Couple never on FBI radar in CA girl’s kidnapping

SAN FRANCISCO — An FBI agent who spent 18 years on the Jaycee Lee Dugard case says the Antioch couple charged in her 1991 abduction were never considered suspects.

Special Agent Chris Campion said the bureau exhausted thousands of leads about Dugard’s whereabouts, sometimes with the help of confidential informants and court-ordered wiretaps.

Yet Campion said in the interview posted on the FBI Web site Friday that Phillip and Nancy Garrido “just did not come up on the radar screen.”

The Garridos have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping Dugard and holding her captive in their backyard.

Cadaver dogs returned to the property Monday to search for possible links to other open cases.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

ANTIOCH, Calif. (AP) — Police resumed their search Monday for possible links to unsolved crimes at the home of the Northern California sex offender charged with kidnapping a little girl and hiding her in his backyard for 18 years.

Three agencies in the San Francisco Bay area were looking through Phillip Garrido’s property in Antioch for the fourth day, seeking evidence that might help solve cold cases.

Garrido and his wife, Nancy, were charged last week in the abduction, rape and imprisonment of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was 11 when she was taken outside her home in South Lake Tahoe. They have pleaded not guilty to 29 counts.

Antioch and Contra Costa County authorities have not provided many details about what they are seeking at the property.

Police in the nearby city of Pittsburg, however, have said they are investigating whether Garrido, 58, was involved in the murders of prostitutes in the 1990s.

Over the weekend, authorities also roped off a next door neighbor’s backyard where Garrido once lived in a shed. Neighbors say he once worked as the property caretaker and helped out an elderly man who lived there several years ago.

Investigators also cleared brush from the squalid backyard compound of tents and sheds where Garrido and his wife lived and allegedly hid Dugard and her two daughters, now 11 and 15. Police say Dugard had the children with Garrido.

The secrets of the Garrido home began to surface early last week when Garrido arrived for a meeting with his parole officer with his wife, Dugard, now 29. and the two girls. Authorities say he confessed to snatching Dugard in 1991.