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
PInow,
What did I say?
I want to clear the air about something right now:
I have been pretty much isolated for the past 25 years and I might have a warped personality because of it. It is possible that I say things to offend people and don’t realize that I’m being offensive. So many people in my life are P’s.
Since the age of 17 I have been under the P’s hypnotic spell and pretty much isolated from friends and family. During those years HE has been the main influence on the growth of my personality. I have not had a job in over 20 years. So if you see me being abrasive or inconsiderate, I apologize in advance. I don’t mean to be.
It’s nothing you said. Not at all. I just read about you missing yours and Started missing mine. They all sound so similar, we may be missing the same characteristics or personality traits (funny how that one came out, ha?). Anyway, I was responding more to this blog. I found nothing Genuine about my X, so whatever attractions he had are probably like those of kids to shiny objects. Nothing you said: I was sad with you and carried it into my own personal dark place that I try to keep locked up. Sorry if my message was not clear earlier: I still cry at night,
Oh,PInow,
Ok, I’m sorry U are sad. I’m working hard at learning how to make it better. There has to be a way.
He took so many years from me. I’m wondering if my ability to relate to people has been damaged too. I can’t help wondering what the long term effects on my personality are going to be.
God, this is such hard work, He must have a reason for us to FEEL this sadness. We have to keep trying to make sense of it. I know God loves us, why would He choose us for this cross to bear?
Are we being big babies? After all, we did not die, we are not living in refuge camps or prisons. We are hurt emotionally but how bad is that compared to the suffering of people in North Korea? Africa?
Here’s a song that may help you. a bit.
http://video.canadiancontent.net/71350455-alanis-morissette-thank-you.html
Thank you for sharing the song. I too know, what it’s like to feel naked in public, I think many of us do….
Funny you should say this about God: it was just the point I’ve made to someone few hours ago. God certainly did not forget us, if he/ she is giving us such a harsh lesson…
I don’t know that we can compare our pain to that of refugees in camps. They are together, their enemy is easy to identify and therefore hide from. They don’t know the ultimate emotional betrayal that we’ve gone through (unless of course, they do, because of their personal circumstance).
I feel like I am in a war zone. I have support from those who love me and whom I love, but at the end, I alone must face the battles. It is also like grieving death of a loved one. Except, the loved one goes on living like a clone of self, but I am forced to realize that he never existed. Maybe, going to Africa or volunteering with someone who is in pain will help me not feel so alone. One must have good footing though to give to others, and I have lost that footing, having been trampled on by the circumstances that are now beyond my control.
Some days I go away from LF, try to pretend that life can go on as before. I get tired of P related subjects and want to move on. But, X makes sure to keep me on a leash from my desire to “put it behind me” and so I return, to read more, to suffer more, to be understood or at least to share. I am luckier than most, his relatives told me, that I can rely on my professional training and knowledge and work experience to understand what is going on. Can’t imagine not having this knowledge and having to go through this nightmare. Definitely, given a choice, would have opted for the refugee camps.
Pinow,
I can read between the lines. no matter what the words say, it boils down to one thing: you are really sensitive, just like me. The perfect N-supply.
NO, you would not have opted for the refugee camps.
I will share something with you though I don’t yet have permission to quote it yet:
Be the kind of woman that, each day, when your feet hit the floor, the devil says, “CRAP, she’s up.”
Make that your goal.
Look, the internet is the reason you and I can communicate, if that isn’t a miracle of God, I don’t know what is. It has saved my life and it will change the world more than it has already. Use it.
skylar –
I just was thinking that recently – Thank God for the internet and the information available. I don’t know how I would have found not only the information but then to have people who get it post on the message board.
It has been a godsend….
PInow – I hope you have a better week. I am sorry you are in such pain today. I have the luxury right now if being 3,000 miles away from some of the N’s in my life and the other one is locked up right now. I am having a period of peace and I am enjoying every bit of it. I pray you get some soon. It helps with the healing tremendously.
This story seems yet to really unfold….I think there is alot more to it than what meets the eye.
Of course the first mistake as far as justice is concerned is that he didn’t serve his time and was let out of prison early.
If in fact this was allowed because it is “presumed” that a sex offender will not recommit a crime because he is married is ridiculous. And proves how BADLY our laws need to change.
However that is one of the things that leads to many questions as of Nancys involvement in this entire situation. From the start to the finish…..Somehow, without more in depth information about this whole thing of how she happened to marry this man while incarcerated….It almost seems like she could also be a victim.
For all we know this might have been why she was taken to the jail to visit her “uncle” to begin with. For the intent purpose for her to marry this man. Her family could have arranged this ahead of time.
If this guy is as sick as he appears to be, God only knows what he did to her?
I am certainly not saying that if she was a willing participant in this crime that she shouldn’t be punished to the FULL exent of the law.
However it would be helpful to have more information on this woman and her life with Phillip Garrido. Something just doesn’t seem right? If she was tortured and “brain washed” by this man for years, then she is yet another of “his” victims as well.
Thank you, friends, for your support. When I am ready, I will happily share what is going on with me and what my X is coming up with on a regular basis. I too agree with Witsend about the Garrido’s wife. My X was a drug to me, totally derailed me from reality and I enjoyed it thoroughly. (and paid dearly). She could have fallen to be Gerrido’s victim just as easily. I am not so quick to come to any conclusions on any of this; it sounds like the man is so delusional that perhaps anything else takes the back seat in his dysfunction.
PInow,
I am sorry to hear that you are in pain. I do not know your whole story. I believe that you mentioned that you have a child and he is doing the same thing to your child.
From my perspective it is so much harder to heal and continue the journey of recovery when you can’t go complete N/C with the toxic individual. And of course if you have a child together this is almost impossible. It seems whatever small “access” they might have into your life they will use that to hurt you further. And what better way to hurt someone then through their own children? Like rubbing salt into an already open wound…..
I don’t have much to offer as far as what you might do in your situation….The “disordered” person in my life is my son….But like you I can’t go N/C and I understand you feeling like you are living in a nightmare. I feel that as well.
And I also understand you feeling alone in your pain even though you do have people around you that love you.
Sometimes the hardest things we have to do in life…We do alone. Maybe this is how we grow emotionally and spiritually?
I don’t know what your professional training or knowledge is that you refered to but if it helps in your recovery USE it!
Let’s all remember when we miss those ‘certain personality traits’ of the P….we are missing an illusion….it’s not real. Most of the time it’s our personality traits being reflected back to us….KACHING!