Under questioning, Garrido admitted that he had, a long time ago, kidnapped a woman and raped her. Santos’s account of this admission—”a long, long time ago I kidnapped her and raped her”—suggests that Garrido’s confession was presented in a way that minimized its temporal immediacy. The language “a long, long time ago” is the language of distance, of something finished and in the past. But the woman he had kidnapped was in the room.
The identification of Allissa as Jaycee Lee Dugard marked the transition from a parole compliance issue to a criminal investigation of extraordinary scope. Law enforcement agencies that needed to be notified included the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office and other agencies with jurisdiction over the original 1991 abduction. The FBI needed to be contacted. Investigators needed to go to the Antioch property. The daughters’ situation needed to be addressed.
Santos’s description of the aftermath—”All hell then broke loose”—conveys the controlled chaos that follows the resolution of a major case. There were procedures to follow, agencies to coordinate, people to protect. Dugard and her daughters had to be separated from the Garridos, formally identified, and transitioned into a different kind of custody—not criminal custody, but protective care—while the broader investigation began.
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## The Parole Officers and Their Predicament
Edward Santos Jr. received death threats after the case became public. His children were escorted to and from school as a security measure. He stayed quiet about the case for years.
The trajectory of his experience after August 26, 2009, illustrates the complicated position of a parole officer who had done his job correctly in the moment of identification but was associated, by proximity, with the institution that had failed for eighteen years. Santos did not supervise Garrido for ten years before August 2009. He conducted the August 26 appointment. He acted appropriately. He received death threats.