N.Y. TIMES
About the time that neighbors kicked in a front door to free three women abducted and long imprisoned, the man charged with their kidnapping was idling away a spring afternoon at his mother’s home.
The man, Ariel Castro, 52, crossed the street to borrow a lawn mower on Monday afternoon from a neighbor to cut his mother’s postage stamp lawn, then left with a brother to spend the afternoon drinking, neighbors said.
It was typical of the outwardly mundane life Mr. Castro led, which apparently included outings with a daughter he is believed to have fathered with one of the captives. Meanwhile, inside his house on Seymour Avenue, the three women, who last celebrated birthdays with their families about a decade ago, saw year after year perversely marked by Mr. Castro’s serving of a cake on each woman’s “abduction day,” according to one victim’s cousin.
Those years of captivity ended late Monday when Amanda Berry, who had not been seen since she left her job at a local Burger King on April, 21, 2003, when she was 17, appeared at the front door of the house accompanied by a young child and screamed: “I need help! I need help! I have been kidnapped for 10 years!”
On Wednesday, as new details of the women’s horrific ordeal emerged, Mr. Castro was charged with the rape and kidnapping of Amanda Berry, held 10 years; Gina DeJesus, held 9 years; and Michelle Knight, held 11 years. He was also charged with kidnapping the 6-year-old daughter Ms. Berry gave birth to, and the authorities said he would undergo a paternity test....
No charges were brought against the two brothers of Mr. Castro, who were arrested with him: Onil Castro, 50, and Pedro Castro, 54. Ed Tomba, deputy chief of the Cleveland police, said investigators were convinced after interviewing the victims that the two brothers had no involvement or knowledge. ...
“All three women victims stated that Ariel chained them up in the basement, but eventually he let them free from the chains and let them live upstairs on the second floor,” the report said. The young women were subjected to years of sexual abuse and beatings inside the house. We have confirmation that they were bound, and there was chains and ropes in the home,” Chief Michael McGrath told NBC. Although their physical states were “very good,” McGrath says they were likely allowed outdoors only “once in a while.” The grisly details, initially discovered through interviews with the women, have been corroborated by evidence in the house.
The front door of a house in Cleveland that neighbors kicked in to free three
women who were held hostage for nearly 10 years.
“These are some of the most catastrophic kinds of
experiences a human being can be subjected to,” said Kris Mohandie, a forensic
psychologist who has been a consultant in other long-term kidnapping cases. The perpetrators of such crimes, Dr. Mohandie said,
have been men “who have had longstanding fantasies of capturing, controlling,
abusing and dominating women.”
Such men, he said, use a perverse system of rewards
and punishments to create fear and submission in their victims, who quickly lose
all sense of self and become dependent on their captors. “Total control over
another human being is what stimulates them,” he said.
Angel Cordero, one of two men who helped Ms. Berry
escape by kicking in the door, said that she had appeared ragged — her clothes
dirty, her teeth yellowed and her hair “messy” — and that the child with her had
looked “very nervous,”
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Ms. Knight told officers that Mr. Castro had impregnated her multiple times. In each case, the report said, he starved her and then punched her repeatedly in the stomach until she miscarried....Ms. Knight was forced to deliver Amanda Berry's baby as... Castro stood nearby threatening to kill her if the baby died, according to a police report obtained by reporters. When the baby stopped breathing during birth, Knight put her mouth to the child's and "breathed for her." The report also details the moment of escape, when Castro forgot to lock the "big inside door" and Berry got the attention of neighbors. When the officers entered, Knight and Gina DeJesus threw themselves into police arms. Knight told police she was forced to abort five pregnancies. [Read it at WKYC ]
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Tony Dejak/Associated Press
Beth Serrano, the sister of Amanda Berry, spoke to reporters after Ms. Berry arrived at her home on Wednesday.
Nelson Martinez, 54, a cousin of Mr. Castro, said Mr. Castro visited him in Parma, Ohio, with a child he introduced as his granddaughter two or three years ago. “She looked healthy and happy and looked as though she liked being with her ‘granddaddy,’ ” Mr. Martinez said. “She had on clean clothes, like a normal little girl, and she seemed alert and talked.”
Ms. Knight, the oldest of the women and the longest held, was the only one who had not been released to relatives yet. She remained hospitalized in the MetroHealth Medical Center.
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..."Right now, we want to let them spend some time with their families and take this process very, very slowly and be respectful for their families and the young girls' needs," Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba said. Police are now facing questions about their failure to investigate despite repeated calls to the house.
On Wednesday the city released portions of the original missing persons reports that showed that dozens of officers were involved in the investigations of Ms. Berry and Ms. DeJesus. Authorities also rebutted accounts that have circulated this week of sightings of the women at Mr. Castro’s home, denying that the police had received calls.
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Mr. Castro [above] has been unemployed since November after two decades as a Cleveland school bus driver. ...[He] had a history of disciplinary problems. In 2004, he was interviewed by the police after “inadvertently” leaving a child on the bus. In 2009, he was called before a disciplinary hearing for negligence and disregard for the safety of passengers. He was fired in November 2012, after another “demonstration of lack of judgment,” according to school district records.
The house he owns where the women were discovered is in foreclosure.
Other records show that he fought violently with a former wife, Grimilda Figueroa, who had full custody of their children. According to a 2005 complaint she filed in domestic relations court, Ms. Figueroa suffered a broken nose, broken ribs and two dislocated shoulders. Her lawyer, Robert Ferreri, said in the filing that Mr. Castro “frequently abducts daughters and keeps them from their mother.” Ms. Figueroa died last year.
But neighbors said Ariel Castro had appeared to be “a
regular Joe,” who chatted with families on their porches, waved hello in the
street and invited neighbors to clubs where he played bass with several Latin
bands.....
But Zaida Delgado, 58, a family friend, said Ariel
Castro also had a darker side.
“There was something not right about him,” she said.
“He could be flaky and off the wall. He was also arrogant, like ‘I am Mr. Cool,
I am the best.’ He had an attitude, like ‘I am God’s gift.’ ”
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Charles Ramsey may have played the hero Monday when he helped Amanda Berry escape the house in which she'd been held captive for a decade, and called the police to rescue the remaining two captives, but on more than one occassion it was Ramsey himself who was the subject of a 911 call. The Smoking Gun has discovered that the 43-year-old "Cleveland Hero," who told reporters that he responded to Barry's cry for help because he was "raised to help women in distress," served jail time for three separate instances of domestic violence. Ramsey was also incarcerated in the early 1990s for drug abuse, receiving stolen property, and criminal trespassing. In her divorce complaint, Ramsey's ex-wife, Rochelle, accused her ex-husband of "gross neglect of duty" and "extreme cruelty" and she told The Smoking Gun that Ramsey apologized for beating her but "never paid his child support."
[Read it at The Smoking Gun]