The man accused of kidnapping an 11-year-old girl Jaycee Lee Dugard, and holding her captive for nearly two decades, is now being investigated in connection the murders of prostitutes.
Phillip Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, appeared in El Dorado County Superior Court yesterday to answer 29 criminal counts that included kidnapping for sexual purposes, forcible lewd acts on a child and rape.
Meanwhile, police apologized for failing to follow up an anonymous tip in 2006 that could have led them to Jaycee, who was snatched from a bus stop near her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991.
Contra Costa Sheriff Warren Rupf acknowledged that a neighbour of Garrido called police in 2006 and said he was a 'psychotic' with sexual addictions and had children living in tents in his backyard.
When an officer went to the home he spoke with Garrido in the front yard, but did not enter the property, Rupf said, adding that the officer was not even aware Garrido was a registered sex offender, even though he is listed as such on a public database.
'This is not an acceptable outcome,' Sherriff Rupf said.
'Organizationally we should have been more inquisitive or curious and turned over a rock or two.'
It has emerged that police have searched the Garrido home in California looking for clues of a possible link to the unsolved murders of 10 prostitutes whose bodies were dumped near an industrial park where he worked in the 1990s.
Local media reported that police from the city of Pittsburg had executed a search warrant at the home in Antioch, east of San Francisco, in connection with the deaths of several women in the region.
Several of the bodies were found in 1998 and 1999 in an industrial area near to where Garrido worked.
Contra Costa County Sheriff's Captain Daniel Terry said Garrido has been interviewed by authorities concerning the deaths but has not given any indication he was involved.
‘Pittsburg police, for whatever reason, decided he was a person of interest,’ Mr Terry told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ms Dugard, now 29, was discovered alive on Wednesday.
Police said she had been held as a sex slave in a secret prison hidden in Garrido's back yard.
Garrido fathered two children with Ms Dugard during her captivity, police said.
