THE TRUE STORY OF JAYCEE LEE DUGARD AND THE ABDUCTION THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

After Jaycee Lee Dugard’s allegedly heartless kidnapper Phillip Garrido was unmasked as a 21st Century Charles Manson, many questioned how a human being could commit such unspeakable crimes. But Garrido’s arrest came as no surprise to Katie Callaway Hall, who had been his first victim in 1976, when he had forcibly taken her across the California/Nevada border to rape her.

As a result, Garrido was sent to prison for half-a-century. But after only serving 11-years, he had cunningly managed to beat the system to be freed back into society.

Soon after getting out, he tracked Katie down to the casino where she was working and threatened her. Terrified, she had warned his parole officer that it was only a matter of time before he struck again, but was told nothing could be done.

If only law enforcement had heeded Katie’s desperate pleas, little Jaycee might have been spared her terrible eighteen-year ordeal.

Over the years, while Jaycee and her daughters Starlit and Angel lived in squalor, hidden away in his backyard, the authorities missed many opportunities to catch the sexual predators and free their captives. And they would almost certainly still be there, if the increasingly delusional Garrido had not virtually given himself up, seeking a world stage to preach his bizarre religious beliefs.

Perhaps the only precedent for this strange case is Austria’s Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his own daughter Elizabeth for almost a quarter-of-a-century, fathering her seven children. In 2008 I wrote a book about the case, Secrets Of the Cellar, but in many ways the Jaycee Lee Dugard tragedy is even more disturbing and heartbreaking, as it should never have happened in the first place.