Couple deny Jaycee kidnap charges

Aug 29 2009

A couple accused of snatching an 11-year-old child and keeping her imprisoned for 18 years have pleaded not guilty to dozens of charges, including kidnap, rape and false imprisonment.

Phillip Garrido, 58 - who is accused of fathering two children with the captive - and his wife Nancy Garrido, 55, are alleged to have abducted Jaycee Lee Dugard from outside her Californian home in 1991 and held her in a secret back garden compound for almost two decades.

Meanwhile, forensic experts are searching the couple's property for evidence relating to the unsolved murders of a number of prostitutes.

Appearing at El Dorado Superior Court, the accused pair remained largely silent as 29 charges were laid before them. Both were denied bail.

Further details have begun to emerge about the kidnapping of Dugard and the alleged ordeal she endured.

The woman is believed to have borne two children - now aged 11 and 15 - by her captor in a chilling echo of the case of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who fathered seven children with his daughter while she was imprisoned in his cellar.

In a rambling phone interview with a local TV station from his jail, Mr Garrido, a convicted sex offender, described the years he spent with Dugard as a "heart-warming story".

He said: "(Over the) last several years, I have completely turned my life around. You are going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, the victim."

A spokesman at the Sheriff's Department said Ms Dugard was apparently kept in a shed in the concealed area of the garden of the Garridos' house where her children were born and brought up. She has now been reunited with her mother.

Speaking about her initial reunion, Ms Dugard's stepfather said that his wife commented that her daughter looked young but healthy. In an interview with CBS, Carl Probyn, 60, added that Ms Dugard felt "really guilty for bonding with this guy", adding: "She has a real guilt trip."