The image of a stepfather on a bicycle, pedaling after a vehicle carrying a kidnapped child, captures something essential about the gap between witnessing and preventing. Probyn had not failed to care. He had not been absent or inattentive. He had been at a window, watching his stepdaughter walk to the bus stop on a normal school morning, and what he had witnessed was a crime that had already happened by the time his body responded to it.
The subsequent scrutiny he faced—the suspicion that a male witness to the abduction of a female child in his family might himself be a person of interest—added a particular cruelty to his experience. He was investigated. He was cleared. He was still the person who had watched from the window.
In the years that followed, Probyn cooperated with investigators and media alike. He appeared on television programs seeking information about Jaycee’s whereabouts. He spoke about the morning of the abduction. He described what he had seen and what he had been unable to do. His account remained consistent, and his clearance by law enforcement was never rescinded.
When Jaycee Dugard was identified in August 2009, Probyn was among those who learned that she was alive. The reunion that followed on August 27 was primarily between Dugard and her mother, Terry Probyn. The family dynamics of that reunion—who was present, what was said, how the relationships that had existed before 1991 and then been suspended for eighteen years were reconnected—are not described in the public record in any detail.