A Stolen Life - Jaycee Dugard, 18 Years In Captivity

Jaycee Dugard, then 11 years old, was kidnapped on June 10, 1991, in front of her home in South Lake Tahoe, California. The stepfather of Dugard was among the witnesses, but officials had no leads as to who might have abducted her.

Despite the FBI's assistance, they didn't get any closer to discovering Dugard, and for almost 20 years, it seemed as though she would never be located.

Nevertheless, on August 24, 2009, a little more than 18 years later, a man by the name of Phillip Garrido traveled to Berkeley, California, with his two children to ask about holding a religious event there. Sadly for Garrido, the UCPD's background investigation revealed that he was a parolee for kidnapping and rape and a registered sex offender.

Furthermore, Garrido's parole officer was uninformed of his parental status. Two days later, Phillip Garrido appeared at a parole hearing with his wife Nancy, the two young children, and a third young woman. At this point, Garrido abandoned his pretense and came clean about everything.

The two youngest girls were his. These were actually the daughters of "Allissa," the oldest girl, whom Garrido had abducted and repeatedly raped 18 years prior. Originally, she went by Jaycee Dugard.

Dugard was finally set free after 18 years of imprisonment, and she later wrote a memoir titled A Stolen Life in which she recounted her experience being held captive by Garrido. Here is all the information you require regarding the abduction of Jaycee Dugard.

Who Are Phillip Garrido and Jaycee Dugard?

Jaycee Lee Dugard was an ordinary young child prior to her kidnapping. She shared a home with her mother Terry and stepfather Carl Probyn when she was born on May 3, 1980. In 1990, Shayna Probyn was the second child Carl and Terry Probyn had.

Jaycee Dugard's life would be turned upside down a year after the birth of her younger sister when Phillip and Nancy Garrido abducted her just yards from her house.

Meanwhile, Philip Garrido had a history of sexual assault. The El Dorado County District Attorney's office claims that before kidnapping Jaycee Dugard, he had previously been found guilty of a number of offenses.

A 14-year-old girl was drugged and raped by Garrido in Contra Costa County in 1972. He persuaded a 19-year-old to get in his car in South Lake Tahoe four years later in June, after which he handcuffed and raped her. He tried to do the same thing to a 25-year-old lady later that year, in November 1976, but she managed to get away and warn the neighbors.

After luring another victim into his car, Garrido transported her to a Reno storage facility where he sexually attacked her less than an hour later. He was given a 50-year prison sentence just for this one offense.

Garrido, however, only completed 11 years of that sentence. He could be certified as "not contributing to a menace to the health, safety, and morality of society," according to the parole board. Yet, he paid a visit to one of his victims who was employed in South Lake Tahoe many months after his release. “It's been 11 years since I last drank”, he told her.

The victim informed Garrido's parole officer about this, but the officer simply ignored the matter, noting in the officer's file that "to subject (Garrido) to electronic monitoring would be too much of a burden based on the hysterics, or fears, of the victim."

Phillip Garrido started looking for his next victim, seemingly paying little attention to what he was doing.

On June 10, 1991, he came across her.

Taking Jaycee Dugard hostage

Carl Probyn thought it would be a typical morning and that young Jaycee Dugard would soon be off to school as he dropped his 11-year-old stepdaughter off at the bus stop, just a few yards from the family's home.

Instead, the child was taken into a car by two strangers who had seized her. Probyn observed this while he was still in his yard. He got on his bike and tried to catch up with the car, but he was unable to do so. The distraught stepfather informed the authorities that they were gone.

Unfortunately, initial searches were unsuccessful, and even dogs, planes, and the FBI were unable to locate Dugard.

A few years after Jaycee Dugard vanished, Probyn and Terry Dugard, Jaycee's mother, divorced. Probyn claimed that the stress of the kidnapping was what broke their marriage. Years after Jaycee was discovered, Probyn still had trouble accepting what had happened.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, he admitted that he could have thought about giving her more embraces in the past. "Terry's relatives believed that I treated her badly. They may have believed that Jaycee's decision not to flee the Garridos was due to me. But I can now admit that I had strong feelings for that girl.”

The Captive Life of Dugard

Jaycee Dugard was being compelled into her new life in a shack in the backyard of Phillip and Nancy Garrido's house in Antioch, California, 170 miles away while officials continued their unsuccessful hunt.

There, they started calling Dugard "Allissa," and Phillip Garrido raped the young girl repeatedly, leading to two pregnancies: the first when Dugard was 14 and the second when she was 17.

She had a girl in both pregnancies, and the Garridos gave birth to the kids without any medical help. The daughters of Jaycee Dugard soon joined her in the prison she had built in her backyard.

Jaycee Dugard, in her journal on July 5, 2004

“I have a sinking sensation. I'm frightened that I desire control over my life because it's supposed to be mine to do as I choose, but he took it away once more. How many times can he take it away from me before it becomes illegal? The things he says make me a prisoner, I'm afraid he doesn't understand that. I should be in charge of my life, why am I not?”