by Robert Scott
In another high-school yearbook photo, Chris, adorned in moddish clothes, has a large smile on her face as she gazes upon floats that appear to be a circus parade. This occurred in one of the buildings on campus, and the caption stated, Christine Perreira casts a smile as she watches the “circus” pass by. As you may have guessed, the animals aren’t real, but it’s always fun to imagine.
At the time, Chris couldn’t imagine what her life would become when she started dating Phil Garrido. In fact, all of Christine’s photos, including one of her amongst the pep squad, seem sweet and innocent in light of what was to happen later. The caption below that photo stated, Pep Club Buttons Help Raise Spirit. On Homecoming Week Pep Club provided frivolity to the Homecoming rally.
Phil somehow managed to convince Christine that the fourteen-year-old girl had been lying about being raped in a motel room near Antioch. After all, hadn’t the charges against him been dropped? And as for the drug charges in the Oakley case? Phil said that he’d changed his ways about dope. By this point, Phil was apparently no longer with Cathy. By March 1973, Christine was so infatuated with the young rock musician, she and Phil eloped to Carson City, Nevada, and got married. Soon she was working as a blackjack dealer at Harrah’s in Reno, right on the main drag of Virginia Street. Harrah’s in that era was one of the topline casinos in the area.
It was Chris’s job that mainly supported them. Phil made extra money playing with his band at parties, high-school dances, and taverns around the area. But the group wasn’t exactly making a fortune doing it.
Apparently, the other members of his band liked Phil. He was a fairly accomplished bass guitar player and he had a good stage presence. But as time went on, the other members of the band became more and more concerned about Phil’s increasing drug use. He constantly smoked marijuana and took LSD and cocaine whenever he could. And he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off girls, even if they were underage. His fellow band members attested to Phil’s wandering ways and penchant for teenage girls.
On top of that, Phil was absolutely addicted to porn. Pornographic magazines and books were strewn around his house, and he liked pornographic movies, especially Deep Throat. He also liked Behind the Green Door. This was ironic in light of the fact that Phil would one day move to Antioch, California. Antioch’s most infamous former citizens, the Mitchell brothers, Jim and Artie Mitchell, were by the 1970s making a string of pornographic movies including Behind the Green Door. In that movie, the Mitchell brothers used the Ivory Soap model Marilyn Chambers and turned her into a sex goddess. It was just the kind of fantasy Phil liked. Young, blond and good-looking.
Just how far Phil’s drug usage had gone was later attested to by a friend of his in Reno named Gregory Sheppard. Sheppard said of Phil, “I first met Phil when he came into Shep’s Discount Liquor, the store owned by me and my mom. I became a friend of Phil Garrido. We were both musicians and we played a lot together. He played bass guitar. During that time, I saw him taking LSD, pot, cocaine, downers and uppers. Sometimes we’d be playing our guitars and he would take three tabs of acid.”
Another person who knew Phil during this period was Reno taxi driver William James Emery. Emery smoked marijuana with Phil and noted later, “He was usually stoned or in the process of being that way. When he was stoned, he was more extreme in everything he did.” And about one porno movie that Phil showed Emery, concerning lesbians having sex, Emery said, “Phil became very excited. It was of extreme nature. Manual, oral, and anal action.” Emery spoke of the lesbians using synthetic dildos and vibrators.
By 1976, matters became very rocky in Phil and Christine’s marriage. She later stated, “He began beating me when he got angry. One time, he took a safety pin and went after my eyes. He left a scar on my face. He would smack me around, and he threatened me when I tried to leave him. I was always looking for a way to find out how to get away. He always told me he’d find me wherever.
“I did get away once, but he came after me. He pulled up, turned around, and forced me back into the car. He was a good manipulator and a monster. He was pretty much capable of anything.”
Phil may have done whatever he could to keep Christine in his life, but he was restless with married life. He wanted a lot more; and when he was high, he took whatever he wanted. On the night of November 22, 1976, what he wanted was sex with a woman other than his wife. Phil was an opportunist, and when he spotted a pretty young woman at a market in South Lake Tahoe, California, near Stateline, Nevada, he decided to act on his impulses. The pretty young woman turned out to be twenty-five-year-old Katherine “Katie” Callaway.
In 1976, Katie Callaway lived on Venice Avenue in South Lake Tahoe. She was a blackjack dealer at one of the nearby casinos in Stateline, Nevada, a job not unlike that of Phil’s wife, who was working at Harrah’s in Reno. Katie later related that on November 22, 1976, “I was on my way to my boyfriend’s house with a hot dinner I prepared for him. I stopped at a market to pick up some coffee and some rice and some oil. It was Ink’s Market at Al Tahoe (a section of the city of South Lake Tahoe). I picked up the items that I needed, and got back into my car and started to back out, and someone tapped on my window on my side of the car.
“I turned around, and it was a young man out there. I rolled down my window, and he said, ‘Excuse me. I didn’t mean to scare you, but do you think you could give me a ride down the street? My car won’t start. It’s cold.’
“I had some friends who lived just down the street, and I had the whole passenger side filled with food. So I told him, ‘Well, if you don’t mind holding some of this food, I guess I could.’
“So I let him in the car. He was about six feet tall, and very slender. He had on a blue denim jacket and pants that matched and a brown sweater, and he appeared to have very short hair, but [that was because] it was pulled back in a ponytail. We started toward Stateline, because that’s the way I was going, and I asked him where he wanted to be let off. He said, ‘Do you know where Ski Run [Boulevard] is?’
“I said yes, and he said, ‘Well, it’s in that area.’ Then he added, ‘I’m not familiar with this area, but I know where it’s at. I don’t know the name of the street I’m staying at.’
“I said okay, and turned up Ski Run, because I was going that way, anyway. We approached the street I was going to turn off on, and I asked, ‘Is it much farther?’
“He said, ‘No, it’s just the next block.’
“I said, ‘Okay. I’ll just drive around the block.’ And he indicated a place on the right. I pulled in and looked over, and there was no house. Just an empty lot. I looked at him and asked, ‘Are you sure this is the place?’
“He grabbed my key and started to take it out, but it locked in. He turned off the car and grabbed my hands and grabbed my neck with his other hand. He pushed my head down and said, ‘All I want is a piece of ass! If you do what I tell you, you won’t get hurt. I’ m dead serious! I mean it! I’ll hurt you if you make me.’
“I said, ‘Okay, all right! What do you want? I’ll do what you want.’ And he pulled out some handcuffs from his pocket, and he cuffed my hands behind my back. And then he said, ‘Okay, we’re going to go for a ride. I want to make sure nobody sees you.’
“He strapped my head down to my knees with what I thought was a belt. But it turned out to be a strap. Then he put a coat over me. We started somewhere, and I said, ‘Where are you taking me?’
“He answered, ‘Somewhere far away.’
“I said, ‘Why can’t we stay here?’
“He answered, ‘Look, there’s no use arguing. I’ve got this all planned out. You might as well understand that you’re going with me.’
“We headed down the road, and I said again, ‘Is this place very far?’
“And he said, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty far.’
“Then I asked, ‘Can you tell me when I’m going back? A couple of hours?’
“He said, ‘No, no. You’ll be back sometime tomorrow.’
“I told him,
‘Did you notice I don’t have any gas to go anywhere?’
“He said, ‘Don’t worry. I know where there’s a gas station where I can stop and no one is going to see you.’
“Before we stopped at the gas station, he pulled over and said, ‘I’m going to have to tape your mouth and blindfold you, because I don’t want you trying to call the attendant.’ But I talked him out of the blindfold, because I wore contacts. He had wanted to put some Kleenex and some tape over my eyes. But I told him with the contacts I couldn’t stand that. He just put some light-colored tape over my mouth. It was about two and a half inches wide and about four inches long.
“We pulled into a gas station, and I was thinking it must be one that was self-service. I was trying to figure out the amount of time it took to drive there and where there was a self-service station where the attendant couldn’t see inside the car. He tried putting regular gasoline into my car, but it needed unleaded. He jumped back to my car, very nervous and upset. And he said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me your car won’t take gas? What’s wrong with it?’
“I couldn’t tell him because my mouth was taped shut. All I could say was ‘Mmm, mmm.’
“He said, ‘You want to tell me something, right!’
“I shook my head yes.
“He said, ‘I’m going to undo you, and you’d better not scream. Because if you scream, I’m going to jump in the car and cram it.’
“He untied my mouth, a tiny, tiny bit, and he was very nervous. He was about ready to tape it back shut. And I said, ‘Unleaded gas.’
“So then he went back and put unleaded gas in the car, and I was trying to think where we were. Because some gas stations in the Tahoe area then didn’t have unleaded gas. He put the gas in, and we took off. After awhile he said, ‘I know you’re uncomfortable, so I’m going to pull over as soon as I can and release the strap around your neck and take the tape off your mouth.’
“He stopped approximately five minutes past the gas station and pulled over. I recognized it as an area around Cave Rock (about ten miles from the California/ Nevada state line, within the state of Nevada on Lake Tahoe’s eastern shore). He took the strap off around my neck and he took the tape off my mouth. But he left my handcuffs on. Then he picked me up, put me in the backseat on my side, and put the coat back over me. But it didn’t quite cover all of my face. He didn’t realize that I could see a tiny bit.
“As we drove off, I was kind of watching the terrain to see where we were going. I tried engaging him in conversation, because I was terrified, and I just wanted to kind of get an idea of how to cope with this person. Trying to figure out what his motives were. Trying to keep myself alive. As I did, I noticed the terrain starting to gradually change.
“I wasn’t sure where we were going, but then I saw a neon sign and I guessed we were in Carson City (about thirty miles from South Lake Tahoe). I realized we were heading in the direction of Reno.
“We drove to a place where he said there was a shed.” (Actually, the shed Phil mentioned was part of a storage/warehouse complex.) “He was gone for a while, but he came back to the car and was very upset. He said that he had lost the key to the shed. He said he was going to have to go off again and find something to pry open the door. He seemed to mention something about going to his house or his car to find something. I still had the handcuffs on, and a coat over my head. We drove off for about five minutes, and it seemed like we drove on a dirt road. He went to some place to look for a tire iron, but he couldn’t find one. Then he asked me if I had one in my car.
“I said, ‘I think I have one in the trunk.’ I said it because I didn’t want to cross him at all. I just kept thinking that if I let him go on with his fantasy, I’d have a better chance of staying alive.
“He found a tire iron in my trunk and we drove back to the shed and there was a loud rock band playing. I thought maybe we were out by some discotheque. But he said it was a band practicing in one of the nearby warehouses. The band was loud enough to cover up the banging and the prying of the lock off the warehouse door. He finally got it open, came back, and took the coat off my head. He said, ‘Now, am I going to have to blindfold you, or are you going to keep your eyes closed? I’ll be watching you, and I’ll have to hurt you if you open your eyes.’
“I said, ‘I’ll keep my eyes closed.’
“He got me into an area inside the warehouse, and we walked until he said, ‘Here we are. You can open your eyes now. I’m going to be right back. I’m going to pull the car around the side of the building. But I’m going to be in sight. So you’d better not try to get away!’
“He went away, and I didn’t know where he was. I thought that I was in the middle of the desert somewhere. If I tried to run, I wouldn’t even know where to start. He came back and released my hands. He locked the warehouse door. I didn’t even know the size of the room I was in because of the way it was set up. Once he released my handcuffs, he told me to undress.”
CHAPTER 8
PHIL’S PORNO PALACE
Katie Callaway continued with her story: “I told him I had to go to the bathroom, and he found a little jar for me to urinate in. I got undressed, and I was freezing in there. I got under a filthy, furry, fake fur–type blanket that he had on an old mattress. It was filthy, but I was freezing. He sat down on the mattress, and I was shaking so badly because I was terrified. I think that he felt sorry for me. He told me that I was the only person that ever made him feel bad for what he was doing.”
Phil had rigged up the room with a large mattress, which was covered with a satin sheet and dirty fakefur blanket. He’d decked out the room with handcuffs, dildos, pornographic magazines, drugs, and bottles of cheap wine. He also had a movie projector to show pornographic movies and multicolored lights.
Katie related, “Then he just sat on the mattress and talked to me for about an hour. Just conversation. I think he was trying to relax me. He brought out some marijuana and hashish. And some cheap wine, too. He told me to drink some wine. It would relax me, and besides, he wasn’t going to let me go anywhere. After that, he undressed and started having sexual intercourse with me. I just lay very still. I was tolerating it.
“The intercourse was continuous. Ten times, maybe twelve. I couldn’t believe it. He entered me from behind, too. Anally. He was very rough and very forceful. He got a vibrator, made me get up and sit on an audio speaker. Then he put the vibrator in my vagina. It really hurt. This just went on and on. I was in there for five and a half, or six, hours.
“He got some scissors and cut off all my vaginal area hair. And around that time, somebody came to the door and banged on it. My attacker put some pants on and went out there. I heard, like, a sliding aluminum door. He was speaking with someone. I thought he was going to bring in some friends. And then he came back and was kind of giggling. He said, ‘It’s just the guy next door. And the guy kind of wanted to know what was going on in here.’ And he said the guy told him that he wanted to hear a tune on the radio. But he (the abductor) knew the guy really kind of knew what was going on in here. Something like that.
“Later, a police officer came and banged rather loudly on the aluminum door. The abductor put on his pants and boots to see who was banging. And he came back, and I was still completely naked. He said to me, ‘I think it’s the police. Are you going to maintain? Are you going to be quiet?’
“I thought it was a setup or something, and I said okay. He went back out, and it was the first time I ventured beyond a wall of plastic that was immediately in front of me in the warehouse. I fought my way through a couple of walls of carpet to peek outside. And I saw, from the waist down, an officer. So I started yelling, ‘Help me! Help me!’
“And the officer just stood there, with no reaction at all. And so did my abductor. So I ran out of there completely naked. And I thought, ‘My God! He’s not going to help me!’
“And when the abductor didn’t try to run, or the officer didn’t do anything, I thought, for sure, it was a setup. I though
t this guy (the police officer) was a friend of his and they were just having a good time or something. I ran out farther, and I saw the police officer’s car, and then I thought, ‘He really is a policeman. What the hell is going on here?’
“The abductor said, ‘This is my girlfriend. We’re just having a good time.’
“And I said, ‘No we’re not!’
“The officer asked, ‘Whose car is that?’
“And I said, ‘It’s mine.’
“The officer asked, ‘Who drove it here?’
“And I said, ‘He did,’ and pointed at the abductor.
“The officer then said to the man, ‘May I see your driver’s license, please?’ And the abductor said, ‘I don’t have a driver’s license. I didn’t drive the car. She did.’
“‘No, I didn’t,’ I replied.
“Then the officer said, ‘Go back in the warehouse and put on some clothes.’ I went back inside and put my clothes on, and the officer let the abductor back inside, too. I was scared the abductor was going to make me a hostage or something. I was trying to put my clothes on as fast as I could. And the abductor was begging me not to tell on him. That it would be terribly embarrassing. He was pitifully begging me. I just wanted to get out of there and back to the police officer before he did anything rash.
“I got half of my clothes on, one sock, my jeans and coat, and just left the rest. Then I ran back outside, and I think the officer finally realized that I was terrified. Every time he took a step sideways, I was right beside him, taking one step with him. Eventually he believed me. He told me to go sit in the car, and he called in other officers. When they came, they asked me if I wanted to press charges, and I said yes. I didn’t see them arrest the man. I wasn’t looking. And then he was gone.”