Sometimes all my sentences run together in my posts here so if that happens, just go for the links and the highlighted remarks. Sorry if it happens!
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These articles are a bit old but both of them describe both husband and wife as a JW! See yellow highlighting.
How Garrido got out the first time
JAYCEE LEE DUGARD CASE
Under federal guidelines, he served only 10 years
September 02, 2009 | By Jaxon Van Derbeken and Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writers
When Phillip Craig Garrido was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1977 for kidnapping a South Lake Tahoe woman so he could rape her in a Reno storage unit, the prosecutor who put him away figured that was one sexual predator who was gone for good.
Under sentencing guidelines now in place, Garrido would have been behind bars for more than two decades - and wouldn't have been free in 1991 when 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was snatched off the street in South Lake Tahoe, not far from where Garrido kidnapped Katie Callaway Hall in 1976.
But under 1970s-era sentencing laws, Garrido was eligible for federal parole after just 10 years - and he was set free in 1988.
"It was a horrendous crime," said Leland Lufty, the former federal prosecutor in Reno who won the 1977 conviction against Garrido. "We had a tough judge. As far as we were concerned, he was locked up forever.
"How could they do that?" Lufty asked. "Look at the record, look at what the guy did - this case was premeditated as it could be."
Fueled by LSD
In testimony at his federal trial, Garrido described himself as a habitual sexual predator who fueled his urges with the LSD he started taking in 1969. The day of the attack, he took four tabs of acid, he testified.
"I had this fantasy that was driving me to do this," Garrido testified. "No way to stop it."
Garrido approached Hall in the parking lot of a South Lake Tahoe grocery store Nov. 22, 1976, told her his car had broken down and persuaded her to give him a ride.
Once in her car, Garrido handcuffed Hall, then used a leather strap to tie her head to her knees. He drove her car across the state line - making the kidnapping a federal case - to what the prosecutor called a makeshift "sex palace," a storage unit in Reno that Garrido had stocked with pornography, sex devices and a mattress.
"I thought I was dead," Hall said this week in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live."
Five-hour attack
Over the next five hours, Garrido raped Hall repeatedly. The attack stopped only when a passing police officer became suspicious about the car outside and knocked on the storage unit door.
In his testimony, Garrido said he leered at girls as young as 7, exposed himself to them and later became a Peeping Tom who fantasized about raping women.
He said that he started using drugs in 1969 and that LSD and cocaine fueled his sexual urges. He said he went to local elementary schools, masturbating as he stalked girls in his car.
"This guy was a predator," Lufty said.
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A court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Lynn Gerow, described Garrido as having a "multiple sexual deviation" condition - including compulsive masturbation - and attributed it to four years of daily LSD use, along with marijuana, alcohol and cocaine ingestion.
When Garrido subsequently appealed his sentence, however, his lawyer said he was getting help in prison and had become a Jehovah's Witness. In a handwritten letter to a judge in March 1978, Garrido said he was ready for a chance to "get my life in line."
"I am so ashamed of my past. But my future is now in controle (sic)," he wrote.
How Garrido got out
Garrido lost the appeal and spent his prison time in federal lockups in Leavenworth, Kan., and in Lompoc (Santa Barbara County). Under federal guidelines in place at the time, he was allowed to seek parole within one-third of his sentence or 10 years, whichever was less.
Hall says she figured Garrido would be an old man when he got out. "We had been told his projected release time was 2006," she said on CNN.
Authorities with the U.S. Parole Commission have declined to comment about the circumstances of Garrido's release. However, Gail Powell, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Public Safety, said federal authorities at the time told the state that "his progress reports were good. I don't know the specifics, other than he was coming along nicely."
Common treatment
A sentencing expert said Tuesday that in those days, the commission commonly released kidnappers in 10 years or less.
The commission, appointed by the president, set guidelines for the terms of federal prisoners eligible for parole. The guidelines for a kidnapper who raped his victim, but did not hold her for ransom and had no serious criminal record - and Garrido had no previous conviction - were probably less than 10 years in prison, said Dennis Curtis, a Yale Law School professor.
"It would have been a routine decision by the Parole Commission to let him go at the 10-year point," Curtis said.
"It goes to show you how sentences have climbed since 1984," Curtis said. "You're looking at a much harsher climate now."
Congress passed a law that took effect in 1987, abolishing parole for federal crimes and established a sentencing commission to develop new guidelines. The commission has increased recommended sentences for most crimes, and Congress has weighed in with laws requiring minimum sentences for many offenses.
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"It was an attack on so-called lawless sentencing," said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford law professor. He said the parole system had fallen out of favor across the political spectrum, denounced from the right as lenient and based on unrealistic notions of rehabilitation, and from the left as arbitrary and prone to political manipulation.
New rules
Kidnapping with sexual exploitation and the use of restraints, such as the handcuffs Garrido used on Hall in 1976, now carries a guideline sentence of 24 to 30 years. Prisoners can get their terms shortened by up to 15 percent for good behavior.
If Garrido had been sentenced in 1977 to 27 years, in the middle of the guideline range, he would have been in prison until at least 2000.
As it was, federal officials turned him over in January 1988 to Nevada, where he served a few additional months for the rape conviction stemming from the 1976 attack.
On Aug. 1, 1988, the parole board in Nevada voted 3-2 to release Garrido.
Powell said four of the members from that board have since died, and the fifth is in an elder care home.
"Nobody knows what was in the mind of these board members," she said. "It's very hard to speak for somebody who isn't here. They didn't write anything. It was a checklist."
Busted for marijuana
In 1993 - two years after he allegedly kidnapped Dugard - Garrido violated his federal parole by possessing marijuana. He served a stint in prison from April to August that year.
Powell said her agency was never informed of the violation and instead kept getting positive reports from federal authorities.
"We could have revoked him," she said. "We definitely would have done something."
California took over Garrido's parole supervision in 1999. He didn't record a single violation, said state parole spokesman Gordon Hinkle.
Garrido's victim from 1976 said she "never did quite feel comfortable" after Garrido was put away - "I mean, it takes a long time to overcome something like this," Hall said - and thought Garrido had once approached her menacingly after he was paroled.
When she learned he had been arrested last week, she said, "I screamed. I started screaming, 'Oh my God, oh my God! It's him.' "
Dugard fund
At the request of Jaycee Lee Dugard's mother, Terry Probyn, the nonprofit Soroptimist International of South Lake Tahoe has set up an account for Dugard and her two daughters to help with "immediate and future needs."
Checks should be made payable to SISLTF/Jaycee Dugard Family Fund. They may be sent to Bank of the West, Account No. 186153508; 2161 Lake Tahoe Blvd., South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150.
http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-09-02/news/17204579_1_south-lake-tahoe-sexual-predator-storage-unit
Did you watch Diane Sawyer’s interview with abduction survivor Jaycee Dugard last night? There are a lot of parallels to the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping, though Smart was rescued after nine months, while Dugard was held captive for 18 years, giving birth twice in her backyard prison.
Both Smart’s kidnapper Brian David Mitchell and Dugard’s kidnapper Phillip Garrido said they were acting on special instructions from God, using these delusions to justify their crimes. (Of course, Christianity doesn’t condone kidnapping and rape… but, when used by madmen, twisted beliefs serve as an effective tool for manipulation.)
Both Mitchell and Garrido had female accomplices — their wives, who were somehow in their thrall, sharing their religious convictions. Were they also crazy, or just taking “obey thy husband” too far?
But perhaps above all, both Smart and Dugard now serve as living examples of incredible hope and strength — for some of us, reaffirming faith in God, even as the horror of what they went through begs the question, “Where was God?”
I don’t know if everyone can handle reading Dugard’s book, but the TV interview is worth checking out, if youmissed it. There were lots of references to religion’s role in her captivity, ranging from how Nancy Garrido, a Jehovah’s Witness, first met her husband by discussing the Bible with him in prison, and how Phillip Garrido would make Dugard listen to “ long lectures about the Bible and how he is the chosen one.”
http://blog.beliefnet.com/beliefbeat/2011/07/jaycee-dugard-elizabeth-smart-kidnappings-satan-among-us-and-god.html
Atlantis