Some of the most interesting cases that UM has done at least in my opinion are those involving missing/kidnapped children. There have been several to speak of: Here are a select few

Kerry/Carrie Lynn Nixon - Teenage girl who disappeared while running a late night errand for her father, I believe she was going to buy some milk and a romance novel from a local conveinence store. UM had a creepy shot of "her" walking home down a dark street lit by the light of a lone streetlight. A few months later a woman recalled speaking to two girls she met at a cook out and one of them claimed to be Kerry Lynn Nixon. The woman never saw this girl again, and the girl who "Kerry Lynn" was with later had a memory blockage about the whole thing. Anyhow sadly in an update segment Kerry Lynn Nixon's body was found just a few short blocks form where she disappeared and police suspect she was killed soon after she vanished. Sad story :(

Robbie Baskin/Katherine Baskin - Brother and sister abducted by their non custodial grandparents Marvin and Sandra Maple. The Maples made outlandish accusations (later all proven false) that their daughter and her husband were abusing their children. The court granted temporary custody to the grandparents who then apparently fled with the children due to the genius concept known as "family law". UM profiled this case several times to no avail although they did turn up a few leads that fifteen years ago (giving you an idea as to how dated this case is) The Maples were living with their grandchildren in Santa Clara, California under the name The Farmers. They had also changed Katherine's name to Robin I believe. I'll buck the trend here and say that The Maples are not necessirily evil people but instead may have had a mental breakdown or illness of some sort leading them to suffer dillusions about their grandchildren's enviorment. It seems to me that if this case ever is solved (which is unlikely as the years go by - Robbie would now be 23 and Katherine 24) one of the most interesting aspects would be to find out the motive for the abduction in the first place.

Nyleen Kaye Marshall - In an area of study in which every case is disturbing this one is especially disturbing. Four year old Nyleen Kaye Marshall disappeared in 1983 while on a hiking trip with her parents. Nyleen's abductor later mailed several letters to the police from the Dane county, Wisconsin area claiming to have a girl named "Kay" (believed to be the abducted) and that he loved her, provided for her and took her on trips to Japan and London but just couldn't give her up. However as the letter continues apparently some of the things described lead investigators to believe that perhaps some explotation might had gone on. Regardless the abductor had also made telephone calls from the area describing information that was not widely known about Nyleen and their were even a few sightings as well. Nyleen would now be in her mid 20s possibly with a family of her own totally unaware of her true identity.

Morgan Nick - I posted on this a few weeks back - Six year old girl who disappeared in Arkansas in 1995 during a softball game when she wandered off to dig in the dirt. Authorities believe she was abducted by a dishelved looking man who was seen near her prior to her disappearance. Morgan's mother Colleen has founded "The Morgan Nick Foundation" in an effort to find missing children and they have a sketch of the alleged abductor on that site which you can find at the bottom of this post. There have been a few possible sightings of Morgan but due to this case still being "new" (although Morgan would be 15 this year) a lot of information is not publically known probably to preserve Morgan's safety.


In my opinion both Nyleen Kay Marshall and Morgan Nick are likely still alive while the baskins are probably dead. My reasoning is based on these two facts

1) There have been sightings of Nyleen and Morgan but none of The Baskins since 1989. People just don't drop off the face of the earth, they stay in contact with at least a small amount of people in society - someone has to know something and the fact that so little has crept out in regard to the Baskin case leads me to believe that the children are no longer with us.

2) The Nyleen Kaye Marshall case is especially interesting as by now Nyleen if she is still alive which I believe she is would be of age. There is going to come a point in her (and maybe even Morgan's) life that some documents will have to be produced regarding identity. Although I am aware that documents can be dummied up, there are several instances in which these falsehoods could be easily detected. In a case it is just going to be a matter of the right information getting to these people who in reality have "no real past".

This also works against the baskin children as it was their grandparents and not strangers who abducted them. While it is very likely that they do not have the "full true story" they might think everything is perfectly fine as perhaps their grandparents told them their parents are in jail or dead. Also the threat of killing both children rather than have them returned to their parents deeply concerns me.

Later.

http://www.morgannick.com/

Is it possible for BOTH the husband and wife to have mental breakdowns at the same time? I can't help but look at Sandra and Marvin Maple as evil. They were completely unreasonable about the whole issue involving the grandchildren long before they kidnapped them.

All the tension and drama started in the first place all because Mark and Debbie Baskin wanted to take Kristi and Bobby home with them after they had stayed with the Maple's through most of the summer and on to Christmas. Sandra acted as though Debbie was this horrible person just because she wanted her children back saying, "They are a part of our family now, you can't do this to me." O.K., I'm all for loving your grandchildren, but this is taking it way too far. You have to let your children lead their own lives. Sandra and Marvin were NOT THE PARENTS of these kids, therefore they had no right to get all angry over the Baskin's wanting to retrieve their children. Any sane grandparent knows this, but they obviously didn't.

The most confusing part was why the Baskin's didn't take the children home with them anyway after Christmas in the first place. I'm guessing it's because they wanted to keep some sort of peace in the family but they still should have taken the children back with them.

I don't know.....you may have a point about them having some sort of mental illness. The fact that the Maple's told police that they would kill the kids before ever seeing them returned to their parents makes me think that. Especially since the Baskin's never did anything to deserve such abuse. Anyone that is crazy enough to do this to their own daughter just might be crazy enough to do almost anything. But a part of me feels that the threat to kill the kids was just a ploy used by them to get the Baskin's to give up their search.

I'd really hate to think that the Maple's could put so much pain to their family in this way and not get punished.

Originally posted by JohnMill
Anyhow sadly in an update segment Kerry Lynn Nixon's body was found just a few short blocks form where she disappeared and police suspect she was killed soon after she vanished. Sad story :(


A slight correction - her killer, who was already imprisoned for another crime, confessed to her murder in 1993, and led authorities to the makeshift grave.

Justin

I had seen that case, but didn't know it was updated....

How sad. It just goes to show how messed up our world had become. :(

Originally posted by justins5256
A slight correction - her killer, who was already imprisoned for another crime, confessed to her murder in 1993, and led authorities to the makeshift grave.

Justin

Was it a well hidden grave? If it was so close to where she vanished, how did the police not find it?

The disappearance of at least four girls in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1980s and early 1990s remains unsolved. In 1988, 8 year old Amber Swartz disappeared from her front yard. Three days later Timothy Bindner visited Swartz's mother and became emotional when discussing Amber. Five months later Michaela Garecht disappeared from Hayward. Two months later 13 year old Ilene Misheloff disappeared from Dublin. In 1992, 4 year old Nikki Campbell disappeared while playing in her driveway in the town of Fairfield.

Timothy Bindner is suspected of abducting and probably murdering the four girls and several others. He was involved in the search for Amber Swartz and Ilene Misheloff. He sent girls in the Bay area birthday cards and one child's parent contacted authorities when the message on the card was written backwards and required a mirror to decipher it. Bindner visited the grave of five year old Angela Bugay who was abducted and murdered in Antioch in November 1983 on average 90 times a year when the FBI conducted surveillance. Her mother's former boyfriend was found guilty of Bugay's murder in 2002.

John Philpin, a Harvard educated psychologist wrote the book, Stalemate discussing Bindner and the abduction of several girls in the Bay area. It suggests Bindner could me a serial murderer. Bindner was employed as a grave digger and presented a theory on how the murderer or murderers disposed of the physical evidence. Bindner claimed the killer or killers secretly buried the corpses of missing children in open graves the night before funerals. The evidence would be conveniently concealed by the casket meant for that grave.

Originally posted by Fletch
Was it a well hidden grave? If it was so close to where she vanished, how did the police not find it?

It could be very well that the grave was in an area so seldom used that even most local residents don't usually go there. Also, even if the grave wasn't very deep, it may not have been shallow enough to be easily detected.

Just a thought.

Kane's post got me thinking - could this also be the case with Angela Hammond?

Later.

Originally posted by Rieder
The disappearance of at least four girls in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1980s and early 1990s remains unsolved. In 1988, 8 year old Amber Swartz disappeared from her front yard. Three days later Timothy Bindner visited Swartz's mother and became emotional when discussing Amber. Five months later Michaela Garecht disappeared from Hayward. Two months later 13 year old Ilene Misheloff disappeared from Dublin. In 1992, 4 year old Nikki Campbell disappeared while playing in her driveway in the town of Fairfield.


If I'm not mistaken, during the mid to late 80's they would run tv commercials about Michaela Garecht's abduction with some sad acoustic guitar music in the background. They also threw in a composite sketch. A VERY SCARY one of a suspect that was thought to be a white male (or female?) with shoulder length dirty blond hair. They even had that case profiled on America's Most Wanted with that same sketch, only they profiled all 4 girls, not just Michaela. Anyone else remember this and the scary drawing?

John MIll, just out of curiosity, why do you believe that Morgan Nick is still alive? Did i miss something in you rpost? Sometimes I scan when I read and miss things...???

There have been numerous sightings of Nick since her 1995 disappearance although none in recent years - none at least that Colleen Nick and her family are letting us know about likely to ensure Morgan's safety. That is the thing with these missing childrens cases folks, a lot of information is surpressed due to the sensitive nature of the cases. I often wonder about Morgan and Nyleen and The Baskins and wonder if they are still alive and if they are it is more likely that they have no memory of their "past life" and live in complete ignorance with the person who kidnapped them or in Nyleen's case possibly independant of that person (Nyleen now being in her mid 20s if she is still alive)

Equally baffling is the baskins, it is my belief they believe their parents are dead but in a world of internet and so much information being able to be procured it is a wonder how they have not stumbled onto the truth yet.

Later.

Originally posted by Zero
If I'm not mistaken, during the mid to late 80's they would run tv commercials about Michaela Garecht's abduction with some sad acoustic guitar music in the background. They also threw in a composite sketch. A VERY SCARY one of a suspect that was thought to be a white male (or female?) with shoulder length dirty blond hair. They even had that case profiled on America's Most Wanted with that same sketch, only they profiled all 4 girls, not just Michaela. Anyone else remember this and the scary drawing?

Was this it? (I have never seen the AMW or 1989 UM segments on it)

http://www.geocities.com/farmgirl1032001/717172a1.jpg

I'm not surprised that AMW showed this case, it's the type of case that John Walsh would jump on, as it is loosely similar to how his son Adam was abducted.

Originally posted by Zero
If I'm not mistaken, during the mid to late 80's they would run tv commercials about Michaela Garecht's abduction with some sad acoustic guitar music in the background. They also threw in a composite sketch. A VERY SCARY one of a suspect that was thought to be a white male (or female?) with shoulder length dirty blond hair. They even had that case profiled on America's Most Wanted with that same sketch, only they profiled all 4 girls, not just Michaela. Anyone else remember this and the scary drawing?

I think I remember the AMW story. Didn't the police have some information that a group of individuals were kidnapping children for prostitution/slavery purposes? I seem to remember they got a letter from a kid who had been abducted (and possibly rescued from these people) and he said he had met Michaela and some of the others. He even identified a few of the kidnappers (by first name at least). For example, the blonde man who kidnapped Michaela was named "Tony". Anyone else remember this?

Justin

It was the first sketch issued by law enforcement in the abduction of Michaela Garecht. A refined sketch was issued later that resembled Timothy Bindner. Binder is considered the primary suspect in the abduction of Garecht and several other girls in the San Francisco Bay area.

That's right! This is the second composite made:

http://www.angelfire.com/mi3/mpccn/images/garecht_abductor2.jpg

And it ressembles a younger Tim Bindner (photo below taken in 2001):

http://www.angelfire.com/mi3/mpccn/images/Bindner.jpg

Coincidence can only go so far, and there's no smoke without fire......

(Since it's Angelfire, you must copy and paste the URLs into your toolbar and press Enter to see the pictures, or go here: http://www.angelfire.com/mi3/mpccn/garecht.html)

Interesting article I just found. Im sure some of you have seen it. But Ill make a link to the article. In essence it tries to make a link between Brian David Mitchell, who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, to being a possible suspect in the disappearance of Michaela Joy Garecht. Mitchell was in California at the time of the disappearance, and at the time of the disappearances of several other BLONDE, BLUE eyed girls. Amanda Campbell, Amber Swartz-Garcia, and Jaycee Dugard. At the bottom of the page they show pictures of all of them. And they do all bear a striking resemblece to one another. Just a thought, and an intersting point of view I thought Id share!

http://forthelost.bravepages.com/mgarecht.html

Just found another interesting article about this. Im sure some of you have seen this too, but it has some interesting facts that I didnt know. Just thought Id share it!

Vanished: Missing Girls Mystery
Sympathetic Stranger or Suspect?


FROM ABC NEWS:
Jan. 16 — Three days after 7-year-old Amber Swartz disappeared from her Pinole, Calif., yard in June 1988, a stranger came by to tell her mother that he had been searching the nearby woods for the little girl.


"'I wanted to be the one to save her,'" Kim Swartz remembers the man saying. "'I wanted to be the one to bring her home to you.'"
When Swartz heard him say that they were "looking for a dead body," the grieving mother wanted nothing to do with the man, who said his name was Tim Bindner. But he wasn't easy to ignore. Bindner would continue to call her for years, offering help in the search for her little girl.

Five months later, another little girl, 9-year-old Michaela Garecht, disappeared in Hayward, a nearby town. Bindner showed up again, asking Michaela's mother if he could help find her daughter. Michaela had been abducted while buying candy with a friend, who heard a muffled cry and turned around to see her friend being kidnapped by a white male.

"He said that he wanted to go out and look for Michaela," said Sharon Murch, Michaela's mother. "He brought a map and showed us where he wanted to go."

Amber and Michaela were not the first young girls to disappear from towns along Interstate 80, which goes through the communities of San Francisco's East Bay.

Angela Bugay, 5, disappeared from Antioch in November 1983, and Tara Cossey, 11, disappeared from San Pablo in June 1978.

And the heartbreaking losses continued. In January 1989, Ilene Misheloff, 13, vanished in mid-afternoon near the town of Dublin. Two years later, 4-year-old Nikki Campbell vanished from Fairfield.

The disappearances of little girls in the East Bay area left law enforcement officers puzzled. "It was just taunting the investigators, taunting the public, taunting the families," said Linda Goldston, a reporter for The Mercury News who covered the cases for years. "You just felt there was a master killer, it was a master suspect at work."

Were the continuing disappearances along I-80 unrelated tragedies, or the work of one person? Investigators began to search for clues that might link some of the cases.

Birthday Greetings From a Stranger

Bindner's name surfaced again in the Nikki Campbell investigation. Months before Nikki disappeared, a worried couple in the same Fairfield neighborhood told police their 12-year-old daughter was getting odd mail, with the letters written backward so they could only be read in a mirror.

The person who had sent the letters was Bindner, a 43-year-old married man who worked at a sewage treatment plant. It turned out Bindner had been writing to lots of young girls, often sending birthday greetings.

"He said he just did it to be nice, and that they liked it," said Goldston. "That they were lonely."

Whatever his intentions, Bindner caught the attention of Fairfield police. He had also been questioned by Pinole police, because he was seen repeatedly visiting Angela Bugay's gravesite at Oakmont Cemetary, often in the middle of the night, and because of his contacting many of the grieving mothers.

Over the years, as he came into the public eye, Bindner has steadfastly denied harming, or even meeting, any of the girls. He said he was deeply affected when he heard of their disappearances and just wanted to do anything he could to help.

'Accumulation of Coincidence'

But investigators were troubled by a series of coincidences.

Bindner once wrote a letter to law enforcement speculating that the next girl to disappear would be 9. Then, 9-year-old Michaela disappeared. On another occasion, Bindner sent a Christmas card to an FBI profiler with an image of a little girl holding up four fingers. Shortly after, 4-year-old Nikki disappeared.

Police bloodhounds also picked up Amber Swartz's scent at Angela Bugay's gravesite, which Bindner often visited. Police said dogs later picked up Nikki's scent at the gravesite.

"This kind of accumulation of coincidence is not anything that I've ever encountered in 25 years of investigative work," said John Philpin, a criminal psychologist who spent 1,000 hours interviewing Bindner for his book Stalemate, which examined child abductions in the Bay Area.

Investigators in the Nikki Campbell case questioned Bindner, and named him a suspect in 1992. But bloodhound evidence is too unreliable to be presented in court, and prosecutors never found evidence to support criminal charges against Bindner. Next month, another man goes to trial on charges that he murdered Bugay.

Delivering Little Girls to Jesus

Goldston, the Mercury News reporter, found it odd that Bindner wanted her to interview him at Oakmont Cemetery in the middle of the night. She picked him up at 4:30 a.m., and he asked if he could play his favorite song on the car radio: "Jesus, Here's Another Child to Hold." They drove to the cemetery.

Goldston, who asked Bindner why he was concerned about the girls who disappeared, said: "He told me that he came to think of them as his children. That he cried about them, he prayed for them, that he spent a long time thinking about them and that he dedicated himself to trying to find them."

When she asked what he thought happened to the girls when they were taken, Goldston remembers him saying: "'Well, you know, one of them was sweet and shy and didn't say a thing, but the other went kicking and screaming.'" Then, she said, he added, "'I'm just guessing that that's what they would have said.'"

"I really got chills," said Goldston. "He had convinced himself that he was rescuing these girls and he was delivering them to Jesus."

A Taunting Game?

Goldston said it seemed he was purposely toying with both investigators and reporters. "Whether he is the person who took the girls, I don't know," she said, "but I felt that he went out of his way to make me think that he had."

Kim Swartz, who had developed a bizarre friendship with Bindner at the urging of police, agreed that it seemed to be a game to Bindner.

"He was walking that fine line, knowing exactly where he can go with it," she said."I think he was getting off on taunting me and my family."

At Bindner's suggestion, Swartz read Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, in which a character who keeps showing up turns out to be the man who actually committed the crime.


A Good Samaritan

Bindner refused to be interviewed on camera, but he agreed to speak with ABCNEWS off camera.

He said he was simply trying to help find the missing girls, and described himself as a good Samaritan. In fact, Bindner does have a record of helping others: He was given an award for heroism by the California Highway Patrol for assisting in the rescue efforts after the 1989 earthquake. He continues to insist that he had nothing to do with the girls' disappearances.

"It's a fundamental mistake to focus on Tim Bindner," said his attorney, John Burris. "Because he's the wrong person."

No civil or criminal actions have been filed against Bindner in any of these cases. The only court action involving him was a defamation suit he brought against the city of Fairfield. The city settled by paying him $90,000.

Philpin said that in some of the cases neither he, nor Swartz, nor any of the investigators have been able to rule Bindner in as a supsect or rule him out.

"It's a stalemate," said Philpin. "In the end, all the pieces of this particular puzzle just don't come together."

COPYRIGHT 2004

Yes. That's exactly what I was talking about. But please, hide scary composite sketches behind a URL. *shudders* :eek:

Ive just finished reading this book. Stalemate BY JOHN PHILPIN. If you havent read it, and any of these cases interest you I highly recommend it. It sheds a new light on the entire story. Not to mention the Police Departments that dealt with the disappearances. The book is easily found on Half.com and Ebay. I bought my copy for just $2.99
take
This inside account- featuring the words of Bindner himself- take you into the mind of a suspected child abductor as well as the complex realm of modern forensic investigation. Not to mention a shocking indictiment of our flawed legal system. Stalemate asks the even more disturbing question of whether Timothy Bindner is playing a sinister game of cat and mouse and getting away with it.

Check it out!

Sounds like an interesting book...I'll have to check it out.

I have to say that this case is starting to sound more and more like the Zodiac/Arthur Leigh Allen case. The overwhelming circumstancial evidence says, "It's gotta be this guy!!" but nobody has ever been able to conclusively link these suspects to the respective murders. Also the fact that both cases are handled by Bay Area police isn't too reassuring. I hope there's some kind of justice here.

I too hope there is final justice in the near future for these families. The circumstantial evidence is absolutly overwhelming in this case. The book outlines all of it quite well. Its just unbelievable. Many times as I was reading the book, I felt as if I were reading someones nightmare, but its infact true life, real, and unbelievable. Just stunning. Id love to hear your thoughts after you read the book.

:)

So here I am, reading this thread via my webtv unit (29" TV screen), tapping the SCROLL DOWN button with my finger as I read. I stop to light my pipe, but tap the button a couple more times without looking, then reach over, pick up my lighter, bow my head to light my pipe, AND LOOK UP TO FIND THAT COMPOSITE SKETCH STARING AT ME!!!

DAMN DAMN DAMN! I will be seeing a cardiologist tomorrow for the heart attack I just suffered! :D

Wow, incredible how the human face can be so beautiful, yet so utterly terrifying.

I can see my own story on a future UM: Family Wants To Know Why Healthy 40-Year- Old Suddenly Dropped Dead While Surfing The Net"

11

Link (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/27/BA4N19EJ35.DTL)

A woman who has been missing from her South Lake Tahoe home has reportedly surfaced in Concord, 18 years after she was kidnapped.


Jaycee Dugard, who would be 29 today, apparently walked into the Concord Police Department on Wednesday. Concord police have declined comment, referring inquiries to the El Dorado County sheriff's office. A news conference is scheduled for today.

Dugard was last seen on June 10, 1991 as she was walking to a bus stop in South Lake Tahoe. Dugard, a blue-eyed, blond 11-year-old dressed in a pink top and pink pants, set out to catch the bus to her school near South Lake Tahoe. She never made it.

As her stepfather watched helplessly from the family's driveway on a hill about two blocks away, a two- tone gray sedan pulled up and someone yanked the girl into the car and sped off. Even though officers responded within minutes, no trace of the car or girl was ever found.

Dugard's mother was reportedly on her way from her southern California home to reunite with her daughter.

Link (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/27/BA4N19EJ35.DTL)

A woman who has been missing from her South Lake Tahoe home has reportedly surfaced in Concord, 18 years after she was kidnapped.


Jaycee Dugard, who would be 29 today, apparently walked into the Concord Police Department on Wednesday. Concord police have declined comment, referring inquiries to the El Dorado County sheriff's office. A news conference is scheduled for today.

Dugard was last seen on June 10, 1991 as she was walking to a bus stop in South Lake Tahoe. Dugard, a blue-eyed, blond 11-year-old dressed in a pink top and pink pants, set out to catch the bus to her school near South Lake Tahoe. She never made it.

As her stepfather watched helplessly from the family's driveway on a hill about two blocks away, a two- tone gray sedan pulled up and someone yanked the girl into the car and sped off. Even though officers responded within minutes, no trace of the car or girl was ever found.

Dugard's mother was reportedly on her way from her southern California home to reunite with her daughter.


All I can say is WOW! I hope she's o.k. I'm off to see if there is more on this story.

Link (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/27/BA4N19EJ35.DTL)

A woman who has been missing from her South Lake Tahoe home has reportedly surfaced in Concord, 18 years after she was kidnapped.


Jaycee Dugard, who would be 29 today, apparently walked into the Concord Police Department on Wednesday. Concord police have declined comment, referring inquiries to the El Dorado County sheriff's office. A news conference is scheduled for today.

Dugard was last seen on June 10, 1991 as she was walking to a bus stop in South Lake Tahoe. Dugard, a blue-eyed, blond 11-year-old dressed in a pink top and pink pants, set out to catch the bus to her school near South Lake Tahoe. She never made it.

As her stepfather watched helplessly from the family's driveway on a hill about two blocks away, a two- tone gray sedan pulled up and someone yanked the girl into the car and sped off. Even though officers responded within minutes, no trace of the car or girl was ever found.

Dugard's mother was reportedly on her way from her southern California home to reunite with her daughter.


All I can say is WOW! I hope she's o.k. I'm off to see if there is more on this story.

Sorry for the double post, hadn't seemed to have posted...

A site with a video, not of woman claiming to be Jaycee, but with history of case.

http://www.ktvu.com/news/20581955/detail.html

Says there will be new conference today.

Another site with recorded interview of stepfather:
http://www.ktvu.com/news/20581022/detail.html

Press Release from El Dorado County Sheriff's Office:


http://claycord.blogspot.com/2009/08/jaycee-dugard-has-been-positively.html

Mayor of Claycord, CA states that she has been found, that suspects are in custody and that a house is being searched in Antioch, CA.

I hope it is her...but it leaves me wondering...why now? The woman is 28 years old...she's been an adult for a long time...

Did she just find something that told her who she really was? Something on the net or something????

If I were her family, I would def want some DNA testing just to be sure.

Oh. My. God.

If this is her, and it sounds like it is, this is just amazing.

I hope it is her...but it leaves me wondering...why now? The woman is 28 years old...she's been an adult for a long time...

Did she just find something that told her who she really was? Something on the net or something????

If I were her family, I would def want some DNA testing just to be sure.

This answers some questions, apparently she walked into police station with her 2 abductors to ask a question. Not saying what the question was. Then somehow it came out that she was Jaycee, that also not clear.

http://www.rgj.com/article/20090827/NEWS/90827020/1321/NEWS

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/27/california.missing.girl/index.html?iref=mpstoryview)

An 11-year-old California girl snatched from the street in front of her house in 1991 had two children with the man accused of taking her and was forced along with the children to live in backyard sheds, police said Thursday.


Phillip Garrido is a registered sex offender, listed as having been convicted of forcible rape.

"From what they have both said, he fathered both of those children with Jaycee [Dugard]," El Dorado County Undersheriff Fred Kollar told reporters.

The girls, now 11 and 15, had been living with their mother, now 29, in a series of sheds behind Garrido's house in Antioch, California, until they were discovered on Wednesday, Kollar said.

"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," he said. "They were born there."

In a rambling telephone interview from jail, Garrido told CNN affiliate KCRA of Sacramento he was relieved at being caught.

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

Kollar said Garrido's wife, Nancy, was with her husband when Dugard was abducted from the street in front of her house in South Lake Tahoe. Dugard was already a registered sex offender at the time.


"There was nothing then nor is there anything now to indicate that this was anything other than a stranger abduction of an 11-year-old," Kollar said.

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 attempted 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.

A police officer "thought the interaction between the older male and the two young females was rather suspicious," so she 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.

A school spokesman identified the officers as Allison Jacobs and Lisa Campbell, and said the two became suspicious of "subtle behavior" Garrido exhibited.

They passed on the information to Garrido's parole officer, who requested that the 58-year-old man appear Wednesday at the parole office.

Garrido did just that, accompanied by his wife, Nancy, "and a female named Allissa," Kollar said.

The presence of "Allissa" and the two children surprised the parole officer, who had never seen them during visits to Garrido's house, Kollar said.

"Ultimately, Allissa was identified as Dugard," Kollar said.

DNA confirmation is being sought to confirm her identity, but Dugard revealed information during an interview that only she could have known, Kollar said.

"The two minor children turned out to be children of Jaycee and the male suspect, Garrido," he said.

Scott Kernan, undersecretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told reporters that Garrido admitted to having abducted Dugard.

El Dorado County Sheriff's Office online records showed that Phillip and Nancy Garrido were in the county jail, held on suspicion of offenses including conspiracy to commit a crime and kidnapping with the intent to commit robbery and rape.

Dugard had been living behind Garrido's home since she was kidnapped, Kollar said.

But her presence there apparently went unnoticed by others in the residential neighborhood, where homes on one-fourth to one-half-acre lots typically sell for less than $200,000, said Kathy Russo, whose father has lived two houses away from the Garridos for 33 years.

"My dad said he never saw a young woman," said Russo, who added that her father, 94-year-old Dante Confetti, 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.

Her family's last contact with Garrido was last fall, she said. "He was burning something in the backyard and my home health aide called the fire department," Russo said.

"He was really pissed off," she said. "Came over to the house and started yelling."

Garrido told KCRA that he left documents three days ago with the FBI in San Francisco, California, that would shed light on the case. "They're going to be a part of the trial," he said.

A call from CNN to the FBI's San Francisco bureau was not immediately returned.

Garrido said 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 said. "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 'til 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 the two daughters, he said, "Those two girls slept in my arms every single night from birth; I never kissed them."

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

Asked about the fact that they had not seen doctors, he said, "We just didn't have the finances and so forth."

Kollar said a search of Garrido's property "revealed a hidden backyard within a backyard," he said. It included several sheds no higher than 6 feet tall, two tents and several outbuildings "where Jaycee and the girls spent most of their lives."

The "secondary" backyard was inside the first and was "screened from view." One of the sheds was soundproof, he said.

"The way the backyard is set up you could walk through the backyard, walk through the house and never know that there was another set of living circumstances in that backyard."

At the end of the backyard is a 6-foot fence lined with shrubs, tall trees, garbage bags and a tarp, all of which obscured views of what was there, he said.

Extension cords provided electricity to the sheds and tents, and an outhouse and rudimentary shower "as if you were camping" were there, too, he said.

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

The mother and her two daughters were staying at a motel in the area, he said. "Family reunification has begun and will be a long and ongoing process," he said, presumably referring to Dugard's parents.

Earlier Thursday, Carl Probyn, Dugard's stepfather, told CNN that an FBI agent had called his wife, Terry, on Wednesday afternoon to tell her that Dugard had been found.

"Jaycee remembers everything," he said. "They talked back and forth and she had the right answers to all my wife's questions."

He said, "I'm feeling great! ... It's like winning the Lotto."

He witnessed the abduction of the blond, blue-eyed girl, who was wearing a pink windbreaker and pink stretch pants as she walked to her bus stop on June 10, 1991. Watch the stepfather describe finding out Jaycee is alive »

At the time, "It was reported that a vehicle occupied by two individuals drove up to Jaycee Dugard and abducted her in view of her stepfather," the El Dorado County Sheriff's office said Thursday.

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said the reappearance of Dugard is "absolutely huge."


"One of the things that we preach to searching families all the time ... is that even in these long-term cases there's hope," he said.

"Even in these long-term cases ... it's important that we not let the world forget."