by Robert Scott
Lieutenant George Lawrence told reporters that CCSO didn’t know yet if Valerie had been killed at the spot she was found, or dumped there. He also added that Valerie had a history of prostitution arrests in the Bay Point area from 1991 to 1994. She was a very pretty Chippewa young woman who got her adopted nickname of China from her exotic looks.
Several prostitutes, working the streets in Pittsburg, said that they knew China and added that she was too friendly and possibly not streetwise. Even with the recent murders of all the young women in the area, it’s quite possible Valerie came into contact with the wrong man sometime during the late-night hours of January 7, 1999.
Valerie’s father said, “She seemed quite happy being where she was in Kentucky. She talked about coming for a visit sometime in the next month. Over the past month, we had a lot of fun conversations. Kidding each other, talking about life. She was feeling pretty upbeat.”
The Contra Costa Times contacted Professor Michael Rustigan again. Rustigan now said, “It looks to me probably like a thrill killer who’s enjoying the publicity and thumbing his nose at the police. It’s time to call the FBI. In a small community like Pittsburg, this is truly exceptional. It’s beyond coincidence.” He also noted that none of the victims had been shot. That was also the sign of a serial killer. Serial killers generally preferred a more intimate type of murder—by strangulation or stabbing their victims to death.
Acknowledging this aspect about a serial killer, James Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, related, “A gun distances the killer from his victim. It doesn’t give the sense of superiority and satisfaction that they’re after.”
Law enforcement, however, still would not say that one killer had murdered all these women. PPD lieutenant Zbacnik stated, “Does that mean the killings are not connected? Absolutely not. We have to consider everything.” As yet, however, there was no “signature” left by one killer. In other words, one particular thread in common to all the murders. The Contra Costa Times noted that there was no single factor of age or race on these victims. The only commonality was that all of them were murdered in an area where prostitutes worked. Lisa Norrell, who was not a prostitute, just happened to be in that area when she was murdered.
Making a match through DNA was also difficult, because a prostitute may have had sex with several different men on the same night that she was murdered. Or her killer may have worn a condom. Along with that, it was difficult to trace the last hours of some of these women. And other prostitutes, who knew them, would often not be cooperative with police.
With the death of Valerie Dawn Schultz, the string of murders came to an end in the Pittsburg area. The Contra Costa Times noted, An uneasy calm has settled over Pittsburg and Bay Point. It was uneasy, indeed. Linda Laney, of Pittsburg, told a reporter, “It’s quiet, but you’re still kind of nervous.” Lisa Norrell’s mother, Minnie, chimed in. She said, “I think people may be holding their breath. You just hope it doesn’t happen again.” Even Michael Rustigan admitted, “The intense media coverage and increased police work might have sent the killer or killers into hiding or made them flee the area.”
In 2009, all of these cases were being closely examined by the Pittsburg Police Department to see if Phil Garrido was somehow connected to them. Adding to the speculation on this, a PPD spokesperson told reporters that a bone fragment had been found in the backyard of the Garrido home. PPD lieutenant Brian Addington said of this development, “A few items will require further forensic examination before they can be completely excluded.”
A reporter for the Contra Costa Times spoke with Minnie Norrell about these latest developments. Through tears, Minnie only said, “It makes me sad. There’s not much more I can say.” Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Phil Garrido had done business with many establishments near the Antioch-Pittsburg Highway in 1998 and 1999. It was an area he knew well as he made his way from Walnut Avenue, through Antioch and over to Pittsburg.
Within a few days, the Pittsburg Police Department reported that nothing found on the Garrido property led them to believe that the Garridos were involved in the murders of Lisa Norrell, Jessica Frederick, Rachael Cruise, or all of the prostitutes near Pittsburg. On the late afternoon of September 4, investigators loaded an old Dodge van onto a flatbed truck and hauled it away from the Garrido property.
The Contra Costa Times ran a headline, FRENZY DISSIPATES, BUT SHOCK PALPABLE. One resident told the reporter, “Twilight Zone one week, and nobody home the next.” All the news vans, reporters, helicopters, and law enforcement vehicles were quickly leaving the area.
Another resident, Lulu Pagnini, related, “It’s just so overwhelming. Everybody recovers from everything, but this one . . . I think it touched everybody deeply. It’s just so horrific.”
And yet, as all the frenzied activity died down on Walnut Avenue, one small article in the Contra Costa Times presaged things to come. The article concerned seven-year-old Michaela Garecht, of Hayward, California, who had been abducted in 1988. As yet, few people took note of this possibility. But all that would change very soon.
CHAPTER 26
FACT AND FICTION
Along with information about Phil and Nancy Garrido, the compound, Jaycee and her daughters, there was also misinformation being dispensed by the media at an alarming rate. Part of the reason was the absolute frenzy of activity on Walnut Avenue and the fact that almost any story that anyone said was being taken at face value in the beginning. Because it was so amazing that Jaycee was alive at all, anything seemed possible.
One false account, which was initially being reported upon, was that Jaycee’s daughters knew almost nothing about the world beyond Walnut Avenue. In fact, they were reported to be “starved for information,” as if they had never been taught anything at all. And the youngest daughter was still having her name spelled as Starlet, Starlit, Starlite, and Starline.
This image of the girls being totally isolated from modern culture was soon dispelled by Tina Dugard, who said that they had seen things on the Internet. Tina also revealed that the girls were now playing the computer game Super Smash Bros. and a board game called Apples to Apples.
Tina also stated that one evening she and Jaycee watched a DVD movie of a Disney film, Enchanted, about a fairy-tale princess. Jaycee said that she wanted to see the Sandra Bullock romantic comedy The Proposal. And in the background the girls drew pictures and talked about their love of animals and climbing trees.
One thing that seemed to be true was when a detective told a reporter about the girls that “they are being given TV microwave dinners and their favorite meat loaf meals. They have never had fizzy drinks, so they get cooled water, which they are used to.”
Leading the charge in news that could not be corroborated were tabloids like the National Enquirer. In one issue, they ran a headline, SEX PSYCHO DOSED JAYCEE AND HER KIDS WITH ILLICIT NARCOTICS. As to the validity of this comment, all the National Enquirer would relate was that it came from a “source close to the investigation.” The article went on to note that Valium and other “highly addictive tranquilizers” had been found by authorities in the Garrido home. And the anonymous source supposedly said, “The narcotics were used to keep them from escaping. Garrido allegedly turned Jaycee into a sex slave, often keeping her in a drug-addled state, and police are investigating whether he gave the drugs to the daughters, too.”
In a statement by another unnamed source, the person said that he had witnessed Phil Garrido force Jaycee to smoke marijuana. The exact statement in the article was: “One night we were sitting around Phil’s house when he lit a marijuana cigarette and shoved it into the hands of a young woman we knew as Allissa. He watched to make sure she inhaled. Phil said he wanted to make sure she did it right—but it was more than that. She was afraid, and he glared at her in anger. She tried to pass the joint back after a couple of hits, but Phil pushed her hand back and told her to keep inhaling.”
Even more startling was a comme
nt by another unnamed source. In this published quote, the person said, “Phil wrote and recorded a creepy song about a man killing a woman and her young son, and laughing about it. And after he played the song, he said, ‘That’s me. I actually did it. ’” Backing up the National Enquirer ’s claims of this incident, they cited a spokesman for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office agreeing that CCSO was investigating the CD in question and whether Phil Garrido actually had murdered a woman and her son. The CCSO was also looking into the possibility that Phil had secretly fathered a son with that woman, and then murdered them both.
By this point, just about anything seemed possible. One neighbor, Mike Rogers, had an account that no one else in the area corroborated. And yet, Rogers was adamant about his story. Rogers told a UK newspaper reporter that he’d seen wild parties occur at Phil Garrido’s property. Rogers said that up to ten men would come over to the backyard and light bonfires, play loud music, shout, laugh, and curse into the early hours of the night.
Rogers stated, “Eight to ten men, mostly Mexican, would gather in a line in his garden, drinking beer, yelling and screaming and swearing. They normally had a bonfire and I saw them entering the tent, one by one. On a number of occasions, I saw them bobbing up and down through the window, and I thought, ‘My God, there is something sexual going on in there.’ They were drinking beer and smashing bottles on the ground. I thought they had a prostitute or something in there. I thought it might have been some kind of sex party or something.”
Rogers added that when the men came out of the tent, they would give each other “high fives.” Only later, when Rogers learned about Jaycee, Starlit, and Angel living in the tent, did he hope that Phil wasn’t “pimping them out to these men.” As to why he had never reported this activity, Rogers said he had discussed the matter with his brother. He took his brother’s advice not to call the cops unless things really got out of hand.
Another person whose stories could not be corroborated was neighbor Dana Crandall. Crandall had lived in the area since she was young, and now worked at a local Save Mart. Crandall said that Phil shopped there and sometimes he took two young blond girls along with him.
Crandall told a UK tabloid, “Years ago, my brother heard someone in the backyard having sex. At the time, we just thought it was him (Phil) and his girlfriend. They had a hot tub back there. There were wooden shutters on the house that he would always put up, and he always locked the gate. I played back there as a little kid. Phil always peeked over the fence. He was real neighborly, but he never let anyone come onto his property. I never knew that it (the secret compound) existed back there.”
Crandall also spoke of her meetings with Phil and the girls at the place where she worked. She said that Phil would come in and talk to her about religion and his recordings. She had met the two young blond girls on three occasions, and Phil introduced them as his daughters. Crandall said, “They were hanging on to his arms, and asking ‘Can we get this? Can we buy this?’ He just got milk and the bare necessities and always paid with cash.”
Among all the so-called information that was making the rounds as facts were other stories that could not be pinned down as to whether they were true or not. One of these stories concerned an account of Phil and Nancy Garrido looking for a “cute blond girl on a child shopping trip to Lake Tahoe.” This story was reported upon by the news source the UK Telegraph. The article stated: Phillip Garrido selected the pretty blond girl with the gap-toothed grin as his prey during a child shopping trip because she looked so cute, his wife, Nancy, has told investigators in California. But the couple decided not to try and snatch the 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard that day in June 1991 because she was walking through South Lake Tahoe with a bunch of school friends. Instead they apparently trailed her home before returning the next morning to complete their horrific mission.... “That’s the one I want,” Garrido told her (Nancy) when he saw Jaycee in the resort town. “She’s cute, but she’s with the other kids. Let’s come back later and get her.”
This story sounds quite plausible, but there were two things wrong with it. One was that Jaycee was abducted on a Monday, so she could not have been walking home with friends from school on the previous day. And a variation of this “walking home with friends” incident could not have happened as well. It was a story of Jaycee walking home with friends after the art fair on Sunday. An El Dorado Sheriff’s Office detective who had been working the case for years emphatically stated that did not occur. Jaycee had returned home from the art fair in a vehicle with her father.
One of the most dramatic stories to come out of this period was one that detailed a late-night visit by investigators and Jaycee to the Garrido home after August 26, 2009. According to the story, Jaycee led the investigators who carried flashlights, back into the compound where she had been a virtual prisoner for so many years. According to the tale, she showed the investigators where Phil Garrido had first raped her, and the spot where Angel and Starlit had been born.
The story went on to relate, “For the next several hours, police with flashlights led her around every shed and tent, asking her to describe in detail exactly where she had been imprisoned and what had happened where. Several times Jaycee broke down in tears, revisiting the scene of her nightmare.”
It was all very dramatic, but an El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office detective, who was absolutely familiar with Jaycee’s case and the events of August 2009, said the story in his words was “garbage.” He added that the investigators and Jaycee roaming around the compound with flashlights, “Never happened. It’s all fiction.”
At least on September 6, 2009, there was some information that seemed to be correct about Phil and Nancy Garrido, but it was all filtered through Phil’s elderly mother, Pat. And, of course, Pat had serious memory problems by that point.
A reporter for the UK’s Mirror interviewed Pat, who was now residing in a nursing home for the elderly. Pat told the reporter that Phil had shown up one day in the 1990s with a young blond girl and said, “She’s mine, Mom.” Meaning that the blond girl was his daughter by a previous relationship that had nothing to do with Nancy.
Pat related that Phillip and Ron had been good boys, but she always wanted a daughter. “When Alyssa appeared one day, it was amazing. I was so pleased she was around. I was ill in bed. She was a real angel,” Pat recounted.
Pat added that Alyssa was hardworking and helped Phil on his printing projects. And when two more young girls appeared on the scene, Angel and Starlit, Pat was thrilled. Phil introduced them as two more of his daughters by another relationship. Pat declared, “I’ve blocked out some of the memories, but I still remember the joy of having the children around. I saw all three girls as my granddaughters.”
As far as Nancy went, Pat said that she had a “heart of gold.” Nancy was always attentive and helpful with Pat and her medical needs. And over time, Alyssa also helped once in awhile.
As far as Alyssa, Starlit, and Angel living in tents in the far backyard, Pat said that she had grown up during the Great Depression, and such living conditions were not out of place in her memory. Pat related that she was used to a lot of noise while growing up on a farm and spending a great deal of time outside, just like Alyssa, Starlit, and Angel.
Pat added that the girls had a trampoline to play on, and Starlit and Angel often played in the garden. They didn’t have a lot of toys, but they did spend their time reading books and sitting with Alyssa. Alyssa mostly stayed in the garden in the daytime, but as the girls grew older, they spent more time in the main house. Pat said that the kids were messy, but Alyssa always tried to keep things tidy. Pat also said that Alyssa helped around the house and never complained.
Pat stated that Alyssa worked on the computer in regard to Phil’s printing business. Alyssa even showed Starlit and Angel how she did it. And according to Pat, Phil in the last year had let the girls go on errands with him around the area. Pat also commented, “Nancy was always sweet to the girls, but sometimes Phil would sh
out at them.”
As to how Jaycee’s abduction, rape, and captivity—along with the advent of Starlit and Angel being right under her nose—had occurred, Pat said, “I was getting older then and was spending more and more time just in my room, in my bed, so some days I would just see Nancy and some days I would see Alyssa. I didn’t know she was being kept there against her will. I was in my bed and all I knew was this smiley girl who came to see me.”
Pat said she didn’t want to talk about why Phil had done such a thing because it upset her. She did say that prison could be very hard on most people, but when Phil got out of prison, “He didn’t have a scratch on him. It didn’t seem to affect him at all.”
Pat ended her interview by saying that she always thought that Alyssa, Starlit, and Angel were her granddaughters. “I had no idea why he would do something like this. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he has made the family very sad.”
Farther away, in Southern California, it was reported that Jaycee Lee’s biological father, Ken Slayton, made known how he felt about Phil Garrido. Slayton told reporters, “When I think about what she went through, it’s just horrible. I’d love to get my hands on Garrido and kill him. I hope he rots in jail.”
Three hundred miles away from Southern California, there was a celebration taking place, and that celebration occurred where it had all begun back in 1991—Lake Tahoe.
CHAPTER 27
TEARS OF JOY
In the days before the next storm on Walnut Avenue, it was a time for happiness in Lake Tahoe. On Sunday, September 6, 2009, an estimated three thousand people attended a parade for Jaycee Lee Dugard in South Lake Tahoe. Many of them were clad in pink—Jaycee’s favorite color when she was abducted—and many more carried pink balloons. Among the throng was South Lake Tahoe’s mayor, Jerry Birdwell. He said he was there to show support for Jaycee and her family, just as the rest of the community was doing. “The innocence of the town was basically taken away that day,” he said. Tahoe resident Sheryl Langstaff added, “The parade is a closure of a nightmare and the beginning of some peace and, hopefully, some happiness.”