Wife of Jaycee kidnapper was child carer

The wife of suspected kidnapper Philip Garrido worked as a carer for the handicapped while she kept Jaycee Lee Dugard locked up for 18 years to be repeatedly raped by her husband.

Nancy Garrido, 55, got a job as a nursing aide at a charity, working with more than 1,000 children and adults, three years after helping to kidnap 11-year-old Jaycee as she walked to the school bus stop in June 1991.

"She was a good employee and she was well liked by the people she worked with. They cannot believe that this is possible.

"They're totally shocked," said Barbara Maizie, executive director of the northern California charity, Contra Costa.

Mrs Garrido was a carer from 1994 to 1998, while Jaycee, now 29, was forced to live in a tent in the couple's garden.

A state record check on Mrs Garrido, who worked as a nurse in the early Eighties, came back clean, said the Contra Costa Times newspaper.

Detectives say her nursing background helps explain how Jaycee had two healthy babies, even though neither she nor her daughters, Starlite, 15, and Angel, 11, saw a doctor.

Mrs Garrido and her husband, 58, face kidnap, rape and sexual abuse charges.