Cleveland officials hail bravery of missing women

Rescued: Amanda Berry, left, and Gina DeJesus. Photo: Reuters


Amanda,  her sister and daughter

 

Celebrations: the house of Amanda Berry's sister Beth. Photo: Reuters 

 

House of horrors: The residence where three women escaped. Photo: AP

 

  Onil Castro                                 Ariel castro                                  Pedro Castro





 

 

 

 

 Elsie Cintron said her granddaughter saw a "naked lady crawling in the backyard

 

Police have praised the bravery of three women found alive on Monday evening in a house in Cleveland, Ohio, after they vanished about a decade ago. Amanda Berry, who disappeared in 2003 aged 16, escaped with a neighbour's help while her alleged captor was away. Gina DeJesus, who went missing aged 14 a year later, and Michelle Knight, who vanished in 2002 aged about 19, were also rescued from the property. A school bus driver and his two brothers have been arrested.
 

The three women were taken to hospital for a check-up and to be reunited with their relatives before being discharged on Tuesday morning. A six-year-old girl also rescued from the house was believed to be the daughter of Ms Berry, Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba told a news conference. FBI Special Agent Stephen Anthony said: "The nightmare is over. These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance. The healing can now begin."

 

It is difficult to believe that Seymour Avenue could be home to such a crime: a quiet tree lined street with houses knocked about and sometimes boarded up, a red-brick church and traffic humming back and forth at either end.

But it is the residents and neighbours who are most surprised. Aurora Marti, 75, has lived across from 2207 Seymour Avenue for 27 years. Ariel Castro used to come and sit on her porch and chat with her. He took her granddaughter out for bike rides at a nearby park.  When the nearby area was being dug up in the search for Amanda Berry's remains, he talked to her about it. All the while he is alleged to have held Amanda and two other women just across the road.

Anthony vowed prosecutors would "bring the full weight of justice" on those responsible in the "horrific case". School bus driver Ariel Castro, 52, and his two brothers, Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50, have been taken into custody. Police Chief Michael McGrath said the women were believed to have been tied up at the house. Officials said they may also investigate other properties.

While the official story hasn't changed, other law enforcement sources have leaked details of the investigation, though they have not been publicly confirmed from local authorities. In what is the most disturbing claim — though not a otally unexpected one —  all three women were forced to have sex with their captors, resulting in at least five pregnancies during their time in captivity. According to their sources, the pregnant women were beaten until they lost the babies, though it seems at least one (the daughter of Amanda Berry who was also rescued) survived.

Law enforcement sources also reports that the women were usually held in the basement, though one was in an upstairs room, and one of the rooms in the house had chains hanging from the ceiling.

Some of those who knew Castro have also come forward to say that he seemed like a normal guy who never gave off any suspicion of the secret he was hiding. He was apparently known around the local music scene and listed one band, Grupo Fuego, as one of his employers on his Facebook page. The group came forward to disavow Castro, saying he only played with them a couple of times.

Ms Berry, now 27, escaped on Monday evening when a neighbour heard her screaming and kicking a door, while her alleged captor was out of the house. Rescuer Charles Ramsey said he had helped kick in a metal door so that Ms Berry could climb outside and phone police. In a recording of Monday's emergency call, she says: "I've been kidnapped, and I've been missing for 10 years. And I'm here. I'm free now." Ms Berry identifies herself to the 911 dispatcher, saying she has been on the news for the past decade, and begging for help to arrive before her captor returns. A neighbour, Charles Ramsey, tells reporters: "We had to kick open the bottom of the door".

Police Chief McGrath told Tuesday's news conference: "Thankfully, due to Amanda's brave actions these three women are alive today."

Neighbour Anna Tejeda said she had refused to believe the young woman at first. "You're not Amanda Berry. Amanda Berry is dead," she said, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Other neighbours in the working-class district said they did not realize anybody was living at the house at 2207 Seymour Ave.

During the news conference, Public Safety Director Martin Flask said that in March 2000, Mr Castro had called the authorities to report a fight on his street, but no arrest was made. In January 2004, police called at Mr Castro's home, but no-one answered. They were alerted by children's services after a child was left at a depot on a school bus that Mr Castro had been driving. Authorities concluded there had been no criminal intent.

Ms Berry had last been heard from aged 16 when she called her sister on 21 April 2003 to say she would get a lift home from her job at a Burger King restaurant. In 2004, Ms DeJesus - who is now 23 years old - was believed to have been on her way home from school when she went missing

911 call: "Help me I'm Amanda Berry... I've been missing for 10 years"

Their disappearances made local headlines in Cleveland, and many assumed the girls were dead.

The case of Michelle Knight, who was older than the other women when she disappeared and is now 32, was less widely publicized.  Her grandmother, Deborah Knight, was quoted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper on Monday as saying the authorities concluded she had run away.

The victims' families have responded with stunned joy. Sylvia Colon, a relative of Gina DeJesus, said they had never given up hope. But Ms Berry's mother, Louwana, died in March 2006, three years after her daughter went missing. A local politician said the mother had died of a "broken heart".

In an extraordinary twist, it emerged that Ariel Castro's son - also called Ariel, although he goes by his middle name Anthony - wrote an article about the disappearance of Gina DeJesus for his local newspaper in 2004. Police have not commented on the case of a fourth missing girl, Ashley Summers, who disappeared in the same area in July 2007 when 14 years old.

The case, which has electrified the public, has raised questions about how such a heinous crime could be committed for years, under the nose of the public. It has also emerged that suspect Ariel Castro, 52, had a history of violence with women. Former partner Grimilda Figueroa filed a domestic violence complaint against Castro in August 2005, claiming he had severely beaten her and threatened to kill her and her children. In a chilling note in the domestic violence petition, it said: "Respondent (Castro) frequently abducts daughters and keeps them from mother," according to the Ohio news station.

Authorities attempted to visit the home in 2004 on a matter unrelated to the disappearances but were unable to enter, police said. Court records show Ariel Castro was arrested in 1993 on a domestic violence charge that was subsequently dismissed. But one neighbour told the Associated Press a naked woman was seen crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard of the house a few years ago. Another heard pounding on the home's doors and noticed plastic bags over the windows. Both times, police showed up but never went inside, neighbours said.

Authorities said it will be some time before the details of the ordeal come out, as FBI agents go about the delicate task of interviewing Berry, DeJesus and Knight. Police did confirm that Berry, now 27, has a six-year-old daughter, apparently born while she was in captivity.

Investigation: members of the FBI evidence team remove items from the house. Photo: AP

 

The three Ohio women were abducted separately in 2002, 2003 and 2004 and were found in the home of 52-year-old Ariel Castro, not far from where each disappeared. Castro and his brothers - Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50 - have been detained, authorities said. It was not immediately clear why the women were abducted and how they were held. The city heaved a sigh of relief at the happy ending to a horrible story. The women were released from a Cleveland hospital early on Tuesday.

"Due to Amanda's brave actions, these three women are alive today": Cleveland police chief Michael McGrath speaks at a press conference. Photo: AFP

 

The disappearances of Berry and DeJesus were well known in Cleveland, although Knight's disappearance had attracted less attention, police said. Just last month a vigil was held to mark the ninth anniversary of DeJesus' disappearance.

Anthony Quiros, 24, who grew up next door to the house where the women were found, said bus driver Ariel Castro had been an onlooker as police dug up a Cleveland lot looking for remains in the case on a tip that proved false.

"He also came to a vigil and acted as if nothing was wrong," said Quiros. He said he saw Castro comforting DeJesus's mother about a year ago.

Ariel Castro was friends with the father of DeJesus, said Khalid Samad, a friend of the family. He also performed music at a fundraiser held in her honour, Samad said.

"When we went out to look for Gina, he helped pass out fliers," said Samad, a community activist who was at the hospital with DeJesus and her family on Monday night. "You know, he was friends with the family."

Born in Puerto Rico, Castro played bass in Latin music bands in the area. Neighbours said he sometimes parked his school bus in front of the house at lunchtime and would take multiple bags of fast food inside. They said he was divorced more than a decade ago and his ex-wife had since died.

On a Facebook page believed to belong to Castro, he said last month that he had just become a grandfather for a fifth time.

Tito DeJesus, an uncle of Gina DeJesus who used to play Latin music with Castro, said on CNN he had been in the house two years ago and saw nothing suspicious. He said the living room was filled with bass guitars. Cleveland Director of Public Safety Martin Flask said police had not been alerted to anything untoward happening at the house on Seymour Avenue. Police came to the house twice over the years - once in 2000 when the detained owner Ariel Castro reported a fight in the street, and again in 2004 because in his job as a school bus driver, he had inadvertently left a child on board when he parked the vehicle at a lot.

What went on in the house for the past decade or so will come out in time from the women themselves, deputy police chief Ed Tomba said. Tomba said he had seen the women on Monday night and they seemed to be in fairly good health, although he said ‘‘they needed a good meal.’’

The long nightmare ended when Berry - kidnapped 10 years ago at the age of 16, just shy of her 17th birthday, - reached her arm through a crack in the front door and called for help.

‘‘I heard screaming... And I see this girl going nuts trying to get outside of the house,’’ neighbour Charles Ramsey told the local ABC news affiliate.‘

‘I go on the porch, and she said, ’Help me get out. I’ve been here a long time’.’’

Ramsey, a bystander now hailed as a hero, said he tried to get her out through the door but could not pull it open, so he kicked out the bottom and she crawled through, ‘‘carrying a little girl.’’

Authorities confirmed the six-year-old child who fled the house was Amanda Berry's, but they gave no information about the identity of the father. Berry went into a neighbouring home and called police, begging them to come as soon as they could, ‘‘before he gets back.’’ When police arrived, she said two other women were being held captive.

DeJesus was 14 when she vanished while walking home from school on April 2, 2004. Knight, who was 20 at the time of her disappearance, was last seen at a cousin’s house on August 23, 2002, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper.

‘‘She’s like my best friend. I’m glad she’s home,’’ Ricardo DeJesus, her brother told CNN, vowing to never let his sister out of his sight again.

‘‘It is a miracle by God that she came home. That’s all I can say.’’

A man who helped to look for DeJesus, Pastor Angel Arroyo, said he and her family members had handed out flyers years ago in the neighbourhood where she was found.

"We didn't search hard enough. She was right under our nose the whole time," Arroyo said.

Kidnap ordeal survivor Jaycee Dugard has called for the three women to be given time to adjust to freedom. Dugard was subject to a worldwide media frenzy in 2009 when she was found alive 18 years after she was abducted as an 11-year-old girl in 1991 by a convicted sex offender.

As reporters descended on the Cleveland scene on Tuesday, Dugard issued a statement urging for the women at the centre of the latest extraordinary story to be given space to adjust.

‘‘These individuals need the opportunity to heal and connect back into the world. This isn’t who they are. It is only what happened to them,’’ Dugard told People magazine, while acknowledging the strength of the victims.

‘‘The human spirit is incredibly resilient. More then ever this reaffirms we should never give up hope.’’