FBI Fumbles Again

The strange kidnap and rape case of Jaycee Lee Dugard has grabbed the attention of people from around the world. The suspect, Phillip Garrido, was convicted and jailed for rape in the past. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison, but he served much less time. He wore a GPS tracking bracelet so authorities could know his whereabouts at all times. He reported regularly to his parole officer.

A neighbor reported him to the sheriff a couple of years ago because of the makeshift tents and buildings in his backyard. Yet, when they investigated they didn't find anything unusual.

Furthermore, Jaycee Lee Dugard worked for Garrido at his home-based business card printing company. Several of his customers said that they even had talked to her, with her using a different name. Now, we all know about the Stockholm Syndrome...but still.

I came across the following last week:

"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- An FBI agent who spent 18 years on the Jaycee Lee Dugard case says the Antioch couple charged in her 1991 abduction were never considered suspects.

Special Agent Chris Campion said the bureau exhausted thousands of leads about Dugard's whereabouts, sometimes with the help of confidential informants and court-ordered wiretaps.

Yet Campion said in the interview posted on the FBI Web site Friday that Phillip and Nancy Garrido ''just did not come up on the radar screen.''"

Here was a man who had been arrested for kidnapping and rape, and he was under observation, yet he was not a suspect in the kidnapping.

Now, I ask you, if the FBI never had Garrido on their suspect list, how can the FBI possibly find D.B. Cooper when they've lost evidence and mismanaged the case for so many years?

Some time ago, the FBI asked us for DNA evidence from our suspect in the D.B. Cooper hijacking, Kenneth Christiansen. We readily provided it, but didn't know that they had lost the most probable DNA evidence in their possession, the cigarette butts that D.B. Cooper smoked on the plane.

Last month, National Geographic TV aired a documentary on D.B. Cooper. They even duplicated the jump wearing what "D.B. Cooper" was wearing at the time, to see if it could be done successfully. The stuntman duplicated the caper flawlessly.

Kenneth Christiansen was featured prominently, but the show concluded that perhaps D.B. Cooper drowned in a river and was dragged 20 miles upstream by a ship's propeller, where they found a little of the money he got in his ransom.

Even the FBI hasn't come to that conclusion! The FBI does feel that he died when he parachuted from the plane, but they've never found and body or the parachute. Maybe that explains it, but I don't think so.