Erin Moriarty: What Kind of Man is Phillip Garrido? Talk to His First Victim
This story is contributed by Erin Moriarty, a correspondent at 48 Hours | Mystery
NEW YORK (CBS) To learn what kind of man Philip Garrido is, all you have to do is spend some time with Katie Callaway Hall. Katie first encountered the accused kidnapper of Jaycee Dugard before Dugard was even born, back in November of 1976. That's when Katie learned firsthand how evil and manipulative Garrido can be.
Katie was just 25 years old and working in a casino in South Lake Tahoe, California, when on November 22, 1976, she was kidnapped by Garrido outside of a supermarket, handcuffed, tied, and driven in her own car to a mini-warehouse in Nevada.
For the next eight hours, she was repeatedly raped and assaulted by Garrido until, miraculously, she was rescued by a policeman who noticed a broken lock on the building and investigated it. As Katie talked to me about that terrible night, I caught glimpses of the frightened young woman who believed she was going to die at the hands of Garrido as he held her captive.
When she recently saw on television the make-shift structures behind Garrido's Antioch, Calif., home where Jaycee had allegedly been held, Katie says she was instantly taken back to the room where she had imprisoned, a room specially designed for rape and torture: Garrido had created a maze of hanging carpets that concealed a mattress he had hidden deep inside.
Garrido, who was only a year older than Katie, had clearly already started stalking and assaulting women; she learned later at his trial that she was actually the second woman he had attacked that very evening. The first had somehow managed to escape him. Katie wasn't as lucky.
Garrido was hit with both Federal and State charges for kidnapping and rape. Katie, who only had to testify at the federal trial, still bristles when she remembers how Garrido's defense attorney tried to place the blame on her, questioning what she wore the night she was kidnapped.
Still, Garrido was found guilty and sentenced to fifty years to life in federal court and later pleaded guilty to state charges which added another life sentence. That should have been the end of the story, but just eleven years later, in 1988, while working at a table in casino, Katie came face-to-face again with the man who ruined her life. Garrido, the convicted sex offender, the man who had been given a life sentence, had been paroled and had somehow tracked her down! He had spent 10 years in a federal prison and less than a year in a state institution and was released to a halfway house.
Katie, shocked and scared, tracked down his parole officer, who admitted that he believed Garrido was likely to strike again, but trying to reassure her, told her that he doubted Garrido would go after her again.
Katie now believes, she says, that Garrido was granted early parole because the manipulative sex offender had lied to his parole officer and convinced authorities that she had been his "girlfriend" and had falsely accused him of rape.
From 1988 until last month when Katie Hall saw Philip Garrido arrested for the kidnapping and arrest of Jaycee Dugard, she has been living a life of fear that he might someday reappear.
There is a side of her, she says, that regrets not speaking out more when Garrido was released in 1988. She says now she has no choice but to speak publicly. She wants to see Garrido behind bars this time for life so he can no longer hurt women as he did her and Jaycee Dugard.
Erin Moriarty is an award-winning correspondent for CBS News and has been with 48 Hours since 1990. Drawing on her training as an attorney, she has examined some of the most important issues of the day, including DNA testing in death-row cases, the abortion controversy and battered women's syndrome. She covered the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School shootings and the 9/11 investigation overseas. Moriarty has won nine national Emmy Awards and a 2001 Press Club Award, among others.
