Torturer was full of anger
THERE was nothing extraordinary about 2207 Seymour Avenue, a double-storey clapboard house in a down-at-heel area of west Cleveland.
On second thoughts, something was odd, says author Allan Hall: ‘‘I thought it was peculiar that you’d have nonsee-through plastic sheeting over your windows.’’
But none of the neighbours seemed to think so, even though school bus driver Ariel Castro kept three young women captive there for a decade.
No one asked why Castro, who supposedly lived alone, brought home so many groceries.
That lack of curiosity is the mystery of Hall’s gripping book, Captive.
Michelle Knight, 21, made the mistake of accepting Castro’s offer of a lift home in August 2002. Amanda Berry disappeared in April 2003, the day before she turned 17. Gina DeJesus was 14 when Castro spirited her away in April 2004.
For many, the news that they were alive was the biggest story of 2013. Few can forget the moment news broke in May that the three women (along with Berry’s six-yearold daughter Jocelyn) had been freed from the hellhole in which Castro had chained, raped, starved and tortured them.
To Hall it was all devastatingly familiar. He was already the author of two books on similar psychopaths: Wolfgang Priklopil, who held Natascha Kampusch captive in a cell under his house for eight and a half years after kidnapping the 10- year- old schoolgirl; and Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter El- isabeth imprisoned as a sexual slave beneath their home for 24 years after tricking her into the cellar in 1984.
‘‘I’m an accidental expert,’’ says Hall.
‘‘Everybody was interested in what drives a man to kidnap a girl and then keep her prisoner.’’
The three cases all have something in common.
‘‘It’s all about control,’’ Hall says.
All three perpetrators lacked ‘‘an empathy gene’’ and regarded their victims as objects: ‘‘ They can’t identify with them as human beings and so it becomes easy for them to degrade them over the years.’’
Researching his books, Hall spoke to ‘‘ dozens of psychiatrists’’ and to countless friends and associates of both perpetrators and victims: ‘‘You build up a picture of a life from the people that shared it with him.’’
For Captive, he travelled to Cleveland to do the same and to get a sense of the poor Puerto Rican neighbourhood where most people rely on food stamps.
He describes Castro as ‘‘a low-rent, egotistical rapist, absolutely full of anger.’’