Lost and Found (11 page)

Judge Thompson said he would rule later on whether the jury could hear about any of the defendant’s prior criminal acts. Then he turned to Phillip Garrido, telling him that he must decide whether or not to take the stand in his own defense.

“I want to advise you that that is a decision you have to make,” said the judge.

“Yes, Your Honor,” replied Garrido.

“I have to tell you this, also, Mr. Garrido,” said the judge, “that if you decide to take the stand and testify, any testimony that you give can be used in any criminal prosecution. You are not testifying under any form of immunity whatsoever. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” said the defendant.

Van Hazel then asked the judge whether he would allow his client to be cross-examined about the “unnatural act” he was charged with as well as the rape. Judge Thompson replied that as it had not been raised on direct examination, he would not allow it, admitting even he did not know what it was.

Then Judge Thompson recessed the court until 1:30
P.M
., when the defense case would begin.

13

“
I HAVE HAD THIS FANTASY
”

At 1:30
P.M
., Willard Van Hazel rose from the defense bench, announcing he was waiving his right to deliver an opening statement. He then called Phillip Garrido’s friend and Reno liquor store salesman Gregory Sheppard to the stand.

The twenty-seven-year-old aspiring musician told the jury how he’d met Garrido at his mother’s liquor store and they’d become friends, sharing an interest in music.

“Now, during the two years that you knew him,” asked Van Hazel, “did you ever observe him using any drugs?”

“Yes, I have,” replied Sheppard. “I’ve seen him taking LSD, pot, cocaine, downers, uppers.”

Sheppard said he usually saw Garrido every couple of weeks, when they jammed together in the warehouse.

“At the time he was playing,” asked the attorney, “was he also administering drugs to himself?”

“Yes,” replied Sheppard.

“Do you have any idea of the type of dosage of LSD he would take?”

“I would say one or two at a time,” said Sheppard. “Sometimes maybe three. It just depended on what mood he was in.”

“Three what?” asked the judge.

“Three tabs of acid,” said Sheppard.

Then the judge asked the witness to explain to him and the jury the different types of LSD.

“Comes in pill form,” said Sheppard, “capsule form. It comes in paper, comes in sugar cubes. Those are the most common forms that LSD does come in.”

In his cross-examination, Leland Lutfy asked Sheppard about the different strengths of LSD.

“When you saw the defendant taking this LSD,” asked the prosecutor, “did you know the strength?”

“It was fairly strong,” said Sheppard. “It was blotter-type LSD . . . on a piece of paper.”

“And the blotter type of LSD,” asked Lutfy, “there are different strengths in that, is there not?”

“Yes, there is,” said Sheppard.

Then Willard Van Hazel called his client, Phillip Garrido, to the stand. The tall, thin defendant, wearing a blue suit and brown tie, stood up and walked across the courtroom to the stand.

“Are you married?” asked the defender.

“Yes, sir,” answered Garrido.

“Happily?”

“Very happily.”

“Do you find your wife attractive?”

“She is beautiful,” Garrido replied emphatically.

Then Van Hazel asked how long he had been using narcotics. Garrido replied that he had started using marijuana in 1969, a month after graduating high school. His first LSD experience came just a month after that.

He told the jury he had first been arrested in 1969 for marijuana and LSD.

“What other drugs besides marijuana and LSD have you used?” asked Lutfy.

“Cocaine has been one of the more frequent drugs I have used,” Garrido replied matter-of-factly. “On occasion I have taken downers and uppers, but not very often.”

Then his attorney asked if he ever combined drugs with each other.

“Whenever I take LSD,” he replied, “I also smoke marijuana. And whenever I have had the chance, I have snorted cocaine at the same time. It is a very expensive drug, so that the occasion is only off and on.”

Van Hazel asked how frequently he had taken LSD over the previous couple of years. Garrido said he tripped out on LSD every couple of days, but if he took it too frequently, he would have to take more and more for it to work.

“What is the most you have ever taken on an occasion in the last two years?” asked Van Hazel.

“I have taken up to ten hits,” replied Garrido. “All at once.”

“Have you ever OD’d, or whatever the proper expression is?” asked the defense attorney.

“The only time that I have ever had bad trips is in my younger part of my experiences with LSD. As far as frightening experience.”

Then his attorney asked if LSD and cocaine stimulated him sexually.

“Beyond a doubt,” Garrido replied, adding LSD turned him on the most.

Van Hazel then asked him if he had taken cocaine around the time of the alleged offense. Garrido said yes, as he’d had some money available.

“I would buy quite a bit,” he told the jury. “A large amount that I would put myself up on a cocaine high for two or three days. And sometime even without sleep to the manner of burning out my whole body.”

But he claimed not to have taken cocaine the day he had met Katie Callaway, although he had dropped four hits of LSD purchased in South Lake Tahoe.

Then the defense attorney asked if he had sexual fantasies in the late sixties, when he had first got into drugs. Garrido said he certainly did. He would masturbate at home to pornographic magazines, or at a local drive-in. Then he described to the jury how he would arrange two towels over the side windows of his car, so he couldn’t be seen, and masturbate in the backseat. But over the past two years, he said, he had begun screening pornographic movies at home on his projector.

“Did you engage in that activity in any other public places?” asked his attorney.

“You mean masturbation?” asked Garrido.

“Yes.”

“Well, I have done it in restaurants, bathrooms, lavatories, different types of amusement places, such as a bar.”

“Have you done it in residential areas?”

“Yes,” he replied impassively, “looking into windows.”

“What were you looking at?”

“Women.”

“What were the women doing?”

“They were either clothed or partly clothed.”

“And you would masturbate yourself then?”

“Yes.”

Then Van Hazel asked his client to tell the jury where else in public he had pleasured himself.

“I have done it by the sides of schools,” he replied, “grammar schools and high schools. In my car while I was watching young females.”

“How old were they, would you guess?” asked Van Hazel.

“From seven to ten.”

“Did you ever expose or exhibit yourself on those occasions?”

“A few times.”

“What would you do?”

“Open the car door.”

“How would you be dressed?”

“Pants down to my knees.”

Van Hazel then asked if there was a certain type of pornography that turned him on. Garrido replied that he particularly loved looking at bondage pictures.

“Women in handcuffs, chained,” he told the jury. “There [are] the positions that the women are in the magazines . . . the different positions.”

“Did this sexual fantasy,” asked Van Hazel, “or whatever you want to call it, become increasingly real to you, so you could visualize without pictures, just by closing your eyes?”

“Yes.”

“Were you increasingly obsessed with it?”

“Yes. It started the first time I went to a drive-in and started masturbating myself. I found that from that point on, I just increased it into a realm that I didn’t even realize.”

Then, gently guided by his attorney, Garrido admitted getting in Katie Callaway’s car at Ink’s Market, and seizing her when she stopped to let him out.

“Did you handcuff her?” asked his attorney.

“Yes.”

“Bind her with a strap?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take her with tape on her mouth across the line into Nevada?

“No,” answered Garrido. “She had no tape on her at that time. I didn’t tape her until I got to the gas station, and then I pulled into it, and only taped her for the few minutes that we were there until we left.”

Garrido admitted taking her across the state line against her will, saying he was powerless to resist his sexual impulses.

“I have had this fantasy,” he told the jury, “and this sexual thing that has overcome me.”

“Didn’t you know you could be caught and criminally punished for it?” asked Van Hazel.

“Criminally,” replied Garrido, “yes, I did know that.”

“Didn’t you think it was wrong?”

“No.”

“Well, who told you it was right?” asked the defender. “Did your parents bring you up to believe that was morally right to do?”

“No,” replied Garrido. “My parents never instructed me sexually at all. But just from my parents bringing me up—no.”

“You didn’t learn in school it was right, did you?”

“No.”

“But you didn’t think it was wrong?”

“Not at that point in time, no.”

Garrido then admitted telling Katie Callaway he was unable to control his behavior.

“Did you tell her you were sorry you were doing this?” asked Van Hazel.

“Yes.”

“Why were you?”

“Because she was so nice to me.”

“But you weren’t sorry enough to stop, were you?”

“No.”

The attorney then asked why he had not just had sex with her in the bushes while they were still in California, as she had offered.

“Because I couldn’t help myself,” replied Garrido, showing the first hint of emotion since he took the stand. “I had this fantasy that was driving me to do this. Inside of me. Something that was making me do it . . . no way to stop it.”

Then the attorney asked if he had wanted to be caught, giving his victim several clues to his identity, like his real name and wife’s occupation.

“No,” said Garrido. “She was convincing me that she was enjoying what she was doing, and I just didn’t know what I was doing to be able to tell her that.”

“You really thought she wanted to do that?”

“In my own mixed-up mind, yes.”

Finally, Van Hazel asked why he didn’t get his sexual gratification from the legal brothels in Nevada.

“I went once when I was younger,” he answered, “and it never did do nothing for me. I have had the advantage of being with many women . . . with their will.”

“But that isn’t your sex thing?” said his attorney. “That isn’t what drives you?”

“No,” said Garrido, shaking his head excitedly.

“And yet,” said Van Hazel, “you have stated, ‘I live a clean life.’ ”

“Besides this fantasy, yes,” he replied. “I don’t go breaking into people’s houses. I don’t go to hurt anybody.”

Before starting his cross-examination, prosecutor Leland Lutfy asked Judge Thompson to allow questions about his failed kidnap attempt, an hour before this alleged offense. Judge Thompson said he needed to hear some of the psychiatric testimony before making his decision.

Then the jury were summoned back into the courtroom and Lutfy began questioning the defendant.

“Do you know what the terms ‘right and wrong’ mean?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Garrido nervously.

“Do they have any meaning for you?”

“Yes.”

“Is it right to beat your wife?”

“No.”

“Would it be wrong to beat your wife?”

“Yes.”

Garrido testified that he and his wife Chris had “an understanding” about his sexual activity.

“Did she know where you were the night you kidnapped Miss Callaway?” asked the prosecutor.

“No,” answered Garrido. “The only thing my wife knew was that I went to South Lake Tahoe to get LSD.”

The prosecutor then asked at what point had he taken the four hits of LSD on the night of the abduction.

“Right after the abduction,” claimed Garrido.

“You didn’t take it before the abduction?”

“No.”

“Do you have sexual relations with your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Does she restrict your sexual activities with her?” asked Lutfy.

“No.”

“Does she let you do what you want to do?”

“Well,” replied Garrido, “I don’t hurt her, so she does restrict me, yes.”

“Why don’t you harm your wife?”

“Because I love her.”

“Is it only people that you don’t love that you harm?”

“I didn’t feel I was harming Katherine Callaway,” he said. “So I don’t feel I was harming anybody.”

“You didn’t think you were harming her when you put handcuffs on her?”

“No.”

“You didn’t think you were harming her when you grabbed her by the back of the neck and pushed her neck down to her knees?”

“No.”

“You didn’t think you were harming her when you put that strap around her?”

“No.”

“You didn’t think you were harming her when you threw that coat over her in the front seat?”

“No.”

“You didn’t think you were harming her when you threw her in the back seat—or put her in the back seat—with that coat over her again?”

“No,” replied Garrido angrily, “I didn’t put the coat over her, in the first place.”

“You never put any coat over her?” asked Lutfy.

“I did after the gas station,” clarified Garrido.

Then he maintained that he hadn’t believed he was harming his victim when he gagged her with tape and threw her on the back seat in handcuffs.

“What about the fact that you didn’t put tape over her eyes?” asked the prosecutor. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because she asked me not to,” replied the defendant.

“She asked you not to rape her, didn’t she?”

“No,” he replied resolutely.

“Not at the beginning?

“No.”

The prosecutor then asked why he masturbated in his car at drive-ins and put towels in the windows, and not publicly in the middle of the street.

“To hide myself,” replied Garrido. “I felt an embarrassment.”