07/12/2011
By Malaika Fraley
The El Dorado District Attorney's Office Tuesday released clips of convicted kidnappers Phillip and Nancy Garrido's home movies, including videos of young girls playing at parks and a parole agent searching the couple's Antioch home without knowledge that a captive Jaycee Lee Dugard was 30 feet away in the backyard.
District Attorney Vern Pierson, who also released documents related to Phillip Garrido's criminal past and a map of known victims before Dugard, said he hopes the previously undistributed materials will shed light on how a violent sexual predator who was well-known to law enforcement was able to avoid suspicion in Dugard's 1991 abduction for 18 years.
"This is one individual case, but it highlights some of shortcoming and failures that are more systematic," Pierson told Bay Area News Group. "Some things have already changed (since Dugard resurfaced in 2009), but it is important to examine every aspect of the system to determine what more we can to do to ensure something like this won't happen again."
Pierson and state Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, are hosting a public meeting at the state Capitol on Aug. 3 to explore deficiencies in state law and identify potential legislative solutions that could strengthen public safety. Law enforcement officials at the state and federal level, as wells as victims' rights advocates, have been invited to participate. Gaines and Pierson's report on failures that contributed to the Garridos escaping justice for nearly two decades will be released at or just before the meeting, Pierson said.
In a startling 2 minute, 42 second video, Nancy Garrido films a state parole agent conducting one of the dozens of searches of their home while Jaycee was in the backyard. The agent, whose face is blurred, never steps foot in the backyard and seemingly follows Phillip Garrido throughout the house.
The video clip, filmed between 2000-2007, begins mid-visit, as Phillip walks into his elderly mother's bedroom, his long sleeve shirt unbuttoned and exposing his bare chest. His ailing mother is briefly seen in the bed as the parole agent quickly checks the room.
As they continue through the house, Nancy Garrido begins to badger the agent: "What does the parole agent do for his parolee?"
"Ma'am, you can come to the office and we can discuss that," the unnamed agent says. "It's an inappropriate time. Right now I'm doing a search ... and if you'd stay in this front room, so I won't have to place you in restraints because right now I'm searching the house."
As the agent continues, Nancy follows him and films. While not in the video, the agent is heard telling Phillip Garrido: "So right now, it's just you, your wife and your mother ... oh OK."
As Phillip Garrido leads the agent out the front door, Phillip Garrido is heard for the first time: "I don't understand. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do. ... No one's ever talked to me like this."
The agent tells the Garridos to contact him at his office for further questions.
The clip ends with Nancy Garrido saying: "He's an arrogant little guy isn't he?"
A video taken sometime between 1989 and 1993 -- overlapping with Dugard's kidnapping -- shows the Garridos fumbling with the autofocus feature on a camcorder with a city park in the background.
For bystanders in the area, it looks like Phillip is leaning against a tree waiting for Nancy to film him singing and playing guitar. But their chatter suggests that the singalong is a distraction.
The camera shakily captures girls playing on a tire swing in a playground that serves as the video's background. Then Phillip's instructions are heard.
"So what you need to do is you need to make it look like you're pointing at me," he says. "That way you get it so it sort of looks like it's pointing at me, but it's going just by me."
He adds: "The further you are away from me, they can't tell exactly where it's pointing."
That's followed by Phillip singing and strumming, but the camera pans left to focus on a young dark-haired girl in a red tank top as she swings from a bar. They continue obfuscating their true purpose with more chatter.
"Can you see me real good?" asks Phillip.
Nancy responds, "I can see you really good!"
But the video doesn't match: it continues to follow the young girl as she walks from one end of the playground to the other.
Phillip Garrido used a chemical agent to reduce the video to heaps of melted plastic before investigators found them buried in garbage that dominated the Garrido's backyard. While most investigators dismissed them as unsalvageable, Contra Costa Sheriff's Detective Garrett Schiro was adamant that they should not be discounted, said El Dorado district attorney investigator Mike Franzen. It took several hundred hours of manpower by El Dorado County and NASA technicians to recover the film.
"We can't give Schiro enough credit for not taking no for an answer," Franzen said. "Had this gone to trial, they would have been presented to show that (Garrido) was a lifetime sexual predator trolling for new victims or was shooting them for his own sexual pleasure."
"We can only assume it was an Antioch-area park because that's where he frequented but we never really figured it out," said Franzen, a former Antioch detective. "We know it happened after they took (Dugard) because she said Nancy would complain about having to do it."
A final video showed female legs in short skirts, with Nancy and Phillip Garrido discussing the filming in the background.
