‘NIGHTMARE IS OVER’ FOR CAPTIVE WOMEN
Victim who led escape hailed as a ‘real hero’
CLEVELAND — A woman held captive for a decade and made to have a child after being kidnapped as a teenager was hailed as a heroine Tuesday, after freeing herself and two other women from their prison in the home of a school bus driver.
Amanda Berry, missing since the eve of her 17th birthday in 2003, called 911 after breaking through a door in the house in Cleveland and screaming for help from a neighbour. She also released Gina DeJesus, 23, who vanished in 2004 aged 14, and Michelle Knight, 32, who was presumed to have run away 11 years ago. The house’s owner, 52-year-old Ariel Castro, was arrested with his brothers Pedro, 54, and Oneil, 50.
“The real hero here is Amanda,” said Ed Tomba, Cleveland’s deputy police chief. “She came out of that house and started it all.”
Stephen Anthony, the head of the FBI office in Cleveland, declared: “The nightmare is over.”
Police were facing questions about their past inquiries after it emerged that the women were last seen within metres of the same spot, about 5.5 kilometres from Castro’s house, and that a daughter of Castro said in 2004 that she was the last to see DeJesus alive.
The women were treated in hospital for dehydration and malnourishment. Berry was at the bedside of her sixyear-old daughter, who was fathered by Castro. There were unconfirmed reports that chains had been found in the house, that “Rest In Peace” was written on a basement wall alongside another woman’s name, and that the captives had become pregnant several times.
Officers said they visited Castro’s home in 2004 after he left a child on his bus, but said they had no reason to suspect he was a kidnapper.
Two neighbours told The Telegraph they complained to police after hearing screams near the house in recent years.
The emergence of the women from the home of Castro, described as a “happy-go-lucky” grandfather who joined neighbours for beers and barbecues, has startled residents of the city in America’s Midwestern heartland.
Castro’s son, Anthony, a 31-yearold journalist, wrote an account of DeJesus’s disappearance for a newspaper in 2004. “This is beyond comprehension,” he told local news. “I’m truly stunned.”
Neighbours were struggling to come to terms with their failure to notice Castro’s alleged activities. They claimed to have been duped by the “mask” of a charming, harmless figure who would chat to their children and entertain them with his motorcycle.
Castro, who has at least three other daughters, one son and five grandchildren, was arrested for domestic violence and disorderly conduct in 1993, but was not prosecuted. He lost his job as a bus driver in November for making an illegal U-turn.
In 2005, Castro was accused of seriously injuring his former wife, Grimilda Figueroa, according to court documents. Lawyers for Figueroa asked that the judge help stop Castro from “threatening to kill” his wife, and accused him of “abducting his daughters.”