Sacramento Bee Reports
A 58-year-old convicted rapist and registered sex offender and his wife have been arrested in connection with the 1991 abduction of 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, who surfaced alive in the Bay Area on Wednesday after disappearing for 18 years.
Authorities were swarming the neighborhood on Walnut Avenue in Antioch where Phillip Craig Garrido, a 6-foot, 4-inch, 196-pound registered sex offender lived with his wife, Nancy Garrido, is listed on the state's Megan's Law sex offender Web site as being convicted of rape.
Phillip Craig Garrido, a registered sex offender, is reportedly a suspect in the abduction of Jaycee Lee Dugard.
State parole officials said Garrido came to their attention after someone reported suspicious activity because he was seen near UC-Berekley with two small children.
On Wednesday, parole agents and Concord police brought Garrido in for questioning, along with the two children and an adult female. During questioning, authorities said, Garrido confesse that he had abducted Dugard and the adult woman in his company revealed that she was Dugard.
Garrido had served time in a federal prison in Nevada for sexual assault.
Garrido's next-door neighbor said people in the area had known for years that Garrido was a registered sex offender and that at one point someone called authorities because they were concerned that there were children living in the home.
Haydee Perry, 32, said her boyfriend has a 7-year-old daughter and that he was concerned about Garrido living next door. She said a friend of her boyfriend had called police a few years ago because there were children living in the Garrido home and other people were living in the yard in tents.
Neighbors also noted that Garrido had a penchant for wandering the neighborhood distributing religious tracts and quoting Bible verse, she said. Perry added that nothing came of the call to police.
Perry said she talked to a young girl at the home recently who she estimated was 11 and that the girl had indicated she had two older sisters, one a young teen and the other 28, about the same age as Dugard today.
The El Dorado County Sheriff's Office this morning confirmed the identity of the 29-year-old woman who walked into a Bay Area police station claiming to be Dugard.
Further, in an extraordinary sequence of events today, federal and local law agencies renewed their focus on the 18-year-old mystery of what happened to the blond, blue-eyed girl who was abducted while walking to school June 10, 1991.
Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted in 1991.
El Dorado County sheriff's officials were preparing to release details on the case at a 3 p.m. press conference, but the girl's stepfather confirmed to The Bee early today that Jaycee had resurfaced and was being reunited with her mother.
Carl Probyn, Jaycee's stepfather, said his wife and daughter were flying to Northern California to meet Dugard and that his wife, Terry, spoke with the young woman by phone Wednesday night.
The Probyns, who are separated, live in Southern California, Carl in Orange County and Terry in Riverside. Terry Probyn and their daughter, Shayna, 19, boarded a 6 a.m. flight to the Bay Area to meet with Dugard, Carl Probyn said.
Probyn said he is elated.
"I'm just pleased that she is alive and well," said Probyn, a 60-year-old Orange County wallpaper contractor.
Probyn, who has yet to speak with his stepdaughter, said he believes suspects who might have been involved with the abduction are in custody.
Dugard's disappearance prompted a massive search, nationwide publicity and one of the largest police investigations in the region.
Dugard was on her way to school when authorities said she was pulled into a stranger's car just a block away from her South Lake Tahoe home.
Probyn said he heard her scream and saw a man and a woman drive his stepdaughter away in a gray two-tone sedan.
Despite several false sightings, Dugard was never seen again.
One person in the car was described as a 30-year-old woman with long, dark hair. Jaycee was last seen dressed in a pink windbreaker, white T-shirt and pink stretch pants.
The stepfather said Shayna Probyn called Wednesday about 4 p.m. and said, "Mom has something to say to you. Are you sitting down?"
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