Between 2002 and 2004, Ariel Castro abducted Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus from the roads of Cleveland, Ohio, United States, and later held them captive in his home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in the city's Tremont neighborhood. All three young women were imprisoned at Castro's home until 2013, when Berry successfully escaped with her six-year-old daughter, to whom she had given birth while captive. Neighbors Charles Ramsey and Angel Cordero helped Amanda Berry escape from a Cleveland house on May 6, 2013, after she cried for help from a locked door. Ramsey and Cordero assisted her and her young daughter in breaking through the door, and Ramsey provided a phone to call 911. Police arrested Castro a few hours later.
Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. He pleaded guilty to 937 criminal counts of rape, kidnapping, and aggravated murder as part of a plea bargain. He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 1,000 years in prison without the possibility of parole. One month into his life sentence, Castro died by suicide by hanging himself with bedsheets in his prison cell.
Kidnapper background
Ariel Castro (July 10, 1960 – September 3, 2013) was born in Duey, Yauco, Puerto Rico, to Pedro Castro and Lillian Rodriguez. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he moved to Pennsylvania with his mother and three siblings. They first lived in Reading, Pennsylvania, before settling in Cleveland, Ohio, where Castro's father and other relatives were living. His uncle Julio “Cesi” Castro was a shop owner who was widely known throughout the Puerto Rican community in Cleveland. He had nine siblings (both full and half). Castro was a devout Catholic.
Castro was sexually and physically abused throughout his childhood. He was molested starting at the age of five by a male neighbor in Puerto Rico and was also raped by an uncle. His mother had physically abused him by striking him with "belts, sticks and an open hand" daily and verbally abused him by "yelling negative things and cursing" at him. He was suspended in junior high for "touching a girl's breast". Castro attended Lincoln-West High School in Cleveland.
As an adult, Castro met his girlfriend, Grimilda Figueroa, when his family moved into a house across the street from hers in the 1980s. Castro and Figueroa lived with both sets of their parents until they moved into their own home at 2207 Seymour Avenue, located in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood, in 1992. Their home was a two-story, 1,400-square-foot (130 m2), four-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a 760-square-foot (71 m2) unfinished basement built in 1890 and remodeled in 1956.
According to Figueroa's sister, Elida Caraballo, "All hell started breaking loose" after the couple moved into their new home. Caraballo claimed that Castro beat Figueroa, breaking her nose, ribs, and arms and causing a blood clot on her brain that resulted in an inoperable tumor. He also threw her down a flight of stairs, cracking her skull. In 1993, Castro was arrested for domestic violence, but was not indicted by a grand jury. After another alleged beating in 1996, Figueroa moved out of the house and secured custody of their four children. Police assisted in the move and detained Castro, but they did not press charges. Castro continued to threaten and attack Figueroa after she left him. In 2005, Figueroa filed charges in the Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court, which accused Castro of inflicting multiple severe injuries on her and of "frequently" abducting their daughters. The court granted her a temporary restraining order against Castro, but it was dismissed a few months later. Figueroa died in 2012 due to complications from her brain tumor.
Castro was in a relationship with Lilian Roldan from 2000 to 2003. She had described him as “gentleman” during their relationship.
Before his arrest at age 52, Castro worked as a bus driver for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District until he was fired in November 2012 for "bad judgment", including making an illegal U-turn with students on his bus, using his bus to go grocery shopping, leaving a child on the bus while he went for lunch at Wendy's, and leaving the bus unattended while he took a nap at home. At the time of his arrest, Castro's home was in foreclosure after three years of unpaid real estate taxes.
Castro performed in several local merengue bands and was featured in a live performance with Los Boy'z Del Merengue in 2003. Upon his arrest, Grupo Fuego, one of the bands he performed for, stated that he was not an official member of the band and that he was a sub twice in 2008.
Kidnappings
Castro's modus operandi for each victim was similar: he kidnapped his targets by offering them a ride; he drove each to his home at 2207 Seymour Avenue, lured them inside, took them to the basement, and restrained them.
Michelle Knight
Michelle Knight (born April 23, 1981) disappeared on August 23, 2002, after leaving a cousin's house. She 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 Joey, who was in the custody of 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. Authorities believed that she had run away voluntarily due to anger over losing custody of her son. According to Cleveland Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba, she was "the focus of very few tips". She was removed from the National Crime Information Center database in November 2003, fifteen months after she disappeared, which made her largely unknown prior to her rescue; the FBI's decision to remove her record was heavily criticized. The Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintain that her inclusion or exclusion had no bearing on her rescue.
Amanda Berry
Amanda Marie Berry (born April 22, 1986) disappeared on April 21, 2003, the day before her 17th birthday. She was last heard from around 8:00 p.m. when she called her sister to tell her that she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King at the corner of Lorain Ave & W. 110th St. The FBI initially considered her a runaway until a week after her disappearance, when an unidentified male used her cell phone to call her mother, Louwana Miller. He said: "I have Amanda. She's fine and will be coming home in a couple of days".
Berry was featured in a 2004 segment of Fox's 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. Berry and DeJesus were profiled on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Montel Williams Show, where self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Browne told Berry's mother Louwana Miller in November 2004 that her daughter was dead and that she was "in water". This pronouncement devastated her mother, causing her to take down pictures and give away Berry's computer. However, Miller continued to search for Berry before dying from heart failure in early March 2006. Later that year, on December 25, 2006, Berry gave birth to a daughter. DNA evidence has confirmed that Castro was the father of the child.
Robert Wolford was a prison inmate who had lived in Tremont, and he claimed in July 2012 that he had information about the location of Berry's body. He led police to an empty lot on Cleveland's West Side, where they conducted a fruitless search. He was sentenced in January 2013 to 4+1⁄2 years in prison for obstruction of justice, making a false report, and making a false alarm.
Gina DeJesus
Georgina Lynn DeJesus (born February 13, 1990) went missing on April 2, 2004, at the age of 14. She was last seen at a payphone around 3:00 p.m. while on the way home from her middle school at West 105th Street and Lorain Avenue. At the time, she was friends with Castro's daughter Arlene. Shortly before Gina disappeared, she and Arlene had called Arlene's mother, Grimilda Figueroa, for permission to have a sleepover at DeJesus' house, but Figueroa replied that they could not and the two girls parted ways. Arlene was the last person to see DeJesus before her disappearance.
DeJesus was under the impression that Castro was picking her up to drop her off at home, and she trusted Castro because she was friends with his teenage daughter. No one witnessed her abduction and 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, 5 feet 10 inches (178 cm), 165 to 185 pounds (75 to 84 kg), with green eyes, a goatee, and possibly a pencil-thin beard.” According to court records, Castro was 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm), 179 pounds (81 kg), with brown eyes and a goatee.
DeJesus was featured in the America's Most Wanted segment which linked her to Berry. The disappearances received regular media attention into 2012, while the families held public vigils. Castro attended at least two of these vigils, reportedly participated in a search party, and tried to get close to the DeJesus family. Castro's son Anthony was a journalism student in 2004, and he interviewed DeJesus's mother for an article about the disappearances in the Plain Press newspaper. Police kept the investigation open and offered a $25,000 reward for information.
According to Castro's uncle, his family knew the DeJesus family and had lived in the same neighborhood. Castro falsely claimed that he was not aware that DeJesus was a member of that family when he abducted her.
Captivity
Upon kidnapping Michelle Knight, Castro took her to the upper floor of his house, tied her hands and feet together, and pulled her up using her hands, feet, and neck. He left her there for three days without food. Prosecutors at Castro's sentencing wrote that diaries kept by his victims "speak of forced sexual conduct, being locked in a dark room, anticipating the next session of abuse, dreams of someday escaping and being reunited with family, being chained to a wall, being held like a prisoner of war, missing the lives they once enjoyed, emotional abuse, Castro's threats to kill them, being treated like an animal, continuous abuse, and desiring freedom." Castro kept the girls in locked bedrooms, where he forced them to use plastic toilets that were "emptied infrequently". He fed them one meal a day and allowed them to shower twice a week at most. He also replaced the windows with solid wood, preventing any sunlight from entering the house.
Knight told police that Castro had impregnated her at least five times and had induced miscarriages each time through beatings, hitting her with dumbbells, punching her, and slamming her against walls. He also starved her. Knight's grandmother told reporters that she would require facial reconstruction surgery due to the beatings that she endured, and had lost hearing in one ear. At one point, Knight had a pet dog while in captivity, but Castro killed it by snapping its neck after it bit him while trying to protect Knight. DeJesus told law enforcement that Castro raped her, but she did not believe that he ever impregnated her.
On Christmas Day 2006, Castro allegedly ordered Knight to assist in the birth of Berry's child, which took place in a small inflatable swimming pool, and threatened to kill her if the baby did not survive. At one point, the baby stopped breathing, but Knight was able to resuscitate her. Castro occasionally took Berry's daughter out of the house, including to visit his mother; she called him "daddy" and Castro's mother "grandmother". In 2013, he showed one of his adult daughters a picture of the child and said that she was his girlfriend's daughter from a previous relationship; he had told others that she was his granddaughter. Berry taught her daughter how to read and write.
According to a statement from the CPD, officers 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. Neighbors stated that they had called the police about suspicious activity observed at the home, but police claim that they have no record of any such calls. Castro's son Anthony reported that there were certain areas of the house that were locked and inaccessible. He also mentioned an occasion three weeks before the women's escape when Castro asked him if Berry would ever be found. Anthony said that he told Castro that Berry was likely dead, to which Castro responded: "Really? You think so?"