SACRAMENTO — Phillip Craig Garrido, the convicted sex offender charged with abducting Jaycee Lee Dugard in 1991, may have attacked at least two other victims — one a 14-year-old girl he allegedly drugged and raped repeatedly in a motel, authorities now say.
Garrido, 58, was arrested in 1972 after the incident, police in Antioch, Calif., said Thursday, but the case never went to trial because the girl decided during the preliminary hearing that she did not want to testify.
Garrido also was suspected of trying to abduct another young woman near South Lake Tahoe in November 1976 — just one hour before he kidnapped 25-year-old Katherine Callaway and drove her to a Reno storage shed where he raped and sodomized her for more than five hours.
"It is so horrendous," Leland Lutfy, the former federal prosecutor who won a 50-year sentence against Garrido in 1977, said of the revelations emerging about a man he remembers as someone who never should have been released from prison.
The 1972 incident came to light after the alleged victim, now an adult who does not want to be identified, contacted Antioch police after Garrido's arrest last week on charges of kidnapping and raping Dugard in 1991 when she was 11.
Antioch police Lt. Leonard Orman told The Bee this morning that the incident began as the 14-year-old and a friend were walking to the public library on West 18th Street in Antioch.
"On the way there the girl tells our victim they're going to meet a couple of guys," Orman said. "The victim assumes these guys are going to be age appropriate, and when they get there it's a couple of guys quite a bit older than they expected.
"They get into the car with these guys and start driving around the city."
One of the men was Garrido, Orman said, and they began giving the girls barbiturates. For some reason that Orman said isn't clear, a police car began chasing the car but the men were able to elude it and ended up at a house near where Garrido lived until his arrest last week. Orman said it may have been the same house but authorities are not certain because many of the records from then are not available.
"Essentially, from there the girl is provided more barbiturates and she remembers next waking up in a motel in Antioch that's on east 18th Street going out toward Oakley," Orman said. "She remembers Garrido being there and she remembers being repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted, by him.
"At some point a day or two later her mother and father find her there ... They get to the motel and find her daughter there who's obviously been raped and Garrido is still there. From what we understand they call law enforcement, an Antioch police officer responds, finds out the basics and from what we can tell arrests Garrido."
Orman said the Contra Costa District Attorney's office began a prosecution of Garrido but "at the preliminary hearing the victim decides she's not going to testify and that charges against Garrido are dismissed."
Orman said police do not know what happened to the other man involved and whether he faced charges, or whether the other girl was assaulted.
The alleged victim in the case called Antioch police after Garrido's arrest to alert them to her case. Orman said that although there may be statute of limitation obstacles to filing new charges, the woman wanted to be certain authorities knew Garrido may have had multiple incidents involving attacks against women.
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