Shattered Innocence

by Robert Scott

  Discussing various reports connected to Phil Garrido, the special report noted that for the 123 months that the department had jurisdiction over Phil, the administrator found that there were only twelve months of satisfactory supervision. In fact, the report stated that from the very beginning, the supervision of Phil Garrido had been inadequate. A parole agent had not conducted a visit of the residence where Phil and Nancy were staying in the first month that control of him was passed from Nevada to California. This was something that was required by the department. In fact, a parole officer did not visit the house until nearly a year later. There were no visits at all to the Garrido residence between June 2001 and July 2002; and between June 2004 and August 2005, a parole agent only visited once.

  As far back as Phil’s initial contact with the California department, there had been problems. Part of the problem stemmed from the movement of Phil between federal parole supervision, Nevada parole supervision, and into California parole supervision. In the space of a few months, Phil passed from one to another.

  And through a further “screwup” at the California department, Phil Garrido was assigned to a minimum level of supervision rather than the high-control status he should have had. Between November 1999 and May 2000, when he should have been supervised under a high-control status, Phil only went to the parole office on three occasions, submitted five brief monthly reports, and made one phone call. No agent personally visited him or his residence.

  It didn’t even occur to the California parole agents until May 2000 that Phil Garrido was a sex offender and should be supervised at a higher level. And it was then that they began requiring Phil to take drug tests, as he should have been doing all along. And one small item popped up in the report that should have been a red flag to parole agents if they had known about it. (And there is speculation this information was never passed down from the Feds to the state of California.) A paragraph stated, In the federal file was information regarding a federal agent’s search of the soundproof recording studio that Garrido maintained in the back of his residence. The studio was, in fact, located in the concealed compound, where Phil had raped and kept Jaycee Lee Dugard. Information from the federal agency would have alerted parole agents that Phil Garrido’s yard extended beyond the backyard fence that they saw.

  In January 2001, Phil’s California parole agent completed a “Sex Offender Risk Assessment” to evaluate Phil’s level of becoming a repeat offender. Unfortunately, based only on documents that the parole agent saw, he rated Garrido as a low-risk offender. The description that the parole agent gave of the situation: (His) offending sexually is more opportunistic or situational than a primary deviant sexual orientation. These cases can be reasonably handled on a control service caseload.

  The special report now noted that Phil Garrido’s controlling offense was clearly sexual in nature and not just opportunistic. He had kidnapped and raped Katie Callaway over a six-hour period. The special report related that Phil had shown premeditation by placing a leather strap around Katie Callaway’s neck. He had taken her on an hour-long ride to a storage shed, where he had drugs, a bed, and sex-related devices. That information was available to parole agents and should have been used to evaluate Phil’s risk assessment.

  The report went on to say that if Phil had been classified as a high-risk offender—as he should have been—his activities would have been watched more closely. In June 2006, the department implemented a new assessment tool, STATIC 99, which was designed to estimate the probability of sexual and violent recidivism among adult males who had been convicted of at least one crime. This tool was only used on those who were in prison and about to be paroled, rather than people like Phil Garrido who were already out on parole.

  The special report added that in July 2009, just one month before Phil’s arrest, a parole supervisor completing a case review on Phil requested that a STATIC 99 assessment be made of Phil. But it wasn’t until September 17, 2009, three weeks after Phil’s arrest, that the STATIC 99 assessment was done. This assessment correctly identified him as a high-risk offender. Of course, by that time, it was a moot point.

  The report noted that on at least ten occasions, the parole supervisors had not performed the mandated reviews. In fact, between April 2001 and October 2003, no reviews were done at all. And just as bad were fifteen instances when parole supervisors completed the case reviews, but they failed to identify and correct obvious deficiencies in the manner that parole agents handled Phil’s case.

  Phil was supposed to have regular mental-health assessments, but this never happened from 1999 until October 2007. It was only then that a parole agent recommended that Phil see a psychologist at the Parole Outpatient Clinic.

  Incredibly, on four different occasions, the California department recommended to Nevada to discharge Phil Garrido from parole altogether. These occurred in November 1999, July 2004, December 2005, and April 2008. The special report stated that California parole supervisors concurred with a parole agent’s recommendation for discharge. It was Nevada that insisted upon Phil Garrido staying under parole supervision. If California’s standard had been used, Phil would have been released from supervision after three years. In other words, when Phil Garrido went to UC Berkeley with his girls on August 25, 2009, Officer Ally Jacobs could not have gotten in touch with Phil’s parole agent, because Phil wouldn’t have had any by that point. It was only because of Nevada’s insistence that Phil was still on parole in 2009 at all.

  As far as GPS devices went, an ankle-type GPS device was not attached to Phil Garrido until April 2008. One of its uses was to monitor if Phil traveled more than twenty-five miles from his residence without prior approval. Even with this device on his ankle, the parole agent did not properly monitor it. In a thirty-two day period from July 23, 2009, to August 23, 2009, Phil traveled to Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco, well outside the twenty-five-mile range. Between April 2008 and June 2009, the GPS device proved that Phil left his residence fourteen times after curfew; something that was not allowed. In a vast understatement, the report noted, Ignoring the alerts generated by the system defeats the purpose of this tool.

  One of the most glaring omissions about the GPS device was the fact that it alerted that on numerous occasions Phil had been going into his far backyard, where the secret compound was located. A curious parole agent might have wondered why Phil was going back there so often. One overhead photo of the Garrido property in the report depicted red dots for where Phil had been on one single day—April 15, 2008. The dots showed Phil as having gone into the secret compound area at least thirty times. The report added, It should have led the parole agent to determine that the boundaries of Garrido’s backyard extended beyond what he believed them to be. Interestingly, the red dots also showed up in Damon Robinson’s backyard on at least ten occasions that same day.

  On top of all of this, there should have been alarm bells going off, when between July 23, 2009, and August 23, 2009, the department lost the GPS signal from Phil’s device almost every night for prolonged periods of time. This loss of signals occurred up to nine hours at a time. Signals could be lost because of the structure of a person’s home, but the department also knew that offenders would sometimes mask the GPS signal. The fact that the signal was being lost on such a consistent basis should have sent up red flags to the parole agent. And yet, even though the parole agent learned about the loss of the signals, no action on Phil was ever taken.

  And then the special report got to a portion titled: “The Department Missed Other Opportunities to Discover the Victims.” In this section, it noted that various parole agents had conducted at least sixty face-to-face contacts with Phil Garrido at his home. Several photos in the report showed visible utility lines, a coaxial cable, and telephone lines running from Phil and Nancy’s home to a carport in the backyard. These utility lines then ran from the carport to the secret compound beyond an eight-foot-high wooden fence. All of these lines should have sent out an alert to the agent, and the
report noted that parole agents had the right to search Phil’s property at any time without a warrant or prior notification. Several agents had inspected the main residence and backyard, but none ever looked over the wooden fence to see what might be back there. Of course, what was back there was the concealed compound in which Jaycee and her two daughters lived.

  The report stated that the presence of the wires should have raised awareness that Phil might be engaged in some kind of illegal activity. Often utility wires indicated crimes such as electricity theft, marijuana cultivation, or a computer used for child pornography. Suspicions should have been raised because Phil was a known drug user in his past and a convicted rapist.

  In this area of nonsupervision, the report noted that the department was not the only agency that came up short. In July 2008, a regional sex offender task force searched Phil’s residence during a sweep of known sex offenders in the Antioch area. (The parole department was not part of that sweep.) During the July 2008 sweep, officers searched Phil’s house and backyard, but not one of them looked over the eight-foot-high wooden fence toward the hidden compound.

  On top of all of this, during a June 17, 2008, face-to-face visit with Phil, the parole agent went to Phil’s house unannounced. Inside the house were Phil, Nancy, Phil’s mother, and a “twelve-year-old female.” The agent questioned about the girl, and Phil told the agent that the girl was his brother’s daughter. The agent did not question Phil any further about this. Nor did the agent contact Phil’s brother. If the agent had done so, he would have learned that Phil’s brother did not have a daughter.

  Not once did parole agents speak to any of Phil’s neighbors. After the August 2009 arrest, commissioners for the report did speak with neighbors, and many of them referred to Phil Garrido as “weird Phil.” The neighbors spoke of his strange behavior, and two of them said they had seen underage girls at Phil’s home. Another person the commissioners spoke with was apparently Dennis McQuaid, who told them that when he was five years old, he had spoken with a young blond girl on the Garrido property through a chicken wire fence. According to McQuaid, the girl had told him, “My name is Jaycee.” McQuaid said that it was soon after that, Phil built his eight-foot-high wooden fence.

  The report also noted that local law enforcement and emergency services had gone out to the Garrido residence on several occasions. In the years that Phil and Nancy had been there, there were at least thirty times that those types of agencies had arrived at the residence. Most of these had to do with Phil’s aged and infirm mother. But on top of this list was the phone call from Erika Pratt on November 30, 2006, in which she said, “He has several tents in the yard with people living in them, and there are children there!” That report noted, She was concerned because her neighbor has a sexual addiction.

  Another missed opportunity was in June 2002, when the local fire department responded to the Garrido residence because of a report that a juvenile had a shoulder injury that had occurred in a swimming pool. A parole agent could have learned of this report, because a juvenile should not have been in a swimming pool on the Garrido property at all. Obviously, there was a young person using a small plastic swimming pool in either the closer backyard or the secret compound.

  Even as late as August 2009, parole agents were still botching their opportunities. When Phil Garrido took two girls to UC Berkeley, he was outside his twenty-five-mile limit. Also, these girls referred to Phil as their daddy, and he referred to them as his daughters. Each and every person who had ever been Phil’s parole agent knew that he had no daughters. Even with all of this, the parole agent only contacted Phil Garrido on August 25, 2009, and told him to come to the agency in Concord the next day.

  The special report emphasized that given Phil’s violent criminal past and increasingly strange behavior, it wasn’t unreasonable to speculate that the parole agent’s lack of further investigation might have placed Jaycee, Angel, and Starlit in greater danger. It also might have prompted Phil Garrido to flee the area. The report noted that the parole agent clearly had concerns for the two girls, and the report added that it wasn’t clear why the parole agent had not followed up on those concerns.

  In addressing why there were so many failed opportunities, the special report stated that no parole agents ever got proper or adequate training for something like Jaycee’s case. Agents were rushed through a ten-week program and then sent out into the field, where their caseloads were staggering. Even the parole academy instructors said that they gave their new agents “an overall picture of compliance,” but never specifics about what they should be looking for in a case like this. And after the rushed ten-week course, there were no field-training programs as follow-ups. Often in police and sheriff’s departments, there would be refresher courses and advance courses of training. This was not true with parole officers.

  Near the end of the report, there was a list about “Parole Supervision, GPS Monitoring, Missed Opportunities and Training.” The list was seventeen items long. At the very end, there was a list of recommendations. As far as parole supervision went, it was recommended that all sex offender parolees be correctly assessed for their risks to reoffend, and require parole agents to get information from other states and the federal government if those were applicable. Also recommended was that there be a coordination with local law enforcement and public safety officials, such as in fire departments.

  In response to the special report, Matthew Cate, the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, agreed with the recommendations and added, “It is regrettable that the victims in this case were not discovered sooner. We are committed to doing everything we can to improve our system so that high-risk parolees are more closely supervised.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “ANY DAY I CAN SEE THAT MAN IN SHACKLES IS A GOOD DAY FOR ME.”

  Every week in 2009 seemed to bring some new development in the Jaycee Lee Dugard/Phil Garrido saga. From his jailhouse cell, Phil Garrido contacted KCRA’s Walt Gray once again. This time, it was by letter. In the letter, Phil wrote with many misnomers and misspellings that Jaycee Dugard’s “free speech rights” had been violated when she asked for a lawyer on August 26 at the Concord Parole Office. Phil probably meant her Miranda rights had been violated, not free speech. Phil wrote, She has repeatedly been denied access to have an attorney present during questioning. Over and over she clearly expressed this request from beginning to the conclusion of questioning.

  Phil added that he wanted Walt Gray to contact Jaycee Lee Dugard and make sure her “civil rights” were being enforced. Phil also wanted Gray to take the letter to a “private attorney” for Jaycee’s “best interest.” Phil noted that “her two children” witnessed Jaycee’s request for a lawyer at the Concord Parole Office.

  Walt Gray went to the jail in Placerville to see if Phil Garrido could explain himself more thoroughly about all of this. But Phil told the jail staff he would not meet with Gray, unless his attorney was present.

  Susan Gellman was less than happy about Phil’s latest letter, and she met with Walt Gray at the jail, after being informed by jail staff about all that was transpiring there. Gellman said that Phil was instructed not to speak to the media, and that she was going to emphasize that with her client once again. Then Gellman made a short comment that the case had a long way to go and she wanted it to play out in court, and not in the media.

  About the media, Bill Clark, chief assistant district attorney in El Dorado County, told reporters that Phil Garrido now had access to television in jail and knew what was happening with the case. The unspoken word was—how much was Phil learning from the media, and then thinking about how best to finesse his defense and use the media in his plans?

  The incident with Walt Gray had barely died down, when both Katie Callaway Hall and Ken Slayton went to the Placerville Courthouse to attend a hearing for Phil and Nancy Garrido. Katie and Ken sat next to each other in the gallery, and both glared at the Garridos as they were escorted to the ju
ry box area by bailiffs.

  After the hearing, Katie told reporters, “The same old fears came back, as I felt thirty-two years ago when he had me. It was intensely emotional. I just feel so intensely passionate about this. I’m going to make sure that man goes away forever this time.”

  One reporter asked if Phil had looked at her in the gallery, and Katie said, “He looked right at me, and I just glared back. I just wanted to say, ‘Look at me! You know, I’m here!’”

  Asked if she had a message for Jaycee Dugard, Katie replied, “Just be strong. Be strong. Try and remember that [Phillip Garrido] did something horribly wrong.”

  Asked if she wanted to meet Jaycee someday, Katie said that she did, and added, “I just want to give her a hug.”

  As far as Ken Slayton went, he was there with his lawyer, Gloria Allred. After the hearing, Slayton told reporters, “Hopefully, in a short period of time, I get to see Jaycee. I want her to know I am in support, and that the support will continue.”

  Soon there was another upheaval in the court proceedings. On November 5, Nancy Garrido’s lawyer, Gilbert Maines, was ordered to a closed-door hearing with Judge Douglas Phimister. After the hearing, Maines was relieved by Judge Phimister of being Nancy’s lawyer. Maines was allowed to appeal this removal, and another hearing on the matter was scheduled for November 30.

  No reasons for the removal were given to the press, but rumors started bubbling to the surface as to the reason why. There were allegations that Maines had been at a local golf course and had too much to drink. On that occasion, Maines allegedly had told someone that he was going to make a lot of money on a book deal and television deals from Nancy Garrido being his client. This conversation was apparently overheard by someone else, and that person reported the comments to Judge Phimister.