Last week I discussed Philip Garrido, a psychotic and psychopathic individual who allegedly with the help of his wife kidnapped Jaycee Dugard at age 11 and held her 18 years. This week I would like to discuss the some of the details of Nancy Garrido’s life that have been reported by reliable news sources.
The Details
Nancy Garrido is 54, her maiden name is Bocanegra. She was born born in Texas, the second child of a family of five or six children. She has been married to Phillip 28 years. According to the New York Times, “Gail Powell, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Public Safety, said Nancy Bocanegra was visiting an incarcerated uncle when she met Mr. Garrido, a tall, lanky and deep-eyed sex offender who was serving a 50-year sentence for the 1976 rape and kidnapping of a casino worker from South Lake Tahoe, Calif.”
The couple married in the prison and did not live together until Phillip’s release 7 years later. Nancy never had children, but is reported to have been a caregiver. She cared for Phillip’s elderly mother and worked as a nurse’s aide.
Several people who knew Nancy described her as submissive, depressive and quiet. Others said she appeared kind and caring.
Nancy’s employer reportedly said this about her work with developmentally disabled adults, “The people she worked with really liked her.”
Questions
The same employer also questioned “How could it be that this other situation was happening at the same time? It’s impossible to understand.”
People are also asking why Nancy participated in this crime. They are questioning whether she was under “the spell” of her husband, and whether she was “brainwashed.”
My questions
I wonder why we allow sex offenders to marry in prison. He had a history at least one other arrest, “It seems likely that Ms. Garrido knew all too well of her new husband’s sexual history and proclivities. In addition to his rape and kidnapping conviction, Mr. Garrido had also been arrested in a 1972 rape of a 14-year-old girl in Antioch, Calif., the Bay Area suburb near where he had grown up and where he and Ms. Garrido would settle with his mother after his release from prison in 1988,” said the New York Times.
Is there any legal reason why sex offenders or other psychopathic felons should be allowed to marry while they are in custody? They can’t vote, why should they marry? I think we allow these offenders to marry because some still believe that “love” can rehabilitate them; that marriage makes it less likely they will reoffend. (Lawyers reading this please comment!)
I contend that this marriage facilitated his re-offense and that sociopaths often could not do what they do without the help of witting and unwitting accomplices. The best thing for society is to isolate these people. We are more likely to be suspicious of an offender who lives by himself. Marriage and family just give them the false facade of normalcy.
There is data showing that generally speaking marriage prevents re-arrest of felons. We don’t know if that applies to psychopathic sex offenders. We also don’t know if marriage protects against re-offense versus just re-arrest. My suspicion is that married psychopaths just get away with more.
Why would a woman marry such a man? Many serial killers have a following of women and other women have married offenders serving life sentences. It is noted that Nancy had an uncle in the same prison, and that is how she met Phillip. Perhaps the presence of other antisocial individuals in her life desensitized her to their dangerousness.
Many have questioned why Phillip was released after serving only one fifth of his sentence. I wonder if it had anything to do with this marriage and the fact that Phillip’s mother allowed the couple to live with her after his release.
All family members who render aid to psychopathic offenders have moral culpability to any subsequent crimes they commit. When you do something nice for a psychopath, a perverse reverse Karma is created. The psychopath will use the “nice” to perpetrate evil on someone else or even you. In this case, a kindness bestowed upon a psychopath will result in bad Karma for you.
The fact that sociopathy/psychopathy is a spectrum as opposed to an absolute category is confusing for people. In the same way, the spectrum that defines the spouses, family members, and associates of sociopaths/psychopaths is also confusing. Let’s be open to the real likelihood that Nancy is also psychopathic and selected Phillip for that reason.
What about the caretaking behavior? What about Nancy’s assertions that she loves and misses the victims? This week I came across another important statement regarding psychopathic individuals and love. It came from a book chapter written by three psychopathy experts:
“they (psychopaths) may also be prone to express intense affiliative impulses directly. Because such attractions are not based on empathy (for) or a mature appreciation of another person, these positive affectional links are often likely to be fleeting, tenuous, and based on illusory perceptions of others” (emphasis added).
To translate the difficult vocabulary, psychopaths do experience affection and intense impulses that feel like “love” to them. It is not all just a sham or a lie. That is why psychopaths are able to fool people. It is not that victims and family members are always so gullible that they fall for the lies. Sometimes the people in a psychopath’s life correctly read the “positive affectional links” and “intense affiliative impulses”.
What we all need to understand is that the presence of these impulses and feelings doesn’t tell us anything about a person since even psychopaths have these. What tells us most about Nancy’s inner world is the crimes she is alleged to have perpetrated.
Please if you are in the life of a psychopathic person, particularly an offender or sex offender consider carefully what I have said here.
Sources for this blog
LA Times
NY Times
The Clinical and Forensic Assessment of Psychopathy: A Practitioner’s Guide (Personality and Clinical Psychology Series) by Carl B. Gacono (Editor) Chapter 8
“All family members who render aid to psychopathic offenders have moral culpability to any subsequent crimes they commit. When you do something nice for a psychopath, a perverse reverse Karma is created. The psychopath will use the “nice” to perpetrate evil on someone else or even you. In this case, a kindness bestowed upon a psychopath will result in bad Karma for you.”
Very powerful and truthful words, Donna. My life and my karma are much sweeter without the taint of a sociopath. I think the thoughts that marriage shields the perp are very true. I saw it in action. How could a married Christian man (such as my xs) do those things…he’s MARRIED?
I was thinking the other day about some “romantic comedies” and how the womanizing man-child becomes “fixed” and therefore a fabulous marriage partner. It’s a theme in so many books and movies-it’s pervasive. Oh how I HATE that “What Women Want” movie! (As an example and don’t get me started on the Twilight characters, ugh.) I’m not trying to go off topic- I think marriage is viewed as a salve when in reality a married jerk isn’t less of a jerk. That isn’t to say all married men are really jerks, just that married is irrelevant and sometimes even a cloak of respectability.
Thanks for the article Liane.
I feel like we, here at LF, had roles similar to Nancy’s because we all gave our P’s a veneer of legitamacy. But I hope that the moment I saw him hurt other people or an animal, it would have ended there. Or very soon after.
That’s why it’s so important to have various relationships and not allow the secrecy that the P’s thrive on. We need a perspective from outside the “cult of one” to clear our minds and show us reality.
I thoroughly agree – why allow predators to marry? It fools the people responsible for watching over them and making them toe the line afterward as well… I am sure Nancy being present is one of the reasons the officer sent to check years earlier did not do a more thorough examination. Heartbreaking.
As for Nancy – I vote psychopath – to support his victimization of Jaycee is beyond revolting – I bet she felt special getting to live IN THE HOUSE instead of in a tent outside with infants. It is nauseating.
And – YES skylar – I unwittingly was a beard of respectability and after the fact friends of his came to me and said the reason no one warned me is they all hoped that he would change – he would step up and begin to act right because he had me and how could he want to lose you???? And while I never allowed him to physically harm others – I did help him begin a lawsuit – get him an attorney and so forth and deal with the details of it for quite some time – something that ultimately caused financial harm to his brother
– when I realized what was happening I warned the brother but he was so arrogant himself he did not believe it would swing around and bite him in the rear as it did – ultimately he was angry at me but I do not feel any guilt as I did give him enough warning and information about it all to be able to extricate himself with no harm done and he chose to ignore me and castigate me for having been involved with his brother.
Now the prices he paid for it are according to him – my fault – so I wonder if the apples did not fall far from the tree…?
A cousin told me that that entire branch of the family tree always stuck their head in the sand about problems and also always blamed others for their problems – sounds to me like magical thinking / lack of concern for consequences – a sense of their ability to “get out of it” via manipulation… and then assigning blame – a family steeped in an odd narcissism maybe?
The friend – they never understood – they don’t to this day – and yes the friends, and not the family, are trying to save his house so he has a place to go after jail – 4 blocks from me. They know he has threatened my life – why do they do this – because they feel like they will be bad people if they don’t do something for him – that seeing him possibly homeless (they certainly do not want him in their homes!) will be so difficult emotionally and guilt inducing –
I wonder, if he does harm me or my children how they will feel?
I hope Nancy Garrido gets as long a sentence as his – life and not a minute less. And while it is rotten to think it – knowing they have harmed children I am sure the population in prison will take care of them properly.
UGH – for the children Jaycee bore – to know – now that they are in the world and free – to know what it is that created their very being – one can only hope that with therapy and Jaycee’s family they can all heal and not live emotionally tortured lives. So many prayers for them.
Excellent post. I really find that thinking of sociopathy/psychopathy as a spectrum makes everything “fit” better.
I also TOTALLY agree “psychopaths do experience affection and intense impulses that feel like “love” to them. It is not all just a sham or a lie. That is why psychopaths are able to fool people. It is not that victims and family members are always so gullible that they fall for the lies. Sometimes the people in a psychopath’s life correctly read the “positive affectional links” and “intense affiliative impulses”.
One weekend the very P-ish man I was involved with was on a real narc high. He had done very well in a bicycle race, and he managed to sexually assault me. And he got to show off his birding skills, wine selection skills, etc. He said it was one of the most fun weekends of his life. It was the same weekend where he professed he wished he had married me, that he was going to tell his best friend about me, and after he said that he was trying to breath my molecules left in the air when we were apart, etc. I really think at that moment he “loved” me to the extent that he is capable of loving anyone….which is in a very shallow, context related manner, which is extremely fleeting, and often very contrary to their actions at the moment! (Sexually assaulting someone you love??? How does that work???))
I took very specific steps to warn others about him, which I don’t want to write of here, but I agree it is part of our moral duty to try to warn others, or at the very least, not be part of their facade.
Breckgirl said-
The friend – they never understood – they don’t to this day – and yes the friends, and not the family, are trying to save his house so he has a place to go after jail – 4 blocks from me. They know he has threatened my life – why do they do this – because they feel like they will be bad people if they don’t do something for him – that seeing him possibly homeless (they certainly do not want him in their homes!) will be so difficult emotionally and guilt inducing –
If an offender is still in prison and “friends” are helping financially and you have some degree of proof I wonder if we could publically expose these situations. IF we get enough cases perhaps Donna would explore the idea. These are the cases we need: psychopathic individuals serving time for assault (physical or sexual) or large financial fraud whose friends and families are helping get out of prison early or helping to re-establish in the community. Let us put real pressure on people not to render any aid to psychopaths.
This is a subject on which I speak with a great amount of personal experience as most of you already know.
My psychopathic son is in prison for murder. One of the things that is considered by parole boards is OUTSIDE SUPPORT FOR AN OFFENDER. Does he or she have a place to go? Do they have supportive family members.
Sex offenders FREQUENTLY REOFFEND which is well known. There are some however in the “system” that seem to think if a sex offender is married (and therefore presumably “getting sex”) that they would be less likely to reoffend. POPPY COCK! Submissive and willing sex is NOT what a rapist wants, so being married and having access to a willing sexual partner does NOT make the sex offender less likely to offend.
According to Dr. Anna Salter, Ph.D, one of the recognizable experts on sex offenses world wild, and pedophilia in particular, she states that ALL sex offenders re0offend and that they have NO REMORSE and NO GUILT. Wait, a minute? Does that mean ALL sex offenders are PSYCHOPATHS? I think it means exactly that! Therefore, no amount of prison time (except for natural life) will keep these people from reoffending.
Liane is right, even Jeff Dahmer had 14 women at the time of his death that he was corresponding with and claiming exclusive and undying love for each one. (the letters were found in his cell after his death.)
I was able to keep my “Trojan Horse Psychopath” from getting parole the first time he came up because I worked hard to find a way. The parole lboard had a “plan” to send him to a half way house. Which, it just so happens is prohibited to send a sex offender to a half way house in Arkansas by Act 679. They had approved it anyway, thinking no one would cause a STINK about it.
Of course, you know me, and I did cause a STINK and his parole did not happen. However, he got “in good” with some Christians who worked in the prison and they found him a place to stay so 5 months later, his parole was approved.
This is a man who has THREE felony convictions for molestation of children ages 8, 11 and 14, as well as assault convictions, who has violated EVERY parole he was let out on and reincarcerated for that violation…..yet, the system was ANXIOUS to get this man back on teh street. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
If I understand correctly, Giarrdo had SEVERAL convictions and incarcerations and a sentence of FIFTY YEARS for one, but served only a tiny fraction of either of those sentences.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR “JUSTICE” SYSTEM? Or should I say IN-JUSTICE system that will turn a PROVEN VIOLENT offender out into society where he can reoffend again and again and again?
Liane, apparently he was allowed to “marry” in prison because convicts have rights, apparently unlike the victims and potential victims.
Why would his wife marry under such conditions, or pick such a man to marry? I think it speaks to her “normalizing” of criminal behavior in her world, (her uncle being in prison and her visiting him) and I have no doubt that HE LIED about what his charges were or his guilt of those charges. The trojan horse psychopath lied to my egg donor, my P-son lied to her as well. Even when I had PROOF that the TH-P was lying to her, she refused to believe the documentary proof and accused me of “manufacturing it” on my computer—complete with mug shot. Her “proof” was “he TOLD ME SO”—-
Obviously the woman was a programmed “care giver” which is not uncommon in this level in society where women are valued only for their ability to “provide comfort” to their men by working and bringing home the money, sex on demand, and household care, while the men are free to engage in whatever outside pleasures they wish to. A woman in this culture is “nothing” without a man, she is scorned as “worthless” because no one wants her. As a “married woman” even to such a thing as Girrado, she has a status among her women friends, and if her husband is in prison and she “waits” for him, she proves her “worth” to him as being loyal (to a fault). During the time he is prison, just like with any long distance relationship, she has the VISION of the wonderful FUTURE when he gets out and they have a wonderful life together. A FANTASY world which is built up in her mind during the time of his incarceration, one that takes on a life of its own.
In the meantime, he has someone to send him commissary money for treats and extra food, while he is in prison. He can write her letters and get visits from her which help him pass the boring days and years. In the book, “The Felon” which is a researched study of the FANTASY that the felons build up of what their life will be like when they get back “outside” the felon himself builds up a FANTASY world of how wonderful it will be when he gets out, how he will have material status cars, clothes, and women….of course neither of these fantasies comes true….in his case, maybe it did come true with the kidnapping of the child and her enslavement for 18 years.
My P-convict-son’s fantasies were apparent in his letters to the Trojan Horse psychopath when he talked about how things would be with him back on the outside and them living here on the farm without me to check their desires for what they felt was unlimited money and leisure time to “sit on the back porch and drink tea” will looking out over the “spread.”
I seemed, apparently, the only fly in their ointment! Well, and my other sons, but they could either be managed or elimiinated, no big deal either way. Of course my P-son made it clear that after I was gone the TH-P would have to learn how to manage things financially (with my mother’s money) but that when he came home (on parole) HE would be the captain of the ship! Ah, fantasy of paradise on earth!
I sincerely doubt, however, that with the three VIOLENT pasychopaths in one “pile” here on the farm that it would have been “happily” ever after! I also predict that my son would have been the survivor, but probably he would have gone back to prison as he has seldom committed a felony he didn’t get convicted for.
I totally agree with Liane that anyone who “nurtures” and “supports” these people is equally guilty of the crimes they commit. At the same time, I have some empathy for this monster’s wife, she was “programmed” from birth to be sumissive to males in her environment. “Trauma bonded” if you will.
Should she be pitied or should she go to prison as well as a kidnapper? The way our “in-justice system” works, though, I imagine she will “cut a deal” and testify against her husband and receive a lesser sentence than he does. Is that what should happen? I’m not sure, part of me feels pity for the woman, and part of me says, “she was a willing participant”—but in any case, the damage done to the VICTIMS (including the children) is too horrific to even imagine. The cry of the Nazi underlings that “I was just following orders” sounds pretty hollow.
Denial isa wonderful salve to the feelings of family and friends who support these violent people….I used it myself for many years…in the end, however, the TRUTH comes out if we will only see it, unfortunately too many times, it comes out like it did with Dr. Amy Castillo’s dead children after her husband killed them when the Judge gave him unsupervised visitation AFTER he had threatened to kill them.
Oxy, your story about your P son and the Trojan horse fascinates me because I have my own trojan who want’s my P-parents home and money. I don’t have it completely understood as to all the details and sequence of events.
Who did your P son kill which sent him to jail?
The trojan had an affair with your DIL and together they tried to kill your son.
When did the trojan “move” on your eggdonor?
I’m still confused as to that relationship.
I agree that Nancy should pay for her indifference to Jaycee’s suffering. Her indifference is what I don’t understand. Maybe it’s the slippery slope scenario. Maybe he got her to do some small evil deeds first and then some more until it finally seemed normal to do horrible evil deeds.
I don’t understand why my P didn’t do that to me. I watched him do it to others. twisting them into hating for no reason. I thank God that he didn’t because I cannot say what would have happened. I know that I’m very empathetic to others, but can that be unlearned a little bit at a time?
Or did he want to keep me “pure” so that he could watch this “innocent” soul commit suicide and thereby snatching the prize away from God?
Witch Hunt!
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=psychetruth#play/uploads/36/nXgyfYKzb28
Skylar, your comments last night got me all wound up with my own pity party. I am so angry with myself for feeling the way I do today, and – after reading this blog, I wondered what IS love. You see, my X wanted me so bad, there was not a question about it: he was “in Love”. And in the process he lied and manipulated to such a terrific degree, that it seems not humanly possible to even “want someone and “love” them” and course so much of dissonance in their life. “whatever works” I guess was the justification in his sick mind. Intense impulses and positive affectionate links turned out to be nothing more than a toddler temper tantrum – getting his toy prize at whatever cost. He is doing the same now with our child. I am sick of this sick being.