ANTIOCH, CALIF., AND LOS ANGELES — For years, neighbors knew something was off about Phillip Garrido, the registered sex offender now accused of abducting an 11-year-old girl and holding her for 18 years, much of the time in an overgrown backyard filled with sheds and tents. One neighbor even called 911, worried about children living in the yard.
Authorities regularly visited Garrido's home in Antioch, northeast of Oakland, but never detected the presence of Jaycee Lee Dugard, whom Garrido allegedly kidnapped in 1991, or the two blond, blue-eyed girls officials say she bore him during her captivity.
On Friday, authorities retraced their steps to explain and understand where they had failed.
Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren E. Rupf expressed dismay that a deputy had visited the squalid home after a neighbor's ominous 911 call three years ago and found no evidence of the crimes.
"No one knows that we could have found Jaycee or the other children on that day in 2006, and I cannot change the course of events," Rupf told reporters in a televised mea culpa. "But we are beating ourselves up over this and will continue to do so."
As their neighborhood continued to bustle Friday with FBI officers, sheriff's deputies and news crews from around the world, Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 55, were charged 75 miles to the northeast in El Dorado County Superior Court in connection with 29 felony kidnapping and rape counts. The abduction occurred in the South Lake Tahoe area in that county.
Dugard, now 29, and her daughters, now 11 and 15, remained in seclusion in Northern California with her mother, Terry Probyn of Riverside County. Dugard's half sister Shayna, who was 1 when the abduction occurred, was also with them.
Police from Pittsburg, which borders Antioch, began searching the Garrido home for evidence that Phillip Garrido may have been linked to a series of prostitutes' murders in the 1990s. His father, meanwhile, said he wasn't surprised by the news about his younger son and had seen the warning signs decades ago.
Authorities described the Garrido compound as containing a "backyard within a backyard," a squalid complex of tents, tarps and sheds. A children's playground with two swings and a slide sits beside a dilapidated barn. An empty pool filled with leaves occupies one corner of the yard.
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Yard never searched
