Missing Girl 'Back From Dead' 18 Years After Being Kidnapped

Chris Ayres in Los Angeles

Los Angeles, USA, August 29, 2009 – The blonde, blue-eyed girl was 11 years old when she was abducted outside her home near Lake Tahoe, California. After almost two decades the only hope that her parents had left was that one day her body would be found.

Friday night that same girl, Jaycee Lee Dugard, was being reunited with her family as a 29-year-old woman after walking into a police station and revealing her identity.

After interviews and DNA tests it is thought that Ms Dugard’s story has been confirmed, bringing an extraordinary end to a missing person case that in 1991 attracted the same kind of media frenzy that the disappearance of Madeleine McCann generated more than two years ago.

The elation of her reappearance soon turned to horror as details emerged of the abuse she suffered. She had been forced to live in a garden shed for almost two decades, had been raped by her captor and gave birth to two children.

Philip Garrido , 58, a convicted rapist and the suspected father of her children, and his wife, Nancy, 55, are being held by police on suspicion of kidnapping to commit rape. Bail has been set at $1 million (£600,000).

Police said that Ms Dugard had spent the past 18 years as a virtual slave, sheltered from the outside world in a hidden compound behind a grey, one-storey house in the semi-rural town of Antioch. Police described the compound as a “backyard within a backyard”, accessible only through a series of outhouses and tarpaulins.

Her children, now aged 11 and 15, were also kept locked in the compound. “None of the children have ever been to school, they've never been to a doctor,” said Fred Kollar from the police department in El Dorado County. “They were kept in complete isolation.”

Ms Dugard reappeared when Mr Garrido, a registered sex offender on lifetime parole, was ordered to visit a police station following a report of suspicious activity involving him and two young children the previous day.

He took Ms Dugard and the two children with him. Police said that after close questioning he admitted that he had kidnapped her and that the children were his.

Ms Dugard’s mother, Terry Probyn, did not make a statement. but her stepfather, Carl Probyn, said: “After 18 years, you do give up hope. This is a miracle.”

Mr Probyn was standing in his driveway on June 10, 1991, when he saw a grey car pull up beside the bus stop where his stepdaughter was waiting on her way to school. Someone reached out, grabbed her and sped off.

There were several witnesses and a massive search operation ensued, to no avail. Police never gave up on the case, though, and as recently as 2002 a former priest’s home was raided in connection with the child’s disappearance. On the FBI’s “wanted” poster — still active on the agency’s web page yesterday — the suspects were described as a man and a woman.

Mr Probyn, 60, said: “It broke my marriage up. I’ve gone through hell. I mean, I’m a suspect up until yesterday.” He lives in Orange County while Mrs Probyn lives in Los Angeles. The couple have another daughter, Shayna, who is 19.

Mr Probyn said that his wife had been called at work by an FBI agent who told her the news and that at first she thought it was a prank call. He said that his daughter called him at about 4pm on Wednesday.

“Mom has something to say to you,” she said. “Are you sitting down?” Then his wife came on the line and said, through tears, “They found Jaycee. She’s alive.” The two women flew to El Dorado to be reunited with Ms Dugard.

Neighbours said that the Garridos were “nice and friendly” and cared for an elderly parent. It was also reported that Mr Garrido held religious services in a tent in his garden and had recently claimed to have invented a device that would allow him to control sound with his mind.

Back from the dead

Katharine Farrand Dyer — also known as Boulder Jane Doe — reappeared in Australia this month after vanishing from Boulder, Colorado, in 1954. Investigators thought she had been a victim of Harvey Glatman, the so-called Lonely Hearts Killer, but Dyer, now 84, said that she had chosen to vanish for “personal reasons”

Natascha Kampusch disappeared in 1998 aged 10 and reappeared eight years later after escaping her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, who had kept her in a dungeon. She now hosts a TV talk show and owns the house where she was imprisoned

Elizabeth Smart disappeared from her family’s home in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2002 when she was 14. But nine months later she reappeared a few miles away in the company of a married couple who said they could speak to God

Natasha Ryan, 14, ran away from home in Australia in 1998. After a huge police search a man was charged with her murder. Five years later police found her hiding in a cupboard in the house that she shared with her boyfriend. They have since married

John Barnes, from Michigan, claimed this year that he was really Stephen Damman, kidnapped at the age of 2 outside a bakery in New York in 1955. DNA checks with Stephen’s sister, who was also abducted but found soon afterwards, disproved his claim

Source: Times database, August 28, 2009

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