'This is a brand new situation, and it's pretty remarkable what they have to face. It's going to take a long time.'

He explained that the girls were led to believe that Jaycee was their sister.

'They didn't realise she had been captured. I think they are OK, but they were attached to this guy, and they cried when this happened,' Probyn said. 'The girls are smart. They are intelligent. They're shy and clingy, but they're smart.'

Police said Tuesday that searches of the properties owned and managed by Garrido did not reveal any evidence linking him to a spate of unsolved murders in the late 1990s.

'Aside from a few items that will require further forensic examination before they can be completely excluded, we did not locate any evidence to connect the Garridos to the unsolved cases,' a police official was quoted as saying by local media.