Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of assault and abuse. Reader discretion is advised.
Jaycee Dugard was 11 years old when she was abducted by Philip Garrido and Nancy Garrido, on June 10, 1991, as she walked to the bus stop in South Lake Tahoe, a California town near the Nevada border. An investigation followed after Dugard’s stepfather gave authorities a description of the car that the kidnapper arrived in when she was reportedly on the way to school when the abduction happened, according to CBS News.
On August 26, 2009, 18 years after the abduction, Jaycee Dugard was found. She was held captive for all these years when she even gave birth to two children. Authorities identified her after she showed up at the parole office with Nancy Garrido, Philip Garrido, and her two children. Dugard reportedly identified with the name ‘Alyssa’ and Garrido claimed that the three girls were his nieces. Philip was under parole supervision after he was convicted of the rape of a 25-year-old woman in 1977 and was released from prison in 1988.
However, investigators turned suspicious and probed into the matter. They found out that it was Nancy and Philip Garrido who abducted Jaycee Dugard all those years ago. Garrido confessed to the police that he held Dugard captive and raped her through the years. Lewd conduct with a minor, child pornography, false imprisonment, multiple counts of rape, and kidnapping were among the charges on the Garridos. They pleaded guilty to all charges except child pornography in 2011.
How long was Jaycee Dugard in captivity?
Jaycee Dugard was held captive in the Garrido home for 18 years between June 10, 1991, and August 26, 2009. Philip repeatedly raped her and she gave birth to two daughters when she was 14 and 17 years old respectively. She was held in a ramshackle dungeon in the Garridos’ backyard in Antioch, California, ABC 10 reported. She was 29 years old when she was re-united with her mother and stepfather.
According to the New York Times, the compound that Jaycee Dugard and her children were held in was the size of a tennis court and had several hand-built sheds, ragged tents, and a dingy couch. The police also found a wired cage next to one of the tents in the backyard. One of the sheds was soundproof. In 2006, authorities reportedly received a complaint that Garrido was a psychotic sex addict who was housing victims in his backyard. However, the secretive backyard was never revealed. Even in 2008 when a larger team investigated the house owing to sexual crime allegations, Dugard wasn’t found.
The sheds and storage units where Jaycee Dugard and her children were held, were concealed by a fence. Dugard was allegedly threatened with a stun gun and lured into the car when she first saw the Garridos, according to ABC News. Philip Garrido pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and 13 counts of sexual assault. He was sentenced to 431 years in prison. Nancy Garrido pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping, and one count of rape by force. She was sentenced to 36 years in prison.
