Latest / The conspiracy / They Spent 10 Years In HELL-part 1

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They Spent 10 Years In HELL-part 1 · The conspiracy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: He was the last person anyone suspected. To the people
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: who passed him on the street. He was no one
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: to fear, just a familial face in the neighborhood.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: No one looked at him and would.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Have guessed what he was or what he was capable of.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: But behind that ordinary face and behind the closed doors
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: of his house, something sinister was taking shape, and they
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: would pay a horrible price. This is the story of
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Ariel Castro and the Cleveland Three crime conspiracy cults, serial killers,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and murder, all things that I love to consume, and
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I know you do too.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: You sick, just a beautiful, intellectually mighted freak.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: And today we're talking about a very infamous case and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: a case I feel like doesn't get covered to its
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: full extent. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: go mock fight on the highway, slam on the brakes,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and bustle the windshield into this.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Infamous case together.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I want to take a quick pause to tell you
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: a little story.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: I got a text.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Last week saying a package was stuck and I owed
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: two dollars and fourteen cents, just two dollars, and that's
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the whole trick, make it small enough that you don't
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: stop and think. But luckily I didn't fall for it,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and that's thanks.
• 1:23
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  Speaker 1: podcast for disclosures. Thank you so much to cash app
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel, and let's
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: get back to it. Aeriel Castro was born on July tenth,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, in Dewey, a mountain village outside Yauco in
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Puerto Rico's Coffee country, and the Castro family held much
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: of the land in a stretch called Lepara, which had
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: made them the leading family in the area for generations. However,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: their standing did not spare them from poverty. An Ariel
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: was born in his father's wooden shack at the top
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of a hill with no electricity and no plumbing, and
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: his father had to make a jeep run to a
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: distant well in the mornings so the family could drink
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and wash now. His father was named Pedro Castro, also
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: known as Nona, and his mother was Lilian Rodriguez, and
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Ariel was their third child in a lineup of four.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: He had an older sister and a brother, Marisol Alicia
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and Pedro Junior, and a younger brother, O'Neil. So when
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Ariel was small, his father took up with a woman
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: who lived close by and secretly split his life between
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the two households for years, and Lilian found out in
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two and Pedro left for good, moving in
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: with the other woman and marrying her not long after,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and Lilian moved to Reading, Pennsylvania to live with her father,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: leaving her four small kids behind to live with their grandmother.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: So they just got abandoned right out the gate, and
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Ariel eventually wrote that both his father and his mother
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: had abandoned him and that his grandmother raised him. And
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: years later, Castro would tell a psychia trist that an
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: older boy had sly abused him at the age of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: five for more than a year, and after he was
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: asked why he never reported it, he said, quote, people
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: who are abused.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Keep quiet, so I did unquote.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: So Lillian would eventually send for Ariel and his siblings
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: to come live with her in Reading in nineteen sixty six,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: and they did, and Ariel said that she beat him
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: almost daily with belts, sticks, and an open hand, along
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: with verbal abuse as well, and he prayed for her
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: to die. And Pedro moved to Cleveland in nineteen sixty
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: eight along with his other family, and he had relatives
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: there and opened a used car lot that soon prospered,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: and his brothers followed suit, opening a grocery store on
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Seymour Avenue and the city's first Latino record store, and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Lilian brought her children to Cleveland in nineteen seventy, by
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: which point the Castors became one of the city's leading
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Puerto Rican families, just like they were back in Puerto Rico,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: and they even bankrolled a social club and a yearly
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: festival honoring the tw they came from. But in nineteen
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: seventy one, federal agents raided one of the family stores
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: in an illegal lottery sting and seized cash and guns
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: from eleven relatives, including Pedro. So some shady dealings were
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: happening and in school, Ariel's performance was below average as
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: a student, but he made up for it with his
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: extracurricular activities. He wrestled, played softball, and joined the band,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and his behavior left much to be desired, though, and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: in junior high he was suspended for touching a girl's
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: breast and disciplined for fighting. Music was the exception for him, though,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and an uncle gave him a guitar one Christmas, and
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: he fell in love with it and he demonstrated natural
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: musical ability and entertained at Castro family gatherings, and he
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: taught himself bass and the family noticed his gift pretty
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: early on, and his uncle Cecy, who gave him the guitar,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: said quote he had the smarts. There are very few
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: people who can teach themselves how to play bass. Now
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: at Lincoln West High he joined his first Latin band
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: and played in local churches, and classmates remembered him as
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: an outgoing, well liked kid with a good family, and
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: he graduated in nineteen seventy nine near the bottom of
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: his class, mind you, and then drifted through a number
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: of routine jobs, and while working and living at home
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: with his mom and two brothers, he also spent his
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: time making a name as one of the city's rising
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: young Latin musicians. And the music brought money and he
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: spent it on cars, motorbikes, sharp clothes, and instruments, and
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: in early nineteen eighty, Lilian moved the family to a
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: house on Burrer Avenue, a mile away from the previous
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: living space, and across the street lived a shy Puerto
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Rican girl named Grimilla or Nilda Figueroa, and Castro would
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: compliment her whenever they passed, and she liked being noticed
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: by him. Now, Nilda was seventeen when Ariel began really
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: pursuing her, and he invited her to see one of
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: his shows, and within a week they were together, and
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: she went to see him play a number of times
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: in the weeks that followed and was smitten with him,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: and one evening she decided to give him her virginity,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: only to have her mother waiting for the two of
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: them when he drove her home, and she had a
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: talk with Ariel and told him, quote unquote, now you
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: have to take her. And she moved into his room
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: that night, and she would stay with him as his
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: common law wife for well over a decade. Some moms
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: ground their kids, but.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: He had to literally basically get married to the woman,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: my goodness, and they soon moved into their own place
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: after Nilda first became pregnant, and together they had four children,
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: first a son named Ariel Anthony Castro Junior, who they
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: called Anthony, and eventually three daughters, Angie, Emily, Lisette, and Arlene.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Now Ariel was overjoyed with.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: His first child, and he regularly had Nilda bring him
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: to the shows to show him off, and Nilda's sister
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Alita said, quote, he was a nice guy. He was
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: really good to my sister at the beginning unquote, and
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: the rest of the family liked him too, But his
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: behavior towards Nilda shifted shortly after Anthony was born, and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Alita said further, quote, he just started being too controlling,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: too possessive, and he would abuse her. I think having
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the child made him feel she was his property unquote.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: And the violence was a fixture of the relationship almost
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: from the start, and it continued for years, and the
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: injuries started to pile up broken noses, broken ribs, teeth,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: knocked out shoulders, dislocated head injuries, etc. And the abuse
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: even surfaced in police records more than once. And on
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: September thirtieth, nineteen eighty nine, Nilda called police after Castro
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: slapped her and threw her against a wall and a
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: washing machine multiple times, and she was treated for a
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: bruised shoulder and said he had assaulted her before, and
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: on December twenty sixth, nineteen ninety three, she reported him again.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: He threw her to the ground, struck her head and face,
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  Speaker 1: and kicked her and Anthony there now twelve year old
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: son ran from the house and Castro Chaini, but almost
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: nothing came of it, and after the nineteen eighty nine reports,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the case went to prosecutors and no charge was ever filed,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: which is so incredibly sad. The system completely failed Nilda,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and after the nineteen ninety three assault, he was arrested,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: but he pleaded guilty only to disorderly conduct and Nilda
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: did not want to press charges, but a prosecutor did anyway, luckily,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: and when a grand jury weigh the domestic violence charge,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: they declined to indict, unfortunately, and other complaints against him,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: including threats to neighbors, were also referred to prosecutors and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: went nowhere. And in April nineteen ninety two, Castro would
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: eventually buy a house of his own and the family
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: moved in together and the house was two to two
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: O seven Seymour Avenue, a two story wood frame home
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: built in eighteen ninety two with four bedrooms at about
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: fourteen hundred square feet, and for a century it had
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: been a working class address, first built by a Cleveland
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: firefighter on a street that had shifted from a Jerman
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: enclave to the heart of the city's Puerto Rican community,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: and Castro had bought it from his uncle Edwin, who
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: owned a record store nearby, and under that roof the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: abuse would unfortunately escalate, and Castro controlled the household from
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the beginning. He sealed off parts of the house, fully
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: kneeling window shut and putting locks on the basement, attic
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: and garage. And he also made the house hard to
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: see into, and a chain link fence and an eight
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: foot wooden barricade walled off the backyard, and a neighbor,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Verdi Adams, said, quote unquote, you couldn't see anything. He
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: made sure he couldn't see into his backyard. But regardless
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: of this extremely shitty and shifty behavior, Castro wore a
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: pretty friendly.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Face out and about.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: He drove a Cleveland school bus for work, played bass
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: in a local band, and went to church on Sundays,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and relatives and acquaintances called him polite and quote unquote cool.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: He was a bass player, a.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Sweet and happy, they would say, and neighbors would see
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: more of a private, quiet man. And Aurora Marty would
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: say he was easy going, but she noticed the windows
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: never open, with blinds over the big ones and plywood
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: over small quote at nighttime, the only light you would
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: see would be the porch light, but nothing inside, no
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: lights at all, unquote. And Anthony Westry noted he would
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: let neighbors ride his three and four wheelers in the snow,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: but he'd always be waiting outside for them to return.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Quote.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: He was always creepy, stand offish, but never to the
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: point where you'd be overly suspicious. I just thought he
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: was a very private person. I thought he was depressed
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: from going through a divorce or whatever. You lose your family,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: you know, unquote. Because Nilda finally got out of the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: relationship in nineteen ninety six, she moved out and brought
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the children with her. Luckily, and by nineteen ninety seven
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: she had full custody, but Castro did not let her
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: go easily, and he would still abuse her and take
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: their daughters back with him in In two thousand and five,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: she sought a protection order, telling the court he had
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: threatened the lies of her and her kids, though she
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: chose not to pursue it and moved with them to Indiana,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: so she at least got some distance from him. But unfortunately,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Nilda died in twenty twelve, and accounts of the cause differ,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: with one sighting an accidental overdose of painkillers and another cancer.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: But back in.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Two thousand and two, across town, a young mother was
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: fighting to get her son back. Michelle was born in
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: April nineteen eighty one and grew up on Cleveland's West Side,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and her family had almost nothing, and in her own words, quote,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: we didn't have a couch to sit on, we didn't
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: have a stove. Just to give us a hot, warm meal,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: I had to cook on a space heater. It takes
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: four hours for a hot dog to cook unquote. And
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: she took on the role of caregiver for her younger siblings,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: holding the household together, and her brother Edward said, quote,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: she has always been there to help us unquote. And
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: when she wasn't planting vegetables in the yard, she was
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: next door feeding a neighbor's pet pony. And at a
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: young age, she had also survived abuse by a male relative,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and of her childhood she would say, quote unquote, you
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: name it, I went through it, and at fourteen she couldn't.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Take any more. Quote.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I got to the point where I said, I'm more
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: safer on the streets than I am living in my
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: own home, so I basically ran away unquote.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: So on the streets.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: She lived in a garbage can with a blanket taken
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: from a porch, and she sheltered near a bridge where
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: the vibrations of passing cars helped keep her calm. And
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: a local Baptist church became her refuge, where they took
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: her in and fed her, gave her clothes in place
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: to wash. And she was originally drawn in from the music,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: which she found beautiful. Quote I was a little bit
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: embarrassed because I didn't smell too pretty. I stood in
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: the back and singing along with every hymn that they
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: were singing unquote. And at one point a church goer
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: recognized her and told her father, who made her return
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: to school. Now there, classmates would bully her, and at
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: four foot seven, she was nicknamed Shorty. At eighteen, Michelle
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: had a son directing her to drop out of school,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: and she named her son Joey. And despite everything, motherhood
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: became the thing she really wanted to get, right, saying, quote,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be the best mom. I wanted to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: be better than my mom. It was difficult because I
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: didn't have very much money unquote, And she made up
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: her mind to get through school and build something stable
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: for her son. She also loved animals, and at a
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: young age, after helping her mother deliver a litter of
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Shitsu puppies, the experience planted the dream of becoming a
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: veterinarian in her head. But of everything that school had
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to offer, while she attended, art class was what she
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: looked for to most, and for everything she had been through,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: she said she loved growing up in Cleveland, just despised
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: her home life, but unfortunately, custody of Joey would be
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: taken from her and her mother's boyfriend. Drunk had broken
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: the toddler's leg and the boy was placed in foster care.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Losing him just left her desperate. So in August of
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: two thousand and two, Michelle had a meeting she could
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: not afford to miss because it was with Social Services
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: about the one thing that was on her mind, reclaiming
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: her son Joey. She had spent nearly four hours lost
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: in the city trying to find the place, and keep
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: in mind that this was years before her smartphones were popularized,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: so she's just trying to figure it out on her own.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: So exhausted, she ducked into a family. Dollar grabbed a
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: soda and asked around for directions, but no one around
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: seemed to be able to help, so she was about
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: to give up when a man's voice cut in, saying
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: he knew exactly where she needed to go, and she
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: recognized him, and she said, quote unquote, oh my gosh,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: you're Emily's dad. And she had only ever seen him
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: in photos, but that was enough to make the connection.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Quote. He said, I know where it's at. I can
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: take you straight to it.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: It'll only take me five minutes. And she thought, okay,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna make it. This is gonna happen unquote. And
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: that man was Ariel Castro. She followed him out to
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: his car, an orange Chevy cluttered with fast food wrappers,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: grateful for the help, but rather than driving to the meeting,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: he said he had one quick errand at his house
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: before they went, and they got to talking about Joey,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: and Castro mentioned his dog had recently had a litter
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: so Michele thought to herself quote so I was like, okay,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: I could take one home to my son, because unfortunately
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: his dog had passed away unquote. But when he finally
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: parked outside the house on Seymour Avenue. He had talked
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: her into coming in for a puppy. Quote, just come
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: in for a little while. The puppies are upstairs. You
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: can take one home to your son unquote. But unfortunately
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: there would be no puppies, and he would lock her
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: in an upstairs room, bind her with an extension cord,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and a day later took her down to the basement
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and Michelle's family reported her missing, but before long they
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: decided she had simply left, and her grandmother later explained
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: how the family had come to see it. Michelle I
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: just walked out on her own, bitter overlosing Joey, and
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: police and social workers took the same view, and in
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: November of two thousand and three, fifteen months after that report,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Cleveland police had taken her out of the FBI's database
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: of missing people, and the reason they gave was that
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: they could not quote find a parent, guardian, or other
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: reporting person to confirm that miss Knight was still missing unquote.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: That makes no sense to me.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: You can't find any evidence that she isn't missing, So
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: why the fuck are you taking her out of the database.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: This is an infuriating case, but that just drives me insane.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: It's just awful.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: But on paper, her case would stay open, and the
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: police said they checked it as late as twenty twelve,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: but it drew little notice, and for all practical purposes,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: no one was really looking for Michelle Knight now. Amanda
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Marie Barry was born on April twenty second, nineteen eighty six,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: and grew up in and around Cleveland, and she went
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: to John Marshall High School, and by her late teens
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: she had a job at a local burger king and
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the people who taught her remembered a very resilient kid.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: One teacher called her a tough cookie, a girl who
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: stood her ground in science class even when the boys
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: wouldn't leave her alone. And she dreamed of graduating and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: making something of herself, saying, quote, I always wanted to
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: grow up and be somebody and do something with my life,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: you know. I always planned to graduate, and my mom
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: always wanted that for me, to see me cross the
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: stage unquote. And she had a sister, Beth Serrano, but
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the center of her world was her mother, Luana Miller
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: so Regina Brett, a Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist who spent
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: time with the family described their bond. Quote they were
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: more than just mother daughter. I think that Luana Mandy
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: was like her best friend. You know, they were like
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: sisters unquote. And Luana called Amanda Mandy. And Luana was
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: not the typical image you would exc of a mother,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and Brett said of her, quote, she's an old fashioned
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: you know, whiskey drinking, chain smoking. Don't get in the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: way of my daughter and me. You know you're going
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: to have to pay unquote. And Brett also admitted the
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: woman scared her a little bit, but there was no
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: mistaking what drove her. Quote she was fierce in her
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: love for her daughter unquote. So in the spring of
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: two thousand and three, Amanda was just about to turn
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: seventeen years old, and on April twenty first, Amanda had
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: almost stayed home from her shift at Burger King, and
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: she said, quote, I almost called off work that day
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: because the next day was my birthday unquote, but she
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: would go anyway. And when her shift ended, she called
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: her sister Beth to say she was heading home. And
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: on her way back, Amanda noticed a car trailing her
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: down the street, and the driver leaned out and asked
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: her if she wanted a ride.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: She knew him.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Castro drove an elementary school bus and he was the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: father from Amanda's friend Emily, a girl she had gone
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: to Wilbur Wright Middle School with. And he said to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: his daughter, quote unquote, well she's at my house. Would
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: you like to go see her? And Amanda said yeah,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: sure and got in the car with him. And once
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: they had arrived at the house on Seymour Avenue, Castro
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: said his daughter was probably in the bath, and Amanda
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: called quote, so he said, we'll just wait, so he
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: started showing me around the house unquote. But as we know,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: his daughter didn't even live with him, and she was
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: not in the bath. She was across town with her mother,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and Amanda was now trapped. And a week later, in
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: the middle of the night, the phone rang at Amanda's
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: family home and the call was coming from Amanda's own
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: cell phone, and her sister Beth remembered saying quote he
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: called and said I have Mandy, which nobody called her Mandy,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: but people who knew her she wants to be with
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: me unquote. And the man on the line also said
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Amanda was fine and would be home in a couple
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: of days. So at that point, the FBI was building
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Newton tools that could pinpoint where a cell phone was
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: as long as someone switched it on, so agents would
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: trace Amanda's phone to a stretch of thirty to forty blocks.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Gets that's a lot of blocks. An agent, Tim Kolinik
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: said they sat in that area around the clock for
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: about a week, non stop, waiting for the phone to
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: come back on, but it never did, and Castro would
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: not turn it on for a second time. He basically
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: just did it to taunt because he's a monster. And
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the FBI would not disclose the call publicly until that November,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and no one could tell even then whether it had
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: been real. And Amanda's disappearance set off the kind of
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: search Michelle never got, and it drew national publicity, organized
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: searches on the ground and a twenty five k FBI
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: reward for information on her whereabouts, and the FBI posted
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: ten separate notices about her case on its site, and
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: America's Most Wanted aired a segment on her disappearance in
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: November of two thousand and eight, and there were posters
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: and yellow ribbons put up all over and meanwhile, there
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: was nothing at all about Michelle on the FBI's website.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I mean she was taken out of the database for
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: God's sake. So one young woman got ten federal postings
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: in a primetime broadcast and the other got silence. The
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: same world that had quietly closed Michelle's case as a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: runaway was the one Luana fought to keep away from
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: her daughter. Now Lawana pointed out that Amanda had left
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: one hundred dollars sitting on her dresser. No teenager runs
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: away and leaves the cash behind or the phone charger
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: or walks off the day before her seventeenth birthday party,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: still wearing her Burger King uniform. So for three years,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: finding Amanda was Luwana's whole life. She sat for interviews
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: with local reporters and telephone the police, the FBI, in
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: every newsroom that would pick up again and again, just
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: anything to keep her daughter's face on the news. And
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: she showed support for visuals and rallies, and she kept
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: buying amanda Christmas presents, certain she would be home to
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: open them. And she told the reporter quote, I want
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: her on the news. She faded away from the whole world.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: It just kills me. This is killing me unquote. And
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, Luana took her search onto
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: national television, appearing on The Montel Williams Show, and the
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: show's in house psychic, Sylvia Brown, told her the thing
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: she was hoping to disprove. Quote, She's not alive, Honey,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: your daughter's not the kind who wouldn't call unquote, And
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Lauana broke down in tears on the show, and she
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: later said she believed ninety eight percent of what Brown
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: told her, and a friend, Art McCoy watched it break
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: something within her quote unquote, I think she had given up.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Lauana's health had been failing for years, and pancreatitis and
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: other illnesses put her in hospital for months, and her
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: conditions steadily got worse over time, and on March second,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: two thousand and six, Luana died of heartfel failure, three
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: years into the search for her daughter, and Donna Brady,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: a Cleveland councilwoman who had spent countless hours at her side,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: told the Associated Press quote unquote, she literally died of
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: a broken heart. Georgina Dejezeus, known to everyone as Gina,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: was born in nineteen ninety and grew up on the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: West side of Cleveland. On West seventy first Street, and
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: she was the youngest child in a tight knit family,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: including her father Felix to Jzeus, and her mother Nancy Ruiz,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and her sister Mayra and her brother Ricardo. Now, Gina
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: was a shy girl and she had grown up bi lingual,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: speaking English and Spanish at home, and she went to
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Wilbur Wright Middle School, almost forty blocks from her house,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and her mother would give her fare for the bus,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: but Gina pocketed the change and walked anyway, ducking into
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: a store along the way for her a piece of
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: gum or a bag of snacks. At school, though Gina
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: was one of three, she Arlene Cass and Kayla Rogers
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: were best friends so close that they were referred to
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: as the three Musketeers, and Kayla had known Genu since
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: elementary school and the two of them met Arlene once
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: they reached middle school, and they ran the same West
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: side blocks, hung around on Gina's porch and had sleepovers together.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And Gina loved dancing, and her afternoons were filled with
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Spanish music and rap, and the girls stayed on the
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: phone for hours, traded gossip and talked about boys, and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Kayla said quote, we were gossips gossip girls unquote, and
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: each day after class the three of them walked home together. Now,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Arlene's father, Ariel Castro, was no stranger to the Dejesu's family,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and he and Felix knew each other the way parents
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: in the same neighborhood do when their daughters are inseparable.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Gina had seen him around and heard his name regularly,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: and to her he was simply her best friend's father.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: So in the spring of two thousand and four, Gina
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: was fourteen years old and April second was a school day,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and at the end of it, Gina left wilbur right
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and started the walk home, and her mother had given
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: her a dollar twenty five for the bus, but Gina
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: had kept it for snacks, as had become something of
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: a routine, and she got as far as the payphone
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: on Lorraine Avenue, and Arlene Castro was with her, and
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: she wanted to spend this afternoon at Gina's house, so
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Gina handed her fifty cents to call home and ask.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: And the answer was no, and Arlene said, quote I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: told her I couldn't, and she said, well, okay, I'll
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: talk to you later. And she walked quote, and she
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: went along on foot alone. Now somewhere between a quarter
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: to three and three o'clock at a car would pull
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: up beside her, and the man behind the wheel was
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Arlene's father, Ariel Castro, and he asked if she'd seen
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: his daughter, and at Gina's words quote, he asked me,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: you seen my daughter? I said yeah, she's right around
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the corner. And he was like, can you help me
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: find her? And I said sure, unquote. She knew him.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: She didn't think there was any danger. He was her
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: best friend's dad, a friend of her own father's, a
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: face from the neighborhood. So she got in and he
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: drove her to two two seven Seymour Avenue, and inside
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: he asked her to help him move a stereo, and
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: something about him started to unnerve her. And Michelle had
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: been inside almost twenty months at this point in Amanda,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: nearly a year, and Gina would now be joining a
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: new group of three. And when Gina didn't come home,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: her family went straight to the police, but no Amber
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: alert went out, and the police were the situation the
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: same way they had Michelle two years before. A teenager
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: who had just run off maybe with a boyfriend, and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the delay left the family to start searching on their own,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: which is heartbreaking. And Jessica Ponce had walked part of
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the way home with Gina that afternoon, and she said, quote,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: she called her mom and told her mom she was
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: on her way home, and that's the last time I'd
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: seen her, unquote. And the family poured everything into the search,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: papering the neighborhood with flyers and holding visuals, and the
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: FBI joined in as well, and a year later, America's
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Most Wanted ran Gina's case alongside Amanda's, pointing out that
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: both girls had been taken from nearly the same point
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: on Lorraine Avenue, and one of the people who spoke
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: on the broadcast was Arlene, the last to see Gina
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: at the payphone, so all three of them had vanished
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: from the same road Lorraine Avenue within twenty months, Michelle
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: in August of two thousand and two, Amanda in April
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: of two thousand and three, and Gina in April of
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: two thousand and four, but the police somehow never seemed
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: to tie the cases to one another, and three months
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: before Gina was taken in January of two thousand and four,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: officers had actually come to two two o seven Seymour Avenue,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: but the call had nothing to do with the women,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and child Welfare had reported that Castro had left a
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: child alone on a bus he drove and no one
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: answered the door, so officers spoke with Castro afterward and
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: didn't see any criminal intent involved. And in the years
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Gina was gone, Castro even participated in the search for her,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and he handed out flyers with her face on them,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: and he played music at a fundraiser thrown in her
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: name and had a candle visual for Gina. A man
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: named Antonio Kiros saw him stand with her mother and
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: comfort her, and Khalid Samad, an activist and a friend
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: of the family, also acknowledged quote when we went out
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: to look for Gina, he helped pass out flyers. You know,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: he was friends with the family unquote. And Gina's uncle,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Tito de Jesus, had been a longtime bandmate with Castro,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: sharing stages for twenty years and had been inside the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: house on Seymour Avenue without ever noticing a thing. And
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: one day, while investigators dug up a nearby yard looking
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: for the missing girls, a neighbor named Francisco Cruz stood
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: next to Castro, and Castro turned to him and said, quote,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: they're not going to find anyone there, unquote three young
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: women taken from the same few blocks of one street
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and one house three miles off was holding all three
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: of them, and not a single dot was connected.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: And for the next.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Nine years the world moved on, but inside two two
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: oh seven Seymour Avenue time stopped. All right, I want
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: to take a quick pause to confess. I will spend
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: six hours going down the rabbit hole on plenty of
• 30:25
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• 30:30
  Speaker 1: It's just something about that phone tree, the hold music
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: and the transfer and.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: The our next appointment is in March.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: When it's August. So I just don't do it. I
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: put off one appointment for over a year once and
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: a year of putting something off isn't a plan. It's
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: avoidance with extra steps. And I don't want you doing
• 30:50
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• 30:54
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• 31:01
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• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So from their first days, the rules of that house
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: were set with restraints and silence. Michelle was restrained with
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: an extension cord looped around her legs, her arms, and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: her neck, and a sock was forced into her mouth
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: so no one could hear her, and Castro turned the
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: music up loud to cover whatever noise the sock did not,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and he would saw several times a day. And Amanda
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: spent her first three days in that basement, and on
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the fourth he brought her upstairs to a bedroom and
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: fixed a chain to a radiator and its other end
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: around her stomach, and she would describe it saying, quote,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: going to sleep at night, you know, if you wanted
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: to toss on your back, you couldn't do that. You
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: would have to take the whole chain and move it
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: to the front of your stomach so that you're not
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: laying on the big lock on your back unquote. In
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: the room was barely the size of a closet, and
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: she would sleep on a filthy mattress with a bucket
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: in the corner as a bathroom, and once a day
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: some food arrived, usually chips or crackers, and even the
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: weekly shower had a steep cost because she could only
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: take it with him. And when Gina arrived a year later,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Castro put her in the nicer room, and the small
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: unfairness of this stung because it appeared she was the favorite. Quote.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: He seems to treat me better than the other girls.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I have the nicer room, Gina would say. And Amanda
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: said of the difference in her treatment, quote, it was
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: just simple things. But when you don't have anything, you're like, well,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: why don't I have that?
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: I want that unquote.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: So he made sure to keep the three of them
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: apart and would not let them speak, and Ginas said,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: it felt like he knew everything because he was always watching.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Sometimes he pretended to leave the house, then waited outside
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: and punished anyone who had tried to call out or run.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: And the rules inside were obsessive. The whole sink of
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: dishes had to be washed with a single drop of soap.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: When cooking, the pan had to sit dead center on
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the stove. Quote, it couldn't be a little to the left,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: a little to the right, unquote, Amanda would say. And
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: he reminded Michelle over and over that no one was coming,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: just to add more insult to injury to the fact
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: that the other girls' families were constantly on the news
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and hers were not, And Castro said to her, quote,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: your families don't care about you, Ain't you glad I
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: took you quote. I felt like he hated me the
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: most because I was the one that stood my ground unquote,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: she would say. And the regime did not stay fully fixed, though,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: and as the years passed, the women were allowed a
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: bit more freedom on the second floor, even though they
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: were still abused behind locked doors, and they each found
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: ways to survive the torment. Michelle taught herself to leave
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: her own body saying, quote, anytime he was doing anything
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: to me, I had to put myself in a different
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: place unquote. And Amanda kept a diary wherever she could,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: in notebooks, on napkins and fast food bags, and at
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: the top of each page she wrote a string of numbers,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: a private code, counting how many times Castro had rare
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: her that day, so that someone might read it one
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: day and make him answer for what he had done.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And Gina held onto a particular piece of paper. One day,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Castro carried a missing person flyer into the house with
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: her own face on it, handed to him by her
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: own mother during a search, and Gina asked if she
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: could keep it. It was the last thing her mother
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: had touched, and she wanted to show her one day
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: that she still had it. And their one link to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the world outside was a small black and white TV,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: and in the early months, Amanda watched her own mother
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: and sister on it searching for her. It was the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: one thing that kept her going, saying, quote, you know what,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I'm going to make it home to you. As long
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: as you fight, I'm going to fight unquote. And she
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: was watching the day her mother, Luana went on the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: montell Williams Show to ask Sylvia Brown whether her daughter
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: was still alive, and heard the woman tell her she
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: was dead, and Amanda naturally broke down quote I couldn't
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: believe she said that, and then my mom broke down crying,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: so that hurt.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: Even worse unquote.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: But she was obviously still alive and then trapped in
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: this house still when her mother died in the spring
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: of two thousand and six. And over the years, Michelle
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: had become pregnant five times, and each time Castro ended
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: it in brutal ways until she could never carry a
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: child again. But he would not do the same to Amanda,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: who realized she was pregnant on her twentieth birthday. Quote
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: I was terrified. How I mean, I barely eat and
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I'm chained to a wall and I have a bucket
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: for a bathroom unquote. So on Christmas Day of two
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: thousand and six, in an inflatable pool set on the floor,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Amanda gave birth, with Michelle helping to bring the baby
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: into the world, but the newborn girl was not breathing,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: and Castro told Michelle he would kill her if the
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: baby died, so she breathed into the little girl's mouth
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: until the baby took a breath of her own, and
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Amanda named her Jocelyn. And the baby looked like Castro,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: and Amanda didn't care. Quote. I would look at her
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: and I just felt like, she's mine, She's mine, unquote.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: And for all three women, the child became something to
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: hold onto, and Gina would describe quote when I was
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: playing with Jocelyn, Jocelyn made me forget everything unquote. And
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Jocelyn grew up seeing the chains on Amanda, who was
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: taught to call them bracelets. And when she had grown
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: to the age of two or three, he finally took
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Amanda's chains off of her. And that was all thanks
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: to Jocelyn. And as she got older, he gave her
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: things that he denied the women, including playing outside in
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: the backyard, going to the park, and Sunday services at church.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Quote she loved him and he loved her unquote. Amanda
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: would say, but under those words, she carried a fear
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: she could never set down of what he might one
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: day do to the child. Quote. I was nervous, like
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: would he touch her? Would he ever think about touching her?
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Because you know he had his problems unquote. But despite
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: everything happening in the house. Outside of those walls, Castro
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: was a familiar friendly face. He played bass at clubs
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: around Cleveland, performing like a man with nothing to hide,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: and he went about his work as a bus driver,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and even the people closest to him were kept out
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: of parts of the house, and his son Anthony said
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: there were areas that no one was allowed in the basement,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the attic, and the garage all stayed locked at all times.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: And on a chaotic block, his boarded up house stayed
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: among the quietest, one of the last to ever draw
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: a police call, and in that almost decade, the block
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: drew some eleven hundred police calls, equivalent to about one
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: every three and a half days. Then, in all of
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: those years, they came to Castro's own door only twice,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: and neither visit had anything to do with the women.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: And the first was the school bus complaint back in
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: early two thousand and four that we talked about, and
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the second time in two thousand and nine, Castro was
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the one who called to report a fight in the street.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: So they were forever just steps away from these poor
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: poor girls. And three days after Michelle vanished, police were
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: two doors down over a stolen phone, and nine days
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: into Amanda's captivity, an abandoned car brought them to the
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: same address, and the day after Gina disappeared, another call
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: put them only a block away, and twice a neighbor
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: down the street thought she'd heard something, a woman screaming
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: up front in two thousand and three, and in two
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight a muffled voice crying, get off me,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: with a baby somewhere behind it, and officers came each time,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: and each time nothing was found. In eleven years, the
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: women were let outside exactly twice, in wigs and sunglasses
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: with their heads down. Then slowly the structure of Castro's
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: own life began to give, and he had driven the
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Cleveland school bus since nineteen ninety one, and in the
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: fall of twenty twelve he left it parked and unattended
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: and was fired that nova after twenty one years, and
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: his house was sliding toward foreclosure, and he owed.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Thousands in back taxes.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: So with the job gone, nothing pulled him out of
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: the house on a schedule anymore, and by twenty thirteen,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Jocelyn was now six years old and taking in everything
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: around her. The chains had been off Amanda for years,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: and the grip that had kept that house shut for
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: a decade was quietly beginning to loosen. So May sixth,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: twenty thirteen was an ordinary afternoon, that is until Jocelyn
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: noticed her father was nowhere to be seen around the house,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: and Amanda checked her bedroom door and found that Castro
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: had left it unlocked for the first time. And Gina
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: remembered quote, So Jocelyn goes downstairs and then she runs
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: back up and she says, I don't find daddy. Daddy's
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: nowhere around unquote. And Amanda recalled the precious moment, saying, quote,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: She's like, mom, Daddy's car is gone. Like my heart
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: immediately started pounding because I'm like, should I chance? If
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do it, I need to do it
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: now unquote. And she made it down the stairs and
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: reached the front door. It was tied to an alarm,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: but it opened, and the storm door just beyond it
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: was padlock shut. So she pushed an arm through the
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: gap and waved, quote, somebody, please please help me. I'm
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Amanda Barry, Please I could die any moment. I'm so
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: terrified unquote. And a neighbor saw her and was too
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: scared to get involved, and for a moment she thought
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: it was over. Quote. After I got to the locked
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: door and the guys didn't help me, I was like,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: he's going to come home, and this is just going
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: to be the endquote, And then a man crossed the street.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Angel Cordero had been visiting a porch nearby when he
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: saw the woman clawing at the door, and he kicked
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of it, and Charles Ramsey, who lived
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: next door, heard the shouting and came over as well,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: and as Amanda remembered it, Ramsey urged her on, saying,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: quote he like kind of kicks it, and he's like,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: there you go, finish kicking it out and you can
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: get out unquote, and the bottom of the door gave
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: and Amanda pushed through, then ran back inside for Jocelyn
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and came out with a girl in her arms, and
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the two men would give differing accounts of who reached
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: her first. And more importantly, Amanda crossed to a neighbor's
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: house and called nine to one one quote help me.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: I'm Amanda Barry unquote, and when asked what was wrong,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: she said, I've been kidnapped and I've been missing for
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: ten years and I'm here, I'm free now. And when
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: dispatcher said police would come as soon as a car
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: opened up, she cut in saying, quote, no, I need
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: them before he gets back, unquote. And she named Ariel Castro,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: and she kept insisting on who she was, that her
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: face had been all over the news for a decade.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I got I got that deer, they would answer. So
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: officers Anthony Espada and Michael Tracy were near the West
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Side Market when the highest priority call came over the radio.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Quote we kind of looked at each other like deer
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: in headline, Like is that for real? Unquote, as Spota
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: would say, And they turned onto Seymour and a woman
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: approached them carrying a child, and she looked like an
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: older version of the girl on the old missing posters,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: and a Spota knew her by the eyebrow pier, saying, quote,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I think this is for real unquote, he said on
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: the radio. And Amanda told them there were two more
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: women inside, and Tracy pulled at the front door, found
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: it changed from within, and kicked it until it gave out.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: And inside the house was dark, and a Spota climbed
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: the stairs with his gun drawn, calling out Cleveland police,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: and upstairs he found mattresses on the floor, chains in
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the closets, and a hole cut in each door where
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: food had been pushed through. And Michelle and Gina had
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: heard the noise and thought Castro had caught Amanda, and
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Gina almost bolted. Quote. I turned to Michelle and I'm like,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: we could run, we could do this. But then once
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Michelle gets pumped, I'm like, no. I talked her out
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Unquote.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: They were terrified that they were next for what they
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: believed to be Castro's anger. And then came the word police,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: and Michelle threw the door open and ran to their arms.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: I see a badge, she said, and she jumped up
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: and held on. Please don't let me go, Please don't
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: put me down. Michelle was so small that a spota
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: mistook her for a child, and she took him and
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: she told him she had been in that house for
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: eleven years and that they had saved her. And Gina
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: came to the realization of what was happening a bit
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: slower due to shock, not really believing the men were real. Quote,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: I thought they were people in costumes unquote, she would say,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: and a Spata recognized her from the posters and asked
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: her name, and when she said Georgina DeJesus, he told
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: her we've been looking for you for a long time.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: And the officer's faces fell. Officer Barbara Johnson, whose arms
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Michelle jumped into, said, quote, it was just like getting
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: smacked in the face, like, holy cow, she's still alive
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: after all these years unquote. And then over the radio
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: came the words so many had waited to hear. We
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: found them, We found them, And Michelle dropped to the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: ground outside and kissed it. Quote.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't care how dirty it was.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I kissed that ground and thanked God that he helped
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: us get out of there, unquote. And the three women
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: and Jocelyn kept reaching for one another in the ambulance.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: It was like it's real. Amanda would say, we're going home.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: And Gina's mother, Nancy Ruiz, was just a few blocks
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: away when she spotted one of the FBI agents from
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: her daughter's case, and she ran to him an ass
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: just tell me if it's her. Then he told her yes,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: and they held each other and cried, and Felix to
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Jezeus said the reunion felt like a dream. He needed
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: someone to wake him up from and Gina recalled, I'm
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: hugging everybody. Then the first thing I pulled out was
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: this flyer, and I showed my mom. Now she could
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: finally give it back to her. And at the hospital,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Amanda and her sister Beth held each other tight, and
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Beth would say she was just really skinned and had
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: short hair, but she was still beautiful. She had the
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: biggest smile that she always had. And Jocelyn, who had
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: never known anything but the house, hugged her new family
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: like she knew them forever, running around cracking jokes. And
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Michelle's homecoming was not like the others, though, because she
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: was in the worst shape of three and doctors gave
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: her only days to live at this point. Though difficult
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: news to receive, she wouldn't let it win, saying, quote,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: I was singing, I was dancing. I was trying to
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: make the best of the life I had left. They
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: put me on fourteen different medications before I was actually
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: better unquote. And though she was finally free at the
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: age of thirty two, she was in a way the
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: others were not, and that was alone. She had no
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: family to return to, no friends, and no home, so
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: she went to live in an assisted living facility outside
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: the city, and she called herself a forgotten one and
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: then said, quote, that's a reason why I made a
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: and said that all the people that are out there,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: they're not forgotten in my eyes.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Never.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: So while the women were being attended to, police were
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: already out looking for Castro, and before she left, Michelle
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: had handed officers a photo of him from the refrigerator,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't long until they found him in his
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: blue masdamiata and arrested him. And his brothers, Pedro and
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: O'Neil were picked up two with the belief that they
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: might have been part of it as well, and two
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: days later prosecutors cleared them as they had nothing to
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: do with what had happened in that house. So on
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: May ninth, the Ariel Castro was charged with four counts
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: of kidnapping and three counts of wreath and his bail
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: was set to eight million dollars, and over the weeks
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: that followed, the full scope of his crimes came into
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: focus through a grand jury process that explained the charges twice.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: The first indictment, on June seventh, carried three hundred and
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: twenty nine counts. Then a grand jury indicted Castro on
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: nine hundred and seventy seven counts on July twelfth, including
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: five hundred and twelve counts of kidnapping in four hundred
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and forty six counts of along with seven counts of
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: gross sexual imposition and six counts of felonies assault and
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: three counts of child endangerment and two counts of aggravated
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: murder for the pregnancies he had forced to end, and
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: finally one count of possessing criminal tools, and Ohio law
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: reserved the death penalty for aggravated murder alone, of which
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: he had two counts, And on July twenty six he
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: took a deal and he pleaded guilty to nine hundred
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: and thirty seven counts and the state agreed not to
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: seek the death penalty and the sentence was recommended to
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: be life without the possibility of parole, and the deal
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: also made it so the women would not have to
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: testify at the trial. So on August first, twenty thirteen,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Castor was brought to court to be sentenced, and as
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the case was laid out, the inside of the house
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: told its own story. An FBI agent Andrew Burke to
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: find that Castro had rebuilt the place to keep the
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: women hidden, and alarms sat on the back door. Curtains
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: and bedspreads blocked the sitelines, and a porch swing had
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: been set in front of the stairs that led to
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the rooms where he kept them, and he chained them
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: to a pole in the basement, and in Amanda's room,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: the doorknob had been taken off and a lock was
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: put on the outside, with a hole cut through the
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: door for air because the windows were boarded over, and
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: detectives told the judge that the women had lived through
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: years of rape and beatings and hunger, and a gun
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: produced as a tool of control, and even forced rounds
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: of Russian roulette, which, if you're not familiar, that's when
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: a loaded gun, usually only with one bullet, is put
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: to people's head or somewhere on them and the trigger
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: was pulled and.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: It might go off and it might not.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: It's a horrifically psychologically step. I don't even want to
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: It's not a game. It's life or death. Used to
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: do this to them. And Burke also told of a
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: letter Castro had written out by hand in which he
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: said he had been abused as a child and called
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: himself what he was. I am a predator. That's quoted.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: And all three women had kept diaries through the years,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: and those pages filled in much.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Of the record.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: And Amanda and Gino would not come to the hearing,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: and instead they sent family to read their words for them.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Michelle did show up in person to say her words
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: to his ugly face. And she spoke about Joey quote,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: I missed my son every day. I wonder if I
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: was ever going to see him again. He was only
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: two and a half years old when I was taken.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I cried every night. I was so lone. Days turned
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: into nights, nights turned into days, the years turned into
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: eternity unquote. She said Castro had told her over and
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: over that her family did not care about her, even
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: on holidays, and that Christmas was the heardest because she
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: never got to spend it with her boy. Then she
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: spoke about Gina.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Quote.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Gina was my teammate. She never let me fall. I
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: never let her fall. She nursed me back to health
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: when I was dying from his abuse. My friendship with
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: her was the only thing that was good out of
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: the situation unquote. And then She turned to the man
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: who had taken it all, saying, quote, I spend eleven
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: years in hell, and now your hell is just beginning.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: You will live. I will live on.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: You will die a little every day. The death penalty
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: would be so much easier. You don't deserve that. You
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: deserve to spend life in prison. After eleven years, I
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: am finally being heard and it's liberating unquote. And what
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Michelle described the experts confirmed, and doctor Frank Auckbord wrote
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: that she had suffered the longest and most severely of
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the three, and that it was Michelle who had been
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: quote doctor, nurse, midwife and Peter autrition unquote at Jocelyn's birth,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: who quote breathed life into that infant when she wasn't
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: breathing unquote, and who had put herself between Castro and Gina,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: absorbing abuse meant for her friend. And he also said
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: that quote each survivor had a will to prevail and
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: use that will to live through the ordeal unquote. And
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: another doctor asked whether Castro was mentally ill, said that
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: an examination showed no psychiatric illness whatsoever, so he was
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: completely of sound mind when he was doing all of
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: these atrocities, and when Castro was given his chance to speak,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: he used it to defend himself, and he insisted, quote,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not a monster. I'm just sick. I have an addiction,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: just like an alcoholic has an addiction.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Unquote.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Why is he even allowed to speak, is my question, honestly.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: And he would claim the women had not been virgins,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and that they had wanted the sicks, and that there
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: had been harm in a happy household. And he had
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: said he had never beaten or tortured anyone, that he
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: had only kept them so they could not leave, and
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Judge Russo answered him saying, quote in your mind there
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: was harmony and a happy household. I'm not sure there's
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: anyone else in America who would agree with you.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: Unquote.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: Now at the end, Castro turned toward the victims' families
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: and would say, quote, thank you, victims, Please find it
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: in your heart to forgive me unquote, And then Judge
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Michael Russo handed down his sentence, which was life plus
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: one thousand years. You don't deserve to be out in
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: our community. You're too dangerous, he would say. But unfortunately,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: a month into this pathetic shit stain of a human
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: on September third, twenty thirteen, guards would find Ariel Castro
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: dead in his cell, having himself with a bed sheet,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: and he left no note, and photos of his family
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: were set out and a Bible lay open beside him,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: to chapters two and three of the Gospel of John.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: He took the easy way out and basically had to
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: do no time for the abhorrent crimes that he committed,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: and just the hell that he put these three women through.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: And I hope he's rotting in hell for it. And
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: at this point the house itself was already gone. Six
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: days after the sentencing, a back hoe had torn into
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: the roof of two two seven Seymour Avenue, and the
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: neighbors cheered as it came down, and Michelle was there
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: and she let go of dozens of yellow balloons meant
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: for every child who had been taken and never found,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: in said of prayer. Nobody was there for me.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: When I was missing.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: And I want the people to know that they can
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: have strength, they can have hope, and their child will
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: come back. And Castro had forfeited money to help pay
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: tear down the house as part of the plea deal,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: so the women were offered it and asked that it
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: go to the neighborhood instead, and Michelle said she hoped
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: someone would plant a garden where the house had stood,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: and when it was over there was only an empty lot.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: Let's take a quick pause to talk about my cat. Okay, specifically,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: baby Baby is my main coon cat and she is
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: the love of my life.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: But she has.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly one personality trait, and that is that she inhales
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: her dinner like she's being timed on the regular and
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: then returns it to me on the rug on the regular.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: If you know what I mean.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: I call it the scarf and barf And this has
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: happened for months and months, but then we switched to Smalls.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Smalls is fresh cat food, protein pack recipes made with
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: preservative free, one hundred percent human great ingredients you'd find
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: in your own fridge, and it's delivered right to your door.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: In set switching, her coat is absolutely softer and there's
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: way less shedding, and her poops are a lot less stinky,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: and she's not doing the scarf and barf thing all
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: the time anymore. And that's because more of the ingredients
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: in small'st food are digestive, so less junk comes out.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: The other end. Sorry. And it's not just me though,
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: because Forbes right, Smalls the.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: Best overall cat food, and after switching to Smalls, eighty
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: eight percent of cat owners reported overall health improvements. So
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: stop serving your little carnivore a bowl of processed shortcuts.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: And for a limited time, because you are a crime, conspiracy,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: cults and murder listener, get sixty percent off your first
• 56:22
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• 56:30
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• 56:34
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• 56:36
  Speaker 1: dot com slash CCCM. Thank you so much to Smalls
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel. And let's
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: get back to it. So the three women who walked
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: out of the house each set about rebuilding their life.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Michelle Knight became someone new down to her name. She
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: took the name Lily Rose Lee left Cleveland and on
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: May six, twenty sixteen, three years to the day after
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: her escape, she would get married and under the name
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: she was born with. She wrote two books, Finding Me
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: and Life After Darkness, and she started a Foundation Lily
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: Rays of Hope to help other survivors find their footing
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: with housing, clothing, and a way back into school. And
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Amanda Barry and Gina DeJesus wrote a book together called Hope,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and it became a number one bestseller. And Amanda turned
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: her worst years into something useful, and she has hosted
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: a segment on Cleveland's Fox eight since twenty seventeen called
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Missing with Amanda Barry, putting the faces of the missing
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: on the news the way her own mother once begged
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: the news to show hers. And she lives with her
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: sister Beth and talks to students at school. And now
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: ten years out, she said that against everything, she was
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: happy quote. I never thought I was going to be
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: able to trust and love somebody. It's been a good
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: ten years unquote. And Gina had to learn her own
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: life all over again, and she relearned the Spanish she
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: had lost during her captivity, learned to and let her
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: cousin take her to a prom she never got to experience.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: And then she and her cousin Sylvia Cologne opened the
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Cleveland Family Center for Missing Children and Adults, a place
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: to help the families of the missing and they put
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: its headquarters on Seymour Avenue. Quote. I wanted to bring
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: something positive to the street. If I can be on
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: that street, then anybody else can.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Be on that street too, end quote.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: And both she and Amanda finally received the high school
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: diplomas they had been robbed of honorary degrees from John
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Marshall High School. And Amanda's daughter, Jocelyn, grew up out
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: of the spotlight, and the women meant to keep it
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: that way, and her family has guarded her privacy, letting
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: the public know little more than the milestones. And by
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: the end of twenty twenty two, she had turned sixteen,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: the same age Amanda had been the night Castro took her.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: But long before this rescue, the system had already failed them.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Michelle had been adult when she disappeared, and the police
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: wrote that she had a mint condition and might have
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: wandered off, and most of her family assumed she had
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: left on her own, and she was taken off the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: FBI's missing person's list within about a year, while she
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: was still inside of that house. And part of why
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: Gina's family opened their center was the way the police
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: had treated them in two thousand and four and when
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: officers first assumed their fourteen year old had just run off.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Some of the center's work now as teaching officers how
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: to answer a missing person call with more care, and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: what happened to Michelle was not unusual. Every year, more
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: than half a million people are reported missing in the
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: United States, and the ones who make the news are
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: not chosen at random. One study of thousands of missing
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: person stories found that a young white woman draws roughly
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: ten times the coverage a black man from the same
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: city gets, and nine out of ten missing children of color,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: one advocate said, are written off by police as runaways,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: so no alert goes out and no cameras come, and
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: they stay missing far longer than any someone else. Quote.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: If you go missing and the press de votes a
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: lot of attention to it, the editor or publisher of
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: the Columbia Journalism Review said, you have a better chance
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: of a decent outcome, whereas you don't if they ignore it.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: Unquote.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: And the three women knew that better than anyone. And
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: for years they were the missing, and Michelle was the
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: one almost no one came looking for. And now they
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: spend their days looking for other people's daughters and sons.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: Michelle said the missing were not forgotten in her eyes,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: and the question the case leaves behind is whether they
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: are forgotten in hours, who do we search for and
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: who do we let just disappear. I will make sure
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: to link all of the foundations and outreach programs that
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: I spoke about in the description below if you want
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: to look at them or give back in any way.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: But a lot of you guys requested me looking into
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: this case, so I really appreciate that, and please let
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: me know what other cases you want me to deep
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: dive into. There's no little or too big or just
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: any case. I really really appreciate it. And that is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: it for today, and I will see you in the
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: next one. I'll see you, beautiful face. Please stay safe
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: out there. Bye.