by John Glatt
“He threatened me lots of times with it,” recalled Angel. “He would say, ‘Act up again, you’ll be in that back room with the mannequin.’”
On one occasion, Nilda came home with bags full of groceries. As she walked in, Castro leapt into the doorway in front of her, brandishing the mannequin. The poor woman was so terrified she fell down the stairs, smashing her head open.
One day their eldest daughter, Angie, managed to pick the lock on the basement door and sneaked downstairs.
“We went snooping,” she recalled, “and I remember there being a fish tank down there, which is odd because there was nobody … to look at the fish.”
She also saw the mannequin as well as a “porch-type, two-seat swing.” After poking around she relocked the basement door, and her father never found out she had gone down there.
* * *
Ariel Castro had now joined the Roberto Ocasio Latin Jazz Project. And whenever he was away overnight playing out-of-town gigs, he’d lock Nilda and the children in the house.
“He would go out for days,” said Chris Giannini, a private investigator who later interviewed Nilda. “He had the windows tinted, so you couldn’t see inside, and the doors were padlocked. He would go out to play music and even her sister couldn’t see her.”
Tito DeJesus accompanied him on several out-of-town gigs, and will never forget a weekend trip to Youngstown, Ohio, in summer 1992. Castro had called him up, inviting him to come along, and Tito agreed. The following Saturday, Castro drove him to Youngstown in his blue Mustang. The gig went well and Castro had the bandleader call Tito up onstage to play a couple of numbers.
It was past midnight when they set off on the seventy-five-mile drive back to Cleveland. During the drive, Castro, who had been drinking beer all night, announced he needed to urinate. Tito said they should stop at the next rest area.
“He goes, ‘No, it’s late and I want to get home,’” Tito remembered. “I’m like, ‘Well, park the car off the road.’ He said, ‘No, I don’t want to stop. Grab the wheel.’”
Then, as his passenger nervously took the wheel, Castro opened the driver’s door and started urinating out of the car, as they were traveling around ninety miles per hour up the Ohio Turnpike.
“What the hell are you doing?” asked a terrified Tito. “Are you crazy? We’re going to get in an accident.”
But Ariel Castro just laughed as he retook the wheel, and put his foot down hard on the accelerator.
* * *
On Wednesday, March 10, 1993, Ariel Castro called the Cleveland police, accusing two parents of physically assaulting him on his school bus. According to a police report, Castro claimed they had boarded his bus without permission, shoving him back into his driving seat when he attempted to stop them. He said he was uninjured and refused any medical attention.
Later that day, the parents explained to police that their son was being bullied on Castro’s bus, so they took him to the bus stop to protect him. After putting him on the bus that morning, they saw him being attacked by other boys.
“They got on the bus to stop it,” read the police report. “However, [they] were shoved by the driver.”
The case was turned over to the Cleveland School Security Department, but no charges were ever filed.
* * *
In October, Ariel Castro pushed Nilda down a flight of stone steps, cracking her skull and causing her permanent brain damage.
“[He] broke her skull from the front of her head to the back of her head,” said her sister Elida. “Even after her injuries to her head he would still be mean to her.”
Ariel, Jr., grew up in a battlefield, seeing his mother beaten and humiliated on a daily basis. He dreaded the sound of his father’s car in the driveway at night, knowing he would have to protect his mother, and probably be beaten in the process. On one occasion his fatherdragged him down into the basement dungeon and whipped him with a dog chain. Afterward, he told his son how fortunate he was not to have a father who had abandoned him, like his own father had.
“I grew up in a house with a lot of fear and a lot of violence,” Ariel, Jr., said in July 2013. “[My father was] incredibly strict. He had a temper. He wasn’t a monster twenty-four/seven, but if you crossed him there would be consequences … physical consequences.”
But for some reason, Ariel Castro never laid a finger on his daughters.
“He treated my sisters like daddy’s girls,” explained Ariel, Jr. “There was no abuse directed towards them. As a boy I sometimes resented it [when] I saw how they were treated differently than I was.”
Castro’s eldest daughter, Angie, agreed she and her sisters were never physically abused, although they often witnessed their mother’s beatings.
“When Mom and Dad were fighting,” said Angie, “I just wanted to melt into the ground. I’ve seen him basically stomp on her like she was a man.”
* * *
Ariel Castro’s violent behavior was an open secret on Seymour Avenue after Nilda came knocking on her neighbors’ front doors for protection. But mostly neighbors turned a blind eye, not wanting to upset the unpredictable Castro.
“When he used to hit her,” said Jovita Marti, “she used to come over here and ask for help. [Nilda] wanted us to call the police, but my father didn’t want to get involved with the police … because Castro will get mad at him. So we helped her and let her stay in the house until Castro calmed down, and she could go home again.”
* * *
At the end of November, a few weeks after he threw her down the steps, Nilda began suffering seizures and was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic for brain surgery. During the operation, doctors found she had a blood clot in her brain, which had hardened into a tumor.
“Dr. Hahn, who was doing the surgery, found meningioma,” Nilda later testified. “It’s a brain tumor.”
When the surgeon asked later what could have caused it, Nilda told him how Castro had thrown her down the steps. Dr. Hahn said the timing definitely accounted for the size of the tumor, which was inoperable and would eventually prove fatal. The next day she was discharged.
On Sunday, December 26, at 7:20 P.M., less than a month after her brain surgery, a drunken Ariel Castro came home and attacked Nilda. He threw her to the ground and started kicking her head and body. When their terrified twelve-year-old son ran out the front door to summon help, Castro chased him along Seymour Avenue, as Nilda locked the front door and called the police.
By the time a squad car arrived at 2207 Seymour Avenue, Ariel Castro had disappeared. The police officers started searching for him, but a few minutes later a dispatcher ordered them back to 2207 Seymour, where a furious Castro was now trying to break in.
They pulled up to see Castro pounding on the front door, screaming for Nilda to let him in. But on seeing the police he fled.
“These officers chased the arrested male and caught him in the rear of 2117 Seymour,” Lieutenant Caveit wrote in his official report of the incident. “At that time, the male was placed in ZC (zone car) and read his constitutional rights which he stated he understood.”
A tearful Nilda then told the officers that she had recently undergone brain surgery and suffered seizures.
“The victim states that [Ariel Castro] threw her to the ground, hitting her about the head and face and kicking her body,” read the report. “She had brain surgery a month ago. Her head is very sensitive. Victim refused medical attention at this time.”
Nilda signed a misdemeanor complaint against Ariel Castro, who was then read his rights and taken to the Second District Police Station and booked.
The next morning, Nilda informed detectives that she had changed her mind, and wanted all domestic violence charges against Castro dropped. She then came into the detective bureau and signed a statement to that effect.
Later that day, the Ariel Castro case was reviewed by Cleveland City Prosecutor Richard Kray, who ordered it to go before a grand jury. A few hours later, Ariel Castro appeared in the Cuyahoga Co
unty Court of Common Pleas in front of Judge Shirley Saffold, who freed him on $25,000 bail.
In February 1994, a grand jury declined to charge him with domestic violence, after Nilda Figueroa denied that the beating had ever happened, saying it was all her fault. Ariel Castro was then discharged with a clean record.
Eleven years later, Nilda would admit that right before she was due to testify in front of the grand jury, Castro had met her in front of the courthouse. He offered her money and a new car and promised to treat her better if she did not testify against him. When she refused, Castro threatened to kill her and their children if she went ahead.
“He said, ‘Look, bitch!’” Nilda would later testify under oath, “‘If you do I’m gonna kill you, and I’m going to take care of the kids; I mean, kill the kids too.’ So I was scared.”
Frightened for her and her children’s lives, Nilda then went into the courthouse and told the grand jury it had never happened.
“I said that,” she said, “just so he wouldn’t hurt me or the kids anymore.”
* * *
A few days later, Ariel Castro moved out of 2207 Seymour Avenue and in with his mother, Lillian, and two brothers. But he would still arrive at the house without warning, demanding to see his children.
“He would show up uninvited,” said Nilda, “although [he] was not living with me on Seymour Avenue. He attacked me again late one night after I had surgery. While I was down on the ground, [he] kicked me in the head. His son, Ariel, witnessed the attack and ran from the house to get help.”
Nilda then walked out of 2207 Seymour Avenue for the last time, taking her four children to live with their grandmother on Corning Avenue.
Within hours, Ariel Castro had moved back into the house, and began fortifying it with chain-link fences, mortise locks and deadbolts.
* * *
On November 29, 1994, seventy-four-year-old Ernesto Santiago went to check on his rental property at 2211 Seymour Avenue, and discovered his chain-link fence was missing. He looked next door and saw an identical fence in Ariel Castro’s garden. Then he knocked on Castro’s front door to ask him about it.
“[Ariel Castro] became upset,” read a subsequent police report. “He picked up a shovel and attempted to hit [Santiago] … and told him he was going to take care of him. Santiago was so afraid he left.”
The police report was again referred to the Cleveland prosecutor, who took no further action.
4
BREAKING FREE
A few weeks later, thirty-one-year-old Nilda Figueroa had another brain surgery after suffering further seizures. Before the operation, she reluctantly asked Ariel Castro if he could look after their children while she recovered. He refused, saying they were not his problem anymore.
“He said he didn’t have enough room in his house,” said Nilda. “I mean … it has five bedrooms and two bathrooms.”
After the operation, Nilda was put on a program of neurologic physical therapy, with regular outpatient appointments at Grace Hospital. One day in the waiting room, hospital security guard Fernando Colon saw her looking dazed, as she was recovering from yet another beating by Castro.
“I asked her if she would be able to walk to the X-ray zone,” said Colon, “and offered to get her a wheelchair. She said yes, so I took her in.”
Over the next few weeks, Nilda struck up a friendship with the handsome thirty-year-old security guard, telling him how she had been beaten for years.
“When I saw her injuries,” he said. “I offered my help. She paused for a little bit and said, ‘Yes, I’m tired of this. I need to get out of this situation.’”
Colon told her that although she had moved out of his house and in with her mother, Castro still knew where she was.
“I said, ‘He doesn’t know me or where I live,’” said Colon. “So let’s get you out of here. And that’s what I did.”
At the end of July 1995, Nilda and her four children moved into Fernando Colon’s house on West Fifty-third Street. They soon became engaged, with Fernando giving her a diamond ring.
Ariel Castro found out only after his daughter Emily called him from Colon’s landline one night. He was furious.
“So he got my number,” said Colon, “and that night he just kept calling and calling and calling. And I let Nilda talk to him. I said, ‘Look, tell him that you’re done with him and to leave you alone. And if he doesn’t we’ll press charges against him, and this time they’re going to go through.’”
When an angry Castro started berating her, Colon grabbed the phone.
“I told him, ‘You need to leave her alone,’” recalled Colon. “He said that she was his wife, but I said, ‘No, she’s not your wife because you did not marry her. She doesn’t want to be with you anymore. Don’t call my phone again.’”
Then Ariel Castro swore revenge on Fernando Colon.
“He [said] he would get even with him,” said Nilda in 2005, “for taking me away from him.”
Castro also attempted to turn his son, now in his freshman year of high school, against his new stepfather.
“He constantly tried to undermine him,” Ariel, Jr., later testified. “He told me, ‘Yeah, he’s gonna get his.’”
Soon afterward, Ariel, Jr., stayed the night at 2207 Seymour Avenue.
“[My father] took me to school the next morning,” said Ariel, Jr. “We stopped near [Fernando’s] house at a stop sign, and he looked over at the house and he said to me, ‘You know what your mom’s doing in there?’ And I kind of looked over. He said, ‘She’s ho-ing in there.’ He asked me if I knew what that meant, and I said, ‘Yeah.’”
* * *
Over the next few months, Nilda began to get her self-confidence back. For the first time in years she was happy. Fernando Colon got on well with her four children, who gradually accepted him as their new stepfather. And Colon tried to provide them with a stable home life for the first time in their lives.
“Nilda and those kids were psychologically injured,” said Colon. “He just had them all messed up with his threats. They’d seen him beat their mother, and he had the environment under his control for so long, nobody could do or say anything.”
Ariel Castro now started showing up at Colon’s house day or night without warning, demanding to take his kids out. When Colon refused to allow it and ordered him to leave, Castro would argue and threaten.
“I told him to his face,” said Colon, “‘You’re an abusive man. I don’t know what you’re going to do to these kids.’”
Finally, Colon told him to move on with his life and stop contacting Nilda and the kids.
“And he said, ‘One day I’m going to get you back,’” Colon remembered. “‘I’m going to destroy your life.’”
* * *
On May 16, 1996, Fernando Colon filed a criminal complaint, accusing Ariel Castro of attempting to run him down with his car. A police report stated the incident happened at 7:45 A.M., while Colon was waiting in his car with the children for the bus to school.
“The children’s father pulled up behind him,” read the report. “He walked up the victim’s auto [and] was very profane. He told the victim that he better watch himself.”
When Colon tried to reason with Castro, he got back into his car and began to drive straight at him.
“Victim states that [Ariel Castro] would have run him over if he did not get out of his way,” stated the police report. “This is an ongoing problem.”
The case was sent to the Cleveland prosecutor, but once again no further action was ever taken.
After that incident, to everyone’s relief, Ariel Castro backed off and had little contact with his children, staying out of their lives.
“He would call them about once a month,” said Nilda, “and only saw them about three times a year.”
* * *
Four months later, Ariel Castro came under Cleveland police scrutiny yet again, after his neighbor Ayana Sickes sued him over a property dispute. Castro then drove over to
her house and stopped in the driveway.
“[Ariel Castro] screamed out of his auto window, ‘I’m gonna get you, bitch!’” read the official report. “[He] then drove off.”
A police report was sent to the Cleveland prosecutor, who took no further action.
* * *
“On January 22, 1997, Cuyahoga Juvenile Court Division Judge Betty Willis Ruben awarded Nilda Figueroa full custody of the four Castro children, terminating their father’s visitation rights.”
“She told me it was not a good idea for Mr. Castro to be around my children,” said Nilda, “because of his abusive nature.”
Ariel Castro did not even bother to turn up at the hearing, but when Nilda told him that from now on she wanted their children to use her surname of Figueroa, he flew into a rage and refused to allow it.
* * *
On March 16, 1998, a violent fight broke out on Ariel Castro’s school bus, while he was taking pupils home from school. As he was listening to loud Latin music on his headphones, he had no idea what was happening and carried on driving.
When he finally realized, he stopped the bus, ordering everybody to sit down. He then handed one of the fighters a tissue, to wipe off the blood from a badly cut face and lip. After the crying student declined medical help, Castro carried on driving his route, without reporting the incident.
The next day, the Cleveland City School District found out about the fight, resulting in Castro being suspended for five days.
* * *
On August 12, 1998, Nilda gave birth to Fernando Colon’s son, Ryan. They had just moved to West 110th Street, and were still engaged with no immediate plans to marry.
A year later, Ariel Castro, Jr., graduated from Wilbur Wright High School with honors, and was accepted by Bowling Green State University to study journalism. Before leaving, he said good-bye to his father and proudly showed off his diploma.
“Who cares about that?” Ariel Castro scoffed. “You don’t do anything around here.”
