The Lost Girls (17 page)

“They’re so bizarre,” he said. “It was like one of those strange reality shows. I mean, this family and family dynamics [are] pretty bizarre. But the reality is that’s their reality. That’s their life. That’s the way their family traditions and customs operate.

“Do I think a frame-up took place? I think that is a derogatory statement. I think what happened here is that everybody gets something with Fernando out of the way.”

He then asked Judge Russo to acquit Fernando Colon on all charges, and let him walk out a free man.

In his rebuttal, Prosecutor Kosko condemned the defense for attacking Ariel Castro’s good character.

“This demonization of Mr. Castro has no basis here,” he said angrily. “He’s obsessed with their sexuality? I didn’t see any evidence of that.”

Once again, Kosko admitted “begging” Castro to bring Emily back from Fort Wayne, as her mother was making “no effort” to bring her back to Cleveland.

“And what happens when Emily shows up?” he asked the judge. “Suddenly we’re running to domestic relations court and getting a restraining order.”

On Tuesday, September 6, Judge John Russo convicted Fernando Colon of four counts of gross sexual imposition, relating to Emily and Arlene Castro. He acquitted him of the remaining nine counts. Judge Russo found that Colon was not likely to engage in future acts of sexually violent offenses, deleting the “sexually violent predator” specifications from the guilty counts.

“This court,” said Judge Russo, “after careful and deliberate review of all the evidence, finds that the State of Ohio has presented evidence that this court believes rises to the acceptable legal standard of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Two months later, Judge Russo sentenced Colon to three years of supervised community control, ordering him to register as a sex offender.

That same day, Nilda Figueroa told Fernando Colon that she and Arlene were moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and their relationship was over.

After hearing the guilty verdict, a triumphant Ariel Castro drove back to 2207 Seymour Avenue to celebrate his victory. That night, under cover of darkness, he unchained his three prisoners from his van and brought them back into the house, disguised in wigs and dark glasses. It would be the last time they would leave the house for almost eight years.

In September, Cleveland Domestic Relations Court officers arrived at 2207 Seymour Avenue to serve Ariel Castro with a summons to attend a court hearing about Nilda Figueroa’s protection order against him. After three unsuccessful attempts to get an answer, Castro came to the court and picked up the summons.

The hearing was held in November, with Castro and his attorney both attending. But Nilda’s attorney Robert Ferreri did not show up, as he was in juvenile court that day. Nilda then decided not to proceed and the judge dismissed the case, leaving Ariel Castro with a clean record.

In late October, Gina DeJesus’s parents appeared on a
Maury Povich Show
segment focusing on missing children. After Felix and Nancy made a national plea for any information about their daughter, Povich introduced Long Island psychic Jeffrey Wands, who had studied their case.

Wands said that he believed Gina’s kidnapper was a sexual predator, who had spoken to her several times. He told them their daughter was still alive, and her abductor knew the area from where she was taken very well. He described him as a black man with facial hair in his late twenties to early thirties, around five feet nine inches tall.

That Christmas, Louwana Miller was hospitalized for pancreatitis and other serious health issues. Two months later, on March 2, she died of heart failure at a rehabilitation center in Lakewood, Ohio.

Friends said that after TV psychic Sylvia Browne had declared Amanda dead, Louwana lost hope of ever finding her daughter alive.

“She died of a broken heart,” said Louwana’s sister Theresa Miller. “After all the stress, she would say, ‘I can’t eat. I don’t know if Mandy ate.’ My sister was a very strong person, but it took a lot out of her.”

Her friend and missing-persons activist Art McKoy said Louwana went downhill after
The Montel Williams Show.

“[She] was never the same,” said McKoy. “I think she had given up.”

WOIO-TV news reporter Bill Safos agreed that she died of a broken heart.

“And people ask me, ‘How do you know that?’” he said. “Because I was listening to her heart break for three years.”

That afternoon, Michelle and Gina learned of her death on the TV evening news. They were shocked when the reporter said Louwana had died of heart failure, as Michelle remembered Castro boasting of calling her on Amanda’s cell phone.

A few hours later, Castro unlocked Michelle and Gina’s chains, and let them walk around the second floor. Michelle wandered over to Amanda’s white bedroom and went in, saying she was so sorry about her mother. Amanda looked puzzled and asked what she was talking about. Then, Michelle realized she did not know and broke the sad news that her mother had passed away. Amanda began to cry.

“I backed out of the door,” recalled Michelle, “wanting to give her some peace and quiet. When I was back on my mattress I could hear her sobbing. I felt so terrible for Amanda—and so furious this man had stolen her from her family.”

Several weeks later, Ariel Castro became a grandfather for the second time after Emily gave birth to a baby girl she named Janyla. She was now living in a house in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with her boyfriend, DeAngelo Gonzalez, and her mother and sister Arlene. It was a very turbulent relationship and Emily would often accuse Gonzalez of having affairs.

At around the same time, Amanda Berry became pregnant with Ariel Castro’s baby. She started suffering morning sickness and throwing up in her room. One morning, when all the women were having breakfast in the kitchen, Amanda complained of feeling nauseated.

That night, Castro told Michelle that he thought Amanda could be pregnant. Michelle replied she probably was and Castro smiled and seemed pleased. Michelle then told him to take better care of Amanda during her pregnancy than he had with her.

But Michelle suspected that, as Ariel Castro considered Amanda to be his wife, he would want to keep her baby.

As Amanda’s belly swelled over the next few months, she never acknowledged that she was pregnant to the other girls. Michelle was dying to ask her if she wanted the baby, and if Castro had ever threatened to make her abort it, but she never did.

During her pregnancy, he kept Amanda away from Michelle and Gina, who rarely saw her.

“I could only guess what must have been going through her head,” wrote Michelle later. “I kept thinking about my babies—the one I was trying to get back to and the ones this monster had killed.”

Ariel Castro now started treating Michelle Knight worse than ever. He fed her only once a day on stale leftovers, and she was allowed just one shower a week. She was his “punching bag,” suffering his fists at the least provocation.

“I was the only one he physically hit,” Michelle later told
People
magazine. “I was the one being told I was ugly.”

At one point, Amanda asked her why he treated her so badly, and Michelle said it was because he disliked her.

“He was the type of person who wanted to break everyone in the house,” explained Michelle, “and I was considered unbreakable.”

Whenever Michelle stood up to him, Castro would threaten to cut open her uterus end to end, showing her the black rubber chain he would tie through it.

“And he would hang it right in front of the door where I was sleeping,” she said. “And he would [say], ‘Remember that.’”

Chained together on the bed in the pink room, Michelle and Gina forged a uniquely close relationship.

“Gina and I had that bond like I never had,” Michelle said. “It was not normal for me to ever have a friend.”

Michelle always tried to rally Gina’s spirits and protect her against Castro.

“I would hold her hand,” Michelle remembered, “so she could squeeze when she was in pain.”

Amanda was always treated far better than his other two prisoners. As his “wife,” she enjoyed better food, clothes and blankets. And it set her apart from them in the house.

“She got basically whatever she wanted,” said Michelle. “She was the wife-type of person. I was the punching bag.”

And the ruthless manipulator used this to distance the women from each other.

“[Amanda] was like one of those girls that really didn’t get it,” said Michelle. “She would see it but she wouldn’t believe it. She wants to think that it wasn’t happening. He treated her totally different, so she looked at the situation in a different way.”

On July 4, Cleveland police cars converged on Seymour Avenue to break up a street fight, just a block away from Ariel Castro’s house. More than twenty people fought with baseball bats, sending a pregnant woman to the hospital.

A few days later, Michelle and Gina were sweltering in their pink bedroom, writing in their journals, when they heard a little child’s voice downstairs. A few minutes later Ariel Castro came into their room, saying he was taking care of his eldest daughter Angie’s young son, and wanted to bring him upstairs. He told them to conceal their chains, as he didn’t want to scare the baby, threatening to shoot them if they tried anything.

The girls were baffled, as Castro had never brought anyone upstairs to meet them before, secretly praying the little boy would tell his mother about them later. First, Castro brought his grandson into Amanda’s room and proudly introduced him. Then he brought him into the pink bedroom to meet Michelle and Gina.

“This is my grandson,” he said with a smile on his face, as the girls waved to the little boy.

Suddenly, the toddler burst into tears and screamed for his mommy, and Castro put a hand over his mouth and took him downstairs again.

Several weeks later, according to Michelle, Ariel Castro’s two eldest daughters, Angie and Emily, arrived at 2207 Seymour Avenue to search the house. They had brought along Angie’s husband and Emily’s boyfriend to help them. Michelle believes that they had become suspicious that something bad was going on in the house.

Shortly before his family arrived, Castro unchained all the women and marched them downstairs into the basement. He then chained them to the large pole in the middle, winding duct tape around their heads and stuffing dirty socks in their mouths. He told them that if anyone made a sound while his family were there, he would shoot her.

A few minutes later, Michelle heard voices upstairs, and a woman demanding that he unlock the basement so they could go down there.

“Then one of the younger boys came to the basement door,” recalled Michelle, “saying, ‘They’re down there. I hear music.’”

Castro told them they couldn’t go down, as it was under renovation and it was flooded. The three girls held their breath, afraid to scream for fear of what Castro would do to them.

After his family had left, Castro came back into the basement, took off the duct tape over their mouths and fed them a meal. Then he went back up and left them all together in the basement.

For the next three weeks they remained chained in the basement. Every night he would come down and take one of the girls upstairs for sex, and then bring her down again. While they lay chained in the dark basement, they exchanged stories about how they had been kidnapped, and what Castro had done to them. But Amanda was always vague, just agreeing that she had also suffered the same indignities.

“I figured Amanda was too scared or exhausted to talk,” wrote Michelle. “I felt sorry for her.”

Finally, Castro brought them back upstairs, putting Amanda by herself in the white bedroom and Michelle and Gina in the pink one.

On Thursday, September 21, Cleveland police arrested two men on suspicion of the aggravated murder of Gina DeJesus. After an anonymous tip that her body was buried under a concrete garage floor on West Fiftieth Street, detectives arrested thirty-five-year-old registered sexual predator Matthew Hurayt and John McDonough.

At 10:00
A.M.,
after Gina’s parents had been briefed, dozens of police and FBI agents began searching the suspects’ four-bedroom colonial house. As helicopters hovering above shot TV news footage, CSI specialists began cutting the recently poured concrete floor in the garage into sections, before a backhoe moved in and dug five feet deep into the foundations, looking for Gina’s body. A cadaver dog was led around the garage, sniffing for human remains.

During the search, many family members and friends arrived at the DeJesus house to comfort them, including one of Amanda Berry’s aunts and Shakira Johnson’s mother. Ariel Castro also came to offer his support.

At a midday news conference, carried live on all Cleveland TV stations, a police spokesman said they had found “a dungeon” in the house, and a police dog had picked up the scent of a dead body.

The search finally ended at 7:30
P.M.
when police announced it was a false alarm and the two suspects would be released the next day.

After hearing the news, the DeJesus family supporters burst into cheers and offered a communal prayer for Gina’s safe return.

Nancy Ruiz told a TV reporter she was certain Gina was still alive, appealing to whoever took her daughter to release her immediately.

“Just let her go,” she sobbed, “so she can come home.”

In early December, as Amanda Berry entered the final stages of her third trimester, Michelle Knight became pregnant for the fourth time. After missing a period, Michelle told Gina that she was pregnant and was terrified about what Ariel Castro would do to her this time, now that Amanda was also expecting.

“Michelle was pregnant most of the time,” Gina later told investigators. “She had stuff coming out of her breasts.”

When Castro found out, he starved her for three weeks and forced her to drink soda pop.

“I started to throw up and couldn’t keep anything down,” said Michelle. “I would try and steal food just to eat.”