Lost and Found (25 page)

On June 11, 2002, one day after the eleventh anniversary of the abduction, Phillip Garrido met his new parole agent, Agent R. Rodriguez, at the Concord parole office. While there he completed a drug test, again explaining his prescribed medication would always give a positive result.

“To evaluate his testing,” wrote Agent Rodriguez in his report, “we need to see the other drug use. Testing once per month at home.”

On June 19, Garrido’s test came back from the laboratory positive. Rodriguez duly noted that he informed his supervisor, who asked him to note the incident, but that no activity report was needed.

One month later—on June 22—Agent Rodriguez paid an early morning visit to Parolee Garrido’s house. It was the first time any parole agent had gone to 1554 Walnut Avenue in more than a year. When no one answered the front door, Rodriguez left his business card, instructing Garrido to call him.

When Agent Rodriguez next visited the Garrido home at 8:51
A.M
. on August 22, Pat Franzen answered the door, saying her son was not home.

“Mom showed me their room,” the agent later reported. “First room off the living room. Big house.”

Five weeks later, when Agent Rodriguez paid his next visit, Parolee Garrido was at home. This time he met Nancy, noting that they were “Doing ok.” Once again Garrido was unable to provide a urine sample, promising to come into the parole office and give one, which he did three hours later.

During one of his visits, Agent Rodriguez drew a simple sketch map of the Garrido house in pencil. Through the front door he drew a large living room, backing on to the kitchen/dining room area. Phillip’s bedroom backed onto the porch with another, presumably Nancy’s, to the right of it. A bathroom separated that bedroom from the one at the front, occupied by his mother.

Behind the porch, the agent noted the “backyard door”—the door that lead out to the secret prison where Alyssa and her two daughters were being held.

Lorenzo Love and Christine Meacham, who own a transport and tow company in Oakley, California, became friends with Phillip Garrido after hiring him to print their business cards and invoices. And before long he opened up about his past life.

“He told us he had a drugs, gambling and sex problem,” recalled Meacham. “There’s a few people that come into this office, and if I don’t feel comfortable I’ll ask them to walk outside and do the transaction. Not once did I ever feel threatened sexually.”

Every couple of weeks, the printer arrived at their office to deliver their orders. And although they thought him an old hippie who had probably taken too many drugs in his youth, they found him surprisingly businesslike and efficient.

“His business he conducted very well,” said Meacham. “He was always on time. He was very presentable. His charges were cheap.”

On one visit, Garrido discussed his business, saying his daughter Alyssa helped him with the printing and that he also had two grandchildren. Then he gave them a Printing For Less business card, with a smiling blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman on it.

“I was like, ‘Who is that? She’s gorgeous,’ ” said Meacham. “And he said, ‘That’s my daughter.’ ”

When Meacham remarked that his daughter should be a model, Garrido smiled, agreeing she was “very gorgeous.”

Over time, Meacham and Love developed a good rapport with Phillip Garrido, who often stayed with them for an hour or more.

“We weren’t like, ‘Get out!’ ” she explained. “We’d listen to him. He’d sing his songs that he wrote to us. Gorgeous voice. He loved our metal acoustic building and he’d just come out and sing.”

Garrido told them that he suffered from schizophrenia and A.D.D., and was under heavy medication.

“He told us he used to take drugs,” Meacham recalled, “that he is now on a certain drug for a schizophrenic that is comparable to crank. He was also balancing the Ritalin they give you for A.D.D.”

Although her partner Lorenzo Love thought Garrido was “fucking nuts,” he still liked him.

“One time he says something that kind of caught my attention,” Love remembered. “He said, ‘I’m high on medicine. I started doing the crank.’ ”

Later, there were reports of Phillip Garrido being a “tweaker,” and using an old van in the hidden backyard as a methamphetamine laboratory. Crystal meth is big business in the poor unincorporated Antioch badlands, and it was rumored that Garrido was manufacturing and selling the drug.

There would also be media speculation that he had turned Nancy into a hard-core methamphetamine addict, so he could control her even more.

In late 2002, realtor Deepal Karunaratne’s print orders started coming back riddled with spelling mistakes and inaccuracies. So he complained to Phillip Garrido, asking why the quality of his work had fallen.

“He told me that he had dyslexia,” recalled Karunaratne. “He said his daughter was the one who is handling all the work.”

Karunaratne asked to meet with Alyssa, so he could deal with her directly. At first Garrido was reluctant, but eventually he invited his longtime client over to his house for a meeting.

When Karunaratne arrived at 1554 Walnut Avenue, Garrido made him wait at the gate at the end of the driveway, while he fetched Alyssa.

“He brought her out to the front of the house,” recalled Karunaratne. “He introduced us. She was very normal. A very pretty young lady, but she was kind of dirty blonde.”

Wearing gloves and dressed in ink-stained work overalls, Alyssa was polite and professional.

“We talked specifically business at the beginning,” remembered Karunaratne. “She appeared very normal. I regarded her as his daughter.”

Initially, Alyssa found it difficult to understand the Sri Lankan–born businessman, but they soon developed a good rapport.

“We got used to each other,” he explained. “She is a very good graphic designer and understands computer graphics. She was very good at her job.”

From then on Karunaratne was in touch with Alyssa at least twice a week by phone or e-mail, with the occasional meeting in Walnut Avenue. But their conversations were limited to business.

Once Karunaratne asked Garrido if he could come into the backyard to see the printing operation, but he refused.

“He said it was a trade secret,” said Karunaratne.

In 2002, El Dorado County, California, implemented the Amber Alert network, to quickly track down missing children who may have been abducted. Named after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was abducted in Arlington, Texas, and then savagely murdered in January 1996, the nationwide plan has saved many children’s lives since it was first introduced.

If Amber Alerts had been in place in 1991, investigators believe Jaycee Lee Dugard would have been found quickly, and her abductors caught.

“Would there have been a greater likelihood we could have caught [Phillip Garrido] in the early 1990s had these systems been in place? Absolutely,” the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children president Ernie Allen later told the
Contra Costa Times
.

30

“
I DON’T WANT TO HURT HIM
”

Phillip Garrido always talked a good game. Constantly in motion and using his hands to make points, the eccentric printing entrepreneur loved to embellish the truth. As Tim Allen got to know him better over the years, he became curious about his printing operation and just how it worked.

“Phillip would just say it was a family business,” said Allen, “and they did all the work in a metal building behind the house. He kind of described the property. So in my mind I thought they actually had a printing company in a big metal building you could drive cars into.”

Garrido also loved talking about his cutting-edge printing equipment.

“He was always bragging,” recalled Allen, “about how he was buying new machinery—a new copy machine, new computers, new printing equipment. But I always encouraged him, as he was kind of a self-employed entrepreneur. Instead of relying on government support, he was out there beating the pavement.”

Perhaps the only one of his clients to ever see his archaic printing equipment firsthand was Christine Meacham, who claims to have been in his backyard at least eight or nine times.

“I needed to check the first proofing on a print order,” she said. “He took me into the backyard. I was in three tents. One tent had printing, the other had different colored paper, the other had stenciling.”

Garrido also allowed Marc Lister into the backyard several times, showing off his recording equipment.

“Phil just told me,” said Lister, “that shed back there was his recording studio and his print shop. You’d just have to assume he was telling the truth. There was no reason to question what he was telling me.”

Another client, Ben Daughdrill, who owned a hauling and demolition company in Oakley, collaborated with Alyssa on several new advertising campaigns.

“She was the brains in the business,” said Daughdrill.

Whenever Daughdrill called Printing For Less with an order, Phillip Garrido would answer the phone. Then he would hear him relaying instructions to Alyssa, who would then take over the project. From then on they would correspond through e-mail, working up the proofs and designs.

“I always got the impression,” said Daughdrill, “that she was the one doing the design and the artwork.”

Several times over the years, Daughdrill met Alyssa when he came to collect orders, and was impressed by her professionalism.

“She came across as just a nice, genuine person,” he said. “[I] didn’t see anything that was weird or like she was looking over her shoulder. Just a normal person.”

On September 5, 2003, Alyssa, now twenty-three, wrote this entry in her secret journal, providing a clear insight into the mental turmoil that engulfed her. Her desperate cry for her and the children’s freedom reveals her torturously conflicted feelings for her captor.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” she wrote. “Sometimes I think my very presence hurts him . . . so how can I ever tell him how I want to be free. Free to come and go as I please . . . Free to say I have a family. I will never cause him pain if it’s in my power to prevent it. FREE.”

In 2004, Phillip Garrido stopped paying property taxes on 1554 Walnut Avenue. Technically the deeds were still in his mother’s name, but since she was suffering from dementia, he and Nancy were now paying all the bills.

Nancy Garrido was working at the Diamond Ridge Healthcare Center in Pittsburg as a laundress and cleaner. It was a big step down from her old career as a nurse, having not renewed her state nursing license since 1995 and letting it lapse.

“Nancy was a nice woman,” her former co-worker Janie Bates later told the
National Enquirer
, “but she often looked unkempt.”

Bates said Nancy often came to work looking like she had slept in her clothes and was in need of a wash.

“Nancy’s hair was always oily,” Bates recalled. “Her clothes were not filthy, but not fresh either. They were never ironed.”

During breaks, the disheveled cleaner often spoke about her husband.

“Nancy talked about Phillip like she worshipped him,” said Bates. “We all thought it was so strange the way she looked off into space when she talked about him.”

Nancy also told them that Phillip was her only family, as she could not have children. She explained that Phillip promised God would bless them with children, and that God always kept his promises to her husband.

After finishing work, Nancy went home to take care of her ailing mother-in-law before going into the backyard to garden.

“Nancy worked hard in that yard when she wasn’t inside,” said longtime neighbor Helen Boyer, “weeding, watering, mowing.”

As a young man in Reno, Nevada, Phillip Garrido had often organized drug-fuelled late-night sex orgies. And toward the end of 2004, he reportedly started throwing wild parties in his backyard, keeping his neighbors up in the early hours with loud rock ’n’ roll music.

One night Mike Rogers, whose backyard backed directly onto the Garridos’, was unable to sleep because of the deafening music and drunken laughter. So he peered over the fence into Garrido’s backyard and was shocked.

“What I saw was not normal,” Rogers later told the
News of the World
. “Eight to ten men, mostly Mexican, would gather in a line drinking beer, yelling and screaming and swearing.”

Rogers says Garrido regularly threw late-night parties where groups of men would drink beer around a campfire before mysteriously disappearing into one of the tents.

“I saw them entering the tent one by one,” he said. “On a number of occasions I saw them bobbing up and down through the window and I thought, ‘My God, there is something sexual going on in there.’

“I thought they had a prostitute or something in there. I thought it might have been some kind of sex party or something.”

Rogers said the backyard parties lasted until two in the morning. But he never reported them to the police, for fear of reprisals.

“These guys were unsavory-looking men,” he explained, “and they were drinking beer and smashing the bottles on the ground. I didn’t know what they were capable of.”

Polly White was also kept awake by the parties, hearing stories of men lining up outside the tent for sex.

“I did hear men laughing and loud music playing,” she said. “It’s frightening to know something like this was happening at the end of your backyard.”

On July 5, 2004, Alyssa wrote an entry in her journal, revealing the total control Phillip Garrido now exerted over her. Thirteen years after being snatched from her family into his dark realm, she still desperately struggled to keep her identity. But it was a battle she could not possibly win.

“It feels like I’m sinking,” she wrote. “I’m afraid I want control of my life . . . this is supposed to be my life to do with what I like . . . but once again he has taken it away. How many times is he allowed to take it away from me? I’m afraid he doesn’t see how the things he says makes me a prisoner . . . Why don’t I have control of
my life
! I feel I can’t even be sure my thoughts are my own.”