Bone found next to Garrido home likely human: police

A bone fragment found in the backyard of a California home where kidnapping suspect Phillip Garrido once stayed is probably human, a sheriff's spokesman said Tuesday.

Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jimmy Lee said that was the assessment of a forensic expert who performed tests on the fragment recovered last week.

Investigators discovered the shard in the yard of the home next to the one where Garrido and his wife, Nancy, allegedly held Jaycee Lee Dugard captive for 18 years.

For a brief time in 2006, Garrido took care of the neighbouring house while it was vacant and sometimes camped in the yard.

Lee said it's not unusual to recover Native American remains in the area. But the sheriff's department has asked the state crime lab to perform DNA tests to determine the bone's age and who it might have belonged to.

Garrido and his wife face 29 counts in connection with the kidnapping, rape and imprisonment of Dugard, who was 11 years old when she was abducted from her home in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., in 1991. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Police say Garrido fathered Dugard's two daughters and kept them in a backyard encampment of tents and sheds in Antioch, Calif.

Since her sudden reappearance, Dugard and her daughters have spent their time getting to know their other family members, including her younger sister, who was a baby when Dugard was kidnapped.