by John Glatt
“Yes,” replied Garrido nervously.
“Do they have any meaning for you?”
“Yes.”
“Is it right to beat your wife?”
“No.”
“Would it be wrong to beat your wife?”
“Yes.”
Garrido testified that he and his wife Chris had “an understanding” about his sexual activity.
“Did she know where you were the night you kidnapped Miss Callaway?” asked the prosecutor.
“No,” answered Garrido. “The only thing my wife knew was that I went to South Lake Tahoe to get LSD.”
The prosecutor then asked at what point had he taken the four hits of LSD on the night of the abduction.
“Right after the abduction,” claimed Garrido.
“You didn’t take it before the abduction?”
“No.”
“Do you have sexual relations with your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Does she restrict your sexual activities with her?” asked Lutfy.
“No.”
“Does she let you do what you want to do?”
“Well,” replied Garrido, “I don’t hurt her, so she does restrict me, yes.”
“Why don’t you harm your wife?”
“Because I love her.”
“Is it only people that you don’t love that you harm?”
“I didn’t feel I was harming Katherine Callaway,” he said. “So I don’t feel I was harming anybody.”
“You didn’t think you were harming her when you put handcuffs on her?”
“No.”
“You didn’t think you were harming her when you grabbed her by the back of the neck and pushed her neck down to her knees?”
“No.”
“You didn’t think you were harming her when you put that strap around her?”
“No.”
“You didn’t think you were harming her when you threw that coat over her in the front seat?”
“No.”
“You didn’t think you were harming her when you threw her in the back seat—or put her in the back seat—with that coat over her again?”
“No,” replied Garrido angrily, “I didn’t put the coat over her, in the first place.”
“You never put any coat over her?” asked Lutfy.
“I did after the gas station,” clarified Garrido.
Then he maintained that he hadn’t believed he was harming his victim when he gagged her with tape and threw her on the back seat in handcuffs.
“What about the fact that you didn’t put tape over her eyes?” asked the prosecutor. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because she asked me not to,” replied the defendant.
“She asked you not to rape her, didn’t she?”
“No,” he replied resolutely.
“Not at the beginning?
“No.”
The prosecutor then asked why he masturbated in his car at drive-ins and put towels in the windows, and not publicly in the middle of the street.
“To hide myself,” replied Garrido. “I felt an embarrassment.”
“You thought it was wrong? Did you?”
“At that time, yes.”
Lutfy asked if he had ever sought psychiatric help for his sexual problems. Garrido said he had not, as he had not thought there was anything wrong with masturbating in cars or restaurant bathrooms.
“Did your parents ever teach you right and wrong?” he asked him.
“Yes.”
“Did your get slapped when you were a boy when you did something your parents said was wrong?”
“Very unfortunately, no,” he replied.
“Did they ever verbally tell you you were wrong, you shouldn’t do this?”
“Up to the point when I was ten years old. After that I was spoiled. My father never did take any restrictions of beating me or disciplining me, and my mother spoiled me.”
“Do you feel he should have done that?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think he should have done that?”
“Because of what I have learned.”
Lutfy then asked if he had lied to the two psychiatrists who had examined him in jail. And when Garrido claimed to have answered every question honestly, the prosecutor asked why.
“Because I have been working very steadily,” he replied, “the last two months with a minister getting close to God.”
Garrido said that although he had believed in God for the last three years, it was only after his arrest and incarceration that he had found the Lord.
“In fact,” asked the prosecutor, “you told Miss Callaway that you had discovered God or Jesus, didn’t you?”
“I told her that I believed in him and someday I would like to turn to him,” he replied.
“Someday?” asked the prosecutor. “It wasn’t going to be that day, was it?”
“No.”
“You think God would like the things you have done?”
“Absolutely not,” he said contritely. “I am ashamed of them.”
In redirect, defender Willard Van Hazel attempted to show his client had not known the difference between right and wrong during the period of the abduction.
“Mr. Garrido,” he began, trying to repair the damage from the prosecution, “were you ashamed when you did what you did to Miss Callaway?”
“No,” answered the defendant.
“You were not ashamed?”
“No,” he continued, “I couldn’t feel shame. I didn’t even realize the reality of shame for what I was doing.”
Garrido then denied only being ashamed now because he was scared of going to prison, saying his newfound religion was the sole reason.
“Well, what is the difference between then and now?” asked his attorney.
“Because I have come close to God,” he replied. “Because I feel God. Because God has shown me he is real.”
He said although he had spoken of God to his victim, he knew nothing about it at that time.
“Since November twenty-second,” asked Van Hazel, “you have had contact with God?”
“Yes,” said Garrido. “I have studied very hard and I have learned what it takes to find God.”
The final defense witness was its own psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Kuhn. He told the jury he had spent an hour examining Phillip Garrido two weeks after his arrest, and would occasionally see him later while visiting other inmates.
“Have you observed any changes in his behavior?” asked defender Van Hazel.
“His appearance changed,” replied the psychiatrist. “He looks somewhat more healthy, and he certainly seems quite lucid and pretty well together.”
Then Van Hazel asked the doctor for his diagnosis of Garrido.
“Drug dependence,” said Dr. Kuhn. “Both on LSD and cannabis.”
The defense attorney then asked what the doctor believed Garrido’s mental capacity to have been at the time of the offense. Dr. Kuhn said Garrido’s sexual fantasies, voyeurism and exhibitionism had been exacerbated by his drug use.
“Without the influence of any of this drug involvement,” he told the jury, “I think Mr. Garrido would pause before carrying out sexual fantasies.”
Then the attorney asked the cause of the defendant’s perverse sexual fantasies.
“I think that would be too difficult to explain in any short period of time,” replied Dr. Kuhn. “But in any case I do not feel that the drug caused the fantasy.”
Van Hazel then asked if he thought Garrido lacked the substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the standards of the law.
“Yes, I do,” replied the psychiatrist. “I think the defendant did not have adequate control to conform his behavior.”
Finally, Van Hazel asked if the doctor thought Garrido would be a menace to the health, safety and morals of himself and others, without psychiatric treatment.
“I certainly do,” replied Dr. Kuhn.
At this point, Judge Thompson dismissed the
jury for afternoon recess, so he could consider the prosecution’s argument to permit damning evidence that Garrido had tried to kidnap another woman just an hour before seizing Katie Callaway.
The prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. Lynn Gerow, was then summoned into the courtroom to hear this new evidence.
“He entered her car,” Assistant United States Attorney Leland Lutfy told the judge, “by again asking for a ride.”
The prosecutor said that he directed the unnamed woman to a certain street, and attacked her when she’d stopped the car, exactly as he had done with Callaway.
“Mr. Garrido grabbed this woman,” said Lutfy, “put one handcuff on [but] was unable to put the other one on. She jumped out of the vehicle struggling with him. After she promised she would not tell the police, or tell anybody about what he had done, he agreed to unloosen that handcuff.”
He then unlocked the handcuff while the car was still moving, before jumping out and running away.
After hearing this potentially explosive new evidence, Judge Thompson asked both psychiatrists if it would have affected their diagnoses, if they had known of it before.
“Not at all, sir,” answered Dr. Kuhn.
“It tells me, Your Honor,” said Dr. Gerow, “part of the state of mind prior to the alleged offense, in that he formed the intent.”
“Would it change the opinion you have reached?” asked the judge.
“No, sir,” said Gerow.
Then Judge Thompson ruled against allowing the jury to hear about Phillip Garrido’s previous kidnap attempt before taking a fifteen-minute recess.
When the court reconvened, Prosecutor Lutfy attempted to change the judge’s mind, saying Dr. Gerow now believed this new evidence would “reinforce” his opinion of Phillip Garrido.
“And on that basis,” said Lutfy, “we would ask that the testimony be allowed.”
But Willard Van Hazel disagreed, saying he believed Dr. Gerow’s opinion was quite clear and didn’t need reinforcing.
The judge then asked Dr. Gerow what he felt was important about the evidence. The doctor replied that Garrido had already told him about it during his psychiatric examination.
“And you based your opinion partially on that?” asked the judge.
“All I was saying,” said the psychiatrist, “was he was clear-minded and he formed the intent prior to leaving this area and going to Lake Tahoe. And he followed through with his intent, this first abduction being just one part of the sequence of events.”
Willard Van Hazel countered, telling the judge that the jury had already heard that his client had come well prepared for the abduction, with handcuffs and a strap.
“There was some planning,” he said. “There was a place he was going to. I think we have all of those things. The jury will now be hearing of a crime that the defendant is not charged with.”
Then in a victory for defense, Judge Thompson ruled that the jury should not be told about Phillip Garrido’s first abduction attempt.
The prosecution then called Dr. Lynn Gerow as a rebuttal witness. The psychiatrist told the court he had spent almost two hours examining the defendant on December 19.
“I formed some opinions about Mr. Garrido,” he testified. “I felt that he was competent to stand trial and I felt he was responsible for the act in question.”
Then the prosecutor asked if he felt Garrido had “sexual aberrations.”
“I don’t use that word,” answered the psychiatrist. “I concluded that he had a sexual disorder. He gave a history of being a Peeping Tom or a voyeur . . . of being an exhibitionist and taking his clothes off in front of little girls.
“He gave a history of impulsive masturbation. These things led me to believe that he was sexually deviant and had that mental disorder.”
“One last question,” said Lutfy. “Is it your opinion, as a result of any mental disease or defect, that Mr. Garrido could conform his conduct to the requirements of the law?”
“He can conform his conduct to the requirements of the law,” said the doctor.
“Can he appreciate right from wrong?”
“He can appreciate right from wrong,” Dr. Gerow told the jury.
In cross-examination, Willard Van Hazel asked about Garrido’s relationship with LSD and sex.
“He used LSD as a sexual stimulant,” said the psychiatrist. “He, without LSD, was not sexually stimulated to any great degree.”
“Did you arrive at the conclusion in [your] report then that . . . chronic drug abuse,” asked the defense attorney, “may be responsible for . . . mixed sexual deviation?”
“Not responsible for the mixed sexual deviation,” said the doctor, “so much as I was applying just the tremendous sex drive the man had under LSD.”
Finally, Judge Thompson asked if the psychiatrist had ever studied the effects of long-term LSD use.
“I was in San Francisco during what they call the ‘Summer of Love,’ ” said Dr. Gerow. “The heyday of the Haight-Ashbury problem horticulture, and I saw a lot of people who had taken a lot of LSD.”
“In your opinion,” asked the judge, “can it have a lasting effect on the brain function?”
“Yes,” replied Dr. Gerow. “Taken in sufficient quantity, in some individuals it will produce dementia.”
The judge then asked if the psychiatric tests he had run on Garrido would have revealed any signs of this. The doctor said they would have, but there was no indication of any brain damage in the defendant.
At 4:20 P.M. the judge recessed until 10:00 A.M. the following day, when he would give the jury its final instructions before they went off to determine Phillip Garrido’s fate.
On Friday morning, the federal government called Dr. Albert Peterman as its final rebuttal witness. The neurologist said he had examined Phillip Garrido and given him an EEG brainwave test.
“I was asked specifically if there was any evidence of brain damage,” Dr. Peterman told the jury. “I did not feel that there was.”
In his cross-examination, Willard Van Hazel asked if his neurological tests would have detected any organic brain damage from LSD or cocaine.
“In the instance of addiction to LSD,” he said, “I would likely find nothing on examination.”
“How about cocaine?” asked Van Hazel.
“Nothing.”
Later that day, Judge Thompson sent the jury out to deliberate. And late Friday night it returned a unanimous guilty verdict on all counts. Then Judge Thompson remanded Phillip Garrido into custody for sentencing.
14
“EVERYBODY IS TRYING TO GET A POUND OF HIS FLESH”
A month later—on Wednesday, March 9, 1977—Phillip Garrido appeared in Washoe County district court for a change of plea hearing. A few days earlier, Ronald Bath, Garrido’s defense attorney for the Nevada State case, had cut a plea deal with Washoe County deputy district attorney Michael Malloy. In exchange for the state dismissing the two other counts of possession of marijuana and an infamous crime against nature, his client would plead guilty to one count of forcible rape. The charge carried a minimum of five years to a maximum life sentence in the state prison.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” prosecutor Malloy told Washoe County judge Roy Lee Torvinen, “as long as that’s what the negotiations are. He’s going to plead guilty to forcible rape and the other will be dismissed.”
Then Judge Torvinen asked Garrido if he had discussed his change of plea with his defense lawyer.
“Yes, I have,” he told the Judge.
“Is it your desire to withdraw your not guilty plea to Count One, forcible rape?”
“Yes, Your Honor, I do.”
The judge then formally read out the indictment alleging the forcible rape of Katie Callaway, asking how he pleaded.
“Guilty,” declared Garrido.
Then prosecutor Malloy said the state had made no commitments to the defendant as to the sentencing it would be asking for.
“He has been found guilty by a jury in Federal Cou
rt . . . on a charge that arises out of what happened the same night,” Malloy told the judge. “Whatever sentence the federal court gives Mr. Garrido, and maybe already has as far as I know, that hasn’t entered in our discussions as to what to do here with this guilty plea. And no representation has been made to him by anybody that I know of as to whether the sentence would run concurrently or consecutively or anything else about the two cases.”
“Do you understand the negotiations?” the judge asked the defendant.
“Yes, Your Honor. I do,” replied the defendant.
“Are you satisfied with the legal representation you received from the public defender’s office?”
“Definitely, I am,” said Garrido.
Judge Torvinen then asked Malloy to outline the offenses committed, and the possible penalties now faced by the defendant.
“Mr. Garrido is charged in Count One with forcible rape, to which he has already entered a plea of guilty. The possible penalties, since there is no allegation of substantial bodily injury, are a term of years ranging from a minimum of five to a maximum of life in the state prison.
“The court can fix the sentence in that area. Probation is not available and the matter of how long the sentence should be is entirely up to the court and nobody else.”
Judge Torvinen then remanded Garrido until April 11 for sentencing.
Two days later, on March 11, United States district court judge Bruce Thompson sentenced Phillip Garrido to fifty years in federal prison for kidnapping Katie Callaway.
The official United States District Court for the District of Nevada Judgment and Commitment Order read: “The defendant has been convicted as charged of the offense of Kidnapping. The court asked whether the defendant had anything to say why judgment should not be pronounced. Because no sufficient cause to the contrary was shown, or appeared to the court, the court adjudged the defendant guilty as charged and convicted and ordered that: The defendant is hereby committed to the custody of the Attorney General or his authorized representative for imprisonment for a period of FIFTY (50) YEARS.”
Four days later, Phillip Garrido sat down in his cell at the Washoe County jail and wrote a three-page letter to federal public defender Kenneth C. Corey, firing his attorney Willard Van Hazel and announcing his intention to appeal his sentence. In his slanting longhand, he wrote: