Kidnapped Girl Jaycee Lee Dugard Found 18 Years Later

By Amanda Pendolino on August 28th, 2009

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Jaycee Lee Dugard disappeared back in 1991, when she was just 11 years old. CNN reports that the woman from Lake Tahoe, California, spent most of her life inside a soundproof tent hidden in the backyard of her alleged captors, Phillip and Nancy Garrido.

Now 28, Jaycee spent more than half her life in that tent, where she was apparently known as “Alissa.” She was trapped in Antioch, California, over 160 miles from where she taken in front of her childhood home. Inside the tent, there was a makeshift bathroom and shower, along with electricity supplied by an extension cord. The tent was so overgrown with bushes, trees, grass and a tarp that no one ever noticed Jaycee or the two daughters she had with her abductor, now 15 and 11. Both girls are in good health, though they have never seen a doctor or attended school.

Phillip Garrido, 58 (a previously convicted sex offender) and his wife, 54-year-old Nancy Garrido have been arrested on numerous charges.Authorities finally began to uncover the mystery of Jaycee when Phillip Garrido showed up at UC Berkeley with Jaycee and their two daughters and tried to get permission to hand out literature and speak. Police were suspicious, and after a background check that linked Garrido to other crimes, they were able to piece together the case.

Jaycee faces a difficult reunion with her mother and stepfather, Terry and Carl Probyn. Carl witnessed the kidnapping, and said over the years he had lost hope that Jaycee would ever be found.