The Lost Girls (7 page)

Castro then picked up the tiny fetus and placed it in Michelle’s hands, asking if she wished it were alive and saying that she had caused its death.

As the weeks stretched into months, Michelle began to get some sense of time. On Sunday mornings she could hear the bells of nearby Immanuel Lutheran Church ringing. And one evening a drunken Castro came into the basement wearing flashy black clothes and a panama hat. He began boasting about his Latin band, and what a great bass guitarist he was. Soon afterward he warned Michelle, who was still chained up and wearing a motorcycle helmet, not to make a sound, as his band was coming over later to practice.

That night she heard voices downstairs speaking Spanish, and loud live music. This started happening regularly and Michelle deduced that the rehearsals were being held on Fridays or Saturdays.

Cleveland musician Rickie Sanchez regularly rehearsed with Castro, drinking beer and eating dinner afterward.

“I used to go there and cook,” Sanchez recalled, “and being from Puerto Rico we like rice and beans.”

One night, he heard some strange
boom-boom
noises coming through the walls, and asked Castro where they were coming from.

“And he said he had some dogs on the second floor,” recalled Sanchez. “Then he took out the radio and cranked it all the way up. It was hard for you to hear him unless you were screaming, because of the music. It was always loud.”

That winter, Michelle Knight almost froze to death. There was no heating in the house and it was a brutally cold winter. Castro refused to give her any blankets or clothes to keep warm.

“It was always very cold,” said Michelle. “He didn’t have heat and I only had one sheet. [It was] so cold that my lips would turn blue and you could see my breath.”

Castro told Michelle that he would not give her blankets or clothes to wear until she had proved he could trust her. She was also filthy, as Castro had not allowed her to wash or use the shower since he had taken her, and he seldom emptied her toilet bucket.

If she disobeyed him in any way, he would stop feeding her. He would also show her his loaded .357 Magnum caliber revolver—the exact same firearm Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character talks about in the 1973 movie
Magnum Force
—threatening to shoot her dead if she ever tried to escape.

At Christmas, Castro gave her a puppy to keep her company. She named it Lobo and lavished it with love. But when Lobo came to Michelle’s defense during one of his beatings and bit Castro, he picked it up and broke its neck right in front of Michelle. Then he carried Lobo’s body out to the backyard and disposed of it.

On December 24, Ariel Castro celebrated the holidays with Lillian Roldan at her father’s house. After dinner, he got out his guitar and began playing to entertain the family.

“He was playing and singing Christmas songs with my father,” said Lillian. “And I said, ‘Do you know what, it’s the twenty-fourth and it hasn’t snowed, so for me it’s not Christmas. I need a white Christmas.”

So Castro suddenly started strumming Bing Crosby’s
White Christmas.

“Suddenly, I looked out the window,” said Lillian, “and it was snowing. I said, ‘Oh my God, Ariel, you made it snow.’ It was the best Christmas gift ever.”

On Christmas Day, Ariel Castro raped Michelle Knight, and then started tormenting her because Joey was not there to celebrate with her.

“He rubbed it in my face that I wasn’t with my son,” recalled Michelle. “That I’m spending my holidays with somebody else. And he’d say, ‘He’s better off without you.’”

In early January, Michelle tried to escape. Ariel Castro had finally brought her downstairs to the bathroom for a shower, and while his back was turned she found a needle and hid it. After the shower, he brought her back to the bedroom and chained her up before leaving for work.

“I picked the lock,” said Michelle. “But I didn’t know he was in the backyard.”

After getting free, Michelle was halfway out the window when she heard Castro running up the stairs.

“I’m panicking,” she said. “I run back to the bed.”

She then threw the chains back on, trying to pretend nothing was out of place. But Castro was suspicious and after searching the room, he found the needle under the pillow.

“What are you doing with this?” he demanded to know.

Michelle said she had used it to self-mutilate her arms, and Castro took the needle away, saying he disapproved of the practice.

“He figured it out,” said Michelle. “The chain wasn’t put on right … that’s the last time that I had a chance to get out.”

As punishment, he dragged her back to the basement and chained her to the pole. Then he told her that she was not the “only one” who had been down here, showing her a little shrine in a corner of the basement. Inside was a sign with the words
REST IN PEACE,
along with a girl’s name that had been scribbled out.

“I couldn’t really see,” said Michelle, “because I didn’t have glasses.”

A few weeks later, he brought her back upstairs and gave her a battered old television to watch, so she would have something to occupy her time. She was still tethered to the wall on a three-foot chain, but at least she could pass the time watching her favorite shows.

In April 2003, Michelle Knight became pregnant again and dreaded what Ariel Castro would do when he found out. This time, he kicked her in the stomach so hard that she fell backward and hit a door. Ten days later she miscarried.

When Castro wasn’t abusing Michelle, he would often talk to her. He constantly told her how he himself was a victim who had been abused as a child. He also spoke of his obsession with pornography and his hatred of African Americans. Once he confided that he regretted not getting to JonBen
é
t Ramsey first, and that he would have loved to have kidnapped Elizabeth Smart.

He also told Michelle that he was now actively looking for another girl to kidnap, and this time he wanted a blonde.

“He had an obsession with blondes,” said Michelle. “He would always say, ‘I’ve seen this girl and I’m just sad I didn’t get her in my car.’ He would let me know what girl he was trying to abduct and where she worked.”

Amanda Marie Berry grew up on West 111th Street, less than three miles north of Seymour Avenue. She was born on April 22, 1986, to Johnny Berry and Louwana Miller, who already had a daughter Beth, who had been born two years earlier.

Her father reportedly had a history of violence, serving jail time for sexual battery and aggravated assault. When Amanda was four years old, her parents split up and Johnny moved to Elizabethton, Tennessee, where he had family. Louwana remained in Cleveland, to raise her two daughters.

Every summer, Amanda visited her father and extended family in Tennessee, and was especially close to her grandmother, Fern Gentry.

“Commando Amando,” as her father nicknamed her, was a “real firecracker” and loved the rural countryside, where she played with her cousins in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“We would play hide-and-seek [and] take showers in the creek,” said her best friend, Lisha Jacome. “It was her favorite place.”

Amanda went to Wilbur Wright Middle School and knew Angie and Emily Castro, who were also pupils there. She was a good student with a reputation as a “girly girl,” who dreamed of becoming a fashion designer when she grew up. She loved rap music and was a big fan of Eminem, putting his posters on her bedroom wall.

“She was always so smart,” her cousin Tina Miller said. “Mandy was always in the magnet programs at school.”

After spending a short time at John Marshall High School, where she was in the gifted student program, Amanda studied online at home. Her sister, Beth, had recently married a young man named Teddy Serrano, who had moved into the house.

At sixteen, Amanda got a job at Burger King on West 110th Street and Lorain Avenue, just three blocks away from her home. The petite five-foot-one-inch teenager had waist-length wavy blond hair, and had her left eyebrow pierced to keep up with the latest trend.

She loved Tommy Hillfiger and Nautica clothes, although she was careful never to mix them. She adored costume jewelry and collected necklaces, including a gold one spelling out
AMANDA
and another with a Playboy bunny.

Amanda loved to stay out late and party, drinking beer and smoking marijuana, but she always stayed clear of hard drugs.

In mid-March 2003, Amanda started dating Danizo Diaz, a tall, handsome sixteen-year-old Latino boy whom she first met after taking his order at Burger King’s drive-through window. Diaz drove a white Dodge Intrepid convertible and was known to everyone as “DJ.” Amanda told friends she thought the relationship looked promising.

At 2:00
P.M.
on Monday, April 21, Amanda Berry kissed her mother good-bye and left for her shift at Burger King, wearing her maroon uniform.

“I love you,” Louwana told her. “Have a good day at work.”

It was the day before her seventeenth birthday, and her mother had organized a party. Before leaving, Amanda had carefully placed $100 in crisp new bills in her bedroom drawer to get her nails done later that night and buy a new outfit. A stack of gift-wrapped presents lay on her bed.

But there was something troubling Amanda that day. She had just heard that her brother-in-law, Teddy Serrano, who also worked at Burger King, was having an affair with a female worker there. The affair had started a month earlier, and when somebody told Amanda, she was devastated.

That afternoon, she tearfully called her mother several times for advice on what to do. Later, Teddy Serrano would tell police that he had seen Amanda “upset and crying,” making calls on her new cell phone.

Although her shift ended at 8:00
P.M.,
Amanda left half an hour early. She walked into the employee dining area and sat down next to Stephanie Torrence, who was waiting for her daughter to finish work. Amanda mentioned it was her birthday tomorrow and she was getting her nails done later. She was going to walk home, she said, as she had no money on her. Torrence offered to walk her home, but Amanda declined.

At 7:36
P.M.
Amanda officially clocked out of Burger King, saying good-bye to Torrence a couple of minutes later. Then she started walking north on West 110th Street, still wearing her Burger King uniform with her black bag slung over her shoulder.

As Amanda Berry left the Burger King parking lot, Ariel Castro drove past her in his maroon Chevy van, with his youngest daughter, Arlene, in the passenger seat. Amanda had been on his radar for some time, as he had often seen the beautiful blond employee behind the counter.

Amanda too noticed when his van drove past her, thinking she recognized a girl she knew in the front seat.

After pulling into a driveway a few houses ahead and letting Arlene out of the van, Castro made a U-turn and drove back along West 110th Street.

Several minutes later, Amanda was talking to her sister, Beth, on her cell phone, as the maroon van pulled up alongside her. Then a smiling Ariel Castro opened the window, asking if she wanted a ride home. Amanda said yes.

“Gotta go, I’ve got a ride,” she told Beth breathlessly. “I’ll call you back.”

Then Amanda Berry got into Ariel Castro’s van and he sped off down West 110th Street.

As soon as Amanda was inside the van she realized Arlene was not there. But before she could say anything, the pudgy middle-aged driver with the porkpie hat and goatee introduced himself as Ariel Castro. He asked if she knew his son, Ariel, Jr., who used to work at that Burger King and his daughter Angie. Amanda said she knew both of them.

Then Amanda noticed that he had driven past her home on West 111th Street, and asked where they were going. Castro replied he was taking her to see Angie at his house.

A few minutes later they arrived at 2207 Seymour Avenue, and Ariel Castro pulled into the back of the driveway. He invited her inside to see his daughter, leading her in through the back door and into the kitchen.

“Angie could be in the bathroom,” Castro told her, taking Amanda up some stairs. On the way, they passed a closed door with a large hole in it. Amanda looked in and saw a woman inside. She asked who it was.

“It’s my roommate,” he replied.

Then Castro led her into a bedroom with an en suite bathroom at the far end, edging her against the wall. Suddenly, Amanda became nervous and told him to let her go, or he’d be in trouble with the police.

When Ariel Castro suddenly grabbed her, she started screaming. He muzzled her mouth with his hands, threw her to the floor and raped her.

Afterward, he duct-taped her wrists and legs together and taped her mouth shut. He put a motorcycle helmet over her head, and carried her downstairs into the pitch-black basement, where he chained her around the waist to the large center support pole.

Then he went up the stairs and locked the basement door behind him, leaving Amanda helplessly chained with the motorcycle helmet over her head.

When Amanda Berry didn’t arrive home after work, Louwana Miller immediately knew something was wrong. Her daughter was always punctual and was so excited about her birthday party the next day. She also knew that Amanda would never go anywhere without taking her phone charger or a change of clothes. There was also the hundred dollars in her bedroom drawer left untouched.

“Mandy waited all week for that party,” said Louwana. “All her clothes are here. No way would she leave with her Burger King outfit on.”

Over the next few hours, Louwana and Beth phoned around to all Amanda’s friends, asking if they had seen her. Then at 12:33 on Tuesday morning, Louwana went to the First District Cleveland Police Department office on West 130th Street, to report her missing.

“Mom is concerned,” read Amanda’s missing person’s report. “Mom claims there have been threats made against her at work. Cannot reach her on her cell phone. States this is unusual for her daughter.”

The following morning, Detective Brent Scaggs interviewed Louwana and Beth at their home. They described Amanda as a “good kid” who had never done anything like this before. They were concerned for her safety.