Police expand Jaycee kidnap search

Police in Antioch, California, also used sniffer dogs to search an adjoining property where neighbours say one of the suspects once served as a caretaker.

Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the local sheriff's department, refused to elaborate on what kind of evidence investigators were looking for or the nature of the possible crimes involving the second property.

The link to the kidnapping case is that Phillip Garrido, the man charged with holding Dugard in captivity for 18 years, had access to the neighbouring land when the house that sits on it was vacant three years ago.

"It looks like Garrido lived on the property in a shed," Mr Lee said.

Damon Robinson, who moved into the vacant house in 2006, and another neighbour say Phillip Garrido served as caretaker before Mr Robinson took occupancy. That same year Mr Robinson's then-girlfriend called police after she saw tents and children in next door's back garden - not realising they were the kidnapped Dugard and her daughters.

A third neighbour, Janice Deitrich, 66, said that Phillip Garrido visited and helped to feed an elderly neighbour who lived in the house before Mr Robinson.

Police in Pittsburg, a city near where the Garridos lived, have said they are investigating whether Phillip Garrido may be linked to several unsolved murders of prostitutes in the 1990s. Antioch police are also looking into unsolved cases but declined to give further details.

Investigators also continued clearing brush from the scruffy back garden compound of tents and sheds where Garrido and his wife, Nancy, allegedly took Dugard after abducting her from her family's street 170 miles away in South Lake Tahoe.

Neighbours called Garrido "Crazy Phil," partly because he ranted about hearing voices from God, and some knew that he was a registered sex offender. But they assumed parole authorities were keeping a close watch on him.