Lost and Found (5 page)

Three months later, Eddie Loebs visited Reno to buy a new guitar, and his old Rock Creek bandmate invited him to a party in a local hotel room. Loebs walked in to find Garrido had unscrewed the mirror from the back of the door and placed it on the dresser. On it were several carefully laid out three-foot lines of cocaine, leading to a huge rock.

“He goes, ‘Help yourself,’ ” recalled Loebs. “I think the pile was as big as my hand. And it was really good stuff. It was really strong.”

After snorting a huge line, Garrido produced a stack of pornographic magazines, spreading them out over the floor.

“He was flipping through them with a sick-sounding giggle,” recalled Loebs. “He was saying, ‘OK, look at this, Eddie.’ And showing me these chicks saying, ‘Isn’t that amazing?’ ”

Loebs was so “sickened” by Phillip Garrido’s behavior that he never saw him again.

“He’s a sick guy,” said Loebs. “His sexual demons had taken over.”

Phillip Garrido had started organizing blue movie stag shows and hard-core orgies in his new warehouse retreat. He had equipped it with a large mattress with gaudy red bedding, several heavy rugs and other furnishings. And there was also a movie projector, colored lights and handcuffs, as well as restraints and various sexual devices.

One day, he invited William Emery over to see some “dirty films.” Emery agreed and as Garrido set up his movie projector, he explained how he bought his blue movies through a mail-order catalogue. Also there was a young man, whom Garrido introduced as a lighting director, explaining he was eager to see pornography for the first time.

Then Garrido turned down the lights, projecting a hard-core lesbian movie on his warehouse wall.

“He became very excited,” remembered Emery, “and started making verbal statements [about] their practices.”

Garrido gave a running commentary on the action, becoming particularly excited when lesbians used “large synthetic dildos and vibrators” on each other.

“It was of extreme nature,” Emery later told police, “manual, oral and anal action.”

After the film, Garrido invited Emery to “one of their parties” in his warehouse. He promised that there would be many beautiful women, supplied by his wife Chris from Harrah’s Casino where she worked.

“He said his wife fully accepted the idea,” Emery later told detectives, “and kept him in a constant supply of companions.”

When Garrido began explaining how it all worked, Emery told him he did not want to know, as it was not “his trip.” Eventually Emery did agree to go to one of his warehouse sex parties, arriving to find three “attractive women,” as well as a “young negro boy.”

An enthusiastic Garrido told his neighbor he was in a for a treat, and to be prepared for some “extreme” sex. Then the party started, with Garrido getting everyone high.

“There was the usual paraphernalia,” explained Emery. “Strong pot, chemically treated pot, PCP crystals and wine with LSD in it.” The women began drinking the LSD-laced wine and everyone was smoking the “heavily saturated pot.”

Then a beautiful woman arrived, and Garrido made a big fuss over her.

“She’s a lady’s lady,” he announced, “for all of you who understand.”

Not knowing quite how to respond to that statement, Emery remained silent. And then a few minutes later, with the party in full swing, he quietly slipped out.

It would be some weeks before he saw his neighbor again, who appeared angry he had left early.

“He seemed more distant then ever,” said Emery, “and was standoffish. I feel that this is because I failed to acknowledge his statement about the woman and . . . didn’t go to the extremes that they did.”

During the few months he knew Phillip Garrido, Emery watched him become stranger and stranger. And after the orgy, he did his best to avoid him.

“Right in front of my eyes,” said Emery, “he seemed to be changing. More extreme in everything he was doing.”

In their last ever conversation, Garrido tried to persuade him and a group of other musicians to play a gig in a brothel. They thought it a bad idea and refused. But Garrido refused to take no for an answer, asking them to imagine all the fun they could have with the prostitutes.

“They said they couldn’t play their music in a whorehouse,” said Emery.

By mid-November, Phillip Garrido had finished preparing Unit 39 for his long-awaited sex slave. He had stacked the front of the small storage area high with boxes of china and other items. Directly behind he had hung three heavy rugs from the ceiling, about a foot apart one behind the other, effectively soundproofing the warehouse. At the end of each was an opening for access, creating an overall maze effect.

The final rug then opened out onto his inner sanctum, resembling a stage with gray, blue and gold carpets hanging on each of the three walls.

Inside was a large dirty mattress, covered by an old ripped red satin sheet and a dirty imitation fur blanket. On a table nearby lay handcuffs, dildos, Vaseline, a large pair of scissors and several bottles of wine. A stack of pornographic magazines were piled against a wall.

In one corner was a movie projector and he’d hooked up multicolored stage lights. Like the director of an elaborate theatrical production, Phillip Garrido had spent weeks painstakingly setting up his warehouse. He’d written the script in his head, and now all that was needed was his leading lady.

5

“
ALL I WANT IS A PIECE OF ASS
”

On Monday afternoon, November 22, Phillip Garrido drove to South Lake Tahoe, California, to kidnap a young woman and realize his long-anticipated sexual fantasy. It was the week of Thanksgiving and there was heavy snow on the ground.

Dusk had just fallen and it was below zero when the predator entered a supermarket, searching for a young woman to snatch. He was now running on pure adrenaline, nervously stroking a pair of silver handcuffs in his trouser pocket.

Anxious not to scare off possible victims, Garrido had adopted a collegiate look. His long brown hair was tied into a neat ponytail and he wore a blue denim suit, a fashionable brown turtleneck sweater and engraved brown cowboy boots.

Before long he spotted an attractive woman shopping. After she paid the cashier, he followed her out into the parking lot, waiting as she got into her car, and started the engine. Then he walked over, tapped on the window and asked for a ride, explaining his battery had frozen and his car would not start.

She took pity on the well-dressed young man, unlocking the front passenger door for him to get in. After politely thanking her, Garrido asked to be taken to a street nearby. But a few minutes later when they arrived, he suddenly grabbed her, slipping a handcuff around one of her wrists and locking it.

Terrified, she slammed on the brakes and hit the horn as she jumped out of the still-moving car. Then with Garrido still in the passenger seat, gripping the other end of the handcuffs, she ran alongside her car still tethered to him.

“Let me go! Let me go!” she yelled. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Finally, after making her promise not to go to the police, he unlocked the handcuffs and freed her. But amazingly, he tried to entice her back in her car. When she refused he jumped out, running away into the freezing dark night.

A few blocks away, beautiful casino blackjack dealer Katie Callaway was preparing for a romantic night with her boyfriend, David Wade. The twenty-five-year-old blonde with a then fashionable Farrah Fawcett haircut had spent the afternoon preparing a crock pot dinner to take over to his house in nearby Stateline, California.

At 6:45
P.M
. Wade called, asking her to pick up some coffee, oil and rice on her drive over. The young mother of a seven-year-old boy then took a shower, dressing in a green and blue ski jacket, with a striped hooded T-shirt and Britannia Levi jeans.

At 7:15
P.M
., she left her house and five minutes later was parking her blue Ford Pinto in front of Ink’s Al Tahoe Market, on the corner of Talac and Highway 50. As she was running late, she dashed inside to get the items she needed. It was then, out of the corner of her eye, that she first noticed a tall, well-dressed man with a ponytail standing in an aisle. But she paid little attention to him.

After paying for the groceries, Katie walked out to her car and started the engine. She was about to back out of the parking space, when she heard a light tap on her window.

“I rolled down the window,” she would later testify, “and a young man was standing there. He said, ‘Excuse me, I didn’t mean to frighten you, but which way are you going?’ ”

Katie replied that she was going toward Stateline and the tall, slim man with a ponytail and oddly spaced teeth politely asked for a ride. He pointed at the Mercedes-Benz convertible parked down the street, joking it did not like the cold and refused to start. Could he possibly get a lift to his friends, he asked, so they could come back and help him to start it.

Katie said he could, as long as he would hold the plastic containers containing the hot meal she had prepared, occupying the passenger’s side floor and front seat.

“Okay,” he said, as he got into her car and sat down, loading the containers onto his lap.

She then asked where he was going.

“A little ways,” he replied, as he pointed down Highway 50 toward Stateline.

They sat in silence, before the stranger asked if she lived and worked in South Lake Tahoe and skied. Katie had no interest in making small talk, so she just replied yes or no to all his questions.

A few minutes later, she took a right into Ski Run Boulevard, informing him that her turn to Stateside was coming up soon. The man nodded, replying that that they were almost there. She asked what exact street he wanted. He said he could not remember the name but would know it by sight.

Katie turned left on Willow Avenue until she reached Birch Street, saying this was where she turned off for her boyfriend’s house. That was fine, said the man, pointing to the Slalom Inn Motel neon sign a couple of blocks ahead.

When they got to the motel, Katie asked where he wanted to be dropped off. The man then pointed toward the end of the street at a set of duplexes with a yellow porch light on. The house he needed was on the other side of them, he said.

“As I pulled in,” she later remembered, “there was no house. There was an empty lot, and I looked at him to say, ‘Are you sure this is the place?’ ”

The man then casually took the salad off his lap and placed it on the back seat. Then without warning he suddenly lunged at her, grabbing the ignition key and throwing it on the ground.

“I thought he was going to try and kiss me,” she said. “Then he got me and just started grabbing.”

He seized her hands, smashing her head down hard into the steering wheel.

“All I want is a piece of ass!” he declared. “If you do everything I say, you won’t get hurt. I’m dead serious. I’ll hurt you if you make me.”

Katie tried to raise her head, but he forced it down below the dashboard. Terrified, she asked what he wanted, saying she would do anything.

His only reply was to produce handcuffs from his pocket, tightly cuffing her hands behind her back.

“Okay,” he told her, “we’re going to go for a little ride. Now we’re going to change places.”

Then he stood up, easily lifting the 105-pound woman across into the passenger’s seat. He then maneuvered himself into the driver’s side, forcing her head down hard into the seat.

“All right,” he told her. “I am going to strap your head down . . . until we get out of town.”

He then pulled a leather strap out of his long hair, placing it around her neck and under her knees, forcing her face down below the dashboard to conceal her from view. Then he threw a coat over her head and drove off.

Petrified, Katie asked where he was taking her.

“Somewhere far away,” he replied calmly. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it all planned.”

Phillip Garrido adjusted the driver’s seat and mirrors before heading north on Ski Run Boulevard. So far everything was going to plan, and he would have her inside his Reno warehouse in a couple of hours.

Trembling beneath the coat on the passenger-side floor, Katie Callaway could smell the beer batter which had splashed onto her pants in the struggle. She knew her boyfriend was expecting her soon and would worry if she was late.

She then asked her abductor when he was bringing her back, and whether it would be very long.

“Maybe I will bring you back tomorrow,” came Garrido’s cold reply.

Now Katie became really scared, thinking he was going to kill her. But her survival instincts kicked in and she told him to stop the car, so they could have sex in the bushes there and then.

“I told him I would do anything he wanted,” she later testified, “if he would not hurt me. I figured we were going off on some dark road, and I just wanted to get it over with. And I said, ‘Why can’t we stay right here?’ ”

Garrido told her that that was not what he wanted and she should not argue, as he had everything planned.

“You might as well understand that you’re going to be with me,” he told her, as they drove on into the night.

A few minutes later he broke the silence, saying he’d gone to South Lake Tahoe to abduct a girl. He said they should wait until they reached a shed he had rented in the desert. Then if she did everything to please him sexually, he promised not to hurt her unless he had to.

“He kept saying he wasn’t going to hurt me,” recalled Katie. “He said he would not kill me, he would only go to the extent of knocking me out if I tried to scream.”

Garrido then boasted of abducting two other girls recently, saying that he had not hurt either of them.

“I realized that he had plans of taking me to somewhere he had all fixed up that was far away,” she said, “and I wasn’t coming back. I had to cope with the situation.”

Then Katie pointed out her car was almost out of gas, and he wasn’t going to get very far. Garrido told her not to worry, as he knew a self-service gas station nearby, where he was going to stop for gas because it did not have an attendant.