Phillip Garrido, who became internationally notorious as the man accused of kidnapping Jaycee Lee Dugard when she was 11, is expected to plead guilty Thursday, a lawyer in the case said Monday.

Garrido, who turns 60 today, is alleged to have kept Dugard as his sex slave for part of her 18 years in captivity and has had little hope of ever walking free since his arrest in August 2009.

He initially pleaded not guilty but agreed last week to reverse his plea as a show of compassion toward Dugard and his wife, co-defendant Nancy Garrido, her lawyer told The Bee.

Stephen Tapson said Phillip Garrido’s expected guilty plea would spare Dugard from having to testify in court against the man whose sexual assaults resulted in her two daughters being born in captivity.

He also said Garrido’s guilty plea would benefit his wife’s case by showing that “the major evil person is out of the way.”

Neither El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson nor Phillip Garrido’s public defender, Susan Gellman, could be reached for comment Monday.

Gellman previously has conceded there is no way her client can ever win release from custody.

But Tapson holds out hope that Nancy Garrido, 55, may be able to win a deal that could see her walk free in 30 years.

Tapson said prosecutors originally offered Nancy Garrido a 40-year deal and that he was told the Dugard family did not object. But prosecutors later rescinded the deal, saying they wanted Nancy Garrido to serve 184 years, Tapson said, adding that it made no sense for him to accept a deal like that rather than go to trial.

Tapson said he still hopes for an offer “within reason to avoid the tribulations of a trial at great cost to the taxpayers.”

The Garridos are accused of snatching Dugard off the street outside her South Lake Tahoe-area home as she was walking to a school bus stop.

Nancy Garrido is believed to have been the one who dragged Dugard into the car. The Garridos are accused of taking Dugard to their Antioch home and keeping her captive in tents and locked sheds in the backyard until she was rescued in August 2009.

Both suspects admitted their involvement in recent interviews with detectives, including one with Nancy Garrido that Dugard watched, Tapson has said.

Phillip Garrido was on parole at the time of Dugard’s abduction for the November 1976 kidnap and rape of a young woman he had talked into giving him a ride.

That victim, Katie Callaway-Hall, has attended most of the Garrido court hearings since his arrest. She told The Bee on Monday that she had expected a guilty plea and was relieved at word that it may finally happen.

“We all knew he was guilty, and in that sense now we can go forward and he can be sentenced and this ordeal can be over,” Callaway-Hall said. “I can put it away.”

But, she said, she wasn’t buying the notion that Garrido was trying to show compassion for Dugard.

“I have a feeling Nancy’s just trying to save her own butt at this point,” she said. “I don’t think she’s going to be thinking of Jaycee.”

Now living in seclusion in Northern California and writing a book, Dugard has yet to speak publicly about her ordeal.

In July, she was awarded a $20 million settlement from the state over parole agents’ failure to detect her presence at the Garrido house for years.

Her mother, Terry Probyn, had her own claim against the state rejected. She has since filed a civil suit against the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation seeking special and general damages for negligence, failure to discharge mandatory duties, negligent hiring and training, and infliction of emotional distress.

The suit, filed March 22 in Sacramento Superior Court, accuses the department of “egregious conduct” that caused Probyn to suffer “severe emotional distress learning of the torture and abuse her daughter endured while a captor of Garrido’s and trying to re-establish the relationship lost over all those years.”

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