Jaycee kidnap case police extend inquiry

Police in the Californian town where Jaycee Lee Dugard was allegedly imprisoned for 18 years by a convicted sex offender were today examining possible links to unsolved cases of murdered and missing women in the area.

Officers with cadaver dogs were searching a house next door to the home of Phillip Garrido, who is believed to have fathered two children with Ms Dugard while holding her in sheds and tents in his backyard.

They extended the boundaries of the crime scene after it emerged Garrido had acted as a caretaker of the next-door house before the current resident moved in in 2006.

Police in Antioch, the town where Garrido lived, are looking into unsolved murders and disappearances but have not yet released details of the cases.

Garrido, who was arrested last week with his 55-year-old wife, Nancy, has already been named by police as a “person of interest” in an investigation into the unsolved murders of a number of prostitutes in the 1990s in nearby Pittsburg.

Several of the women’s bodies were dumped near an industrial park where Garrido worked during the 1990s.

The couple have pleaded not guilty to 29 counts, including kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment, after they were discovered holding Ms Dugard and her two daughters in a ramshackle compound in their back yard.

They were arrested on Wednesday after Mr Garrido – who was convicted of rape and kidnap in Nevada in 1971 – admitted the kidnapping under close questioning by a parole officer.