The Lost Girls (5 page)

“It was love at first sight,” recalled Lillian. “He was older than me and I liked that. He was very handsome and from the beginning he treated me so sweet.”

After their blind date, Castro invited her to come hear him play on Saturday at Belinda’s, and she eagerly accepted. That night he swept her off her feet and romance blossomed.

“We were like a normal couple,” she said. “I used to stay over at his house some weekends, or I would cook at my home. He wasn’t the kind of person to go to restaurants.”

They soon became intimate and Lillian remembers Ariel Castro being a good and considerate lover.

“He was a normal man,” she explained. “Nothing outrageous.”

Whenever Lillian stayed over at 2207 Seymour Avenue, she would try to clean it up, as it was so filthy. Finally, she suggested they sleep at her place instead.

“I cleaned the kitchen, the living room and the dining room,” she said. “The bath and the bedroom were filthy, so I told him I’d rather be in my place and you come over.”

She soon got to know Ariel Castro’s three daughters, who visited periodically, and saw how strict he was with them regarding clothes.

“He was jealous that they used to wear hot pants,” Lillian recalled, “because of the boys or whatever.”

One time over at his house, Lillian asked why there was a padlock on the basement door. Castro replied that he kept all his money down there, and didn’t want his kids to steal it.

“So it was a good excuse, because they were really young,” said Lillian, who later posed for photographs with Castro by the padlocked basement door.

Soon after they met, Lillian mentioned that a friend had some medical marijuana, and she was going to try it.

“He got upset,” she remembered, “because I hadn’t told him that I wanted to try some.”

Then Castro said he had something to show her in the basement.

“So he unlocked the padlock,” she said, “and we went into the basement. He had a real bag of marijuana, but it was all dried up. So I said, ‘Okay, big deal. I’m not interested no more.’ So we went back upstairs.”

Soon afterward, Ariel Castro proposed marriage to Lillian.

“He asked me, ‘Well, would you like to marry me?’” she remembered. “And he did make a fuss about it. When I told him I don’t believe in marriage, he asked me to move in with him. I told him no. That it was all right to carry on as we were.”

Several days later, Castro took Lillian to a jewelry store in downtown Cleveland, telling her to pick out a ring.

“I wanted a red ruby,” she said, “because it was my birthstone. He said, ‘Well, I’m going to buy it for you.’”

After they left the store they walked over the Detroit-Superior Bridge, and when they reached the middle he stopped. Then he gave her a kiss and slipped the ring onto her ring finger.

“So he put it on and I never took it off,” said Lillian, “I really thought that we were going to get married one day.”

That night, he took Lillian to a salsa club, where he was playing bass. Suddenly, in the middle of the show, he walked to the front of the stage, ordering the musicians to stop playing. Then he took the microphone and addressed the audience.

“Today,” he told them, “I gave my girlfriend Lillian a ring.”

“So everyone clapped,” said Lillian. “And he told the group that he wanted to sing ‘La Bamba’ for me. It was so romantic and I was charmed. It was such a special [night] and he really did show me love.”

That Thanksgiving, Lillian introduced Ariel Castro to her family, who were much impressed. After the meal, he took out his guitar and played some traditional Puerto Rican songs, as Lillian’s father, Angel Roldan, sang along. From then on he would be invited to every Roldan family birthday and holiday celebration.

“They treated him like my husband,” said Lillian. “My father really got on well with him.”

Castro also bonded with Angel Roldan over their love of motorbikes, and they often went out riding together.

“Ariel would say, ‘Have fun on the motorcycle, let’s go,’” said Lillian’s sister Mildred. “Then he would take [Dad] on a ride. Ariel was one of the family. Well, [I thought] he was the perfect man for her. I saw the love they showed.”

Lillian Rodriguez also approved of her son’s new girlfriend, who shared a name with her, and often had them over to her house for dinner.

“His mother was really nice and made cookouts for us,” said Lillian. “She told Ariel that I was a good woman, and why didn’t we get married.”

Lillian was best friends with Castro’s neighbor, Jovita Marti, as they both worked for the same manufacturing company. Sometimes at lunchtime, Castro would park his school bus near their office and bring Lillian lunch.

“They were girlfriend and boyfriend for four years,” said Jovita. “She really loved him and I think he [loved her] too.”

On Friday and Saturday nights, Lillian helped Castro prepare for his shows, and was his biggest fan. He would play clubs and venues all over Cleveland, and once Lillian even saw him perform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Then on Sunday mornings he would take her to church.

“I thought they were the perfect couple,” said Jovita. “We were best friends, so we talked about him all the time and how much they really loved each other. She would come to work on Monday morning … happy, because they had a great weekend together.”

One day, when Lillian announced she wanted a tattoo of her favorite flower on her leg, Castro said he would get a matching one as a token of his love. But at the tattooist’s, he insisted that she get a far bigger one than she had intended.

“I wanted a small tattoo,” she explained. “And he said, ‘No, I want that bigger.’ So I did make it bigger and then he got one too. That was the only thing that I didn’t like about him during our relationship.”

Lillian often saw Nilda Figueroa, when she went over with Castro to pick up his daughters. And she had heard the rumors of how he had beaten Nilda when they were together.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Lillian said, “because I never saw that side of Ariel. I mean, he was such a mellow person, so I thought, she’s probably [making it up].”

Meanwhile, a plan had slowly been forming in Ariel Castro’s head. He had decided to kidnap a young girl and imprison her as his sex slave, to satisfy his lustful cravings. Since Nilda and his children had left, he had become obsessed with sadomasochistic sex and humiliation. His sexual fantasies had become darker and darker and his basement was now full of hard-core S-and-M sex videos.

Lillian Roldan knew nothing of this, later telling police their sex life was completely normal and he was always respectful of her. Ariel Castro liked that she shared the same first name as his mother, and put her on a pedestal.

Their relationship was the polar opposite of his with Nilda, where he had beaten and humiliated her, treating her like an animal. He had loved controlling and imprisoning Nilda, using her for sex whenever he felt like it. But after she escaped his clutches, he became obsessed with finding a replacement. And by the summer of 2002, he was ready.

From the beginning, Michelle Knight had had the odds stacked against her. She was born on April 23, 1981, to Barbara Knight. Her father has never been named. According to Michelle’s autobiography,
Finding Me,
her parents had identical twin sons, Eddie and Freddie two years later.

Michelle’s first memories are of living in a car with her mother and two little brothers, fighting for space. As a small child she was fascinated by the fire trucks she saw driving to emergencies, and wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up.

Michelle’s family was eventually housed by Cleveland Social Services in a bad part of town, with drug dealers and prostitutes on their street. Then they lived in a series of run-down houses, as Barbara Knight supported the family on welfare.

“[My mom] made sure I was dumber than a doormat,” said Michelle in November 2013, “just to get the SSI money.”

When she was five years old, Michelle was sexually molested by a family friend, who threatened to hurt her if she ever told anybody. The molestation continued almost daily throughout her childhood, and she never told a soul.

Her mother enrolled her at the Mary Bethune School, but Michelle rarely went to classes and was classified as slow. She struggled to keep up with the other children, who made fun of her, calling her an “ugly retard” or “Dopey.”

“By the time I was twelve and going on thirteen,” she said, “I had barely made it through the fifth grade! I was always the oldest kid in the class and it stunk.”

But Michelle, who wore glasses, loved drawing and had a rare gift for it. She began illustrating her class books with butterflies, wolves and the big mansions that she hoped to live in one day.

In November 1994, at the age of thirteen, Michelle ran away from home to escape the sexual molestation. She slept rough on a park bench in downtown Cleveland, eventually finding a highway underpass, where she could sleep in a garbage can at night to keep warm.

Over the next few months, the tiny dark-haired girl survived on church handouts before being recruited by a local drug gang. They set her up in an apartment, paying her $300 a week as a drug runner. That lasted for a couple of weeks, before the gang leader was busted, leaving Michelle homeless again.

Soon afterward she was spotted on the street by a family friend, who called her father, who drove straight over.

“My father jumped out and dragged me toward the car,” she said. “He shoved me into the backseat and hit me.”

Then he drove Michelle home to her mother, who insisted she go back to school.

At seventeen Michelle became pregnant. She described the father as a handsome boy called Erik, with whom she had a brief affair. But it was later reported that the baby was the result of a gang rape by three boys, in a storeroom at her school. Although her mother wanted her to have an abortion, Michelle insisted on having the baby.

When she was five months pregnant her father left, and Barbara Knight found a new boyfriend, who was unstable.

On October 24, 1999, eighteen-year-old Michelle Knight gave birth to a baby boy she named Joey. She was now living with her mother on West Sixtieth Street, receiving social security checks to support her new son. Michelle was a devoted mother, and dreamed of finding a good job, earning enough money to move out and support her “Huggy Bear.” But as she was just four feet seven inches tall and had never finished high school, her options were limited.

Soon after Joey was born, Barbara Knight invited her boyfriend to move into the house. He reportedly had a history of abuse and violence, and drank heavily. One afternoon in June 2002, Michelle came home and walked into a bedroom to find him lying on the bed with two-and-a-half-year-old Joey nearby. According to Michelle, her mother was supposed to be looking after Joey, but had gone out.

Then, the boyfriend began lunging at Michelle and making improper suggestions. Joey was so scared he began to wet himself, and the man drunkenly grabbed the little boy’s leg, fracturing his knee.

“My mother’s boyfriend [was] high and drunk,” Michelle later told Dr. Phil, “and he decided to take out his frustrations on my son. He twisted my son’s leg and I hear it crack. My son didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. He just looked at me and said, ‘Mommy, help me.’”

Michelle then took her injured son to the nearest ER. When she was asked how Joey broke his knee, she said he had fallen in the park, as she was too scared to tell them the truth and risk having her son taken away.

While doctors were treating Joey, the boyfriend’s sister called the hospital and told them what had really happened. Police were called and the boyfriend readily admitted it, later pleading guilty to child endangerment and felonious assault.

Joey was then placed in foster care until social workers could investigate the Knight home to see if it was a safe place to bring up a child.

“Then they tried to say that I never protected him,” said Michelle. “I did all I could do.”

In late June, Michelle Knight moved out of her mother’s house, renting a bedroom at her cousin Lisa’s house for $300 a month. She now devoted herself to getting Joey back, as well as finding a job to support him.

After Joey was taken away, Michelle, now twenty-one, fell into a deep depression. Lisa introduced her to friends around the neighborhood, so she’d have a social life. Soon she met Ariel Castro’s fourteen-year-old daughter Emily Castro, who lived nearby.

“I got to know Emily,” recalled Michelle
.
“She told me that her parents weren’t together, but that she still saw her father on Seymour.”

Over July, Michelle and Emily became friends. Although she was seven years older than Emily, Michelle was used to being with younger children, as she had always been a few grades behind at school.

Soon after they met, Emily showed Michelle a photograph of her father, whom she called “AC,” on her cell phone. She said he drove a school bus.

Emily would often call “AC” while she was with Michelle, making plans to go out. One time she put him on speakerphone, so Michelle could hear his “silly hillbilly” accent, which he adopted for his daughter.

“Emily never actually introduced me,” said Michelle, “yet I felt like I kind of knew him. He seemed like a pretty nice guy.”

On Thursday, August 22, Michelle Knight had a 2:30
P.M.
appointment with Cleveland Social Services about her son, Joey. The office was in a part of downtown Cleveland that Michelle did not know, so her caseworker had offered to drive her there. But Michelle turned it down, as a relative had promised to take her.

At 11:00
A.M.,
the relative cancelled, so Michelle decided to walk there, as she did not have taxi fare. It was a sweltering hot day, and after putting on a white T-shirt, cut-off jean shorts and some sandals, Michelle set out toward downtown.

She soon got lost and with the appointment time fast approaching, Michelle went into a Family Dollar store on West 106th Street and Lorain Avenue, to call the social services’ office for directions.