Phillip Garrido’s Backyard Of Horrors

@♥♥♥:
that gave me goosebumps and the creepies.

tonilost

@downlow: In other odd 'coincidences'... I read that in this case a neighbor named Erika Pratt reported to police she'd seen children being kept in the back of the property.. I googled Erika Pratt and there is a wiki page on a girl of the same name who was kidnapped at 7 years old in 95 and kept in an abandoned home until she chewed through her restraints and escaped. .. I just thought that was wierd.

@downlow: Here's a link and of course this sick fuck was a convicted sex offender!

[www.thefreelibrary.com]

Ok, since it's late at night, this is an older post, and I've had 3 glasses of wine, I'll share a quick story:

A few years ago a girl went missing from her apt. complex in San Antonio. I live 62 miles NW from there. For some reason, while I was in the convenience store across the street from my apartment I thought, for no reason I knew of at the time "Wow. That guy with that kidnapped girl could be in here right now." Later that girl was returned home by the perp, but no one saw him. A girl from New Orleans went missing and about a week later was dropped off at a train station with money for a ticket home. Neither of these girls knew where they had been taken, but the police had enough info from them to surmise it was the same perp. Then a girl from Houston goes missing. Now my town is off I-10 as is Houston, SA, and NO.

One day every police officer in my county went racing down the rural road I lived on at the time. HE LIVED DOWN THE STREET FROM ME!!! He had held these girls for about a week at a time in a trailer less than a mile from my house. When the cops caught him he still had the Houston girl.

The sick coward blew his brains out right then, in front of police and the little girl.

What made me think what I thought that day? It haunts me. Were they in there at the time? Did my subconscious tell me something my conscious mind didn't pick up on? I'll never know. I always look very hard at photos of missing people because you never know if you could be the one to find them, hopefully alive.

@Wrapitup: Please..you are joking, right?

Heatherz

@PontiusPirate: Antioch, Pittsburg, Brentwood, Byron, and Stockton...

@Tart of Darkness: I read an article this morning that said homes in Antioch on an acre of land were valued under $200,000.

ShansyPants

@Andalucía: Agreed. I was just using the common term I hear in these cases.

I don't think the parole officers were the first to fuck up. We need stronger sentences for rapists. Period. We need our states to pass legislation that will lock these people up for good. I read the comments on this guys blog last night. I say instead of venting our anger here or his blog or the comments sections of online news sites we inundate our legislators with emails, letters, phone calls and DEMAND that they pass laws to impose stricter sentences on rapists.

The fact that rapists receive such light punishment is a throw-back to the good ol' boy days and shit needs to change.

For anyone who has ever been to Antioch, your reaction is likely, "Yep, this sounds about right."

PontiusPirate

@cellardoor: I'm usually on board the "fire the caseworkers!" train, but honestly I can't think of what they could have done differently. I mean, they inspected the guy's yard. They inspected his house. He cooperated the whole time. There's only so much they can do--and keep in mind that human services agencies around the country are getting fucking decimated by budget cuts. There are very few caseworkers, and TONS of cases for them to manage. It's sad, but if you have something to hide and are as adept as this guy at hiding it, you'll hide it. If he had not gotten touched by the serious crazy and gone to UC Berkeley to preach, this poor woman would still be missing.

@Andalucía: Yes, and we can we call for the immediate firing of all case workers assigned to this fuck? A PA on a film would be canned immediately if they offended a starlet, right?

@Big Poppa: I hope you get the inspector job.

ohnothimagain

'Unincorporated' also probably means that there were no police to call. Instead it was probably under the watch of the county sheriff, who has a larger area to watch over, and in these areas neighbors tend to value their 'independence' and not call the law on each other. This in response to commenters in an earlier post on why the nobody called the cops.

AvisBabawaba

@MissPeacock: Sadly, a great deal.

skippywasserman

@Rosewater: Mental illness? Un-treated PTSD? Maybe some sort of developmental issue? I'm grasping at straws here, I guess.

skippywasserman

@Big Poppa: So, basically you're down with punishing some people with torture and death and only held back by the legal consequences of doing so? Man the fuck up and get your knife and do it yourself and then go turn yourself in and do the time. Just stop demanding that the state do the work so you can get your sick little genital mutilation thrill. Fucking free-riders.

skippywasserman

@Tart of Darkness: It's a horrid part of the east Bay. Farmland nearby, kinda industrial. Kinda poor and trashy. So not so much.

He has a creepy van.

westie1984

@Tart of Darkness: which means that the city should look into their lack of enforcement in that area as well...

ah self responsibility, where art thou...

dumanue

@Big Poppa: The BBC said that his home was inspected every year as part of him being registered as a sex offender, and thats why he built the compound and hid it, from inside the yard it would look as if it was the property of the house behind him. They also said he cooperated with their inspections all the time because he knew his secret world was too well hid for them to find

@Andalucía: got it, but 'slave' is pretty fucking bad on it's own.

moosesanddeers

@Cynical Media Bitch: Yeah. I was going to say that. Unincorporated generally implies very little by way of building codes (although there's generally still some kind of zoning to prevent things like sex boutiques from going up). I grew up in the country, and that property looks pretty decently kept in comparison to some of our old neighbors. Where are all of the rusted out cars? Come on, now, do it right!

moosesanddeers

I'm wondering what that "shithole" property is valued at? I'm thinking quite a bit of money. That's a lot of acreage.

@Pesti-Esti: Well, I got a fire hazard citation for a six by six square foot plot of overgrown weeds at the back of my property. So...you know how it is. Some cities are more enforcement oriented than others.

Maybe they should pass legislation requiring sex offenders' homes to be inspected from time to time. Not just for trapped victims but for child porn and that kind of thing. Since it is part of sentencing it would be constitutional. Its just part of parole.

Of course a better idea would be to cut off their weenies and stick them on a stick and parade them around town but that might not be constitutional.

@Wrapitup: she should clearly go to prison too. Despite trauma, she is an adult.

But what of good Mrs Garrido? I think it's important to exonerate her of all blame and focus on just the guy.

The guy is a monster obvs. The woman is mentally ill or just severely misguided. Whatever her motives for kidnapping and enabling her husband to commit rape again and again on a kid, surely she must have been suffering from severe trauma herself.

There must be some way to make her also a victim.

@downlow: "Sex" slaves? Try rape slaves. What does it take to call rape...rape?

This case is beyond sick. She's just a year older than me and she's been rotting away, trapped in horror all this time. The parole officers fucked up for nearly 20 years!

Andalucía

@MissPeacock: thinking of it from that perspective makes it really hit home

@Uncle_Billy_Slumming: there are tens of thousands of women...perhaps even hundreds of thousands of women....in America that work in the sex industry who are virtually slaves....forced to work against their will and kept in closed quarters without any creature comforts and no money...many of them were enticed to travel to America illegally with the promise of jobs. It happens in even the richest areas of America. Not enough is done to stop it.

@MissPeacock: Thinking about it too long makes me feel like crap that my life-everyone's life- isn't dedicated every waking moment to finding victims of this kind of horror.

deardearfriend

@downlow: For real. Just think back to all of the things you've done over the last 18 years and imagine that while you were doing those things, this poor woman (and untold others) was being held captive.

MissPeacock

This is why I never trust someone with a deep lot. What are you doing back there?

Pesti-Esti

@Mount_Prion: Of course. No intent to diminish this.

Well, this kind of helps to explain why no one suspected there were people living in the tents. The children never, ever left these tents? Oh God....

heywhat

interesting tag...'real estate'

maddoxhair

@Uncle_Billy_Slumming: I was telling my dad this weekend, after we watched a lot of crime tv, that there were people right now being held as sex slaves and about how it freaked me out to think about it. I can't imagine what sort of hell this woman has been living in for the past 18 years. It terrifies me.

"Unincorporated area" usually means lax code enforcement, if any.

@Uncle_Billy_Slumming: Maybe. But I'd say 18 years of rape is pretty high up there on the horror list.

@Spirit Fingers: More like a slave terrarium. They never ever left it.

What's even more horrific, is that there are more horrific things going on every minute, of every day, all over the world. Right now. And... right now.

Jeff Foxworthy should change his shtick to "You might be a rapist."

What the FUCK is wrong with people?!?!

MissPeacock

Sooo, basically he had slave quarters.

Spirit Fingers