Sheriff: We 'Missed an Opportunity' to Find Jaycee Dugard

ANTIOCH, California (CNN) -- Law-enforcement officers "missed an opportunity" in November 2006 to find a woman who had been kidnapped as an 11-year-old girl and held since 1991, a California sheriff said.

Someone called 911 on November 30, 2006, to say that a woman and young children were living in tents in the backyard of Phillip Garrido, a registered sex offender, Sheriff Warren E. Rupf of Contra Costa County, California said Friday.

The responding officer left without going into the back yard, the sheriff said.

"This is not an acceptable outcome," he said.

On Friday Dugard also began the long process of reuniting with her family.

A psychiatrist envisioned a slow and overwhelming adjustment for Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was kidnapped in 1991 as her stepfather watched, helpless, in front of her house in South Lake Tahoe, California,

Dugard lived for the next 18 years in a shed and other outbuildings behind her abductor's house, where she gave birth to two girls that he fathered; the girls are now aged 11 and 15, police said.

Investigators arrested Garrido on charges of kidnapping and abusing her after police discovered Dugard on Wednesday.

"The last 18 years have been rough, but the last two days have been pretty good," her stepfather, Carl Probyn, told CNN's "American Morning" on Friday.

Authorities have jailed Garrido, 58, and his wife, 54-year-old Nancy Garrido, on numerous charges. An arraignment for the couple is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. PT (4 p.m. ET) Friday in Placerville Superior Court in Placerville, California.

El Dorado County sheriff's office online records showed that Phillip and Nancy Garrido are being held on suspicion of offenses including conspiracy to commit a crime and kidnapping with the intent to commit robbery and rape.

During their time living in Garrido's backyard, Dugard and her two children apparently rarely ventured out of their compound, investigators said.

Dugard "was in good health, but living in a backyard for the past 18 years does take its toll," El Dorado County Undersheriff Fred Kollar told reporters. He described her as "relatively cooperative, relatively forthcoming" in discussions with detectives. She was "in relatively good condition," neither obviously abused nor malnourished, he added. "There are no known attempts by her to outreach to anybody."

The children didn't go to school or to the doctor's office. Now they and their mother are being thrust into a strange new world.

Helen Morrison, a forensic psychiatrist, told CNN Dugard's world will now take on an air of science fiction.

"It would be a little like being a time traveler, of being introduced to a world you have no concept of," Morrison said. "You're going to be absolutely overwhelmed."

Dugard faces a change of identity -- she apparently was known as "Allissa" while living behind her captor's house -- and "has no idea what's out there," Morrison said. She may actually miss her captors because they apparently have been the center of her world for so long, she said.

"The only reality she has is the life that she's lived," Morrison said. "In her parent's mind," however, "she's still the 11-year-old girl."

Probyn said he felt helpless after witnessing his stepdaughter's abduction in 1991.

"When it first happened, I was thinking, 'If I had my car keys, I would have chased him and done this and this,'" Probyn told CNN on Friday. "But lately, toward the last few years, I just wanted an ending to this."

He expressed anger at Garrido and his wife, who police say was with him when the 11-year-old girl was abducted.

"It's just sick," he said. "It benefitted him but destroyed everybody else. That's pretty sick."

Part of the shock, he said, is that Dugard's "youngest child is the same age as Jaycee when she was taken."

Terry Probyn -- who is now separated from Carl -- spoke with her daughter on Thursday and learned that she had two daughters of her own, he said. Carl Probyn said he expects Dugard and her two children to come back to Southern California since "that's where we all live." He added that it was not immediately clear whether and when that would happen.

Probyn said he had lost hope over the years that his stepdaughter would ever be found. Now, he and Dugard's mother are faced with a potentially difficult reunion with their daughter -- and grandchildren they didn't know existed until this week.

"None of the children had ever gone to school. They had never been to a doctor. They were kept in complete isolation in this compound, if you will, at the rear of the house," Kollar said. "They were born there."

Garrido apparently maintained a blog in which he claimed to control sound with his mind. The blog now has numerous profanity-laced responses from people outraged over his alleged actions.
In a rambling telephone interview from jail, Garrido told CNN affiliate KCRA of Sacramento that he was relieved at being caught.

"I feel much better now," he said. "This is a process that needed to take place."

The investigation went years without apparent progress until Tuesday, when Garrido showed up on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley with his two daughters and tried to get permission to hand out literature and speak, Kollar said. He did not know the subject of either the literature or the planned talk.

Police officers "thought the interaction between the older male and the two young females was rather suspicious," so they confronted them and performed a background check on him, Kollar said.

That check revealed that Garrido was on federal parole for a 1971 conviction for rape and kidnapping, for which he had served time in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas.

The two female police officers contacted Garrido's parole officer, who requested that he appear Wednesday at the parole office.

"My dad said he never saw a young woman," said Russo, who added that her 94-year-old father considered Garrido to be a "kind of strange, reclusive, kind of an angry kind of guy."

She said the one-story house's backyard was obscured by trees and ringed by a wooden fence.

In his jailhouse interview, Garrido told KCRA he could not go into detail about why he chose to abduct Dugard. "I haven't talked to a lawyer yet, so I can't do that," he said.

But Garrido said he had "completely turned my life around" in the past several years. "You're going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, from the victim," he promised. "If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backward and in the end you're going to find the most powerful, heartwarming story."

He added, "Wait till you hear the story of what took place at this house. You're going to be absolutely impressed. It's a disgusting thing that took place with me in the beginning, but I turned my life completely around."

Describing his two daughters, he said, "Those two girls slept in my arms every single night from birth; I never kissed them."

In a later comment, he said that, from the time the youngest was born, "everything turned around."

10-Year-Old Suspected in Fatal Shooting

BELEN, N.M. (KRQE) - A 10-year-old Belen boy is suspected of shooting and killing his father Thursday night, according to police who are investigating whether the gunshot was deliberate or accidental.

The Belen police chief confirmed a 42-year-old man had been shot once in the head with a rifle. Two children were at the home on the 300 block of Vivian Dr. in Belen at the time of the shooting.

Late Thursday night investigators were still in the process of searching through the home after they'd waited several hours for the search warrant to be signed.

They said they were recovering documents possibly related to Children, Youth and Families Department visits as well as weapons inside the home.

Officers responded to the home after they received a call of shots fired at 6:30 pm.

Ramona Silva, who lives almost directly across the street from the victim, told KRQE News 13 she knew the single-dad and his three children well.

The police chief said the man and their mother were divorced.

Silva said the children adored their father and she hopes the shooting was accidental.

"What I saw he was a wonderful dad, and those kids were really respectful with their dad," Silva said. "They were always respectful to their dad, you know?

"I mean come on, for a man to raise three children on his own, you know, it says it all right there."

She said the victim's parents live directly across the street from their son and had no idea of the shooting until she called them to ask about the police activity at their son's home.

If the shooting is ruled a homicide it will be Belen's first this year after recording two in 2008.

Documents: Marijuana Found in Search of Jackson's Bedroom

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The first search of Michael Jackson's bedroom a day after his death found marijuana, skin-bleaching and hair-growing ointments, anti-insomnia pills and empty bottles of several anti-anxiety drugs, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.

A substance initially suspected to be tar heroin proved not to be a narcotic, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

An affidavit, written by Los Angeles Detective Orlando Martinez, was used to outline probable cause for a warrant to search Jackson's Holmby Hills, California, home on June 26. Martinez filed his report on what was found in the search five days later.

While the documents may provide some insight into Jackson's life, they appeared to contain nothing that would lend new insight into his death.

Another sworn statement written by Martinez several weeks later -- and made public earlier this week -- provided a more extensive list of drugs found by investigators at Jackson's bedside.

That document also revealed that toxicology tests led the Los Angeles County coroner to a preliminary conclusion that Jackson died of an overdose of propofol, a powerful sedative he had been given to help him sleep.

The latest release refers to suspicions by some members of Jackson's family in the hours after his June 25 death that heroin might have been involved.

"During the course of the investigation, family members of the decedent notified [coroner investigator] Chief [Ed] Winter that they located a quantity of tar heroin in a bag in the decedent's bedroom located on the second floor of the residence," Martinez wrote.

He used this statement to justify a search of Jackson's home because "there may be additional medications and/or narcotics at the location as well as the necessity to confiscate these items for the safety of the minor children."

A source with knowledge of the probe told CNN Thursday that a test later showed that a brown, sticky substance found in the search was not heroin. The source asked not to be named because the source was not authorized to speak about it publicly.

In addition to listing two Baggies of marijuana, the detective's report of what was found in Jackson's home listed three vials of Latanoprost Plus Solution liquid. An online search found medical journal references to this glaucoma medication also used to stimulate hair growth.

Jackson suffered permanent hair loss when his scalp caught fire while taping a Pepsi commercial in 1984. He was known to wear wigs in public after the mishap.

Also listed on the detective's report was Benoquin ointment, a medication used to lighten skin pigmentation in people with vitiligo, a skin condition.

Jackson's dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein, said on CNN's "Larry King Live" last month that he had treated Jackson for the condition, which causes irregular patches of white skin. "His was bad because he began to get a totally speckled look over his body," Klein said.

The coroner announced two weeks ago that the report on Jackson's death was completed, but that police asked for it to be withheld until completion of the criminal probe.

Jury to Deliberate in King Death Penalty Case

SARASOTA, Florida–Closing arguments are now underway in the death penalty trial of Michael King, accused of raping and murdering 21-year-old Denise Lee in January 2008. Jurors should begin their deliberations later today.

On Thursday, medical examiner Dr. Daniel Schultz testified to an execution-style shot to the head that caused the death of Lee, which he demonstrated to the jury with a wooden pistol. Schultz’s demonstration showed that the gun used to kill Lee would have been touching the young mother’s right temple at her upper eyebrow when the one shot was fired. Her right eye was ruptured from the force.

Prosecutors have already identified a fluid on King’s car consistent with the DNA of Lee. Schultz also told jurors, “If you tell me blood spatter was around it, I do believe the contents of the young mother’s eye was on the defendant’s car.”

This testimony is vital to the prosecution’s case against King. A murder weapon was never found and the defendant was never seen with bullets, so Lee’s bodily contents on the defendant’s car link him directly with the murder itself.

Defense attorneys questioned Schultz about the contact shot and the potential spatter and eye fluid on the defendant’s car, but stressed King himself did not have any of Lee’s blood on him. Testing of the defendant’s clothes showed no sign of the victim’s blood or bodily fluid.

In other testimony, a supervisor with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department forensic unit testified about the gravesite where investigators found Lee’s body. Louis Wood, who is also a trained archeologist, testified that the grave area looked different from other vegetation in the area even on first observation.

Investigators dug three feet, three inches from the surface of the soil and encountered the right shoulder of the victim. Lee was nude, curled in a fetal position with bloody duct tape on the back of her head. Once her body was removed, the entire grave was determined to be 4 feet 1 inch deep.

The gravesite included new and fresh plant life substantially below the surface showing recent movement of the soil, Wood testified.

–Stay tuned to In Session for all the latest from inside the Florida courtroom.