Man said to be biological dad wants to contact Jaycee Dugard

Edited by Naved Khan Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:22 AM

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Kenneth Slayton wants to get a message to Jaycee Dugard, the California woman kidnapped as a child and held captive for 18 years. Slayton would like to get together with Dugard and her two children on Father's Day, but he said he is being blocked from communicating with the 29-year-old he believes is his daughter. When Dugard went missing in 1991, FBI agents investigating the 11-year-old's disappearance knocked on Slayton's door because the truck driver had been identified as her biological father. Slayton said he was shocked by the FBI visit because until then he didn't know about Jaycee was his daughter. The 64-year-old truck driver said he was shocked again last August when he heard a radio report his long-lost daughter had been found alive. "I almost wrecked my truck," Slayton said. But Dugard's return to her family did not include Slayton. He said he is desperately trying to change that. "Since she has been found, I have done everything I could to make contact with Jaycee, but to no avail," Slayton said at a news conference Friday. Doing everything included hiring celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred.
"Sunday is Father's Day," Allred said. "Our client has missed celebrating Father's Day for 29 years. He is thrilled that his daughter has been found alive and that he has two grandchildren he never even knew he had." Several letters from Slayton sent to Dugard through her lawyer were returned unopened, he said. They included photos of his other children who would like to meet their sister, he said. Allred would not speculate on who decided not to open them. "They only thing she knows about me is something that maybe somebody said that maybe didn't like me too well," Slayton said. "That's wrong." A spokeswoman for the Dugard family issued a statement recently which acknowledged Slayton as the father but questioned his motives for wanting into Dugard's life after many years. "I was very upset by the verbal missiles that the spokesperson fired at me when she targeted me," Slayton said. "I guess they're trying to kill my spirit, reputation issuing totally false statements. I mean, these things are over the hill."
"The statement that I had no interest in Jaycee is a completely false statement," he said. "Ever since I learned certainly that I had a daughter I wanted to see her, protect her and love her." He said he never would have abandoned a daughter if he had known she existed. "I'm not a runner." "I would have been there," Slayton said. "I would have been a good loving father, and involved in supporting her and helping in any way that I could." He filed a paternity suit last month. Legally establishing that he is her father would guarantee Slayton a courtroom seat when the couple charged with kidnapping Dugard are tried, Allred said. Phillip Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 54, are charged with 29 felony counts in the kidnapping of Dugard, who was 11 when she was snatched in 1991 from the street in front of her house in South Lake Tahoe, California. "I am also a victim of Phillip Garrido because he kept me separated from my daughter and because he inflicted terrible pain on her," he said.

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