Lost US girl found after 18-yr horror

A California girl who was kidnapped at the age of 11 in 1991 has been found alive, having spent 18 years living in sheds and tents behind the home of her accused abductor, a convicted rapist who fathered two children with her, police said on Thursday.

Jaycee Dugard had been missing since she was snatched off a street by two people in a gray sedan while walking to a bus stop near her home in South Lake Tahoe, east of San Francisco, on June 10, 1991.

Dugard, now 29, was found after a parole officer for her accused kidnapper became suspicious, leading to a search of his home. Police say the search turned up a hidden “backyard within a backyard” at the home of registered sex offender and convicted rapist Phillip Craig Garrido, where Dugard and the two children were confined in a series of sheds and tents.

Carl Probyn, Dugard’s stepfather, her mother “cried for about 10 minutes” after they were told by authorities that she had been found alive. Authorities said Garrido was suspected of fathering two children with Dugard, girls now aged 11 and 15.

“None of the children had ever been to school, none had been to a doctor. They were kept in complete isolation in this compound,” Kollar said.

While the case of Dugard’s abduction had remained open for the past 18 years, police had never found a trace of the missing girl or the gray sedan until Tuesday, when Garrido tried to enter the University of California, Berkeley campus with the two girls to pass out religious leaflets.

Garrido said in a TV interview that theirs was a “heart-warming” story, and that he slept with all three every night. “Having those two girls - they slept in my arms every single night - from birth, I never kissed them, you have to take this a step at a time,” Garrido said.
“What’s kept me busy the last several years is I’ve completely turned my life around.”