by John Glatt
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.”
18
MIRACLE AT CHRISTMAS
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.”
Castro kept her upstairs and stopped her from going into the kitchen, ordering Gina not to feed her.
“She’ll do it anyway,” said Michelle, “because she didn’t want me to hurt.”
Michelle vomited continually during this pregnancy, enduring three weeks of agonizing pain as she starved. Every night, as they lay chained together in bed, Gina would rub Michelle’s stomach to reassure her and try to ease the pain.
Finally, losing patience, Ariel Castro punched and kicked Michelle in the stomach, until she aborted their baby.
* * *
On Christmas Day, Amanda Berry went into labor and Ariel Castro brought her into the basement to give birth. As her contractions became stronger, Castro ordered Michelle, who was still recovering from losing her own baby, into the basement to deliver Amanda’s. In preparation he had bought a black plastic children’s swimming pool for Amanda to sit in, so there would be no mess.
Down in the filthy basement, Castro and Michelle were sitting on either side of Amanda as the baby started to emerge. Suddenly, Amanda pushed and the baby’s head became stuck. The baby began turning blue from lack of oxygen.
Michelle, who had no medical training, told her to stop pushing, as the baby could not breathe. But Amanda said she couldn’t help it.
“And I told her, ‘Oh, I see the baby’s head,’” said Michelle. “And the baby is blue.”
Michelle said they had to get the baby out right now, grabbing Amanda’s arms to support her.
“When I say, ‘One, two, three,’” Michelle told her, “I want you to push as hard as possible and grab onto my hands.”
Finally, as Amanda held Michelle’s hands, the baby came out but was not breathing. When Ariel Castro saw this he screamed at Michelle, telling her it
was her fault and threatening to kill her if his baby died.
“So I laid the baby flat on her back,” said Michelle, “and lifted her head up.”
Michelle began breathing into the baby’s mouth and doing compressions with two fingers, as Castro kept threatening to kill her. Then the baby started screaming.
It was a baby girl and Ariel Castro named her Jocelyn, keeping the placenta in his refrigerator as a memento.
* * *
Soon after Jocelyn was born, Ariel Castro took off Amanda’s chains, so her baby would never have to see them. But it would be another two years before he would remove Gina and Michelle’s. The tiny baby moved into Amanda’s bedroom and she took care of it.
The new baby in the house raised everyone’s spirits. Ariel Castro now saw his three hostages and his new daughter as a family, although he didn’t hesitate to beat them at any opportunity.
After seeing four of her pregnancies brutally terminated, Michelle was delighted that something positive had finally come out of 2207 Seymour Avenue.
“It was just so amazing to bring a new life into the world,” she said, “but it was also traumatic at the same time. I knew that if I didn’t get her to breathe, that he would have killed me right then and there.”
* * *
Three months later, on April 4, 2007, nineteen-year-old Emily Castro repeatedly slashed her eleven-month-old baby’s throat with a knife. Emily had recently stopped taking her medicine for manic depression and become delusional. She believed that her boyfriend, DeAngelo Gonzalez, had slept with her two sisters and mother, who all planned to kill her and take her baby.
The previous day, Gonzalez had moved out of their apartment, leaving their baby, Janyla, behind. Emily had called her mother, who came over and hardly recognized her.
“Her eyes didn’t seem the same,” said Nilda. “She was not there.”
At around 6:30 P.M. the next day, Emily picked up her infant daughter and carried her into the garage. She then slashed the baby’s throat four times with a sharp knife, before carrying her back into the house, covered in blood and struggling for breath. Nilda grabbed her granddaughter out of Emily’s arms and ran into the street, screaming for help.
After they left, Emily tried to commit suicide using the same knife she had tried to kill her baby with. She slashed her wrists and stabbed her neck, before staggering outside to a creek behind her home, where she tried to drown herself.
Meanwhile in the street, Nilda desperately flagged down a young student named Heather Powell, showing her the baby, who was bleeding from deep cuts to the throat.
“The bitch tried to kill the baby,” Nilda told Powell, who misunderstood, thinking Janyla had been bitten by a dog. She then called 911, reporting that a baby had been attacked by a dog.
As they were waiting for medics to arrive, a nurse who was passing by tried to stop the baby’s bleeding with a towel.
When Fort Wayne police arrived, they found Nilda Figueroa holding her granddaughter, who was covered in blood. A few minutes later, Emily gave herself up to police, drenched in blood, mud and water.
She was then arrested for attempted murder and battery, as she and her daughter were taken to the hospital for emergency treatment.
The next day, Emily Castro was interviewed in the hospital by Fort Wayne Police Detective Taya Strausborger. Wearing a hospital gown, her wrists heavily bandaged from her suicide attempt, Emily told the detective that she had been hearing voices and believed her boyfriend was cheating with her sisters and mother.
“It really spaced me out,” Emily told the detective. “They were going to kill me and take my daughter.”
In the ninety-minute videotaped interview, a tearful Emily said that if she was going to be murdered, she wanted to take her baby with her.
Later, Fernando Colon would say that he was not surprised what had happened to Emily, after Ariel Castro had cut him out of their lives.
“Everything went down the drain,” he said in 2013. “They started using drugs. They got pregnant. Everything that I tried to prevent happened right after Ariel made those accusations, because they didn’t have me there to stop it.”
* * *
On Saturday, April 22, Amanda Berry celebrated her twenty-first birthday, one day after the fourth anniversary of her abduction. At seven that night, her family organized a “Mandy’s Birthday Prayer Vigil,” outside the Burger King where she was last seen.
“Let’s stand in for Louwana and pray for Mandy’s safe return,” read the flier, with a photograph of Amanda and her late mother. It also invited supporters to choose a biblical passage and post it on Amanda’s newly inaugurated website at www.amandaberry.net.
The official flier for her vigil quoted Isiah 54:17, saying, “No weapons formed against (Amanda Berry) shall prosper!! The word becomes flesh. Wherever she is Jesus is! God is the word!!”
* * *
On July 9, fourteen-year-old Ashley Summers went missing. The pretty Cleveland teenager, who bore a striking resemblance to Amanda Berry, disappeared in the same West Side neighborhood as she and Gina DeJesus had.
Detectives investigating the case at the time believed it might be connected to Amanda and Gina’s disappearances.
* * *
That summer, Ariel Castro was highly visible on the Cleveland Latin music scene. Most weekends he played at clubs all over the city with his various bands.
“He wanted to be in the spotlight,” recalled Belinda’s Nightclub owner, William Perez. “He wanted to be the kid.”
Pianist Tito DeJesus, who often played with him, said Castro loved attention.
“Ariel would stand in the middle of the stage playing,” said Tito. “I mean, that’s a weird spot for a bass player. Often when he was playing he would go into a daze. We’d tell him to pay attention, but he would close his eyes and just drift off. We used to always make fun of him.”
Castro was now playing with Grupo Fuego, one of the top Latin bands in Cleveland. He was usually late for practices and gigs, offering such lame excuses that they ended up firing him.
He also played sporadically with Grupo Kanon over a fifteen-year period, at various clubs, churches and cultural events. Bandleader Ivan “Popo” Ruiz later described him as weird and crazy.
“He could do the job,” Ruiz told the Plain Dealer, “but he became increasingly defensive and unreliable. It was like he couldn’t leave the house.”
Ruiz, who owns a restaurant and is a pillar of Cleveland’s Latin music scene, thought it strange the bassist rarely allowed anyone into his house, to help carry out heavy amplifiers and musical equipment.
“He wouldn’t let me pull up the driveway,” recalled Ruiz. “Said there were nails or something.”
Ruiz also wondered why Castro never stayed overnight in hotel rooms with the other musicians when they played out of town.
“He would say, ‘I have to get home,’” recalled Ruiz. “He was the only one who never stayed. It was weird.”
* * *
After Jocelyn was born, Ariel Castro stopped going into his uncle Cesi’s Caribe bodega, as questions might have been raised if he bought diapers and baby food. Having a new baby in the house gave the three hostages hope that one day things would improve. Amanda was a natural mother and nurtured Jocelyn from the beginning, while her father was always careful to treat the girls better when the baby was around.
“It brought a joy into the house,” said Michelle Knight, “even though there was sadness. It was like having a beautiful light [and there were] smiles and laughter. It made [us] hope that there would be a brighter day.”
* * *
On Tuesday, January 15, 2008, Emily Castro went on trial for the attempted murder of her baby daughter. Waiving her right to a jury trial, Castro, who had been found competent, was pleading an insanity defense. She faced twenty to fifty years in prison if convicted.
Since the attack, Janyla had made a complete recovery and was living with her father, DeAngelo Gonzalez.
On the first day of the three-day trial, Allen County Deputy Prosecutor Stacey Speith briefly outlined the state’s case to Superior Court Judge John F. Surbeck, who would be deciding the outcome. She told the judge how Emily had tried to kill Janyla after her boyfriend broke up with her.
Then defense attorney Zachary Witte said that Emily had suffered from depression since she was thirteen, but she had become paranoid after her daughter’s birth. Witte told the judge that Emily’s maternal instincts had succumbed to her depression.
The prosecution then called student Heather Powell, who described dialing 911 after Nilda ran toward her in the street with her bleeding granddaughter. Emily Castro’s friend and neighbor Shamona Howard told the judge that she was “a caring and compassionate mother,” whom she never thought would harm her baby.
Fort Wayne police officer Christopher Reed then described how Emily Castro had walked up to him, after trying to commit suicide, soaking wet and covered in mud and blood.
On the second day of the trial, prosecutors reviewed Emily’s hospital interrogation. Still recovering from her wounds, with a blanket over her hospital gown, she said she heard voices. And she had believed her mother and two sisters were having an affair with Gonzalez, and wanted to kill her baby.
Watching the video from the defense bench, Emily wept throughout it.
Then Nilda Figueroa testified, telling the judge that her daughter was “paranoid.”
“She didn’t think straight,” Nilda said. “She would think things about people that wasn’t true.”
Nilda said her daughter seemed emotionally distant when she saw her the night before the attack.
“She was so withdrawn,” she said. “That was not my daughter that was there.”
Then Deputy Prosecutor Patricia Pikel asked Nilda why Emily had tried to kill Janyla.
“There’s no way my daughter [would] do that,” Nilda replied.
The prosecutor also asked why the Castro family had not had Emily committed to a psychiatric hospital earlier, if she had posed a danger to herself and other people.
Nilda said the family had been worried Emily would hurt herself, taking her to the Parkview Behavioral Health facility a few months before the incident.
