Sometime in the last month, Jaycee Lee Dugard sat across a table from Nancy Garrido and listened as she tearfully confessed to kidnapping Dugard off the street 20 years ago when she was an 11-year-old girl on her way to school.
Around the same time, in a separate room in the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department but without Dugard present, Phillip Garrido made a full confession of his own about driving the getaway car and spiriting Dugard to his Antioch home, where she essentially was kept as a sex slave for the 59-year-old convicted kidnapper and rapist.
The extraordinary scenario was described Monday by Nancy Garrido's court- appointed attorney, who said the confessions were part of an effort by Phillip Garrido to win some leniency in an 18-month-old court case that could send both defendants to prison for life.
"For your information, Mr. and Mrs. Garrido have given full, complete statements to the Sheriff's Department in the last month or so, been honest with them, frankly, in the hope of mercy on behalf of Mr. Garrido for Mrs. Garrido," Stephen Tapson told reporters after a routine court hearing. "Unfortunately, the quality of mercy is strained in El Dorado County."
Tapson said prosecutors have offered Nancy Garrido a plea deal if she agrees to a sentence of 241 years and eight months to life, while Phillip Garrido has been offered a sentence of 440 years to life.
"So, she's obviously guilty of kidnapping and a bunch of other charges, but I think at least based on what happened – after all the stuff started to become the bizarre family – that she should at least be able to walk on the beach, probably with a walker, at some point before she dies," Tapson said.
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