Victim’s mother ‘died of a broken heart’

CLEVELAND — When Amanda Berry’s mother, Louwana, died in 2006, three years after the disappearance of her daughter, friends said she had been able to withstand the anguish no longer.

“She died of a broken heart,” said Dona Brady, a local councillor. Two years earlier, a television psychic had told her to give up hope: her daughter was dead.

Amanda vanished at about 7:30 p.m. on April 21, 2003, minutes after leaving work at a Burger King on the west side of Cleveland. It was the day before her 17th birthday.

The happy teenager, remembered for a beaming smile and pierced eyebrow, had called her sister, Beth, to say she was getting a lift for the three blocks to their house.

“I’ve got a ride,” she said. “I’ll call you back.” She never did, and she never arrived.

The driver who apparently offered to take her home was not identified, agonizing her family and leading police to appeal for anyone who had seen the pair in a car.

Amanda was six foot one tall, weighed 110 pounds and had long sandy-blond hair, Cleveland residents were told. She had brown eyes, and a scar across her stomach from surgery as a child.

She was carrying a small black shoulder bag, in which she kept her silver mobile phone, and tended to smoke Newport cigarettes, police added.

“I don’t understand where I stand,” her mother told the local newspaper the next month. Amanda had left $100 in her bedroom that she planned to spend on a new dress and a manicure for her birthday party. “I don’t know if she’s out there being held, I don’t know if she’s out there laying on the side of the road somewhere. Who gave her that ride?”

Her mother was struggling to eat or sleep, and chain-smoked Marlboro cigarettes, the local reporter noted.

Then, seven months after she went missing, there was a lead. Someone used Amanda’s mobile phone to call her mother. But it could not be traced, and the trail once more went cold.

Louwana Miller was only 44 when she died of heart failure. She was never the same after the television psychic’s message, said a friend at the time. “I think she had given up hope.”

It appeared Tuesday that soon afterward Amanda had given birth to a daughter, possibly fathered by Ariel Castro, the man accused of kidnapping and holding her.

But for her family the silence continued even as police pursued their investigation.

Then last year a telephone caller told the authorities that he knew where to find the girl’s remains, suggesting that her family might at least give her a proper burial and close the painful chapter.

The site was dug up, but nothing was there. The man was convicted of obstructing justice and sentenced to four and a half years in jail.

On Monday afternoon, however, Amanda Berry broke through a screen door in the home where she appears to have been held captive since the day she disappeared.

I don’t understand where I stand AMANDA’S MOTHER IN 2003

Cleveland Police Department From left, Onil Castro, Ariel Castro and Pedro Casto. The three brothers were arrested after three women who disappeared in Cleveland a decade ago were found safe Monday. The brothers are accused of holding the victims against their will.

Emmanuel Dunand/afp/getty Images Onlookers watch FBI forensic personnel remove evidence Tuesday from the house where three women were held captive for a decade.

Afp-getty Images These three photographs obtained courtesy of the FBI show Georgina “Gina” DeJesus, who went missing as teenager about a decade ago. Picture at right is a photograph age-progressed to 17 years.

Tony Dejak/the Associated Press A member of the FBI evidence response team carries out evidence from a house where three women who vanished a decade ago were held, in Cleveland.