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into predators in an instant. plus, terrorists among us? al qaeda training, bomb making instructions, a team of terrorists that the fbi says were preparing to attack targets here at home. we the latest on -- we have the latest on the alleged terror plot. captions paid for by abc, inc. good evening. investigators today continue to search a property in northern california that until just a few weeks ago was home to phillip and nancy garrido. but police say it was also where they kept a child that they kidnapped almost two decades ago. a child they say who was forced to conceive two children with her captor. if that were not enough, police believe that the property may yield clues to other crimes committed by a man who they say was both disturbed and deviant.

8:30 this morning, forensic investigators are at this sprawling property, 40 miles from san francisco. they have been sifting evidence for four straight weeks. and still, the dust has not been allowed to settle. they believe it may yet give up further secrets of child abductions even murders, unsolved for decades, perpetrated by the occupants. >> we did begin digging today, and we specifically started at the areas of interest. >> but one child abduction appears to have resolved. the garridos are facing kidnap, rape and a false inprisonment of jaycee lee dugard. as the police begin to build their case, new insights are emerging into the mind of a criminal who allegedly kidnapped

jaycee 18 years ago. >> and jaycee is walking up the hill to the bus. >> carl probyn is jaycee's devoted stepfather. you saw the car in this area here? >> it sped up the street, it cut right in front of her. the driver got her. some dust right here, i saw a door fly open real fast. i heard one scream. >> this is 911. >> my daughter was just kidnapped. >> the unthinkable had happened. 11-year-old jaycee brutally abducted by strangers less than a hundred yards from her home. >> she's pretty, young, innocent child. and it's time she comes home. >> police say the man responsible was a registered sex offender. in 1976, phillip garrido was found guilty of kidnaping and rape and sentenced to 50 years in prison he was paroled after

serving just ten. while incarcerated, phillip garrido met nancy while visiting an uncle. the two were married before his release in 1988. authorities say three years later, the garridos drove 200 miles to lake tahoe with only one intention. >> a shark doesn't think twice about attacking food and wondering if this is a good idea or not, you know, and neither do these guys. when you get couples roaming the country involved in this kind of activity usually you get the alpha dog and the other person who's quite dependent. very sick and masochistic. >> in 1995, four years after the abduction, garrido walked into a glass show room and offered his services as a local printer. >> he said he was starting a new printing business locally in town. he was small, low overhead. >> garrido would visit tim allen

about once a month for 15 years. >> he told me he was severely a.d.d. and he was on medication. >> he said it to you? >> just out of the blue. he'd snap his fingers and start blurting out a song that he wrote. he did that on two or three occasions. >> the happy sound of his singing obscured the horrendous circumstances in which police say jaycee was being held. back of the house, in a ramshackle tent, she was kept in the most appalling conditions for almost two decades. >> i'm sure she was depressed and frightened and shocked. but you know, over time with seduction and certain kinds of treatment people adapt. it sounds awful, but they adapt or they die. >> local attorney michael cardoza isn't surprised that a former sex offender lived unimpeded for years. >> this is an area replete with child molesters. it is replete with crime so people tend to stay out of other

people's business. >> but i thought that megan's law was supposed to alert local people to the presence of a child molester. >> but the public has to look at it, the public has to do an investigation into that. apparently it didn't happen here. >> garrido did have a designated parole officer. but nobody knew what was going on inside the property. by 2005, he was so confident he was taking the girls out in public. >> he came into the front door and he said, hey, i want to introduce you to my daughters. these girls were just stunning. their faces were perfect. i couldn't forget the way they looked. that's one thing i do remember. >> little did tim allen know that these beautiful children were likely the result of garrido's horrendous crime. jaycee gave birth to the first when she was just 14. then last year, garrido's behavior became bizarre. he said he was launching a church and carried around a bizarre invention. >> it was a cardboard box and

wrapped with solid paper with maybe some lines in it. and it had an electrical jack in the side, like for an earphone. what i understood him to say is that i listen -- by listening to this, i could hear him thinking. >> like a form of telepathy? >> exactly. he said that his information coming from god would come through the box also. >> what did he hear? >> the ocean. i hear nothing. >> i just got a weird, uneasy feeling. >> the case finally broke when garrido brought his daughters to a meeting with two u.c. berkeley police officers. he wanted to hold a religious event on college grounds but his strange behavior and the presence of the two young girls were enough to prompt the officers to contact garr row doe's -- garrido's parole officer who knew nothing of the children. >> the tents were placed to isolate the victim outside contact. >> jaycee is undergoing intensive counseling.

although physically free, it will take some time before she unravels herself from the psychological captivity of living with the garridos. >> what's sadder, the two kids. their dad is phillip garrido. that's dad. how do you explain to them that their dad is a rapist, a kidnapper. he's done it before. he should have been in prison for 50 years. think how gut wrenching that's going to have to be for those two young girls. >> and authorities will resume their digging tomorrow. when we come back, new insights into why pet chimpanzees can turn deadly in an instant. you've wanted to quit smoking so many times,

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they can be the same size as some professional football players, but their superhuman in strength. as we learned earlier this year,

they can turn violent in an instant. as a pet chimp called travis left one woman blind and with no hands. as congress looks into the issue of pet chimps there's new insight into why they attack as vicki mabry reports. >> oh, those crazy chimps, so cute and friendly and so trainable. in commercials they're so human like they almost could work in your office. or direct the band. ♪ or learn to dance. this is travis, who appeared with actress morgan fairchild in old navy ads. he was the love of owner sandra herold's life until last february when he became infamous for this. >> he's killing my friend! >> who's kill your friend? >> my chimpanzee. >> oh, your chimpanzee is killing your friend? >> yes.

he ripped her face off! he's trying to attack me. please, please, hurry! >> travis almost killed herold's long time friend charla nash in a vicious mauling that lasted nearly 12 minutes. he ripped off her eyelids and bit her fingers. >> oh, my god, he ripped her apart! >> that attack caused "national geographic" to explore the complex relationship between chimps and humans on "chimps on the edge". the documentary retraces the fateful day that things went terribly wrong. when charla nash ended up mauled and a policeman had to shoot and kill travis. >> travis was not a bad chimp. travis was an unfortunate chimp caught in a very tragic situation. >> to april truitt and her husband clay miller, who run the primate rescue center outside lexington, kentucky. that horrible attack could have been prevented. >> he had given every warning

and every clue that he could that this was likely to happen. and his owner unfortunately chose to ignore those warnings. it's unfortunate -- >> april and clay who once kept this monkey gizmo as a pet opened the center because they no longer believe primates should be kept as pets. she says she tried to convince herold to give travis up six years before the attack. >> we offered to help her place anymore in the sanctuary and she refused. >> the chimps live in specially reinforced cages and this bulletproof glass is like something you'd find at a zoo. you would not go in there? >> absolutely. would not. >> no. absolutely not? >> with the chimp in it? >> not with one. >> no with any? >> come here, yay. >> april estimates there are between 235 and 250 chimps kept as pets in this country.

>> you don't like the crust? >> two of those highlighted in the "national geographic" special are charlie and kiko. and their owner, carmen prestie. >> i fell in love with the chimps like i did with my wife. when i got charlie i used to bring him to the dojo and i taught this chimp how to throw a left punch and a right punch. hit it hard! next thing i know he was doing combination kicks. kick it! >> that was 13 years ago. carmen retired charlie at age 10. by then, he was too strong to take out of his cage. >> at the age of like 3, they have the strength of a full grown adult and maybe the mind of like a 3-year-old child. >> a full grown chimp weighs about 200 pounds and is seven times stronger than a human. >> you being a good boy? >> still, carmen prestie vows to never send charlie and kiko to a

sanctuary. >> i had this conversation with carmen prestie about those two chimps, charlie and kiko, many years ago. and urged him to consider putting them in a social situation where they could be in the company of other chimps. he chose not to do so. i imagine that we'll be hearing more about that in the future. >> when you know what chimps are like in nature you'll understand what they're capable of. chimps on the edge features harvard anthropologist richard wrangham who studied chimpanzees in the wild for decades. he says that like humans at war, male chimps violently assert dominance through lethal raiding. >> many of the attacks happen without anybody seeing them. the body is stretched out and legs akimbo so the victim is being held out almost like a crucifixion. >> april and clay know that no matter how close you are to

chimps, their violent tendencies like just below the surface. >> we hear time and time again the same refrain from former owners. if only i had known, i'd never ever would have done this. >> this is vicki mabry for "nightline" in nicholasville, kentucky. >> and explorer's "chimps on the edge" is tomorrow night on the "national geographic" channel. when we come back, the sinister new details of an alleged home grown terror plot as the suspects appear in court. you've wanted to quit smoking so many times, but those days came and went, and the cigarettes remained. but today's a new day. and a few simple steps

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many residents here in new york are uncomfortably familiar with terrorism, having lived through the dark moments of 9-11. and authorities now say this city may have been in the crosshairs of another deadly plot. our chief investigative correspondent brian ross has the details. brian? >> martin, tonight law enforcement agents are watching a number of people they suspect might have been part of the alleged terror cell and seeking to find others. in what may have been the most serious plot against this country since the 9-11 attacks, authorities say they're still not sure they have everyone identified or neutralized. the case began more than a year ago. in the pakistani city of peshawar, a known al qaeda operations point. in august 2008, cia and other intelligence agencies opened a file on a man who had come to peshawar from america. his name, najibullah zazi. 24 years old.

place of residence -- denver, and before that, new york. occupation -- airport shuttle van driver. citizenship, afghan, but a legal resident of the united states since 1999. stated purpose, to visit his wife. and abc news was told that zazi and another man travelling the u.s. showed at one of the training camps outside of peshawar. the fbi says zazi would later admit he received training in explosions of the kind al qaeda regularly shows in the propaganda tapes. after his return to denver, have a zi, his apartment in the suburb of aurora were under constant visual and electronic surveillance by the fbi. his lawyer arthur folsom describes zazi as a quiet guy. >> he's calm and soft-spoken.

>> but by late august, it was delivered to senior officials at the white house and elsewhere in washington. >> that's a short list of potential attacks, potential attackers. that's the s seller list if you will in counterterrorism. >> then zazi arrived in new york after driving across the country in a rental car from denver. police stopped him on the george washington bridge on the pretext of a drug check. >> they walked the dog around the car and the dog didn't react so they sent him on his way. >> the fbi and new york city police were scrambling across the river in queens to track zazi, fearing he had brought plans for another attack. he stayed with afghans in this neighborhood where his car was towed away by police with his laptop computer inside. >> what was done with it, i have

no idea. if i had to fathom a guess, they did a mirror image of the hard drive and their going through it. >> that's what happened, leading to the discovery of a j-peg of nine handwritten pages of a homemade bomb recipe. the explosive detonators and components of a fusing system. >> this guy went to pakistan, he learned how to make a bomb. now he's moved to new york and he's brought that information with him. >> and officials say zazi's computer also contained video of new york's grand central station. as well as information about the area's football and baseball stadiums. and sites used for a recent fashion week event. but the fbi's investigation was compromised when this man, ahmad after isly a local mosque leader and police informant allegedly tipped off zazi and his father back in denver that he was being watched. zazi flew home to denver from

new york the very next day, with undercover agents waiting for him on his arrival. alarmed an attack might be inimminent, the police moved in in force. every place zazi visited in new york was raided and at least a dozen people were taken in for questioning, although all were initially released. but back in denver the fbi was all over zazi, agents raided his apartment and that of his uncle nearby. even as zazi said he had nothing to hide. >> of course not. i have nothing do with al qaeda and any link or anything with al qaeda. >> and for three days, zazi showed up at the fbi offices in denver for what he said was his full cooperation in answering questions. on friday night, his lawyer continued to insist zazi was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. >> my client continues to cooperate with them. we're set to continue this again tomorrow morning. >> but the next day, saturday,

zazi did not show up at the fbi offices and late saturday night agents moved in to charge zazi with lying, specifically about the bomb recipe found in his computer. zazi's father was charged with lying to the fbi, in his case about the calls made to him by the new york police informant. in new york, the fbi arrested the informant whose lawyer said his client was trying to help the police. >> he has not told the specifics of how to conduct an investigation without tipping off the suspect. all he was trying to do was help the government, and this is the government's thanks. >> all three men were in court today in new york and denver. as the fbi continued an urgent search for bomb making components and for the others who may have been involved. authorities tell abc news they believe the plot had developed to the point where three distinct teams of four men each had been organized and preparing

to go to the attack stage. in a coded message zazi sent out the word, the wedding cake is ready. >> zazi remains behind bars tonight. our thanks to brian ross. we'll be right back.