Phillip Craig Garrido, has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for kidnapping and raping a California girl and holding her captive for 18 years while fathering her two children. He was sentenced to 431 years to life. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story
A serial sex offender has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for kidnapping and raping a California girl and holding her captive for 18 years while fathering her two children.
A judge on Thursday imposed the maximum possible sentence of 431 years to life on 60-year-old Phillip Craig Garrido, calling the defendant’s treatment of Jaycee Dugard evil and reprehensible.
Garrido, who was on parole for a 1976 rape when Dugard was abducted at age 11, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and 13 sexual assault charges, including six counts of rape and seven counts of committing lewd acts captured on video.
His plea was part of a deal with prosecutors that saw his wife and accomplice, Nancy Garrido, sentenced to 36 years to life after pleading guilty to kidnapping and rape.
Dugard, now 31, made her first first public statement about her ordeal in an emotional declaration her mother read on her behalf Thursday at the sentencing hearing.
Dugard said in her victim impact statement that she hated every second of every day for those 18 years. She said her life was “stolen by her abductors.”
“There is no God in the universe that would condone your actions,” Dugard said. “For all the crimes you have both committed, I hope you have as many sleepless nights as I did.”
The two defendants pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape in late April under a deal that called for Phillip Garrido to receive a prison term of 431 years to life.
Both defendants waived their right to appeal.
The deal was designed, in part, to spare Dugard and her children from having to testify at a trial.
Dugard was given an opportunity to present El Dorado County Superior Judge Douglas Phimister with an oral or written statement about her experience. Prosecutors typically encourage crime victims and their families to prepare detailed victim impact statements so courts can factor their suffering into sentencing decisions.
Dugard, who has written a memoir set to be published next month, has strived to preserve her privacy in the 22 months since she was identified during a chance meeting with Phillip Garrido’s parole officer.
In a pre-sentencing memo justifying a sentence of hundreds of years for Phillip Garrido, El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson said that Dugard spent the first one-and-a-half years after her kidnapping locked in a backyard shed. She did not leave the backyard for the first four years after her abduction.
“Phillip Garrido should have spent the rest of his life in prison for the crimes he committed in 1976. He never should have been allowed back on the street to even have the opportunity to commit the crimes he committed in this case,” Pierson said. Garrido “stole the childhood and innocence from an 11-year-old child.”
Dugard was grabbed by Nancy Garrido from the South Lake Tahoe street where her family lived and was forced into a car driven by Phillip Garrido on June 10, 1991. The abduction occurred as Dugard’s stepfather watched her walk to a school bus stop.
Authorities have said the couple drove the girl 168 miles south to their home in Antioch and held her prisoner there for the next 18 years, four months and 16 days. At first, she was locked in the shed, then confined to a series of tents she would come to share with the daughters fathered by Phillip Garrido and delivered by his wife.
The defendants were arrested in August 2009 after Phillip Garrido inexplicably brought his ragtag clan to a meeting with his parole officer, who had no idea the convicted rapist had been living with a young woman and two girls he described as his nieces.
Dugard at first tried to conceal her identity, telling authorities she was hiding from an abusive husband in Minnesota and giving her name as Alyssa. Garrido eventually acknowledged kidnapping her, and Dugard disclosed her identity.
Her reappearance proved a costly embarrassment for California parole officials, who had to explain how a parolee under intensive supervision could live with his victim and have children with her undetected.
The situation existed despite repeated surprise home visits and a woman telling sheriff’s deputies in 2006 that her sex offender neighbor was living with small children.
The state last year paid Dugard a $20 million settlement under which officials acknowledged repeated mistakes were made by parole agents responsible for monitoring Garrido. California has since increased monitoring of sex offenders.
