Newly released parole documents detail Phillip Garrido’s life before Dugard kidnapping arrest

Officials release Phillip Garrido parole file

SAN FRANCISCO — Newly released parole records show that accused kidnapper Phillip Garrido complained in 2008 about having to wear a monitoring device because he had not been in trouble with the law for 19 years — nearly as long as he allegedly held Jaycee Dugard captive in his backyard.

The 120 pages of records released Friday by California corrections officials paint a portrait of a convicted rapist who, once he was released from federal and Nevada state prisons, appeared to grudgingly comply with the conditions set by parole agents. The parole followed his imprisonment for a 1977 conviction in the rape and kidnapping of a Nevada casino worker.

Numerous details on Garrido’s background and the Dugard’s captivity have emerged since he was arrested in August, but the new documents that cover the period from June 1999 to the arrest shed more light on his activities and the approach taken by law enforcement. He and his wife, Nancy Garrido, have pleaded not guilty.

They were made available after several news organizations sued to have them made public. The parole file had previously been turned over to the Office of the Inspector General, which issued a report last fall blasting corrections officials for lapses in oversight and missing chances to catch Garrido sooner.

The paperwork shows that in recent years, agents thought Garrido sometimes acted oddly. At least one agent saw a girl, who Garrido said was his niece, at the home. An agent also wrote notes about “cursory” visual inspections of the house.

“(Garrido) was acting very strange, weird to say the least by ranting on about God and loudly saying songs, other than that, nothing out of the ordinary,” an agent wrote in June 2008.

When he was ordered to meet with his parole agent in April 2008 to receive an ankle monitor to check his whereabouts, Garrido submitted a one-page letter arguing that he should not have to wear it in part because he had founded a church and wanted to travel to the University of California, Berkeley to discuss his religion. The presentation, he claimed, “will gain the attention of world leaders.”

“Be informed if you so choose to place me on this program I am advised to have an attorney present. The reasoning here is simple it concerns the continued progress and perfectly clean record I have with the State of California and the fact that I have nineteen years behind me.”

He writes that the program is meant for high-risk sex offenders, and that the sheriff’s office considers him low-risk.

Earlier documents provided by Garrido to the FBI shortly before his arrest showed he believed that God spoke to him through an electronic device he had built and claimed cured sex offenders.

The documents also show that less than a month before he was arrested, the 58-year-old Garrido initialed papers promising not to have contact with girls between the ages of 14 and 18 or to have a social or romantic relationship with anyone who had custody of a child.

Garrido was living at the time with the daughters he sired with Dugard, who were 11 and 14.

In granting Garrido early release from his federal parole in May 1999, his U.S. government parole agent based in Nevada wrote Garrido to “thank you for your cooperation over this period of supervision and I hope that you will continue to do well.”

Because he was also convicted of the same rape in a Nevada, state parole officials decided to keep Garrido on life parole. But they wanted him supervised in California, where he had been living since he got out of prison.

When he had his first encounter with California parole in 1999, the agent’s opinion of Garrido also seemed high, writing: “He is stable and the prognosis of success is good.”

Only months later, the same parole agent, Al Fulbright, recommended that Nevada terminate Garrido’s parole, a bid that apparently failed.

The documents released Friday also outline the events leading up to the Garridos arrest, including some details not mentioned before about the conversations Garrido had with law enforcement.

Dugard, for example, seemed to be aware that her parents had moved from Northern California, where she was abducted, to the southern part of the state.

“A long, long, long long time ago, I kidnapped and raped her,” Garrido told his parole agent the day he was arrested, according to the documents.

“I asked him if Jaycee knew where her parents were, and he said, somewhere in Los Angeles,” the agent wrote in the report.

Donald reported from San Jose. Associated Press writer Don Thompson in Sacramento also contributed to this report.