by Robert Scott
Cheyvonne Molino, co-owner of the business with her husband, Jim, related that just before all the news about Jaycee broke, Phil started dropping by J&M more often. Cheyvonne said, “Don’t ask me why. He passed out water and quoted Bible Scripture.”
Jim Molino added that Phil requested having a demonstration of his device in the parking lot, and Phil stated that eventually “millions of followers would come.”
Employee Danielle LeBlue related that Phil was doing all this religious activity, “As a way to give back for all he had done wrong.” Of course, Phil made no mention of abducting Jaycee or having her father his children when she was only a child. Nor did he mention that Jaycee and her daughters were still virtual prisoners in his secret compound.
Danielle related that Phil shared his handwritten book about schizophrenia with them, and he told them that he’d recently given a copy to the FBI. Danielle said that the material in the book was “creepy.” Then she said one more thing: Phil had recently brought Angel and Starlit to the shop and introduced them as “my girls.” Danielle stressed, “He said, ‘my girls,’ not ‘my daughters.’”
Of the girls who came with Phil Garrido to the shop, Cheyvonne added, “I don’t think they realized anything was wrong or different, except they didn’t go to schools with other kids. They were very shy. The older one was very clingy to her father.” One of the girls spoke of having a church in the basement of their house.
Cheyvonne also spoke of a “Sweet Sixteen party” for her daughter on the Tuesday before Phil made his fateful trip to UC Berkeley with Angel and Starlit. Cheyvonne said, “He had never mentioned a wife or daughters before then, and we were kind of shocked when he said, ‘Is it okay if my daughter comes to your daughter’s birthday party?’”
Cheyvonne said it was okay, and Phil showed up with two young girls. Cheyvonne related, “He came, he brought his girls, and they stayed for a little bit. After a short while, Phil said, ‘This isn’t what they’re used to. So we’re going to go ahead and go.’”
Later, Cheyvonne told a San Francisco Bay Area reporter, “The media make it seem like these little girls were living like wolves or jungle kids in the backyard dungeon. Perhaps that’s it, but they didn’t give that visual to me. They were polite. They were well-mannered.”
A woman who had met “Alyssa” was Melanie Dewey. Alyssa had designed brochures for Dewey’s day spa. At the time, Alyssa had appeared to be very shy to Melanie. Dewey said that Alyssa wore “dingy clothes”and that her blond hair wasn’t brushed. “She was kind of slumped over, with her head down, and looked really sad and withdrawn. I just thought that she was very insecure. When he (Phil) said, ‘This is my daughter,’ I just got the picture that this was her daddy telling her what to do. He’s probably very strict and she does what she’s told.”
Tiffany Tran, who ran the Furniture Galley in Brentwood, also had business cards created by Phil Garrido. Tiffany told a reporter, “He seemed a little different, and he constantly talked religion and showed a device [that] he claimed he could control sound with his mind. Some people have a story behind their smile, some don’t. He did. He was very happy-go-lucky, but you knew there was a story behind it.”
Deepal Karunaratne, a Sri Lankan–born real estate agent in Antioch, purchased business cards and material from Phil over the years. Deepal believed Phil and Nancy when they told him that Alyssa was their daughter. Karunaratne related to a British Sunday Times reporter, “Alyssa was part of the family business, running the printing press in the backyard. I would see her in work overalls, covered in ink. I negotiated with her when she could not complete my order. She was always polite and professional. Sometimes she would be wearing jeans and a blouse, standing outside the house with Nancy, who did all the bookkeeping.”
Deepal added that Phil would never let him see the printing press in the backyard sheds. Phil told him that his press was a trade secret. But Deepal did get glimpses of two young blond girls in the backyard area. And of these girls, Karunaratne said, they were allowed to go out and eat and even see movies with Phil. Deepal never saw the girls living in tents.
To a Sacramento news station journalist, Karunaratne said, “Alyssa always had a pretty smile on her face. When she came and talked to me, she was always smiling. A very pretty young lady.”
Ben Daughdrill also attested to the good work done by Alyssa. Daughdrill told a reporter, “She was the design person. She did the artwork. She was the genius. I communicated with her by e-mail and phone.” Ben had even gone out to the Garrido home and seen Alyssa there. It just seemed like a normal situation to him.
About Alyssa, Daughdrill told a television reporter, “Nothing stood out. Obviously, there was some brainwashing going on. That’s all I can think. She had access to a phone and a computer, so obviously something went on that no one knows about.”
Ben mentioned that one time when he went out to the Garrido residence to pick up material, Alyssa met him at his vehicle. “She came out, alone. She could have escaped if she wanted to. There is a reason she did not do anything.”
Even entities like Kidnappedchildrenblogspot were doing investigative reporting. That site noted: At a hardware store that Garrido frequented, a receipt for a purchase he made on August 17, 2009, showed he paid $24.99 for a pressure switch.And he left a $2 donation. The receipt:The Children’s Miracle Network, an organization dedicated to saving and improving the lives of kids.
Tim Allen, president of East County Glass and Window Company, was also one of Phil’s business card clients. Like the others, Allen said that Phil brought his device into the office and proclaimed that he had channeled God’s voice through the box. Tim added that on one occasion, Phil brought two young blond girls into the business. Allen described them as “very clingy.” As for Phil, Allen said, “I kind of felt sorry for him at the time. I didn’t know about his criminal past. You never thought anything bad about the guy. He was just kind of nutty.”
Tim told a Sacramento television news station that he had kept some of the business cards that had been printed from Phil’s business. And Tim was impressed by the fact that Phil always hand-delivered the material and promised to take any order back if there was a misspelling or a problem with the color scheme. On one of the visits to his place of business, Phil had brought two young girls with him. Tim now said, “I walked around the counter and actually met his two young girls and shook their hands. I really felt almost sick to my stomach when I realized what was going on following the arrest.”
Because of his dealings with Phil Garrido, Tim Allen became emblematic of the extreme demand by the media to talk to anyone who had known Phil. In a short period of time, Allen was on CNN’s Larry King Live, Dr. Phil, the BBC, and dozens of local television and radio stations.
Steve Contreras, who owned a car repair business in Antioch, talked to a United Kingdom Telegraph reporter. Contreras said that he’d purchased business cards from Phil over the years and that Angel had come in with Phil on occasion. She spent the time in his auto shop playing with an imaginary friend.
Contreras stated, “She looked a lot smaller than her age, and acted a lot younger as well. She kind of acted like a five-year-old. She was talking to an imaginary friend and speaking both sides. Phil used to come in about every three months and he was really strange. He said the world was coming to an end. I thought he was a crank. Once, there was a mistake on my business cards. So I rang up and they were redone that day. Nobody does business cards that quick. I used to joke that he must have some slaves in the backyard doing them.”
Maria Christenson, of Christenson Recycling Center in Pittsburg, said, “There was nothing weird with him in the beginning. But I noticed a year ago, he just went off the deep end. He came into my place and asked for a $2,000 advance. He came in with Nancy. They said they needed a new bathroom and had plans to start a backyard church.”
Christenson told another reporter, “He started preaching and doing all this stuff. He was telling me about his voices. And the
n he said, ‘You know, I’ve been to prison, and I don’t masturbate anymore.’ Out of the blue! Then he started crying, and she was crying. I was looking at them—thinking, ‘What is this about?’ I got freaked out.”
Janice Gomes recounted to a Los Angeles Times reporter that she had been in a local beauty parlor, fifteen years in the past, when Phil Garrido had walked in the place, wanting to drum up clients for his printing business. Gomes was interested in printing for her business and she began talking with Phil. She recalled the year as being 1994 and Phil told her, “My wife just had a baby.” By wife, he meant Jaycee, and the baby was, of course, Angel.
Gomes had worked for decades with criminals and gang members as a youth counselor and she said that her instincts were pretty good about people. But with Phil Garrido she related, “He had me fooled.” It was Garrido who had printed flyers for her nonprofit work with the National Community Empowerment Program. And, of course, Phil had told her, “Children should never go to a bus stop alone. They’re no match for an adult.”
And Janice had also heard Phil singing and playing some of the songs he said he had written. She said, “He would pull up a chair and burst into song. He’d just start singing. One of my daughters told me he sang Madonna songs and she felt one of his favorites was ‘Like a Virgin.’ He would sing very high and very off-key.”
In relation to Phil’s printing, Gomes did business with a young woman over the phone who called herself Alyssa. Gomes said, “She was very sweet. Very professional.” In fact, Janice went by the Garrido home a few times to pick up business cards Phil had printed. Gomes told a reporter for the Oakley News, “The furniture in the house was old-fashioned. I did notice that there were no family pictures, no TV. Everything looked like a set.” And then Janice added a strange comment that Phil made to her. “He said he had recovered from his past excesses, of prostitution, pornography, and masturbation. He never mentioned kidnapping.”
More information about these songs of Phil’s came from Marc Lister, who had run a glass shop in Antioch. Lister was interviewed by the Today show, and he said that he had some friends that were in the recording industry. Lister had told Phil about these friends, and one day Phil brought some CDs that he’d recorded into Lister’s shop. Lister related that Phil had written the songs, sang the lyrics, and played instruments in the background. Phil wanted Lister to sell the songs in the music business.
Lister listened to the music and admitted that Phil did have a good voice. The songs were mainly in a rockabilly style. And Lister added, “I listened very closely to the lyrics and now realize he had written the songs about Jaycee and her daughters. It was absolutely horrifying. One of the lyrics went, ‘For every little girl in the world, they want to be in love. You’re just the same, go play a game, just tell me that you want me. C’mon, babe, I’m just insane, I’m crying out to you.’”
Marc reported to Phil later that there were no offers on the CDs. He wanted to give the CDs back to Phil, but Phil told him to keep them. Then Phil said, “Someday they will be worth millions.” Only after the news came out about Jaycee did Lister and a friend take the CDs out of storage and listen to all the lyrics. The lyrics were haunting in light of what had just occurred. In one song, Phil crooned about a little girl that he adored. And he even sang about her “butt being cold,” and adoring these types of little girls drove them wild.
To the San Francisco Chronicle, Lister related, “Phil told me that he wanted his music released to raise money for a religious program to let people hear the word of God in a way he interpreted it.” And as far as Phil saying that someday the songs would be worth millions, Marc added, “I thought, well, Phil’s just being weird again.”
Marc said that he didn’t want to make any money off the songs. If the music was ever released, he wanted the money to go to Jaycee Dugard’s family or an abused women and children’s center.
Lister also spoke with other reporters and said that he’d been to the Garrido home on Walnut Avenue several times. There he had met Alyssa, Starlit, and Angel. It was unclear to Lister at that time if Nancy or Alyssa was Phil’s wife. Lister said, “Jaycee always looked healthy to me. There was absolutely nothing that I saw that would have raised suspicions.” And he added that not once did Jaycee indicate that anything was wrong or that she needed help.
At least in the beginning, Phil’s dad, Manuel Garrido, was also talking to reporters. Manuel told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that his son was now “absolutely out of his mind! His problems began when he had a bad motorcycle accident. He went from being a comical and funny boy to someone who fell in with the wrong crowd and took LSD. Tell those cops to treat him like a crazy person, because he is out of his mind. He’s nuts! He’s crazy! I hope they treat him like that!”
To a reporter from Australia, Manuel Garrido said, “After he started using drugs, he was gone. It ruined his life. He didn’t want to go to school. We had a hell of a time getting him to graduate. We gave him a new blue Oldsmobile as a graduation present in 1969. Anything he wanted growing up, he got.” Manuel mainly blamed Phil’s mother for spoiling him. And Manuel added to a reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald, “He was a sex addict. That was his problem.”
Phil’s brother, Ron, agreed with that assessment. He’d had very little to do with Phil over the years, but in 2007, one of Ron and Phil’s aunts told Ron, “I swear that the oldest girl (Angel) is his daughter. She’s got his eyes.” Phil had tried telling the aunt that Angel was a daughter of one of his neighbors.
CHAPTER 21
IN EVERY DIRECTION
Even though no reporter was supposed to go onto the Garrido property, things had become so superheated in the quest for anything relating to Nancy and Phil Garrido that one journalist crossed the line. He was an Australian photojournalist and he sneaked into the Garrido yard, directly against police warnings. Soon the photojournalist’s photos were circling the globe, via television and the Internet. The photos depicted a ramshackle set of tents, where Jaycee, Angel, and Starlit had lived. The photos also showed the incredible amount of items that had been stored in the compound, as well as a WELCOME sign above one of the tent enclosures.
The area of the compound was littered with broken toys, cardboard boxes, old furniture, and piles of discarded items that looked beyond use. One of the first law enforcement officers to later describe the scene was CCSO Sheriff Warren Rupf. He told reporters, “It was as if you were camping. The structures are no more than six feet high. All the sheds and tents had electricity furnished by electrical cords. There was a rudimentary outhouse and rudimentary shower.”
Jaycee, Angel, and Starlit had been forced to live in a shed/tent area that contained an old sofa, old mattresses and faded worn-out carpet. A pile of dirty clothes was in one corner next to Barbie dolls. There were some books, puzzles, and games, obviously used by Angel and Starlit. Nearby was a shed that had been soundproofed by Phil Garrido, and in it were several guitars and recording equipment.
Incredibly, the investigators found an older model sedan still in the backyard area. It was the same type of sedan as first described by Carl Probyn so many years ago from which a woman had leaped out the door and snatched Jaycee. It seemed almost beyond belief that no one in all the intervening time had somehow made a connection between that car and the abduction of June 10, 1991.
News agencies were starting to learn more details about the compound in which Jaycee Lee Dugard and her daughters were forced to live. It was described as a series of outbuildings and tents, with locks on the outside of a fence so that the inhabitants could be locked in. There were sheds, tents, and water hoses snaking across the yard behind the tall wooden fence. The San Francisco Chronicle described the compound as a messy campground with mattresses, small chairs, bikes, books, piles of toys, a trampoline, showers, an outhouse, swing set, and even a carved pumpkin.
Of that compound, not much could be seen from the neighboring yards, but nearby resident, Diane Doty, recalled hearing the sound of a
shower being used in the backyard area. From her deck, she could see tarps, but trees and foliage concealed most of the rest. There were sounds of children back there, but that sounded normal to her ears, as if the noise was of children playing.
Diane told the journalist, “I asked my husband, ‘Why are they living in tents?’ And he said, ‘Maybe that’s the way they like to live.’”
Another neighbor, Polly White, also spoke of hearing showers running in Phil Garrido’s backyard. Polly related that she and her husband also heard young girls splashing around in a pool. “We used to hear children back there playing in the pool, and we thought they were just visiting Pat.”
Polly had been tending to her garden one day near the back fence that bordered the Garridos’ far backyard. Through a gap in the fence, she could see a young blond girl who was splashing around in the pool. White caught the girl’s eye and asked her if she was having fun. The girl said that she was. Polly asked how old the girl was, and she answered that she was ten. But when Polly asked the girl’s name, she wouldn’t answer and ran away, instead. The next time Polly White went to that section of the backyard, she noticed that the gap in the fence had been boarded up by Phil Garrido.
Patrick McQuaid had been only five years old when he and his parents lived near the Garrido residence. One day, possibly in 1991 or 1992, McQuaid peeked through the chicken wire fence that separated his yard from the Garridos’ yard. Patrick saw a young blond girl in the backyard. He recalled, “I thought she was pretty.”
Then Patrick recounted, “I asked her if she was living there or visiting, and she said she was living there.” But before Patrick could ask her any more questions, Phil Garrido came out and took the girl into the house. Patrick added, “At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. I was young.”