Jaycee Dugard

First Photo: Kidnap Survivor Jaycee Dugard Emerges from the Shadows

Originally posted 10/14/2009 07:30AM

After being held against her will for 18 years, much of it in a backyard hell straight out of a horror film, Jaycee Dugard wants the world to know:

"I'm so happy to be back with my family," she tells PEOPLE.

Now living in seclusion with her mom, Terry Probyn, 50, and the two daughters – Angel, 15, and Starlit, 11 – fathered by her alleged kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, Dugard, 29, has begun the slow process of recovery. She rides horses, cooks meals and is thinking of collaborating on a book.

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Credit: Nick Ut/AP

Jaycee Dugard's Mom: 'Miracles Can Happen'

Originally posted 09/23/2009 05:35PM

It started as every parent's nightmare. Now, Jaycee Dugard's mother hopes their 18-year ordeal can be a story of hope for the families of other missing children.

"All of us are doing very well under the circumstances," Terry Probyn, 50, said in a statement Wednesday. "We especially appreciate everyone recognizing that what we need most right now is to be allowed to become a family again within a zone of privacy and security. We hope that our story focuses attention on all of the children still missing, and on their need to be found. We must keep looking for them. As Jaycee shows, miracles can happen."

Probyn's statement, released by the family's new attorney, former federal prosecutor McGregor Scott, adds: "Jaycee, her daughters, and I are grateful for everyone's generosity, kindness, and good wishes these past few weeks. Thank you."

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Credit: Nick Ut/AP

Jaycee Dugard Will Be Reunited with Her Pets

Originally posted 09/17/2009 03:45PM

Jaycee Dugard and her daughters are preparing for another happy homecoming: with their animals.

Pets removed from Phillip Garrido's house after his Aug. 26 arrest on kidnapping and rape charges include five cats, two dogs, three cockatiels, a pigeon, white mice and a parakeet.

Animal control officials say that only one of the mice is still alive – but other than that, the pets remain in good health, and Jaycee, 29, Starlit, 15, and Angel, 11, are anxious to get them back.

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Credit: Reno Police Department/AP

Phillip Garrido Wrote Love Songs to Young Girls

Originally posted 09/09/2009 10:00AM

As if revelations about accused kidnapper and rapist Phillip Garrido were not unsettling enough, a customer of Garrido's home-based printing business in Antioch, Calif., has now told reporters that the increasingly religious man recorded and handed out self-recorded albums of love songs to young girls.

"The way she walks, yeah, subtle, sexy. What can I do? I fall victim too. A little child, yeah, look what you do," one song goes.

Garrido told the customer he'd written the songs while serving time in prison in 1976 for a previous kidnapping and rape.

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Credit: Nick Ut/AP

Jaycee Dugard's Abduction Haunted Her Young Classmates

Originally posted 09/05/2009 10:00AM

Missy McBride calls it the most vivid memory of elementary school – the day the children at Meyers Elementary School found out 11-year-old classmate Jaycee Dugard had been kidnapped.

"Everybody was scared," McBride, now 27 and living in Seattle, tells the Reno Gazette-Journal, "and the parents were even more scared than the kids."

The memories flooded back for former students of the South Lake Tahoe school when Dugard, now 29, was found living in Northern California in a squalid compound behind the home of her alleged abductor, Phillip Garrido, along with the two daughters he fathered with her.

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