Testimony Recalls Dugard's Fateful Morning

Fear held Jaycee Dugard captive during the 18 years that she was imprisoned in the Antioch backyard of her kidnappers, Phillip and Nancy Garrido.

In grand jury testimony released Thursday, Dugard describes how she went from being an 11-year-old girl living in South Lake Tahoe to a mother of two confined to a concealed compound on the Garridos' Antioch property.

Dugard recounts her abduction, her physical and psychological confinement, the years of sexual abuse that she endured, and her confusion over why she had been taken away from her family.

"I was very scared. I didn't know who he was. I didn't know why he was doing this. I just wanted to go home," she said in the testimony.

The 158 pages were released hours after an El Dorado County judge handed down maximum sentences to the Garridos for abducting, raping, and imprisoning Dugard for 18 years.

On the morning of June 10, 1991, Dugard was walking to the bus stop on her way to school, as she had countless mornings before, except that on this morning a car approached her from behind as she was halfway up the hill.
   
"I didn't think it was weird at the time, but it kind of pulled in close to me," she said in the testimony.
      
While she expected that the man would ask for directions, instead he shot his hand out of the car window and used a stun gun to shock Dugard, who stumbled into the bushes. As a man, who she would later learn was Phillip Garrido, exited the car, Dugard tried to back away, but found herself paralyzed.

She said, "I feel like my whole body ... wouldn't work. It was tingly, and I can't -- nothing works."

She had been living in South Lake Tahoe in a four-bedroom house with her mother, Terry Probyn, stepdad, Carl Probyn, and 1-year-old sister.

But on that morning she was stuffed into the backseat of Garrido's car, a blanket on top of her and a person holding her down during the 180-mile journey from El Dorado County to eastern Contra Costa County, where the Garridos would hold her captive until 2009.

"It seemed like forever," Dugard said of the ride, during which she heard Phillip Garrido remark to a passenger in the car that they had succeeded in pulling off the kidnapping.

According to Dugard, Garrido said, "I can't believe we got away with it," and he started laughing.

Once Dugard was brought to the Garridos' Antioch home, Phillip Garrido kept her obedient by warning her that the property was patrolled by dogs and by keeping the stun gun at hand.

"He said he had Dobermans and that if I was to run or ... try to do anything, that they would come after me," Dugard said. She said she complied and "tried to do what he wanted me to do even though I didn't like it."

During that initial year of her captivity, Dugard was largely kept alone in a concealed area on the Antioch property. That isolation was interrupted only when Garrido would come to feed her or sexually assault her, she said.

Only later did Garrido introduce Dugard to his wife, Nancy Garrido. At times, the three shared a room in the backyard area and Dugard was not as isolated.

The sexual assaults continued for years, and Dugard gave birth in 1994 and 1997 to two daughters fathered by Garrido.
     
"In the beginning he said that I was helping him and that ... he had a sex problem and that ... he got me so that he wouldn't have to do this to anybody else. So I was helping him," she said.

Judge Douglas Phimister refused to release 34 pages of the transcript where Dugard described the sexual abuse, redacting the parts deemed too graphic to be made public.

Although Dugard said that it seemed that everything changed after her daughters were born -- Phillip Garrido had said that he wanted them all to be a family -- she kept a hidden journal where she vented her feelings about being "trapped and not having a life and just wanting to be free."

"I didn't know where to go ... I just felt like there was no other place for me," she said.

"I didn't know what to do. I couldn't leave. I had the girls. I didn't know where to go, what I would do for money or anything. I didn't have anything."

Phillip Garrido was given 431 years in prison, the maximum allowed under a plea in which Garrido admitted to kidnapping Dugard as well as 13 counts of sexual assault and lewd acts, plus enhancements.

Nancy Garrido, 55, received 36 years in accordance with her agreement, in which she pleaded guilty to kidnapping, one count of rape by force and several enhancements.