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A convicted sex offender and his wife pleaded guilty Thursday to kidnapping and raping a California girl in a surprise plea deal that will keep the now-grown victim and the two daughters she gave birth to during her 18 years of captivity from having to testify at a trial. Under the hastily negotiated agreement, Phillip and Nancy Garrido are likely to spend the rest of their lives in prison after abducting Jaycee Dugard in 1991 and keeping her in a backyard compound of tents and sheds.
"I'm relieved that Phillip and Nancy Garrido have finally acknowledged their guilt and confessed to their crimes against me and my family," Dugard said in a statement released by her spokeswoman, Nancy Seltzer. Phillip Garrido, 60, faces a maximum sentence of 431 years to life in prison after entering guilty pleas to 14 kidnapping and sexual assault charges, including six counts of rape and seven counts of committing lewd acts captured on video.
His wife, Nancy Garrido, 55, who originally faced the same charges as her husband and a sentence of 181 years to life, pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and one count of rape. She faces a maximum sentence of 36 years to life. "Obviously you don't like to plead your client guilty to a life sentence, but that's the best I could get and that's what she's willing to do," Nancy Garrido's defense lawyer Stephen Tapson said. "Unfortunately, it's going to probably be in a casket" when she leaves prison.
El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson credited the 30-year-old Dugard's willingness to relive her harrowing experience in court if necessary with producing the pleas. When he spoke to Dugard on Wednesday, "she expressed again, she was ready, willing and able, if called, to testify," Pierson said. "But I think there's also, as a mother, the practical reality of it, should her children be called and drug into all of this, was something that I don't think any mother in her right mind would want to see happen." Both defendants waived their right to appeal and were scheduled to be sentenced on June 2.
More Couple plead guilty in Dugard kidnapping case - US news - Crime & courts - msnbc.com
US kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard has said her life was stolen when she was abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido at the age of 11, and she hated every second of her 18 years in captivity. Now 31, she made her first public statement, read in court by her mother, as the Californian couple were sentenced for kidnapping and rape.
Nancy Garrido, 55, received 36 years to life, and her husband 431 years. Phillip Garrido, now aged 60, had two children with his victim. Ms Dugard was kept with her two daughters, now 13 and 16, in the backyard of the Garrido home in Antioch, California, in a compound of tents and sheds.
In April the couple pleaded guilty, meaning that Ms Dugard did not have to appear in court. As part of the deal the Garridos made with prosecutors, both waived their right to appeal. The judge described their treatment of Ms Dugard as evil and reprehensible. Nancy Garrido's lawyer, Stephen Tapson, requested that she be allowed to see her husband one last time and remain in the court for his sentencing, but the judge refused, AFP news agency reported.
'Doing well'
The couple, wearing orange jumpsuits, kept their heads down as Ms Dugard's statement was read. They made no eye contact with Ms Dugard's family.
"I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence," Ms Dugard said in her statement, directed at Phillip Garrido. "Everything you ever did to me was wrong and I hope one day you will see that. "I hated every second of every day for 18 years," she added. "You stole my life and that of my family." The kidnap victim said she was doing well now, and Phillip Garrido "did not matter any more". Mr Tapson also read out a statement on behalf of his client, in which she acknowledged that what she did was "evil", that she was sorry and "words are not enough".
Police mistakes
Dugard was clear and composed throughout the interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer on her show "Primetime" that aired Sunday night, but grew emotional when she talked about seeing the first of two girls fathered by Phillip Garrido. When Sawyer asked how old she was at the time of the birth in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Antioch she said "14" with a small, incredulous laugh and a shake of her head. "It was very painful," said Dugard, 31, as tears welled in her eyes. "She came out and then I saw her. She was beautiful. I felt like I wasn't alone anymore. I had somebody who was mine."
She said she didn't know how she could protect the child, but said "I knew I could never let anything happen to her. I didn't know how I was going to do that, but I did." Dugard appeared younger than her 31 years as she talked to Sawyer on a couch and on a porch at her California home. The blond hair she had in now-familiar photographs from her childhood is now reddish-brown, and she wore a red sweater and a necklace with a pinecone charm on it, representing the last thing she touched before her 18-year captivity. The interview came on the eve of Dugard's memoir about her time in captivity, "A Stolen Life," which will be released Tuesday.
Dugard told Sawyer there was "a switch" she had to shut off to emotionally survive her rape and imprisonment. Asked by Sawyer how she stayed sane, Dugard said: "I don't know. I can't imagine being beaten to death, and you can't imagine being kidnapped and raped. You just do what you have to do to survive." She described walking to the school bus stop on the day of a fifth-grade field trip and being zapped with a stun gun on a South Lake Tahoe street at age 11. She said she heard Garrido laughing and telling his wife Nancy Garrido "I can't believe we got away with it," calling the moment "the most horrible moment in your life, times 10."
"I lost control of my bladder," Dugard told Sawyer in one of many moments in the interview where she appeared astounded she was talking about herself. "I wasn't even embarrassed. There was no time to be embarrassed." Dugard said she tried to hold in her tears because of her cuffed hands. "I tried not to cry because I couldn't wipe them away," she said, "and then they get itchy."
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The suit brought by Dugard, alleged that if federal officials had revoked the parole of her kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, her 18-year ordeal never would have happened. Garrido was on parole for a previous rape and abduction conviction over the previous 2 1/2 years leading up to Dugard's kidnapping. But Dugard's lawyer said parole officers did not revoke his parole despite multiple failed drug tests and admitting to drug use, which should have returned Garrido to jail.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 that police or the government had no legal duty to protect Dugard from Garrido because they could not have known he would single her out as a victim. However, the ruling did not say whether parole officers had failed to do their jobs.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday, rejected a suit against the U.S. government brought by Jaycee Dugard, pictured here in 1991, who spent 18 years as an abductee in her kidnapper's backyard. It ruled the government could not have prevented her ordeal by revoking her kidnapper's parole because the government couldn't have known Dugard would be a target.
Garrido and his wife Nancy kidnapped Jaycee from a South Lake Tahoe, Calif., street in 1991 when she was 11 and held her captive in a backyard shed in Antioch for nearly two decades. Garrido impregnated Dugard, who gave birth to two daughters, in 1994 and 1997. Garrido was sentenced to 431 years in prison for kidnapping and rape. His wife was sentenced to 36 years to life. Dugard and her children were awarded a $20 million settlement by state lawmakers after it was determined state officers had missed multiple opportunities to rescue Dugard.
Court rejects suit by kidnapping survivor Jaycee Dugard
