by John Glatt
One morning that spring, Phillip Garrido arrived at Maria Christenson’s recycling plant with his younger daughter, Starlit. He was acting so strangely she was certain he was high on something.
When Maria asked who the little girl was, Garrido snapped, “Oh, this is my daughter. We’ve got to go.”
“She was clinging to him,” Christenson remembered, “and she was dressed kind of old-fashioned, like something you’d wear twenty years ago on a farm. That’s what caught my eye. She was so pale and her skin wasn’t the right color.”
During the brief period they were in her office, Starlit seemed interested in Christenson’s collection of brass animals in a display case.
“She wanted to look at it,” Maria said, “but he wouldn’t let her talk to me. I think maybe he was doing drugs, because he was so wired and in a hurry all the time.”
On May 3, 2009, Jaycee Dugard turned twenty-nine. It was now almost eighteen years since she was kidnapped by Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Although she had assumed a completely new identity as Alyssa Franzen, she still clung to a vestige of her old life by writing every day in her secret journal. It was her only true expression of her real identity, a way of voicing her true feelings of being trapped by a madman in a bizarre netherworld.
Over the years she had grown to love Phillip and Nancy Garrido, but she also knew she could never escape their clutches without risking her daughters’ safety.
Living like campers in tents in the hidden backyard for so many years had made Alyssa resourceful. And despite the terrible conditions, she had done her best to create a home for Angel and Starlit. A large welcome sign hung over the concealed entrance, along with several plastic butterflies and other rather pathetic homey touches. There were drawings and artwork all over the various sheds and tents, and the children’s five cats were probably more comfortable than their owners.
The ten-foot-by-ten-foot shed, where Alyssa had been held in restraints for her first eighteen months in captivity, now housed the Printing For Less operation, with several computers and printers. There were bookshelves full of magazines and books about cats, as well as several romance novels by Alyssa’s favorite author, Danielle Steel. There was also a filthy fish tank and a microwave.
Nearby was a small blue tent where Alyssa, Starlit and Angel’s outdated thrift-shop clothes hung on plastic racks. It was stuffed with dressers overflowing with clothing.
Another old faded tent alongside served as their sleeping quarters, with dirty stripped-down couches for beds. In one corner on a small dressing table was a large cosmetic box, full of old makeup, hairbrushes and combs.
And every night, while Alyssa and her daughters made do with the deplorable conditions they had grown used to, Phillip and Nancy Garrido slept soundly inside the house in comfortable beds.
That June, Pat Franzen’s already frail health worsened, with her worried son summoning emergency services three times over a three-week period.
On June 5, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had introduced a new GPS system. And Phillip Garrido had started tampering with his GPS ankle bracelet. Over the next three months, Garrido’s signal was lost almost every night for hours at a time. But almost all the electronic alerts to the Concord parole office were ignored.
A month later, on July 6, Phillip Garrido posted a new entry on his “Voices Revealed” blog. Entitled “A Power That Has Been Kept Hidden,” it rambled on incomprehensibly about his new religion and saving the world. And it talked about “an intelligently prepared plan that is hidden in the scriptures” that will “inspire all humanity.”
He and Alyssa were now working on an ambitious eight-day series of seminars and demonstrations, to be sponsored by their client J & M Enterprises and held in a tent on their premises. Alyssa designed a series of flyers and posters, showing a new sunrise, to publicize the event.
“Don’t Miss Out,” read the God’s Desire Church flier. “Something brand new is taking place.”
Alyssa had also designed a stunning new logo for “God’s Desire,” to accompany its newly stated mission: “To instruct and encourage intellectual, moral, and spiritual improvement.”
The event would run Monday through Friday from noon to 4:00 P.M. and on weekends from 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., with a one-hour break for lunch.
During the eight-day event, Phillip, Nancy, Alyssa and the two girls all manned the God’s Desire Church tent that had been set up in Jim and Cheyvonne Molino’s front yard. At various times they would all sing together, as Phillip Garrido strummed along on his guitar. And Garrido gave demonstrations of his black box at periodic intervals.
But although all advertising material says the event’s sponsor was J & M Enterprises, mentioning its “Large stock of used parts for all model cars and trucks” and twenty-four-hour towing service, Jim and Cheyvonne Molino later distanced themselves from it.
“He said he had a flier stating he was going to have a tent here,” explained Cheyvonne. “He was just hanging out at the back of our lawn, okay.”
Her husband, Jim, says the God’s Desire event was very informal.
“He had a tent out front,” he later told a local television station, “that he would sit and talk to people. He’d play music for them and get them interested in the Bible.”
A few weeks later, on August 14, Phillip Garrido blogged about the event’s great success.
“During the month of July 2009,” he wrote, “J & M’s Enterprises . . . was the host to a powerful demonstration, the Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongues of angels in order to provide a wake-up that will in time include the salvation of the whole world.”
Two days after the J & M Enterprises event, Phillip Garrido delivered an order of postcards to East County Glass and Window Inc. It was the third attempt at getting them right, as owner Tim Allen had repeatedly returned them with mistakes.
“We had ordered some postcards,” explained Allen, “and they were wrong. So we asked him to make them again and the same had happened. This time they were correct and he brought them in and dropped them off.”
Allen thought the printer was even more distracted than ever, and was now contemplating finding a new print company, after almost fifteen years with Printing For Less.
Love’s Transport and Tow, Inc., was also having problems with the deteriorating quality of Garrido’s work. When Garrido arrived in mid-August with his Bible and several thousand numbered invoices, owner Christine Meacham was appalled at the glaring mistakes.
“They were smeared,” she said. “They were crooked. And I’m wondering if he had the young girls do it, because nothing’s ever been wrong before.”
After she pointed out the mistakes, Garrido agreed to redo them. But suddenly he started talking about an amazing new spiritual development, eerily different from the usual message he preached.
“He said this is a new revelation,” recalled Meacham. “It’s going to be different once the world knows. The time is going to come.”
Phillip Garrido also told Janice Gomes it was almost time to start his God-given mission to save the world.
“Janice, trust me when my story hits, it’s going to be worldwide,” he told her breathlessly. “You’re not going to believe what God healed me of. You’re not going to believe the kind of person I was.”
Now, Phillip Garrido’s sole topic of conversation was an upcoming trip with his daughters to the People’s Park on the University of California, Berkeley campus.
“He kept telling me, ‘I’m going to Berkeley! I’m going to Berkeley,” recalled Maria Christenson. “That was all he kept thinking about. He wanted to go to Berkeley so bad.”
Janice Gomes believes his Berkeley trip was the culmination of four years of planning.
“He was stepping out,” she said. “This is time. He was prepared for this. He believes in what he’s doing—as crazy as it is.”
A few days later, Marc Lister ran into Garrido at a mutual friend’s house. Garrido gave
him one of his black boxes, asking if he could take care of it, along with a stack of other church material.
“I think he had come to a crossroads,” said Lister. “He was fed up with no one listening to him, and had decided to turn himself in and bring his message to the world.”
In hindsight, Lister believes that Garrido had now decided to take his message to a global stage, and deliver Jaycee Lee Dugard back to the world.
“Within days the world’s going to know my story,” he told Lister, who advised him to get back on his meds.
At 8:10 A.M. on July 29 Agent Santos arrived at Walnut Avenue, for his twice-monthly visit. Garrido said he was unable to supply a urine sample for drug testing at that time. Three hours later, the parole officer returned to collect it.
A few days later, Phillip Garrido attended a funeral of a relative. It would be the last time Ron Garrido would ever see his younger brother, who was acting strangely, pacing to and from his car.
“Crazy, crazy, crazy,” Ron would later say.
On Saturday, August 15, Phillip Garrido brought Starlit and Angel to Cheyvonne Molino’s daughter’s “Sweet Sixteen” birthday party, held at a nearby water park. Previously Garrido had asked if his daughters could attend, as they had become closer to the Molinos during the recent God’s Desire religious event on their property.
“Phil wanted to know if he could bring the girls,” said Cheyvonne. “I said not a problem.”
As it would be a dance party for about 125, she told Phillip that his daughters should wear sundresses and sandals.
The party officially started at 9:00 P.M., but Garrido arrived two hours earlier with the girls, to help decorate the dance floor.
“A girlfriend of mine pointed out how clingy the older girl was to Phillip,” said Cheyvonne. “It was almost like she was sending out a message, ‘That’s my man.’ At least that’s how it looked to us.”
Before the party got into full swing, Garrido left, saying he would pick up his daughters later.
“They were mixing and mingling,” said Cheyvonne. “And they didn’t stay together because we had a big space. They interacted just like the rest of the kids.”
At around 9:15 P.M. a photographer arrived to take pictures of the guests. He took a photograph of Starlit and Angel, wearing matching sky-blue sundresses. Soon afterwards, Garrido returned, saying he was taking the girls home, as they were not used to loud rap music.
“When their dad picked up around 9:30,” said Molino, “I walked them to the car and I asked them if they had fun. And they both squealed, ‘Oh, yes!’ ”
Part Three
36
“I’M SO PROUD OF MY GIRLS”
On Monday morning, August 24, Phillip Garrido drove Angel and Starlit forty miles west to the FBI office at 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco. They walked in the front entrance of the Philip Burton Building, passing through a security machine. Then they took an elevator up to the thirteenth floor, and Garrido walked over to the front desk, with his two daughters following behind.
He then handed a copy of his updated twenty-seven page “Origins of Schizophrenia Revealed” manifesto to an agent, saying it was important that he read it as soon as possible.
After leaving the building, Garrido and his daughters drove across the Bay Bridge to the University of California, Berkeley. They spent a few minutes at Sather Gate, where Angel and Starlit handed out God’s Desire leaflets, before walking over to the campus police headquarters at 1 Sproul Hall and going down to the basement.
Garrido walked up to the receptionist, announcing that he wanted to hold a major event on the main campus, showing a stack of pamphlets and manifestos. Then he was directed into the office of the campus police special events manager, Lisa Campbell. As he walked in, he signaled his daughters to wait outside.
When he bounded into her office, Lisa Campbell was working on her computer with her back to him. She turned around to see the tall, thin, balding man with striking blue eyes.
“He came into my office,” recalled Campbell. “He was extremely animated. Clearly unstable.”
After he had formally introduced himself as Phillip Garrido, president of the God’s Desire Church, Campbell asked about his event and what it had to do with the University of California.
“Ah, you’re going to love this,” replied Garrido. “The FBI are involved. The entire world is going to want to know. It’s God’s desire. It’s God’s purpose.”
Then, as he passionately rambled on, Campbell looked into her outer office to see two young blonde girls in long dresses staring at her, with the same piercing blue eyes as the man inside.
She asked Garrido whose children they were, and he said he was their father. Then Campbell summoned the girls in, asking how they were. But they just stood there silently like stage mannequins.
“It was as though he had set it up [to] create a distraction,” she said. “And they were just there in eye view.”
The former Chicago police officer immediately felt something was very wrong.
“I looked at him,” remembered Campbell, “and I looked at the girls. He’s going on and on and on and he’s extremely animated and they’re not. They were really poles apart.”
So Campbell decided to investigate further. As she had another appointment waiting outside, she asked if he could come back tomorrow, explaining she was busy right now but would love to find out more about his event.
“He didn’t expect that reaction,” said Campbell, “because he expected to be blown off. And so I said, ‘Would you be interested?’ He said, ‘Absolutely. You’re going to really love this. You’re going to be so grateful that you did this.’ ”
Then she made an appointment for Garrido to return with the girls the following afternoon at 2:00 P.M.
“I wanted to get him in as soon as possible,” she explained.
After they left, Campbell went next door into campus police officer Allyson Jacobs’s office, saying there was something very strange about the guy who just came for an event permit and the two young girls with him.
“Well, let’s run him,” replied Officer Jacobs, who immediately went to the dispatch office, requesting one of the clerks check a “Phillip Garrido” on the police computer. A few seconds later the computer got a hit.
“She prints out this rap sheet longer than I can imagine,” recalled Jacobs. “He was on federal parole for kidnapping and rape, and he was also a sex registrant. And my red flags went up, because [Lisa] had mentioned something about two young kids.”
Officer Jacobs then went and told the events manager that the man whom she had just interviewed had a long history of sex crimes. And she offered to sit in at tomorrow’s meeting with Phillip Garrido.
“I didn’t feel comfortable,” said Officer Jacobs, “with her being alone with a convicted rapist.”
Several hours later, Phillip Garrido and his girls arrived at Janice Gomes’s daughter’s house to deliver some business cards on their way back to Antioch. After his trip to Berkeley, Garrido was in great spirits, suddenly bursting into song.
“He starts singing to her,” said Gomes, “scares her half to death.”
At exactly 2:00 P.M. on Tuesday afternoon, Phillip Garrido arrived back at the Berkeley campus police building with Angel and Starlit. They went straight into Lisa Campbell’s office, where she was waiting with Officer Allyson Jacobs.
As soon as he sat down, Garrido opened up an attaché case he had brought with him, drawing out a copy of his “Origins of Schizophrenia Revealed” booklet.
“He hands us this book,” recalled Jacobs, “and then he goes off on this tangent about how he can hear voices, and he’s got all these people that can attest to that.”
While Garrido ranted on and on about a black box, Officer Jacobs looked at the two girls. The eldest, Angel, was standing stiffly by her father with her hands on the front of her legs, looking up at the ceiling, while the younger, Starlit, just stared at her, making her extremely uncomfortable.
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br /> As a mother of two young sons, Officer Jacobs was immediately struck by how unnaturally pale and gray the girls were, compared with their father’s normal skin tone. Later Jacobs would describe their clothes as something out of Little House on the Prairie.
“The younger daughter was staring directly at me . . . with this eerie smile on her face,” she recalled, “as if she was looking into my soul.”
Then, apologizing for interrupting him midflow, Jacobs asked who the two young ladies were.
“Oh, these are my daughters,” he replied. He grabbed hold of Starlit, declaring, “I’m so proud of my girls. They don’t know any curse words. We raised them right. They don’t know anything bad about the world.”
The two campus officers both had a weird, uneasy feeling when he said that. For the two girls looked like brainwashed zombies, fearful of saying anything that might upset their father.
Officer Jacobs asked the girls what they were doing with their father.
“I’m socializing them,” Garrido answered for them. “Showing them how it’s done.”
When Jacobs asked him to explain, Garrido replied, “By interacting with people.”
Then, out of nowhere, Phillip Garrido began telling the two officers how he had once been arrested for kidnapping and rape thirty-three years ago.
“And I was kind of, okay,” said Jacobs. “I knew that but I just didn’t think he would throw that out there—especially in front of these little girls. Then the younger daughter said, ‘And we have an older sister that lives with us too. She’s twenty-eight.’ And the older sibling said, without missing a beat, ‘twenty-nine.’ And went right back up to her dad, who seemed kind of bothered that that was even mentioned.”
When they had first walked in, Officer Jacobs had noticed Starlit had a large discolored bump over one eye, and wondered if she had been abused.
“So I asked her,” said Jacobs, “ ‘What’s wrong with your eye? What happened?’
“And she says, really robotic, ‘It’s a birth defect. It’s inoperable and I’ll have it for the rest of my life.’ It was rehearsed and it caught me off-guard. I really think my mother’s intuition kicked in at that point.”