The Lost Girls (40 page)

At 8:54, a prison guard checked in on Castro’s cell and he appeared to be fine.

Then, as soon as he left, Ariel Castro started his preparations to die. He first created a shrine, carefully laying out photographs of his children and all his family members on a poster board on his desk. The he wrote out their names on sheets of paper, placing each by their photographs.

After laying out several personal items around his cell, he opened his Bible to the Gospel of Saint John, chapters one and two, leaving it on the floor. He also wrote out a passage from chapter three on a sheet of paper: “No one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

Castro then took off his bedsheet and tied it in knots to form a ligature. After securing several inches of it around the window frame, seven feet off the ground, he wound a foot-long section around his neck and undid his shorts until they fell to his ankles. Then, facing his cell door, he dropped to his knees, as the ligature tightened, pulling the last breath out of him.

At nine-fifteen, Officer Caleb Ackley began his regular evening cell count. Three minutes later, he reached Ariel Castro’s cell, 2103, and saw his lifeless body dangling from the window frame.

“[He had] a sheet tied around his neck and attached to the window seal [
sic
],” Officer Ackley later wrote, “his knees were slightly bent and his shorts were around his ankles.”

Ackley raised the alarm and within seconds Officer Ryan Murphy arrived. Then they lifted up Castro’s body to release the pressure off his neck, pulling the sheet out of the window and ripping it.

“We then lowered the inmate to the floor,” wrote Ackley. “I instructed Officer Murphy to bring me [a knife] to remove the remainder of the sheet from the inmate’s neck.”

After cutting off the sheet, Ackley started CPR chest compressions to try to revive Castro. For the next few minutes he and two other officers took turns applying CPR in cycles of thirty chest compressions each. But there was no response. At 9:22, a nurse arrived and continued the CPR.

At 9:25, an ambulance was called and for the next forty-five minutes, until paramedics arrived, a rotation of prison guards and nurses took turns applying CPR to Castro. Two correction officers entered with video cameras and started filming the resuscitation attempts.

Finally, at 10:05, the paramedics arrived after getting lost on the way. They placed Castro’s body on a backboard and onto a gurney, wheeling it out of the cell, which was then secured with yellow tape. Ariel Castro’s body was then carried down the stairs into the waiting ambulance.

At 10:24, the ambulance driver turned on the flashing lights and siren, and drove to the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. Attempts to resuscitate Castro continued, as a correctional officer filmed. Midway, the ambulance stopped to pick up more medics, who came on board to join in the attempts to revive Castro.

When they arrived at the hospital, a doctor pronounced Ariel Castro dead at 10:52, and he was taken to the morgue. Four minutes later, the video camera was turned off.

At 12:03 Wednesday morning, after getting a tip-off, WOIO-TV broke into regular programming to report Ariel Castro had hung himself in his cell. For the next two and a half hours they broadcast live, from the studio and the former site of the Castro house on Seymour Avenue.

Just after midnight, Ariel Castro’s cousin Maria Montes received a text informing her of the news. Then she turned on the television to find every station reporting her uncle’s suicide.

“I cried a little bit,” she said. “It wasn’t for him. I cried for those girls … and just wondering if they knew, what they thought, how they felt.”

Montes said she was also concerned for Castro’s elderly mother, Lillian Rodriguez, who had already been through so much.

“I just hope this doesn’t kill her,” said Montes.

In the wake of Castro’s suicide, the Ohio Department of Corrections issued a statement:

Inmate Ariel Castro was found hanging in his cell at 9:20
P.M
. at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient. He was housed in protective custody which means he was in a cell by himself and rounds are required every 30 minutes at staggered intervals. Upon finding inmate Castro, prison medical staff began performing lifesaving measures. Shortly after, he was transported to OSUMC where he was pronounced dead at 10:52
P.M.
A thorough review of this incident is underway and more information can be provided as it becomes available pending the state of the investigation.

On Wednesday morning, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation announced it would conduct a “thorough review” of the incident, to determine exactly what happened. Many questions were being asked about how Ariel Castro was able to commit suicide while under maximum security. There were even reports that guards had turned a blind eye and let him kill himself.

Even more embarrassing was that, only three weeks earlier, convicted killer Billy Slagle had hung himself in his cell at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, just forty miles south of Orient. Three days away from his execution by lethal injection, Slagle had left a suicide note, asking how Ariel Castro had avoided the death penalty and he had not.

On the
Today
show, defense attorney Craig Weintraub claimed that he had warned the Ohio prison authorities several times that Ariel Castro was a suicide risk, but no one had taken any notice.

“There is no doubt that he had psychological problems … and was deeply disturbed,” he told reporter Willie Geist. “I understand the public in general is probably going to say, ‘Well, good riddance.’ But this is a human being, we are in a civilized society, and we expect that the person will be protected when they’re institutionalized. I would doubt the prison officials would dispute that they have an obligation to ensure that there won’t be a suicide or anything else. And we pray that there wasn’t anything else.”

Prosecutor Tim McGinty told reporters that Ariel Castro had taken the coward’s way out.

“This man couldn’t take, even for a month, a small portion of what he had dished out for more than a decade,” said McGinty.

Michelle Knight agreed, saying that she understood why he had hung himself.

“He couldn’t face what he did with his head held up high,” she said. “He had to face it like a coward because he was ashamed and embarrassed of what he had done. And he didn’t want what he did to us to happen to him.”

In the wake of Ariel Castro’s suicide, the Ohio branch of the American Civil Liberties Union called for a full investigation into his death. And the Ohio authorities announced two separate investigations: one to examine the circumstances of his death, and the other to determine if he had received adequate medical and psychological care prior to his death.

Franklin County Coroner Jan Gorniak said that an autopsy on Ariel Castro’s body had determined his death was a “hanging suicide.” She noted depressions on his wrists, injuries to his neck and chin, and that he had bitten his tongue as he died. It also revealed that the five-foot-seven-inch Castro weighed 168 pounds, ten pounds less than when he had arrived at Lima, almost a month earlier.

On Friday morning, as Castro’s body was released to his family,
Today
aired part of his interrogation video, which had been leaked. Castro spoke about an early close call soon after he had snatched Michelle, when Lillian Roldan had asked him why a television upstairs was turned on. After watching the
Today
piece, Roldan said she could not even remember the incident.

Over the next few weeks, Anthony Castro devoted himself to finding a cemetery that would take his father’s remains, but was turned down again and again.

“Anthony is trying to work the body,” said Cesi Castro, “but I don’t know how he’s doing it.”

By October 1, the Cleveland Courage Fund stood at $1.4 million and still growing daily. A week later, the Ohio Department for Rehabilitation and Correction published its findings. It made lurid headlines by speculating whether Ariel Castro might have died of autoerotic asphyxiation, as he was found naked from the waist down.

Coroner Jan Gorniak scoffed at the idea of Castro accidentally killing himself, trying to get a sexual thrill by depriving the brain of oxygen during masturbation.

“I did the autopsy myself,” she told CNN. “I saw the ligature. I saw the pictures of the cell. It was a suicide.”

The report also criticized prison guards for failing to check his cell at least eight times on the day he died, and then falsifying logbooks to cover it up.

In mid-October, Dr. Phil McGraw arrived in Cleveland to interview Michelle Knight for a two-part special. She was seen filming with Dr. Phil at the Family Dollar store from where she was abducted, later posing for photographs with Commander Keith Sulzer and other Cleveland police officers.

“Michelle Knight’s story of horror and courageous survival almost defied description,” read a press release from Dr. Phil, “and has changed me like no other in twelve years of doing the show. Her dark journey from victim to victor is beyond compelling.”

At the end of October, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus signed a book deal to tell their story. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, was brokered by the Jones Day law firm. Michelle was invited to participate but declined, as she now had her own attorney handling her affairs.

In early November, soon after the Dr. Phil special was aired to huge ratings, Michelle Knight signed her own book deal, to write a memoir with a ghostwriter to be published on the first anniversary of her escape.

That Thanksgiving, Michelle moved out of the halfway house and into her own apartment in a fashionable part of Cleveland. Since her escape she had started getting tattooed and pierced as a therapeutic symbol of her newfound freedom.

She had also started boxing and regularly practiced on a red punching bag, with Ariel Castro’s face drawn on it in Magic Marker.

“I just wanted to put his face right here,” she told
The Guardian,
“and hit it.”

She also announced plans to change her name to Lily, her favorite flower, and was writing her own songs and recording them in a Cleveland studio. But her real passion was cooking, and Michelle told
People
magazine she wanted to open her own “multicultural” restaurant, serving different dishes from around the world.

Michelle had also been in touch with her son Joey’s adoptive parents, and had been sent photographs of him as a teenager. But for the moment she had agreed not to contact him until his adoptive parents were ready, as it would be too unsettling.

Fernando Colon hired a lawyer to handle his appeal against his conviction for molesting Emily and Arlene Castro, and is still awaiting a date for it to be heard.

On May 6, 2014—the first anniversary of the escape—Michelle Knight, now thirty-three, officially forgave Ariel Castro. In an interview with Savannah Guthrie of the
Today
show to promote her new book,
Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed,
Michelle said she no longer bore him any grudges.

“If I did something wrong,” she explained, “even if it was a small thing, I would want somebody to forgive me. So I can forgive him for what he’s done wrong because that’s the way of life.”

That afternoon, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus and their families went to the White House, where they met President Barak Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. After a VIP tour of the White House followed by lunch, they posed for photographs in the Oval Office with the president and the vice president, who congratulated them on their bravery and fortitude.

That night, Amanda and Gina were guests of honor at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s annual Hope Awards dinner. During the glittering evening, Amanda, who looked glamorous in a fashionable evening gown, delivered a speech to the guests.

“If I could only say one thing,” she said, fighting back tears, “it would be this: Never give up hope, because miracles do happen.”

Then the crowd rose to their feet for a standing ovation.

The mountain in Duey, Puerto Rico, which was owned by the Castro Family. (Courtesy John Glatt)