Kidnapped Girl Found

Kidnapped Girl Found

kidnapped 18 years ago got a call she never expected: On the other end was the child she had long thought was dead. Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was abducted from in front of her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991, was privately reunited with her mom Thursday night. "It's an absolute miracle. Can you imagine this after 18 years?" said Jaycee's stepfather, Carl Probyn. Cops arrested a 58-year-old religious fanatic and convicted rapist, Phillip Garrido, who they say kept Jaycee hidden in a "secret backyard" and fathered two children with her - one the same age as the victim was when she vanished. In their first conversation Wednesday night, Jaycee gave her mother a double jolt, Probyn said. "I have something to tell you. I have babies," Jaycee told Terry Probyn, 50, who asked how many. Also arrested was Garrido's wife, Nancy, who police charge was with Garrido when they snatched Jaycee on June 10, 1991, as she walked to her school bus stop.

"I gave up hope for 18 years, just went into recovery mode," said Carl Probyn, who witnessed the abduction but was too far away to stop it. "Now, I just won the lotto. It's just unbelievable." Probyn said his estranged wife called him soon after getting word from the FBI that Jaycee was safe and healthy. "She said, 'They found Jaycee. She's alive,'" said Carl Probyn, 60, now of Riverside in Southern California. "We cried for about two minutes." In an interview with KCRA3, Garrido on Thursday night urged people to wait for more details about the case to come out before making a judgment. "What's kept me busy the last several years is I've completely turned my life around," he 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 heartwarming story."

Lt. Fred Kollar of the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department said Garrido and his wife kept Jaycee for nearly two decades hidden the backyard of their home in the suburban San Francisco town of Antioch. "My understanding is they went directly to that property right after the kidnapping," Kollar said. "The children were born there and they lived there since." He said that Jaycee, now 29, and her two daughters, ages 11 and 15, were kept in a shack and two tents hidden behind a tree-lined, 6-foot-tall fence at the rear of the suspects' backyard. Kollar said a plastic tarp covered the entrance to the covert camp, which had an outhouse and an outdoor shower. The suspect Phillip Craig Garrido (above photos left) and his wife Nancy Garrido (above photos right) will be charge of by the police in abducting Jaycee Dugard. Phillip Craig Garrido was convicted in 1971 for kidnapping and rape. Watch the Jaycee Dugard police press conference for additional details.