Missing US girl is found after 18 years

08-27-2009 • Guy Adams in Los Angeles

Couple arrested after woman walks into sheriff's office to identify herself.

A woman who was kidnapped more than 18 years ago was today being re-united with her family, after escaping from a couple who apparently forced her to spend a large portion of her adolescence locked in their garden shed.

Jaycee Lee Duggard, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl of 11 when she was abducted, in broad daylight, while waiting for a school bus, surfaced on Wednesday after wandering into a parole office in a town near San Francisco.

In a case that bears chilling echoes to that of Joseph Fritzl - the Austrian electrician who kept his daughter in a cellar - police believe Ms Duggard was locked away in a darkened building for several years, and repeatedly raped by her captors.

2 Comments in Response to Missing US girl is found after 18 years

Comment by Powell Gammill

Entered on: 8/28/2009 6:09:12 AM

More on this story (AP):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/28/AR2009082800427.html

Comment by Powell Gammill

Entered on: 8/28/2009 5:51:27 AM

The last paragraphs are the most interesting:

"..., questions were being raised as to how Garrido escaped the scrutiny of investigators for so long.

Officials said Garrido had been arrested in Nevada for sexual assault in the late 1990s [the girl was kidnapped and held since 1991], and served time in State prison. He was paroled in June 1999, but parole officers never got round to visiting him at home.

Mystery also surrounds what happened to Dugard during the years that he was held in custody. Federal records also show that Garrido has a separate kidnapping conviction related to an [sexual] offense committed in 1980."

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