On June 10, 1991, in the small town of Meyers, California, 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was walking to her school bus stop just a few feet from her home. Her stepfather, Carl Probyn, watched as a gray sedan pulled up beside her. A man got out, used a stun gun on the girl, and pushed her into the car.
The vehicle disappeared before Probyn could reach it.
The kidnapping triggered one of the largest searches in El Dorado County history. Thousands of volunteers, search dogs, helicopters, and FBI agents combed the South Lake Tahoe area. Tips poured in from across California and Nevada, but none led to Jaycee.
The investigation focused on the local region and neighboring Nevada, never extending to the East Bay area where the kidnapper actually lived.
The case went cold in the weeks that followed. Jaycee’s mother, Terry Probyn, never lost hope that her daughter was still alive. What she did not know was that Jaycee was living just 120 miles away, hidden in a backyard compound in Antioch, California.
The kidnapper was Phillip Garrido, a 40-year-old registered sex offender from Antioch. In 1976, Garrido had kidnapped Katherine Callaway Hall in Nevada, bound her, held her in a shed, and sexually assaulted her for hours. He was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison plus life in state court, but was released after just 11 years, in 1988.
During his parole, Hall proactively contacted his parole officer to warn that Garrido was still dangerous and needed closer supervision. The warning was ignored. Three years later, Garrido kidnapped Jaycee Dugard.
Jaycee was taken to 1554 Walnut Street in Antioch, where Garrido lived with his wife, Nancy. Behind the house, hidden by dense trees, a tall fence, and tarps, Garrido had built a compound of tents and sheds covering about 900 square feet. There, Jaycee was kept completely isolated from the outside world.
She had no electricity, no running water, no school, and no medical care.
From the moment of her abduction, Garrido raped Jaycee repeatedly. In 1994, when she was 14, she gave birth to her first daughter, fathered by Garrido, inside the backyard compound without any medical support. In 1997, at age 17, she gave birth to her second daughter under similar circumstances.
The two girls grew up in the backyard, with no birth certificates and no legal records of their existence. Garrido told anyone who asked that they were his granddaughters.
Garrido maintained control not just through force but through a complex system of psychological manipulation. He saw himself as a prophet with a divine mission, creating a closed worldview inside the compound that became the only reality Jaycee and her daughters knew. Jaycee later wrote about this in her memoir, “A Stolen Life,” describing how she learned to survive and protect her daughters in a situation where she had no other choice.
Between 1999 and 2009, federal parole officers conducted 60 inspection visits to Garrido’s home on Walnut Street. They would knock on the door, talk to Garrido at the front, note in their files that he was compliant, and leave. Over ten years and sixty visits, none of them entered the backyard where Jaycee and her daughters were living just a few feet away, separated by a fence and some tarps.
In 2006, a neighbor reported to Antioch police that people were living in tents in Garrido’s backyard and that children’s voices could be heard from the covered area. Police went to the address, spoke with Garrido at the front of the house, but did not enter the backyard. They left with a report noting no problems at the address.
In 2008, parole authorities conducted their own investigation after receiving information about Garrido’s strange behavior. Investigators went to the Walnut Street address and questioned him about his activities. Again, no one searched the backyard.
The compound remained undiscovered.
The case broke on August 24, 2009, when Garrido arrived at the University of California, Berkeley campus with two teenage girls, his daughters from Jaycee Dugard, seeking permission to hold a religious event for his group called “God’s Desire.” Lisa Campbell, the events manager at the UC Berkeley police department, immediately sensed something was wrong. Garrido’s behavior was strange and fanatical, and the two girls seemed subdued and unhappy.
Campbell scheduled a follow-up meeting for the next day and alerted Officer Ally Jacobs. Jacobs ran a background check on Garrido and discovered he was a registered sex offender under federal supervision for kidnapping and rape. This raised immediate red flags.
A registered sex offender showing up on campus with two girls he claimed were his daughters, when there was no record of him having children.
On August 25, Jacobs and Campbell met with Garrido again, keeping things normal while investigating. After the meeting, Jacobs contacted Garrido’s parole officer, Edward Santos Jr. , and reported what they had observed.
Santos recognized the seriousness of this new information and ordered Garrido to report to the parole office in Concord immediately, bringing everyone with him.
On August 26, 2009, Garrido arrived at the Concord parole office with Nancy, the two teenage girls, and a young woman he introduced as his niece, “Alyssa.” Investigators separated everyone for questioning. During interrogation, Garrido eventually admitted to kidnapping and raping Jaycee Dugard in 1991.
The young woman who had lived for 18 years under the name Alyssa confirmed her true identity. Jaycee Dugard, the 11-year-old who had been waiting for her school bus on that June morning in 1991, was now a 29-year-old woman speaking her real name to authorities for the first time in 18 years.
That night, authorities took Jaycee and her daughters to a safe location. The FBI arranged a phone call between Jaycee and her mother, Terry Probyn, who was in Southern California. It was the first time they had heard each other’s voices in 18 years, two months, and 16 days.
The next morning, Terry flew to Northern California and reunited with her daughter and the two granddaughters she never knew existed. Jaycee’s aunt, Tina Dugard, described the reunion: “My sister’s smile was as wide as the ocean. Her oldest daughter had finally come home.
We laughed, we cried, and we enjoyed each other’s company.”
Phillip and Nancy Garrido were arrested on August 26, 2009. The initial charges included kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, multiple rape charges, and lewd acts with a minor, among others. Both initially pleaded not guilty.
In April 2011, nearly two years after their arrest, Phillip Garrido pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and 13 counts of sexual assault, including six counts of rape and seven counts of lewd acts. Nancy Garrido also pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and one count of rape by force. The plea deal was designed in part to spare Jaycee and her daughters from testifying in court.
On June 6, 2011, the sentencing hearing was held in El Dorado County Superior Court in Placerville, California. Jaycee was not present. In her statement, she wrote: “I chose not to attend today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence.
Everything you did to me was wrong, and I hope you realize that someday. I hated every second of every day for 18 years. You stole my life and my family’s life.”
Judge Douglas C. Phinster sentenced Phillip Garrido to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 431 years. Nancy Garrido received life with the possibility of parole after 36 years, the maximum sentence allowed under the laws in effect in 1991.
At 60 years old, Phillip Garrido would die in prison.
After the sentencing, attention turned to the systemic failures that allowed the abduction to continue for 18 years. Garrido was a registered sex offender under federal supervision for kidnapping and rape. Over the years, dozens of investigators visited his home, and none entered the secret compound where Jaycee was held.
A neighbor reported suspicious activity in 2006, and no effective action was taken. Investigators visited the home in 2008, and the compound was not searched.
Jaycee filed a lawsuit against the state of California for these systemic failures. The state agreed to settle for $20 million, the largest settlement in state history for parole system failures. It was an acknowledgment that what happened to Jaycee Dugard was not just a crime committed by Phillip and Nancy Garrido, but also a systemic failure by those responsible for preventing it.
In the years following her rescue, Jaycee not only survived but rebuilt her life. In 2011, she published “A Stolen Life,” a memoir recounting her 18 years of captivity. The book was widely praised as one of the most honest and courageous survivor memoirs ever written.
She also founded the J. A. C.
Foundation, an organization that supports families of abduction victims, with a focus on helping families reintegrate and recover from trauma.
The Jaycee Dugard case offers three lessons. The first concerns the decision to release Garrido after 11 years and the failure to heed the victim’s warning. When Katherine Hall warned parole officials that Garrido remained dangerous, the official noted in the file that electronic monitoring would be too complicated given the victim’s hysteria.
Three years later, Garrido kidnapped Jaycee.
The second lesson concerns the 60 parole inspections in which no one entered the backyard. This was not an individual failure but a structural one. Parole inspection procedures for sex offenders with a history of kidnapping and holding victims should include full property searches, not just a conversation at the front door.
The third lesson concerns Officers Ally Jacobs and Lisa Campbell, the UC Berkeley officers who had no special warrant, no DNA evidence, and no forensic technology. They only had a gut feeling that something was wrong when they looked at Garrido and the two young girls with him. They acted on that instinct rather than letting him walk away, as dozens of parole and police officers had done over the previous 18 years.
If you see something suspicious, a child who appears frightened, an adult exercising excessive control over those around them, or a situation that feels wrong, report it. You do not need to be 100 percent certain. Just report it and let the authorities investigate.