Jaycee Dugard Case: Nancy Garrido -- Where is the Wife in All of This?

The Jaycee Lee Dugard story is definitely the topic of the moment. Everyone and their psychoanalyst is interested in Jaycee Dugard, her daughters, Phillip Garrido, Nancy Garrido, photos and videos of them all, and any type of article or news snippet that can be found. There are so many facets to the Jaycee Dugard story that volumes of articles have already been written about it. And there is no doubt that volumes more will follow, as will books, documentaries, made for television movies (based on a true story, no less), and untold hours of news footage. But in the rush, one major actor has been nearly ignored: Nancy Garrido. Who is Nancy Garrido? What do we know about her? And just what is Nancy Garrido's role in all this?

According to Dr. Michelle Golland, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles who appeared on "Larry King Live" Monday evening that she had no doubt that Nancy Garrido participated in the entire 18-year scenario.

Michelle Golland told Momlogic that the participation of women in crime's such as those committed by Phillip Garrido are more common than people realize. People should not be fooled by the quiet and demure-seeming demeanor of Nancy Garrido. Golland said that Nancy Garrido was more likely as not abused as a child and that the abduction of Jaycee Dugard gave her a measure of control, especially as she reenacted "the crimes that she endured as a child." Golland believes that Nancy Garrido probably could not have children.

The two met when Nancy went to the Nevada prison where Phillip Garrido was pulling a 50-years-to-life sentence for the brutal kidnap and rape of a 25-year-old Reno casino worker. She was there to visit a relative. Their relationship would result in marriage before Phillip Garrido got paroled in 1988 after serving just 11 years.

Nancy Garrido knew all about her husband's crimes.

She was allegedly with him the day that Jaycee Lee Dugard was snatched off the street in South Lake Tahoe, California. Carl Probyn, Jaycee Dugard's stepfather, witnessed the abduction and described a woman that resembled Nancy Garrido.

In the Jaycee Lee Dugard case, Nancy Garrido might be just as culpable, certainly seems complicit, and may have even been the "brains" behind the entire Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapping. Of the particulars, the public has not been made privy as yet. But the media has focused on the colorful and disturbing character presented by Phillip Garrido. A convicted sex offender, a religious fanatic who talks to god through a little box he carries around with him, a blogger who writes about mind control, a rapist who not only raped a 25-year-old woman under similar circumstances but managed to elude the local authorities and the California Department of Corrections for 18 years.

And he doesn't mind talking, chatting up his theories and his religious views. He has already given one strange interview from jail, one in which he promised revelations of a "heart-warming" nature when he and Jaycee Lee Dugard finally get to tell their story.

Heart-warming...

Nancy Garrido is very quiet, the neighbors say.

"We have to understand that abuse is not relegated to males," Dr. Golland told Momlogic, "that these things develop in a woman as much as in men."

Thus far, no word from Nancy Garrido, save, "Not guilty."

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Sources:

"Larry King Live," CNN Television
Momlogic.com