by Robert Scott
Just why the strange reaction by the officer—when Katie Callaway came running naked out of the warehouse, crying for help—was later addressed in a court hearing. The officer was Reno Police Department (RPD) officer Clifford Conrad, and he testified that in the early-morning hours of November 23, 1976, he was patrolling the south side of Reno. Conrad said, “I stopped in the warehouse area to check a suspicious vehicle and suspicious circumstances. The vehicle was from California and the warehouses are normally rented by people from the Reno area. The vehicle shouldn’t have been there that time of morning. So I checked further and found the lock on the warehouse door broken off. I tried the door to see if I could open it, and it would come up about four inches. And I kept trying the door until someone came there. It was a garage-type door that rolled from the bottom to the top. The man who answered the door had on a blue pair of pants and nothing else. It was not a warm evening. It was cold.
“I questioned him about if the warehouse was rented to him, and he said no, it was to a friend of his. I’m not sure if he gave me the friend’s name or not. But he said his friend lived on Market Street. He said he had lost the key. I asked him for his name, date of birth. Things like that. He said his name was Phillip Garrido. I wanted to check with our dispatcher to see if they would obtain an address and just everything to check his story.
“While I was talking to Mr. Garrido, a young woman stuck her head out behind some type of plastic material on the left-hand side of the garage, as you were looking in, and said, ‘Help me.’ So I asked her what she wanted. She just said, ‘Help me’ again and she ran out. She had on no clothing at all. She ran around the back of me and said, ‘Help me. He is trying to rape me,’ is the way she put it. She also said that she was afraid of him, and she repeated that he was trying to rape her.”
It’s hard to know at this point if Officer Conrad misunderstood Katie Callaway. He heard it as, “He’s trying to rape me.” More likely she had said, “He raped me.”
Conrad continued, “I talked to him for another minute. And he went inside to get his jacket, after he asked me if he could.”
As to this strange occurrence, the prosecutor asked Officer Conrad, “You saw a broken lock on the door. You had a man who came to the door with only his pants on, and nothing else. You had a young lady who ran out, who was naked, crying something about rape. Why did you allow Mr. Garrido to go back into that warehouse when Miss Callaway was in there?”
Conrad answered, “The circumstances that I was led to believe by Mr. Garrido were that he was married and lived down the street, and this was his girlfriend.”
“Is that what Mr. Garrido said to you?”
“He implied that. He didn’t exactly come out and say it.”
“How did he imply it?”
“He said he lived down the street, he was married, and this was a friend of his. He even called her by name. He called her Kathy.”
“But Miss Callaway had said something about rape when she came out?” the prosecutor asked.
“She said, ‘He is trying to rape me,’ are the words she used.”
“You didn’t feel at that point that there was any danger or anything like that?”
“No, sir.”
“And how long were they inside that warehouse together?”
“I would say about thirty seconds to a minute at the most.”
“Before this incident, had you ever investigated rape charges before?”
“No, sir.”
After both Katie Callaway and Phil Garrido came back outside of the warehouse, after they put on some articles of clothing, Officer Conrad placed Katie in the backseat of his patrol car and continued his conversation with Phil. Conrad related later, “I was still trying to check why he was there and why the broken lock. He said that he and a friend used the place for storing musical instruments and playing there, and that he lost the key to the lock, so he broke the lock off. I asked him how long he had known Kathy and where he had met her. He was being evasive. He said, ‘I don’t have an answer to that.’”
Another police officer, named Erick Soderblom, soon came on the scene. Soderblom later said, “On my arrival at the Mill Street Warehouse, I observed Officer Conrad and Officer Bradshaw engaged in conversation with a male subject and female subject. I went over to the female subject, who was later identified as Miss Callaway, and began speaking with her to ascertain what the problem was at the warehouse. Miss Callaway told me that she was the victim of a rape and kidnapping.
“She appeared to have some sort of a red mark or abrasion about her wrists. The marks or abrasions had the appearance of having been made by a handcuff. I was familiar with the marks made by handcuffs. I’d seen those types of marks and abrasions roughly six times per day for over four years. The marks and abrasions on Miss Callaway—they were like a red line that joins on each side of a wrist in a circular pattern, two lines parallel and adjoining a second or a third singular line.
“She appeared to be upset. The male seemed to be quite calm. It was quite illuminated there, both with the vehicles’ lights and with the area lighting.” Soderblom believed Katie Callaway as soon as she began telling her story to him. What she was saying seemed to fit the situation.
Katie filled out a criminal complaint against her attacker with Officer Soderblom. Meanwhile, Officer Conrad was waiting for his sergeant to arrive. While he did so, Conrad went with Phil into the warehouse so that Phil could retrieve his shirt and jacket. Once Conrad was in there, he spotted a vial of what appeared to be hashish. When the sergeant arrived, he agreed with Officer Conrad that illegal drugs were present. Phil Garrido was read his Miranda rights and then arrested. He was taken to the Washoe Medical Center for testing of alcohol and drugs. After that, he was driven to the Reno City Jail, had his mug shot taken, and was placed into a jail cell.
Reno PD officer Carolyn Jean Carlon became part of the situation concerning Katie Callaway. Carlon went to the Washoe Medical Emergency Center with Katie Callaway and was there as a physical examination was done. A doctor named Dr. Boss took pubic hair samples from Katie and handed them to Officer Carlon. Carlon put them in an envelope, wrote the case number on the envelope, and took the envelope to a Reno PD evidence locker. Also stored into evidence was the comb that Dr. Boss had used, in case there was trace material on the comb.
Officer Soderblom was also present at the examination and related, “After the initial investigation had occurred, when Miss Callaway was at the Reno police station being interviewed by Officer Carlon, I took samplings of Miss Callaway’s hair. Each sample was taken separately and bagged and tagged, and then placed into evidence.”
Soderblom prepared a card with a case number and wrote on the separate cards, Four hair samples, one piece of white paper with tape and hair-like particles. That last item came from a jacket pocket of Phil Garrido’s coat. The hair sample on that seemed to match the hair samples taken from Katie Callaway’s head. Soderblom also bagged and tagged a piece of Kleenex with some hair strands and silver-colored tape as well.
RPD detective Dan DeMaranville also became involved in this matter. He met with a very upset and shaken Katie Callaway and interviewed her about her ordeal. Katie told DeMaranville about how she had been kidnapped, her terrifying ride from Lake Tahoe, and being taken into the warehouse. Katie related about her rape, “He just kept doing the same thing over and over!”
She was stunned by how long her ordeal had lasted. She initially thought he would rape her and it would be over in a short period of time. Instead, it went on for hour after hour. DeMaranville agreed with Katie that if Officer Conrad had not come along, her attacker probably would have taken her somewhere and killed her after he was done with her.
After her interview with DeMarnaville, Katie was taken to the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office. At the DA’s office, she gave statements to Deputy District Attorney (DDA) Michael “Mike” Malloy. And before long, she was making more statements to FBI agents because it was obvious she had been
taken across state lines.
One of the RPD officers in the case had a very unusual name. He was Nevada J. Wise, and he worked as a criminalist for the Reno PD. He was a lieutenant in charge of technical services in 1976, which was comprised of the crime lab, evidence and property rooms, and photographic laboratory.
Lieutenant Wise went to the warehouse, where the alleged crime had taken place, and he searched and seized items from Katie’s Ford Pinto. One item was a belt that Katie said had been used to restrain her. Lieutenant Wise and other technicians gathered items from the vehicle, from the ground, and from inside the warehouse. These items were taken to the Washoe County Criminalistic Laboratory for examination. Among the items was a pair of scissors, a padlock, and a broken metal hasp. A key to the padlock was also found on the floorboard at the rear of the driver’s-side seat. This was undoubtedly the key Phil had dropped and had been searching for on the night of November 22.
Also seized were a pair of handcuffs, a key to the handcuffs, and a roll of tape on the passenger-side dashboard. An imitation “furry” blanket was taken from the warehouse; marijuana was seized, along with a small bottle containing a hard brownish material believed to be hashish, a roach, a roach clip, and a hash pipe. Anything that could possibly be narcotic in nature was bagged and taken to the narcotics laboratory for analysis. One of these items was a small container with some kind of residue. The residue would later be analyzed as being trace amounts of LSD.
Detective DeMarnville was also out at the warehouse and he investigated the crime scene. DeMarnville noted that Phil had rigged up different colored studio lights in the interior of his “shed.” DeMaranville also noted: I found a bed. Marital sex toys, handcuffs. A piece of tape, silver in color. There were some baggies, containing a substance believed to be marijuana. DeMaranville wrote of finding cigarette rolling papers and what appeared to be semen stains on the mattress as well.
Vincent Vitale worked as a criminalist at the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO). He had a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s degree in biochemistry. One of the items Vitale looked at was samples of hair taken from the crime scene. Vitale put samples of hair taken from the head of Katie Callaway onto slides, next to samples of hair taken from Phil’s shirt and also from the belt that was seized. The hairs matched. The same thing held true for head hairs found on a piece of tape. As far as pubic hair went, a sample taken from Katie Callaway and one found on the pair of scissors could have come from the same individual.
At first, Phil Garrido had “lawyered up” and would not talk to detectives at the jail. However, within a few hours, he had a change of mind and agreed to speak with Detective DeMaranville. At first, Phil barely spoke at all. To put Phil at ease, DeMaranville began talking about unrelated things, such as what Phil did for a living. Phil was happy to tell DeMaranville about his career as a rock musician.
Then slowly the subject turned to the kidnapping of Katie Callaway. Phil was at first hesitant to talk about it, but further questioned as to why he had done it, Phil suddenly blurted out, “Because it’s the only way I can get my sexual satisfaction!”
As the interview progressed, Phil began to have tears in his eyes and eventually started crying. DeMaranville didn’t know if this was genuine or an act. DeMaranville later stated: “He seemed remorseful. But I think a lot of it was a put-on. Of course, he appeared remorseful, but I think a lot of that was because he got caught.”
In another outrageous statement by Phil Garrido to Detective DeMaranville, he started shifting the blame of why it had all occurred in the first place. Phil said, “She was attractive, and she shouldn’t have given me a ride.”
DeMaranville later added, “He (Phil) wouldn’t have had any other choice but to get rid of her (after he was done sexually abusing her). The guy’s not stupid. He wasn’t going to turn his victim loose and have her go right to the police, which is what she would have done.”
Around the same time that Phil was being interviewed, Reno police officers contacted Phil’s wife, Chris Garrido, at her work area in Harrah’s. They told Chris the basic outlines of what Katie Callaway was alleging. Chris agreed that officers could search the residence where she and Phil lived on Market Street. Asked if Phil owned a pair of handcuffs, Chris admitted that she had bought him a pair from a local pawnshop in the recent past.
Chris accompanied the officers to her residence, and they discovered numerous pornographic magazines and books there. One officer was going to look at some Polaroid photos, and Chris asked him not to. She said that those photos had been taken by Phil of her naked, and the photos depicted her “pubic area.” The officer complied and did not look at or seize the photos. Just what else the photos might have depicted was never known.
Because Katie Callaway had been kidnapped in California and transported to Nevada, the FBI was now involved. Special Agent Gerald Adams was an agent in South Lake Tahoe, and he met Katie Callaway and had her retrace her path on the night of November 22 through 23, 1976. Agent Adams went with Katie to Ink’s Market on Highway 50, and then up Ski Run Boulevard to Willow Avenue. They turned left on Willow and then to a vacant lot, where Katie said she had been attacked initially. This was clearly on the California side of the border, and she obviously had been transported to a warehouse in Reno, Nevada, where she was raped.
Two different cases began to go forward against Phil Garrido for the abduction and rape of Katie Callaway in December 1976. One was a federal case, because he had kidnapped her in California and taken her across state lines into Nevada, and the charges mainly concerned the kidnapping. The second case was a state of Nevada case, to be held at a superior court. The charges there were for the rape and other related charges in the commission of the rape. The first to take a crack at Phil in a trial would be the Feds.
CHAPTER 9
INSIDE PHIL’S MIND
Phil Garrido might have thought he was being very clever by having a storage room in a warehouse turned into a “sex parlor,” where he could restrain a victim and have sex with her. But the fact that he had kidnapped Katie Callaway in California and taken her to Nevada made his plight infinitely worse. A federal grand jury in Reno, Nevada, indicted Phil on kidnapping charges. In legal language, they stated: On or about the 22nd day of November, 1976, Phillip Craig Garrido knowingly transported in interstate commerce, from South Lake Tahoe, California, to Reno, Nevada, one Katherine Callaway who had theretofore been unlawfully seized, kidnapped, carried away and held by Phillip Craig Garrido; all in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1201.
In a document that Phil had to fill out about his financial situation, he listed one dependent—his wife, and that he was self-employed. As to property he owned, all he listed were musical instruments.
Compared to the worldwide attention Phil Garrido would receive in 2009 for the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard, his 1976 case barely made the newspapers at all. A short article in the Reno Gazette-Journal stated MUSICIAN HELD IN KIDNAP CASE. The entire article was three paragraphs long and related in very sketchy details about the kidnapper, the victim, and the fact that the FBI was involved because the victim had been taken across state lines. By comparison, an article just above it, entitled TEEN-AGE GIRL LEADS WILD CHASE, was much more lengthy, and related about a teenage girl who had led cops on a one hundred mile per hour chase in the area.
Oddly, it wasn’t Phil Garrido as much as Officer Conrad who received much more print the next day. And even more oddly, Conrad received praise for his actions in the arrest of Phil Garrido. Granted, Conrad had spotted the car with a California license plate and a broken lock at the warehouse on Mill Street. But he also had let Phil Garrido reenter the warehouse with Katie Callaway, which terrified her and could have led to a very dangerous situation.
The title of the article was POLICEMAN GIVEN PRAISE FOR RESCUE OF WOMAN. In the article, a Reno police detective stated, “Officer Clifford Conrad did a heck of a job.” The detective said that Conrad had stopped to see why a
car was parked at that late hour in front of a warehouse. The detective added that a warehouse storage unit had rugs on the floor and walls, pornographic magazines, a movie projector, marital aids, a spotlight, wine, and hot water.
In the federal case, a judge assigned a defense attorney, Willard Van Hazel, for Phil Garrido from the Office of the Federal Public Defender. And it soon became apparent in what direction Van Hazel’s defense was going to go. Van Hazel asked that Phil be examined by a psychiatrist because it was possible that he was mentally ill. This motion was granted, and Reno psychiatrist Lynn Gerow went to the jail, where Phil was incarcerated, to examine him. In a report to federal judge Bruce Thompson, Gerow related that Phillip Garrido was a tall, thin white male, appeared “unkempt and unshaven,” but he presented his story in a “clear and logical fashion.”
Phil told Dr. Gerow that he had extensively used LSD, marijuana, alcohol, and cocaine for the previous six years. Phil said that he had particularly abused LSD. Then he stated that from 1970 to 1974, he took LSD on an almost daily basis, and had done so more sparingly up until his arrest. Phil also related that he took “four hits of acid” after he had kidnapped Katie Callaway on the drive to Reno.
Phil complained of residual effects from the LSD, such as “flashbacks.” Phil said that he had never been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, and didn’t have “head problems” other than an occasional migraine. Phil told of one incarceration in the Contra Costa County Clayton Farm for possession of an illegal substance. He did not mention his guilty plea on the 1972 Oakley charges, or speak of it at all. Nor did he mention anything about his alleged rape of a fourteen-year-old girl in April 1972 near Antioch.