The Lost Girls (12 page)

That weekend, the DeJesus family and their supporters canvassed the West Side yet again, hoping for any scrap of information that might lead to her. And on Sunday night, Gina’s parents attended a prayer rally for Amanda Berry at West 110th Street and Lorain Avenue, where she disappeared. From then on Felix, Nancy and Louwana Miller would become close, working together in a common mission to find their daughters.

Four days later, Ariel Castro assisted in a Cleveland police investigation, after an angry mother boarded his school bus, threatening to kill a nine-year-old student. Castro had then contacted the student’s parents, who called in police.

The mother denied all of Castro’s allegations, saying she was merely protecting her daughter, who was the victim of bullying. The police report said Castro had described how the mother had lashed out at the student on his bus.

“She told him she would ‘Fuck him up’ and ‘Kill him,’ Castro told police, “[if] he ever hit her daughter.”

There is no record of any further criminal action taken against the mother.

The first week of May, the FBI’s Quantico-based Behavioral Analysis Unit arrived in Cleveland to build a psychological profile of who might have taken Gina. The unit, which specializes in missing-children cases, advised that Gina’s
MISSING
posters should be in English and Spanish, and an aerial map of the path Gina took from Wilbur Wright the day she disappeared should be given to the media. A special tip line was also established for any anonymous information that might lead to Gina.

“They are confident that there is someone out there who has information that would resolve this investigation,” FBI Special Agent Hawk told the
Plain Dealer.

Felix DeJesus was becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress. Each night since Gina had gone missing, Felix and several friends went out scouring the streets for her. And when police asked him to stop, he refused.

“I will not give up,” Felix declared. “As long as she’s out there missing, I’m going to be out there with her.”

He was also actively investigating sex offenders living on the West Side. One night he and some friends reportedly broke into the apartment of a known sex offender, just a block away from where Gina disappeared.

Police were called to the apartment on West 104th Street and Lorain, but although no criminal charges resulted, Felix was again asked to stop this line of inquiry.

“I’m not a vigilante,” he told the
Plain Dealer
. “I’m desperate to find my daughter.”

While Felix was out searching, Nancy lit candles on her porch and prayed for her daughter’s safe return. She had also constructed another shrine in their living room, full of Gina’s photographs, toys and tchotchkes.

On June 1, 2004, a $20,000 reward was offered for any information leading to the discovery of Amanda Berry or Gina DeJesus. A couple of days later, a twenty-two-year-old Bowling Green University journalism student named Ariel Castro, Jr., wrote an article for the Cleveland
Plain
Press
community newspaper.

Headlined
GINA DEJESUS’ DISAPPEARANCE HAS CHANGED THE NEIGHBORHOOD,
the article, bearing the byline “Ariel Castro,” focused on how radically his old Cleveland neighborhood had changed since Gina had disappeared. Castro interviewed Gina’s mother, Nancy Ruiz, as well as several parents and a community organizer.

“Since April 2, 2004,” his article began, “the day 14-year-old Gina DeJesus was last seen on her way home from Wilbur Wright Middle School, neighborhood residents have been taken by an overwhelming need for caution.”

Castro noted that everybody in the neighborhood felt deeply connected to the DeJesus family, and had come together for a single cause.

“You can tell the difference,” Nancy Ruiz was quoted as saying. “People are watching out for each other’s kids. It’s a shame that a tragedy had to happen for me to really know my neighbors.”

Ariel, Jr., also interviewed parents waiting for their children to be let out of Wilbur Wright Middle School, where Gina had left that fateful day with his sister Arlene.

“I really believe there needs to be more security,” Vaneetha Smith told Castro, as she waited for her niece. “We have too many kidnappings and they should crack down on all the sex offenders in the area.”

Castro noted how the Ohio Electronic Sex Offender Registration and Notification database listed 133 sex offenders living or working near Gina’s home.

“I have been notified of only one sex offender,” Ruiz told him, “and he lives only about 1,000 feet away from here.”

Around this time, Ariel Castro brought Gina into the pink bedroom with Michelle. Several days earlier he had removed the bucket Michelle had been using as a toilet, replacing it with a larger white plastic portable one.

He then ordered Gina onto the dirty queen-size mattress with Michelle, padlocking a long rusty chain around Michelle’s neck, and attaching the other end to Gina’s ankle. When Gina asked how they were supposed to use the toilet if her leg was chained to Michelle’s neck, Castro unlocked the chains and shackled their feet together instead. Then he threw some T-shirts and sweatpants on the bed for Michelle, who was still naked, leaving the girls on the bed chained together.

At the beginning of June, Ariel Castro started buying his daughters Emily and Arlene expensive presents for no apparent reason. He now visited them every day, paying them more attention than he had ever done before. Although suspicious, Nilda allowed him more access to their daughters, hoping he might have changed for the better.

“He was bringing them a lot of stuff,” she said later. “Putting too much attention on them.”

Over the next few weeks, he bought them expensive cell phones, iPods and perms, even promising to buy them cars when they turned eighteen.

“He began having a lot of contact with Arlene,” said Nilda. “He would pick her up from school or from my home, or contact her by telephone quite often. He purchased Arlene a lot of clothing. Some of the clothing is inappropriate for her age and I will not let her wear it.”

When he gave each of the girls a thousand dollars from his father’s will, Nilda insisted on taking the money on their behalf, so they wouldn’t waste it.

He also began probing into the most intimate parts of his daughters’ lives, quizzing them about their periods, to the embarrassment of their mother.

“Are you sure you started your period,” he asked each of his daughters, “or did somebody stick their finger up your vagina?”

As Ariel Castro insinuated himself into his daughters’ daily lives, he began turning them against their stepfather. In the seven years since Nilda had become engaged to Fernando Colon, he had become the disciplinarian of the family. And his strictly enforced rules against smoking, hanging out in bad company and maintaining curfew did not endear him to Emily and Arlene.

“I was [strict] with them,” said Colon, “because I didn’t want them to get into drugs or become pregnant.”

In June 2004, after a fight with her stepfather, sixteen-year-old Emily walked out of the house, moving in with Colon’s sister, Sonia Lebron. Her mother was powerless to stop her.

“She would push me around,” said Nilda, “and do what she wants to do. She used to stay up all hours of the morning [and party].”

Then, on July 4, Arlene was grounded for several weeks for breaking her curfew. She was furious, complaining that her stepfather had no right to order her around.

“[Fernando] wanted the rules of the house followed,” explained Nilda. “[Emily and Arlene] didn’t like the rules. They told me, ‘He’s not my dad, so why should he ground me [and] tell me what to do.’”

Now being treated for depression, Arlene Castro was regularly playing truant from Wilbur Wright Middle School.

“Sister Caroline called me from the school,” said Nilda, “and told [me] that she wanted to expel Arlene because she’s constantly lying. She’s always saying she has a baby at home and that’s why she couldn’t attend school. Other children told me [Arlene] was pregnant.”

In late July, Ariel Castro told Nilda he still loved her, asking her to dump Fernando Colon and move back in with him.

“He’ll put his arm around me,” said Nilda, “or he’ll come in the house to try and kiss me. Because I’m his property. He says it all the time.”

But Nilda told him she would never return to 2207 Seymour Avenue because of “his abusive nature.”

“I don’t love him,” she would later say. “I don’t want him. I’m scared of him.”

That summer, as Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus lay chained together in the pink room, they bonded into a sisterhood. They told each other their life stories and discussed their most intimate secrets. They regularly endured terrible indignities together, inflicted by Castro, including sharing the same filthy plastic portable toilet, which he rarely emptied.

When he was out working, they watched the ancient TV he had given them, and it was their only window to the outside world. Michelle warned Gina never to let “the Dude” catch them watching any programs with African Americans in them, or they’d be punished.

“We liked
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
and
Friends
,” Michelle later told
People
magazine. “At least we were looking at the same things the rest of the world was looking at, even if we were locked up in a prison.”

He also gave all three of his captives spiral notebooks, so they could keep journals and draw pictures. He would sometimes sneak a peek in them to see what they were saying about him, and be hurt if they ever criticized him.

“I wrote every day,” said Michelle. “Poems. Songs. Dreams of how I wished everything could be different.”

Michelle even made a list of what she needed for an imaginary camping trip, including: underwear, sleeveless T-shirt, long sleeves for when it’s cold, shorts, long johns, socks, compass, hiking boots, peanuts, chocolate-chip cookies and pegs.

The most prolific writer was Amanda Berry, who used her journals to mark the passage of time, carefully chronicling her everyday life as a prisoner, as well as the horrible sexual abuse she suffered.

Amanda kept three distinct journals: the “Blue Journal,” detailing her molestation by Ariel Castro; the “Miss Shady Hand Crafted Items,” containing her personal notes and drawings; and a black journal titled “Love,” in which she described herself as a “prisoner of war.”

She also wrote daily letters to her mother about her ordeal, and her hopes for them to be reunited one day.

“The journals have extreme detail,” said attorney Craig Weintraub, who would later read them. “And parts of them are very graphic about what occurred inside the house. The journals describe their relationships [with each other and Castro], the food, the clothing, the bathroom, the shower, the television and the chains and sex.”

Most nights, Ariel Castro would come into the pink bedroom and rape Michelle or Gina, as they gripped the other’s hand for comfort. He would also beat them in front of each other, although Michelle would always be hit harder.

“Hers were more like a smack,” said Michelle. “Mine was more like a fist. There were times that he would hit her too … and I would jump in front of her and take the hit.”

On Wednesday, July 15, Ariel Castro brought Emily and Arlene into the Cleveland Police Department’s First District Station, where they accused Fernando Colon of sexually molesting them. But as Castro no longer had custody of his daughters, Nilda was called in to sign a release form.

“The first I knew of any criminal allegations against Fernando,” she said, “was the day I was asked to sign a release form so that my daughters could talk to the detectives.”

When Nilda arrived at the police station, she was greeted outside by Ariel Castro.

“He was laughing and excited,” Nilda later testified. “He told me to go along with the complaints against Fernando, and he would buy me a new car. I told him I don’t need anything from [you].”

Then Castro suggested that after Emily and Arlene talked to the police, they all go out to dinner.

“Castro believes that we will be together again,” she said. “He told me that [Fernando] would know what it’s like to be on the other side of the badge.”

Six days later, Ariel Castro drove his daughters to the Justice Center, where they repeated their allegations to Detective Arthur King. With their father looking on encouragingly, they told the detective how their stepfather had been touching them for years.

“I was about eight or nine years old,” Emily said in her statement, “and I woke up to him touching me under my clothes. We slept upstairs and they had a bedroom downstairs. And every night around twelve or one he would go into our room and just feel on me under my clothes.”

Arlene told the detective how she had been molested by Fernando too.

“The first time … I was seven or eight,” Arlene said in her statement. “Me and my sister was sleeping in the living room. He came downstairs and … started touching on me and started feeling on me. And I don’t remember him penetrating me. I woke up and he said, ‘If you ever tell anybody this I would hurt you.’ He went back upstairs and I went back to sleep.”

Arlene said her stepfather next touched her when she was asleep on the couch.

“He started feeling on my chest,” she said. “I got up and went to my room and locked the door.”

The third incident she alleged happened when she was sleeping on the couch, and he came in to clean the living room.

“He started touching on my butt,” she told the detective. “Then I looked up and went to my room.”

A few hours later, police arrested Fernando Colon on suspicion of kidnapping and rape as he protested his innocence. When he was later released on bail, he moved out of his house into a nearby hotel, until a grand jury could meet to decide whether the case would go to trial.

Two weeks later, Emily Castro was hospitalized for three days, after taking a drug overdose at her aunt Sonia’s house. After she was admitted to Lutheran Hospital, Nilda telephoned Ariel Castro to let him know. He told her he did not care. But the next morning, he arrived at the hospital with breakfast for Emily.