Criminology - Cleveland House of Horrors

Episode Date: March 27, 2022

In 2013, three women were rescued from a house of horrors in Cleveland, Ohio. Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina DeJesus were rescued from a house where they had been held captive for years by a man named Aeriel Castro. Also rescued was a young girl named Jocelyn who turned out to be Amanda Berry's daughter, fathered by Castro during his reign of terror. Join Mike and Morf for the 200th episode of Criminology as they discuss the infamous case of Ariel Castro. But, this episode is more about the horrors that these three women went through and how they managed to escape and move forward with their lives. Aeriel Castro was a monster who perpetrated unimaginable horrors on Michelle, Amanda, and Gina for many years. After the women were freed, the questions centered on how Castro was able to hide his criminal acts for so many years. Many people, including the police, had been to his house over the years but no one was able to figure out what he was doing. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 200 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what's going on with you, man? Not a whole lot. I'm pretty excited about this episode.

200's a pretty big milestone, and I knew it was creeping up, but here it is. So it seems like time went by pretty quick to get to 200. Well, it does. I mean, if you think about when we started, what was that, five years ago, almost five years ago, something like that, it's kind of hard to believe. A couple of different things. Number one, that we've been doing this podcast for as long as we have. And number two, that, you know, this is our 200th episode. Yeah, it's crazy.

And I guess once you get older, just like everything else, the time just sort of slips by and you look back and it's like, hey, where those first 199 episodes go. Oh, they're still there. People can still listen to them. They haven't gone anywhere. So let's start out by giving our Patreon shoutouts. We had Lisa Barry, Anthony Rabino, and Jessica Renfro. So some great new support. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks so much for taking the time to go over and support us on Patreon. And for anyone else that would like to, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, buddy. Let's go ahead and jump into this episode. As we mentioned, it's a big one. It's number 200. Now, as we have done so many episodes, we've talked about a lot of cases that haven't had good outcomes, where there's been no justice, and a lot where there haven't even been surviving victims. There's no doubt we tell a lot of stories about tragedy, death, terror, sadness, and grief.

We've told the story of many serial killers who often left few victims in their wake who were still alive to tell them. their tale. When people do survive their ordeals, time and again, it's been shown that in many instances it was because of their tenacity, intelligence, and grace under pressure. We've discussed the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, whose captivity lasted nine long months. We have also talked about teenager Alexis Taylor, an eight-year-old Ronnie O'Neill IV, who survived separate fatal domestic violence incidents. So, you know, when you look back over 199 episodes morph, our roots are definitely in taking deep dives into the crimes of serial killers like the Golden State Killer or the Zodiac, but we wanted to take a different approach. For our 200th episode, we wanted to talk

about another type of story, one of survival, hope, and strength. This is a story of the Cleveland House of Hors, or as many people refer to it, the Cleveland kidnappings. On August 22nd, 2002, 21-year-old Michelle Knight was walking in Cleveland, Ohio. She was trying to find the location of an appointment she needed to get to. Michelle had a lot on her mind because she was fighting to get custody back of her young son. Going to this meeting, she hoped to be the first step in getting custody of it. But Michelle had a problem finding the address, and she realized that she was lost. She was supposed to have a ride, but earlier that morning, the person giving her that ride had canceled on Michelle.

Unable to figure out where she was going, she stopped at the family dollar store on West 106 Street and Lorraine Avenue to use the phone. A man in the store heard her asking an employee how to get to the social services office where appointment was scheduled. He told her he knew where it was, and it turned out that she recognized him. She knew this man's daughter, Emily. She was older than Emily, but they lived nearby. Michelle agreed to a ride with him, figuring if he didn't know where she needed to go, he could at least take her home. Instead, he took her to his house at 2207 Seymour Avenue, where he said there was a litter of puppies that he wanted to check on.

It was only about a two-minute drive, so it would be a quick stop. He said she could have one of the puppies for her son. She followed him inside the home, and he locked the door behind her. It was only the beginning of a years-long ordeal for Michelle, and the start of a crime spree that would gain infamy in the city. When Michelle's mother, Barbara Knight, realized she was missing after Michelle didn't come home after 24 hours, she filed a report about her disappearance the next evening with police, but it really seemed to authorities as though Michelle had left on her own.

They felt that the custody battle for her son was too much for her. So she just up and left. She had run away eight years earlier when she was 13 years old. Her mother, Barbara, didn't believe that Michelle would just take off. And she noted that Michelle got confused easily about her surroundings. She thought Michelle may have gotten lost and possibly hurt. Despite her concerns, there were no searches, no missing posters, and no vigils. Police filed the report away and pretty much dismissed Barbara's

concerns. On April 21st, 2003, just after 7.30 p.m., 16-year-old Amanda Berry was walking with three blocks home from her job at Burger King. She was talking to her older sister, Beth, on the phone as she walked home. When she got to West 110th Street in Lorraine Avenue, a man pulled over and offered her ride home. He had seen her walking while he was dropping his daughter off at her mom's house. She told Beth she would call her back. When the man noticed that she was wearing a Burger King uniform, He asked Amanda if she knew his daughter, Angie, or his son Ariel, who had worked at the same Burger King location, and she actually did recognize her names. It was a small world despite it being such a big city. She also thought she had just seen him drive past with his daughter

Emily. She agreed to a ride, and when she was in his van, he drove past her house and asked her if she wanted to visit his daughter. Once at his home at 22.07 Seymour Avenue, he told her his daughter was in the shower, but she could come in and wait. She followed him inside the home, and then he locked the door behind her. She wouldn't leave the house for a very long time. Amanda's family and friends were immediately worried about her. Her birthday was the next day, and she planned to get her nails done after work to look nice for her 17th birthday.

A $100 bill she had saved for that trip to the salon was still in her bedroom, as were unopened birthday presents that were waiting. for her one week after her disappearance. According to Cleveland.com, Amanda's voice said, I have Amanda. She's fine and will be coming home in a couple of days. Of course, Luana demanded to speak to Amanda, but the call ended. At first, Luana thought this was a prank. But authorities determined that the call came from Amanda's cell phone. Because of this, investigators believe that Amanda was not a runaway, which absolutely terrified Luana. Amanda's boyfriend, Danilo Diaz, was a suspect in her disappearance. According to Cleveland.com, witnesses thought they remembered

seeing Amanda get into a white four-door sedan with three men on the day that she disappeared. And at that time, Danilo did indeed drive a white Dodge Intrepid that he had recently purchased. He and his friends were questioned multiple times, but police found no evidence that they were responsible for Amanda's disappearance. On April 2, 2004, 14-year-old Georgina de Jesus and her friend Arlene Castro were walking home from the Wilbur Wright Middle School. They were close friends and their fathers had even gone to school together. When they got near the intersection of West 105th Street in Lorraine Avenue, they called

Arlene's mother, Grimilda Figaro, to ask permission for Arlene to sleep over at Gina's house. Ramilda told Arlene that she couldn't go because she was grounded. So Arlene and Georgina, who went by Gina, went there separate ways. Soon after, a man pulled his Jeep Cherokee over and asked Gina if she knew where his daughter Arlene was. She told him she had just seen her. So he asked her to help him find her.

But he didn't take her to look for his daughter, or even give her a ride back to her house. Instead, he took her to his home at 2007 Seymour Avenue. Gina's mother, Nancy Ruiz, was concerned almost immediately. Just 10 minutes after the normal time, Gina would arrive home, Nancy was out searching the neighborhood for her. Nancy was worried because Gina was apparently a bit delayed in school. She was taking special education classes and still learning how to read. So Nancy was worried about her being vulnerable to people that might want to do her

harm. Perhaps her mom thought she was a little less street smart than most other 14-year-old girls. At 5.09 p.m., Gina was reported missing. There was no trace of her after the phone call to Arlene's mother. And Arlene was questioned, but didn't see anything suspicious when the two girls parted ways. So more, if we have three girls who have gone missing, they're similar in age. You know, one is a little bit younger at 14 years old, you've got some of the same types of things that we see in case after case, right? Obviously, parents get worried. They know what time their 14, 15, 16, 17, 17 year old daughter is supposed to be home. There might be a little bit of leeway there in time, right? Sometimes they're late, but at a certain point, I think it's almost universal. Panic kicks in because somebody

should be home. They're not home. And then especially when you can't get in touch with them. That's when the panic really has to set in. And I'm curious if there are anyone noticed maybe within the police department that this multiple girls around the same age were missing because, you know, Cleveland obviously is a small town. It's a huge population. So if this had happened in a small town, A few girls going missing might definitely have been on the radar and been noticed easier. But here in such a big city, you know, would police even recognize that, hey, there's a little cluster of missing girls? And would they connect the dots and say, hey, these might be related?

I think one factor that may have worked against that, what you just talked about, is the fact that these girls were taken in subsequent years, right? These three abductions didn't occur within the same month. Each one happened in a different year. And I think in a city the size of Cleveland, I don't know that you're going to be able to put that together as being linked. I think at the very least, I think it would be harder. The other parallel that we see with many other cases is coming from police.

You know, in the case of Michelle Knight, we're not that worried. We're not really going to do anything. You know, I go back to the fact that she had run away when she was 13 years old. But that was eight years prior. So, yeah, I don't know, you know, how police really factor that in. Now, Michelle Knight was 21 years old. So when you factor that in and police say, okay, she's 21 years. years old. She's obviously an adult. She has the freedom to do what she wants to do. I get that part,

but obviously her mother's not going to think that way, right? 16, 17, 21, a mother knows whether or not their daughter has just run off or whether there's something wrong. I truly believe that. Mothers know. Yeah. And as much as it is an adult's right to choose to go missing if they want oftentimes when someone does go missing, it's not because they chose to. It's because something bad happened to them. So if you're a parent in that situation, it's got to be awful because you don't know what the case is. On November 17, 2004, Amanda Barry's mother, Lana Miller, went on the Montel Williams show. She begged psychic Sylvia Brown for answers.

According to the Atlantic.com, the TV psychic said bluntly, she's not alive, honey. Knowing Amanda would call whom if she were alive, and after over a year with no word, the psychic asked what else is there. In a book about this case called The Lost Girls by John Glatt, the author detailed how Sylvia Brown also claimed that she saw a heavyset, stocky, Cuban-looking man,

and that she believed Amanda's jacket had DNA on it. Brown did believe that the case could be solved if authorities looked for the man she saw in her vision. But sadly, Brown told Luana that she would only see Amanda again in heaven on the other side. Now, Morph, I know there's a lot of debate about psychics and the validity, you know, surrounding psychics. Some people believe in them very much so. Some people believe that, you know, that's all kind of hoax or hocus pocus or whatever you want to call it. I think for Luana, Sylvia Brown's words were devastating.

It was almost as if she seemed to give up hope of finding her daughter. So, you know, what I got from this was that Luana put a lot of stock in what Sylvia Brown told her. Yeah, I think when you're a parent and you're desperate for any kind of answers you can get about what happened to your child, even interacting with psychic and talking to the psychic, you might, there might be no stops. You're not willing to, you know, pull out to, to try and find them. I don't think there's anything you're, you're unwilling to do to try to find your child. I guess what I was trying to get at was that these words from Sylvia Brown

had a huge impact on Luwama. So what's the responsibility there? I guess that's the conversation I was kind of trying to lead us into, do psychics have a responsibility? Obviously, they believe in what they are telling other people. We're going to find out that Sylvia Brown was wrong. I mean, I think most people know that who have followed this case. And just one thing you just said that some of these psychics believe that, I don't know that it's all. I think some of them may be con artists that are willing to, you know, go to great lengths to to make money, to get fame, whatever it is.

So while I think some of these people believe what they're saying to be true, I think there's plenty of them that there are charlatans or conorist. Oh, I absolutely agree. And I'm not trying to badmouth Sylvia Brown at all. But I think what you just said is true in every walk of life, right? Every profession, I don't care what it is, up to, you know, those that we hold in the highest regard, the majority of the people who are good, hardworking, trying to do the right thing, and then there are those that are trying to game the system, trying to get over on people.

That's just the reality of life. But back to this devastation, I think that these words cause Luana. Amanda's room had remained untouched since she disappeared. But following the interaction with Sylvia Brown, Luana, gave away her daughter's belongings. The photos that had decorated Amanda's walls were taken down. She was sure that Amanda had passed away and might never be found. So, you know, to bring it full circle, I think this was very detrimental to Luana, to,

you know, her mental state. And, you know, that thing that you and I kind of always talk about, which is you can't give up hope in finding someone. Well, it sounds like Luana did. And to me, it also sounds like it was very much tied to what the psychic Sylvia Brown said to her. Yeah, I wonder if she had given her some positive words. Like, I feel she's out there. I feel she's alive. Would that have caused Luana to keep up the faith, keep up the hope? But definitely it went in the direction you just mentioned. A week after the one-year mark of Gina DeHasus's disappearance, the FBI released a composite sketch of a suspect who had been seen near Wilbur Wright Middle School on the day Gina was last seen. The sketch depicted a Hispanic man with a goatee about 5 foot 10, 175 pounds and between 25 to 35 years old.

sadly on March 2nd, 2006, Luana May Miller passed away after a long battle with multiple illnesses, including pancreatitis. Her family believes that she died of a broken heart. The hope she had to hold on for her daughter was taken away from her the day she was told by psychic Sylvia Brown that she would never see her again. This is what her family believes. As Luana was facing death, she took comfort in the belief that she was. She took comfort in the belief that she would soon be reunited with her daughter. On July 6, 2007, 14-year-old Ashley Summers was walking near West 96th Street in Madison Avenue. She never made it to her destination, and it took days for anyone to notice she was missing, because she would often stay over at different friends' houses.

She had taken most of her clothes with her, and she had recently fought with her mother over getting a tattoo without permission. The argument led authorities to believe that Ashley had run away. After she was gone for a week, Her family didn't believe that she was gone of her own free will. So they searched for around Cleveland on foot, the same way the families of Amanda and Gina had done. None of these girls, Michelle, Amanda, Gina, or Ashley, had known each other before they vanished. But it wasn't lost on local residents that girls were being snatched off the streets in Cleveland.

In August 2007, Ashley Summer's family received the call from someone claiming to be Ashley, saying that she was safe. It was still unknown where she was or whether the call was either. even actually from her. But it gave her family hope. On August 26, 2009, the world was shocked by the headline J.C. Lee Dugard, who had been kidnapped when she was just 11 years old in 1991, had been found alive. She had been held for over 18 years, just 40 miles away from her home in California. Her captor, Philip Garito, had made people suspicious when he brought two young girls with him to the University of California, Berkeley.

This prompted an investigation into Garito and the identity of the girls, which resulted in JC and her two daughters who had been born while she was in captivity, being rescued. This gave people a newfound hope that Amanda, Michelle, Gina, and Ashley could still be found a lot. In October 2009, Cleveland authorities found the body. of 11 young women on the property belonged to a man named Anthony Sal on Imperial Avenue. Residents were shocked, understandably so. People living in the neighborhood had been complaining of a bad smell for a while. The city had even flushed the sewer lines because of it, but it was blamed on the sausage shop next door. People wondered if any of the missing girls would be among the victims

that were identified, but they weren't among Sal's almost dozen victims. While it was good news that they weren't his victims, it still meant that they were out. there somewhere. Well, and it also meant more if that you had yet another bad person, right, running around doing extremely bad things, committing murders, you know, again, something that we see time and time again, which is you're researching one case. And obviously, we know we've got a bad perpetrator on our hands. But in the research, you stumble across three, four, five different serial killers that are operating. in the same area, around the same time.

It's a little disheartening sometimes when you're doing that type of research. And I think it's frightening, too, to know that there can be more than one bad person in an area. Now, obviously, again, we're talking about Cleveland, so it's a huge, huge city with lots of people. So there's bound to be more bad guys there. But still, it's when you're going out walking down the street to know that there could be multiple people like that around, it's frightening. On July 19th, 2012, authority started to dig on a property on West 30th Street in Wade Avenue in Cleveland, searching for Amanda Berry's body. A 25-year-old inmate named Robert Wolford was serving a 26-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter when he wrote a letter claiming to know where Amanda was buried. Despite two days of digging, after taking Wolford to the site to point out specific areas,

nothing was found. In January 2013, Robert Wolford pleaded guilty to obstructing justice, making false claims and falsification. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to serve four and a half years in prison for the new charges. These four years would be served concurrently or at the same time as he was serving the remainder of his 26-year manslaughter sentence. So more of this is something that always gets under my skin. You know, whether it's a person making a phone call to a victim's family, telling them something that they know is not true, giving the family false hope. Here you have a prison inmate saying that they know something, which obviously is not true.

It turns out not to be true. But what does it do to the family of Amanda Berry? it would give them unbelievable hope specifically around this new lead and then it all comes crashing down. Because why? This guy wants to mess with police. He wants to, you know, get a ride outside of the prison to go, you know, look at these specific sites. And then, you know, the other thing that really kind of chapped me about this one was, okay, he was fine $10,000.

And nobody ever seeing that $10,000. Also, you got four and a half years tacked on to a sentence, but it's made to be served concurrently. So what's the difference? Yeah, I think someone like this guy has nothing to lose, and it's his, a way he's going to get some entertainment. As you mentioned, get out of the prison, get some fresh air. You know, we've seen guys like Henry Lee Lucas that would cop to just about anything

so they could get a strawberry milkshake. So there's there's really nothing for them to lose. And when you get a sentence, that's concurrent with what you're already serving, what's the risk to them? There's really none. No, they're not getting $10,000 from this guy who's making 78 cents a day

washing dishes in the mess, right? It's just, I just don't get it. And like I talked about, right, this bogus lead provided by Wolford had provided some temporary hope that there would be some answers, at least for one of these missing girls' families,

but the lack of anything being found only made some people believe that they would never find out the fate of the missing girls, but then a phone call would change all of that. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer.

For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved, until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. At 5.52 p.m. on May 6, 2013, a 911 operator working in Cleveland received a frantic call. You need police fire ambulance. I'm the police. Okay, and what's going on there?

I've been kidnapped, and... And what's your address? 22.07 Seymour Avenue. 22.7 Seymour. It looks like you call me from 2210. Okay, stay there with those neighbors. Talk to the police when they get there. Yeah, talk to the police when they get there.

Okay. I'm going to run right now. We're going to spend on as soon as we get a car open. No, I need them now. Okay. Who's the guy who went out? Name is Eric. Okay.

I've been on the news for the last two years. Okay, I got that here. I already... The police are on the way. Talk to when they get there. Okay? I told you they're on the way. Talk to when they get there, okay?

All right, okay. As you can tell by that call, the quality wasn't great. But to recap, the caller started with Help Me, I'm Amanda Berry. The dispatcher went through the basic steps of answering an emergency call. They asked whether fire, police, or ambulance was required,

and what the situation was. I've been kidnapped, and I've been missing for 10 years. And I'm here. I'm free now. The caller replied. The dispatcher moved on to finding out where the caller was located. The caller said 2207 Seymour, and the 911 operator responded with, looks like you're calling me from 2210. After some confusion, the caller explained they were using the neighbor's phone. Figuring the caller was safe, the dispatcher gave instructions to stay with the neighbors and wait for police. The caller was still frantic, sobbing. I need them then. I need them now before he gets back. I'm Amanda Berry. I've been on the news for the last 10 years. The dispatcher

told the caller, I got that dear, before asking for her kidnapper's name. It was Ariel Castro. The dispatcher told the caller to wait for police and talk to them when they arrived. Some people have pointed out that it was clear that this dispatcher didn't really recognize the name Amanda Barry. And how big would it be to receive a call from her in 2013? a decade after she went missing. The response to the caller has been described in some news articles as dispassionate and lackadaisical. We should point out, the department had dealt with hoaxes before, though, and it hadn't even been a year since the expensive and time-wasting dig on Wade Avenue and West 30th Street, all because of a made-up story about Amanda Berry. So the dispatcher may have been trying to not get too excited and to do their job properly.

And more if this is something that I've talked about many times. You know, the job of a 911 dispatcher, I've never done it. I can only surmise that it's a pretty tough job. It might not be every second of the day, but there are going to be days and there are going to be calls that are going to shake you to your core. So I guess for me, I do give 911 operators quite a bit of slack. Now, I'm not disagreeing with some of these people and some of the things that they're pointing out, but it's a tough job. And I think sometimes maybe even if they ask the right questions, their people skills may still be lacking. Again, I will say, it doesn't matter what job you do.

Some people are going to be better than others. some people are going to be superstars and some people are going to be mediocre. Also, some people are going to have bad days. I have bad days at work all the time. And if you catch me on one of those bad days, you're not going to see me at my best. It turns out that the frantic woman on the 911 call was not the only caller to the 911 center. At the same time, a man named Charles Ramsey, who lived at 2203 Seymour, was also on the phone with 911. He explained that he had seen a woman trying to break out of a home, yelling that her name was Linda Barry or something similar, and that she had been kidnapped.

He was new to the area and had never heard of the name Amanda Berry, but other neighbors nearby didn't believe her, and one even told her in Spanish that she couldn't be Amanda, because everyone knew that Amanda Berry had died. Ramsey, along with other neighbors, helped the woman kick the glass out of the storm door, and she and a young girl climbed through and stepped out. At 5.54 p.m., officers arrived at 2207 Seymour Avenue. Outside, a young woman was standing with a child. She said she was Amanda Berry. And the child was her six-year-old daughter. She told officers that there were other girls inside the home. It wasn't just her.

An officer alerted dispatch that Georgina DeHasus may be inside 2207 Seymour. When officers searched the home, a young woman. woman came out of a bedroom on the second floor. According to Cleveland.com, the girl was yelling, You saved me. And another young woman crept out of a bedroom. She said she was Gina DeHesus. A triumphant announcement of We Found Them came over the police radio. There was one last woman rescued from the home. She gave her name as Michelle Knight, the first girl to go missing. Investigators weren't sure who Michelle Knight was. Because when they called her name into police headquarters to be looked up, she wasn't even on the missing persons list anymore. At 5.55 p.m., officers put an all-points bulletin out

for Errol Castro's blue 1993 Mazda Miata. The car was quickly spotted less than a half a mile away from his home on Seymour Avenue. And officers took him into custody without incident, along with his brothers, O'Neill and Pedro Castro, at 6.16 p.m. Ariel took full responsibility for the crimes, and he knew why police had arrested him, while Pedro thought he had been arrested on an open container charge. O'Neill had no clue what was happening at the time. Pedro and O'Neill were released soon after police figured out that they were not connected to the abductions. Police and prosecutors struggled to detail all of the things that Ariel Castro would be charged with,

and in the end, he faced a staggered. 977 separate charges. His bond was set at $8 million. Some neighbors thought Castro's house on Seymour was abandoned. Since the windows were all boarded up and the bushes were never trimmed, they were astonished when two small thin figures came out of the house, covered from view with blankets even over their heads, and were then rushed into a waiting ambulance. Michelle Knight weighed just 84 pounds.

She was in very rough shape. She had a bacterial infection, probably from the years of physical abuse, limited showers, no air conditioning, bedbugs, and eating food that was old and sometimes probably even rotten. Doctors found that her jaw was severely damaged. And she also had nerve damage in both arms due to abuse and the chains that she sometimes wore to secure her. sadly Michelle was not reunited with her family that night her mother barbara had moved to naples florida she found out that michel was alive by watching the nightly news she called metro health medical center to talk to her daughter but michel was not taking calls it was all too much to handle

for her at that moment and more of i just want to take a step back you know this was an unbelievable revelation. I remember it vividly. You know, being splashed on the news. It was a huge story. I think a lot of people will remember this who are listening now. But I specifically want to talk about Michelle's mother, Barbara, all this time, wondering where your daughter is, wondering what happened to her. You don't get a call from the authorities saying, hey, we found her. You're watching the nightly news like everyone else and the story splashes across the screen. I can't even imagine what that must have been like. And I think for her, her natural response is to just, I want to reach out to her and talk to her

and see how she's doing. But her daughter just seemed like she was in a place where she just needed some time to adapt to being out of that house where she was held prisoner for so long. So I can understand her side of things not being ready to talk to her mom at that point. Well, and I think I said it was all too much for her to handle. I think that's probably a severe understatement. I mean, it had to have been shock. It had to have been so overwhelming that, you know, you're just not functioning.

As for Gina DeHases, her long hair had been chopped short and she was much more pale than then photos of her on missing posters showed. Her parents and her brother Ricardo rushed to the hospital to see her for the first time in nine years. Gina couldn't remember how to speak Spanish. Amanda's sister, Beth, visited her in the hospital immediately and learned about her niece, Jocelyn, a daughter Amanda Boor after becoming pregnant at the hands of Aero Castro.

Amanda was also pale and thin. Little Jocelyn was in decent health, but she looked pale like she didn't see the light of day. Amanda's child was a shock to everyone. How did a monster like Ariel Castro have any hand in creating such a sweet little girl? Obviously, like I said, more if this was huge news in Cleveland, and then soon after that, nationally, at 7.02 p.m., the first article about Amanda's escape and the shocking rescue of Gina and Michelle was published online by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the sketch that had been released of a suspect in the case of Gina's escape. in the case of Gina DeHesos looked a lot like a younger Ariel Castro.

At 11 p.m., Amanda called her father, Johnny Berry, who was terminally ill, and told him she was still alive. This was news that, you know, he never thought that he would hear. When Michelle was released from the hospital, she went into a hospice center. She had no family in the area to take her in. She did eventually see her mother, but sadly, they left on not so great terms. Castro's House of Horrors quickly became a tourist attraction for curious residents, and a 10-foot fence was built around 2207 Seymour Avenue to keep it free from people entering it. Authorities were concerned with keeping the home intact for evidentiary purposes,

as well as keeping people from stealing anything from inside the home as some kind of ghoulish trophies or souvenirs. It was kept under 24-7 security with an officer station outside the home. During searches, 99 total feet of chains were recovered from the home, painting a dreadful picture of what went on there behind closed doors. Each time Castro would trap a girl inside a house, he would chain them to a pole in the basement with a motorcycle helmet on their head to muff their screams and cries. Once he was satisfied that they wouldn't scream, they were moved to a room upstairs,

but still chained. This is where they stayed for years restricted by rusty metal chains until one day little Jocelyn asked about them. When Castro could no longer keep up the lie that they were bracelets, he removed them. Little Jocelyn had been born in Castro's House of Horrors on Christmas Day 2006. Castro apparently tried to keep things as normal as possible for her, mostly so that she couldn't accidentally give him away in public. He took Jocelyn to church, took her to the park, and to other places like McDonald's. Because of this, the women captive at his home were banned

from ever saying their names so that Jocelyn couldn't ever say them in public. And they weren't allowed to say her name either. Michelle recalls calling her pretty instead of Jocelyn. When people saw the two of them on outings, Castro claimed that she was his granddaughter or the daughter of one of his girlfriends. He had even shown his daughter Angie, a photo on a cell phone of Jocelyn, and she remarked about how similar she looked to her other sister Emily. She said their noses were identical, but he said it was his girlfriend's child. While being held on Seymour Avenue, Amanda taught her daughter everything she could think of, including the Pledge of Allegiance, because she could remember saying it in school. She taught her daughter the alphabet, how to write her name, and some simple math. Everyone in the house loved her.

She brought joy and hope, even when the women were being abused. Despite the unimaginable environment, Jocelyn appeared to be a happy little girl. Not only was she a ray of hope for the captive women, Jocelyn also would prove to be Ariel Castro's downfall. On May 6, 2013, Jocelyn told Amanda that her daddy was gone. This didn't seem right to Amanda because the front door was open. He would never leave the door wide open. She felt that Castro must be testing them. Jocelyn said again that his car was gone.

Based on the little girl's news, Amanda took her chance to flee and call for help, leading to their escape and reunification with her happy families. So Morph, as you were talking there in the beginning, it really reminded me of this movie called Room. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie with Bree Larson. No, I've never seen that one. So it's a similar situation. She's being held captive. She has a son.

And it's basically a two-hour movie about her and her five-year-old son in this one little room. It's sad. It's hard. but it's also kind of uplifting at the same time. Despite all of the charges against Ariel Castro, there was no trial. On July 26, 2013, Castro pleaded guilty to 937 of the 977 total charges, which included rape, kidnapping, assault, child endangerment, aggravated murder, and possessing criminal tools. This plea allowed him to avoid the death penalty, and it wouldn't put the women through the

ordeal of testifying against him. The murder charges were related to several abortions. Castro forced upon his victims against their will. Castro's statement to the judge at his sentencing hearing was, in a word, terrible. It's almost unbelievable, morph, that someone could be so out of touch with reality. He insisted that he didn't sexually assault anyone. He tried to say that all the sex was consensual. He even told the judge that there were times they would ask him for sex. I mean, that's enough to make you sick to your stomach.

Though he had pleaded guilty to doing so, he said, I never beat these women. I never tortured them. He claimed that the footage of the women on the news was proof. that he had never hurt them saying all the victims are happy. It almost seemed like he didn't think taking Michelle even counted. He told the judge regarding Michelle since day one, no one missed her. I never saw flyers about her as if him not seeing flyers for Michelle meant that he hadn't really taken her against her will.

And more of I think, you know, people were obviously shocked. when the particulars, the specifics came out about, you know, what had happened to these, these girls, these in some cases women inside the home. But I think they were also shocked about Castro and just his cavalier attitude as if, eh, what I did wasn't really that bad. I saw it a little differently. It was kind of shocking. Yeah.

And it's, it's not surprising to me. me that he would be this out of touch when he's capable of doing those kinds of things, because anyone capable of doing what he did doesn't seem like they're all there in the right state of mind. So for him to see it in a different light is not surprising to me. Yeah, you know, him saying, all the victims are happy. Well, hell yeah, they're happy. They just escaped your house of horrors. They weren't happy when they were inside there, though. The The prosecution spoke out at the hearing, laying out everything that the women went through in order to document Castor's crimes, so that the severity of his sentence would hold up in the future. It would be clearly justified. Aside from abducting them and depriving them of their freedom, families, and lies for a decade, he beat and sexually assaulted the women every day, sometimes or often multiple times a day. While he had let Amanda keep their child, he forced Michelle to miscarry or abort pregnancies, up to five times by starving her, beating her, and forcing her to exercise.

When Jocelyn was born, he threatened all of the women. He threatened a man not to be too loud while she was giving birth in a plastic pool in the dark basement without any medical help or painkillers, and threatened Michelle with her life, if anything went wrong during the delivery, forcing her to be the midwife and to perform CPR on Little Jocelyn when she was born not breathing. Every year on the anniversary dates of the girls' abductions, he would bring them a cake to eat, like it was their birthday or some type of joyous occasion. He would also let the girls watch news coverage of themselves and on the anniversaries

watch their vigils with them. Or sometimes he would even show up in person at the vigil. The women could see him standing with their grieving families on the TV footage. Michelle, who had no vigils, would be relentlessly teased and told that no one loved her by Castro. He told her that no one cared. No one was looking for her like they were for Amanda and Gina. It was all of this. Everything he did, Morf, was a sick mind game.

It was a way to inflict pain on his victims. Ariel Castro was sentenced to life in prison with no possible. of parole, plus 1,000 years. On September 3, 2013, at 918 p.m., Ariel Castro was found dead in his cell. He had tied a noose out of bed sheets and hanged himself with his pants around his ankles and a note nearby. The note had some religious writings, as well as statements about his love for his family. Because his pants were around his ankles, some people thought that he was possibly partaking in some kind of autoerotic asphyxiation and accidentally died. But the medical examiner assured doubters that it was clearly a suicide.

And more, if we don't want Castro to be the focus of this episode, obviously it should be his brave victims who survived the ordeal. But it is important to talk about him in an effort to understand this case fully. You really have to understand who Ariel Castro was. Castro was born in Puerto Rico in 1960, and when he was still young, his family moved to Cleveland, where they had family. In 1992, he bought the house at 2207 Seymour Avenue that would later become infamous. He was married and had four children, but his wife left him. In 1996, took their kids with her after she had experienced domestic violence. at his hands following the breakup and during the time he had women captive in his home. Castro tried to look normal to the world. He worked as a school bus driver.

He played bass in a local band. But Ariel Castro was really a monster. And eventually the world found out just how truly evil this man was. As far as Castro's House of Horrors, for a long time, the Google Street View of the home wasn't updated. Since 2009, when the Google streetcar drove past and unwittingly captured a bleak piece of history, the women and Amanda's daughter were all inside that house on Seymour Avenue when the photo was taken. They were chained and dreaming of one day being free. Now, though, the house is blurred completely.

You can't see it on Google Maps anymore. The aerial view has been updated since the house was torn down, along with the houses on either side of it. Before the house was demolished, Amanda and Gina bravely visited. visited the home one last time to retrieve Jocelyn's belongings and drawings. Michelle also visited to hand out yellow balloons to neighbors and gathers to symbolize all the other missing children who never made at home. Castro's family is also allowed to go inside and get family photos. During this final trip inside, a letter was found hidden in the kitchen before the house was demolished. It was written by Ariel Castro, a sort of confession, though he never really

fully comes clean or admits all of his wrongs, but it does include the words, I'm sorry. But really, it's not a true apology. It looks like it's full of excuses. It was dated April 4th, 2004. At this point, Georgina had only been missing for two days and Amanda for about a year. Michelle had been in his house for about two years by this point. It would be another nine before the three of them escaped. In the note, Castro mentions a bank account with $10,000 in it, as well as around $11,000 hidden under the washer and the home. He wanted the money to be given to his victims.

Interestingly, the letter also seemed to prove that Castro himself didn't know why he did what he did. According to John Glatt's book, the letter read in part, I don't understand why I keep looking for women out in the street. as I already had two in my possession. Castro also claimed that he was a victim, having been molested as a child. It's unknown how much of the letter is actually based in truth, because in it Castro also claimed that he didn't know that Gina was so young because she looked older than 14,

even though he knew she was his daughter's age, was aware that they went to school together. Yeah, so let's break down this letter a little bit. It's pretty strange, right? quasi apology, not really an apology. He's got tens of thousands of dollars hidden that he says he ultimately wants to go to his victims. And then he kind of comes out and says he doesn't know why he's doing what he's doing. So, you know, there's a couple of things to take away from that for me.

First of all, I think this is a man who knew at some point he was going to be caught. He was probably shocked that, you know, he got away with it for as long as he did. But to talk about wanting this money to go to his victims, that kind of leads me to believe that he knew at some point this was all going to come crashing down. But I will say the part about not knowing how old Gina was, I think is absolute BS. You know how old your daughter is. you know that this is one of your daughter's friends, that argument just does not hold water. And I think it's something that we see from these types of monsters, an attempt, anything they can do to make them look even a small amount better in the eyes of others.

Not that anything this guy could have said or done would make him look good in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, I also found it interesting that he left that money to them, almost as if it was, you know, a will. Like, he's gone and this is for you to help you with your lives, that someone would, on one hand, seem like they cared or at least portray that they cared about these women. But on the other hand, we know what he did to them. So it's hard to balance those two things. they don't seem to go together. Well, and as if a few thousand dollars for each of them is going to make up for the years and years of horrors that they had to endure.

I mean, you know, we talked about it earlier. This was a man who obviously was not in touch with reality. He's a monster. He just didn't get it. You know, everything he said, it makes my stomach turn. Man, it really does. Gina DeHasus helped found the Cleveland Family Center for Missing Children and Adults. She also adopted one of Castro's three dogs, Lola.

Tragically, Michelle's son, who she had been trying to regain custody of, had been adopted just after she disappeared, as people had presumed she had just run off. Michelle changed her name to Lily Rose Lee and married Miguel Rodriguez in 2016. she still hopes to be reunited with her son someday. In 2017, Amanda Berry started working at Fox 8 to highlight missing persons cases in Ohio. In May 2021, Gina made headlines again

when she was carjacked and robbed at gunpoint, but since that time, there really hasn't been much in the way of news on the brave and heroic trio. But this is something that, you know, you often see come out of these types of cases, right? These are women who went through unimaginable horrors. And then they go on to try to help other people. I always find it so uplifting, so inspiring that, you know, they're able to battle through and then go on to do

some amazing things. Yeah. And I hope along the way they've been able to sort of reestablish their own lives or own. And I would even say their own identities because I think those were taken away from them. And I think in the end, we mentioned there hasn't been news lately. And my thinking is maybe no news is good news. Maybe they are living their lives finally

and just blending in with society and have normal lives. And I hope at least for their sake that they are. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I think one thing many people may be asking themselves, is how was this missed for so long? Were there chances to stop Ariel Castro or save his victims earlier?

His son, Ariel Jr., recalled that Castro nailed the windows in the basement shut, kept locks on the doors of the basement in attic, and started soundproofing the basement by adding curtains and bricks to it. Castro's nephew, Angel Caballero, recalled padlocks on the doors of every room, not just the basement, and having to wait half an hour to be let in every time he went over to the house. Once inside, he and his parents were only allowed in the living room. A former girlfriend of Castro's Lully and Rolden once asked him about the padlock basement door,

and she was told that he kept money in the basement, and the lock was there so that his children couldn't steal from him. Although she had no idea that Michelle Knight was a prisoner in his home the last few times she stayed there, she did once ask him why he had a TV on upstairs. And to me, Morphus is kind of shocking, right? It's almost unthinkable. At the very least, it's very brazen that Ariel Castro would allow visitors inside his home, while three women were chained up inside there.

As we mentioned, he played the bass and would often have his band over to practice. One thing they all noticed was that he always had loud music blaring, and they would basically have to shout over the music. Family members recall seldom being allowed in. and when they were. It was only after waiting outside for upwards of 30 minutes. His kitchen was always blocked off and the stairwell was blocked by furniture, but none of this really set off any alarm bells. Castro was known to be a hoarder and his house was pretty full of stuff. Apparently, the strange environment was all just Ariel Castro being Ariel Castro to

his visitors. Incredibly, it wasn't just Ariel Castro's friends and family that visited his home while his victims were being held there. In January, 2004, the police went to Castro's home regarding an incident at work. He had left the child on the bus that he drove

when he went to Wendy's. He told the child to lay down so he wouldn't be seen and he called the child a bitch. After he missed some school that day, his parents filed a complaint. At that time, only Michelle and Amanda were chained up inside the home. No one answered the door, so police left.

Castro was only suspended for 60 days for this incident. It wasn't until Castro's fourth serious infraction that he was finally fired on November 6, 2012. And this is just one more crazy thing to think that this guy was driving around kids on a school bus. Very frightening. Well, I think there's a lot of people who, you know, looked back after the news broke of who this guy was, what he did, it had to have been a little frightened thinking, all right, my child rode that bus over the years. I'm sure a lot of children rode that bus over the years. Could they have been targeted at some point?

That's a scary thought for a parent to think that, you know, a person that you're really trusting with your kids, right? A bus driver has a lot of control. They're driving your kids around day in and day. out and to find out that they're being driven by this monster had to be unsettling at the very least. Even neighbors claimed that they saw suspicious activity around the home. Two sisters who lived nearby said they saw a naked woman in Castro's backyard in July 2010, as well as tarps all around the backyard, concealing certain areas.

In November 2011, a different neighbor. claimed to have heard yelling from inside the home, he called the police who came out, they knocked, but then they left when no one answered. In the same month, another neighbor said they saw a woman and possibly even a baby in the attic window, and they said they appeared to be in distress. However, Cleveland police say there is no record of any calls regarding any of these incidents. All of these things seem like misopportunities to stop Ariel Castro. And I do remember more if that this was a big topic of discussion in the weeks and months you know, after this case broke. Why didn't the police do more? I remember that. And some people

still talk about that to this day. You know, the fact that they had gone to the home a number of times. Okay, you go once, you knock, nobody answers, and then you leave. There's no follow up. And then kind of this stuff that comes out indicating that these reports that people said they made weren't real or they didn't have any record of them. Okay. A lot of people find that very suspicious, almost as if they're trying to, you know, cover their own ass, basically. And there's probably some kind of pride because they're going to look, you know, silly after missed opportunities like this. If it was a one-time thing that they missed, that would be one thing. But here it seems like there were multiple trips to that home for one reason or another. And each time the police left without ever getting inside or talking to him, so it doesn't look very good for them.

Unfortunately, there's people that have passed some of the blame on Castro's victims, saying that the girls should have tried to get away sooner. This completely discounts the fear they lived with every second of their lives for a decade, and the torment the Castro delighted in putting them through. We also need to point out that Castro had made sure the girls didn't try to escape. He booby trapped the doors with alarm clocks, an elaborate set of mirrors, so he could watch them from everywhere. And sometimes, he would deliberately make it appear as if they could get away,

as he watched to see if they tried. And if they did try, he would punish them. And to me, Morph, this is just sad. You know, anybody who tries to lay the blame at, you know, the feet of these victims, I think is misguided. As you said, it's completely discounting the fear that these girls, these women were living with constantly day in, day out for years. I think for some of this, it's easy to think, well, I would have just walked out or I would have busted a window and I would have jumped out. You know, I in some ways equate this to situations of domestic violence where I've talked to many women who have said, you know, it's not as easy as people think just to walk out of a relationship. The fear grips you in a way that unless you've experienced it, you just can't possibly understand it.

And I think that's exactly the situation here as well. The fear, in my estimation, Morf, would have been all-consuming. Fear of trying to do anything would result in severe punishment, infliction of pain, you know, maybe even death. So do you want to take that chance? And are you too scared to even contemplate it after so many years of it? Yeah, I think some of the people that have made those accusations are sort of victim blamed here. They don't realize that those chains are probably not just physical chains,

but mental chains. He controlled them with fear and other methods besides just secure. curing them in the spot. So getting in their heads and making them afraid to get away was just part of his control over them. So I think unless anyone's been through this kind of situation, they just don't know what they're talking about. And, you know, I think that's pretty shitty to to blame these women in any sort of way. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say that bottom line. It's just not fair. In the book, The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBacker, Michelle, Gina, and Amanda, would all describe being somewhat nervous about their initial interaction with Castro.

Gina said once she started talking about his daughter, that she kind of got a little bit relaxed. And Amanda realized his daughter wasn't with him and told him to take her home. But they just went along with him because they sort of knew him. And he didn't seem terrible. The book details how the three women in their initial interactions, with Castro felt that something was off, but they sort of dismissed those gut feelings because of his demeanor and the fact that they thought they knew him enough to trust him. Listening to this episode, as we detailed what happened to these brave women is one thing,

but you can also hear the stories of these survivors in their own words, along with multiple media appearances. There are also memoirs that you can purchase and read. Amanda Barry and Gina DeHasus released a book together called Hope. A memoir of survival in Cleveland. Michelle Knight wrote two books by herself called Finding Me a Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed, and Life After Darkness, Finding Healing and Happiness, after the Cleveland kidnappings.

One person that we've not talked about any further, but we don't want to forget, is Ashley Summers. As we mentioned, 14-year-old Ashley vanished on July 6, 2007, is she was walking near West 96th Street in Madison Avenue. She was never officially connected to Ariel Castro. And while she may have met her end at his hands, it's possible she crossed past with someone else in that area who's responsible for her disappearance.

What we do know is that Ashley Summers is still missing. In 2015, it was briefly thought that she had been spotted at an ATM, camera in Rhode Island. But the FBI have since announced that they somehow determined it was not Ashley. For what it's worth, Ashley's uncle, Kevin Donathan, who has a long criminal record, was sentenced to 35 years in prison. For rape and prostitution charges, some people have claimed that he was one of the last people to see Ashley. If you have any information about Ashley's case, please contact the FBI. to provide your tip. So Morph, as we wrap up this episode, it's a little bit of a different episode

for us. We wanted to do something different for 200. This is an extremely infamous case. And, you know, we did have to detail out some pretty rough stuff that happened to these three individuals at the hands of the monster Ariel Castro. But these three women, ultimately, got away, survived. They've gone on to live their lives and to do some really great things. Now, for me, just the powerful story, the arc of this story, which is, you know, something, it's obviously not fiction. It's true life is that they came out the other side, survivors, and hopefully they're thriving today. but I can't imagine having five, ten years of your life snatched away from your family, your friends, just what they went through, how they accomplished getting through it is just

incredible. And it makes me think that when I have a bad day or something's not going right, I think back to, it's pretty minor compared to what these victims went through and made it through. I think that's a good way to help put things in perspective. Yeah, you know, one of the things that jumps out at me about this case is, you know, Ariel Castro, you know, holding these three women in his house for as long as he did, having people over. You know, this wasn't as though he kidnapped these three individuals and then took them to a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere.

He's living on a street in a house with a bunch of neighbors. He's got a job. You know, for for long stretches of this entire ordeal. It's just amazing to me that not a single person really saw what was going on. Now, there were people that saw things that they thought were strange. They say they called it into the police. The police don't have a record of it. I find all of that, you know, a little suspicious, but all these individuals in his house and

I don't know, I don't want to put the blame on them as though they, they should have been able to, you know, figure it out. But, yeah, at the very least, you got to think, it's a little strange that in all that time, someone didn't hear crying, a scream, a cry for help, something, that he was able to get away with it in the way that he did for that period of time is, is quite frankly almost unbelievable to me. Yeah, it's very frightening that someone could do this over that long a period of time and have people there and just, you know,

I think it goes back to the old. If you see something, say something, or if something is telling you in your gut, something's off here. You know, don't just walk out of that house and forget it and do your next thing. Maybe take the time to reach out to the, the police and say, I don't know what it is or something here. Can you check it out? Um, you know, take the extra step. Yeah. And I'll end the episode, you know, kind of talking about

some of the words that the victim said themselves, right? They had a gut feeling that something wasn't quite right. And I'm not blaming them in any way. What I would say is for people who are listening, you know, when you have those types of gut feeling, don't discount them. You know, often there's a reason why you get that gut feeling. Don't be afraid that you're going to upset somebody, you know, walk away, get away. And again, no blame on them whatsoever. But I do think it's an important concept to talk about.

We have gut feelings for a reason. If you're wrong, no harm, no foul. Thanks because of the Sunny Landon for help with writing and research in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out and give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review as well. But keep telling your friends. That word of mouth about the criminology podcast really helps out. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod.

You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. Well, Morph, I'll say it's been an amazing first 200 episodes. Hopefully we have 200 more. But the one thing I do know is that we'll be back next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.