by Robert Scott
Car horns honked, people cheered, as young and old alike marched along the route. Most had never known Jaycee Lee or her family personally, but there were some marchers in the parade who had. One of those was Meghan Doris, who had been a classmate of Jaycee’s. Since then, Meghan had stayed in touch with many of her classmates, who had been traumatized by the events of June 10, 1991, and Meghan said that she had attended some of their weddings. Like Jaycee, Meghan had been a blond-haired, blue-eyed pretty girl. When Meghan’s mother had first heard the description of the kidnapped girl, she feared that it had been her own daughter who had been abducted. Like many others, Meghan expressed a common refrain: “We were robbed of the safety of the community. Even in high school, our yearbook did a dedication to her. We never forgot her. Hearing the news of Jaycee’s discovery has brought back all of the memories.”
Meghan also spoke to a reporter from CBS news. Meghan related, “It really haunted us over the years. I’m just excited to get her back. Putting myself in her place, I can’t imagine what she went through. I wish her the best in the healing process and hope she can lead a normal life.”
CBS also spoke to Jillian Broadfoot, who had attended Meyers Elementary School in 1991 when Jaycee had been kidnapped. Broadfoot said, “We just want her to know that we love and support her. I think Tahoe lost its innocence with the kidnapping, and, hopefully, her return restores a little faith here.”
Jaycee’s school principal, Karen Gillis-Tinlin, told the CBS television news reporter, “All I want to do is cry right now. I feel overwhelming joy and happiness. Obviously, Jaycee hasn’t been forgotten. She has remained in our minds and hearts all these years. She could have been anyone’s child, and that’s why you personalize it. You think, ‘It could have been my child who was kidnapped.’”
Another marcher, Roxie Upton, had a daughter in the school system who was eleven years old in 1991, the same age as Jaycee. Upton said, “There was not a soul in this town who didn’t know what happened to Jaycee.” Another woman, Jackie Hardie, recalled how her daughter had wanted to walk to the school bus stop alone, and she wouldn’t let her. When Hardie finally allowed her daughter to walk by herself, she followed close behind her in a car. In the parade, Hardie now rode a bicycle with a large handmade sign on it, WELCOME HOME JAYCEE.
Not only were friends of Jaycee in the parade, but police officers who had initially worked on the case as well. One of those was veteran officer Larry Hennick, of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office. Hennick said of the kidnapping, “It was really hard. It was something we all lived with. We all had those missing person posters in our cars. There wasn’t a day we didn’t look for the abduction vehicle.”
On the day of the parade, many of the missing person posters from when Jaycee was eleven years old were put back up on the parade route. People on the sidewalk, people in restaurants, people driving by in their cars, all shouted and waved as the parade wound by. South Lake Tahoe police chief Terry Daniels said of the throng of marchers, “I’m not surprised. The community has been very supportive. Everyone was excited and anticipating this day.”
Off on the sidelines, Carl Probyn watched the marchers from the seat of an SUV, surrounded by a film crew from Australia. Carl stated about the march, “I wanted to be here, but I didn’t want to be the center of attention. I didn’t want it to be about me.”
The Soroptimist Club, which had sponsored Jaycee’s family all through the years, put on the event, and Soroptimist Sue Novasel said, “The parade signifies a full circle.” People came from all over the area to be in it, including Kelly Tousey, of Fair Oaks, California, a city about one hundred miles away. Tousey was there with her husband and three children, ages five, fourteen, and sixteen. Tousey told a reporter, “We wanted to celebrate and rejoice. We wanted to show our support for Jaycee and her family.”
The culmination of the parade was at Meyers Elementary School—the place where Jaycee Lee had been going on the morning that she was kidnapped eighteen years before. At the school, the Soroptimist Club handed out pink-frosted cupcakes and pink T-shirts emblazoned with TAHOE LOVES JAYCEE. A party atmosphere took over the grounds, with people Hulahooping, blowing bubbles, displaying homemade signs, and cheering. And the crowd really cheered when a pair of loudspeakers began playing the song by Sister Sledge, “We Are Family.”
Later, El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office lieutenant Les Lovell told the crowd, “I was expecting that we would never see her again. Her story shows that anytime there’s hope, we need to keep hope alive.” Then Lovell told the children in the crowd, if ever faced with the same situation as Jaycee, “Fight! Fight your way out of it. Don’t be complacent.”
South Lake Tahoe police officer Rebecca Inman told reporters that since Jaycee was abducted, three thousand children had taken part in the Fighting Chance program. It taught them how to fight back against an abductor. And then Inman told the crowd, “My heart is just overflowing with joy.” Inman raised her fist in the air in celebration.
A few days later, in Brentwood, California, UC Berkeley police officer Ally Jacobs was honored in the town where she lived. A crowd packed City Hall as the mayor and the entire city council presented Ally with a key to the city. She was only the second person in Brentwood’s history to receive such an award. Mayor Bob Taylor said of Ally, “I think what she did is remarkable.” Even a United States representative’s aide was there to let the gathering know that Congressman Jerry McNerney had entered into the House record, “Had it not been for Officer Jacobs’s outstanding performance of her duties, the abuse of Jaycee and her daughters would have continued indefinitely.”
Ally Jacobs was escorted into City Hall by members of the local Warriors’ Watch Riders and American Legion Post 202. When Ally was presented with the key to the city and a dozen roses, she tried not to cry, but she brushed back tears from her eyes, anyway. She told the gathering, “I’m completely humbled and honored for what I feel was me just doing my job.”
Over in Antioch, there was less of a celebratory mood. Antioch had gotten a black eye in the press, around the world, for something the citizens, and especially the mayor of Antioch, thought was not their fault. Walnut Avenue, where the Garridos had lived, wasn’t even within the city limits. Many citizens of Antioch believed they were being unfairly painted with a broad brush for things that only Phil and Nancy Garrido had done.
Even the Contra Costa Times ran an article that Antioch was being unfairly tainted. The article’s headline was ANTIOCH’S INFAMY UNFOUNDED. The article related, It’s a juicy nugget for the worldwide press, tripping alarms on the cable news fear-o-meter. Anderson Cooper of CNN has the graphics to prove it and a roster of experts to explain how the local area where police say Jaycee Dugard was held in sexual bondage for eighteen years has fast become a dense haven for registered sex offenders. The article went on to say that the media was frightening the locals with unfounded reports.
The article proved, in fact, that Antioch was well below dozens of other Bay Area cities as far as a ratio of registered sex offenders per capita. And it barely made the top ten of Contra Costa County cities in that regard.
The article quoted Antioch police chief Jim Hyde saying that Antioch was taking flak from reporters using “high-school journalism.” Hyde also said, “Many Antioch residents are mad because they feel their town has been defamed.” And Antioch councilman Brian Kalinowski stated, “From my perspective, one individual who’s sick in the head doesn’t define a community.”
One angry resident declared, to a different news source, “If we’re going to be defined by Phil Garrido, then Londoners should be defined by Jack the Ripper, and Berliners by Adolf Hitler. When you start making wrong assumptions, you can say all sorts of stupid things. Some of the worst are the foreign journalists!”
Blame, censure, and chaos spread in all directions as the “Jaycee Lee Dugard story” continued to be a hot commodity. The Telegraph.co.UK reported, Given this interest in the case, one British paparazzi agency has
suggested that a deal for an exclusive interview and pictures (of Jaycee Lee and daughters) would stretch into several hundred thousand pounds, and could easily top 500,000 pounds. However, they speculated that it was more likely that an American television company would secure the rights to hear Dugard’s story for an even greater fee.
The site posited that the reason that no photos of Jaycee Lee or her girls had yet come to light was because law enforcement and mental-health professionals might have blocked the release of any photos. Then it related the story about Austrian victim Natascha Kampusch. It also related how far the paparazzi were willing to go to obtain photos and stories like these. When it was learned that Josef Fritzl had kept his daughter captive in what amounted to a basement dungeon, one British photographer broke into the kitchen of her hideaway home in an attempt to secure photographs.
Law enforcement, and especially the FBI, wanted none of that taking place with regard to Jaycee Lee and her daughters. When law enforcement learned that Cheyvonne and Jim Molino had allegedly made some kind of deal with the media about videotapes showing Angel and Starlit at their daughter’s recent Sweet Sixteen party, law enforcement cracked down hard.
Cheyvonne related later, “They came in and upended drawers and mattresses, looking for authentic photos of Phil’s girls. I never videotaped the girls. I need to let people know what really went on and clear my name.”
Cheyvonne added, “I had no idea what Phil had done to Jaycee Lee or anything about that. As for those girls, they behaved like normal kids on the day that photo was taken. He left the girls unattended at the party. He dropped them off. He picked them up. The girls did not attempt to flee.”
There was one photo in particular of Angel and Starlit at that party that was now starting to come to light on the Internet and on television. And law enforcement must have put the fear of God into any news agency that ran those photos unaltered. Several media sources depicted the girls with their faces blurred out. The depictions showed two young girls, dressed in party dresses, walking into a room where a party is taking place in the background.
Amidst all the media frenzy and finger-pointing, there was almost a calm at the eye of the storm now for Phil and Nancy Garrido as they sat in their cells in Placerville. The two suspects certainly weren’t going anywhere. There was one report in the Herald Sun that both Phil and Nancy Garrido were being protected from other prisoners while in jail. According to the Herald Sun, there had been a stream of death threats upon Phil and Nancy ever since the story had broken.
CBS News.com also reported about this aspect: Fellow prisoners are warning that they’ll rape or murder Nancy Garrido. She’s spending her time reading the Bible, sources say.
Former San Francisco prosecutor Michael Cardoza told CBS News, “In a prison system, there is a certain code of morality, and this type of crime ranks at the very, very bottom. So it doesn’t shock me that either one of them has been threatened with death or the rape. The sheriffs in the jail there have to keep them from the rest. And even when and if they go to prison, they will have to be kept in isolation, because there will be the big worry that someone will try to murder them.”
As far as the present concerns of the Garridos’ safety in the El Dorado County Jail, DA Vern Pierson commented, “Every effort is being made to ensure their safety while they are held in the county.”
The Garridos’ fellow inmates in the El Dorado County Jail weren’t the only ones who wished they could get their hands on them. Ken Slayton, Jaycee’s biological father, told reporters, “I think they should live as long as they possibly can, and someone should torment them as much as they did Jaycee and those little girls. In fact, that’s too good for them. I’d skin him.”
And in all of this, Nancy Garrido was indeed the mystery woman. It seemed that almost no one knew much about her, even people who had lived next to her for years on Walnut Avenue. Damon Robinson had told one reporter, “The wife (Nancy) was like a hermit. She looked like she had no spirit.” In fact, people who received business cards from Phil had seen more of Jaycee than they had of Nancy Garrido.
Trying to plumb the depths of the mystery woman, the Contra Costa Times ran an article, WHO IS NANCY GARRIDO? The article began by stating that Nancy had worked as a state-licensed aide for a respected nonprofit agency that served a thousand adults and children with disabilities. She worked full-time for the Contra Costa County ARC from December 1994 until March 1998. The agency’s executive director, Barbara Maizie, said that Nancy was accepted because “she had a stellar reference as a nursing aide and physical therapy aide. The people who received services through her liked her very much. She was a good employee and she was well-liked by the people she worked with. They cannot believe this is possible. They’re totally shocked.”
Maizie went on to say that Nancy Garrido worked with adults only. Nancy’s credentials and references dated back to 1981, the same year she married Phil Garrido in Leavenworth Penitentiary. And, of course, Nancy had followed Phil to California after his release from Leavenworth, Kansas, and his stint in a Nevada prison.
The Contra Costa Times article noted that when Nancy Garrido first came to work at the Martinez-based agency, Jaycee Lee was already a teenager and having the first of her two babies. Even though there was a great deal of speculation that Nancy had helped in the birth of Angel and Starlit, Ken August, a spokesman for the Department of Public Health, said that Nancy did not have training in assisting with childbirth. This, of course, might not have stopped her, since of all the members of the household on Walnut Avenue, Nancy had the most medical training.
Nancy’s family, in Denver, Colorado, became a magnet for media outlets. The UK Telegraph sent a reporter there to try and speak with family members. The journalist did talk to brother David, reporting, The 46-year-old looked bleary-eyed and exhausted when he opened his front door in a Denver suburb. “My mother looks even worse,” he said.
When asked about Nancy, David replied, “I’ve got nothing bad to say about my sister. He (Phil Garrido) turned her into that. She was normal until she hooked up with that guy.” Then David spoke of the sister he had known who used to go fishing, canoeing, and other fun activities.
Inside Edition’s Diane McInerney also spoke with Nancy’s brothers, David and Ray Bocanegra. McInerney asked, “What happened to your sister?” Ray answered angrily, “Phil Garrido! That’s what happened to my sister! She was a normal kid. A teenager going out with friends, working, having a good time.”
“She never did drugs?” McInerney asked.
“No.”
“Any prior arrests?”
“None. I don’t think she even had a speeding ticket. Not even a parking ticket.”
David related, “Once she met Phillip, that was it. It was like she was no longer around.” Then David added that the family was deeply concerned when Nancy married Phil in a prison ceremony in 1981. They wondered what kind of life she could hope for with a convicted sex offender.
When David and Ray first saw photos of what kind of living conditions Nancy had been living in on Walnut Avenue, Ray said, “That’s not the way we grew up.” And David said that when he’d had his last phone conversation with Nancy, three years previously, she was saying whatever Phil wanted her to say.
David stated that Phil had spoken to him and brought up the situation with his “magical black box,” with which he could talk to God. David said, “It was just really off-the-wall when he talked about that. I couldn’t believe my sister was with this guy. That was just nuts!”
David and Ray were very disturbed by the fact that it might have been Nancy who actually grabbed Jaycee off the street and forced her into the car in 1991. Ray said, “I think Nancy was a victim, too. Just like everybody else was a victim of Phillip Garrido. She was scared, brainwashed.”
Despite the fact that David and Ray thought that Nancy had been brainwashed, they didn’t make excuses for what she had done. David said, “She took someone’s life away. I apologize to you (Jayce
e) and your family for what my sister did. I hope you’re doing better, you and your kids. God bless you.”
Even Ron Garrido, Phil’s brother, thought that Nancy had been brainwashed. Ron told a reporter for the Sunday Times, “She was a robot. She would do anything he asked. I told my wife, ‘It’s no different from Charles Manson and those girls.’”
An article in the First Post, entitled MADNESS OF WANTING TO BE NORMAL: Nancy Garrido’s Make-Believe Family, related that a woman often joined forces with an abuser in order to feel loved. The couple didn’t have to live in the real world; they could create a parallel one that masked their inadequacies.
One thing seemed clear regarding Nancy’s role in the initial abduction of Jaycee on June 10, 1991. It was a dark-haired woman whom Carl Probyn had seen throwing Jaycee into the kidnapper’s car. A woman who matched Nancy Garrido’s looks of that period. And Gilbert Maines was going to have a tough sell with this factor. Nonetheless, it appeared that he was doing his best. On NBC’s Today’show, Maines said that Nancy was a victim of her husband’s suppressive control. Maines declared, “The crux of the matter, the argument, I think, goes to maybe her mental condition at the time, and not so much what physically happened.” And Maines went on to reiterate how Nancy felt about Jaycee, Angel, and Starlit. “What she said that I can tell you about is—there came a time that when she felt that they were a family and that she loves the girls very much and loved Jaycee very much, and that seems a little strange, given the circumstances, but that’s what she told me.”