by John Glatt
But Jaycee was highly intelligent, inheriting her mother’s artistic gifts.
“She was a decent student,” recalled Meyers Elementary School principal Karen Gillis-Tinlin. “She was well liked but didn’t have a lot of friends.”
But Jaycee enthusiastically joined in many school activities, becoming a Girl Scout and playing on the soccer team.
That holiday season, Carl Probyn put up a Christmas tree in the front room, and Terry and Jaycee helped trim it. Since moving to South Lake Tahoe, Jaycee’s relationship with her stepfather had improved dramatically, and she had now accepted him as her father.
On Christmas morning a smiling Terry donned a Santa hat, as Carl shot home movies of an excited Jaycee and Shayna opening their presents.
“A boombox,” exclaimed a delighted Jaycee as she unwrapped a gift, before helping Shayna with hers.
“Moving to Tahoe felt like freedom and safety,” said Terry. “And Jaycee was blossoming.”
By the spring of 1991, Phillip Garrido’s plans to turn the backyard of 1554 Walnut Avenue, Antioch, into a prison were well advanced. He was already back into drugs, his new favorite being crystal methamphetamine, which gave him a manic energy for all the heavy work necessary.
Nancy was now working at an abused children’s center and had started drinking heavily, after discovering she was infertile. Phillip had told her it was God’s wish that they have children, and if they could not have them naturally, they must seize a young girl to bear their fruit.
On May 3, 1991, Jaycee Lee Dugard celebrated her eleventh birthday, with a party for her friends at the Round Table Pizza restaurant. There was a birthday cake and a joyous Jaycee blew out the eleven candles on it.
Now at the end of her first year at Meyers Elementary School, Jaycee was finally coming into her own and had become more outgoing.
Every morning she walked up Washoan Boulevard to the school bus stop with her friend Jamie Smith. And her teacher, Sue Louis, was pleased with Jaycee’s progress.
“She’s every teacher’s dream,” said Louis. “She was responsive in class [and] always did her work on time. She was cooperative and she worked well with other kids.”
On Friday, June 7, Jaycee attended a sleepover party for her friend Kelly Brosnahan’s eleventh birthday. A photograph taken that night shows a laughing Jaycee dressed in a pink top and light blue trousers, sharing a joke with her friends.
“We had fun,” Brosnahan recalled. “And we were playing Nintendo and just the normal things you’d do at a sleepover.”
That weekend Jaycee helped her parents run a stall at a local arts fair. And later several people would remember an intense dark-skinned woman with jet-black hair lurking around it.
On Sunday night Jaycee told her mother she wanted a pet dog. But the little girl seemed unusually distracted, refusing to say what was wrong.
“Something was on her mind,” Terry would later say. “I wonder if she wanted to tell me she’d been approached by this woman at the fair.”
A few weeks earlier, Jaycee had been asked to list her likes and dislikes for a school assignment.
She wrote: “Blond hair. Blue eyes. Freckled. Sibbling [sic] of Shayna. Lover of chocolate, cats, horses. Who feels happy on holidays. Pain when hurt. Who needs loving care. Friends. Family. Who fears bumble bees, spinach and spiders. Who would like to see my friends. Less homework. More trees.”
20
THE ABDUCTION
Just after eight o’clock the next morning, Phillip Garrido’s shabby gray Ford sedan was parked across the street from Jaycee’s house. It was a bright sunny day and the street was empty, as he watched the front door of the girl’s house, while Nancy sat in the passenger seat clutching a stun gun.
Then they saw the beautiful girl they had followed the day before. She was wearing a pink windbreaker, stretch pants and white sneakers, looking far younger than her eleven years.
The predators watched her go into the garage, before coming out of the driveway and heading up the steep hill.
At 8:12 A.M. Garrido turned the ignition key to start the engine, slowly driving down Washoan Boulevard. He made a U-turn by the house and then drove back up the hill towards Jaycee.
As he pulled alongside the tiny four-foot, seven-inch, eighty-pound girl, he suddenly turned the wheel around sharply, cutting her off. Then the little girl screamed in terror, as Nancy threw the door open and snatched her into the car.
Nancy pushed the defenseless child to the floor, shooting a bolt of electricity from the stun gun to subdue her. Then Phillip Garrido slammed down the accelerator, speeding off down Route 50 toward Antioch.
After witnessing Jaycee’s abduction, Carl Probyn jumped on his mountain bike in a burst of adrenaline, giving chase up the twisted mountain road. But he was no match for the silver sedan which had sped off at high speed.
“I couldn’t catch them,” he later explained. “My energy was gone after seeing what happened.”
So in a panic he rode back down the hill to a neighbor’s house, screaming to call 911 as there had been a kidnapping. By the time he reached his neighbor’s front door, she already had emergency services on the phone.
“My daughter was just kidnapped,” Carl breathlessly told the dispatcher. “Top of the hill. It was a gray Ford. A man and a woman in the car.”
Jaycee’s abduction was also witnessed by some of her Meyers Elementary classmates, who were waiting at the bus stop on Pioneer Trail. Nicole Sipes was already on the bus when it arrived at the stop a couple of minutes later.
“The twins from across the street ran onto the bus,” she remembered, “and started yelling, ‘They took her! They took her!’ ”
Then an El Dorado County sheriff’s officer arrived and boarded the bus, ordering the frightened pupils to stay put.
“Everybody was scared,” said Sipes. “A police officer gets on and says we all have to stay on the bus. You know something bad has really happened.”
Within minutes of Carl Probyn’s 911 call, an all points bulletin was broadcast for a two-tone silver Ford sedan, with a male driving accompanied by an Arab-looking woman with jet-black hair and a little blonde girl dressed in pink.
The Tahoe Basin is shaped like a giant bowl and has only seven roads in and out. But instead of sealing off these roads, the El Dorado Sheriff’s Department, which was soon joined by the South Lake Tahoe Police Department, focused the search within.
Ironically, El Dorado deputy sheriff Jim Watson had been on his way to Meyers Elementary School with his wife when the emergency distress call came over his police radio. He immediately made a U-turn back to his office, where he was appointed lead detective on the search for Jaycee Lee Dugard.
The experienced forty-seven-year-old investigator immediately drove to Washoan Boulevard to interview the abducted girl’s stepfather, Carl Probyn, the only eyewitness to her abduction.
Still in deep shock, Probyn described the kidnappers’ car as an early ’80s or late ’70s silver two-tone Ford Grenada. He said he had not seen the man driving, but had got a good look at the woman passenger, describing her as between thirty and thirty-five years old, with an olive complexion and dark straight hair. Later a police artist used his detailed description to make composite a drawing of the woman for the media.
Terry Probyn was at her desk at work when an El Dorado County sheriff’s officer walked in.
“We have reason to believe your daughter was kidnapped,” said the officer.
In that moment, Terry Probyn’s world fell apart.
By 10:00 A.M., California and Nevada highway patrols and law enforcement officers from all neighboring counties had joined in the search for Jaycee Lee Dugard. Police helicopters and planes took to the air, and officers started canvassing door-to-door for any leads. Local radio stations broadcast descriptions of Jaycee, the suspected female abductor and the car used in the kidnap.
Meyers Elementary School was in total lockdown, with the children in a panic.
“I ha
d walked into the office,” recalled principal Karen Gillis-Tinlin, “and the secretary said, ‘We’ve got a problem. One of our children has been abducted.’ [I was] sickened. This just doesn’t happen in Tahoe.”
Then the school bus Jaycee should have been on arrived, after police finally allowed it to complete its journey.
“I remember the kids coming from Jaycee’s bus,” Kelly Brosnahan later told Dateline NBC. “They heard somebody got kidnapped, and then another group of kids said they thought it was Jaycee.”
As word quickly spread around the South Lake Tahoe community, anxious parents began arriving at school, concerned it was their child who had been abducted. And television news crews descended on the school, trying to interview anyone they could.
“My students were scared,” said Jaycee’s teacher, Sue Louis. “Some of the kids already knew about it because they had witnessed it at the bus stop. The kids were very agitated and upset.”
Later that morning, counselors arrived to help Jaycee’s classmates try and cope with her abduction.
“I had kids in my office within a few hours,” said Gillis-Tinlin, “asking, ‘Can we pray for Jaycee?’ ”
Jaycee’s classmate Stephanie Spees said the children were too young to fully comprehend what was happening.
“The news crews were coming up to the school,” she said. “Counselors were coming and talking to us. It was intense for being so little.”
At around 11:00 A.M., Phillip and Nancy Garrido pulled up in front of 1554 Walnut Avenue, Antioch. All through the 160-mile drive from South Lake Tahoe, a petrified Jaycee Lee Dugard had been restrained by Nancy in the backseat.
When they arrived at the house, Phillip carried the tiny girl through a secret blue tarpaulin entrance into the hidden prison compound he had so carefully prepared. Then he threw her into the tiny soundproofed shed, placing her in restraints and locking the door behind him.
It would be eighteen months before they would allow her out to see daylight again.
21
“IF YOU CAN HEAR MOMMY”
After Terry Probyn learned of her daughter’s abduction she went into deep shock. Later she would describe it as having open-heart surgery, without being sewn back up again. That first agonizing day she chain-smoked and drank heavily, in a desperate effort to cope with the heartbreak of losing her beloved daughter.
By the afternoon, when there was still no sign of Jaycee Lee Dugard, calls from her kidnappers or ransom notes, investigators became increasingly concerned for her safety. They realized that there was a clock ticking, with each passing hour decreasing the chance of getting her back alive.
South Lake Tahoe was in virtual lockdown, as investigators set up checkpoints on all roads. They searched scores of old two-tone Ford sedans, showing motorists a picture of Jaycee that her mother had provided.
Specially trained police dogs walked the abduction site, in the hope they might pick up a trail. And detectives were also running down a report of a suspicious vehicle seen near the Probyn house on Sunday.
At 3:30 P.M., someone reported seeing a man driving a sedan with a woman and a little girl in pink by Fallen Leaf Lake, just five miles from where Jaycee had been snatched. Teams of investigators rushed there, but there were no signs of Jaycee or her abductors.
It would be the first of hundreds of false leads over the next few months, and investigators would faithfully check out each and every one of them.
Within hours of the abduction the FBI had been called in, and Special Agent Chris Campion of the Sacramento office was assigned case agent.
“From the very first call,” said Agent Campion, “our agents were out there covering leads shoulder-to-shoulder with the sheriff’s department.”
Agents from the FBI’s Reno and South Lake Tahoe offices were also drafted in to help in the search.
“Basically everybody with a badge within fifty miles,” said Agent Campion, “was somehow involved in this case.”
Late that evening, FBI spokesman Special Agent Joseph T. Sheehan held a press briefing. Without revealing Jaycee Lee Dugard’s identity, he told reporters that her stepfather had witnessed the dramatic abduction. He said a man and woman may have been working together to kidnap the eleven-year-old girl, but so far no ransom demand had been received.
He appealed for anyone with any information to call the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department or the Sacramento FBI Office, giving out special hotline phone numbers.
At nine o’clock that night, Terry and Carl Probyn invited a local television news crew into their home and made a plea directly to their daughter and the kidnappers.
“Jaycee,” sobbed a distraught Terry, dabbing her eyes. “If you can hear Mommy, I love you, and I want you to come home tonight safe and sound. It’s been thirteen hours and that’s too long. She’s got to be scared.”
Then Carl told how he had witnessed Jaycee’s abduction, but had been powerless to save her.
“I saw the dust,” he said choking up, “and I heard one scream and I realized I couldn’t catch them. She’s eleven years old. She’s a pretty little blonde and some psycho came down the hill, saw her . . . and just snatched her.”
Then he pleaded with the abductors to return Jaycee unharmed.
“Drop her off,” he said. “Let her go back home. Don’t hurt her.”
On Tuesday morning, the Sacramento Bee metro section carried a front-page story, headlined “Girl, 11, Abducted On Way To School Near Lake Tahoe.” In the story, FBI agent Joseph Sheehan was quoted as saying that the unnamed girl lived with her stepfather and mother in Meyers.
“Her natural father resides in Southern California,” he said. “At present, the father is not a suspect in the case.”
The Tahoe Daily Tribune also reported the story, with FBI special agent Albert Robinson asking for sightings of any suspicious people in town over the last several weeks.
“Even though it may seem trivial,” he said, “[it] may fit into our puzzle.”
That day hundreds of FBI investigators and law enforcement agents from California and Nevada, as well as volunteers, searched the whole Lake Tahoe area for any signs of Jaycee Lee Dugard. Investigators now believed that the man and woman suspected of the kidnapping might have been local and still in the area.
“We had a command post of between one hundred and two hundred officers [going] out door-to-door searching,” recalled lead detective Jim Watson. “We had dog teams and horse teams out searching the woods all around the area.”
Leads were coming in from the public by the minute, and every one was followed up. But twenty-four hours after the abduction, Watson knew that time was running out.
Later that morning, Terry and Carl Probyn held a press conference at the El Dorado Sheriff’s Department’s South Lake Tahoe station. They were accompanied by Carl’s mother, Wilma, and Jaycee’s little sister, Shayna.
Clasping Jaycee’s favorite stuffed bunny to her chest, Terry tearfully announced the family was posting a $5,000 reward for any information leading to her daughter’s safe return.
“Please don’t hurt her,” wept Terry. “She’s a good girl. Just drop her off. No questions. No nothing.”
Then she told reporters how Jaycee would check the microwave oven clock in the kitchen every morning, starting her walk to the school bus stop at precisely 8:05 A.M. And she described how Carl had watched in horror as he’d witnessed Jaycee’s abduction.
“My husband heard her scream,” said Terry, “and that’s it.”
Then Terry burst into tears, as she spoke directly to her missing daughter.
“If you are out there and you can hear me,” she sobbed, gazing longingly into the camera, “you know I love you and want you to come back soon. She’s out there somewhere. The baby has been asking for you, Jaycee.”
El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department sergeant Larry Hennick told reporters his officers had been working around the clock, setting up checkpoints all over the Lake Tahoe area.
A repor
ter then asked if investigators believed Jaycee’s disappearance had anything to do with a domestic dispute. FBI special agent Joseph Sheehan replied that Jaycee’s natural father had already been questioned but was not a suspect.
“At this point,” said Agent Sheehan, “we are less inclined, if we ever were inclined, to see this as a family matter.”
Suddenly, from the back of the room, a smartly dressed female TV tabloid show reporter started yelling at Carl and Terry Probyn.
“What are you hiding in that house?” she shouted accusingly.
As everyone turned around in amazement, the woman continued, lambasting the police for not allowing her camera crew to film inside the Probyns’ home.
In the hours after Jaycee Lee Dugard’s abduction, South Lake Tahoe plunged into shock and disbelief. Nobody could believe that something so horrible could touch the tranquil town, where serious crime was virtually unknown. And from now on parents started taking their children to the bus stop or directly to school.
“Kids were very, very worried,” explained Meyers Elementary School principal Karen Gillis-Tinlin. “They walk to the bus every day. It was a common thing . . . and then it went awry.”
For the rest of the week, all special events marking the end of the school year were cancelled. And Jaycee’s fifth-grade class became a continuing group therapy session, as her teacher and classmates tried to make some sense of her disappearance.
“It was a very scary time,” recalled Meyers fifth-grade teacher Sue Louis. “We did personalize—‘My gosh, this could have been my child.’ ”
Then suddenly pink ribbons started appearing all over South Lake Tahoe, on trees, poles and posts. It was reminiscent of the yellow ribbons for the American Embassy hostages in Iran, twenty years earlier.
“We had pink ribbons on the kindergarten fence within twenty-four hours,” said Gillis-Tinlin. “The students knew that her favorite color was pink. Pink ribbons were everywhere.”
Jaycee’s heartbroken classmates also tied a pink ribbon to her chair, writing letters to their lost friend as a way of expressing their feelings.