Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland

by Amanda Berry

  There must be a hundred police and FBI guys in the hallway, some of them looking through the glass and others who come in to say hello. Some of them are crying and a couple of them even fall to their knees, sobbing.

  My mom and I can’t stop hugging.

  “Mommy,” I ask when we finally pull apart, “do you still make mashed potatoes, fried chicken, and corn?”

  “We can make it tonight!” she says.

  “I want to go to the mall,” I tell her.

  “We’ll go tomorrow!” she says.

  Then I remember that I have something for her.

  “Wait, Mommy, wait,” I tell her. “I gotta show you something.”

  I get the book bag I took when we left Seymour Avenue and pull out a “missing” flyer of me, the one that he got from her and that I decorated with glittery hearts and pictures of food.

  “Look what I have,” I say, handing it to her.

  “Oh, my God,” she says.

  She recognizes this flyer, and she’s starting to put it all together.

  I think if Ariel Castro were standing here right now, she would kill him.

  Amanda

  Where is Beth?

  I wish she would get here. I’m dying to see her. Gina’s family has been here for a while, and a nice woman named Yvonne Pointer is talking to Michelle.

  The nurse says Pointer’s daughter was murdered in 1984, and now she’s an activist who helps victims of violence. She’s sitting on the bed with Michelle, holding her hand, and they are singing: “Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring.”

  The doctors keep poking and pulling at me, checking my heartbeat and blood pressure. I weigh ninety-two pounds, and I was one-twenty when he took me. They take swabs from my mouth and Jocelyn’s to check our DNA.

  The nurses bring us a sandwich, chips, and juice. They ask Jocelyn what her favorite food is, and she says, “KFC!” So somebody runs out and gets her some. She’s excited but takes one bite and realizes it’s the spicy kind. Too hot for her, so she gulps down water.

  And then I see Beth.

  She’s walking through the nurses’ station but hasn’t noticed me yet. She looks so skinny, even thinner than I am. But it’s really Beth! And my aunt Theresa and my cousin Melissa!

  Beth looks through the glass window and finally catches sight of me.

  She starts pushing her way through the chaos until she finally reaches me, and we hug. We’re both crying hard, and Theresa and Melissa put their arms around me, too. Jocelyn is sitting on the bed staring at all this. I don’t think she has any idea what’s going on.

  “Who is this?” Theresa asks.

  “That’s my daughter, Jocelyn,” I say.

  “Well,” she says, “tell her to come over here!”

  So Jocelyn joins in the hug, and I introduce everyone. She knows exactly who they are because I have been talking about them for her entire life.

  “Is Daddy okay?” I ask Beth. “I heard on the news he was really sick.”

  “Yeah,” Beth replies. “He’s okay.”

  “And what about you? You’re so skinny. Are you okay?”

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m fine.”

  An FBI agent named Tim Kolonick comes in and introduces himself.

  “We’ve been looking for you for ten years,” he says.

  “I know. I saw you guys on TV. Thanks for not forgetting us.”

  He looks at Jocelyn and asks her name. “She’s gorgeous,” he says, smiling at her.

  In a few minutes the police ask me to come to a separate room and answer questions. I tell Jocelyn to wait with Betsy Martinez, a nurse who has been taking good care of us. I can tell Joce is getting more comfortable, because she’s running all over the place, with her face all red from a cherry Popsicle somebody gave her.

  “I’ve got a joke, Miss Betsy,” she says to the nurse.

  “What’s your joke?”

  “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “To get to the other side!! I got you!!!”

  And she laughs and laughs and laughs.

  Amanda

  They ask me if I want a shower.

  God, I would love a shower, a long one, without worrying about someone pawing me. Just a hot, peaceful shower. I can’t remember the last one I had. It used to be my favorite thing.

  Today—Monday—was my bath day anyway. He had a schedule in the house. It depended on the season and the weather, but usually Jocelyn and I got to take a shower every four or five days. Tonight it was going to be our turn to go downstairs to use the shower.

  They lead us to a big bathroom. It’s so clean! I close the door and lock it, and Joce and I stand under the hot water, soaking and shampooing and scrubbing. It’s been ten years since I have been able to use all the soap and shampoo I want. I close my eyes and breathe in the sweet smells. I’m so happy it almost makes me cry.

  As we’re scrubbing, the diamond stud in my ear falls out and slips down the drain. He used to wear it and then gave it to me. This seems like a fitting moment to have that little trace of him disappear forever.

  We dry off with fluffy towels and put on some clothes that a nurse gave us. She says it was stuff that her family had outgrown. When I escaped from the house, I was wearing a tank top and a pair of baby-blue pants that Gina had sewn for me out of fabric from an old dress. Now Jocelyn is wearing a Disney princess dress and I’m in a track suit. I can’t wait to buy brand-new clothes that nobody else has ever worn.

  We walk back to the big room in the emergency ward, and I see Teddy, Mariyah, Marissa, and Devon standing there along the wall. The last time I saw Teddy was at Burger King the day I was kidnapped. I was so mad at him that day, but I’m so happy to see him now. And I can’t believe how big the girls are.

  My mouth drops, and I run over to hug them.

  “This is Devon,” they tell me, and I take a long look at this adorable little boy. I first saw him on the TV news as a newborn in Beth’s arms, and now he’s seven. I’ve been gone for his entire life.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Devon,” I say, and we hug.

  At around midnight they put my whole family into an FBI van and drive us to an Embassy Suites hotel in the suburbs. We have a two-room suite with FBI agents stationed outside to make sure nobody bothers us. They tell us there are reporters from all over the world at the hospital and on Seymour.

  Jocelyn and Devon are bouncing off the beds and playing in the big closets like they’ve been friends forever, and Beth and I sit up talking. She tells me about Mom, and what it was like right up to the end. We make plans to go visit her grave. Beth says she didn’t have enough money to get her a gravestone. I’m going to figure out how to fix that.

  We never do get to sleep, and at about eight we wander down to the breakfast buffet. In the house, Gina and I would often daydream about a buffet where you could eat whatever you wanted and all you wanted. I eat pancakes and doughnuts and orange juice, and I ask the man at the omelet station to make me one with ham and cheese and onions. I can’t believe how much I’m eating. I haven’t seen this much food in ten years. So many choices!

  Then, back in the room, in a bed with big pillows and soft sheets that smell like soap, I fall into a slumber so deep and happy that I could sleep forever. And for the first time since I was sixteen, I’m actually looking forward to waking up.

  May 7, 2013: Nos Vemos

  On the morning of Tuesday, May 7, Cleveland police officer Larry “Chiqui” Guerra brought a suspect into the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland. As he was turning the man over for fingerprinting and booking, he heard a familiar voice call out in Spanish from behind him.

  “Hey, Chiqui! ¿Qué haces? ¿Cómo estás?”

  Guerra turned and saw Ariel Castro in a holding cell, lying on a mat on
the floor, his hands clasped behind his head, smiling.

  Guerra took a step back in surprise. He had known Castro all his life. Their families were both from Yauco, and they had grown up together in a Puerto Rican neighborhood a few streets away from Seymour. Castro was seven years older, but he and Guerra hung out in the same places, including the Caribe Grocery.

  Castro’s uncle Cesi and Guerra’s father were friends and they’d often take young Chiqui to Indians baseball games. When Guerra graduated from the police academy, Cesi Castro bought him a military-style flashlight worth more than a hundred dollars.

  Guerra played the güiro, a percussion instrument made from a hollowed-out gourd, and he would always join in the parrandas, the Christmas music parties in the back of Cesi’s shop. He had seen Castro there at one of those celebrations just five months before, drinking a beer.

  Guerra had always thought that Castro was a little odd and obsessively private. Guerra had never met his wife or his children. Castro would never engage in conversation much beyond small talk. He was friendly enough, but you always knew not to ask him too much because he wouldn’t answer.

  Guerra had been at home when he heard the news, and he thought of all the times he’d talked to Castro while he had the girls locked in his house. He thought of the hundreds of times he’d driven by 2207 Seymour and towed illegally parked cars off that street. It was his neighborhood, and the man accused of this unbelievable crime was his friend.

  Now here was Castro, smiling at him from the mat on the floor, looking as relaxed as a man in a backyard hammock.

  “¿Ariel, qué pasó?” said Guerra.

  “I really fucked up,” Castro said, sounding tired.

  “Hey,” Guerra warned him, “I’m not just Chiqui in here. I’m a policeman. Whatever you say, you might want to think about it.”

  “I don’t care,” Castro said. “I’m a victim here, too.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I didn’t take those girls,” Castro told him. “They came with me. I didn’t make them do anything.” He stood and started pacing around in the cell as he talked. “I was abused, too, as a kid.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Guerra replied, his anger rising. “But it doesn’t give you any excuse for what you did. Dude, it’s been ten years. You even know Gina’s father. Everybody knows Felix. How could you do this?” Guerra felt the crime personally, as his brother had married a relative of Gina’s, and their daughter and Gina had been close friends.

  “I didn’t make them do anything,” Castro insisted. “I didn’t rape them. They did this willingly. They wanted to be with me. And another thing, when can I see my daughter? I should be able to see her.”

  Guerra was growing increasingly disgusted, and asked, “How did you keep this a secret for ten years? Did your brothers know anything about this?”

  “My brothers didn’t know anything about this. Nothing,” Castro answered. “It was hard, but this was my little secret, and I’m glad it’s finally over. I know I’m going to die in prison, but I didn’t do all that stuff you guys say I did.”

  Guerra looked at Castro staring back at him through the bars and saw that he was cool, unemotional, and resigned. And Guerra thought to himself, he’s been living this lie for so long that he actually believes it.

  “All right, man,” Guerra said. “I’m done talking to you.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you later,” Castro replied.

  “Nos vemos,” Guerra said—see you later—though what he was really thinking was, “Para el carajo.”

  Go to hell.

  May 7, 2013: Confession

  On the morning after his arrest, police searched Castro’s house and found ninety feet of chains. They seized padlocks, deadbolts, and a clock-radio and wires rigged up as alarms connected to the front and back doors. In a drawer in the kitchen they discovered a note handwritten by Castro with the heading “Confession’s [sic] and Details.” The four-page document, printed on lined notebook paper, was filled with misspellings and scratched-out words.

  The first page was dated with odd precision: “4-4-04, 8:06 a.m.,” forty-one hours after Gina’s abduction. The letter apparently took him four days to finish, because the final page was dated “4-8-04, 2:05 p.m.”

  The rambling note was in turns confession, suicide note, personal history, and rambling fatherly advice to his children.

  He wrote that he had been “abandoned” by his parents, that an older boy had sexually abused him when he was a boy in Puerto Rico, and that his mother had been so physically abusive there were times he “wished she would die.”

  He said that he was married at age twenty and that the “marriage was a failure from the beginning.” He claimed that Nilda was “abusive” and would hit him and “push me to the limit.”

  “I hit her back,” he wrote. “She put me in jail, only to get me out and apologize to me. This happened a couple of times, but the name calling and arguments were always there.” After she left him he said, “I lived alone for the most part . . . I had good sex drive. I was in a relationship with a woman for about two years.”

  He then described kidnapping Michelle and Amanda, claiming, “I treat them well and make sure they eat good.”

  “I don’t understand why I keep looking for women out in the street. I already had two in my possession,” he wrote. He said that Michelle and Amanda were being held “against their will because they made a mistake by getting in a car with a total stranger.”

  Though he expressed no remorse about taking the first two women, he did seem more troubled about Gina: “I had no idea Gina was so young, she looks a lot older,” he wrote, adding that he didn’t know that Gina was “the daughter of Felix, a school classmate of mine.”

  The bottom line is, I am a sexual predator who needs help, but I don’t bother to get it. I live a private life. I function around others like a normal person. I’ve been having problems with my head for a long time. I feel depressed, dizzy and short term memory loss. I really don’t know what’s wrong with me. To the parents of these three woman [sic], I would like to say, I’m very sorry. I am sick.

  When I wake up in the morning, I don’t feel like I’m really hear [sic]. For some reason I feel I can’t concentrate. This is a big problem in my everyday life. I just want to put an end to my life, and let the Devil deal with me.

  Castro wrote that he planned to let the women go “when I feel I have arranged everything so my family knows what to do after I take my life.” He noted that he had about $10,000 in a bank account and another $11,000 in cash hidden inside his washing machine.

  I would like this money to go to the victims, for they deserve every red cent of it. Again, I apologize (sorry) to everyone this whole ordeal has affected.

  To my children, please be strong and make the right decisions. Just because you may think you know someone do not get into their vehical [sic]. This was the case of Amanda + Gina.

  Grimilda; please do your best to insure my babies are safe. If possible, move away (far away).

  As I write this letter on 4-8-04 at 2:05 pm, my simptoms [sic] are clearly bothering me (dizziness and not really feeling like I’m hear [sic]). Also, Depression. I know I am sick (Mentally).

  May 7, 2013: Fallout

  While investigators searched Castro’s house, other officers scoured the neighborhood to make certain they weren’t missing any accomplices or clues. Across the street and three doors down from Castro’s house, police arrested Elias Acevedo Sr., a convicted sex offender who had moved in with his mother but failed to register his new address with police. He was jailed for that offense, and while he was incarcerated police linked his DNA to an unsolved 1993 rape. The further they looked into that case, the more they also began to suspect Acevedo in the unsolved disappearance of Christina Adkins, who was eighteen and pregnant when she went missing in January 1995.

 
Encouraged by the fact that Amanda, Gina, and Michelle had been found alive after so many years, FBI agent Andy Burke began reviewing cold cases. Burke noticed inconsistencies in police reports about Adkins’s disappearance—one witness seemed to have given police a false name and date of birth. After pulling the original files and reinterviewing people involved in the case, Burke discovered that that witness was Acevedo.

  Acevedo ultimately confessed to killing Adkins, as well as Pamela Pemberton, a thirty-year-old whose body was found in 1994. He then led police to an area off I-90 near downtown Cleveland and pointed to a manhole cover. When officers lifted it, Burke shined his flashlight twenty feet down into an old concrete storm sewer and saw Christina Adkins’s skull.

  May 7, 2013: Interview

  Twenty-four hours after his arrest, still in his paper jumpsuit and slippers, his hands cuffed in front of him, Ariel Castro shuffled into a small interrogation room on the ninth floor of the Justice Center, the headquarters of the Cleveland police and Cuyahoga County courts.

  At 5:28 p.m., two interrogators—Dave Jacobs, a veteran officer in the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office assigned to the FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force, and Andy Harasimchuk, a Cleveland police sex crimes detective—entered the room, showed Castro their badges, and began questioning him. Castro sat with his chin resting in his shackled hands, his elbows on the table, sobbing softly and dabbing his eyes.

  “Whatever you need to know,” he said quietly, “just ask me questions.”

  He spelled out his name. He said he had an ornate tribal tattoo around his left bicep and tried to lift his shirt to show the detectives but couldn’t manage it with his hands cuffed. He said he was five-foot-seven.

  Jacobs handed Castro a paper with his Miranda rights and asked Castro to read them out loud.

  “‘You have the right to remain silent,’” Castro started, but then his voice broke and he started crying loudly. “I’m worried about my little girl. How’s she doing?” he asked.

  Jacobs assured him that Jocelyn was fine.