The Lost Girls (20 page)

In the wake of the Cleveland Strangler, the City of Cleveland appointed a commission to examine how police handled missing-persons cases. And the DeJesus family joined forces with Amanda Berry’s family to campaign for what they called “AMINA’s Law,” to improve the handling of missing-persons cases across America. They wanted missing-persons’ parents to be given a written explanation of police responsibilities and their rights, plus an outline of the investigative process.

Nancy Ruiz said that when Gina had gone missing, a simple pamphlet to show her how to help the investigation would have been invaluable.

“It’s so sad,” explained Nancy, “you have nowhere to go, nowhere to turn to and nobody to speak to, because there’s nothing there available to guide you.”

On Wednesday April 1, 2010, the day before the sixth anniversary of Gina DeJesus’s disappearance, Mayor Frank Jackson, who had been elected in 2006, unveiled a nine-hundred-page report at city hall, detailing more than two dozen problems with how Cleveland’s police handed missing-persons cases. It recommended setting up a special unit to deal with them. The mayor vowed to adopt all the commission’s recommendations, including Felix DeJesus’s suggestion of an information guide.

The next day, the DeJesus family attended an emotional vigil to mark the sixth anniversary of Gina going missing. As Ariel Castro mingled in the large crowd of supporters, Nancy Ruiz addressed reporters about the commission’s scathing report.

“They should have done it a long time ago,” she said. “But it’s a start. A step forward.”

That night, WEWS-TV news ran coverage of the vigil, which Castro made sure Gina and the other hostages watched on their televisions.

“I don’t know how you’ve made it through six years,” a reporter told Nancy. “Talk to me about that. How does a mother get through even six months, let alone six years, not knowing what happened?”

“At first it was very hard,” said Nancy. “I wouldn’t even give interviews at the beginning. Now, I’m fighting. I’m coming out. My daughter’s out there somewhere. Somebody knows something. I need them to step up to the plate and start speaking. Tell me where my baby’s at so I can bring her home.”

Felix DeJesus said he still went out searching for Gina every night after work.

“I have that hope that we’re going to bring her home,” he said, “so I don’t have to come back out here another year looking for my daughter.”

Three weeks later, Beth Serrano led a small group of supporters in a march past the Burger King on West 110th Street, commemorating the seventh anniversary of her sister Amanda’s disappearance.

“I feel somebody did see something,” Serrano told WEWS-TV news. “Maybe they’re scared but they could be anonymous. Because maybe that one piece they hold could pull it together.”

In November, Anita Lugo heard a pounding sound coming from her neighbor Ariel Castro’s house. She looked up to see a woman and a baby at a window, half boarded up by a piece of wood. She immediately called Cleveland police.

“That was me,” Michelle Knight would later explain. “I was trying to get out.”

When police arrived at 2207 Seymour Avenue, an officer knocked on the front door several times before walking round to the side of the house. When no one answered the door, the officers left.

Soon afterward, another neighbor, Juan Perez, was in his basement with his sister, when they heard screaming coming from Ariel Castro’s basement and called the police.

“It was the kind of scream that made you uncomfortable,” said Perez, who had known Ariel Castro since he was a small boy. “It gave us goose bumps and went on for ten seconds. I had my sister called the police.”

Perez, twenty-seven, who lived two doors away, thought the Castro house was vacant, as the windows were boarded up and he rarely saw Castro there.

Once again, Cleveland police came to 2207 Seymour Avenue and knocked on the front door, and then left when no one answered.

Amanda Berry’s daughter, Jocelyn, grew into a pretty four-year-old, who was pampered by everybody in the house. Most afternoons Ariel Castro took her out to play in a local park, telling everyone that it was his girlfriend’s baby. He also, reportedly, often took her over to her grandmother’s house.

When he visited his cousin Nelson Martinez in nearby Parma, Ohio, he brought along Jocelyn, introducing her as his granddaughter.

“She looked healthy and happy,” said Martinez, “and looked as though she liked being with her ‘granddaddy.’ She had on clean clothes and seemed alert and talked like a normal little girl.”

He even took his little daughter to some of his shows, so she could watch him perform.

“He had the nerve to introduce Jocelyn to his band,” said Michelle. “That was another stupid move.”

During the day, when he was out driving his school bus, Amanda homeschooled her daughter, teaching her how to read and write. She turned their bedroom into a nursery, putting up their paintings on the wall, as she instilled strict values and a religious faith in her daughter.

When Castro came home from work, Michelle would hear him unlock Amanda’s door and take Jocelyn downstairs to play. They would spend hours watching cartoons together, with Castro laughing and chuckling.

“My greatest fear,” wrote Michelle in her autobiography, “was that after she got older, he would start to mess with her the same way he did with the rest of us.”

Little Jocelyn grew up in a dark prison without any sunlight and no medical or dental treatment. One night the little girl woke up from a bad dream screaming. Alarmed his neighbors would hear, Castro ran up the stairs into the white bedroom and ordered Amanda to “shut her up!”

Amanda tried to calm her down by rocking her gently and rubbing her back, but Jocelyn wouldn’t stop crying. Then her father put his hand over her face, ordering her to be quiet.

Over the years all three women adapted to their dire situation, learning to keep Ariel Castro happy in order to survive. The seasons changed, with the women sweltering without air-conditioning in the unbearably hot summers, or freezing without any heat in the savage winters.

He strictly enforced his ban of using real names in the house, robbing his hostages of their identity. He also ordered Michelle never to call Jocelyn by her real name.

“I called her Pretty,” she said. “That’s all I was allowed.”

They all tried to get on with each other as best as possible. Michelle and Gina were like sisters, while Amanda devoted herself to Jocelyn and protected her from her father.

“It’s mind-boggling what was going on inside that house between them,” said attorney Craig Weintraub, who would later read all the women’s personal journals, detailing their innermost thoughts. “They grew accustomed to this lifestyle, and after a time you lose your identity and who you were when you first got into that house.”

April 21, 2011 marked eight years since Amanda Berry had first been tricked into 2207 Seymour Avenue. And yet again Ariel Castro ensured that Amanda, who turned twenty-five the next day, watched the television coverage of the annual vigil in her honor.

“It’s eight years ago tonight,” said WEWS-TV anchorwoman Danita Harris, “that Amanda Berry disappeared on her way home from work. And tonight people gathered at the spot where she was last seen. Our John Kosich was there and joins us live tonight. John, have there been any new developments in the last year?”

“No, sadly, Danita, there has not been,” replied Kosich, standing among a small crowd outside the Burger King, “and that is the tough part for the family that Amanda has left. Each April twenty-first at six
P.M.
, those who knew Amanda Berry gather to remember. It was eight years ago tonight at this time she left work here at this Burger King on West One Hundred and Tenth and Lorain. She was headed to home less than half a mile away. She was on the phone with her sister, Beth, at the time when she said her ride was here. It’s a conversation Beth plays over each day in her head.”

“My one question is,” said Beth Serrano, “why didn’t I ask who was giving you the ride?”

Kosich said that after Gina DeJesus had disappeared almost exactly a year later, the girls’ two families had united in their search to find their daughters. But as each year passed, fewer and fewer people came to the girls’ vigils.

“This’ll probably be the last one,” said Nancy Ruiz. “But I will always appreciate [the] support.”

A few weeks later, Ariel Castro bought an old washer-dryer from Tito DeJesus, who was moving. Castro had seen him clearing out junk in his garage and offered to buy some appliances.

“He wanted all that stuff,” recalled DeJesus. “I’m like, ‘Dude, you barely have room for the washer and dryer.’”

Then DeJesus helped Castro load the stuff in his Jeep Cherokee, accompanying him to 2207 Seymour Avenue, where they put everything in the driveway.

“I thought we were going to take it to the basement,” said DeJesus. “And he told me, ‘Just leave the washer and dryer in the driveway, and you can help me put the small stuff in the living room.’”

DeJesus helped him carry it into the house, but Castro wouldn’t let him go any farther than the living room.

“I hadn’t been inside his house for a long time,” said DeJesus, “but it looked normal for a musician’s home. He had all his instruments, like his bass and bass amplifier, as well as a couple of conga drums.”

Then Castro offered him a Corona beer, saying he wanted to show him his new Fender bass.

“So I stayed and it was odd,” recalled DeJesus. “He actually wanted me to hang out with him.”

While they were drinking beer and playing along with some Latin music videos on
YouTube
, Castro had a question.

“And out of the blue he said, ‘Hey, man, did they ever find your cousin Gina yet?’” said Tito. “I’m like, ‘I’m not sure we’re related but they haven’t found her yet, man.’ He says, ‘I pray to God that they find her.’”

That summer, Ariel Castro’s grandmother, Hercilia Carabello, died in Reading, Pennsylvania. Lillian Rodriguez had moved there a few months earlier to take care of her mother. The whole Castro family attended the funeral with the exception of Ariel, who had been so close to her growing up.

“They were surprised that he didn’t go to his grandmother’s funeral,” said Aurora Marti. “He always said he wanted to see his grandmother, but he never went.”

Soon afterward, Ariel Castro, Jr., quit his job at the Fort Wayne
Journal Gazette
and moved to Columbus, Ohio, to work for a bank. He had recently gotten divorced and wanted to start a new life. On his way he stopped off in Cleveland to visit his father, who was as reluctant as ever about allowing him inside the house.

“I would always enter through the back door,” he said. “That’s where my father would flag me in.”

He then brought his son into the kitchen, where they talked for about twenty minutes, before he ushered him out again.

In November, Elsie Cintron was walking home late one night when she saw a little girl staring out of an attic window at 2207 Seymour Avenue. When she got home she told her brother Israel Lugo about the strange little girl in their neighbor’s window.

“She was shaken up,” he recalled. “She told me, ‘I believe I saw a little girl in … Ariel’s house.’”

Lugo told her that Castro lived alone, but his sister asked him to go and check it out anyway.

“So I go over,” said Lugo, “and there’s plywood on the windows and bags all over the place, so you really can’t see in or out of the house.”

Then he called the police and reported his sister seeing the mysterious little girl at the Castro house.

“The cops came maybe half an hour later,” recalled Lugo. “They pounded on the door for maybe five or six minutes and there was no answer.”

After shining a flashlight into the driveway for a few seconds, they got into their patrol car and drove off.

“They didn’t take it seriously,” said Elsie Cintron.

A few weeks later, Lugo’s niece, Nina Samoylicz, saw a naked girl wearing a dog collar in Ariel Castro’s backyard.

“She was walking around naked,” said Nina. “We thought it was funny at first but then it was weird, so we called the cops. They thought we were joking, they didn’t believe us.”

Soon afterward, some residents in a retirement home on Scranton Street, which overlooked Seymour Avenue, saw three naked girls in Castro’s backyard.

“They were naked on all fours with a leash and collar on them,” said Lugo, “and they were being abused.”

Concerned, the ladies called Cleveland police to report it, waiting on Seymour Avenue for the cops to arrive. But they never did.

The next day, Ariel Castro erected an eight-foot fence with chicken wire and blue tarpaulin. Then he let the trees and bushes become overgrown, so no one could see into his backyard anymore.

On February 14, 2012, the Cleveland School District discovered that Ariel Castro drove off his bus route every day to go grocery shopping at a Marc’s superstore. He was spotted parking his school bus outside the store at 3:10
P.M.
, and then going inside. Twenty-five minutes later he came out, carrying three large shopping bags full of food.

Castro then faced a disciplinary hearing, at which he readily admitted the offense.

“[He] blamed it on a route change,” wrote his boss, Ann Carlson, “as he normally stops at the Marc’s store at West 154th Street and Putitas Ave.”

When asked, in front of six union representatives, if he regularly stopped off at Marc’s on his bus, he answered, “Yes.” At that point one of the union representatives told him to stop talking.

“This is Mr. Castro’s third demonstration of lack of judgment,” wrote Carlson. “He has previously been suspended sixty days for leaving a child on a bus and sixty days for making an illegal U-turn in rush hour traffic with a busload of students.”

Castro was then suspended for another sixty days without pay and made to sign a “last chance agreement,” stating that he would be fired if he committed another offense.