| Kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard | |
|---|---|
 Childhood photo of Dugard | |
| Location |
|
| Date | June 10, 1991 – August 26, 2009 |
Attack type | |
| Victim | Jaycee Lee Dugard |
| Perpetrators |
|
| Motive | Sexual gratification |
| Verdict | Pleaded guilty |
| Convictions | |
| Sentence |
|
| Litigation |
|
On June 10, 1991, Jaycee Lee Dugard, an eleven-year-old girl, was abducted from a street while walking to a school bus stop in Meyers, California, United States. Searches began immediately after Dugard's disappearance, but no reliable leads were generated, even though several people witnessed the kidnapping. Dugard remained missing for over 18 years until 2009, when a convicted sex offender, Phillip Garrido, visited the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, accompanied by two adolescent girls, who were discovered to be the biological daughters of Garrido and Dugard, on August 24 and 25 of that year. The unusual behavior of the trio sparked an investigation that led Garrido's parole officer, Edward Santos Jr.[2], to order Garrido to take the two girls to a parole office in Concord, California, on August 26. Garrido was accompanied by a woman who was eventually identified as Dugard.
Garrido and his wife, Nancy, were arrested after Dugard's reappearance. On April 28, 2011, they pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping Dugard. Investigators revealed that Dugard had been kept in concealed tents, sheds, and lean-tos in an area behind the Garridos' house at 1554 Walnut Avenue in Antioch, California, where Phillip repeatedly raped Dugard during the first six years of her captivity. During her confinement, Dugard gave birth to two daughters, who were aged eleven and fifteen at the time of Dugard's reappearance. On June 2, 2011, Garrido was sentenced to 431 years to life imprisonment; his wife, Nancy, was sentenced to 36 years to life. Garrido is a person of interest in at least one other missing persons case in the San Francisco Bay Area.
As Garrido had been on parole for a 1976 rape at the time of her kidnapping, Dugard sued the state of California, which had taken over his parole supervision from the federal government in 1999,[3] on account of the numerous lapses by law enforcement that contributed to her continued captivity and sexual assault. In 2010, the state of California awarded the Dugard family US$20 million. Dugard also sued the federal government on similar grounds pertaining to Garrido's time as a federal parolee, but in a 2–1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed that suit because Garrido had not victimized her at the time he was placed under the supervision of the federal parole system and that as a result of this, "there was no way to anticipate she would become his victim."[4] In 2011, Dugard wrote an autobiography titled A Stolen Life: A Memoir. Her second book, Freedom: My Book of Firsts, was published in 2016.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
- ^ a b "Phillip, Nancy Garrido sentenced in Jaycee Dugard kidnapping". www.cnn.com. Retrieved June 3, 2023.
- ^ TeSelle, Mike (November 2, 2022). "Parole agent central to Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapping case breaks 13-year silence". KCRA-TV. Archived from the original on November 3, 2022. Retrieved January 1, 2023.
- ^ Rothfeld, Michael (November 4, 2009). "State prison watchdog strongly criticizes procedures in Jaycee Dugard case". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on February 8, 2014. Retrieved June 14, 2014.
- ^ Tranawala, Sudhin (March 15, 2016). "Court rejects lawsuit by kidnapping survivor Jaycee Dugard". Associated Press. Archived from the original on April 11, 2016. Retrieved June 14, 2016 – via Reading Eagle.