Jaycee's Stepfather: “I've Won the Lottery”

Carl Probyn watched Jaycee being kidnapped

While Jaycee Dugard, her children and her mother get reacquainted after 18 years, Jaycee's stepfather, Carl Probyn, is doing non-stop interviews, handling the questions from reporters around the world.

Appearing on several morning news shows, Probyn said the most surprising thing to his wife was that her daughter, now 29, looks very young, almost like she did when she taken at age 11.

"I hear they’re doing good, the girls, the two girls, are running around playing. My wife says that Jaycee looks good. She looks almost like she did when she was kidnapped, she looks very young. She doesn’t look 29 at all," said Probyn.

But he says Dugard feels terribly guilty for bonding with her captor and her family is troubled by learning the facts of how she was forced to live.

Police say her abductor kept Dugard hidden behind a series of fences, sheds and tents in his backyard, and fathered two children with her. The children, now 11 and 15, were also kept there.

"It’s pretty sick, you know, I feel sorry for Jaycee going through this he’s had her locked up in the back yard for basically 18 years, no school, no doctor, no dentist, the children have never been to a doctor or a dentist, no life." Probyn said. "It’s going to be a long road to change things around."

Probyn had long been considered a suspect. And he blames the kidnapping, which he witnessed, for ruining his marriage. He and Dugard's mother are separated.

"It ruined our lives totally." Probyn said. "For the first 10 years, I would say, my wife -- during Christmas, during kidnapping date, during Jaycee’s birthday -- she’d take a week off work and sit home and cry. She was just a total basket case."

But, Probyn said he is happy with the way the case is turning out now.

"I’ve won the lottery, they’ve captured them, this guy’s confessed. There’s not gonna be any long trial, it’s just fantastic."

"I couldn’t ask for a better ending," Probyn said.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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