The Lost Girls (36 page)

“Does he describe himself,” asked Martin, “through his own choice of words as, ‘I am a sexual predator’?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Does he describe his victimization of the women in this case?”

“Yes.”

In his cross-examination, Craig Weintraub asked if his client’s letter had expressed remorse.

“He wrote something to the effect that he was sorry for his conduct,” said Burke.

“Hopefully you will agree with me too,” continued Weintraub, “that … he was unsure of, but certainly believed and expressed in his letter, that he was sick and mentally ill. And other than that he had no explanation for why he could possibly do something like this?”

“Yes,” replied Burke, as Ariel Castro looked on dispassionately.

Then Weintraub asked if he agreed it had been a “suicide letter,” although he had never actually tried to kill himself?

“I don’t know that I would concur that it was written as a suicide note,” replied Special Agent Burke. “It did not give me that immediate impression.”

“Thank you,” said Weintraub. “Nothing further.”

The State’s next witness was Deputy David Jacobs of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office, who had interrogated Ariel Castro. He testified that the defendant answered every question posed to him succinctly, even if they were incriminating. During the ten hours of questioning, spread over two days, Castro freely admitted taking the three women and imprisoning them.

“He used the word ‘abduct,’” said Jacobs. “He referenced himself in the interview as a ‘sexual predator.’ I asked him at that point, ‘What do you consider a sexual predator is?’ And he said, ‘Somebody that continually repeats offenses.’”

“Did he tell you why he was abducting young women off the streets of Cleveland?’ asked Martin.

“We got into why he did it,” replied Jacobs, “and his response was, ‘to purely satisfy [my] sexual needs … and I know what I did was wrong.’”

The deputy also described how Castro had admitted to using his gun to control the girls.

“And are you aware that he used the gun … to play Russian roulette?” asked the assistant prosecutor.

“I’d asked him if this incident actually took place,” said Jacobs. “His response was that he didn’t recall. But if the girls said it, then it probably happened.”

“And that he played a trust game,” continued Martin. “He handed an empty revolver to a young woman and said, ‘Here, put it to my head. Pull the trigger. If it’s God’s will that I die, I die. I’ll say my prayers.’ Did he play that game?”

“Yes, he did,” said Jacobs.

Then Jaye Schlachet stood up to cross-examine Jacobs.

“Just one question,” he said. “You went to see him and he completely cooperated with you, didn’t he?”

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” replied Jacobs. “I felt that some of the elements of the crime were minimized, but he was very cooperative through the interview.”

“He talked himself right to the convictions, didn’t he?” said the defender. “And he wasn’t hesitant at all to tell you exactly what happened from his perspective. Right?”

“No, he wasn’t,” said Jacobs.

The next witness was forensic psychiatrist Dr. Gregory Saathoff, who consults with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. Dr. Saathoff said he had reviewed the video transcripts of all the victims’ interviews, as well as interviewing Lillian Roldan.

Assistant Prosecutor Blaise Thomas asked why he had written in his report, “the scope and magnitude of Ariel Castro’s crime is unprecedented.”

“In terms of unrelated victims, the length of captivity and the location,” said Dr. Saathoff, “as well as the fact that most cases of abduction are impulsive in nature and the victim is kept for a matter of minutes or hours. In this case, rather than a short abduction … there appeared to be a strategy here that extended over a period of many years. And this is in fact quite unusual and in fact unprecedented, according to the FBI’s National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime.”

“So he’s in a class of one by himself?” asked Thomas.

“Well, certainly there are cases where there have been longer-term abductions in length,” said the doctor, “but the specific nature of this—to abduct and keep this number of unrelated victims for this length of time within a neighborhood setting is completely unprecedented.”

Then Thomas asked why he had described Castro “as a hoarder of humans.”

Dr. Saathoff explained there was a definite pattern to his choice of victims.

“It was always on the same street,” he said. “These victims were similar in terms of their stature, their age. They were female and they were also very trusting. And his use of ruses in order to get them into his vehicle and … into his house.

“Over the years he exposed them to significant degradation and violence. He enforced control over the most intimately private functions of their lives, which included food, bathing and toileting. So it was really a very complete and comprehensive captivity.”

Thomas then asked about Ariel Castro’s ongoing duplicity with family, neighbors, friends and coworkers, to maintain his control over the situation.

“This is really the most significant part of the case,” explained Dr. Saathoff, “that someone would be able to month after month, year after year devise ways to conceal the situation from family, friends, neighbors. For a time he maintained a relationship with a girlfriend, who was completely unaware that he had these women in the house.”

Dr. Saathoff said he had read Ariel Castro’s April 2004 letter and found two significant quotes in it.

“He stated, ‘I live a normal life. I function around others like a normal person,’” said Dr. Saathoff. “In fact he appeared to have done that and was able to live this life around family and friends without them suspecting.

“[I] was also struck with … his statement, ‘I had no idea Gina was so young. She looks a lot older.’ But we certainly know that he was aware that Gina was a classmate of his daughter. He knew his daughter’s age, and therefore to make that statement … caused some skepticism … as to whether or not he was actually being truthful in writing the document and making the statements that he made.”

In cross-examination, Jaye Schlachet pointed out that Castro had also written that he believed he suffered from mental illness.

“Is that right?” asked the defense attorney.

“That’s what the letter states,” replied Dr. Saathoff.

“He talked about mental illness back in ’04 in a letter he wrote. Didn’t he?”

“He wrote, ‘I’m a sexual predator who needs help but I don’t want to get it,’” said Dr. Saathoff.

“Okay, and he talked about being sexually abused himself when he was a child?”

“Yes.”

“And he talked about an addiction to masturbation and pornography and things like that. Didn’t he?”

“Correct.”

“Thank you,” said Schlachet.

“Does any of that excuse his conduct in this case?” asked Blaise Thomas angrily.

“No,” replied Dr. Saathoff.

At 11:28
A.M.
, the prosecution called its final witness, Dr. Frank Ochberg, who advises the FBI and the Secret Service on Stockholm syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder. He had been hired by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office to consult on the case, and had reviewed the extensive FBI database. Although he had not interviewed the victims, he had read their journals and seen photographs and videos that had been taken during their captivity. He had also reviewed Ariel Castro’s interrogation, and had a face-to-face interview with one of his daughters.

“I did what I felt was necessary,” said the Michigan-based forensic psychiatrist, “to develop a sense of what these survivors went through and what they faced in the future.”

“What were your findings?” asked Assistant Prosecutor Anna Faraglia. “How were these women hurt?”

“These women were hurt in many ways,” he replied, “and I boiled it down to three. First is repeated episodes that were terrifying. And they were the kind of trauma that we meant when we define the post-traumatic stress disorder. The kind of trauma that you don’t escape for years and sometimes a lifetime, after the images, smells, touches. They come back to you when you’re asleep, when you’re awake, when you’re in the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness.”

Dr. Ochberg explained that Ariel Castro had actually changed the hard-wiring in their brains.

“Sometimes you feel you’re going crazy,” he told the judge, “because your mind isn’t working the way it should. This is not normal memory. This is the brain in a different type of circuitry. It isn’t simply an extreme of anxiety. They had that. That was a terror-induced state of mind.”

The white-bearded psychiatrist said Castro inflicted a whole new dimension of psychological torture, by using “degradation, defilement and dehumanization.”

“Being systematically and relentlessly deprived of your sense of self, your sense of dignity, your connection to others. And that has to do with not having access to sanitary facilities, the way you’re fed, the way you’re chained—all of that for a long, long time.”

He said Castro had also robbed his victims of their family, home and school during those crucial ten years of their transitioning into womanhood.

“And that kind of deprivation,” he explained, “isn’t the same as being shot and degraded. It plays with your ability to know who to trust. This is the stage in which a human being is developing the capacity for real intimacy. This was not real intimacy. This was a perversion of intimacy.”

Dr. Ochberg noted how Castro would portray his daughter with Amanda Berry as a love child, despite repeatedly forcing Michelle Knight to miscarry her babies.

“Whether he believed it in his own mind or whether he feigned believing it,” said the doctor, “he tried to produce the belief that this daughter was a love child, not the product of forced sex in captivity. And when that happens, there is something that goes on in our minds and for a period of time we lack a real appreciation of what is real and what isn’t. We become bonded to the person who aggresses against us. And that’s the Stockholm syndrome.”

“Doctor, how did these women cope?” asked Faraglia, “for 13,226 days before their escape?”

“First of all,” he said, “among them are marvelous, compelling examples of resilience, of imagination, of humanity. I would start with Michelle. What an extraordinary human being. She served as doctor, nurse pediatrician, midwife. She did the delivery … and she did it under primitive circumstances. And when the baby wasn’t breathing, she breathed into that baby. She brought life to that child.”

Dr. Ochberg said he had also been moved by Amanda, who had raised Jocelyn under the most difficult circumstances.

“Amanda managed … to teach that child values and faith and school her,” he said. “And there were times when there was interaction among them, and by and large that interaction showed the milk of human kindness, love, faith, optimism. So they coped and part of it was the Stockholm syndrome, but part of it are the gifts and personality and character that they had.”

Finally, the assistant prosecutor asked about their prognosis for the future.

“I want to be on the side of optimism and encouragement and hope for them,” he said. “But the damage that was done does not go away. They have life sentences. This was not trivial. I think they will, with the love and support of this whole community, and what they bring to the table, have a good chance to have a good life. But that doesn’t mean that they will ever be free of the damage that was done.”

“And would you agree with me, Doctor,” said Faraglia, “that their injuries are that of a permanent nature?”

“Yes,” he replied.

Then Judge Russo called a ten-minute recess to prepare for the victim-impact statements.

At 11:49
A.M.
, Michelle Knight walked into the courtroom, escorted by a victim’s advocate. Wearing a simple gray floral dress, Ariel Castro’s first victim looked confident and assured as she hugged one of her attorneys, and took her place in the first row of the public gallery.

A few seconds later, a jaunty-looking Ariel Castro was brought back into court and smirked at his former captive, before sitting down at the defense table. He appeared animated and excited, and his attorneys tried to calm him down, as he would soon be addressing the court.

At 12:05, Assistant Prosecutor Anna Faraglia introduced Gina DeJesus’s cousin Sylvia Colon, who would be delivering a statement on her behalf. Standing in front of Judge Russo, with the DeJesus family attorney Henry Hilow, Sylvia said that today closed a chapter in her family’s lives.

“Today is the last day we want to think or talk about this,” she said. “These events will not own a place in our thoughts or our hearts.”

Sylvia told the judge that Gina was doing well.

“She laughs. She swims. She dances,” said Sylvia. “And more importantly she loves and she’s loved. She will finish school, go to college, fall in love. And if she chooses, she will get married and have children.”

She said Gina no longer lives as a victim but as a survivor, and appealed to the media to give her family the privacy it needed to heal.

Then, she turned to the defendant, fixed him in the eye, and said: “To Ariel Castro
. Que dios se apiade de su alma!
” (“God have mercy on your soul!”)

Beth Serrano then addressed Judge Russo, reading from a prepared statement.

“I am Amanda Berry’s sister,” she began. “The impact of these crimes on our family is something that we do not want to discuss with people we don’t know.”

Beth said it was impossible to put into words what she and her family had been through over the last ten years.

“For me, I lost a sister for all those years and I thought it was forever,” she sobbed. “And you lost my mother forever. She died not knowing. My mother and sister, the two most loving people in the world.”

Beth said although Amanda was not in court, she’s “strong, beautiful and silent” and improving every day. Her biggest fear, though, was the way Jocelyn would discover the truth.

“Amanda’s concern,” she said, “is that her daughter will hear about things, or read about things said by the wrong people, the wrong way at the wrong time. Before Amanda thinks the time is right to tell her daughter.”