CALIFORNIA : D.A. lashes out at Garrido : Responding to letters sent from jail by Jaycee Lee Dugard’s alleged kidnapper, he calls him a ‘master manipulator.’
Phillip Garrido, accused of kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard, is a “master manipulator” who wants to “control” his victims, El Dorado County Dist. Atty. Vern Pierson said Friday.
Pierson made the written statement in response to three letters that Garrido sent from jail to Sacramento television station KCRA.
In the most recent letter, Garrido said he wanted to “apologize to every human being for what has taken place.”
He wrote that Christ had helped cure him of a sexual problem.
“People all over the world are hearing testimony that through the spirit of Christ a mental process took place ending a sexual problem believed to be impossible,” Garrido wrote in a letter that the station received Thursday.
Pierson said his office decided to respond because Garrido appeared to be trying to “control the situation around him and his prior victims.”
The district attorney noted that Garrido previously has sought leniency “due to claims of religious transformation and alleged personal change.”
Pierson called Garrido’s newest statements to the media “eerily similar to what Mr. Garrido told the judge who sentenced him in 1977 and to the parole board when he duped them into releasing him from prison after serving only 11 years of a 50-year federal sentence and 5-to-life Nevada state sentence. It has become clear from Mr. Garrido’s repeated calls and letters that he is attempting to manipulate the process, the people involved in that process, and, most significantly, his prior victims.”
Garrido is accused of kidnapping Dugard, now 29, when she was 11 and confining her in a ramshackle set of buildings and tents in his backyard in Contra Costa County. Authorities said he is the father of Dugard’s two daughters, ages 11 and 15.
Garrido’s wife, Nancy, also faces kidnapping and rape charges.
“Our office fully intends to hold Mr. Garrido legally accountable for his actions and see that he is punished to the full extent of the law,” Pierson said.
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