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strap your head down . . . until we get out of town.”
    He then pulled a leather strap out of his long hair, placing it around her neck and under her knees, forcing her face down below the dashboard to conceal her from view. Then he threw a coat over her head and drove off.
    Petrified, Katie asked where he was taking her.
    “Somewhere far away,” he replied calmly. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it all planned.”
    Phillip Garrido adjusted the driver’s seat and mirrors before heading north on Ski Run Boulevard. So far everything was going to plan, and he would have her inside his Reno warehouse in a couple of hours.
    Trembling beneath the coat on the passenger-side floor, Katie Callaway could smell the beer batter which had splashed onto her pants in the struggle. She knew her boyfriend was expecting her soon and would worry if she was late.
    She then asked her abductor when he was bringing her back, and whether it would be very long.
    “Maybe I will bring you back tomorrow,” came Garrido’s cold reply.
    Now Katie became really scared, thinking he was going to kill her. But her survival instincts kicked in and she told him to stop the car, so they could have sex in the bushes there and then.
    “I told him I would do anything he wanted,” she later testified, “if he would not hurt me. I figured we were going off on some dark road, and I just wanted to get it over with. And I said, ‘Why can’t we stay right here?’ ”
    Garrido told her that that was not what he wanted and she should not argue, as he had everything planned.
    “You might as well understand that you’re going to be with me,” he told her, as they drove on into the night.
    A few minutes later he broke the silence, saying he’d gone to South Lake Tahoe to abduct a girl. He said they should wait until they reached a shed he had rented in the desert. Then if she did everything to please him sexually, he promised not to hurt her unless he had to.
    “He kept saying he wasn’t going to hurt me,” recalled Katie. “He said he would not kill me, he would only go to the extent of knocking me out if I tried to scream.”
    Garrido then boasted of abducting two other girls recently, saying that he had not hurt either of them.
    “I realized that he had plans of taking me to somewhere he had all fixed up that was far away,” she said, “and I wasn’t coming back. I had to cope with the situation.”
    Then Katie pointed out her car was almost out of gas, and he wasn’t going to get very far. Garrido told her not to worry, as he knew a self-service gas station nearby, where he was going to stop for gas because it did not have an attendant.
    “I automatically thought about gas stations around the area,” she said, “that are self-service and would be open that late at night. I tried to be aware . . . even though I couldn’t see.”
    When Garrido asked if she was expected anywhere, Katie said her boyfriend was waiting for her to come over with the dinner.
    “That is where I was going,” she told him.
    “Is anyone going to miss you tomorrow?” he asked.
    “Well,” she said. “I have to get my son off for school at seven in the morning and I have to be at work at nine.”
    “If you’re real good,” he told her, “I will try and have you back by dawn.”

    A little while later, Katie, who was still lying handcuffed under the coat on the passenger floor, realized that they were now driving through Stateline into Nevada. She recognized the three stoplights in quick succession, and the noise of the casinos. Soon afterward, he pulled off the road and took the coat off her. Then he announced he had to tape her mouth and blindfold her, to stop her crying out for help at the gas station.
    Katie begged him not to blindfold her, explaining she wore contact lenses, and could not stand tape being placed over her face and eyes. Garrido told her to take her contacts out first, but Katie said she was unable to unless he unlocked her handcuffs. He