There was high excitement in the press bleachers at Placerville Court in California yesterday, when Phillip Garrido was informed that Jaycee Lee Dugard will give evidence when he’s tried for abducting, raping and holding her hostage for 18 years.
 

Quite aside from the potential courtroom drama it heralded, Dugard’s decision to appear on the witness stand meant the world will finally get to see the face of the woman it knows only from the “missing” posters circulated after her abduction in 1991.

Sadly, for the assembled press pack, at least, that particular “exculsive” now seems to have been scotched. America’s National Enquirer magazine today published what it claims is a recent picture of Jaycee Lee. You can see it above.

It is purportedly taken from the business card of Printing For Less, the firm Garrido ran from his home in Antioch. The magazine was given it by local barber Wayne Thompson, who met Dugard when he brought his own business cards from the firm.

The million dollar question, or course, concerns whether the picture is real. The Enquirer has in the past had an iffy reputation for accuracy, though I have come to admire its string of recent scoops about – among other things – the love life of one-time Presidential candidate John Edwards.

Dominick Dunne, the recently-deceased Vanity Fair scribe whose opinions I value, once dubbed the Enquirer: “remarkably accurate in its sensational revelations.” Either way, the blue-eyed, blonde girl in its picture looks spookily similar to the child who went missing all those years ago.