The Kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard
The Kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard In the town of South Lake Tahoe, children played safely outside, the sun always seemed to be shining, and laughter was a common sound. Everyone knew one another and crime ratings were close to zero. Due to the town’s “child-friendly” nature, the Dugard family called this place home (Hawkins). However, on June 10, 1991, a fiery nightmare exploded into reality for eleven year-old Jaycee Dugard. Walking towards the bus stop, Jaycee was dragged into a grey sedan (Hawkins). Jaycee’s stepfather Carl Probyn witnessed this gut-wrenching act from down the street and tried unsuccessfully to trail the car on a bike. (Tresniowski). Jaycee’s mother, Terry, lost control of her emotions after her daughter’s kidnapping (Tresniowski). The ordeal also eventually caused Terry and Carl to split (Hawkins). Before the divorce, they put forth tremendous efforts to find their missing daughter, such as producing more than 500,000 posters (Tresniowski). Thankfully, Miss Dugard was found alive in 2009 in the Bay Area (Hawkins); however, Jaycee’s abductors, Phillip and Nancy Garrido, can only be described as severely disturbed. During Jaycee’s captivity, she lived in the trash-infested, “hell-warren” backyard compound of the Garrido’s (Tresniowski). As well as a horrendous living environment, Jaycee gave birth to two daughters fathered by Phillip Garrido during her eighteen years of hell on Earth (Hawkins). The basic facts of this story are famous nation-wide; however, most individuals are clueless as to why Jaycee wasn’t rescued for so long and how she survived. Because of mistakes made by police and other officials and Garrido’s master criminal mind, Jaycee was not rescued for eighteen years, during which her methods of survival kept her alive. To start off, among the many mistakes exist the ones made by the police. For instance, police officials failed to notice Garrido’s multiple parole violations as well as the massive amount of time he spent
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