A troubling question related to the Jaycee DuGard kidnapping case is why it took nearly nineteen years for the authorities to find and free DuGard and her daughters. In retrospect, there were many missed opportunities to identify suspicious behavior at her captor’s home, but law enforcement failed to follow through and respond appropriately each time.

After being released from decades of imprisonment and sexual abuse by a known sex offender on parole, DuGard sued the State of California for its negligence. Her case hinged on Phillip Garrido’s classification as a low-level sex offender requiring minimal supervision by his parole officer. In 1976, Garrido had already kidnapped and raped another victim, which resulted in his conviction and monitoring by the parole office. DuGard’s subsequent abduction and captivity were the result of a perfect storm of lapses in investigative efforts on the part of the authorities:

• Right after DuGard’s abduction from South Lake Tahoe in 1991, the police failed to notice that Garrido had abducted his earlier victim from this same area.
• A year after DuGard’s abduction, she was spotted by someone in a gas station near the Garrido home looking at a Missing poster of herself. The eyewitness called the police and described the vehicle in which DuGard was traveling but didn’t remain on the scene to wait for the police.