The Lost Girls (26 page)

At 9:00
A.M.
the Cleveland Department of Public Safety held a press conference to update the media, and try to head off the mounting criticism.

“Now this morning we’re happy to announce,” Mayor Frank Jackson told the hundreds of reporters gathered at city hall, “that Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight have been found and are alive. We’re happy that they have returned to us, but their absence … has plagued their families, our community and Cleveland police … for years.”

Mayor Jackson said although three suspects were in custody, there were still many unanswered questions as to why and how it had happened.

Then Special Agent Steve Anthony, who is in charge of the FBI’s Cleveland Office, took the microphone.

“The nightmare is over,” he declared. “These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance. The healing can now begin.”

Special Agent Anthony said the FBI and Cleveland police had relentlessly pursued every tip that had come in over the years.

“And the families of these three young ladies never gave up hope,” he said, “and neither did law enforcement. As you can imagine, words can’t describe the emotions being felt by all. Yes, law enforcement professionals do cry.”

Ed Tomba then fielded questions from the press, reminding them that the investigation was ongoing and he must be sensitive to the victims. One TV reporter asked if this was an isolated incident or part of a larger human-trafficking operation.

“It possibly could be something that is outside of Cleveland,” replied Tomba, “but as of right now we have no indication that it’s bigger than our neighborhood here.”

Associated Press reporter Tom Sherman asked if the three girls had been held as sex slaves during their imprisonment.

“You know, Tom,” he said, “that hasn’t been determined yet. We were very, very careful with the interview process last night. Today when we have our expert come in from the FBI, they’re going to do a little more in-depth interviews. And I’m sure that as time goes by, there’ll be more information that will be provided from these young ladies as to exactly what took place.”

Then a cable TV news reporter asked why Cleveland police had not been more aggressive with Ariel Castro, especially after the 2004 incident of the boy being left on his school bus.

“If that questioning was done,” said the reporter, “these ladies may have been out. Why wasn’t this guy questioned more aggressively about this and will this change your protocol for looking for missing people?”

Tomba explained that Castro had been interviewed “extensively” about the boy left on his bus, and was not a suspect in any other complaint.

“Our policies are solid,” he said. “I can tell you as part of being [in] this division for the last twenty-eight years, and being very, very involved in this over the last ten years, that the amount of effort, the amount of leads, the amount of work hours and dedication that went into this—I’ve never seen it before. Over the last ten years every single lead was followed up no matter how small.”

Tomba reminded them how Cleveland police and the FBI had “dug up a couple of backyards,” re-canvassed the neighborhood and organized vigils.

“So our goal was to get them back safely,” he said. “The real hero is Amanda. I mean, she’s the one that got this ball rolling … we’re just following her lead. Without her none of us would be here today.”

Later that day, Cleveland City Hall released a statement denying all allegations of sightings of suspicious behavior at Ariel Castro’s house, supposedly reported to the police.

“Media reports of multiple calls to the Cleveland police reporting suspicious activity and the mistreatment of women at 2207 Seymour are false,” it stated.

A few hours later, Ariel Castro was transported from Cleveland City Jail to police headquarters, for the first of two interviews he would give. Deputy Sheriff David Jacobs of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office was in charge of his interrogation, mapping out a careful approach before meeting Castro in an interview room in the Sex Crimes Unit, where it would be videotaped.

“My strategy,” he would later explain, “was to be nonconfrontational. To obtain information from Mr. Castro that would meet the elements of the crimes that we thought he may be charged with in the near future.”

After reading Castro his Miranda rights, Jacobs began questioning him about each of the women in the order he had taken them, and was surprised at his candor and eagerness to talk.

“His answers were very succinct,” said Jacobs. “When I asked him a question, he answered the question. Typically, in my experience in interviews, when you ask somebody an incriminating question, you may not get the answer. I felt that Ariel Castro … answered those questions.”

Referring to himself several times as a “sexual predator,” Castro spoke in chilling detail about the circumstances of his three abductions, saying that he had later had “extensive conversations” about them with each of his victims.

“He used the word ‘abduct,’” said Jacobs. “I asked him, ‘What do you consider [is] a sexual predator?’ And he said, ‘Somebody that continually repeats offenses.’”

Castro told the deputy sheriff that he had acted alone, and his two brothers, Pedro and Onil, had no idea what he had done.

“I’m the criminal,” he declared, “and I knew what I did was wrong.”

Castro admitted abducting the women purely to satisfy his sexual needs. He admitted being particularly callous when he had taken Gina DeJesus, after going to Wilbur Wright Middle School to see his daughter Arlene, and then seeing her walking with Gina. He watched them separate on Lorain Avenue, and then go off in opposite directions before he pounced.

“I did a cold-blooded thing to my daughter that day,” Castro said. “I drove past my daughter to get to Gina.”

He told Jacobs he feared being caught after Gina’s abduction, as he knew there were surveillance cameras outside the school.

Ariel Castro also readily admitted using Amanda’s cell phone to call her mother, a week after taking her.

“I think I said something,” he told Jacobs, “that I have her daughter and that she’s okay and that she’s my wife now—something like that.”

He told Jacobs that he and Michelle Knight had “consensual sex,” from her 2002 abduction until a week before his arrest. He claimed she had only told him of one pregnancy, when the two of them had “devised a plan” for her to go on a tea diet for several days, as well as “knee bends and jumping jacks,” so she would miscarry.

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.