The two California police officers who intercepted convicted sex offender Philip Garrido as he handed out religious leaflets at the University of California last Tuesday have spoken for the first time of the sequence of events.

Officer Lisa Campbell told how he came to her office at the Berkeley campus, UCLA, with his daughters to get a permit for an event he said would change the world. But she said: "In the meantime I'm just watching his body action and movements and they're just not matching the girls. They sort of stood outside, very non-descript, non-emotional, non-reactionary."

Her colleague Alison Jacobs continued: "I ran the name check. He comes back on federal parole for rape and kidnap and he's a registered sex offender. My police officer instincts changed. These are two young girls with a registered sex offender, convicted for rape.

"Mommy mode, protective mode kicks in. What are they doing with this man? Yes, he says he's their dad. Yes, they have his bright blue eyes. There's just something off about these two young girls. They're just zombie-esque in their behaviour. The one who's sitting across from me, the youngest one, is just staring at me with those intense blue eyes, smiling.

"We had a sick feeling about these girls. We just felt we needed to do something but we didn't know what at that point. Something was just tugging at our heart and we had to do something."

Jacobs told how she called Garrido's parole officer and gave him a rundown of what had happened. "I said he brought his two daughters in. He says, 'Wait a minute he doesn't have any daughters.' And my heart just sank down in my stomach. I said, 'They were calling him dad and he introduced them as his daughters. They all have the same blue eyes. I have no reason to believe they weren't.'"

Jacobs said she received a call from the parole officer later on Wednesday on her way home from work and he explained that Garrido had come to an interview with him bringing his daughters and Jaycee Lee Dugard, his kidnap victim. "To be called a hero for what I perceive as me doing my job, which is I follow my gut, my instincts. It's what my department trains us to do and that's what we do here," said Jacobs.

Meanwhile, a business client of Garrido told how she had known him for about 10 years, but had only recently met his two daughters who she named as Starlite and Angel. Cheyvonne Molino said the younger child had appeared happy but the 15-year-old Starlite seemed overly dependent on her father at a birthday party they attended earlier this month.

A neighbour in Antioch, Diane Doty, said she met Garrido on the street recently and was even more disturbed than usual by his demeanor. "He said he hadn't seen me in a while and he said, 'You'll see me on the news soon.'"

It is believed Starlite and Angel referred to Jaycee as their older sister Allissa and that she worked in Garrido's printing business and was talented at art. She sometimes dealt with clients but never revealed her real identity.

Garrido's neighbour on Walnut Avenue, Antioch, California, spoke yesterday of how his girlfriend's suspicions were raised three years ago. Damon Robinson said she looked over the fence between their homes and saw children and, knowing Garrido was a sex offender, she became concerned and called the police.

Although a police officer called to the house, he found nothing suspicious. Contra Costa county sherriff Warren Ruff admitted this weekend that the police had missed an opportunity to rescue Jaycee and her children. "No excuses, we failed," he said.

Scott Kernan of the California Department of Corrections said there would be an inquiry into why Garrido was not investigated more thoroughly over the years or how home visits had not unearthed any suspicions. "There was a false fence that looked like the property ended," he said.

Media frenzy

On Friday, Garrido (58) and his wife Nancy (54) appeared in court near San Francisco accused of the kidnapping, rape and appalling abuse of Jaycee Lee Dugard, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed schoolgirl of 11 who was abducted at a bus stop on her way to school one morning in June 1991. They pleaded not guilty to 28 felony counts.

The kidnapping, in broad daylight just half a mile from Dugard's front door, shocked America, prompting a nationwide manhunt and sparking frenzied media attention similar to that surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

News that America's most famous missing-child case had been solved, after almost two decades, sparked widespread relief. Dugard was last night said to be "overjoyed" at being reunited with her mother, Terry, at a secret location in northern California. But there was also anger that the case had not been solved sooner. Local police issued an apology after it emerged that they had received a 911 call in 2006, alleging that there were tents in the yard behind the bungalow, that children were living there and that Garrido was a "psychotic" with sexual addictions.

Although an officer talked to Garrido in his front yard, he did not try to enter the home. "We missed an opportunity," said Ruff. "This was not acceptable. We are beating up ourselves over this."

Parole officers also searched the property last July, as part of a sex offender "compliance check", but they neglected to look properly at the outdoor area, with its bizarre assortment of tarpaulins, trampolines and camping paraphernalia.

It also emerged on Friday night that police were searching Garrido's property for evidence in the murders of several prostitutes. Several of the murdered women's bodies were dumped near an industrial park where Garrido worked during the 1990s.

Details of how the ordeal has affected Jaycee Lee Dugard also emerged. Her stepfather, Carl Probyn, gave a TV interview saying the now 29-year-old woman still "looks almost like when she was kidnapped" but "is feeling really guilty at having bonded with the guy" who abducted her.

In this and several other unpleasant respects, the case echoes that of both Josef Fritzl, the Austrian electrician who kept his daughter in a cellar and Wolfgang Priklopil, who held teenager Natascha Kampusch hostage at his home in Vienna for eight years.

Garrido was simultaneously a lifelong sex offender, with a string of appalling convictions, and a religious fanatic who believed he could speak directly to God. He recently founded a church at his home, and was publishing a blog detailing his apocalyptic beliefs. In a bizarre interview with a local television station following his arrest, he attempted to portray himself as a reformed man, admitting having done "a disgusting thing" to Dugard, but promising that the world would be surprised by details of his "heart-warming" personal story.

Powerful story

"What's kept me busy, the last several years, is that I've completely turned my life around," he told a TV station from his cell at El Dorado county jail. "You're going to hear the most powerful story. You're going to fall over backwards... You'll be hearing something that needs to be understood."

In a rambling chat, apparently recorded during the one telephone call he was allowed after being taken into custody, Garrido refused to discuss details of how he kidnapped his victim, or explain why he'd forced her to spend adolescence in isolation.

Instead, he made a pitch for forgiveness. "My life has been straightened out," he claimed. "Wait till you hear the story of what took place at this house. It's a disgusting thing that took place in the beginning. But I turned my life completely around."

According to Garrido, he stopped abusing children after Dugard's second daughter was born 11 years ago. "Mine's a constructive story about having those two girls in my arms every single night from birth," he said. "I never touched them. The youngest one was born, and from that moment on everything turned around."

That claim yesterday seemed at odds with the facts surrounding his past. He has a string of previous convictions dating back to 1971, when he was sent to prison for 10 years for kidnapping a woman and raping her in a pornography-filled warehouse in Reno, Nevada.

Garrido had most recently served time in Nevada, after being found guilty of another sexual offence in 1999. The existence of this custodial sentence suggests Nancy Garrido was almost certainly heavily involved in holding the girls hostage.

Garrido, who reportedly met her husband when he was in prison during the 1970s, was described by her relatives as a "robot" who was under his emotional control.

"She would do anything he asked her to," recalled Ron Garrido, Phillip's estranged brother, who lives in Los Angeles. "I told my wife: 'It's no different from Manson and those girls.' She was under his control."

Neighbours on Walnut Street, part of a scruffy residential area on the outskirts of Antioch, say they knew of Garrido's past, and often wondered about his domestic arrangements, but were prevented from seeing onto the property by tall fences, trees and walls.

Lately, locals noticed small groups of up to six followers turning up at the house for church ceremonies, where they were greeted by Nancy Garrido. They apparently held "religious revivals" underneath a blue tarpaulin in the garden.

An indication of the tone of those events, not to mention its organiser's state of mind, can be gained from reading Garrido's blog, Voices Revealed, which contains several endorsements from followers.

"The Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wake-up call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world," reads a recent entry.

Garrido's brother Ron yesterday added that he was a "fruitcake" who had begun abusing women and children after taking a large quantity of LSD during the 1960s, when he was working as a musician.

"My thoughts are with the poor little girl," he said.

Failure Of Safeguards: Megan's Law

If neighbours were indeed "shocked" to discover the full extent of Phillip Garrido's grisly crimes, they can hardly claim not to have been warned.

The convicted rapist and child sex offender residing at 1554 Walnut Street had a string of convictions dating back to a 1971 kidnapping and rape incident in Reno, Nevada.

As a result, like all sex offenders in the US, he was required to register his whereabouts with the authorities, who then publish the name, address and a list of previous convictions, and a photograph, on a public website.

The policy is known as Megan's Law, after a seven-year-old girl whose murder, at the hands of a convicted paedophile in 1994, led to it being passed. It has been highly controversial and some experts question its effectiveness. The fact that it failed to prevent this latest episode will add grist to their mill.

But with politicians anxious to appear tough on crime, Megan's Law is unlikely to be rescinded. Across the US, concerned parents obsessively track local paedophiles. You can even buy an iPhone application, which beeps when you are within sight of a sex offender's home.