SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A woman who was snatched from a bus stop as an 11-year-old child in 1991 turned up at a California police station after 18 mysterious years, and a convicted sex offender and his wife were arrested in the kidnapping.
Jaycee Lee Dugard was reunited with her mother, who was overjoyed to learn the daughter she feared dead was actually alive and well.
It was not immediately clear how Dugard spent the 18 years since she was abducted as a blond, ponytailed child outside her South Lake Tahoe home.
Police said she recently walked into a Northern California police station with Phillip Garrido, 58, one of her reported captors. He and his wife Nancy Garrido, 54, were arrested for investigation of kidnapping and conspiracy on Wednesday, police said.
Phillip Garrido is also being held for investigation of rape by force, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and sexual penetration, said Jimmie Lee, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County sheriff's office.
Phillip Garrido was sentenced to 50 years in prison and served nearly 11 years in Nevada for a federal kidnapping conviction, said Suzanne Pardee, a spokesman for Nevada state prisons.
He also served seven months concurrently for a conviction for rape by force or fear at the medium-security Northern Nevada Correctional Center. Pardee said Garrido was paroled in August 1988.
Dugard was in good health when she came into a San Francisco Bay area police station and revealed her name.
"We're 99 percent sure it's her," said Lt. Les Lovell of the El Dorado County sheriff's office, who was a detective assigned to help investigate the kidnapping in 1991. DNA tests were being conducted.
California corrections officials said they called in Phillip Garrido for questioning Wednesday after receiving a report that he was seen with two small children at the University of California, Berkeley.
Two children and two adult women accompanied him to the station.
"The diligent questioning and follow-up by the parolee's agent of record led to Garrido revealing his kidnapping of the adult female," the department said in a statement. "It was further revealed by Garrido that she was Jaycee Lee Dugard, and that the children were his."
Authorities said Dugard was the children's mother.
FBI spokesman Joe Schadler said the woman was reunited with her mother Thursday morning. He declined to provide details.
The suspects were being held in El Dorado County. Jail records showed Nancy Garrido was being held in lieu of $4.195 million bond and Phillip Garrido was not eligible for bail because he is a parolee.
A house in the city of Antioch was cordoned off with police tape as it was searched by FBI agents and the El Dorado County sheriff's office.
Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, 60, said he was overwhelmed by the news that Dugard was alive. He said that for years he had done everything he could to help find her, especially because he knew suspicion had fallen on him.
"It broke my marriage up. I've gone through hell, I mean I'm a suspect up until yesterday," he said at his home in Orange, Calif. "I'm the last person to see her."
Witnesses reported that a vehicle drove up to Dugard and two people inside abducted her while her stepfather watched on June 10, 1991.
Probyn said he saw someone reach out and grab her before the car sped away.
Probyn said his wife, from whom he is separated, was devastated by the kidnapping. He said that for 10 years after the crime, she would take a week off work at Christmas and on the anniversary of the abduction and spend the time crying at home.
Information for this article was contributed by Paul Elias, Terry Collins, Gillian Flaccus and Brooke Donald of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 9 on 08/28/2009