You may have read that it turns out that the reason the child rapist/kidnapper piece of shit who nabbed the girl off the street 18 years was busted is because he was stopped while handing out religious literature on the UC-Berkeley campus. These things are hard to make up.

Wasn't that Mormon kidnapper who grabbed the girl in southern California a few years ago also a proselytizer of some sort, with the girl dressed in a burqa or something?

Of course there is the obvious though disgusting irony that this child rapist/kidnapper piece of shit was religious. But hardly a surprise, is it?

And there is the interesting little tidbit that if you distribute religious literature on the UC-Berkeley campus, a public university, the cops stop you for questioning. Can't anybody go on a public campus and hand shit out? Isn't this the same institution defending academic freedom in the case of torture advocate John Yoo?

My thinking is that there is at least an even chance that any proselytizer you stop is a piece of shit of some variety, on a scale ranging from child rapist/kidnapper to Republican airport bathroom cocksucker, to everything in between.

But this story is especially fucked up since the police were informed about it but said they couldn't do anything about it. Probably too busy beating up Mexicans to investigate.

But this insane episode does give us some insight into California law enforcement--ID people handing out religious literature on public campuses but do not check on evolving weird encampments of feral children that have been reported by suspicious neighbors.


The San Francisco Chronicle writes:

"Erika Pratt, 25, who stayed next door two years ago, said she was continuously "freaked out" by Garrido's behavior, and that when she popped her head over the fence she saw his secret compound. There were tents, sheds and pit bull dogs, and water hoses leading from her house next door, she said.
'They never talked'

"He had little girls and women living in that back yard, and they all looked kind of the same," Pratt said. "They never talked, and they kept to themselves."

Pratt said people came and went from the property, but the core group consisted of two girls about 4 years old, one girl about 11, another girl about 15 and a young woman about 25. They were all blonde, she said.

Pratt said she had called Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies to investigate, but that officers "told me they couldn't go inside because they didn't have a warrant. So they just told him they'd keep an eye on him."

Police said Thursday that the only people living in the yard when the Garridos were arrested were Dugard and her daughters.
'A blank stare'

Haydee Perry, 35, who lives next door, said that when Phillip Garrido helped her jump-start her car a month ago, he had a young girl clinging to him in a manner that struck her as strange.

"She stayed close to him at all times," Perry said. "It wasn't normal behavior. She had a blank stare on her face. Now it seems like a cry out for help."

A Web site containing statements from Garrido and others called "Voices Revealed," talks about a turnaround that allowed him "to open doors that will honor the creator and his eternal purpose for mankind."

The site also indicates that he gave a demonstration in Pittsburg last month with a homemade box to prove "the creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wakeup call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world."

Mary Thomas, accountant at J&M auto dismantlers in Pittsburg, near where Garrido set up his revival tent, said he was "was always very professional and spoke the word of God whenever he talked.""