Federal parole agents failed to properly monitor convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido during the time he kidnapped, raped and held captive Jaycee Dugard, missing chances to stop his crimes, according to a confidential review made public Friday by the chief federal judge in San Francisco.
"Had Mr. Garrido's federal supervision been conducted properly from the onset, it is possible that he may have been deterred from some of the acts now attributed to him," Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware wrote in releasing the 43-page report written after the review conducted last year by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
The review was made public the same week that Jaycee Dugard's biography is due to be released. In it she gives graphic detail of her 18 years of captivity. "A Stolen Life" hits shelves on Tuesday.
Garrido was a federal parolee from December 1988 to June 1999 after serving 11 years for kidnapping a Nevada woman. California officials then assumed responsibility and did an equally poor job supervising Garrido, missing numerous chances to learn that he had Dugard hidden in a shed in a secret backyard of his Antioch home, according to previously released reports.
Garrido pleaded guilty last month to snatching Dugard, then 11, in 1991 and is serving a sentence of 431 years to life.
Garrido's federal supervision was "substandard," the confidential report concludes.
It said he was rightly classified as a high-risk offender after he served his federal prison sentence, but the federal probation office "failed to supervise him accordingly," Ware wrote after reviewing the report: Home visits were rare and his probation officer never talked with neighbors or local law enforcement.
It took the probation officer more than two months to question Garrido in 1989 after the nursing home where he worked reported that three female co-workers said he made them nervous. In addition, Garrido's plan to sell products door-to-door in 1990 should have raised concerns from his probation officer, given his history.
Moreover, on several occasions Garrido tested positive for drug use and was found to have submitted diluted urine samples, the report said. But there is no indication the probation office told Nevada state parole officials about his drug use. The U.S. Parole Commission was told about the illegal drug use just once, which resulted in a short prison term and home confinement.
Garrido's wife, Nancy Garrido, kept Jaycee locked up while he was imprisoned in 1993 for the failed drug test. Nancy Garrido also pleaded guilty last month and was sentenced to 36 years to life in state prison.
Ware said he decided to release the report to show that officials are serious about making improvements. He noted that the supervisor in charge at the time was replaced even before Dugard surfaced.
