PLACERVILLE (California) - A CALIFORNIAN couple denied on Friday kidnapping an 11-year-old girl and keeping her a sex slave for 18 years, as questions mounted over how their alleged crimes went undetected for so long.
MEANWHILE neighbours of the Garridos expressed shock that the secret prison could go unnoticed for so long.
'It's kind of embarrassing to be here this long and not know what's going on. How could that go on under all of our noses?,' one neighbour, who gave his name only as Steve told AFP.
Phillip Garrido, 58, and his wife Nancy, 54, pleaded not guilty to 28 felony counts including kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment, following the discovery of Jaycee Lee Dugard on Wednesday, nearly two decades after the blonde schoolgirl was snatched outside her home in 1991.
Ms Dugard, now 29, was held captive in a makeshift prison of sheds and tents in what police have described as a 'backyard within a backyard' at Garrido's home in Antioch, around 80km east of San Francisco.
On Thursday police revealed that convicted rapist and registered sex offender Garrido had abused Ms Dugard and fathered two daughters with the captive, now aged 15 and 11, who had also been kept in the compound.
In a bizarre interview with a local television station Garrido acknowledged that his abduction of Ms Dugard from outside her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991 had been a 'disgusting thing'. But Garrido, described by neighbours as a religious fundamentalist who wanted to set up his own church, insisted he had 'turned his life around' since kidnapping the girl in 1991 and that the case was a 'heart-warming' story.
'You are going to be completely impressed,' he said. 'It's a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning. But I turned my life completely around and to be able to understand that, you have to start there.
'What's kept me busy the last several years is I've completely turned my life around,' Garrido said. 'And you're going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, the victim - you wait.
'If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backwards and in the end, you're going to find the most powerful heart-warming story.' Ms Dugard was found after police reported Garrido acting suspiciously at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was trying to hand out religious literature to students on Tuesday.
He was summoned to a meeting on Wednesday with his parole officer who, having previously visited the Garrido home, found it strange that in addition to his wife Nancy he brought along two girls and a woman he called 'Allissa.' Ms Dugard's real identity emerged during the course of the meeting and Garrido and his wife Nancy were detained.
Nancy Garrido sobbed throughout a five-minute court hearing on Friday while her husband stood expressionless nearby. Both entered not guilty pleas through defence attorneys. -- AFP
