Shattered Innocence

by Robert Scott

  Phil didn’t create as many aliases and false addresses, but he did create one address that was strange in its own way. It was in August 1993, around the time he was sent back to prison for six weeks for a parole violation. Phil created an address in Antioch, California, but there was no such address and nothing even close to that in Antioch. Just what Phil was doing making this false address did not come to light later on, nor did the fact that he, like Nancy, seemed to have used the same address in Antioch at some point. Of course, no residence existed at that location.

  On April 14, 2008, Phil Garrido’s life became a lot more restricted. He was finally categorized by the probation department as a high-risk sexual offender. Under “Jessica’s Law,” he could not reside within two thousand feet of a public park, a public school, or a private school. Since he lived on semirural Walnut Avenue, he met those requirements.

  In addition, he had to sign a form that he would not consume excessive amounts of alcohol or use illegal drugs, and that he would actively participate in a psychiatric program. He was not to have contact with females between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. (Under the circumstances, his signature here was fraudulent in the extreme.) He was not to have any contact with the victim of his crime—in other words, Katie Callaway.

  Curfew was to be from ten o’clock until six o’clock the following morning. Many of the other things he agreed to would be harder to prove. He was not to view television shows or movies geared toward the types of crime he had committed. Nor was he to view television programs or movies that would “stimulate sexual fantasies.” He was not to possess handcuffs or any kind of restraints. And he was not to possess costumes, masks, or items that would conceal his identity. That last part was interesting. On the previous Halloween, according to some neighbors, Phil had been seen going around the neighborhood wearing a gorilla suit. He had been accompanied by two young blond girls.

  One thing that was not restricted was use of a computer for the Internet. Perhaps Phil had told his parole agent he needed this for his printing business. At least on the surface, it seemed as if Phil had a steady job and a stable lifestyle. After all, he and Nancy had been married for twenty-seven years, and she had not cited any domestic abuse by Phil.

  Phil had to wear a Global Positioning System (GPS) device now, and the device was placed on Phil’s leg by a parole agent. Phil was required to charge his GPS device twice a day, for one hour each time. One charging was to be at 5:30 A.M. and the other at 5:30 P.M. He was not to tamper with the device, force a boot over the device, expose it to extreme heat, or submerge it in water.

  As 2008 progressed, the local fire department was called to the Garrido residence on May 21 to assist Phil’s elderly mother. None of the fire department personnel noted anything out of the ordinary at the residence, other than it seemed to have a lot of clutter.

  These problems with Phil’s mother apparently became even more severe in June 2009. On June 3, 8, and 22, the fire department was called out to the residence on Walnut Avenue. All that was listed in Phil’s later parole report for each occasion was: Health of elderly female.

  It’s hard to know what effect his mother’s medical emergencies had on Phil. After all, he even had admitted that she was the one who always had “spoiled” him. Perhaps it further eroded the wall of secrecy that he had built around Alyssa, Angel, and Starlit. It was in the summer of 2009 that Phil began to take Angel and Starlit with him more frequently on printing business trips, and especially on his mission concerning God’s Desire. Phil’s grip on the elaborate web of deceit was steadily decreasing and he was on a collision course with the unexpected events at UC Berkeley that would turn his world upside down.

  III

  THE RECKONING

  CHAPTER 19

  LIKE A HURRICANE

  After the first news that Jaycee Lee Dugard was alive reached the outside world, reporters of all stripes hardly knew where to follow the story. There were so many angles, so many locations where events had taken place. They could go to Berkeley to try and talk to Lisa Campbell and Ally Jacobs. They could go to Lake Tahoe, where Jaycee had been kidnapped in 1991, or to Placerville, California, in El Dorado County, where Phil and Nancy Garrido were to be arraigned. Or they could go to Southern California where Terry Probyn and Carl Probyn both now lived, although Terry and Carl were separated.

  Nowhere, however, became more of a magnet for journalists than Walnut Avenue, where Phil and Nancy Garrido had kept Jaycee, Angel, and Starlit as virtual prisoners for year after year. What started out as a trickle of local reporters turned into a flood as journalists from across the nation, and then the world, descended upon once-quiet Walnut Avenue. Even on Walnut Avenue, there were multiple angles to report upon: the neighbors who had known Phil and Nancy Garrido, the law enforcement officers who were working the crime scene, the very house and grounds themselves.

  At first the scene was absolute chaos on Walnut Avenue. Long lines of police vehicles from the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, Antioch Police Department, Pittsburg Police Department (PPD), and even FBI agents were parked every which way down the narrow lane. Carloads of curious sightseers motored by, and reporters’ cars, vans, motor homes, and satellite trucks took up every free space they could find for blocks around. Ground zero was, of course, the Garrido home and yard; and before long, law enforcement had strung yellow caution tape around the surrounding perimeter of the Garrido property, trying to keep journalists and the merely curious out.

  Denied access to the Garrido property, journalists spread out along Walnut Avenue talking to any resident they could lay their hands on. Sometimes there was a surreal feeling to it all, as one resident who had never so much as seen a newsman in person would be surrounded by a local newspaper reporter, television reporters from the Bay Area and Sacramento, journalists with national network television and print, and video journalists from the UK, Germany, Australia, and beyond. The Contra Costa Times noted, More than a dozen news trucks have carved out parking spaces on the edges of the sidewalk-free country lane. Suited up and glued to their cell phones, the on-air personalities shuffle through the thick dust and fan themselves in the heat. All the major networks are here and some from overseas.

  One neighbor Phil had spoken with about his wild ideas was Monica Adams. Monica’s mother, Betty Unpingco, lived on Walnut Avenue, and Adams told journalists that on one occasion Phil set up speakers at a party Monica was hosting at her parents’ house. Phil stuck around and was annoying, even though he wasn’t invited to the party. Monica finally kicked him out, stating, “Because he was acting weird and staring at all the women.”

  Monica added that later that same night, she was watching a program on television and discovered that anyone could look for sex offenders in their community. Monica got on her computer and found the name Phillip Garrido there, listed as a registered sex offender. Monica told the reporter, “We were irate, and we told our neighbors about it.”

  Monica said that she knew that some children seemed to be living on the Garrido property or were at least there a lot of the time. Monica said that she figured that law enforcement must know about the situation, since they were the ones who had listed Phil Garrido as a sex offender in the first place. Then Monica added, “He never bothered anyone. He kept to himself. What would we have done? You just watch your own.”

  Another neighbor, who would soon be very uncommunicative, initially spoke with journalists. This was Erika Pratt, twenty-five, who had lived directly next door to the Garridos with her boyfriend, Damon Robinson. Erika told a reporter, “Phil had little girls and a woman living in the backyard, and they all looked the same. They never talked, and they kept to themselves. I was always freaked out by Phil’s behavior. The girls in the tent were about four years old, eleven years old, and another about twenty-five years old.” Erika was speaking of an incident that had happened in 2006.

  Erika was one of the very few who ever saw that tent compound that Phil had constructed behind the main yard,
in which he had enclosed Jaycee Lee and her daughters. Erika said she had sneaked peeks through the chain-link fence that separated her yard from the Garridos’ property. She described what she saw as a yard having tents, sheds, pit bulls, and water hoses from the main house to the tent area. She also told a reporter that on more than one occasion, Phil took water from her property to run a shower and fill a small plastic swimming pool.

  On November 30, 2006, Erika had been so upset about this situation, she phoned the CCSO about what she had seen. A deputy came out to speak with her, and she told him about the young women living in squalor in the tent area. Erika now related to a journalist, “The deputy said he couldn’t go inside Phil’s home because he didn’t have a search warrant. So he told me to just keep an eye on him.”

  Erika Pratt was one of the very, very few who knew that there was a secret compound in the Garrido’s far backyard, and soon she wasn’t talking to any reporters. Part of the reason may have been that law enforcement agencies were telling her not to divulge anything she had seen. Or she may have decided to keep mum about it on her own.

  If Erika was silent, Damon Robinson, her former boyfriend, had plenty to say. Damon lived directly next door to the Garridos and he told numerous reporters about his interaction with Phil Garrido, and how Phil had become increasingly bizarre as time went by. Damon recounted to a Los Angeles Times reporter that Phil had once been a caretaker on the property Damon now rented. Damon said that Phil had changed locks on the doors so that people could be locked in rather than locked out.

  Damon also said, “It took me a while to realize, but Phil had access to all of these buildings.” (He meant all the sheds on the property.) “At first, I didn’t even realize they were part of my land because there are wire fences splitting up the yard. When I moved over in one of the sheds, there was a music player, a couch, a mattress, and a VCR. He really wanted the VCR back when I found it.”

  Unbeknownst to Damon, this setup in the shed was eerily like the way the shed had been where Phil had taken Katie Callaway in Reno. And, of course, Phil had used that shed as a “porno palace” as Detective DeMaranville had described it.

  Damon added that before he took rightful ownership of them, there had been times when Damon could hear music coming from the sheds in question. Damon said that he thought he had heard a girl’s voice coming from one of those sheds, and Phil’s voice as well. Damon related, “Maybe he was taking the girl over there for a change of scenery or something a little nicer than he had in his yard.” It was never clear to Damon just who the girl was, or what relationship she had to Phil Garrido.

  Unfortunately for Damon, he soon seemed to be embellishing what he was saying. Some reporters wondered if he was making up stories about Phil, just to make the man seem even more outlandish. And this embellishment was a constant threat to the validity of what reporters were hearing from people all up and down the street.

  Ruth Laney, a People magazine stringer based in Louisiana, knew members of Damon’s family. She learned that he had been asked by various national news agencies to appear live on their newscasts. She said, “One show was even going to fly him to New York. But he was like a deer in the headlights. There was all this unexpected commotion going on around him, and he didn’t quite know how to react.” Instead of going to New York, Damon hung around Walnut Avenue, soaking up all the attention there. And then he started asking to be paid for all that attention.

  This being paid for interviews was a real bone of contention with United States news agencies. They generally did not indulge in such practices. But several European agencies were used to doing things that way. Damon started charging news agencies to come into his yard and photograph across the fence into the Garrido’s yard. And Damon got into trouble when he supposedly related some “exclusive” information to one agency, and then charged another agency for using the same information. The reporter for the first agency yelled at Damon, “Hey! That was supposed to be exclusive!” Damon’s reliability began to taper off from that point forward with news agencies.

  Laney related one more thing about Damon Robinson. Damon’s uncle had come to visit him in the summer of 2009. While the uncle was there, Phil Garrido came out of his house and started talking to Damon, the uncle and some other people on the street in front of Phil’s house. The uncle recalled Phil talking frantically about religion. Before long, the other people had left, but Damon’s uncle stayed on, just to be polite.

  “He was all wound up,” the uncle told Laney. “He just wouldn’t stop talking. Most of what he said didn’t make much sense. I didn’t know what he was talking about. It was about some kind of box he had with which he could talk to God and the angels. It all sounded pretty nuts to me. But I listened to him for about fifteen minutes and then I said I had to go. When I walked away, I thought to myself, ‘This guy is like Charles Manson.’”

  Another neighbor of the Garridos, Haydee Perry, told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter about a young blond girl she had seen clinging to Phil one day as Phil helped Haydee change a car battery. Haydee related, “The girl stayed close to him at all times. It wasn’t normal behavior. She had a blank stare on her face. Now it seems like a cry for help.” The little girl told Haydee at one point that she had an older sister named Alyssa.

  Betty Unpingco, who lived a few houses down the street from the Garridos, and whose daughter was Monica Adams, told a reporter, “I once bought some of his business cards. We’re all in shock. Scared it can happen just a few doors down.” Unpingco also spoke about Phil and the party where he had brought speakers to the event. Betty said that Phil had been staring so much at the high-school girls there, he was asked to leave. She was so concerned for the girls, they were later escorted from the area by adults. Betty told a reporter for CNN, “It was so bizarre. I warned my children to stay away from him and to always walk in twos.”

  To a San Francisco television station, Betty added, “I was just in my neighbor’s backyard last week. I looked through the three fences in the Garridos’ backyard, and you couldn’t see a thing (of the compound where Jaycee and her kids had been kept). There were always people at Phil’s place, but you couldn’t tell who lived there.”

  Angela Crabaugh, whose son lived across the street from the Garridos, had met Phil and thought he was a religious nut. She said, “I just always thought he was very bizarre.”

  Another person who lived on Walnut Avenue was Karen Walker. She told reporters about a woman who lived in the Garrido home, and it wasn’t clear if she was speaking about Nancy or Pat. Karen said, “She looked kinda like she didn’t have any medical attention. Like her teeth were not taken care of. And her hair wasn’t brushed.”

  Then Walker told a Sacramento television reporter that Phil recently had a fire in his van. “When neighbors went to investigate, he shooed everyone away. I never saw the girl called Alyssa. But my nine-year-old grandson asked one day if one of the blond girls wanted to play. He and his friend asked if they could ride bikes with her. They were just being friendly. She said that she couldn’t.”

  And to a Sacramento newspaper journalist, Karen talked about the high concentration of sex offenders in the area. “It was so close to home. We were thinking about moving before, but now there’s no doubt about it.”

  Reporters were corralling every person they could possibly find in and around Walnut Avenue. Sam Kovisto, who lived down the block from the Garridos, told a Los Angeles Times journalist, “I never really expected what he had going on, but I expected something. You could just tell by his mannerisms and how he acted that he was trying to hide something. He came around to my place and he wanted to sing. It was always gospel singing and religious stuff. I told him to get lost and not come on my property. Since I first saw that guy, I knew there was something not right about him. He thought he was God. He was crazy.”

  Polly White, another neighbor, told a Sacramento television reporter, “It’s extremely creepy to have someone back there, living close, and not know what they a
re doing.”

  Janice Deitrich, who lived in the area, said that Phil would visit and sometimes help feed an elderly neighbor, Dilbert Medeiros. It only came out later that Phil had been defrauding Medeiros and cashing and possibly even forging Medeiros’s checks. Phil had generally behaved himself around Deitrich and not gone into his most outrageous modes.

  Some people who lived in the area did not want to give their full names. One of these people would only give his name as Steve. Steve told a Canadian Register reporter, “As far as the girls went, I thought they were his nieces or something. It’s kind of embarrassing to be here this long and not know what’s going on under all our noses. When I first met him (Phil), I thought he was a nice guy. Now I’d just like to see him shot or hung.”

  At the nearby Bridgehead Café, journalists learned that Phil generally went there once a month to eat by himself. One waitress, Lusanne Bough, related, “Phil came here and he was always kind. He would always have a smile on his face. Very friendly.”

  Roger Lund, a patron of the café, said that he knew Phil, and Phil had never caused any problems at the café. “He behaved himself. He didn’t preach here, or act crazy.”

  Café owner, Murray Sexton, added, “He was like a schoolteacher. Someone who just led an ordinary life, like the rest of us.”

  Now, of course, any aspect of Phil Garrido being “ordinary” was long gone. The café hummed with conversations at every table about “creepy Phil,” who had lived only blocks away. And because Bridgehead Café was one of the few restaurants in the area, it soon became the local eating establishment for scores of reporters and investigators.

  CHAPTER 20

  “A VERY PRETTY YOUNG LADY.”

  Journalists were also speaking with people who Phil had done business with concerning his business card services. One business was J&M Enterprises in the nearby city of Pittsburg. Mary Thomas, an accountant for J&M, said that Phil had set up a revival tent on the business property and demonstrated his homemade device. She said, “He was always very professional and spoke the Word of God whenever he talked.”