Lost and Found
By John Glatt

The crime:

In 1991 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was grabbed off the street by convicted kidnapper and sex offender Phillip Gorrido and Gorrido’s wife Nancy. Dugard would be kept by Gorrido as a prisoner in a backyard compound he had specially prepared for the next 18 years, during which time she was repeatedly raped and bore two daughters (the first at the age of 14). In 2009 Gorrido, who had become increasingly erratic in his behaviour, was apprehended and Dugard and her two daughters freed.

The book:

I’ve talked before about how a lot of true crime writing takes the form of timely reporting, with instant books trying to cash in on the notoriety of a particular case that has been in the headlines. That was certainly the case here, as the book ends abruptly just before Gorrido’s trial was set to begin (they would both plead guilty, with Phillip receiving a sentence of 431 years to life and Nancy 39 years to life). This is unfortunate, because while John Glatt does a respectable job covering the case, including taking a very full look at Gorrido’s first conviction for kidnapping and rape and interviewing a number of people who knew him during the years he was keeping Dugard a prisoner, you don’t feel like you’re getting the full story, even if what’s missing is what turned into a lot of confusing legal maneuvering. I think it’s still a book worth reading, but you’d be advised to supplement it with further research on the Internet.

You’ll find a lot of information online. This case was huge at the time, though as per usual I think it’s been mostly forgotten today. It was one of three “captivity” cases that made headlines within a few years of each other, the other two being a pair of sensational stories out of Austria: the abduction and imprisonment of Natascha Kampusch (subject of the book Girl in the Cellar), and Josef Fritzl’s house of horrors (subject of another book, also written by Glatt, called Secrets in the Cellar). For her 18 years of hell Dugard received a modicum of fame, a book deal, and a $20 million payout from the State of California (they had been slack in following up on Gorrido’s parole). But I think it’s probably been a blessing to her that the spotlight moved on, as it always does.

Anyway, even for someone steeped in crime writing I find these stories particularly disturbing, and the offenders representative of a particularly unconscionable expression of evil. There’s more to it than just the violence. It’s the demonic inversion of family values, and most notably the abuse and betrayal of a position of authority and trust. But there’s something more to it as well. Serial killers are driven by uncontrollable urges that explode into sexual violence and then go into remission for a while. They are like werewolves: temporarily possessed but the rest of the time able to at least pass as normal. Fiends like Wolfgang Priklopil, Josef Fritzl, and Phillip Gorrido made their evil into a lifestyle. I think that may be why they tend to be such terrible people in all regards. I’ve followed up my hot take on Priklopil with a couple of posts (see here and here) on the foul psychology of the booby or man-baby, enabled by submissive women. There’s a reason these people don’t have any friends. I also noted in my review of Secrets in the Cellar how Fritzl’s wickedness didn’t end with what he did to his daughter:

Not only was he selfish and cruel, he was also cheap: not tipping at the bordellos he frequented, trying to nickel-and-dime the tenants in his apartment building, and even fostering his own children instead of adopting them because it got him a bigger government cheque. Despite this streak of vicious mean-spiritedness he was a lousy businessman and was deep in debt at the time of his arrest. Of course being a miser was far from his worst personal failing, but it just goes to show how some people are bad all the way through.

I was reminded of this as I read Lost and Found. Gorrido was also a mama’s boy, living at home with his aged mother all the time he had Dugard penned in the backyard (like Priklopil, he would first let his captive out only so she could clean the house). Meanwhile, his wife Nancy became a mindless domestic servant who “worshipped” Gorrido and took care of his mom. In short, he was doubly enabled. And like Fritzl his meanness was of a piece. In addition to satisfying himself sexually on Dugard he also used her as slave labour in a print company he started up, and befriended an elderly neighbour who he swindled for thousands of dollars. Gorrido was one of those people you just can’t find any good in, and who the wickedness runs right through.

From being the crazed head of a captive “family,” where does one go? Naturally, to creating one’s own religion and becoming a cult leader. When Gorrido came up with an idea for a black box that would allow the user to listen to angels as well as cure schizophrenia and sex addiction (it was just an amplifier that you could plug headphones into), it’s hard not to think of L. Ron Hubbard’s E-meter machine. But of course the stronger connection to Scientology was that it was just a cynical way of turning religion into cash. Gorrido quickly incorporated his God’s Desire Church and boasted to his brother that it was going to make him rich. And of course there would be the payoff that’s at the core of most cults, something that burns even hotter than the desire to get rich: a fanatic obsession with sex as a weapon of domination and procreation. As Stephen Singular put it in his book on Killer Cults: “a common thread in almost all [cults] is an attempt to control sexual behavior.” What most cult leaders seem to want more than anything is possession of an exclusive harem and the ability to make lots of babies.

Noted in passing:

There’s a reason sex offenders have to be in a registry that’s accessible to the public. That sort of behaviour is in the blood and there’s not much you can do to change it except by the most drastic measures. And while I don’t think it’s right to persecute or stigmatize such people, a red flag is still a red flag. Unfortunately, Gorrido’s home near Antioch, California, affectionately dubbed a “shithole” here by one resident, was a magnet for people with such flags since laws prohibited sex offenders from living near schools, churches, and parks, and his immediate neighbourhood had none of these. As a result there were apparently some 1,700 registered sex offenders living in the county. Gorrido fit right in.

That being the case, I’m actually not as critical of the parole officers in this case as many were. To be sure they could have done a more strict follow-up at various times, but you could probably say that about most of the parolees they were managing. Was Gorrido behaving in a manner that was especially suspicious? In many ways he must have seemed like a successful case of rehabilitation: married, living with his mother, and running a successful small business. I mentioned in my post on Anne E. Schwartz’s Monster that Jeffrey Dahmer’s parole officer didn’t even go to visit him at his apartment because Dahmer lived in a bad part of town. I raised an eyebrow at that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was more the norm than an exception.

Takeaways:

Priklopil and Fritzl kept their captives in basement dungeons, expertly concealed. I don’t believe in being a nosey neighbour, and it’s true that Gorrido’s was a bad neighbourhood to begin with, but at some point you have to be suspicious as to why the guy next door is doing putting up eight-foot fences around the back half of his backyard.

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