boss of the Reno CSI unit.
Her wrists were carefully photographed, as well as the numerous scratches and bruises all over her body. And a cutting of what remained of her pubic hair was taken.
After the forensic testing was completed, Sergeant Saunier drove her to Reno Police Headquarters. At 5:40 A.M. she was interviewed by Detective DeMaranville and his assistant, Officer Carolyn Jean Carlon. And over the next two hours Phillip Garrido’s victim described her terrible ordeal at his hands in graphic detail.
She told the investigators how she had unwittingly given him a ride the previous evening in South Lake Tahoe, after he’d said his car had broken down. Frequently bursting into tears, she described how he had lured her to an empty lot before taking her prisoner.
“He told me all he wanted was a piece of ass,” she said. “And if I did all that he asked I wouldn’t get hurt. He said that he had come to Lake Tahoe specifically for the purpose of abducting a girl.”
She then detailed her long, terrifying ride to Garrido’s warehouse in Reno, and how he had boasted of spending weeks preparing for her arrival. The detectives took notes as she described the six hours of almost nonstop violent acts of rape she had endured.
“It was a sexual fantasy that he had planned,” she told them. “He held my arms down to the bed with the weight of his body.”
She said Phillip Garrido had raped her both vaginally and anally, as well as using his fingers and a vibrator to penetrate her.
“He just kept doing the same things over and over,” she sobbed. “He drank quite a bit of wine and he became somewhat intoxicated, and when he became intoxicated he became more forceful and mean.”