2 Cleveland Kidnapping Victims Return Home; Lead Suspect Charged
CLEVELAND (CBS News/CBSNewYork/AP) -- Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus returned home to their families Wednesday after a decade in captivity, while their alleged abductor, Ariel Castro, was charged with kidnapping and rape.
Charges in the case were announced in Cleveland late Wednesday afternoon. Ariel Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and rape.
On Wednesday night, the public got a first look at Castro walking to his jail cell. As CBS 2's Jessica Schneider reported, his next stop will be a courtroom, where he will be arraigned on the charges.
His two brothers have not been charged, and were expected to be released from custody.
Meanwhile, neighbors lined the streets and cheered as Berry and her daughter were brought to their family home shortly before noon.
Berry's sister, Beth Serrano, spoke to the media, making a brief statement.
"I just want to say we are so happy to have Amanda and her daughter home," Serrano said. "I want to thank the public and the media for their support and encouragement over the years. At this time, our family would request privacy so that my sister, niece and I have time to recover. We appreciate all you have done for us throughout the past 10 years. Please respect our privacy until we are ready to make our statements, thank you."
Later, DeJesus gave a thumbs up as she was rushed inside, wearing a hoodie. Her father spoke for the family.
"I knew she needed me, and I never gave up; never gave up searching for her," Felix DeJesus said.
"My first reaction when I saw my daughter was to grab her and hug her. I didn't want to let go," added Gina DeJesus' mother, Nancy Rui. "I still feel like it's a dream. I still pinch myself."
Sources tell CBS News that Berry, 27, DeJesus, 24, and Michelle Knight, 32, were all restrained for at least part of their decade-long captivity at suspect Ariel Castro's house.
As police collected damaging evidence, sources told CBS News the women never left the house. Most of the time, they were kept in a second-floor bedroom or in the basement.
Eventually, they were allowed to watch TV and move around, but not much, investigators said.
"There were padlocks on doors," Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath said.
Berry, Knight and DeJesus were abducted from the same street – Lorain Avenue – between 2002 and 2004.
Castro and his brothers were taken into custody after a frantic 911 call led police to his home.
Cleveland police said investigators found ropes and chains inside the house where three women were found. Police spokesman Sammy Morris confirmed the restraints were among evidence collected by law enforcement officials who've been combing through the house.
Ariel Castro's son, Anthony Castro, said in an interview with London's Daily Mail newspaper that he now speaks with his father just a few times a year and seldom visited his house. He said on his last visit, two weeks ago, his father wouldn't let him inside.
"The house was always locked," he said. "There were places we could never go. There were locks on the basement. Locks on the attic. Locks on the garage."
Castro handed out fliers with 14-year-old DeJesus' photo and performed music at a fundraiser held in her honor.
When neighbors gathered for a candlelight vigil just a year ago to remember the girl, Castro was there, too, comforting the girl's mother.
Castro, just like everyone else in the tight-knit, mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood, seemed shaken by the 2004 disappearance of DeJesus and another teenager who went missing the year before.
About a week ago, Castro took the 6-year-old girl to a nearby park, where they played in the grass, said Israel Lugo, a neighbor who lives down the street. "I asked him whose kid was it, and he told me his girlfriend's daughter," Lugo said.
Neighbor Anita Lugo added that she had seen Castro last spring or summer in an attic window with a little girl. Berry's young danger, Jocelyn, was also seen just last week at a nearby park.
The women were rescued after Berry kicked out the bottom portion of a locked screen door and used a neighbor's telephone to call 911. An officer showed up minutes later and Berry ran out and threw her arms around the officer, a neighbor said.
Police identified the other two suspects as the 52-year-old Castro's brothers, Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50. Calls to the jail went unanswered, and there was no response to interview requests sent to police, the jail and city officials.
A relative of the three brothers said their family was "totally shocked" after hearing about the missing women being found at the home.
Juan Alicea said the arrests of his wife's brothers had left relatives "as blindsided as anyone else" in their community. He said he hadn't been to the home of his brother-in-law Ariel Castro since the early 1990s but had eaten dinner with Castro at a different brother's house shortly before the arrests were made Monday.
Police Chief McGrath told NBC's "Today" show on Wednesday that he was "absolutely" sure police did everything they could to find the women over the years. He disputed claims by neighbors that officers had been called to the house before for suspicious circumstances. "We have no record of those calls coming in over the past 10 years," he said.
Ariel Castro owned the home where the girls were found in a neighborhood dotted with boarded-up houses just south of downtown.
Anthony Castro, who lives in Columbus, also wrote an article for a community newspaper in Cleveland about the disappearance of Gina DeJesus just weeks after she went missing, when he was a college journalism student.
"That I wrote about this nearly 10 years ago — to find out that it is now so close to my family — it's unspeakable," he told The Plain Dealer newspaper.
Most everyone in the neighborhood knew Ariel Castro.
Neighbors say he played bass guitar in salsa and merengue bands and gave neighborhood children rides on his motorcycle.
Tito DeJesus, an uncle of Gina DeJesus, played in bands with Castro over the last 20 years. He recalled visiting Castro's house but never noticing anything out of the ordinary.
Juan Perez, who lives two doors down from the house, said Castro was always happy and respectful. "He gained trust with the kids and with the parents. You can only do that if you're nice," Perez said.
Castro also worked until recently as a school bus driver.
One neighbor, Francisco Cruz, said he was with Castro the day investigators dug up a yard looking for the girls.
Castro told Cruz, "They're not going to find anyone there," Cruz recalled.
Cleveland police now are conducting an internal review to see if they overlooked anything.
City Safety Director Martin Flask said Tuesday that investigators had no record of anyone calling about criminal activity at the house but were still checking police, fire and emergency databases.
Two neighbors said they called police to the Castro house on separate occasions.
Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard several years ago and called police. "But they didn't take it seriously," she said.
Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of the house in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. "They walked to side of the house and then left," he said.
"Everyone in the neighborhood did what they had to do," said Lupe Collins, who is close to relatives of the women. "The police didn't do their job."
Police did go to the house twice in the past 15 years, but not in connection with the women's disappearance, officials said.
Michelle Knight's mother, Barbara Knight, told the "Today" show that she hasn't seen her daughter yet, but hopes she knows she loves and missed her. She said they had a tense relationship before Michelle's disappearance and at the time thought her daughter maybe just didn't want to see her family anymore. She said Michelle Knight's child had been removed from the home just before her disappearance, and thought perhaps she had vanished because she was upset about "the baby."
"I know she's probably angry at the world because she probably thought she'd never be found," she said.
Knight added that she hopes their past tension can heal, and she wants to take her daughter back to Florida, where she now lives.
In 1993, Castro was arrested two days after Christmas on a domestic-violence charge and spent three days in jail before he was released on bond. The case was presented to a grand jury, but no indictment was returned, according to court documents, which don't detail the allegations. It's unclear who brought the charge against Castro, who was living at the home from which the women escaped Monday.
And in 2005, Ariel Castro's ex-wife accused him of domestic violence.
According to a complaint, she told police she suffered a broken nose, broken ribs, a knocked-out tooth, a blood clot on the brain, and a dislocated shoulder.
She also told police Castro threatened to kill her and her daughters three to four times that year alone.
Four years ago, in another poverty-stricken part of town, police were heavily criticized following the discovery of 11 women's bodies in the home and backyard of Anthony Sowell, who was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
The families of Sowell's victims accused police of failing to properly investigate the disappearances because most of the women were addicted to drugs and poor. For months, the stench of death hung over the house, but it was blamed on a sausage factory next door.
Following public outrage over the killings, a panel formed by the mayor recommended an overhaul of the city's handling of missing-person and sex crime investigations.
On Tuesday, a sign hung on a fence decorated with dozens of balloons outside the home of DeJesus' parents read "Welcome Home Gina." Her aunt Sandra Ruiz said her niece had an emotional reunion with family members.
"Those girls, those women are so strong," Ruiz said. "What we've done in 10 years is nothing compared to what those women have done in 10 years to survive."
Many of the women's loved ones and friends had held out hope of seeing them again,
For years, Berry's mother kept her room exactly as it was, said Tina Miller, a cousin. When magazines addressed to Berry arrived, they were piled in the room alongside presents for birthdays and Christmases she missed. Berry's mother died in 2006.
Just over a month ago, Miller attended a vigil marking the 10th anniversary of Berry's disappearance.
Over the past decade or so, investigators twice dug up backyards looking for Berry and continued to receive tips about her and DeJesus every few months, even in recent years. The disappearance of the two girls was profiled on TV's "America's Most Wanted" in 2005. Few leads ever came in about Knight.
Knight vanished at age 20 in 2002. Berry disappeared at 16 in 2003, when she called her sister to say she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King. About a year later, DeJesus vanished.
Jessica Aponce, 24, said she walked home with DeJesus the day the teenager disappeared.
"She called her mom and told her mom she was on her way home and that's the last time I seen her," Aponce said. "I just can't wait to see her. I'm just so happy she's alive. It's been so many years that everybody thinking she was dead."
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's chief executive officer, John Ryan, said Berry, DeJesus and Knight likely would be honored by his group.
"I think they're going to be at the top of the list," he said.
You May Also Be Interested In These Stories
(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
