San Francisco - There was no doubt that Phillip Garrido, a paroled sex offender, had long been known as an odd and sometimes frightening character to neighbors, business associates and even the few people who called him a friend.

Children were warned to stay away from his home, and adults who ventured near it sometimes got an earful of his ardent and often unorthodox religious beliefs during impromptu street-side sermons.

But in recent weeks, Garrido - who the authorities say kidnapped, raped and imprisoned Jaycee Dugard for 18 years in a lot behind his house - seemed to have been even more unhinged, apparently posting mad ramblings online that hinted at deepening delusions. Many of these appeared on a blog registered to Garrido, and dotted with references to governmental mind control and something he called "cultural trance," whereby "large bodies of people have accepted something as truth."

"The Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongues of angels," read a posting from Aug. 14, under the name TheManWhoSpokeWithHisMind. "You too can witness what the world believe's (sic) is impossible to produce."

On Saturday, law enforcement officials continued to search Garrido's home just outside the Bay Area suburb of Antioch for clues in both Dugard's case and a possible connection to a string of nine unsolved killings of women in the area dating to a decade ago. Garrido and his wife, Nancy, meanwhile, were being held without bail on more than two dozen charges relating to the abduction of Dugard, who was dragged into a car near her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991.

Now 29, Dugard had been repeatedly sexually assaulted and had two children fathered by Garrido, authorities said, while being held captive in a squalid compound behind the Garrido home made up of tents, sheds and dirt floors.

She was reunited with her mother and several other family members after a chain of events set off by campus police officials at the University of California, Berkeley, one of several interactions that suggested that Garrido had little fear of capture.

According to documents and postings on his Web site, Garrido had long been drawn to the Berkeley campus, about 25 miles west of his home in Antioch, where he had apparently wanted to give lectures and "live demonstrations" of a "new insight that has the potential of helping people who hear voices to possibly stop and re-examine their thinking before committing a violent act on themselves and/or others."

On Monday, Garrido had again approached university officials about a staging a religious event and handing out literature about schizophrenia. But campus police officials found his behavior suspicious, particularly in relationship to two young girls Garrido had with him. The girls are now known to be his and Dugard's daughters, ages 11 and 15.

"They didn't look right," said Lisa Campbell, the manager of the campus police special-events unit, noting that the children were pale and withdrawn. Campbell contacted Allyson Jacobs, a campus patrol officer, who ran a background check on Garrido and learned of his criminal past, including convictions of rape and kidnapping in Nevada in the mid-1970s.

On Tuesday, Garrido and the girls returned to the campus, and Jacobs, pretending she shared the office with Campbell, sat in on the meeting. At some point, the girls mentioned having an older sister at home. And during the interview with Garrido, he openly volunteered that he had been convicted of kidnapping and rape but had since turned his life around and was "doing God's work."

The next day, Jacobs reached Garrido's parole officer to discuss her concerns, mentioning the children in passing.

"He stops me when I said he brought in two daughters," she said. "He said, "He doesn't have two daughters.'

"My stomach just sank," Jacobs said. Garrido subsequently brought the two girls, his wife and Dugard, who used the name Allissa, to a meeting with his parole officer, who questioned her and eventually learned her true identity.

On Friday Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren E. Rupf apologized to the Dugard family for seemingly missing opportunities to solve the case, including visits by sheriff's officers to the Garrido home in 2006 and 2008.

Also on Friday, Gordon Hinkle, a spokesman for the corrections department, said that "there was never any indication that there were children at the home" despite numerous home visits by parole officers.

Hinkle said it was unclear whether Garrido's mental health had been a subject of concern for his parole officer, but said the compound in which Dugard was held was well-hidden behind an eight-foot fence and a cluster of trees.

Still, those who knew Garrido said there were numerous clues that his life was teetering, perhaps purposely, toward some denouement. Cheyvonne Molino had used Garrido as a printer for her and her husband's wrecking business for several years, and had recently seen him preaching from a tent near their wrecking yard.

Garrido told her that he had created an amplifier that he thought had other-worldly qualities, though she said it resembled nothing more than a glorified hearing aide. He also told her something that chilled her in retrospect.

"He said, 'I'm going to release the secrets of the past,'" Molina recalled.