A followup on this earlier BB post about the wacko blog and gadget hallucinations of kidnapper/rapist (now also a murder suspect) Phillip Garrido.

Weighing in on that post, an astute BB commenter noticed that if you do a Google Maps search for 1554 Walnut Avenue, Antioch, CA — the address of the Antioch home where Garrido detained Jaycee Dugard (and her children, fathered by rape) — you can see an overhead view of all the tents, tarps and sheds that Garrido's parole officer(s) and local police were too incompetent to bother checking, despite the fact that the guy was a convicted rapist. The overhead view in Google Maps has since been widely reported and blogged, so that's old news 4 days later.

But not this. Check out what another commenter noticed. When you're at that address in Google Maps, switch over to Street View mode. You'll see something chilling. Right in the 1554 Walnut Avenue driveway, you see a beat-up van with a rusty, trashed exterior, and what looks like a man behind the steering wheel. Follow the van.

Pull your POV out of that driveway, moving away on Walnut toward Bown, and look backwards toward the house on Street View. For what I think is, like, 6 blocks or more, that guy in that van is following the black Google VW with cameras mounted on it. Was that Garrido in the van? Is it possible he saw the Google van with all the gear on top, freaked out about being surveilled, and followed it for a while with interest and fear?Maybe, maybe not. IANALEO (I am not a law enforcement officer) so I don't know. Maybe I'm imagining this, and I probably need to stop obsessing about this story. But it's the creepiest thing I've ever seen on Google Street View.

Photos: Here's the Flickr set I created of the sequence within Google Maps. The final shot, before the van veers away, is at the top of this post.

Previously on BB: The blog of Philip Garrido, serial rapist and kidnapper: "sound control" gadget hallucinations.