Ohio kidnappings suspect faces 329-count indictment
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man accused of holding three women captive in his Cleveland home for a decade and fathering a child with one of them has been indicted on 329 charges i nclud i n g murder, kidnapping and rape, prosecutors said.
A Cuyahoga County grand jury returned the indictment Friday against Ariel Castro, a former school bus driver.
Castro, 52, is accused of kidnapping Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight and holding them captive along with a 6-year-old girl he fathered with Berry.
The grand jury charged Castro with two counts of aggravated murder related to one act, saying he purposely caused the unlawful termination of one of the women’s pregnancies. Castro also was indicted on 139 counts of rape, 177 counts of kidnapping, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, three counts of felonious assault and one count of possession of criminal tools.
Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty said the indictment covers only the period from August 2002, when the first of the women disappeared, to February 2007.
The indictment refers to the women as Jane Doe 1, Jane Doe 2 and Jane Doe 3 and gives a glimpse into the circumstances of their captivity.
The aggravated murder counts stem from the unlawful termination of Jane Doe 1’s pregnancy in late 2006 or early 2007, the indictment says.
It says Castro restrained the women, sometimes chaining them to a pole in a basement, to a bedroom heater or inside a van. It says one of the women tried to escape and he assaulted her with a vacuum cord around her neck.
Castro’s attorneys have said he would plead not guilty to any indictment. Castro, during a brief court appearance last month, tried to hide his face, tucking his chin inside his shirt collar, and did not speak.
Castro is being held on $8 million bail. He has been taken off suicide prevention watch, jail officials said this week. He has told jail guards he won’t accept news media interview requests.
Messages left for his attorneys after business hours on Friday weren’t immediately returned.
Castro was arrested May 6, shortly after Berry broke through a door at the home, yelled to neighbors for help and frantically told a police dispatcher by phone: “Help me. I’m Amanda Berry. I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for 10 years, and I’m, I’m here, I’m free now.”
Berry, 27, told officers that she was forced to give birth in a plastic pool in the house so it would be easier to clean up. Berry said she, her baby and the two other women rescued with her had never been to a doctor during their captivity.
Knight, 32, said her five pregnancies ended after Ariel Castro Castro starved her for at least two weeks and “repeatedly punched her in the stomach until she miscarried,” authorities said.
She also said Castro forced her to deliver Berry’s baby under threat of death if the baby died. She said that when the newborn stopped breathing, she revived her through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The women had gone missing separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. They haven’t spoken publicly since their rescue.
The county prosecutor has yet to say whether he’ll seek the death penalty.