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Police again search home in Calif. kidnap case

Police investigating two child abductions in the 1980s searched the Northern California home of a man charged with kidnapping a girl and holding her captive for 18 years.
Image: The home of registered sex offender and convicted rapist Phillip Garrido
The home of registered sex offender Phillip Garrido, where he allegedly held Jaycee Dugard for 18 years, is seen in Antioch, Calif.Kevin Bartram / Reuters file
/ Source: The Associated Press

Police investigating two child abductions in the 1980s searched the Northern California home of a man charged with kidnapping a girl and holding her captive for 18 years.

The Hayward and Dublin police departments went through Phillip Garrido's Antioch property and a site next door on Tuesday, seeking evidence in the disappearances of Michaela Garecht in 1988 and Ilene Misheloff in 1989, authorities said.

Hayward police said they are looking for the clothes Michaela was wearing when the then-9-year-old was snatched outside a Hayward supermarket. They are also looking for any disturbed soil that could indicate a grave site.

Dublin police said their search for clues to Ilene's abduction was prompted by similarities between a vehicle found on the Garridos' property and one that witnesses reported seeing Ilene getting into on the day of her disappearance.

Registered sex offender
Garrido and his wife, Nancy Garrido, have been charged in the 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard. The couple is accused of snatching Jaycee, then 11, outside her South Lake Tahoe home and imprisoning her for 18 years in a squalid encampment of tents and sheds in their backyard.

Police said Phillip Garrido also fathered Jaycee's two daughters. They have pleaded not guilty.

Garrido, a registered sex offender, was released from prison a few months prior to Ilene's abduction, Dublin police said.

Several agencies previously searched the Garridos property and the one next door after the couple's arrest Aug. 26. Police have said the neighbor is not a suspect but the property is a target of the investigation because Phillip Garrido had access to it.

Pittsburg police had looked for clues possibly linking the couple to the murders of prostitutes but later said they found no evidence to tie the Garridos to those cases.

A bone fragment was found on the neighbor's property during one of the searches. Authorities have said it is likely a human bone, but they are still conducting tests.

Dublin police said that discovery was another reason they were searching the property.

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