Couple admits Jaycee Dugard kidnap and rape

A convicted sex offender and his wife have pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping a California girl in a surprise plea deal that will spare their victim and the two daughters she had during her 18 years of captivity from taking the stand 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 back garden 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,” Miss 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, 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.

El Dorado County district attorney Vern Pierson credited 30-year-old Miss Dugard’s willingness to relive her harrowing experience in court with producing the guilty pleas.

He said when he spoke to Miss Dugard on Wednesday, “she expressed again, she was ready, willing and able, if called, to testify”.

“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,” Mr Pierson added.

Both defendants waived their right to appeal and will be sentenced on June 2.

Plea discussions in the case had been under way since January, but a possible deal broke down and the Garridos pleaded not guilty earlier this month after prosecutors refused to drop any of the charges against Nancy Garrido.

The negotiations resumed this week when the district attorney offered Nancy Garrido a maximum sentence of 11 years for kidnapping and 25 years to life for rape, according to deputy public defender Susan Gellman, who represents Phillip Garrido.

Because of his 1977 conviction for raping and kidnapping a woman, Phillip Garrido was already likely to spend the rest of his life in prison for violating parole if he were convicted of any of the charges in the Dugard case, Ms Gellman said.

She said he also was eager to spare Miss Dugard and their daughters from having to give evidence and wanted to accept responsibility for his crimes “to let the world know he changed his behaviour”.

Nancy Garrido’s lawyer Stephen Tapson said she felt terrible about what happened to Miss Dugard.

“She (Garrido) obviously committed a serious wrong, but in her view now, she’s made peace with God and wants to get on with life, what’s left of it,” he said.

Authorities said Miss Dugard was grabbed by Nancy Garrido from her family’s South Lake Tahoe street and forced into a car driven by Phillip Garrido on June 10 1991, as her stepfather watched her walk to the school bus stop.

The FBI, police and volunteers searched in vain for the pretty blonde girl, even though Miss Dugard’s stepfather gave an accurate description of the couple’s car and of Nancy Garrido, and despite the fact that Phillip Garrido was being monitored by federal and state parole agents because of his rape conviction.

It was a visit to the University of California, Berkeley, 18 years, four months and 16 days later that caused his ragged family to unravel.

Garrido turned up at campus with his daughters with Miss Dugard in tow, seeking a permit for a religious event. Campus police became suspicious and after running a background check realised he had been convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman in Reno in 1977.

The Berkeley officers contacted Garrido’s parole officer, who was surprised to hear that he had young daughters and ordered him to come in for a meeting. Garrido complied and for a still unknown reason brought his wife, the girls and Miss Dugard.

Miss Dugard tried to conceal her identity, initially telling authorities she was hiding from an abusive husband in Minnesota and giving her name as Alyssa.

But wary investigators separated her from Garrido, who had described Miss Dugard and the two girls as his nieces, and under further questioning he admitted kidnapping “Alyssa” and Miss Dugard disclosed her true identity.

She was reunited with her mother the next day and has remained in Northern California with her and her daughters, now 13 and 16. She is writing a book, due to be published in September.