Officials release Phillip Garrido parole file

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Phillip Garrido complained in 2008 about having to wear a monitoring device because he had not been in trouble with the law for 19 years - nearly as long as he allegedly held Jaycee Dugard captive in his backyard, newly released parole records show.

The documents released Friday by California corrections officials also show that less than a month before he was arrested last summer, the 58-year-old Garrido initialed papers promising not to have contact with girls between the ages of 14 and 18 or to have a social or romantic relationship with anyone who had custody of a child.

Garrido was living at the time with the daughters he sired with Dugard, who were 11 and 14.

The documents were made available after several news organizations sued. The parole file had previously been turned over to the Office of the Inspector General, which issued a report last fall blasting corrections officials for lapses in oversight and missing chances to catch Garrido sooner.

A convicted sex offender, Garrido was visited by parole agents as part of his mandatory supervision, but never suspected of keeping an abducted girl and their two daughters in a backyard compound.

The paperwork shows agents thought Garrido sometimes acted strangely, and at least one agent saw a girl, who Garrido said was his niece, at the home. An agent also wrote notes about "cursory" visual inspections of the house.

"(Garrido) was acting very strange, weird to say the least by ranting on about God and loudly saying songs, other than that, nothing out of the ordinary," an agent wrote in June 2008.

The 125 pages of documents paint a portrait of a convicted rapist who, once he was released from federal and Nevada state prisons, appeared to grudgingly comply with the conditions set by parole agents who were eager to believe he was doing well.

In granting Garrido early release from his federal parole in May 1999, his U.S. government parole agent based in Nevada wrote Garrido to "thank you for your cooperation over this period of supervision and I hope that you will continue to do well."

Because he was also convicted of rape in Nevada for the same offense, Nevada state parole officials decided to keep Garrido on life parole, however. But they wanted him supervised in California, where he had been living since he got out of prison. From the records, it appears that California did not want to take Garrido on.

A Nevada parole agent wrote California parole officials in June 1999 urging them to accept the case, noting that "Ordering the subject to return to Nevada to await acceptance from your state would be disruptive and unproductive for the subject who has managed to change his behavior."

California officials apparently relented and Garrido has his first encounter with state parole agents that same month. The agent's opinion of Garrido also seemed high, "He is stable and the prognosis of success is good," he wrote.

Only four months later, the same parole agent, Al Fulbright, recommended that Nevada terminate Garrido's parole and reduce him to minimum supervision until then.

"On parole from (Nevada) for LIFE. (Why did I take this case?" Fulbright wrote in May 2000, after his bid to end Garrido's supervision apparently failed.

Another parole agent who took over Garrido's case also asked to have Garrido taken off parole in July 2004 and again in July 2005.

Garrido and his wife, Nancy Garrido, have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping Dugard in 1991 near her South Lake Tahoe home. They are charged with raping her and keeping her in a secret compound in the backyard of Garrido's Antioch home.

They were arrested in August.

The documents also outline the events leading up to their arrest, including some details not mentioned before about the conversations Garrido had with law enforcement.

Dugard, for example, seemed to be aware that her parents had moved from Northern California, where she was abducted, to the southern part of the state.

"A long, long, long long time ago, I kidnapped and raped her," Garrido told his parole agent the day he was arrested, according to the documents.

"I asked him if Jaycee knew where her parents were, and he said, somewhere in Los Angeles," the agent wrote in the report.

The newly released documents do not include documents that the court indicated could be confidential, such as peace officer personnel records, confidential medical or psychological records, Criminal Offender Record Information and the corrections department's case management review.

Those will be reviewed next month by a judge.