Ariel Castro has abducted the three women – Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina “Gina” DeJesus from the streets of Cleveland, Ohio and later imprisoned them at his house at 2207 Seymour Avenue in the city’s Tremont district.
On August 23, 2002, he kidnapped the first woman –Michelle Knight, at the age of 21. He took her to the top floor of his home where he denied her meals for three days, with her hands and feet tied together.
Prior to her kidnap, Knight had a two-year-old kid at the time, but the state had gained custody of him. She was supposed to appear in court on the day she vanished for her son’s custody hearing, but she never did (she has been kidnapped).
Local police assumed that she had left on her own volition, either under stress or in retaliation for losing custody of her kid. As a result, there was little or no effort put into investigating her disappearance.
The second of the three women to go missing was Amanda Berry, it was a day before her seventeenth birthday, on April 21, 2003. Castro had offered her a lift home from her work at Burger King.
Berry’s mother with mother’s instinct argued that she would never run away just before her birthday, despite the fact that investigators (at first) thought she ran away.
A week after Berry vanished, her mother got a call that would alter the investigation’s direction. The kidnapper has called and said, “I have Amanda. She is in good condition and is scheduled to return home soon.”
Police traced that Amanda’s cell phone was the source of the call, and this investigation confirmed the suspicion that she is kidnapped. Unfortunately, Berry’s mother passed away from heart failure in 2006; she was still unclear of what had happened to her daughter before her death.
Castrol would then kidnapped Gina DeJesus (aged 14) on her way home from school on April 2, 2004. After receiving money from her mother to ride the public bus home from school, DeJesus decided to walk instead.
The three women were held in secured bedrooms and given one meal a day and were only permitted to take showers no more than twice per week.
Knight told the police that Castro had impregnated her in more than four times during her captivity and had caused miscarriages on each occasion by abusing her, punching her, slamming her with dumbbells, and smashing her against walls.
Knight’s grandma stated that Knight needed a facial reconstruction surgery and had hearing loss in one ear, all as a result of the abuse.
Castro had impregnated Berry and have a girl child with her – Knight, the eldest of the three played the midwifery role due to life threatening threats from Castro.
Castro used to work as a bus driver for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District for 22 years before being fired in November 2012 for breaking several laws, including inappropriate driving and leaving kids alone on board.
Then, their lucky day
May 2013, Ariel Castro forgot to lock the “large interior door” of the house when he left house but he had remembered to secure the exterior storm door. Berry made the risky decision to yell for assistance from behind the storm door.
She did this until she attracted the attention of Charles Ramsey, a neighbor, who heard her cries as he was inside his house eating dinner. The storm door was then forced open by Ramsey and another neighbor, Angel Cordero.
Then Berry and her 6-year-old daughter were able to crawl out.Knight and DeJesus were found upstairs in two different rooms when the police arrived.
Ariel Castro’s Arrest and Sentencing
Ariel Castro was apprehended on May 6, 2013, and DNA test confirmed Castro as Berry’s daughter’s father. All three of the women acknowledged that Castro had repeatedly raped them over the years.
On August 1 2013, Castro was sentenced to a life in prison and additional 1,000 years without any possibility of parole.
A month into his prison sentence, Castro hanged himself in his cell with bed sheets.
On August 7, 2013, the home where Castro had resided and imprisoned the women was destroyed – on the Google Maps street view, the horror house has been completely erased.
