by John Glatt
At one point in the interrogation, Castro said he realized he was in big trouble.
“I know I am going away for a long time,” he said.
After a short break for lunch and a trip to the restroom, Ariel Castro was brought back to the interview room. During the next session, he told Jacobs that he wanted all his money and property to be divided among his victims, who he identified through photographs.
He also expressed surprise that he had not been caught earlier. Asked why, he mentioned an incident soon after he had abducted Michelle Knight, when Lillian Roldan had noticed a television on in a room where he was holding her.
“She seen that I had a TV on in the upstairs room,” said Castro. “And she says, ‘What is that? You have a TV on up there.’ And my heart started beating, and I was like, ‘Okay, she’s probably catching on to something.’”
Later, when asked about the television incident, Roldan had no memory of it.
He was also questioned about his 2004 confession letter, which had been found by detectives the previous night near the kitchen counter sink. He admitted writing the letter, saying he had done so in the event something happened to him, so people could see he had been a victim too.
Castro also told Jacobs that he was now contemplating suicide, as he knew they were going to throw the book at him.
“I just want to crash through the window,” he said.
* * *
As Ariel Castro was being led through the underground car park at the Justice Center in shackles for the drive back to Cleveland City Jail, WOIO-TV news reporter Ed Gallek found himself face-to-face with him.
“I was checking some police records,” recalled Gallek, “and all of a sudden investigators started walking this guy down to another room. Here’s this guy, the house of horrors, the man everybody is talking about right there in front of my eyes.”
With his cameraman filming, Gallek started firing questions at Castro, who attempted to hide his face with his shackled hands.
“How could you do this?” he shouted. “What would you say to these women?”
Ariel Castro didn’t say a word as detectives helped him into a police car to return to jail.
* * *
Three miles away at 2207 Seymour Avenue, the FBI’s Evidence Recovery Response Team spent the day photographing every inch of the house, inside and out. Several dozen amplifiers and assorted musical instruments were seized, and Ariel Castro’s large collection of cars and motorcycles towed away for forensic examination.
Cadaver dogs were led around the basement, searching for signs of other victims. Investigators had found the REST IN PEACE sign along with a woman’s name scrawled on the wall, after Michelle Knight had told them that Castro had mentioned another girl, who may have been down there earlier. There was also much speculation that the search might produce some leads for the still-missing Ashley Summers and other missing Cleveland girls. But nothing tying Castro to any other cases would ever be found, and he vehemently denied taking any other girls.
When Special Agent Andrew Burke arrived at midday, more than three hundred pieces of evidence, including yards of rusty chains, ropes and bondage materials, had been removed in black plastic bags for forensic testing.
The FBI’s lead evidence technician, Special Agent Chris Garnett, met Burke at the front door, where a Puerto Rican flag still flapped listlessly in the wind. Then, after donning white hazmat suits, Garnett took him on a tour of the house. First he pointed out specific locations where Ariel Castro had installed physical restraints, as well as showing Burke how Castro had carefully fortified certain areas, cunningly concealing the existence of additional rooms used to imprison the women.
Entering through the front door, Special Agent Burke saw a series of alarm clocks wired together, stretching the entire length of the first floor, to create a sophisticated alarm system. Both the front and back doors would set off alarms if opened.
Then, walking into the kitchen, Special Agent Burke observed how Castro had blocked it off from the rest of the living area, so visitors could not see beyond it.
“There was a kind of a heavy curtain or maybe even a bedspread,” said Burke, “that separated the kitchen from the rest of the living area.”
Attached to the kitchen was the only bathroom in the house. And next door was a dining room that Castro had converted into his bedroom, with a queen-size mattress.
Coming out of the bedroom, Special Agent Burke saw a porch swing positioned at the base of the staircase to the second floor, effectively obstructing access to the second floor.
Special Agent Burke walked up the first set of stairs to a landing, where there was another flight at a ninety-degree angle leading to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, Castro had hung a large brown curtain, totally concealing the second-floor landing.
They then went into the front bedroom, where Amanda and Jocelyn had spent most of their time. The white room measured eleven and a half feet by eleven and half feet, and the walls were crudely decorated with various pictures of animals and cartoon characters, with a row of stuffed animals lying neatly on the bed. To one side was a blackboard, which Amanda was using to teach her daughter how to read and write.
Special Agent Burke then closely studied the bedroom door, observing how it had been modified to keep Amanda locked inside.
“There’s a handle on the outside that’s been screwed in,” explained Burke. “It functions to … hold the door closed as there’s no doorknob attached either to the inside or the outside.”
As Castro had boarded up all the windows from the inside with heavy closet doors, he had cut a hole in the bottom panel of the door to ventilate the bedroom. He had also rigged an eyebolt lock, so the door could be locked from the outside.
Lying off Amanda and Jocelyn’s room was an even smaller bedroom with pink walls, measuring just seven feet two inches by eleven and a half feet, where Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus lived. A rusty chain attached to several locks lay on the floor by a filthy mattress next to a commode. Several of Michelle’s paintings, including one saying, LOVE, hung on the wall over an old radio and a doll. The room was also boarded up from the inside, and the only ventilation was a small cutout in the ceiling for a box fan in the attic.
Then the two FBI agents went down into the basement and saw the white support pole in the middle, to which all the girls had been chained at one time or another. At the far end of the basement was a washing machine, containing thousands of dollars in small bills, which Ariel Castro would throw at his victims after raping them.
* * *
On Tuesday afternoon, Deputy Sheriff Jacobs interviewed Onil Castro at police headquarters. As he was being escorted out of the Central Processing Unit, his brother Ariel yelled out, “It’s all my fault. He doesn’t know anything about it.”
In the Sex Crimes/Child Abuse Unit, Onil was read his Miranda rights and taken into an interview room where Jacobs was waiting. He still had no idea why he had been arrested.
At the beginning of the interview, Jacobs asked about Ariel Castro. Onil said his brother had lived on Seymour Avenue for about twenty years, and had recently been fired from his job. He lived alone, but had a girlfriend with a daughter. Onil said he had not been inside his brother’s house for five years, and upstairs for at least seven. He remembered how Ariel used to drive around town with a mannequin in the passenger seat, wearing a wig.
Then Jacobs started showing him photographs of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, asking if he had ever seen them before. When Onil said he had not, Jacobs told him they were photos of three girls who had been found in his brother’s house.
“And my heart fell,” said Onil. “I just dropped, not physically, but I hit the ground after he said that.”
Onil Castro then strenuously denied knowing anything about the women being in his brother’s house, or how they had gotten there.
Later that day, Deputy Sheriff Jacobs interviewed Ariel Castro’s mother, who provided backgro
und information about the family. Lillian Rodriguez said that Ariel had never lived with Onil or Pedro, and avoided his elder brother because of his drinking problem. The Castro matriarch said it had been years since she had been inside 2207 Seymour Avenue, and denied ever meeting her granddaughter Jocelyn.
It was late afternoon when two Cleveland police officers arrived at Lillian Roldan’s house to bring her to the Justice Center for questioning.
“They asked me, ‘Do you know why?’” said Lillian. “And I said, ‘I know it has to do with Ariel Castro.’ So I went downtown with my husband and my daughter, and they interrogated me for two hours.”
During the interview, Lillian was asked if Ariel Castro had ever mistreated her during their three-and-a-half-year relationship.
“And I said, ‘No, there’s nothing bad about him,’” said Lillian. “‘I have nothing bad to say about him, because there isn’t.’”
She was also asked if she knew that Michelle Knight and Amanda Berry had been in the house, when she had stayed over.
“So I said, ‘I’m aware because they said it on TV, not because I knew about it,’” she recalled. “Because if I would have known something, I would never leave those girls there. I have a daughter of two years old and I would never do that to anyone.”
* * *
Less than a mile away, at the Cleveland FBI Office at 1501 Lakeside Avenue, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were photographed and interviewed in far greater detail than they had been the night before. The interviews were conducted by the FBI Child/Adolescent Forensic Interviewer Catherine Connell, with Cleveland Detective Karl Lessmann observing.
Once again the three victims recounted how Ariel Castro had tricked them into his house. They all went into harrowing detail about all the beatings, rapes and mental abuse, which were then broken down into various time periods to allow prosecutors to frame charges against Castro.
Michelle Knight was also closely questioned about her five pregnancies, and how Ariel Castro had forced her miscarriages.
Later, back at the MetroHealth Medical Center, Michelle’s brother Freddie Knight came to visit her.
“She was as white as a ghost,” said Freddie, who was now thirty-two. “But she told me, ‘Come over here and give me a hug. It’s been ages.’ She was happy to see me. It was emotional.”
That night, Barbara Knight flew to Cleveland from Naples, Florida, complaining to reporters that she still had not spoken to her daughter.
* * *
On Tuesday afternoon, Officer Larry Guerra was escorting a prisoner through the Cleveland Central Prison Unit, when he heard a familiar voice.
“Hey, Chiqui, what’s happening?” asked Ariel Castro.
Guerra turned around to see Castro, whom he had grown up with, smiling at him in a holding cell.
“I really fucked up now,” Castro told him in Spanish, “but I’m a victim too.”
Explaining he was now a policeman, Guerra asked how he could possibly be a victim. Castro replied he had been molested as a child.
“Yeah, but you know Felix [DeJesus],” Guerra told him. “You know the family.”
“I’ve known the family my whole life,” replied Castro, “but I didn’t force her into the car.”
“Yeah,” said Guerra, “but it’s been ten years, how can you watch this on the news every anniversary?”
Castro said he understood what he was saying, and then asked how his daughter, Jocelyn, was doing.
“Yeah, that’s your daughter out of consequences?” asked Guerra.
“I didn’t rape her,” Castro declared, “she did it willingly.”
Then the officer asked what part his two brothers had played in all this.
“Nothing,” Castro replied. “They knew nothing about this. This was my secret.”
“How did you keep it a secret for ten years?”
“It was hard, but it was my secret and I’m glad it’s over. Now I can die in prison. But I’m a victim too.”
“Okay, I’ll see you later,” said Guerra, who continued on to the booking area with his prisoner.
Immediately afterward, he informed his superior about his strange conversation with Ariel Castro, and wrote out a report.
* * *
At ten on Tuesday night, Anderson Cooper presented his entire Anderson Cooper 360° show from outside 2207 Seymour Avenue.
“First, we’re live from Cleveland, Ohio, with many new developments here,” said Cooper. “Three women who were missing for about a decade are finally free, after allegedly being held captive at a home across the street from where I’m standing. It’s that white house with the lights still on, on the porch.”
Then the CNN host interviewed Charles Ramsey, who had just been saluted by McDonald’s for the part he’d played in Amanda Berry’s escape. A few days later, the company would award him complimentary burgers for a year, for all his free advertising.
That afternoon, Angel Cordero and Aurora Marti had challenged Ramsey’s version of what had happened on local TV news, claiming Angel was the real hero. But as he could not speak English, reporters had interviewed Ramsey instead. After hearing their accusations, Ramsey went on the offensive.
“So yesterday,” asked Cooper, “What happened?”
“I’m going to tell it all,” declared Ramsey. “Heard that girl scream and saw him run across the street and I went outside. And Amanda say, ‘I’m stuck in here. Help me get out.’”
“So [Angel Cordero] don’t know English that well or panicked. He just looked at me and was like, ‘It’s a girl.’ And that’s all he did. So I come with my half-eaten Big Mac and I looked and I say, ‘What’s up?’ And she’s like, ‘I have been trapped in here and he won’t let me out, me and my baby. I said, ‘Well, you ain’t going to talk no more. Come on.’
“I’m trying to get the door open and can’t because he’s torture-chambered it some kind of way and locked it up, right? So I did what I had to do and kicked the bottom of the door. She grabs her baby, which threw me off. All right, so fine. I got some girl and her kid.”
Then Cooper asked if he felt like a hero, as a lot of people were now calling him.
“No, no, no,” Ramsey replied. “Bro, I’m a Christian, and American, and I’m just like you. We bleed the same blood, put our pants on the same way.”
Cooper said many people might have ignored Amanda’s screams and kept walking down the street, but he had not.
“You have to have some cojones, bro,” Ramsey told him. “That’s all it’s about. It’s about cojones on this planet.”
Cooper then asked if the FBI had mentioned a reward, as there was a $25,000 one out there.
“I will tell you what you do,” said Ramsey. “Give it to them. You know, I got a job, anyway. Just went and picked up [my] paycheck. What that address say?”
Then Ramsey thrust his paycheck into Anderson Cooper’s hand.
“I don’t have my glasses,” said the anchor, fast losing control of the interview. “I’m as blind as a bat.”
“That’s sad,” said Ramsey, taking back his paycheck. “Twenty-two-zero-three Seymour. Where were them girls living? Right next door to this paycheck. So yes, take that reward and give it to that little girl.”
* * *
Four hundred miles away, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., Jaycee Lee Dugard was being honored at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s annual Hope Awards. During her speech she alluded to the three women in Cleveland, who had been rescued the previous day.
“What an amazing time to be talking about hope, with everything that’s happening,” said Jaycee, who had been imprisoned as a sex slave for eighteen years in Antioch, California. “These individuals need the opportunity to heal and connect back into the world. This isn’t who they are, it’s only what happened to them. The human spirit is incredibly resilient. More than ever this affirms we should never give up hope.”
* * *
That night Ariel Castro went to sl
eep on suicide watch in administrative segregation to protect him from the other inmates. A judge had also extended the period that the three Castro brothers could be held without being charged from the normal thirty-six hours to forty-eight, to give investigators more time to prepare a case.
But incredibly Ariel Castro seemed unfazed by everything that was going on and slept like a baby.
27
MOTHER’S DAY
On Wednesday morning, First Lady Michelle Obama spoke about the dramatic rescue of the three missing Cleveland women, and how moved she had been by it.
“My heart just … swells up with relief,” she said on NBC’s Today show, “because just imagine first losing a child and not knowing whether they’re alive or dead or in harm’s way. And to be holding out hope for a decade and to finally have those prayers answered is just probably the best Mother’s Day gift … that these families will receive.”
All three network morning shows were reporting live from outside 2207 Seymour Avenue. It would soon become a must-see tourist destination. Finally, a faded black-and-white photograph of Michelle Knight as a high school freshman had emerged, giving the media a face to put to the name.
On the Today show, Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath described all three women’s physical condition as “very good, considering the circumstances.
“We have confirmation that they were bound, and there were chains and ropes in the home.”
He said the three suspects were talking to police and that the victims were still being interviewed.
Then Barbara Knight, whom NBC had flown in from Naples, Florida, the previous night, was interviewed by Savannah Guthrie, outside the house where her daughter had been imprisoned for eleven years. She admitted having “a complicated and sometimes troubled relationship” with her daughter, whom she had still not spoken to since the escape.
Guthrie asked if she thought Michelle wanted to see her.
