An investigator searched the yard of Phillip Garrido’s next-door neighbor yesterday for any links to other crimes.
(Kevin Bartram/ Reuters)
Police comb home of Calif. kidnap suspect
An investigator searched the yard of Phillip Garrido’s next-door neighbor yesterday for any links to other crimes.
(Kevin Bartram/ Reuters)
ANTIOCH, Calif. - Police said yesterday that they found one small bone fragment on the property next door to the home of a Northern California man charged with kidnapping a little girl and hiding her in his backyard for 18 years.
Authorities revealed the discovery after FBI and local law enforcement agencies in the San Francisco Bay area finished searching Phillip Garrido’s property in Antioch and the one next door for possible links to unsolved crimes in the area.
Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 54, were arrested last week and charged with 29 counts connected to the kidnapping, rape, and imprisonment of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was snatched outside her home in South Lake Tahoe in 1991. They have pleaded not guilty.
The bone fragment was found Sunday in the neighbor’s backyard, said Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jimmy Lee. Garrido once lived on that property in a shed.
Lee said it would take several weeks of testing to determine if the recovered shard belonged to an animal or a human.
Authorities have not provided many details about what they are seeking at the properties in relation to other cases. The land includes the area where Garrido and his wife allegedly hid Dugard and her daughters, now 11 and 15, fathered by Garrido.
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