by Amanda Berry
“I miss her so much already,” Castro said, wiping his eyes. “She knows I was always there for her. I’m sorry. I’m glad she finally got her freedom.”
Castro finished reading the Miranda form and signed it, along with another document granting his consent to speak to police without a lawyer being present.
The interrogation began with Castro giving some family history about his late common-law wife, Nilda Figueroa, and their four children. He said his job as a bus driver was hard and, “I would just come home stressed out.”
His account was delivered as matter-of-factly as if he were answering questions from a bank teller. But he broke down again when he mentioned Jocelyn: “My daughter was born there. It just worked out so well. She’s a miracle baby.”
Jacobs asked him to describe the day he abducted Michelle. He said he offered her a ride home from the Family Dollar store at Clark Avenue and West 30th Street. He couldn’t remember what year it was.
“I’m just so screwed up in my mind,” he said. “Anybody in their right mind wouldn’t do something like this.”
He described chaining Michelle in his basement. Jacobs asked if he had had sex with her, and Castro replied, “That was the whole intention.”
“I’m selfish and cold-blooded,” he said. “Having four kids, and now five, I can’t understand how I did these things. I’m a father. I’m a grandfather.”
When the officers asked about Amanda, Castro started sobbing again.
“I’m going away for a long time; I know it,” he said. “I just want to tell you whatever you need and tell the truth. . . . Maybe my information can help other kids or other women.”
He said he did not know Amanda before he abducted her. He told them that he was dropping off his daughter Arlene on West 110th Street when he saw Amanda walk by in her Burger King uniform: “I noticed Amanda smiling towards us and I was attracted to her. So I says ‘bye’ to my daughter and I pulled out of the driveway and I went the way Amanda was walking.” He pulled up next to her, rolled down his window, and asked her if she wanted a ride. “She said yes, surprisingly,” Castro recalled. “She thought my daughter was still in the van.” Castro then said he “tricked her” into coming to his house and described how he began having sex with her on that day.
“A week or two later I called her mom. I think I said something like, ‘I have your daughter and that she’s okay, and that she’s my wife now,’” he said, crying again.
There was rarely any interaction between Amanda and Michelle, Castro said, because he told them not to talk to each other.
He described Jocelyn’s birth in the plastic wading pool, and how he cut the umbilical cord, froze the placenta, and eventually buried it in the backyard.
While Amanda named her Jocelyn Berry, he considered her last name to be Castro.
The interrogation then turned to Gina, and Castro recalled that he went to Wilbur Wright Middle School looking for Arlene on April 2, 2004, when he noticed Gina on his way in.
“I was attracted to Gina. She was showing her cleavage,” he said.
He spoke briefly with a security guard and then went inside the school, but when he couldn’t find Arlene, he left. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, he recalled, he was driving down Lorain Avenue when he saw the two seventh-graders walking together near the corner of 106th Street.
Castro said he knew Gina was the daughter of Felix DeJesus, and he would see them together at school assemblies and shows. But he said on the day he abducted Gina, he didn’t realize it was her: “If I’d a known then, I would have just dropped her off.”
Castro turned his car around and drove past Arlene, who did not see him, and pulled up beside Gina near the corner of 104th Street. “I did something very cold-blooded to my daughter; I passed her to get to Gina,” he said, breaking into tears again.
He told the interrogators he was surprised that police didn’t see him on surveillance footage when he went into Wilbur Wright Middle School that day: “They could have cracked the case right there.”
Castro said he had not planned to abduct anyone that day. It was an impulsive decision, and he was surprised when Gina got into the car with him, though he couldn’t remember how he convinced her to come into his house.
“We stayed downstairs for a while, then we went to the basement,” he said.
Jacobs asked how he persuaded her to follow him there.
“I just asked her,” he said.
Jacobs asked what happened there.
“We were just talking,” Castro replied. “She was complying with everything. All three of them, they were just so compliant. To this day, I don’t understand how they would get into my vehicle and got into my house with no questions and without a struggle.”
He repeatedly used the word “consensual” to describe his sexual relationship with his captives. He claimed he had never been violent and that none of the victims had ever cried while he was having sex with them.
Castro said he would sometimes take the women outside into the backyard, but always made them wear wigs, baseball caps, and sunglasses.
Jacobs asked if he was concerned they would try to escape.
“I gained their trust,” he said. “They were surprisingly willing to do what I asked.”
Castro described how he would occasionally have guests over to his house. “I would tell them be quiet, because, ‘I don’t want you to get in trouble,’” he said. He did not have to say things like, “I’m going to beat your ass,” “because by then I had felt them out. I kind of knew what I could get these girls to do.”
On the day the women escaped, Castro told the officers, he had gone to his mother’s house to wash his car. He said he told Jocelyn, “I’m going to Grandma’s, and she’s going to cook for us, and I’ll bring some back.”
Amanda’s room was unlocked because Jocelyn had been complaining about being locked inside all the time, he said.
“Yesterday, I know I let my guard down.”
He never took Amanda, Gina, or Michelle out in his car, he said, but he often went out with Jocelyn. His brother Pedro had seen them in his car a few times, and Castro told him she was his girlfriend’s daughter. A few days before Castro was arrested, he said Pedro had walked into a Burger King while he and Jocelyn were eating breakfast, but his brother thought nothing of seeing Castro with the child.
“I never took her to my mother’s house,” he said. “I wanted to so bad. I wanted her to meet her, but she never met her.”
Jacobs asked Castro about a cross in the backyard of Seymour Avenue and some freshly turned dirt. Castro said he had buried two or three pet dogs in the yard, and the newly dug earth was for a greenhouse he had started building.
Jacobs asked if anything else might be buried in the yard.
“If you’re trying to get at, ‘Am I a serial killer?’ I’m not,” Castro said.
“I don’t think you are,” Jacobs said.
“I’m a sexual predator,” he said. “They say if you do it once and you continue doing it, you’re a predator.”
“What if you only do it once? In your mind, what does that make you?” Jacobs asked.
“Probably just an offender,” he said. “I kept doing it over and over.”
Jacobs asked how Castro managed to keep the whole thing secret for so long.
“I don’t know how I pulled it off,” he said.
• • •
After two hours of talking, Castro asked when he could eat.
Jacobs and Harasimchuk said they would take a break and get Castro some food. As they were leaving the room, Castro stopped them.
He said he had about $40,000 in his 401(k) account from the Cleveland Public Schools, plus cash hidden in a black bag inside a broken Kelvinator washing machine in his basement. He was worried that “corrupt cops” searching his house would steal it.
Another officer brought Castro a slice of pizza and a bottle of Coke. Sitting alone in the room, with the surveillance camera still recording him, Castro had trouble picking up the pizza with his cuffed hands, and put his face down into the plate and ate it. When he finished, an officer brought him a second slice.
A half hour later, the two interrogators returned.
Castro asked if they found the money in his basement and told them, “I would like as much money to go to the victims as possible, and my daughter.”
Jacobs showed Castro a series of photographs of the women, taken the previous night at Metro Hospital. He asked him to identify the first one, and Castro started sobbing heavily.
“My baby’s mama, Amanda,” he said. Through his tears Castro told Jacobs, with obvious pride, that he had helped her quit smoking.
He then identified Gina and Michelle, and crying again, said, “I was just so tired of this double life and I wanted freedom for them.”
Jacobs asked Castro about his sexual history. Before he abducted the three women, he recalled, he used to pick up prostitutes on Lorain Avenue and bring them back to his house.
He said he had “lost sexual interest” in his three captives by the end, because “I just didn’t find them attractive.” He had not had sex with Amanda or Gina in “eight months or a year,” and only rarely had sex with Michelle, although he admitted to having two videos on his phone of him having sex with her the previous week.
Jacobs showed Castro the letter dated April 4, 2004, two days after he abducted Gina, that police had found in his kitchen.
“In case something ever happened to me, I wanted you guys to see that I’m a victim,” Castro said, explaining the letter, referring again to his claim that he was sexually abused as a child.
He said he never intended to have a child with any of his captives, but he never used any form of birth control. He claimed all three women “wanted sex all the time . . . they would ask me for it.” When Amanda became pregnant, he said, “We just dealt with it.” He called her “an excellent mom.”
During the course of the four-hour interview Castro never apologized for what he had done and cried every time Jocelyn’s name was mentioned.
“I miss my daughter dearly, but on the same token, she has her freedom now,” he said. “And they have their freedom.”
May 9, 2013: Starting Over
Amanda
The FBI says we need lawyers, and they’re sending over ones they say we can trust. I’m staying at Beth and Teddy’s house on West 129th Street, and there are satellite trucks and TV cameras outside. The police are keeping the media away from the front door and we have our shades drawn. Beth went out yesterday and pleaded for privacy, but this doesn’t feel like privacy.
The lawyers, Jim Wooley, a former federal prosecutor and partner at Jones Day; Henry Hilow, a former assistant county prosecutor and partner at McGinty, Hilow & Spellacy; and Heather Kimmel, associate general counsel of the United Church of Christ arrive, and we meet in the living room with Jocelyn, my aunt Theresa, Beth, Teddy, and their kids. The room is filled with stuffed animals, flowers, and cards that people have sent from all over the world. Jim and Henry start making jokes about each other and they actually make me laugh. I cover my mouth with my hand because my teeth are so yellow and gross after ten years without seeing a dentist. I can’t wait to get them fixed.
“Is there anything we can get for you or bring to you? Anything at all?” Henry asks.
I’m not sure what a lawyer can do for me, but there are two things I need.
“My mother doesn’t have a headstone, and I would like to get her one. And I want a birth certificate for my daughter.”
“We can do that,” Henry says.
May 13, 2013: Graveyard
Amanda
A week after my escape I’m finally going to see where my mom is buried.
I wanted to go yesterday, because it was Mother’s Day, but the FBI said that all the news people would be expecting me to do that, and I’m not ready to face the cameras.
So now Joce, Aunt Theresa, and I are on our way to the cemetery a few miles outside Cleveland. So many wonderful memories of my mom flood back as we drive past the pretty trees and fields along the road.
Jen Meyers, a victim specialist with the FBI, is driving us in her van. Jen recently worked with families in the school shooting at Newtown, Connecticut, and she’s been great to talk to about how to cope with what happened to us. She has been with us practically every day since the moment we got out, and I’m glad she’s the one taking us out here.
We don’t know exactly where Mom is buried, but Aunt Theresa has a section and plot number, and she knows that it’s close to my grandma’s grave. We walk across the grass trying to find the spot, and when we finally do, what I see makes me break down.
Somebody has laid fresh flowers on my mom’s grave, with a note: “Dear Amanda, We hope that your mom knows you are home.” It’s signed by someone I don’t know.
For ten years, I lived in a world controlled by one selfish man. Now I live in a world of kindness, where total strangers help me and ask for nothing in return.
I explain to Joce that this is where her grandmother is buried.
“She’s in heaven, but this is where her body is,” I tell her. “So we’re going to come here and visit her all the time.”
“Okay, Mommy,” she says quietly.
It’s cool, barely fifty degrees, and rays of sunshine shoot through the big trees around the gravesite. I look around at the perfectly mowed grass and think my mom would approve.
I crouch down and whisper, “Mommy, I’m home.”
August 1, 2013: Sentencing
On August 1, Ariel Castro took a seat in a downtown Cleveland courtroom, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and shackles. He looked like an unremarkable middle-aged man with wire-rimmed glasses, a receding hairline, salt-and-pepper beard, and a bit of a paunch.
Castro had already pleaded guilty to 937 felony counts, with many details of the indictment drawn from Amanda’s diaries, and today was his sentencing hearing. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, an outspoken former judge, said 937 was a “conservative” number of the possible counts against Castro. He described Castro as “evil incarnate.”
In exchange for the guilty plea, McGinty had not sought the death penalty, and the case was wrapped up at remarkable speed—less than ninety days from arrest to sentencing. Castro had agreed to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus a thousand years—a sentence intended to convey the community’s revulsion at his crimes. McGinty also said it was a message to other criminals who might want to become famous by copying Castro.
All that was left now was for Judge Michael Russo to formally accept the deal at the sentencing.
Wooley, Hilow, and Kimmel wanted a low-key hearing. Given the extraordinary interest in the case, they had no desire to have Amanda, Gina, and Michelle endure a very public confrontation with Castro. The county prosecutor, an elected official who never shied away from the media spotlight, disagreed. McGinty said Castro’s crimes should be aired as publicly and in as much detail as possible. He said he wanted to leave no doubt in Judge Russo’s mind that he should approve the sentencing deal, and to leave a court record so damning that no judge, even decades in the future, would ever consider letting Castro out of prison. He wanted all the victims to testify.
Russo agreed to let the sentencing hearing go forward, and McGinty presented a series of witnesses, including psychiatrist Frank M. Ochberg of Michigan State University.
Describing Castro’s treatment of Amanda, Gina, and Michelle, Ochberg said, “The damage done to them will not go away.” But he called them, “marvelous, compelling examples of resilience.”
Amanda and Gina did not want to see Castro and were not ready to speak publicly, so they declined to attend. They sent family members to r
ead statements.
“The impact of these crimes on our family is something that we do not want to discuss with people we don’t know,” Beth told the judge. “Even if I wanted to talk about it, it is impossible to put into words. For me, I lost my sister for all those years and thought it was forever. And we lost my mother forever. And she died not knowing. . . . It is impossible to put into words how much it hurts.
“Amanda is not here today. She is strong, beautiful, inside and out, and is doing better every day. She’s not just my only sister, but the best friend I have and the best person I know. She does not want to talk about these things. She has not talked about these things even with me.
“The main reason she does not want anyone to talk about these things, or be forced to talk about these things, is because she has a daughter. She would like to be the person who decides what to tell her daughter, when to tell her daughter, and how to tell her daughter certain things.”
Sylvia Colon, Gina’s cousin, spoke on behalf of the DeJesus family.
“To Ariel Castro’s family, we are saddened that you are burdened with this horror and will unfortunately forever be tied to these atrocities. Please know that we do not hold you accountable and pray that you can one day be whole again. Continue to love and support one another—we promise you that with this recipe you will be triumphant.
“Our family recognizes it is not for us to judge or determine any punishment. Only a higher power can do that.
“Today is the last day we want to think or talk about this. These events will not own a place in our thoughts or our hearts. We will continue to live and love.
“We stand before you and promise you that our beloved family member thrives. She laughs, swims, dances, and more importantly she loves and is loved. We are comforted in knowing that she will continue to flourish. She will finish school, go to college, fall in love, and if she chooses, will get married and have children. She is where we will continue to put our energy. She lives not as a victim, but as a survivor. Her insurmountable will to prevail is the only story worth discussing.”
