‘Kidnapped’ woman to meet family 18 years on

A WOMAN believed to have been kidnapped as a child in 1991 is to be reunited with her family 18 years later.

Police said they are “99% certain” the person who recently walked into Concord police station in California is, as she claims, Jaycee Lee Dugard.

As an 11-year-old girl, Jaycee was snatched by two people in a car from outside her home.

Her apparent re-appearance, almost two decades later, prompted the arrests of a man and a woman in connection with the case.

Authorities arrested Phillip Garrido, a registered sex offender, and his wife, Nancy Garrido, of Antioch, in connection with the case, said Jimmy Lee, spokesperson for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department.

Garrido, 58, is listed on the state’s Megan’s Law sex offender website as being convicted of rape.

Concord police officers first encountered Dugard at a nearby house on Wednesday while they were conducting a separate investigation, Lovell said. Police began to question the woman and something didn’t add up, he said.

“Based on really good police work, the Concord police smelled a rat,” Lovell said. Police continued to press the woman, and she eventually revealed her name was Jaycee Dugard.

Officers asked her to come to the Police Department for further investigation and Dugard co-operated, Lovell said.

Police are awaiting the results of a DNA test to confirm Dugard’s identity, he said.

Dugard’s mother, Terry Probyn, has been in contact with her daughter, Lovell said. “They have discussed things that only the two of them would know,” Lovell said. “We are about 99% sure the woman is her.”

Lovell was one of the original investigators assigned to the Dugard case. “It’s a great feeling that she is alive,” he said.

Dugard was 11 when she was abducted on June 10, 1991, as she walked to a school bus stop on a quiet cul-de-sac in Meyers, in El Dorado County, authorities said at the time.

As Dugard’s stepfather, Carl Probyn, watched from the family garage 200 yards away, a late-model gray car stopped abruptly in front of the girl. Jaycee was swept into the sedan, authorities said.

Probyn gave chase on a bicycle but the car sped off. “There was nothing I could do,” he recalled.