Ariel Castro kidnappings: Difference between revisions

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	==References==		==References==
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			http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/charles-ramsey-neighbor-who-saved-amanda-berry-becomes-viral-int/

	==External links==		==External links==

Revision as of 23:32, 24 May 2013

2013 Cleveland missing trio
Location	2207 Seymour Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, United States
Coordinates	41°28′21″N 81°41′52.5″W / 41.47250°N 81.697917°W / 41.47250; -81.697917 (2207 Seymour Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio)
Date	August 22, 2002 – May 6, 2013
Attack type	Kidnapping, rape, aggravated murder, attempted murder, assault
Victims	Michelle Knight Amanda Berry Gina DeJesus Six-year-old daughter of Amanda Berry

On May 6, 2013, three women from Cleveland, Ohio—Amanda Berry, Georgina "Gina" DeJesus, and Michelle Knight—were rescued from captivity in a Cleveland house owned by Ariel Castro. Knight had disappeared in Cleveland in 2002 at age 21, Berry in 2003 at age 16, and DeJesus in 2004 at age 14. A six-year-old daughter of Berry, fathered by Castro, was also rescued. The women were discovered after Berry escaped the house with her daughter and contacted police.

Ariel Castro was arrested on the day the women were freed, and was charged two days later with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. The case received front-page news coverage worldwide.

Victims

Michelle Knight

Michelle Knight disappeared on August 22, 2002, after leaving a cousin's house. Knight was 21 years old at the time. On the day of her disappearance, she was scheduled to appear in court for a child custody case involving her son, of whom she had previously lost custody to the state.

Following Knight's rescue, police acknowledged that limited resources had been spent on investigating her disappearance, in part because she was an adult and was believed to have run away voluntarily due to anger over losing custody of her son. According to Cleveland Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba, Knight "was the focus of very few tips." Knight's removal from the National Crime Information Center database, 15 months after she disappeared, has been criticized, although police and the FBI maintain that her inclusion or exclusion had no bearing on her rescue.

According to a report by officers who found Knight, she accepted a ride home from Castro, but was instead driven to his house. She was tied up in his basement and beaten, and eventually moved to a locked room upstairs. Knight's grandmother told reporters that Knight will require facial reconstruction surgery due to the beatings she endured; Knight also lost hearing in one ear.

Amanda Berry

Amanda Marie Berry went missing on April 21, 2003, one day before her 17th birthday. Berry was last heard from when she called her sister to tell her that she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King at West 110th Street and Lorain Avenue. Berry has told police she accepted Castro's offer of a ride home after he had told her that he had a son who also worked at Burger King. After Berry entered Castro's vehicle, he allegedly drove straight to his own home and imprisoned her. The FBI initially considered Berry a runaway, until a week after her disappearance, when an unidentified male used Berry's cell phone to call her mother, saying "I have Amanda. She's fine and will be coming home in a couple of days."

Berry was featured in a 2004 segment of America's Most Wanted (re-aired in 2005 and 2006) which linked her to Gina DeJesus, who by that point had also gone missing in Cleveland. They were profiled on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Montel Williams Show, where self-described psychic Sylvia Browne told Berry's mother, Louwana Miller, in 2004 that her daughter Amanda was dead, and that she was "in water." This pronouncement devastated her mother, causing her to take down pictures and give away her daughter's computer. However, Miller continued to search for Berry until Miller's death from heart failure in 2006. Following Berry's escape, Browne received criticism for the false declaration that she was dead.

In July 2012, Robert Wolford, a prison inmate who used to live in the neighborhood where the women disappeared, claimed to have information about the location of Berry's body and led police to an empty lot on Cleveland's West Side, where a fruitless search was conducted. Wolford was sentenced in 2013 to four and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice, making a false report and making a false alarm.

Before Berry's disappearance, her grandfather had promised to give her a rare Chevrolet Monte Carlo from the year Berry was born. He kept the car after her kidnapping, in case she was found alive. Following her rescue, Berry called her grandfather and asked if he still had the car, which he did, although it was in need of restoration from having gone unused. Several automotive shops offered to perform the restoration for free.

Gina DeJesus

2004 FBI sketch of a suspect in DeJesus' disappearance

Georgina "Gina" Lynn DeJesus went missing at age 14. She was last seen at a pay phone at about 3 p.m. on April 2, 2004, on the way home from her middle school at West 105th Street and Lorain Avenue. DeJesus and her friend, Ariel Castro's daughter Arlene, had called Castro's ex-wife, Grimilda Figueroa, for permission to have a sleepover at DeJesus' house, but Figueroa had said they could not, and the two girls parted ways. It is alleged that Castro offered DeJesus a ride to his home to see his daughter but instead took her captive.

Because no one witnessed DeJesus' abduction, an AMBER Alert was not issued, which angered her father. He said in 2006, "The Amber Alert should work for any missing child...Whether it's an abduction or a runaway, a child needs to be found. We need to change this law."

A year after DeJesus' disappearance, the FBI released a composite sketch and description of a male suspect, described as "Latino, 25 to 35 years of age, 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in), 74 to 83 kilograms (163 to 183 lb), with green eyes, a goatee and possibly a pencil-thin beard". According to court records, Castro is 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) and weighs 81 kilograms (179 lb); he has brown eyes and a goatee.

DeJesus was featured on a 2004 America's Most Wanted segment, which re-aired in 2005 and 2006, and which linked her to Berry. The disappearances received regular media attention over the years, as recently as 2012, while family and others held vigils and searched for DeJesus and Berry. Castro was identified by Gina's family in video footage of two of these vigils and he reportedly participated in a search party and tried to get close to the family. Police kept an active investigation open, offering a $25,000 reward for information.

Daughter of Amanda Berry

According to police interviews with the victims, Amanda Berry gave birth to a daughter on December 25, 2006, inside the house where they were imprisoned. Castro allegedly ordered Knight to assist in the birth, which took place in a small inflatable swimming pool, and threatened her with death if the baby did not survive. At one point, the baby stopped breathing, but Knight was able to resuscitate her. Castro occasionally took the child out of the house; she had visited his mother, whom the girl called "grandmother" and in 2013, he showed one of his adult daughters a picture of the child and said that it was his girlfriend's daughter.

DNA evidence confirmed that Castro is the biological father of the child. The child called Castro "daddy".

Discovery and aftermath

Rescue

On May 6, 2013, Knight, DeJesus, Berry, and Berry's 6-year-old daughter were discovered to have been imprisoned in Castro's home at 2207 Seymour Avenue, in Cleveland's residential Tremont neighborhood, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) from where the three women had disappeared.

According to police, when Castro left the house that day, Berry realized that he had failed to lock the home's "big inside door", although the exterior storm door was bolted. She did not attempt to break through the outer door because "she thought was testing her," according to the police report, so instead she screamed for help. Neighbor Angel Cordero responded to the screaming, but was unable to communicate with Berry because he spoke little English. Another neighbor, Charles Ramsey, joined Cordero at the house's front door at some point during the rescue. A hole was kicked through the bottom of the storm door, and Berry crawled through, carrying her daughter; Cordero claimed to have kicked in the door alone, while Ramsey claimed it was a joint effort. Ramsey said that Berry told him that she and her child were being kept inside the house against her will. According to Ramsey, Berry was wearing a jumpsuit, white tank top, rings, and mascara; he said she "didn't look like she was kidnapped". Upon being freed, she went to the house of another Spanish-speaking neighbor and called 9-1-1, saying, "Help me, I'm Amanda Berry ... I've been kidnapped and I've been missing for 10 years. And I'm here, I'm free now."

Responding police officers entered Castro's house. As they walked through an upstairs hallway with guns drawn, they announced themselves as Cleveland police. After peeking out from a slightly opened bedroom door, Knight entered the hallway and leapt into an officer's arms, repeatedly saying, "You saved me." Soon afterward, DeJesus entered the hallway from another room. The women were able to walk out of the home; all three women and the child were taken to MetroHealth Medical Center. Berry and DeJesus were released from the hospital the next day; Knight was discharged on May 10.

Investigation

According to a statement from Cleveland police, officers had visited Castro's home only once following the kidnappings, to discuss an unrelated incident. Castro did not appear to be home at the time, and was later interviewed elsewhere. Although neighbors claim to have called the police about suspicious activity observed at the home, police say they have no record of any such calls.

Castro was arrested on May 6, 2013, and charged on May 8 with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. Two of his brothers were also initially taken into custody, but were released on May 9 after police announced they had no involvement in the kidnappings.

A DNA test confirmed that Castro fathered Berry's 6-year-old daughter. Knight told police that Castro had impregnated her at least five times, and had induced miscarriages each time through beatings and starvation. DeJesus told law enforcement she was raped, but did not believe she was ever impregnated. Castro's DNA will also be compared to unknown DNA from other crimes.

WKYC News reported that during Castro's interrogation, he recalled each of the three abductions in great detail, and indicated that they were unplanned crimes of opportunity. According to WKYC's sources, Castro did not have an "exit plan" and believed that he would eventually be caught. He referred to himself as "coldblooded" and a sex addict. Police found a suicide note in Castro's home in which he allegedly discussed the abductions and wrote that his money and possessions should be given to the kidnapped women if he were caught.

Legal proceedings

Castro was arrested on May 6, 2013. On May 8, Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape, charges that carry prison sentences of 10 years to life in Ohio. On May 9, Castro made his first court appearance in Cleveland Municipal Court. Bail was set at $2 million per kidnapping charge, for a total of $8 million. Additional charges were reported to be pending, including aggravated murder (for intentional induction of miscarriages), attempted murder, assault, a charge for each alleged instance of rape, and a kidnapping charge for each day each victim was allegedly held captive. On May 14, Castro's attorneys said he would plead "not guilty" to all charges if indicted for kidnapping and rape.

Suspect

Ariel Castro (born July 10, 1960) was 52 years old at the time of his arrest. His father, Pedro Castro, moved from Puerto Rico to the US in 1954, first living in Pennsylvania and then moving to Cleveland. His mother, Lillian Rodriguez, lived nearby in Cleveland. Ariel is one of nine siblings. According to Ariel Castro's uncle, his family knew the DeJesus family and had grown up in the same west Cleveland neighborhood. Ariel Castro is a 1979 graduate of Cleveland's Lincoln-West High School.

Castro met his future common law wife, Grimilda Figueroa, when his family moved into a house across the street from her family in the 1980s. The couple lived with both sets of parents, but moved into their own home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in 1992. The home is a two-story, 1,400-square-foot (130 m), four-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a 760-square-foot (71 m) unfinished basement built in 1890 and remodeled in 1956.

According to Figueroa's sister, after the couple moved into their new home, "all hell started breaking loose". She and her husband claim Castro beat his wife, breaking her nose, ribs, and arms, and once threw Figueroa down a set of stairs, cracking her skull. In 1993, Castro was arrested for domestic violence, but was not indicted by a grand jury. Figueroa moved out of the home in 1996 and secured custody of the couple's four children. Police assisted in the move and detained Castro, but did not pursue charges.

Castro continued to threaten and attack Figueroa after she moved out, according to Figueroa's sister. A 2005 filing by Figueroa in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court accused Castro of inflicting multiple severe injuries on Figueroa, and of "frequently abduct" his daughters. A temporary restraining order against Castro was granted, but was dismissed a few months later. Figueroa died in 2012 at the age of 48, due to complications from a brain tumor.

Castro worked as a bus driver for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District for 22 years, from February 1991 until he was fired for "bad judgment" in November 2012 after a series of issues including making an illegal U-turn with children on the bus, using his bus to go grocery shopping, leaving a child on the bus while he went for lunch, and finally for leaving the bus unattended while he took a nap at home. He was earning $18.91 per hour when he was discharged. At the time of his arrest in 2013, his home was in foreclosure due to three years (2010–12) of unpaid real estate taxes.

After Castro's arrest, his son Anthony described his father's house: "The house was always locked. There were places we could never go. There were locks on the basement. Locks on the attic. Locks on the garage." While a journalism student in 2004, Anthony Castro had written an article about the Berry and DeJesus disappearances for the Plain Press, for which he had interviewed DeJesus' mother. He said his father asked him about three weeks before the escape if Amanda Berry would ever be found. Anthony said he told Ariel that Berry was likely dead, and that Ariel responded: "Really? You think so?" Anthony's sister Arlene Castro had been friends with DeJesus and was the last person to see DeJesus before her disappearance.