by John Glatt
Then Pusztay realized that his neighbor had been spying on him from his roof before coming down to confront him.
“The creepiness,” said Pusztay. “I don’t know how long he was up there watching me.”
* * *
At the end of June, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason received a letter from Robert Wolford, an inmate at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility serving a twenty-six-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault. Wolford, twenty-five, claimed he had murdered Amanda Berry with another man, and buried her remains.
After checking out the tip, Mason got a search warrant and ordered digging to start on a vacant lot at West Thirtieth Street and Wade Avenue.
“I had a good feeling,” he told reporters before the digging began. “Thought it was the real deal.”
On Wednesday, July 18, Cuyahoga County sheriff’s deputies drove Wolford to the site. Then, in shackles and handcuffs, the orange-jumpsuited prisoner walked around the lot for several hours, pointing out specific spots of interest.
At seven the next morning, several dozen FBI agents and Cleveland police officers arrived with shovels and dirt sifters, to begin digging up a sixty-by-eight-foot area. A cadaver dog and a backhoe arrived a few hours later.
At around 6:00 P.M. the digging stopped for the day with nothing being found.
“That’s a waste of money,” Pedro Castro told a Fox-8 news reporter, as he walked by.
During the day, Amanda Berry’s worried family gathered at Beth Serrano’s house to await the outcome.
“I don’t want her to be gone,” said Amanda’s aunt Theresa Miller, “but we do want closure.”
On Friday morning, the digging continued with a bigger backhoe, as a crowd gathered on Wade Avenue to watch. Daniel Marti was there and ran into his old friend Ariel Castro.
“Castro was around there helping the cops put that crime ribbon around,” said Marti. “And he was saying, ‘They’re not going to find Amanda there.’”
At around 2:30 P.M., police finally called off the search, without any trace of Amanda Berry being found.
Cleveland Police First District Commander Thomas McCartney voiced his frustration.
“We had our hopes up,” he told reporters. “Everyone had their hopes up, but the other side of the coin is, we still hope for the family. Maybe somewhere a girl is still alive.”
After the search was called off, Beth Serrano handed reporters waiting outside her house a handwritten statement.
I want to say thank you to the FBI and the police for their help and support. I’m happy they didn’t find my sister there, because my faith and hope is that she’s coming home. This time is emotional for me and it’s hard for me to keep speaking of this at the moment, but I want to say thank you to everyone. It’s been 9 long years and I’m just wishing someone would say something and bring my sister home.
Thank you
Beth Serrano.
* * *
In January 2013, Robert Wolford was sentenced to an additional four and a half years in prison, after admitting making up the entire story, just to get out of state prison for a couple of days. The total cost of the two-day dig was $150,000.
* * *
That long hot summer of 2012, Michelle and Gina started getting bitten by bedbugs. Ariel Castro had originally found their filthy mattress in an alley, and over the years it had become heavily stained with semen and blood. When Gina first woke up itching and covered in tiny red dots, they had thought it was chickenpox. Then, Michelle saw a bedbug crawling on the mattress and realized what was going on. Castro’s first reaction when Michelle showed him a bug was to close the door to Amanda and Jocelyn’s bedroom, so they would not get infested too.
He then brought in a plastic sheet and placed it over the mattress, which did nothing to stop the bedbugs, which were now attacking Michelle. The two women spent the sweltering summer locked in the pink bedroom, sweating on the plastic sheet and being eaten alive by bedbugs.
* * *
In September, Michelle became pregnant for the fifth time since she had been taken. And soon afterward, Castro took Jocelyn to a carnival, returning with hot dogs smothered in mustard. Michelle was highly allergic to mustard, and as a little girl her mother had rushed her to the emergency room after she ate some deviled eggs. Doctors had warned that mustard could kill her.
Castro was well aware of this, as Michelle would never eat McDonald’s burgers, if he hadn’t asked them to hold the mustard. When she refused the hot dog, because of the mustard, he threw it on her mattress, took out his gun and threatened to shoot her if she didn’t eat it.
So she wiped off some of the mustard with her T-shirt and ate the hot dog. Immediately her face swelled up and she couldn’t breathe. Castro told her to get over it, as he walked out of the bedroom, locking the door behind him.
That night Michelle writhed on the bed in agony and thought she was going to die. Her entire body turned bright red and her tongue and throat went numb. Several days later, Castro brought in a bottle of cough syrup for her to take. And for the next four days and nights Michelle was in such terrible pain, she couldn’t even move off the mattress.
“I told Gina, ‘Just kill me,’” she recalled. “‘Just put the pillow over my head and kill me. Let me go.’”
But Gina refused, saying that she must stay alive for her son, Joey. All through her sickness, Gina nursed her night and day, urging her to stay strong and fight.
* * *
At 9:30 A.M. on Thursday, September 20, Ariel Castro parked his school bus 978 outside Scranton School and went home. School principal Troy Beadling became concerned when he noticed the yellow bus parked outside his school, as it was blocking the emergency lane used by the fire department. After making repeated appeals to the driver on the school’s public address system, as well as checking all the restrooms, he went inside the bus, which was empty. Then he called the Ridge Road Bus Depot to report the abandoned bus.
Four hours after leaving it abandoned, Ariel Castro returned and drove it away for his afternoon route.
He was ordered to appear at a disciplinary hearing on October 4. Now facing termination for his fourth serious offense, Castro handwrote a rambling, almost incoherent letter of explanation, which he presented at the hearing.
I went to Scranton School after McKinley 9:30 A.M. to get a schedule of pre-school kids days off. Teachers were not available. I left my bus parked in front of the school and walked home two blocks away.
I returned a while later got on bus and went to 49th punched clock to do P.M. Route Lincoln West. My midday was canceled for that day is reason for leaving bus there. Bus was secured and off.
I went home to rest. I’ve been helping Depot with many routes that needed coverage. I felt tired that day, Scranton is my school; so I didn’t think anything wrong with parking there. I do apologize.
Thanks Kindly, A. Castro.
In an official memo, Castro’s boss, Cleveland Metropolitan School District Transportation Director Ann Carlson, said that his excuse of not realizing his route had been cancelled was unacceptable.
“Notice was made over the radio,” she wrote, “and posted within the depot several days before September 20th. He did not notify the depot nor dispatch that he was leaving the unit unattended. This is Mr. Castro’s fourth demonstration of lack of judgment. I am recommending his termination.”
On November 6, Ariel Castro was officially fired by the Cleveland Metropolitan School District after nearly twenty-two years of service.
Later, Ariel Castro would claim he had deliberately gotten himself terminated, as he could no longer handle the pressures of a full-time job and his demanding home life.
“I started slacking off,” he explained, “trying to get fired because I knew it was just too much. This job is too stressful and coming home to my situation. And I just couldn’t juggle both of them.”
* * *
After losing his job, Ariel Castro sunk into a depression and becam
e even more violent. He stopped rising early for his morning route, and his hostages soon noticed that he no longer wore his bus driver’s uniform.
Finally Amanda asked him if he had lost his job, and Castro admitted he’d been fired.
“Now he was at home all the time,” said Michelle, “he assaulted me at all hours of the day and night.”
He also started taking Jocelyn out with him more, shopping and on trips to the bank.
One morning his brother Pedro saw him at McDonald’s eating breakfast with the pretty little girl, and asked who she was. Castro replied that she was the daughter of a girlfriend. When Pedro asked where her mother was, he replied she was grocery shopping.
“So I left it at that,” said Pedro, “because he’s with this little girl and they’re going to have breakfast.”
Three weeks later, Pedro saw his brother’s red truck parked outside Burger King and went inside to see him.
“Again he’s with this little girl,” said Pedro Castro, “and then I questioned him, ‘Where’s the mother?’ ‘Oh, she had to do something.’ So I just let it go. I believed it.”
Over the next few months Ariel Castro was often seen driving Jocelyn to nearby Roberto Clementi Park to play with her pet Chihuahua, named Dina.
“I saw Castro with that little girl … at least twice a week,” said neighbor Moses Cintron. “They pulled up in his red pickup truck, and he helped her out because it was so high. She got friendly with my dogs. She used to come and pet them.”
Jovita Marti said she frequently saw her neighbor with the little girl, whom she presumed was his granddaughter.
“He’d have a little Chihuahua in the back of his red truck,” she recalled, “and he’s with the little girl in the front. They went to the park and he always took her to the U.S. Bank on Clark Street and West Twenty-fifth.”
There were even rumors that one of Ariel Castro’s family was giving the little girl regular lessons. Later, Ariel Castro would tell detectives that Jocelyn had started asking him why he was locking Amanda, Michelle and Gina in their rooms whenever he went out. And she was begging him not to lock them in anymore.
* * *
In late November, Grupo Kanon fired him from the band. After fifteen years of putting up with his arrogant behavior and lateness, they had had enough and found a new bassist. Bandleader Ivan Ruiz said the tardy bassist always refused to conform to his strict dress code for the band.
“[I] would tell all the musicians the attire for the gig that night,” said Ruiz, “and he always had to put on different clothing.”
Whenever Ruiz called him out on it, the bassist would get angry.
“He would not like what I would say … and he always gave me excuses,” said Ruiz, “and I’d tell him, ‘I’m sorry, I’m the director of the band and you have to do what I tell you.’”
* * *
On Christmas Day, Jocelyn celebrated her sixth birthday, and her father threw her a party. He bought festive balloons, streamers and a big banner reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and had Amanda and Gina decorate the living room with them, deliberately leaving Michelle, who was now three months pregnant, up in the pink bedroom.
Then he put on a salsa CD and brought Michelle downstairs, instructing her not to join in the festivities, as she was not part of them. Castro then produced a video camera and filmed Jocelyn cutting her birthday cake with Amanda, as everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to her. But he was careful not to film anyone but Amanda and Jocelyn.
“Jocelyn looked up at her mother with a huge smile on her face,” said Michelle. “We clapped. As horrible as I felt inside and out, it was nice to see her happy.”
After the party finished, Castro sent Amanda, Jocelyn and Gina back to their rooms. Then he pointed at the stairs to the basement and ordered Michelle to go down. At the top, he suddenly pushed her full force down the concrete stairs, and she landed on her stomach on the side of a bookcase.
Castro then came in the basement, shouting that he was going to “fix” her once and for all, so she could never have another child. Then he kicked her in the stomach with his heavy boot as hard as he could, as Michelle begged him not to kill another baby. This only seemed to energize Castro, as he kicked her again and again in the stomach. Finally, he hit the side of her head with his open hand and went back upstairs, leaving her on the filthy concrete floor in agony.
When Michelle screamed in pain, he turned up the salsa music and came back into the basement, threatening to kill her if she didn’t stop screaming. He then dragged her back up two flights of stairs and into her room.
Four days later, Michelle started to bleed and Castro brought her into the bathroom.
“You’d better hope that baby is dead!” he told her, as he left, slamming the door. She then pulled down her pants and sat on the toilet seat, and as her body went into convulsions she heard her fetus splash into the water.
With Castro outside screaming at her to hurry up, a tearful Michelle picked her dead baby out of the toilet and apologized to it. He burst in and slapped her in the face, making her drop her fetus.
“It’s your fault!” he screamed at her. “You aborted my baby! I should go and get my gun and blow your head off right now.”
He then went down to the kitchen for a garbage bag and dropped the fetus into it, and threw it in his backyard trash can.
A few minutes later he brought Michelle back to her room, where a terrified Gina was waiting. Then he threw some white paper napkins on the mattress, ordering Michelle to clean herself off.
23
“MIRACLES REALLY DO HAPPEN”
On February 18, 2013, Ariel Castro signed up for Facebook and started immersing himself in social media. On his new profile page, he posted an old photograph of himself with a full beard and leather hat, taken at least twenty years earlier. He listed the barest details for his profile, merely saying he lived in Cleveland, Ohio, studied at Lincoln West High School and was a member of Grupo Fuego.
As he had alienated so many musicians and now rarely got work, he began searching for new musical contacts in the Cleveland Latin music scene.
“When he started on Facebook he friended me,” said Tito DeJesus. “He had never used a computer before and then he started texting. When he saw on Facebook that I was playing in a few bands, he said, ‘Hey man, if you ever need me on the strings.’”
So Tito invited Castro over to his new apartment to listen to some CDs and go over some musical charts.
“He brought a twelve-pack of Corona,” recalled Tito. “So we sat drinking beer and going over songs.”
Once again Castro asked Tito if they had ever found his cousin Gina. When he said they had not, Castro said he prayed to God that they would.
“That was the last time I ever saw him,” said DeJesus.
On Friday, February 28, Castro told his fifty new Facebook friends that he was feeling full of optimism, as winter was almost over.
“This morning,” he wrote, “I woke up to the sound of a churping [sic] cardinal. Yes! Come on spring.”
The next day, his brother Pedro celebrated his fifty-fourth birthday, and the following Tuesday, Castro wrote: “It was a good weekend. Pedro gained yet another year. Bless my bro.”
On March 9, he greeted his Facebook friends, posting, “Good day everyone, and blessings.”
Four days later, Castro texted bandleader Ivan Ruiz, asking for work. In the four months since Grupo Kanon had sacked him he had rarely played onstage.
“He really wanted to come back with the band,” said Ruiz. “I told him, ‘We’ll keep you in mind.’ But I knew I was never going to call him again. Musically he was awesome … but his actions and stuff.”
That week, his oldest daughter Angie Gregg visited from Fort Wayne, and he showed her a photograph of Jocelyn on his cell phone.
“Isn’t this a cute little girl,” he told her.
“She’s cute,” agreed Angie. “Who is that?”
Castro said it was his girlfriend’s child, explai
ning he was not the father.
But Angie was struck by an uncanny resemblance to her sister Emily.
“Dad, that girl looks a lot like Emily,” she told him. “She has the exact same nose as Emily.”
Becoming visibly uncomfortable, he then turned off the phone and changed the subject.
“I figured at the most he had an illegitimate child out there,” said Angie, “and I would find out eventually.”
* * *
One chilly afternoon in mid-March, Ariel Castro brought Michelle Knight into his backyard. He told her to wait outside his van, soon returning with a large shovel and gloves. Then he announced he was landscaping a garden and handed her the shovel to start digging a hole. The ground was still frozen and Michelle had a hard job getting the shovel even to pierce the soil. Then Castro started digging alongside her with a spade, saying the hole must be deep. And for the rest of the afternoon they dug, with Castro continually saying the hole was not deep enough.
Suddenly, Michelle realized that they were not excavating a new garden, but digging a grave for someone, possibly her. After three hours of heavy digging, Castro announced they were finished for the day and would carry on tomorrow. But he never did ask her to finish digging the hole.
* * *
On April 2, the ninth anniversary of Gina DeJesus going missing, her family held a fund-raiser to keep her in the public eye. Once again Ariel Castro attended, playing music with a pickup salsa band, and asking Nancy Ruiz how she was doing.
At the rally, Nancy vowed never to give up searching for Gina.
“I mean, this is nine years,” she said. “Nine years there hasn’t been nothing. I mean, there’s no body—that’s letting me know that she’s still here and we need to bring her home.”
The next night, Felix and Nancy were the guests of honor at a Cleveland Cavaliers game, where Gina’s photograph and missing-person’s poster were displayed on the Jumbotron at halftime.
Two days later, Castro texted his daughter Angie some photos from his cell phone of a dog seated on a Porta-Potty. A few months earlier he had sent her a video of a dog in labor. Angie believed that they had been taken in the basement at 2207 Seymour Avenue, and wondered why her father would need a portable potty.
