Triple kidnap suspect Ariel Castro shields his face after being confronted by reporters in the Cleveland police station where has taken for questioning. Source: Fox News
- IN PICTURES: CLEVELAND'S HOUSE OF HORRORS
- Ariel Castro charged with four counts of kidnap, three of rape.
- FBI investigators return to examine properties either side of Castro's house.
- Amanda Berry gave birth inside inflatable pool because of the 'mess'.
ARIEL Castro's former wife claimed she didn't testify about his violent behaviour after he paid her off with cash and a car before threatening her safety.
Puerto Rican-born Castro has been charged for the kidnap and rape of 27-year-old Amanda Berry, 23-year-old Gina DeJesus and 32-year-old Michele Knight, all of whom went missing separately not far from each other in Cleveland, Ohio. Castro also faces a count of kidnapping related to Berry's six-year-old daughter Jocelyn, who was born in captivity.
WHO IS THE THIRD VICTIM?
IS THE CLEVELAND HERO A FRAUD?
RESCUED WOMAN AND MUM YET TO SPEAK
An undated picture taken of Michele Knight before she was held in a house in Cleveland against her will with Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry. Picture: Fox News 8
CASTRO'S 'DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE' PERSONALITY
Grimilda Figueroa, who had three daughters and a son with Castro, died last year from a brain tumour and it is not clear if she and her estranged husband had ever formally divorced, though the pair lived separate lives. Both had other long-term partners and Ms Figueroa had a son with her partner Fernando Colon, whom she met in 1995.
In 1994 a grand jury was due to her testimony relating to allegations Ms Figueroa had made regarding the brutal violence she said she suffered at the hands of Castro following surgery in 1993.
In a sworn statement, she said she dropped the charges after her ex bought her silence with a car, cash and an open threat to her safety, The Los Angeles Times reports.
Aduio of police officers comments when responding to Cleveland house call
"You know what will happen to you if you do testify," Ms Figueroa said in the affidavit. "I knew that he would find me and assault me again. … I was unable to offer my testimony before the grand jury. I did not tell anyone about the threats."
Ms Figueroa's partner, Fernando Colon, was questioned over the 2004 disappearance of Gina DeJesus as his stepdaughter was her close friend. He said he told the FBI to look into Castro's activities. He was later convicted of sexually molesting both Arlene and Emily. Mr Colon told Fox 8 News that has always denied the charges and thinks Castro orchestrated the case against him which included testifying to divert attention away from his own crimes.
"Actually, that was something brilliant because if you come to think about it, he's got these girls prisoner in there, and put an accusation as such to me, makes him look like an angel, like he is such a proud father, such a trustworthy person," Colon said.
"If people would have listened, when I told them to look into this individual, these girls would not have been missing so long," he added.
Hope dangerous for grieving families
Members of the FBI evidence response team carry out the front screen door from a house where three women were held, in Cleveland. Three women who disappeared a decade ago were found safe Monday, and police arrested three brothers accused of holding the victims against their will. Picture: Tony Dejak
Thousands of children are missing all across America. The longer they are gone, the smaller the chances they will be found alive. So when three women who had been missing for a decade or more emerged from the house where they had been held captive, it provided an extraordinarily rare happy ending.
"I would definitely say it was a miracle," said Kelly Murphy, who founded Project Jason after her own son vanished to help other such families.
Murphy had worked with two of the Cleveland families while their daughters were missing. After they were found, she heard from many others who are still searching.
"The general response is that it gives us all hope," Murphy said. "I'm in the situation too, with my son almost missing for 12 years without a trace and without clues. It definitely gives us hope that there is a chance. If it happened to those girls, it can happen to us."
Action News 19 reporter Ed Gallek confronts Ariel Castro in the Cleveland police station
"To have hope helps you get through each day, hope that there's a good answer instead of the answer that nobody wants. It just helps you keep going, because it's very difficult to have to live with ambiguous loss."
But how much does it help to hope for a miracle, which by definition is almost impossible?
Some, like Murphy, need to keep that spark alive, however small. Others, like Jody Himebaugh, need to protect their emotions.
Himebaugh knows about what happened in Cleveland, but has avoided the details. His son Mark disappeared in 1991, at age 11.
FBI agents search another Cleveland house close to where three women were held.
"Every time I watch this kind of stuff, it rekindles the last 23 years," he said. "All it does, it just gives us hope again."
For Himebaugh, hope hurts. Whether hope is more painful than saying a permanent goodbye - that's impossible to figure.
"For the past 23 years, I've been happy for the families over that time who have recovered their kids, dead or alive," he said. "At least they've got closure. My biggest fear is I'm going to go to my grave and never know what happened to Mark, and why."
Sherry Hamby, a psychology professor at Sewanee: The University of the South who studies the victimization of children, said some families can become frozen in time at the point their child disappeared.
Dashcam footage shows the kidnapping suspect being questioned by an officer in 2008. Courtesy Fox News Official 16
"At some point, after so many years have gone by, there's a lot to be said for closure," Hamby said. "It's just not a natural state of being for humans to be frozen in this time, waiting. We can't stay in that kind of limbo forever."
The most difficult decisions, Hamby said, can involve what seem like mundane details.
"Are you going to pack up that child's things? Are you going to convert that room to another use?" she said. "I think the need for psychological closure just is necessary because of the concrete limitations that we are facing. It's just hard to go through life trying to not make any changes."
Murphy, of Project Jason, knows families who have chosen to believe their missing child is dead, and she does not begrudge them that choice.
But Murphy holds onto hope, "because it keeps us focused on the future."
"It's just unfortunate that in our case," she said, "we don't know what the future holds."
Castro faces court in next few hours
The former US school bus driver charged with holding three young women in captivity and raping them in a decade-long horror, is due to appear in an Ohio court on Thursday local time, three days after their dramatic rescue.
Castro is due in court in the next few hours for arraignment.
A photo of Ariel Castro released by the Cleveland Police Department following his arrest.
His two brothers are also scheduled to make a court appearance, but on misdemeanour charges unrelated to the kidnappings and rapes, authorities said.
Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba said that a paternity test on Ariel Castro was being done to establish who fathered Berry's child. He reportedly made sure Joceyln didn't know the real names of either Knight or DeJesus in case she accidentally mentioned them when he took her on trips to the outside world.
The young girl was said to be home schooled and none of the women were ever visited by or went out to see a doctor or medical professional during their years in captivity.
The police chief refused to comment on reports that Castro had impregnated Knight at least five times and would punch her in the stomach until she miscarried.
Amanda Berry, left, and Gina DeJesus have been found alive after disappearing in the US city of Cleveland about a decade ago. Picture: AFP
Police Chief Michael McGrath earlier told NBC he was "absolutely" sure police did everything they could to find the women over the years.
He disputed claims by neighbours that officers had been called to the house before for suspicious circumstances.
Castro, a former school bus driver whose family hails from Puerto Rico, has been described as a friendly neighbour who raised few suspicions but who also kept to himself, rarely if ever allowing anyone inside his home.
"Ariel kept everybody at a distance," Tomba said. "He ran the show."
Castro 'marked captivity with cake'
Details have emerged of the horrific circumstance in which the 3 women were held in a US house for 10 years
Inside the Seymour Avenue house, the three women who last celebrated birthdays with their families about a decade ago saw year after year perversely marked by Castro's serving of a cake on the day each woman was abducted, according to one of DeJesus's cousins.
"He would celebrate their abduction day as their new birthday," the cousin said, adding that DeJesus had pleaded with family not to ask her about her years in captivity.
Technology helps thwart kidnappers: experts
Experts say the implementation of the amber alert system for a child abduction emergency which ensures saturation coverage on cable television and social media is helping them put pressure on abductors.
"When an Amber Alert goes out, there is so much public pressure on the abductor that they often release the child before they can get hurt," Robert G. Lowery Jr. from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children told The Washington Post. "The vast majority of children now escape death because of Amber Alert."
The system enacted means stories are quickly transmitted on 24 hour cable TV shows, CCTV vision is scrutinised by the police, known sex offenders are looked at, hotlines for tips are quickly set up, alerts are sent via Twitter and Facebook plus police study traffic images. Lowery's non-profit group has also recently launched a service to send amber alert information to every mobile phone within range of the mobile phone tower where the child went missing.
The ability of computer programs to create realistic images of what a kidnapped child may look like years after they went missing is also vital.
Audio reveals moment of girls' rescue
A stunned police officer called "we found 'em, we found 'em" when three kidnap victims were rescued in Cleveland on Tuesday. Now they're not sure exactly how many were held at the house.
The three women were subjected to prolonged sexual and psychological abuse and suffered miscarriages, a city councilman briefed on the case said.
At the time of the rescue, Michele Knight told police she was unsure exactly how many women were detained inside the house, but that there may have been other victims.
A source has reportedly told The Mirror: "Police are unsure as to how many victims there may have been over the past 10 years but they are following up on every single lead they get."
FBI investigators have begun examining houses on either side of the Seymour Ave, Cleveland, property in which the three captives were kept locked in separate rooms. Fox News reports these properties had previously been owned by the Castro family.
Cleveland's safety director Marty Flask said human remains have not been found at the Castro home on Seymour Avenue. More than 200 items of evidence have so far been taken from the house in which the three were held.
Audio has been released of the frantic emergency call Amanda Berry made after escaping a kidnapping lasting ten years.
Meanwhile, Cleveland police have released the audio recording of the officers' point of view while responding to Amanda Berry's and Charles Ramsey's 911 calls.
Upon arriving at 5.55pm, the officers immediately realised the callers were not cranks.
"This might be for real," one of the officers said while asking for an ambulance.
"Georgina DeJesus might be in this house also," another said.
Audio released by the Cleveland Police Department captures Charles Ramsey's call to emergency services.
With the sound of a woman crying in the background, one officer calls: "We found em. We found em".
Later: "We also have a Michele Knight in the house. I don't know if you want to look that up in the radio, uh the system."
Police press conference
Police told media at a press conference this morning that the three captives never left the property and were only allowed outside twice.
The women were allowed to leave the home briefly, both times to go "into the garage in disguise,'' deputy police chief Ed Tomba told reporters.
"They were in that home. They don't believe they've been outside of the home for the last 10 years,'' he said.
"They were not in one room, but they did know each other and they did know each other was there.''
He refused to comment on reports that the women had become pregnant on several occasions and had lost the babies.
The house was found to be in "disarray" when investigators entered.
Monday was the first time Amanda, Gina or Michele tried to escape - ever, Tomba said.
Councilman Brian Cummins said many details remained unclear, including the number of pregnancies and the conditions under which the miscarriages occurred.
He said the women were kept in the basement for some time without having access to the rest of the house. Earlier, city police chief Michael McGrath had said the women were "bound and there were chains and ropes in the hall''.
"It sounds pretty gruesome,'' Cummins said.
Suspect 'needed help'
Sources told the local Cleveland news outlet that Ariel Castro "talks about a sex addiction and needing help" and that he "puts some blame on the victims for getting in the car with him."
WEWS-TV reports sources as saying Castro had offered Amanda Berry and Michele Knight rides home, but took them to his house instead.
Neighbors in the largely Puerto Rican neighborhood said he had taken part in the search for one of the missing women, performed music at a fundraiser for her and attended a candlelight vigil, where he comforted her mother.
The captives reportedly watched the vigils on television from their basement prison.
"When we went out to look for Gina, he helped pass out fliers,'' said Khalid Samad, a community activist who said Castro was friends with DeJesus' father.
Castro, just like everyone else in the tight-knit, mostly Puerto Rican neighbourhood, seemed shaken by the 2004 disappearance of Ms DeJesus.
Fox news reports the three Castro brothers are being held in separate cells under additional police protection as inmates - even though they are kept separate - are doing all they can to give the men "a hard time".
Prosecutors brought no charges against his brothers, Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50, saying there was no evidence they had any part in the crime. Police said they were detained because they were with Ariel at the time of his arrest and have outstanding warrants.
"There is nothing that leads us to believe that they (the brothers) were involved or had any knowledge of this,'' Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba said.
"We found no facts to link them to the crime.''
The police chief told the news conference that a paternity test on Ariel Castro was being done to establish who fathered Berry's now 6-year-old child.
As recently as 2005, Castro was accused of repeated acts of violence against his children's mother. A domestic-violence court filing at the time accused Ariel Castro of twice breaking the nose of his children's mother, knocking out a tooth, dislocating each shoulder and threatening to kill her and her daughters three or four times in a year.
Victims' families speak
Two of the women were welcomed home Wednesday by jubilant crowds. Neither Berry nor Gina DeJesus, about 23, spoke publicly, and their families pleaded for patience and time alone. The third captive, Michele Knight, 32, was reported in good condition at a local hospital.
Ms Berry was expected to front the media today to make a statement but instead her older sister, Beth Serrano, appeared outside her home overnight (about 2am AEST).
Ms Serrano thanked everyone for their support over the years and requested privacy for the family.
"I want to thank the public and media for their support and courage over the years. At this time our family would request privacy so my sister and niece and I can have time to recover," she told a thicket of microphones and lenses.
"We appreciate all you have done for us throughout the past ten years. Please respect our privacy until we are ready to make our statements. And thank you," she added, before breaking down in tears.
Ms DeJesus also arrived home giving a thumbs up to those gathered outside her home but not speaking to reporters.
Her aunt Sandra Ruiz made a statement on behalf of the family in which she asked the community not to retaliate against the Castro family and to keep searching for another missing girl, Ashely Summers, who was 14 when she disappeared in 2007 from the same Cleveland neighbourhood.
Ms Ruiz described Amanda Berry and Michele Knight as "members of our family now."
"Thank you, again, for your prayers and support. There are not enough words to say or express the joy that we feel for the return of our family member Gina," she said. "Now we need to, as a whole, to rally together, to look next door, and bring our other family member that is missing, Ashley Summers, OK?"
"Be patient with us," she said. "When we are ready ... we will talk to all of you."
Family members of Ms Knight said she remains in hospital but is doing well. A cousin told CNN that she "has the mind of a child."
Life in house of horror
Details are emerging about the house that they were held captive in. Police have confirmed that chains were found on the walls and that the women were only allowed outside for very brief periods of time.
WKYC reported that Ms Knight was forced to deliver Ms Berry's baby, Jocelyn, in an inflatable pool "so the mess was easier to clean up".
"Michele stated that Ariel told her that if the baby died, that he'd kill her," the police report states.
The report said Ms Knight put her mouth to the Jocelyn's mouth and "breathed for her" to keep them both alive.
NewsChannel5 reports Michele Knight was pregnant by Ariel Castro five times. They allege he forced an abortion each time by punching her in the stomach.
19 Action News says its reporter has been told Ariel Castro made a suicide note years ago detailing why he committed the kidnappings.
Police told media at a press conference this morning that the three captives had initially been chained in the building's basement. However, they were later allowed to live in separate rooms upstairs and were hidden in the attic when visitors came to the house.
"We have confirmation they were bound and there were chains and ropes in the hall," Michael McGrath, Cleveland's chief of police told the US Today show.
However, reports have suggested that six-year-old Jocelyn, who was born to Ms Berry while in captivity, was allowed out of the house to visit Ariel Castro's mother, Lillian Rodriguez, who she called 'grandmother'. It is unconfirmed if Ariel Castro is the father of Ms Berry's child.
Neighbours say they reported seeing three women outside on leashes and a woman pounding on a window with a child in her hand's but that police did nothing.
Mr McGrath said that there had been no record of those calls coming into police over the past 10 years. Asked if those calls could be made but that a recording was documented, Mr McGrath replied "We have no record of those calls coming in over the past 10 years''.
CNN is reporting details about Amanda Berry's escape bid.
Castro had left the house without locking the main door. A lighter "storm door" was locked, however.
Castro had previously "tested" his captives by pretending to leave the house with the door unlocked. He would then return suddenly.
Amanda had "reached breaking point" before making her escape bid earlier this week.
