On May 6th 2013, three women escaped the home on Seymour Street, in Cleveland, Ohio in which they were held for over a decade of captivity.
Ariel Castro, 52, a bus driver for Cleveland public schools held Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Georgina DeJesus captive in his 1,435 square foot home. In the ten year span, the women were allowed to leave the house and go outside twice.
All three abductions were centralized around one street, Lorain Avenue. The first woman abducted was Michelle Knight. At twenty-one years of age, Knight suffered from a mental disability. After loosing custody of her son, Knight drifted away from her family. Disappearing after going to visit a cousin’s house, four blocks over from Lorain Avenue, her family believed that she had just walked out of their lives. In truth, Knight had not abandoned her family but was instead abducted by Castro.
Eight months after Michelle Knight was abducted, a 16-year-old girl, Amanda Berry, disappeared from Lorain Avenue, after her shift at Burger King. The following day was Berry’s 17th birthday. Similar to Knight’s kidnapping, Berry was also offered a ride home from Castro and then she was taken back to his home. A week later, hope was restored for Amanda Berry’s family when they received a phone call from Berry’s cell phone. The phone call, however, was not enough to locate Berry, according to CNN.
In November 2003, Cleveland police, after trying to locate Michelle Knight’s family to confirm that she was still missing, took Knight out of the FBI’s missing person’s database when they could not contact Knight’s relatives.
Nineteen days before the anniversary of Berry’s disappearance, another teenage girl went missing. Georgina “Gina” DeJesus at the tender age of 14, was abducted while walking home from middle school on Cleveland’s West side. The last place Georgina DeJesus was seen before being abducted was at a pay phone after school. Strangely enough, Georgina “Gina” DeJesus was a close friend of Ariel Castro’s daughter, Arlene Castro. After her father was revealed as the captor of her childhood friend, Arlene Castro told ABC news, “I would like to say that I’m absolutely so, so, sorry.”
Another of Ariel Castro’s daughters, Angie Gregg, admitted that her father was always slow to answer the front door. Castro was a musician so she never took noticed how loud he would play music whenever she came to visit. Also, he would deter her from going to see her childhood bedroom on the second floor. Throughout the decade that the three women were held in captivity, multiple individuals both friends and family visited the home while the women were held in bedrooms on the second floor.
The women were initially chained in the basement and then were later moved to the second floor, where they inhabited bedrooms. During the years that the women were held captive, Michelle Knight was impregnated five times. Each time Castro would starve Knight, and beat her stomach until she had a miscarriage.
Around 2007, Amanda Berry, became pregnant with Castro’s child. This was approximately the same time that Berry’s mother died at 44, after many years of holding vigils and walks for her missing daughter. Berry’s baby was delivered by Knight, who was threatened that if the baby did not survive she would be killed. It was remarkable that a woman with no experience was able to successfully deliver the child. The child was delivered in a plastic pool “so the mess was easier to clean-up.”
According to CNN, four days before the liberation of the three women, on May 2, Castro posted on his Facebook page, “miracles really do happen, God is good :)” Ironically, four days later, Amanda Berry realized the front door was unlocked and Castro was not home. The storm door was locked, but with enough force could be broken. She was afraid to break the door so she instead yelled for help. Berry’s yells were heard by Charles Ramsey. Ramsey and another man Angel Cordero ran to Castro’s home.
Berry frantically screamed, “I’ve been trapped in here. He won’t let me out. It’s me and my baby.” Cordero broke the door and Ramsey called 911. Amanda Berry then called 911 from a neighbor’s house.
“Help me, I am Amanda Berry,” she told the police. “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years. And I’m here, I’m free now.”
Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.
The women that were abducted on Lorain Avenue, and were held for ten years in captivity on Seymour Street, have yet to recount their story in their own words. The world awaits to here the tragic tale in the words of Michelle Knight, Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry.
