Crime Junkie - SURVIVED: Jaycee Dugard

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was abducted as she was walking to school in June of 1991. No one would see her again for 18 years, until two campus police officers did what parole and police officers couldn’t. But her story isn’t just one of survival – it’s one of strength, resiliency, and life after tragedy.  You can check out how you can support Jaycee and Dr. Bailey’s amazing work in helping other survivors of extreme trauma by visiting The JAYC Foundation and Polyvagal Equine Institute. To learn more about Jaycee’s story, you can purchase her books, a stolen life and freedom here: thejaycfoundation.org - BooksandStationery For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/survived-jaycee-dugard/

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And the story I have for you today is one that you may have heard of before and one that you might think you already know. It's about a little girl who was abducted on her way to school and held for almost two decades by a sick, evil man and his wife. But unlike many of the stories we tell you on this show, this one actually has a happy ending because this young woman had the will to survive against all odds

and wisdom beyond her years on how to do that. This is an important episode that I want you to hear because it is going to change what you think you know about abduction cases and give you important information about how people often survive in cases like this. And it's different than what you've been told for years. This is the story of J.C. Dugard. It's about 8.30 a.m. on June 10, 1991, when a dispatcher at the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office in California

picks up a call coming through their emergency line. 911, this is 911. I'm trying to remove our wash zone. Our daughter was just kidnapped, top of the hill with a great forge. A man and a woman in the car. The dispatcher gets the man's name, Carl. And his address, which is in Southlake Tahoe, California.

Officers from the Sheriff's Office are the first to arrive on scene where they meet a frantic Carl. He explains that he was working in the garage that morning when his 11-year-old stepdaughter, J.C. Dugard, left to walk to the bus stop. And it's not a long walk, and so both he and J.C.'s mother, Terry, feel comfortable letting her go on her own. Terry's always at work by the time J.C. leaves, though,

so in the morning it's usually just a couple of hours before he leaves, though, so in the morning it's usually just him and J.C. and his and Terry's one-year-old daughter. That morning, as J.C. was walking up the hill by their house, Carl noticed a two-toned gray sedan drive past and up the hill towards her. He didn't think anything of it

until a few seconds later when he heard a scream. He says he looked up, saw that the sedan had pulled over, and J.C. was being pulled into the car by the man who was driving. And before he could do anything, they sped away. Carl said that he immediately jumped on his bike and tried to go after them, but a little ways up the hill he realized

that he wasn't going to be able to catch up, so he raced back down and screamed to his neighbors to call 911. Unfortunately, by the time he made it down the hill and back towards his house, a neighbor had already dialed. Now, he didn't get a good look at the people who took J.C., but he was able to briefly see that there were two of them, a man in the driver's seat and a woman on the passenger side who had dark hair, but that's all he can give police.

They immediately spring into action and call in multiple other agencies to join in on the search, including the FBI, California Highway Patrol, and officers from South Lake Tahoe. Edgar Sanchez and Mark Glover reported for the Sacramento Bee that they even go so far as to bring in officers from a few counties in Nevada, since South Lake Tahoe is super close to the California-Nevada border.

At some point, J.C.'s mother is called and informed of her daughter's abduction and she races home to help with the search. Investigators start by going door to door, asking neighbors if they saw or heard anything that might point them in the right direction. They also set up multiple checkpoints and roadblocks in the area to try and stop the car before it gets too far,

and they bring in a helicopter and an airplane to cover even more ground. And meanwhile, another group of investigators sits down with both Carl and Terry to learn a little bit more about J.C. and their family, trying to see if there's anyone connected to the family that could have taken her. They learn that J.C.'s biological father

hasn't really been in the picture since she was born, and Terry and Carl got married just a few years ago. They're originally from Garden Grove, California, which is an urban area with high rates of crime, and shortly after their daughter Shayna was born, they decided that they wanted to move to South Lake Tahoe. The neighborhood that they live in now is very suburban with a low crime rate,

and they thought that it would be a much safer place to raise the two girls. And even though they did just recently move, everything seemed to be going well. J.C. had made friends at school, and Terry can't think of anyone in their lives that might have wanted to harm them. But investigators aren't so sure about that.

Stranger abductions are super rare, and so when the physical search for J.C. turned up nothing, they quickly shift their focus to tracking down her biological father. But they're actually able to rule him out almost right away. You see, he lives in Los Angeles, which is some, like, seven and a half, eight hours away, and they have someone go physically visit him, and that person confirms that he doesn't have her.

A deep dive into the rest of the family also rules out her mom, who is at work, and other members of her family. Everyone except for Carl. And this is for a few reasons. One, because he was literally the last one to see her, and two, his relationship with J.C., who, again, is his stepdaughter, could admittedly be tense at times.

Now, a lot of it was, like, typical family bickering, but after her mom married Carl, J.C. had often felt kind of like the odd one out. According to an article by Laura Marlowe for the Irish Times, Carl had even sent J.C. a way to live with her aunt and uncle for, like, a whole year. So when police learn about this, like this strained relationship, investigators start wondering if Carl had something

to do with her disappearance. They have him take a polygraph, which he passes, but that doesn't shake the feeling for them that there's just something off about him. The next few days are a flurry of activity. Carl sits down with a sketch artist to create a composite of both the woman and the car, and then those sketches are circulated

to law enforcement agencies in both California and Nevada. Terry and Carl even step up to offer a $5,000 reward for J.C.'s safe return, and several of their families even pitch in to bring that total up to $25,000. And that's when police go out to make an appeal to the public for information, which does bring in several tips that seem promising,

but none of those actually led them straight to J.C. So that's when investigators turn to the National Missing Children's Institute in Washington for help. And now, just as kind of a side note, when I look that up, National Missing Children's Institute, I could only find the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,

so I don't know if there was, like, a previous organization by this name, or if the name just got jumbled or whatever. But either way, they helped assist in getting J.C.'s disappearance featured in a segment on America's Most Wanted. Also tells me it's probably Nick Mac. But anyways, once that airs,

the police do receive several calls after the segment, but none of them go anywhere. And all this time, the reward is even, like, bubbling up. Like, $40,000, but they're still stuck with nothing. And then, just when things seem like they're starting to stall, investigators learn about another attempted kidnapping that they think might be connected. On June 3rd, a two-year-old girl was playing outside

in a motel in South Lake Tahoe when a woman with dark hair walked up, picked her up, and then just started walking away with her. Now, thankfully, the little girl's mother, who was in the motel office, had, like, a clear view of her daughter. And according to an article in the Modesto Bee by Mark Glover, she, like, jumped up and went after them.

And the lady who took the girl says, like, oh, no, I was just gonna pick her up and go looking for her mom. I didn't see anyone around. And she just, like, handed her over and then got in a white pickup truck where a man was waiting for her. And the two drove off.

And although this is weird and definitely freaked the woman out, she didn't actually call police. But when she saw the sketch of the woman who supposedly took J.C., she said that that person is the one who tried to take her daughter. Like, she looked super familiar.

So that's when she contacted law enforcement. So the police decide to put out a statement asking that woman, seen at the motel, to call them just so they can eliminate her. And to a lot of people's surprise, they actually get a call from this lady. She explains to police that she saw the little girl walking around on her own

and didn't see anyone else around. And so she was just trying to do the right thing, keep the girl from wandering off. And police believe her. So she is eliminated as a suspect. After this tip, J.C.'s case starts to go cold. Every lead police seem to have takes them to a dead end.

And they've vetted everyone in J.C.'s life, looked up local sex offenders, and even checked with the DMV to see if any registered vehicles matched the one Carl saw. They even look at cases of other missing children from nearby towns and cities, just in case they can connect any of them.

But every single method they try takes them right back to square one. And eventually, even though they still have dozens of investigators signed to her case, they have no choice but to scale back the search. J.C.'s family does their best to keep looking for her. I mean, Terry even quits her job

to dedicate all of her time to looking for her daughter. She leads teams of volunteers who make mailers to, like, send out to truck stops and convenience stores, other high traffic places. J.C.'s even featured on a card that's included in packs of sports trading cards, almost like a precursor to the cold case playing cards that we have now.

But still, nothing significant happens. Over the following years, there are a few pushes to refresh the investigation, the biggest of which happens when Elizabeth Smart is found. And that's because investigators couldn't help but notice the similarities between J.C. and Elizabeth. Like, they're both young, they both have blonde hair.

And J.C.'s house is really close to Highway 50, which runs from Lake Tahoe to Utah, where Elizabeth was abducted. Not to mention the fact that there are similarities between the sketch of the woman that Carl saw in the car and Wanda Barsi, the woman who helped keep Elizabeth captive for nine months. So investigators, like, really look into this.

I mean, they even meet to discuss the likelihood of Elizabeth's kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, being responsible for J.C.'s abduction. But by the end of that meeting, it is actually determined that they weren't involved. So investigators go back to where they started. They give Carl several more polygraphs over the years. And even though some of the investigators are sure

that he's holding something back, there is no real evidence against him. And so J.C.'s case remained cold. That is, as you may know, until 18 years later, when a man walks into a college campus and catches the eye of two women who sense that something is wrong. It's the afternoon of August 24th, 2009,

and police specialist Lisa Campbell is meeting with a man who tells her that he wants to hold an event on campus at the University of California, Berkeley. Now, Lisa manages the special events unit of the university's police department, and part of her job is to do exactly this, meet with people who want to hold on-campus events. So the man she's talking to says that his name is Philip Gerita,

and he tells her that he runs an organization called God's Desire. And basically, he says that the event would promote his cause. But as far as I can tell, it's not really clear what that cause is. And this guy is giving her all the wrong vibes. Like, he's acting erratic, he's going on about how the government is involved in whatever event that he wants to hold.

But it's not just Philip's behavior that is setting her on edge. It is the two girls that he brought with him. Like, they're young. One looks to be a teenager, the other maybe like 10 or 11. And the way that they're acting is unnerving. According to an article by Kathy Cockrell for the UC Berkeley News,

they look, quote, sullen and submissive. And they're not at all engaged with what's going on around them. Now, they don't look malnourished or abused, at least as far as she can tell. But combined with Philip's behavior, Lisa just gets the feeling that there's something else going on here. So she acts like she's interested in what he's saying and makes an appointment for him to come back the following day at 2 p.m.

Now, she's super careful with what she says and how she interacts with him, whether she wants to spook him or say something that'll make him skip out on their next meeting. But as soon as he leaves with the two girls in tow, Lisa and a UCPD officer named Ali Jacobs look up Philip and they run a background check on him. And what they find makes their hearts sink.

It turns out Philip is a registered sex offender and he's on parole for a kidnapping and rape that he committed back in 1971. The story goes that he abducted a young woman named Katie after asking her for a ride and he took her to a storage facility that he'd set up to basically be his own personal prison. He had a bed, stacks of pornography,

and over the course of multiple hours, he repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Fortunately, Katie was saved when a passing police officer noticed a broken lock outside one of the storage units and when Philip went to try and like shoe him away, Katie ran out, completely naked, and told the officer what had happened.

Philip was arrested on the scene, eventually tried, sentenced to 50 years in prison, but he was let out after only 11 for good behavior. So once these two women learn about Philip's past, they are even more worried about the girls that he has with him. Now, I'm not sure if Philip introduced them during their first meeting at any point,

but when he arrives back the next day at 2 p.m., he says that they're his daughters. Officer Jacobs is actually sitting in on the second meeting and she tries to engage the girls in conversation, nothing that would like cue Philip into their suspicions of him, but just enough to learn a little bit more about them.

But for every question she asks, like, what grade are you in? Why aren't you in school right now? They have what sound like super rehearsed answers. Like they say that they're homeschooled and it's not just the two of them, they have another older sister at home as well. Officer Jacobs has kids of her own

and so both her police training and her mom's senses are tingling, head to toe, telling her that there is something wrong with their behavior. And this whole time throughout the meeting, Philip is rambling on the same way he did the day before. This time he brought a multi-page brochure with him called Origin of Schizophrenia Revealed.

He says that he wrote it and talks about how he's doing quote, unquote, God's work. He even offers up his criminal history to Lisa and Officer Jacobs, saying that he'd been arrested and convicted of kidnapping and rape before, but now he's turned his life around. So again, this is weird.

They can't arrest him. They can't hold the girls and eventually Philip and the girls leave again. And neither Officer Jacobs nor Lisa feels great about just letting them go. But again, they can't just detain them, no matter how bad that feeling is that they have in their gut.

So instead, they do the next best thing. They call Philip's parole officer to report his daughter's behavior and to recommend that they check in with him just to make sure that everything is on the up and up. Now, I don't think they got through to him that day because Philip's parole officer calls them back the next morning to get more information.

And during that call, he reveals something truly disturbing. Philip doesn't have any kids. And I'm sure that's when their tingle turned to full body chills because upon hearing that, both women are convinced that those two girls, maybe even a third at home, have been kidnapped

and are being held by Philip against their will. They obviously share all of this with the parole officer and he assures them that he is going to look into it. And sure enough, Jesse McKinley and Carol Pogosh reported for the New York Times that he calls Philip. He sets up a meeting and asks Philip to come to him, and Philip does. But the parole officer is shocked

when Philip shows up with four other people in tow. His wife, Nancy, who the parole officer already knows about and has actually met before, the two girls that Lisa and officer Jacobs told him about, and another young woman in her 20s who the parole officer knows as Alyssa. So Philip is separated from the rest of the group and his parole agent leads the four women into another room.

He starts asking them some questions, mainly questions to Alyssa. And she says that the younger girls are hers and that Philip is their father. After about 20 minutes of this, the parole officer seems satisfied. So he allows all four of the women to leave and go wait for Philip in the car.

And during all of this, other officers in the other room were questioning Philip. And his story about who the girls are starts to change. Like, at first, it kind of matches what Alyssa says. They're his daughters. But then he claims all three, like Alyssa and the two girls, are his brother's kids. And it's with this

that the officers start to get really concerned for the girls' safety. Because if Philip is telling the truth and Alyssa isn't their mother, then why did she lie and say that she was? So two agents go out to the car where the four women are waiting and ask them to get back out again.

And they actually separate Alyssa from the rest. They're all still in the parking lot. And they confront her about whether she's actually the biological mother of the two girls. And that's when Alyssa starts getting defensive. Like, she's insisting, yes, I am their mom. But that's when the parole officer counters and is like, well, Philip's in there telling us

that they're your sisters. But she's pressing. She's like, absolutely not. I am their mother. And she says that, you know, Philip is probably saying that to protect me. Because I'm hiding from an abusive husband. So no one can really know where I am.

So this is all getting like too weird. So the officer brings them back inside and they separate Alyssa from Nancy and the girls again, like in a separate room. Now, she's continuing to say that the girls are hers. But for some reason at this point, the officers don't believe her. In fact, they go so far as to say

that she took the kids from somewhere and is on the run for something. And now they're not even sure if Alyssa is her real name because if she's lying about the girls, then what else is she lying about? And this is like driving Alyssa into a full on panic at this point because police are pressuring her. They're like, we want to know your real name.

What is your real name? And instead of telling them what she does is she asks if she can see Philip. Now, for some reason, this isn't a red flag for them and they just like bring him into the room. And in front of everyone, Alyssa asks him what she should do. And Philip's only response is he tells her that she needs to get a lawyer.

After this, they leave Alyssa alone and they take Philip back to his own room for more questioning. But then completely out of the blue, he starts to break down. And to everyone's complete shock and confusion, he confesses to a kidnapping, but not the one that he was previously convicted of.

No, he confesses to having abducted the woman calling herself Alyssa, and he said he did this years ago. So the question now is, who is Alyssa really? I mean, they were right in thinking she had a fake name, but for all the wrong reasons. So to find out who this girl is, they send a female officer in to talk to her.

I can only find this officer referred to as Melanie, and she decides to take a much gentler approach than the men who had previously been doing the questioning. So when Melanie sits down and tells Alyssa that Philip has confessed to abducting her, that's when she just starts crying. She says, I can't say my name, but she does admit that Philip kidnapped her

when she was just 11, and despite looking young, she's actually 29 now. Melanie is shocked when she hears this, and she asks again, what is your real name? But the woman says she hasn't said her real name in 18 years, and she can't bring herself to do it now. But she thinks she can write it down. So Officer Melanie gets her pen and paper,

and on that paper, the woman writes, JC Lee Dugard. The moment after JC writes her real name is a blur for her. She writes down her date of birth as well as her mom's name, and that's when she's reunited with the other two girls, who are in fact her daughters. The three are taken to the police station where she's finally able to call her mom,

who she learns never gave up hope that she was out there. At this point, Terry and Carl had separated, but once she gets the news that her daughter is alive, Terry rushes to see her, along with JC's aunt Tina and her sister Shayna, who's 19 at this point. JC talks about that family reunion and how nervous she was to see her mom again

in her book, A Stolen Life. She says that she was worried that her mom wouldn't accept her anymore, or wouldn't accept that she had children. She also writes that she was worried that she was having to go back to a house with Carl still there, because they didn't get along. But when she sees her mom, all of those worries,

everything that was running through her mind, just melts away. After 18 years, she's finally back home. Phillip and Nancy are both arrested, and over the next few days, JC recounts as much information as she can about her life with the burritos and how she survived for almost two decades.

The story that JC tells is hard to hear. And if you want to hear her tell it in her own words, I recommend reading her book, because I'm not going to go into every detail here. But starting from the beginning, she tells investigators that on that fateful morning in 1991, as she's walking up that hill, this gray sedan pulled over cutting her off.

The driver, who was Phillip Currito, rolled down his window and kind of leaned out a bit, and he started asking for directions. But then suddenly, he reached out and struck her with a stun gun. She says that she stumbled and fell back trying to get away, but because of the stun gun, her body just wasn't working.

She says that's when Phillip got out and grabbed her, shoving her onto the back floorboards of the car before speeding off. They covered her with a blanket, and she remembers feeling a weight on her back, which she later realized where Nancy's feet pinning her down. Eventually, Nancy got out into the front passenger seat, and she remembers Phillip saying,

quote, I can't believe we got away with it. Eventually, they made it to their house in Antioch, California, which is about three hours away. There, Phillip forced her to shower with him, and afterwards, the overwhelming terror of the situation caused Jacey to break down. Phillip apparently tried to comfort her, but all she wanted in that moment was to go home to her mom.

Over the next few days, Jacey says that Phillip kept her handcuffed in a small, soundproof building in his backyard. The room was dark, and all the windows were covered by towels so that no one could see in. And in that time, he was the only one who would visit her, and she had to rely on him for everything.

Food, bathroom access, even human interaction. And there was no TV, and she could barely move with her hands cuffed behind her back. All the while, Phillip was telling her that she shouldn't try to escape because he had dogs on the property that would attack anyone they didn't recognize. And even if she could somehow get out of the restraints,

he had locked the door from the outside. She writes in her book that, for the first few days of her captivity, Phillip would do funny accents to try and get her to smile and gain her trust. And again, he was the only one who would visit her. Nancy wouldn't come into the picture until later. So despite not wanting to have anything to do with him,

she would almost look forward to his visits if only to have the handcuffs taken off for a little bit. Now, Phillip didn't touch her for the first week or so that she was there. But after that first week, he began regularly raping her. He explained that he had a problem and that she was there to, quote-unquote,

help him so that he wouldn't have to hurt any other girls. A little while later, he began going on what he called runs, where he would take large amounts of cocaine and sexually assault her for hours. And J.C. was kept in that room with no one but Phillip for company for months. After a while, he did introduce her to his wife, Nancy,

who he said would be the one to bring her food and start taking care of her. But her relationship with Nancy was strained to say the least. And that's because she said Phillip made it clear that Nancy was jealous of her. But in order to try and have someone on her side, she did her best to keep Nancy happy. And time went on just like this.

Phillip continued to sexually assault her. Afterwards, he would apologize and say he felt bad, which honestly was just super confusing for her because during his breakdowns, she would have to be the one comforting him, which would then make her angry, because she was the one being hurt. Sometimes when she didn't want to do what he wanted,

Phillip would threaten her, saying that he would sell her to someone who was worse than him and who would keep her in a cage. And to an 11-year-old, the unknown was far scarier than the hell that she was already living in. So she would comply in the interest of self-preservation. Eventually, she was able to be left uncuffed, and Nancy would bring her dolls and other small gifts.

They knew about her love of animals, and so even sometimes they would bring her kittens to keep her company. But none of the kittens ever lasted long over those first few years. Sometimes Phillip would take them away. Other times, they'd just disappear and she wouldn't know what happened to them,

and then she'd be left all alone in that room for hours on end. Years passed like this, and her living conditions slowly started to improve, although improve might be too strong a word. She was given a TV, and although she was limited to certain channels, she finally had some sort of entertainment.

They gave her a game system that she could play Super Mario on, and she got some paper to keep a journal about one of her cats. And eventually, they even started moving her between the original building that she was kept into, this other small building next door. But there seemed to be like no rhyme or reason for why or when they were moving her. But all the while, the assaults continued.

And eventually, when JC was just 14 years old, she got pregnant. In her book, she talks about how she didn't even know the connection between sex and pregnancy. She found out on Easter Sunday when Phillip and Nancy came over and gave her an Easter basket before giving her the news. And this was terrifying.

I mean, JC describes how scared she was because she knew that she wouldn't be getting any medical attention, and even though Phillip assured her that he would learn all about how to deliver a baby, the thought of everything that could go wrong was practically debilitating. And that's just giving birth. Like, then there's the whole issue

of what would happen to the baby after delivery. Like, she didn't want to give up her child, but she didn't have control over her life, much less the life of an unborn baby. Now, somehow, miraculously, she was able to deliver a healthy baby girl. And according to an interview JC did with Diane Sawyer in 2011, once her daughter was born,

she felt that she wasn't alone anymore. And she knew, no matter what, she would never let Phillip harm her daughter in any way. After the birth of her first daughter, Phillip built a tall fence in the backyard, and after years of no sunlight, JC was at least finally allowed to go outside, as long as she stayed in the fenced-in compound.

She has this moment in her book when she talks about, like, that first moment of feeling the sunlight on her face and how Phillip and Nancy wanted to be a real family. After she became pregnant again at 17, Phillip stopped sexually assaulting her. But it was also around this time that he insisted that her first daughter

should start calling Nancy mom instead of calling her mom. And this apparently was because Nancy was feeling left out. And so from then on, her daughter was told that JC was her sister. And when her second daughter was born, she grew up calling Nancy mom, too. It was also at this point when Phillip told her to pick a new name.

I mean, she hadn't used her name in years because Phillip had been calling her Snoopy, because he said she always was, like, snooping around. But she actually picked Alyssa after actress Alyssa Milano. Eventually, JC and the girls moved from the small shed-like building where she was first kept to tense in the backyard. They were able to plant flowers and have pets,

and JC tried to give her daughters as much of a normal life as she could. I mean, this even included school. Even though she herself only had a fifth grade education, she taught her daughters everything she could about math and English and science and social studies. Later on, Phillip got a computer and she would go to homeschool websites

and print out worksheets for the girls. So by the time they were all rescued, her daughters were bright and intelligent all because of the work JC put in. One thing I do want to mention is I obviously said that they had a computer. And this is where so many questions come up more times than I can count in this case.

People always ask, if she had access to the internet, why didn't she search for help? Why didn't she take her daughters and make a run for it? And JC's answer for that is complicated. In her book, she explains it's something that she had to take some time to really think about. Ultimately, she says that it came down to a deep distrust and fear of the outside world

that was ingrained in her by Phillip over her 18 years of captivity. I mean, she was told that the world was full of evil people and that her daughters were only safe there with him. And even though that's ironic coming from him, I mean, you have to keep in mind, he was her whole world for years. She also had no idea where she would go

or what she would do if she left because again, she was taken when she was 11. She had no idea what resources were out there or if anyone would even believe what happened to her. Even when she was able to go into the Guarido's house and had access to a phone, she didn't know if her family would want her back after all of this time.

So no, she wasn't always physically restrained, but those mental barriers were pretty much impossible to break down. And all she was concerned about was the survival of her and her daughters. As JC continued to get older there, Phillip's already poor mental health began to steadily decline. He would talk for hours about how he could hear angels speaking to him and eventually he believed that he could control other people's minds. He created this device that he called the black box,

which is basically a box that you can plug headphones into that he claimed he could speak through without actually speaking himself. He would force JC to listen to it for hours to see if she could hear him through whatever white noise was playing. It was truly just bizarre. And he became more and more obsessed with the Bible. He thought he was the chosen one and he thought he was going to change the world.

And it was around this time that he also started a printing company called Printing for Less. JC started doing graphic design work for the company, which she continued to do up until her rescue. And again, this is where people like always ask questions because she even interacted with clients who all knew her as Alyssa. But no one knew who she really was. No one saw any red flags and any odd behavior

that they did see from Philip, they just kind of brushed off or ignored. And again, even though she interacted with clients, she was stuck physically, stuck mentally until she was in that parole office writing her name on that piece of paper. Once investigators learn about her harrowing story of survival, one of the next things that they want to know is how one new JC and her two young girls were living in the backyard

of the burritos house for years. Because it's not like they were living in the middle of nowhere. They lived in a suburban neighborhood. And remember, Philip was on parole, which means that he should have been regularly visited by parole officers at his home. So what the hell happened? The short answer to that is overwhelming inadequacy

on the part of the parole board. It turns out the state of California classified Philip as a low-level offender when he was supposed to be classified as a high-level offender and heavily monitored. But that didn't happen. The burritos house was visited 60 times by parole agents over the 18 years of JC's captivity, and no one noticed anything amiss.

The part of the backyard that JC and later her daughters were kept in was like hidden behind a fence and some bushes. But I mean, don't get me wrong, it was by no means completely sealed off. Like there were utility cables that ran from the house under that fence, but not a single parole officer checked to see where those cables went. There was even one point where Philip was arrested for failing a drug test and he spent like a month in jail before being released with an ankle monitor. And that monitor showed that he was spending like an unusual amount of time

in this like hidden part of the backyard. But did anyone go look at the data and go like, huh, he's spending a lot of time back there. Maybe we should see what he's doing. No. There was even one time when one of JC's daughters answered the door for a parole officer and Philip said that she was his brother's daughter. But did that parole officer ask any follow-up questions?

Did they check with Philip's brother to make sure that the little girl answering the door for a registered sex offender was actually his niece? No. Over the years, parole agents missed required home checks, drug tests, and obvious red flags. And what's even more frustrating is that after the burritos arrests, the parole board actually comes out and pats themselves on the back for a job well done in bringing JC home, conveniently ignoring

their massive failure that led to a girl being held captive for 18 years. But it wasn't just the parole board that failed. In 2006, one of the burritos' neighbors called the police and reported seeing young girls living in the backyard. But when an officer came to check it out, he didn't even make it to the backyard. In fact, he didn't even make it past the front porch. He asked Philip, if there was anyone else living there,

Philip, of course, said no, and the officer left. As the news of JC's rescue and the police and the parole board's inadequacies make headlines, Philip and Nancy are charged with a total of 18 counts, including kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment, child pornography, and committing lewd acts on a child. They initially plead not guilty with Nancy's lawyer trying to claim that she was under Philip's control and Philip's lawyer

trying to get him a psychiatric evaluation. Now, he does end up getting one, although I can't find what the results were. While they have him in custody, investigators can't help but wonder if JC was the only girl he abducted. I mean, they know about Katie, who was the young woman from 1971, but as they're going through other cold cases from California, they notice that from 1998 to 2002,

multiple bodies of girls and young women were discovered in the Antioch area and surrounding cities. For instance, there is Lisa Norel, who was just 15 when she was abducted and murdered on her way home from a party in 1998. There's also 32-year-old Rachel Cruz, 27-year-old Valerie Schultz, and 25-year-old Jessica Frederick, whose bodies were discovered in ditches in December 1998

and January of 1999, respectively. And these are just some of the women that they initially think could be tied to him. But after a search of his house, they can't find anything linking him to other cases definitively. And JC said she doesn't remember seeing or hearing anything about these other victims. So that's kind of where that trail ends.

Although I should note that all of those cases I mentioned are actually still unsolved to this day. Now, eventually, both Philip and Nancy change their pleas to guilty. Philip is sentenced to 431 years to life, and Nancy gets 36 years to life. And Nancy's sentence is actually a little controversial, with some people calling it too lenient. I mean, they point to that month when Philip was in jail

after he failed that drug test, saying that that's the point where she had every opportunity to let her go, even if she was under his spell when he was there. But the burritos' convictions aren't where JC's story ends. As I'm sure you can imagine, re-entering the world after being hidden away for 18 years presents a unique set of challenges, physically, mentally, emotionally.

But JC isn't someone who has let the terrible actions of other people stop her from living a fulfilling life. And I think the most important part of her story is what she's been able to do in the years since her rescue. And who better to hear it from than JC herself? When JC and her kids got out, she was faced with a question I'm not sure she ever considered for the last 18 years. What's next?

Yeah, I guess I really didn't know what to expect because I didn't know if I was ever going to be going home, but luckily we were under, you know, great circumstances and we were reunited with my mom and my younger sister and my family, and it's been a whirlwind ever since. We didn't know what we kind of needed, so luckily we were connected with Dr. Rebecca Bailey and her program in Sonoma County.

And she was already doing work with horses, so all they said was horses and I was like, yeah, I'd love to go. So we kind of relocated out here with nothing. I mean, we had nothing. They brought my mom up and I guess the journey started there, you know, we didn't really know what we needed, but we needed to reconnect. Like, my kids didn't know their grandma

and, you know, I hadn't seen my mom in so many years and so much had happened that, you know, we really needed time to reconnect and a nice safe place to do that, and luckily we found that. Now, this might sound simple, but the team behind making this happen was pretty big. I mean, we're talking Concord Police, the FBI,

the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And I mentioned that only because I think it's important for people out there to know that there are resources available after trauma. They can just be difficult to find sometimes. And just because no one is sweeping you away to a horse ranch doesn't mean the horse ranch isn't there. You can push agencies to ask for this stuff.

But even then, it's not always simple and buttoned up. I mean, a lot of red tape, right? Like, when the authorities brought JC and her family to Sonoma, they're there, that's great, this place exists, but there was no actual plan for where she was supposed to stay when they got there on a holiday weekend. Thank God for Dr. Bailey. I had no idea who she was or what she was

because I didn't have TV at the time. And I've always been very interested in abduction, but like, I had no idea until like four days later when, to be honest, my daughter said, do you realize who, because my facility is at my home, did you understand who these people are? And I was like, oh, but they came streaming down with no less because we're really spilling the beans, aren't we?

With no less than six SUVs into this small neighborhood. And when they had called, they wanted a place for her to stay. And I said, oh yeah, absolutely. Not realizing it was Memorial Day. Labor Day weekend. Labor Day weekend. And so you can't find anything where we are. So most of the work with JC was resolved by calling neighbors

to call neighbors to ask another neighbor to find the place where the FBI is like, they were good, but we got to get paperwork to go here and this and blah, blah, blah. And I'd be like calling the lady down the street saying, hey, does anybody have a house for this family? So, but when they came into the small neighborhood, seriously, six SUVs with tinted windows. It was quite excessive.

When JC and her family got settled, it wasn't all peace and quiet. They were being hounded by the media. One reporter, and I want to use air quotes because what they did is so shady, I don't want to call them a reporter, but they pretended to be FBI just to get close to JC. I mean, this is like super fucked up stuff.

But even amongst the craziness, Dr. Bailey and JC went to work, but JC wasn't interested in the traditional talk therapy. So Dr. Bailey took a unique approach. It isn't a one size fits all. And there are so many different ways to heal yourself. And for me, the talk therapy one on one, sitting in a little room, you know, just wasn't working for me.

I needed something more. So we would go on hikes side by side and I would talk and she would listen and she would talk to and, you know, it was, it was more like a healing process, you know, like it wasn't a conscious thing, but I knew something was moving forward in my life, you know, instead of just sitting there and then combined with the cooking from her husband, Charles,

like those really tense moments were, where you don't know what to say in a, you know, tense intubation, like you can eat food and then all of a sudden you're talking about food. Same thing with animals. And like when you're with an animal and a horse, you know, they're, they're really big animals. Like you have something to talk about,

but they bring so much more to it as well, you know. As JC began her healing journey, one thing she really took issue with was how the media kept perpetuating this idea that she had Stockholm syndrome. I felt more of what my family was going to think, you know, but what my mom and my aunt, you know, what I didn't want them thinking that I was in love with these people

that kidnapped me and did all these things to me. I wanted them to think that that didn't happen, that, you know, that I wasn't thinking that they were a part of me or anything like that. Like I wanted them to know that I was strong and that I was, you know, myself, you know, and not brainwashed or something like that. Well, what you had to do to survive, JC,

I mean, it's so simple that it's hard. People do what they have to do to survive. And, you know, it isn't often pretty what people have to do to survive. And it's really sad that we pathologize it and sort of look at it from a perspective that it's like changes the responsibility, right? She couldn't leave because she was scared to death

and she had two children. And, you know, there wasn't an option. And people say like, even people in my field are like, well, it was never really a diagnosis. Well, it actually is all over the news, all over the press. It's been used to defend many different situations. It's been used to protect perpetrators as well.

And we have to like, you know, we really just have to say, wait a second, what's the reality survival is? But we have to complicate things all the time as humans. That's why I like animals better. I asked JC and Dr. Bailey if they thought Stockholm syndrome was rooted from like the same place as victim blaming. I can't imagine either, but it happens. Think of the big question they always asked you.

Why didn't I, why didn't I run? Why didn't you leave? Why didn't I leave? Yeah, like you had opportunities. Yeah, but it didn't feel like the opportunity would get me anywhere. Or, you know, there was always a what F and I couldn't save myself. I have to admit I couldn't save myself. I needed, I needed help.

But I think we're just all scared of the things that can happen in this, in this world. So it's easier to blame other people. It's easier to say, oh, that can never happen to me. I'll never be in that situation. And then when you're in that situation, then you're like, oh, now I feel shame because I said that I'd never be in this situation. So I think it's just a never ending circle sometimes.

And you have to, you have to get out of it. You have to take that left turn or that right turn and, and, you know, take responsibility. But at the same time, you know, know that people are scared, you know, and it's understandable. They're scared. They are scared. And when we get scared, we get paralyzed. But we also are in too, in huge denial.

Yeah. And my big tagline, I get to say it the other day was, me too, now what? You know, we got to do something with the me too movement, which is not just about older men and young girls. It's about in every town, every community, there's child abuse and sexual assaults and, you know, victimization of people that are perceived as weaker, weaker than or are. And we just keep denying it.

And it's not like I'm running around. I see goodness every day. I stop and smell the roses three or four times a day. I'm happy to be alive. I love this world. And, you know, I think we have such potential for good. If we can just go to our compassion and tell the truth. And so it is victim blaming.

It really is. It's, it's, there's a way that the media and the courtrooms drive the narratives that we all spew back out. And we just keep perpetuating without really talking about what the issue is, is that we got it. We got to, we got to put down hard on this. It's, it's ridiculous. There's way too many incredible, incredibly wonderful people out

there that are getting hurt. JC and Dr. Bailey have this bond that I can't fully put into words. One thing JC told me met a lot to her was that Dr. Bailey treated her like she was the expert in what she had gone through, which, hi, when you say it out loud, of course she is. But this was super empowering for her, which led me to wanting to, you know, figure out why I did certain things, how I did certain things, why I even, you know, how I even survived all

those years. And so I really wanted to have, like I didn't want to do therapy anymore. I wanted to like learn about myself and learn, you know, how we can give this to other people. Around this time, JC and Dr. Bailey's relationship changed. And so we changed our, I say we changed our relationship status because I really wanted more of a mentor by the time, you know, I

had finished writing my book, we had done all this therapy. And, you know, there was this label put upon me and like I really wanted to understand. And so we became collaborators in trying to figure that out. Long before JC, Dr. Bailey was studying this stuff and kind of operated under one theory. But after meeting JC, it just didn't fit anymore. I originally was operating from the learned helplessness model

that never made sense. And that was Martin Seligman's model that animals, dogs in particular subjected to adversity would give up and lay down and just not go on anymore. So originally that was the model when I first got really interested when I was a really little girl, a kid in my neighborhood was taken. And for some reason I had a lot of abduction around when I was

really younger. And so I kind of was like trying to understand some of these pieces and trying to understand why these things happen. So learned helplessness is where I was my assumption. And then with JC and I were like, no, that's not what it was. That was not a helpless person. Enter Dr. Stephen Porges. We met this doctor, Dr. Stephen Porges, who has the

polyvagal theory about, you know, how your nervous system, you need to feel safe. And we talked about how I survived. Like I used to think like a predator, but act like prey. And so we came up with this term appeasement that really resonated with me and it's resonated with a couple of other survivors like Elizabeth Smart and Cara Chamberlain, like that how we survived our predators, you know, and our, we learned to not

consciously but calm our nervous system and their nervous system at the same time. And it's kind of like a superpower. It is a total superpower. Okay, so polyvagal theory. I'm telling you, this is where crime junkie turns into a college course, but this is like the cool fun course that you took as an adult with your own money.

So you like totally respect learning. You didn't like show up hungover on mom and dad's dime. So you are going to like this. Just like hang with me. Trust me. I am going to give you like the most simplistic like version of what polyvagal theory is. And this is like, I've tried to distill this a thousand ways.

So hang with me. Dr. Stephen Porges's polyvagal theory introduced the notion that the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for things like your fight flight or freeze response also included a component responsible for social engagement as our nervous system adapted and changed over millions of years. Basically, there became three distinct pathways of something called the Vegas nerve.

That's where the term polyvagal came from. This nerve is important to how we operate in the world, both physically and emotionally. Like it plays a role in things like digestion and breathing and other important things. So the first of those three distinct pathways is your fight or flight response. And I think we're probably all familiar with that feeling when

we sense danger or when we're challenged. The second pathway is also a response to danger, but instead of fighting or running away, there are situations where we can't and that results in the total shutdown that comes when we are really scared. When we're frightened or sense danger, it's hard to think clearly or even remember things correctly or even remember things at all.

And then there is this third when we feel safe and connected to each other. That's when we get this really calming and in control feeling. Now these three responses have a really strong impact, not just on us, but also on the other people around us. Like take the one where you feel calm and socially connected. My animal people, you're going to get this. There is this feeling I get when I touch my forehead, two

chucks forehead that I can feel like fully deep in me. And I know he does too. Even he gets calm. I can feel that even when he's just near me, we don't need to be touching that powerful calming effect that animals can have on us. That is it. That's that's what I'm talking about.

So the idea is that people can have this social calm over one another and people like JC can appease their captors and keep their captors calm so that they can survive. It is a freaking gift, not some kind of brainwashing or some freaky love thing, which brings me to another term that Dr. Bailey and JC want to be done with, fawning. Because fawning is really from a perpetrator's perspective, which is, you know, I don't know.

Fawning, you're flirting, you're actively and you're, you know, you're thinking it out where appeasement is a more unconscious process. It's something that I was doing to survive all those years and I didn't even know it. I knew I was never in love with my captor, but there was certain things that I would have to say in order to not get hurt that day, you know, or even to stay alive.

I mean, I never allowed myself to think that he would kill me, but looking back now, yeah, totally possible. But at the time I never let myself go there. And I think that was a defensive mechanism as well. Because then you wonder like, what, where, how, it's just, it's just sad. And we have to change that narrative and we have to change the language.

That's why we're so offended by the term fawning. It's just like, it just, it's like, it's an icky term. It's like a little defensive font, you know, and I love fonts, but it's like, these, these people that we've met, you know, that it's yourself are not defenseless little people. They're amazing survivor of victors and there's a lot in all shapes and colors. And it is, it is truly long before people have been talking

about it. It's, it's really troublesome. The, the, the poster children are the ones, no offense, JC, but are, are, have that same tone and all that. It's just, we got to change it. So that's what I'm hoping you'll help me do crime junkies. I say it all the time. Language is so important.

The words that we use matter. So I know this has felt very educational, but that's because I want it to be. I don't want to just tell you to stop using these words. Let's pick new ones. And here is why, because if you really understand what's happening, you can use the language that really reflects what's going on and really honors survivors for their

bravery and courage. So now that we all understand, we can actually spread the word and treat survivors better. But Dr. Bailey and JC are going way beyond that. Now that they felt like they had found the answers, they wanted to give that gift of healing to others. And it's not just the understanding of the situation. It's that place too.

Finding a healing place is so critical after trauma, but honestly, so rare. Not all survivors have what JC had. And they just saying like survivors don't always have that opportunity. They don't always go into or come out of the situation and have the opportunity. And they don't, and they go into more trauma and more

shut down. Or they're treated like victims. Like that was something that I really resonated with too, is that she didn't treat me like I was a victim or that I would never get better. It was always with the premise of I will be okay. You will be okay. You can do things.

And yeah, the worst is over. And I think a lot of, you know, therapists forget that the trauma doesn't have to go on and on and on. Like you, you can be encouraging. If you could just get people to feel for a minute. Stay if I've been blantering on and on about a kid I met the other day who my cat in the office basically brought this kid back so much that there was no words said for a while.

The cat sat with this kid for 25 minutes and then the cat, the cat, not the cat. The kid said, I am a good person. And this is a kid who hadn't talked to any therapists. And you know, yes, I was there holding testimony to his pain. But what really helped was the cat, the freaking cat got him back in his body. You know, and that speaks to what you're saying, right?

Like it's not, it's not intellectual. It's no words. There is something in us. There is something. And it's not even necessarily human. Like, right? It's not realistic. It's what we were involved to have because a cat could give

him what he needed. That's, I think that's really special. It's so special. And if we, we just have to see that it's like when you're been through extreme trauma, you get stuck in your turtle shell and you just don't want to come out. And you know, in the words of a friend of mine, you can shake that shell all you want, but the turtle can't come out yet.

Unless they can see, they can sense it. There's some little thread of something out there that's going to help them feel safe. And a lot of the turtles have come out and been slapped back in again. So. Or made to feel like, you know, there's no hope for them. Like they're always going to feel like this.

So together, Dr. Bailey and JC created the Jace Foundation to support victims of extreme trauma. It's a place for them to heal and to find hope. And the foundation has a number of amazing programs, even for law enforcement training as well to help them spot bad situations and people in crisis. Well, um, I just loved the, the kind of thing that we were getting, you know, with the, with the horses, with the cooking

and the, the environment and, you know, and talking and learning more about what was going on around me. Like it, that's not the norm for everybody that, that comes out of extreme trauma. And so I really wanted to give back and, and have other families be able to experience that kind of, you know, it wouldn't look the same for everybody, but I knew at least we could provide the environment and therapy that, you know, maybe they wouldn't

be able to get. And so the Jace Foundation was born and really wanted to create programs too, to help with law enforcement because a lot of mistakes were made in my case. There was a lot of missed opportunities. I mean, Phillip was on parole for many years and then he was picked up. He was led off of a federal parole and California parole picked

him up. So he was being seen by a parole officer that would come to the, to the house every week or so. And just so many things were, were missed. And it wasn't that I wanted the, you know, them to feel blamed, but I want, I feel like we, we had accumulated so much knowledge and that it could be used for good, you know, that we created a program within the foundation called the Leo, Leo law

enforcement officer program. And so we would invite officers to the, well, we didn't really have a place, but we would do it like in Kansas city at the Mounted Patrol barn and we have a place in Alabama at the red barn where, where some police officers and parole officers and who else do we have? We had like. That woman that had to see 90 sex offenders in.

Yeah. Like dispatchers and people come out maybe like 13 or 10 or 13 at a time and we created a horse, a horse exercises to kind of remember why they're doing the job in the first place because it burnt out. So they, they, you know, I would talk about them about, about some of the things that were missed and in my case, and then we would do these horse exercises.

Like one of them was called the case and we would create like little cards and they would have to like saddle the horse in such a way, but like work together with no talking because, you know, you can't always communicate with the other departments and stuff like that. So, and then then we would ask them, well, would you put me up on the horse? Do you feel like, you know, this horse is saddled enough?

And some of them would say yes, some of them would say no. And then they would ask for help, which is not common, you know, and they don't always ask for help. And so it was a, it was a really great way to give back. And we learned a lot too from, from them. We learned that, that animal control officers can go into outbuildings where, you know, regular parole officers can't always go.

We had a lot of fun doing that. The biggest take home was JC and her mother and that she was okay. And so these burnt out law enforcement who got so sick of seeing the really, and certainly law enforcement has a lot of room for improvement. But these guys were like the street cops and stuff. And just meeting JC and her mother sometimes was like, oh my

gosh, you can get through it. There was one case we went back to Kansas City a year later and did a second. And this, one of the cops raised his hand and said, you know, I want to tell you a story. This is my second year here. And, you know, he said, we went into a house a couple months ago and because somebody called it in, we knocked.

Somebody came. There was nobody there. We got back in the car. And this cop said, I literally saw JC and her mother on my shoulder say, go back in. They went back in and they knocked on the door and shouted, is anyone here, the person over there, anybody here and they heard this little voice saying, I'm here.

And there was a nine year old, like 37, 38 pound kid in the closet. So, you know, here we are with all our fancy papers and we're doing all this stuff about, you know, action. And really what it was was the vision of these two. So when people gave criticism about true crime stories and stuff, you know, the faces of the missing and deceased children and adults are really important.

But so are the faces and the voice of the survivors because that's what keeps people going. So it was so beautiful. We did a lot of that. And then the Polyvagal Equine Institute, we figured out that we couldn't keep doing it all. We had to teach other people how to do it. Yeah. So the foundation is still running, but Rebecca's seeing more

local clients now. And we are more focused on the Polyvagal Equine Institute, which is training the trainers, training the first responders and how to go in and, you know, and therapists and therapists on how to, you know, work with this population. And how to train, retrain your nervous system. We even have things for true crime junkies to like learn to reset your nervous system.

We have a friend of ours in Canada that has a whole self-care webinar she does on our website to just teach people how to honor your nervous system a little bit and how to like really like just slow down and take care of each other and how to make a room for that ventral vagal connection, the compassion, because we lose that ability. And I do worry about people, your listeners and law enforcement, everybody that exposed to too much.

Like there's nothing like a good like crappy TV show every once in a while. Like I don't ever do this, but Jay might listen to shows like Dynasty or something like that once in a while. There's a little drama in it, but also is to feel kids stupidity, you know, because we've got, we've got it. We've got to make sure we balance all this crap. It's like eating fast food all the time.

It's like, okay, but everyone's got to make sure you get some vegetables in there. You know, we're in trouble. I literally feel like you're just telling me I'm going to die soon because like I get no breaks and I eat a lot of Taco Bell. We got to work on that. We got to work on that. When I left the office, which was about 7pm that night,

probably to go pick up more Taco Bell. I had one more question for Dr. Bailey and JC. You guys laugh a lot for talking about such dark things. Can you talk about that? How, how you have leaned on humor? I think, I mean, I think it was one of the first things that, that made me want to connect with her because I mean, I didn't know her in the beginning.

I didn't know how she would take my story or whatever, you know, or if I even wanted to share it. But there was a funny moment when she had walked in and was introducing herself to us. And, and it was just, it was a funny moment and I, I laughed and we all laughed. And from that moment on, I just felt like, like I could say anything I wanted.

And so, you know, tried out a few things and then she would say a few things and I realized that we had the same kind of like dark humor. I mean, I think it's what got me through a lot of the days was laughing about it to myself, you know, for so long and now having somebody to laugh about it with, you know, and it was stuff that I couldn't really tell my mom or my family.

Like I didn't, it wasn't stuff that I could share like that, but it was something that I really needed. And I think humor and laughter, I mean, there's so many moments in life that just feel like you just can't go on. And if you don't laugh about it, like, I think. It has to be authentic. Yeah, it has to be authentic.

And it's really tricky. And it's something we talk about a whole lot is how do you teach therapists? How do you use humor? Because so many therapists are afraid of it and understand it because there's nothing funny about extreme trauma. But the absurdity of humans can sometimes be like, what?

Like either cry or you've got to laugh about it a little bit because it's just, sometimes it just defies understanding the strange things out there. It just does. When you're in the middle of it and you're being held captive by these people, you may not be all that funny, although JC was able to find humor in some of the absurdity because it was so ridiculous.

Yeah. But I do. So it wasn't just afterwards, JC? Even in the moment, you could. I've always had a bad sense of humor. But to myself, I mean, my kids knew about it, but I didn't share it with Philip and Nancy. That's for sure.

Because it would have been dangerous. Right. It would have been. I find so many kids and adults who really do have that in there. I mean, I always, I used to say it's not heart surgery, what I do. Well, the truth is anyone can make anybody from trauma cry. It's a lot harder to be able to help them get to a place where

they can let go of some of the stress and just have a moment of oxytocin in their body and a moment to lighten up. But you do have to be very, very careful. And I don't want to sound dismissive of people that have been through extreme things, but even just that little, that's what horses do. Horses will, I'm going to say, horses will fart at a very funny moment where there's like deep processing and a horse will go

blue. And you're like, oh, and you can't help. Like that's the thing that's just organic, right? In more ways than once. We're organic. Right. But that's that thing. And then in that moment, that body feels something different.

And then they learn that it's safe to feel that. Your autonomic nervous system goes, oh, I remember this feeling. If J.C. Dugard can heal and go on to live the life that she's always wanted to live after extreme trauma, there is so much hope for others. And the polyvagal theory that we talked about is just that. It's a theory.

At one point, Dr. Bailey told me, you know, maybe this is all woo-woo. Maybe it's magic, but I can get down with some woo-woo that's doing this much good for people. I loved bringing you this episode. I hope you learned something today. And if you want to dive even deeper in talking about the polyvagal theory, I'm actually going to post the raw audio of

my 90-minute call with J.C. and Dr. Bailey in the fan club. And if all of you out there want to support their work in helping other survivors of extreme trauma, check out the Jace Foundation. We link to it right in our show notes. And we loved it so much that we here at Audio Chuck also made

a gift to the organization to sponsor their amazing work and to help others. For a full list of our source material and resources to get J.C.'s book or look at the foundation, you can find all of that on our blog post at crimejunkiepodcast.com. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. I'm going to be back next week with a brand new episode, but stick around a minute because I have some special shout outs.

As many of you already know, we are celebrating crime junkies five-year anniversary this month. And the thing is we truly could not have gotten here without you all. So as a little thank you, we've been pulling together names of fans who want shout outs. I would be here for quite literally years if I was reading everyone, but we're picking a few random names this month.

For every episode at the end, we're going to shout you out. So make sure you stick around all the way to the end to see if we say your name. And today I want to say a big hi and thank you to Becca from Lebanon, Indiana, who says that she's been listening since I was on radio now in me. That is a long time ago. Dawn from Venice, Florida.

I heard you started listening just to humor your daughters, but now you are a full-fledged crime junkie listening every week supporting with merch. I love it. I also want to say hi to Pauline and Sarah from Liverpool, UK. I don't know if you know this. My husband is a die-hard Liverpool fan. So like a lot of people here at the audio check office were

rooting on someday we're going to make it to a game. Maybe I'll see you there. And a special hi to Alicia from Indianapolis, who is one of our OG crime junkies who even came to our New Year's Eve party. I don't even know if most of you know about this, but like the first after the first full year of crime junkie, I threw a New Year's Eve party. It was also my one year wedding anniversary on that day.

My husband was a champ. We had people in this brewery. I wore a sequin jumpsuit. It was like the most fun I've ever had. We all drank to like forever in the morning. It was wonderful. And last but not least, I want to say hi and a quick thank you to Mary all the way out in Sweden.

So thank you guys so much for supporting crime junkie over the past five years. I've actually got a lot in store for you this month. So make sure you stick around. Crime junkie is an audio Chuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve? No.