Case File: Jaycee Dugard

In 1991, Jaycee Dugard was a freckle-faced blonde in the fifth grade, living in the bucolic community of South Lake Tahoe, nestled in the mountains near the California-Nevada state line. Her mother, Terry Dugard, and stepfather, Carl Probyn, had moved to the small town one year earlier because they thought it was a safe place to raise children.

On the morning of June 10, after saying goodbye to her stepfather, Jaycee walked up the sidewalk to catch the school bus when a car pulled up to the curb. Because the driver seemed to need directions, Jaycee approached the car. “And then,” Jaycee later testified, “all of a sudden his hand shoots out and I feel tingly and like losing control, and I’m in the bushes, trying to go back, and somebody is dragging me.”

The driver of the car, Phillip Garrido, had shocked Jaycee with a stun gun; his wife, Nancy Garrido, forced the child into the back of a car and covered her with a blanket. As the car drove off, Jaycee later said, "I heard voices in the front, and the man said, 'I can't believe we got away with it.' And he started laughing."

The Garridos drove Jaycee some 160 miles to their home in Antioch, Calif., located roughly halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. Immediately upon arrival, Jaycee was brought into a ramshackle backyard crammed with tents, rundown shacks, tarps and vegetation, then stripped naked and placed in handcuffs.

Jaycee had no way of knowing that a soundproofed shed in the squalid backyard would be her home for the next 18 years. The only thing she kept from her previous life was a small butterfly-shaped ring that she hid from the Garridos.

A few days after her abduction, Phillip sexually assaulted his young prisoner; he would continue to rape Jaycee for years afterward.

Jaycee's abduction wasn’t the first time Phillip victimized a young girl: He was arrested in 1972 for drugging and raping a 14-year-old girl. The charges were dropped when the victim declined to testify.

Four years later, Phillip was arrested again after he abducted a 24-year-old woman in South Lake Tahoe and took her to Reno, Nev., where he raped her. This time, he was tried and sentenced to a total of 55 years in prison for kidnapping and sexual assault. During his imprisonment at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas, Phillip met Nancy Bocanegra, who was visiting another inmate. The couple married inside the prison in 1981.

After serving 11 years of his sentence–including doing time in a Nevada prison–Phillip was out on parole in California by 1988. The Garridos moved to Antioch, where Phillip kept in touch with his parole officers and other authorities on a regular basis. He also wore an ankle monitor and registered as a sex offender.

After Jaycee’s abduction in June 1991, communities around the Lake Tahoe region responded with search parties, fliers and posters. The crime drew the attention of region-wide law enforcement and was featured on nightly news and unsolved crime programs nationwide for months.

But despite the attention from law enforcement and news media, Jaycee remained undiscovered in the Garridos’ backyard. Phillip often warned her that if she tried to escape, his Doberman Pinschers would attack her, or he would again use his stun gun on her.

Shortly after her capture, a child living next door spoke with Jaycee through the fence separating their properties; seeing this, Phillip–known throughout the neighborhood as “Creepy Phil”–hastily ushered Jaycee back inside and then constructed an 8-foot-tall fence to ensure total privacy for his captive.

Jaycee later testified that Phillip–often under the influence of methamphetamine or other drugs–told her he had a “sex problem and that … he got me so he wouldn’t have to do this to anybody else. So, I was helping him.” He also claimed to have profound religious insights and was a chosen servant of God.

In August 1994, Jaycee, at age 14, gave birth to her first child fathered by Phillip. Three years later, she gave birth to her second daughter at age 17. Both times, she gave birth in the backyard with no medical attention.

There were several occasions when police could have intervened at the Garrido residence but failed to do so. A 911 caller in 2006 reported that children were living in the backyard, but a deputy sheriff who went to the property and spoke with Phillip neglected to investigate the backyard.

In another disturbing lapse, a parole officer saw a 12-year-old girl on the property but accepted Phillip’s statement that she was his brother’s daughter, even though Phillip’s brother told authorities he had no children.

Over the years, Phillip began to allow Jaycee and her two daughters more freedom, even taking them to his printing business, where Jaycee helped with graphic design. Nancy also took the girls shopping, but they were never allowed to socialize or talk to strangers.

By 2009, Phillip was still convinced God had given him a religious mission to fulfill, and in August of that year, he took his two daughters to the University of California-Berkeley. He told campus authorities he wanted to hold a religious event, but his odd behavior aroused their suspicion, and they asked police to intervene.

A background check by the campus police revealed his checkered past as a convicted kidnapper and rapist, and he was ordered to meet with parole officers in August 2009. Arriving with his wife Nancy, Jaycee and their two daughters, Phillip initially insisted that Jaycee and their daughters were distant relatives, but his lies crumbled under interrogation. He and Nancy were arrested and charged with multiple crimes, including rape and false imprisonment.

Jaycee herself tried to keep up the facade as a relative of Phillip’s, but after his arrest, she confessed to authorities that she was the girl who had been abducted 18 years earlier.

Both Phillip and Nancy Garrido eventually pleaded guilty to the charges against them, and in 2011, Philip was sentenced to 431 years to life in prison. Nancy was given a sentence of 36 years to life. Both are still serving their sentences in the California prison system.

After the Garridos’ arrest, Jaycee was reunited with her family. At the Garridos’ sentencing, Jaycee’s mother read a statement from Jaycee to her captors that said, “Everything you have ever done to me has been wrong, and someday I hope you can see that. Thankfully I am doing well now and no longer live in a nightmare. I have wonderful friends and family around me. Something you can never take from me again. You do not matter anymore.”

In 2011, Jaycee published a book about her abduction by the Garridos, A Stolen Life: A Memoir. Her second book, Freedom: My Book of Firsts, was published in 2016. Both books detail the difficult emotional journey that she and her daughters have taken to overcome their captivity. Of her daughters, Jaycee told ABC News in 2016, "They're so resilient, and they're beautiful and loving, and I'm really lucky.”

Shortly after she was freed, Jaycee successfully sued the state of California for $20 million for its numerous lapses and missed opportunities to discover her captivity. A review board found the California Department of Corrections had consistently failed to properly supervise Garrido since 1999, when his parole case was handed over from federal authorities to the state.

Jaycee's abduction and lengthy captivity have raised awareness of other such crimes, and her story gives hope to survivors and their families. “Jaycee reminds us that no matter what happens, we don’t give up on these children,” Robert Lowery of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children told ABC News. “And at the National Center, we will not close a case until that child has been physically found, no matter what the circumstances. Hope is always going to be there.”