Lost and Found Page 4

  In one corner was a movie projector and he’d hooked up multicolored stage lights. Like the director of an elaborate theatrical production, Phillip Garrido had spent weeks painstakingly setting up his warehouse. He’d written the script in his head, and now all that was needed was his leading lady.

  5

  “ALL I WANT IS A PIECE OF ASS”

  On Monday afternoon, November 22, Phillip Garrido drove to South Lake Tahoe, California, to kidnap a young woman and realize his long-anticipated sexual fantasy. It was the week of Thanksgiving and there was heavy snow on the ground.

  Dusk had just fallen and it was below zero when the predator entered a supermarket, searching for a young woman to snatch. He was now running on pure adrenaline, nervously stroking a pair of silver handcuffs in his trouser pocket.

  Anxious not to scare off possible victims, Garrido had adopted a collegiate look. His long brown hair was tied into a neat ponytail and he wore a blue denim suit, a fashionable brown turtleneck sweater and engraved brown cowboy boots.

  Before long he spotted an attractive woman shopping. After she paid the cashier, he followed her out into the parking lot, waiting as she got into her car, and started the engine. Then he walked over, tapped on the window and asked for a ride, explaining his battery had frozen and his car would not start.

  She took pity on the well-dressed young man, unlocking the front passenger door for him to get in. After politely thanking her, Garrido asked to be taken to a street nearby. But a few minutes later when they arrived, he suddenly grabbed her, slipping a handcuff around one of her wrists and locking it.

  Terrified, she slammed on the brakes and hit the horn as she jumped out of the still-moving car. Then with Garrido still in the passenger seat, gripping the other end of the handcuffs, she ran alongside her car still tethered to him.

  “Let me go! Let me go!” she yelled. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  Finally, after making her promise not to go to the police, he unlocked the handcuffs and freed her. But amazingly, he tried to entice her back in her car. When she refused he jumped out, running away into the freezing dark night.

  A few blocks away, beautiful casino blackjack dealer Katie Callaway was preparing for a romantic night with her boyfriend, David Wade. The twenty-five-year-old blonde with a then fashionable Farrah Fawcett haircut had spent the afternoon preparing a crock pot dinner to take over to his house in nearby Stateline, California.

  At 6:45 P.M. Wade called, asking her to pick up some coffee, oil and rice on her drive over. The young mother of a seven-year-old boy then took a shower, dressing in a green and blue ski jacket, with a striped hooded T-shirt and Britannia Levi jeans.

  At 7:15 P.M., she left her house and five minutes later was parking her blue Ford Pinto in front of Ink’s Al Tahoe Market, on the corner of Talac and Highway 50. As she was running late, she dashed inside to get the items she needed. It was then, out of the corner of her eye, that she first noticed a tall, well-dressed man with a ponytail standing in an aisle. But she paid little attention to him.

  After paying for the groceries, Katie walked out to her car and started the engine. She was about to back out of the parking space, when she heard a light tap on her window.

  “I rolled down the window,” she would later testify, “and a young man was standing there. He said, ‘Excuse me, I didn’t mean to frighten you, but which way are you going?’ ”

  Katie replied that she was going toward Stateline and the tall, slim man with a ponytail and oddly spaced teeth politely asked for a ride. He pointed at the Mercedes-Benz convertible parked down the street, joking it did not like the cold and refused to start. Could he possibly get a lift to his friends, he asked, so they could come back and help him to start it.

  Katie said he could, as long as he would hold the plastic containers containing the hot meal she had prepared, occupying the passenger’s side floor and front seat.

  “Okay,” he said, as he got into her car and sat down, loading the containers onto his lap.

  She then asked where he was going.

  “A little ways,” he replied, as he pointed down Highway 50 toward Stateline.

  They sat in silence, before the stranger asked if she lived and worked in South Lake Tahoe and skied. Katie had no interest in making small talk, so she just replied yes or no to all his questions.

  A few minutes later, she took a right into Ski Run Boulevard, informing him that her turn to Stateside was coming up soon. The man nodded, replying that that they were almost there. She asked what exact street he wanted. He said he could not remember the name but would know it by sight.

  Katie turned left on Willow Avenue until she reached Birch Street, saying this was where she turned off for her boyfriend’s house. That was fine, said the man, pointing to the Slalom Inn Motel neon sign a couple of blocks ahead.

  When they got to the motel, Katie asked where he wanted to be dropped off. The man then pointed toward the end of the street at a set of duplexes with a yellow porch light on. The house he needed was on the other side of them, he said.

  “As I pulled in,” she later remembered, “there was no house. There was an empty lot, and I looked at him to say, ‘Are you sure this is the place?’ ”

  The man then casually took the salad off his lap and placed it on the back seat. Then without warning he suddenly lunged at her, grabbing the ignition key and throwing it on the ground.

  “I thought he was going to try and kiss me,” she said. “Then he got me and just started grabbing.”

  He seized her hands, smashing her head down hard into the steering wheel.

  “All I want is a piece of ass!” he declared. “If you do everything I say, you won’t get hurt. I’m dead serious. I’ll hurt you if you make me.”

  Katie tried to raise her head, but he forced it down below the dashboard. Terrified, she asked what he wanted, saying she would do anything.

  His only reply was to produce handcuffs from his pocket, tightly cuffing her hands behind her back.

  “Okay,” he told her, “we’re going to go for a little ride. Now we’re going to change places.”

  Then he stood up, easily lifting the 105-pound woman across into the passenger’s seat. He then maneuvered himself into the driver’s side, forcing her head down hard into the seat.

  “All right,” he told her. “I am going to strap your head down . . . until we get out of town.”

  He then pulled a leather strap out of his long hair, placing it around her neck and under her knees, forcing her face down below the dashboard to conceal her from view. Then he threw a coat over her head and drove off.

  Petrified, Katie asked where he was taking her.

  “Somewhere far away,” he replied calmly. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it all planned.”

  Phillip Garrido adjusted the driver’s seat and mirrors before heading north on Ski Run Boulevard. So far everything was going to plan, and he would have her inside his Reno warehouse in a couple of hours.

  Trembling beneath the coat on the passenger-side floor, Katie Callaway could smell the beer batter which had splashed onto her pants in the struggle. She knew her boyfriend was expecting her soon and would worry if she was late.

  She then asked her abductor when he was bringing her back, and whether it would be very long.

  “Maybe I will bring you back tomorrow,” came Garrido’s cold reply.

  Now Katie became really scared, thinking he was going to kill her. But her survival instincts kicked in and she told him to stop the car, so they could have sex in the bushes there and then.

  “I told him I would do anything he wanted,” she later testified, “if he would not hurt me. I figured we were going off on some dark road, and I just wanted to get it over with. And I said, ‘Why can’t we stay right here?’ ”

  Garrido told her that that was not what he wanted and she should not argue, as he had everything planned.

  “You might as well understand that you’re going to be with me,” he told her, as the
y drove on into the night.

  A few minutes later he broke the silence, saying he’d gone to South Lake Tahoe to abduct a girl. He said they should wait until they reached a shed he had rented in the desert. Then if she did everything to please him sexually, he promised not to hurt her unless he had to.

  “He kept saying he wasn’t going to hurt me,” recalled Katie. “He said he would not kill me, he would only go to the extent of knocking me out if I tried to scream.”

  Garrido then boasted of abducting two other girls recently, saying that he had not hurt either of them.

  “I realized that he had plans of taking me to somewhere he had all fixed up that was far away,” she said, “and I wasn’t coming back. I had to cope with the situation.”

  Then Katie pointed out her car was almost out of gas, and he wasn’t going to get very far. Garrido told her not to worry, as he knew a self-service gas station nearby, where he was going to stop for gas because it did not have an attendant.

  “I automatically thought about gas stations around the area,” she said, “that are self-service and would be open that late at night. I tried to be aware . . . even though I couldn’t see.”

  When Garrido asked if she was expected anywhere, Katie said her boyfriend was waiting for her to come over with the dinner.

  “That is where I was going,” she told him.

  “Is anyone going to miss you tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said. “I have to get my son off for school at seven in the morning and I have to be at work at nine.”

  “If you’re real good,” he told her, “I will try and have you back by dawn.”

  A little while later, Katie, who was still lying handcuffed under the coat on the passenger floor, realized that they were now driving through Stateline into Nevada. She recognized the three stoplights in quick succession, and the noise of the casinos. Soon afterward, he pulled off the road and took the coat off her. Then he announced he had to tape her mouth and blindfold her, to stop her crying out for help at the gas station.

  Katie begged him not to blindfold her, explaining she wore contact lenses, and could not stand tape being placed over her face and eyes. Garrido told her to take her contacts out first, but Katie said she was unable to unless he unlocked her handcuffs. He refused and then he taped her mouth shut, placing the coat back over her without bothering with the blindfolding.

  A few minutes later, Garrido pulled into a gas station, stopping in front of a pump. Lying on the floor by the front passenger’s seat completely bound and gagged, Katie was terrified. Before getting out of the car to fill up at the pump, Garrido warned her not to scream for help, or he’d come back and hurt her.

  Then he attempted to fill the Ford Pinto with regular gas, but when the nozzle would not fit, as it only took unleaded, he threw a fit.

  “He jumped back in the car very nervous and upset,” Katie recalled. “He started up the car and demanded to know why the gas nozzle wouldn’t fit my car. He just started yelling at me . . . that I had done it on purpose so he couldn’t put gas in the car.”

  Now Katie was terrified he was really going to hurt her. She desperately tried to speak, but was unable to make a sound with her mouth taped shut.

  “You’re trying to tell me something—right?” asked Garrido.

  Katie nodded her head.

  “Okay,” he said. “I am going to take the tape off a tiny little bit. If you try to scream, you are going to get hurt.”

  Garrido then pulled back the tape a little, and Katie managed to say, “Unleaded.”

  He then put the tape back over her mouth, pumped unleaded gas into the car and drove away.

  Five minutes later, he pulled over to the side of the road. He had calmed down, saying he knew she was uncomfortable and removed the tape from her mouth. He also took off the strap that bound her neck to her knees, loosening the handcuffs a little.

  He then lifted Katie over the front seats, laying her facedown on the back seat, and throwing his coat back over her.

  Then he headed east on Highway 50, back toward the Nevada border.

  “He seemed very nervous,” she later said, “very uptight . . . and scared.”

  As the coat was slightly open, Katie could just see out of the back window, and she now tried to see where he was taking her. At one point, just over the Nevada border, she recognized a distinctive brick house, a few miles past Zephyr Cove.

  As Garrido had told her it would be a long drive to their destination, she now tried to strike up some kind of rapport with her kidnapper in order to survive.

  “I was terrified,” she later testified. “I tried to engage him in some normal conversation to try and figure out what kind of person had abducted me, what was going through his mind, how best to cope with the situation that I was in to get myself out of it alive. I was trying to keep myself alive.”

  When she asked his name she took him by surprise.

  “Phil,” he replied, but immediately realizing his mistake, said it was actually “Bill.”

  Then she asked why he had selected her. Garrido then replied it was her fault, because she was so attractive. She asked what turned him on about raping young women. Garrido thought for a second, replying that it wasn’t the pain. He said it was just a fantasy that he had to live out, and he had no real control over it.

  Trying to relate to her attacker, Katie pretended she too fantasized about being raped. She said maybe it wouldn’t be too bad if he didn’t hurt her, and only wanted to give her pleasure.

  She then asked if he was married. Garrido said he was and that he and his wife shared a “very heavy” and “happy” sex life. She was aware of what he did and understood his needs, he said, even buying the handcuffs from a pawn shop store.

  “He was happily married,” Katie recalled. “And that the main reason he was doing this was because of a sexual urge. That he just really enjoyed it, and he had done it twice before.”

  Phillip Garrido said none of his friends knew what he was really like, and would never believe him capable of something like this.

  Soon afterward, Katie Callaway recognized they were passing through Carson City, when they hit a stoplight outside a casino and she saw a billboard. Her abductor then headed north on U.S. 395 toward Reno, as she lay helplessly bound in the backseat of the car.

  Phillip Garrido now began talking about religion.

  “He talked a lot about Jesus on our ride,” she later told police. “Telling me how he was going to turn himself over to God next year, because Jesus was the way. And on and on . . . did I understand what he was saying about God?”

  He then started talking about his wife again, slipping up saying, “My wife said Phil the other day.” This mistake was not lost on Katie, who kept calling him “Bill,” so he wouldn’t realize she now knew his real name.

  When she mentioned being a 21 dealer in a casino, Garrido chuckled, saying so was his wife. When Katie asked if he was from Reno, he then became evasive, saying just because his wife did casino work they could be from Las Vegas or many other places.

  He then asked if she had ever taken LSD.

  “I said yes,” she recalled. “I said yes to everything. ‘Oh, yes,

  I have done this. Oh, yes, I have done that.’ ”

  At one point, when she mentioned wanting a marijuana joint to relax her, Garrido said the stuff he had waiting for her where they were going was so good it would blow her head off.

  At around 9:00 P.M., Phillip Garrido stopped the car and turned off the engine.

  “Okay, we’re here,” he announced, as he got out of the car to open his shed. Katie Callaway was certain they were in Reno, as she had heard planes and recognized the treetops of the Reno Valley, through the back window.

  A couple of minutes later, he returned in an agitated state.

  “I lost the key,” he snapped. “I can’t get in. I knew I heard it drop at the lake. I should have picked it up.”

  He then announced they were driving to his
car, so he could get a crowbar and pry open the lock of his shed door. They then drove along a dirt road for five minutes, finally stopping at a white building, before getting out. Katie could hear him hunting around in another car for a tire iron.

  He then came back, complaining he couldn’t find one and asking if she had one. Katie told him there was one in her trunk and where the key was.

  “I was thinking,” she later explained, “if I just let him go on with his own fantasy . . . I’d be safe until I had a better chance to change the plans.”

  Garrido soon found her crowbar and drove back to the shed. He then spent the next fifteen minutes trying to force open the lock. As she lay handcuffed on the back seat under the coat, Callaway could hear the sound of a rock band playing so she thought they must be outside a discothèque.

  Finally, her abductor managed to break the lock and returned, putting the crowbar back in the trunk.

  “He told me he was going to have to blindfold me,” recalled Katie. “Then he lifted me out of the back seat, and he led me into the shed, as he called it.”

  Back in Stateline, David Wade began to worry when there was no sign of Katie Callaway. She should have arrived around 7:30 P.M., and when she didn’t he kept looking out of the window and watching the clock.

  At around 8:00 P.M. he called Forrest Dougherty, who worked with Katie at the Harveys Lake Tahoe casino, asking if she’d seen her. Dougherty said that she had seen her earlier, pulling out of a parking spot in front of Ink’s Al Tahoe Market. She had been with a dark-haired man, and she’d watched them drive east on Highway 50.

  Wade then called South Lake Tahoe police to report Katie missing. But he was told that a person had to be missing for forty-eight hours before he could file a report.

  6

  “JUST IMAGINE THAT YOU WERE IN ROMAN TIMES”

  Phillip Garrido led his terrified captive into his warehouse in handcuffs, closing the rolling aluminum door behind them.