Aug 31, 2009 6:14 pm US/Pacific
Garrido Was Never On FBI Radar In Kidnapping Case
ANTIOCH (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ―
-
-
Mugshot of Phillip Craig Garrido, taken August 26, 2009.
CA Dept. of Corrections
A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who spent 18 years on the Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapping case said Monday that the Antioch couple charged in her 1991 abduction never were close to being considered suspects.
Special Agent Chris Campion said that the bureau exhausted thousands of leads to Dugard's potential whereabouts, sometimes with the help of confidential informants and court-ordered wiretaps.
Yet Campion said in an interview that Phillip and Nancy Garrido "just did not come up on the radar screen."
"We've gone through and checked our records and my memory is no, we didn't have any thing that remotely was close to these people," Campion said. "We can tell you several thousands of people that didn't kidnap Jaycee Lee Dugard."
The Garridos have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping Dugard and holding her captive in their backyard.
The secrets of the Garrido home began to surface early last week when Garrido arrived for a meeting with his parole officer with his wife, Dugard, now 29, and the two girls.
Authorities claimed he confessed to snatching Dugard in 1991.
On Monday, cadaver dogs returned to the Garrido home as part of a search for any links to other open cases. Authorities said they found a bone fragment on an adjacent property, but hadn't yet determined whether it was human.
Over the years, Campion said he made a point of calling Dugard's mother every year on Dugard's birthday. He was the one who called to give her the news that her daughter was alive and he was present last week when they were reunited.
"It was a very emotional scene — both of them were just overjoyed to be with each other again," he said. "There's going to be a period of adjustment, no doubt, but they're doing very well at this point. And the two daughters are probably as happy as Jaycee is to be part of this family as well."
Like the FBI, many Contra Costa County merchants also wonder if there was something they missed about Phillip Garrido — a man they did business with for years, sometimes decades — that would have indicated he was dangerous.
Garrido ran a printing business out of his home at 1554 Walnut Avenue in Antioch, and created business cards and other materials for numerous merchants in Pittsburg, Antioch and Oakley.
While several business owners described Garrido as odd, "we didn't really see anything that would have raised a red flag," said Ben Daughdrill, former owner of A&D Hauling in Oakley.
Daughdrill said Garrido was assisted by "Allissa," a woman he introduced as his daughter, who regularly corresponded with A&D employees to arrange orders.
Investigators said last week that "Allissa" was actually Dugard.
Daughdrill overlapped twice with "Allissa," both times when he went to the home on Walnut Avenue to pick up an order. He described her as "very polite, well-spoken, good manner - not unusual at all."
"The only thing is, it looked like her clothes didn't fit her very well, like they were secondhand," he said.
He said that seemed to fit with Phillip Garrido's occasional comments that the family was short on money.
Daughdrill is now having a hard time grappling with the developments of the past week, especially since Garrido came to his home several times and crossed paths with his children.
Wayne Thompson, owner of Wayne's Barbershop on Railroad Avenue in Pittsburg, cut Garrido's hair.
Sometimes, he said, Garrido's daughters, now ages 11 and 15, would come and wait for their dad during the haircuts.
"They just sat in there and read magazines," he said.
Thompson also had printing done by Phillip Garrido until one day he was leafing through a binder full of convicted sex offenders at his daughter's karate school and came across Garrido's photo.
"At that point I stopped doing the business card business with him," Thompson said.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.)
Photo/Graphic: Inside Look At Antioch Secret Backyard Compound
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
Comments