A terrible tragedy

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

The story of Jaycee Lee Dugard is frightening. She was kidnapped at age 11 in 1991. She was found last week after being held in repulsive conditions by a convicted sex offender.

Police say she was abused and kept against her will by Phillip Craig Garrido and his wife, Nancy. Dugard was repeatedly raped and has two children by Garrido, according to investigators. Dugard and her children lived in makeshift tents and shacks in the back yard of Garrido’s Northern California home.

The story of how Garrido got away with this for nearly two decades is chilling as well. Investigators say he was elusive and lucky, but law enforcement officers also faltered when they had their chances.

For example, three years ago, a neighbor called 911 and said Garrido — the neighbors knew him as “Crazy Phil” — was an admitted “sex addict” and that there were people, including children, living in tents in his back yard.

The Contra Costa sheriff’s deputy who responded merely warned him that he was probably violating building codes with the tents in his yard.

The deputy did not ask to see inside the house or the yard. He told a neighbor that without a warrant he couldn’t look inside. The deputy never checked Garrido’s record. Garrido was on parole for the kidnapping and rape of a woman in Reno in 1976, so police could have searched his house without a warrant.

Since being released in 1988, Garrido had regular visits with his parole officers, but parole officials said the sheriff’s office never forwarded the neighbor’s complaint. Even though parole officers had been inside the house, they said Garrido had walled off the part of the back yard where he kept Dugard and her girls.

The case broke last month after Garrido asked police at the University of California, Berkeley, for a permit to hold an event on campus. Police were suspicious when he showed up with two daughters — ages 11 and 15 — and called his parole officer, who was surprised. Garrido, at least on paper, didn’t have any children.

An investigation revealed the truth, and Garrido and his wife were arrested.

The horror of Dugard’s abduction was compounded by the mistakes made by law enforcement. The lesson is that more vigilance would have ended this tragedy years ago.