The story of the ‘Cleveland monster’, as he was known Ariel Castro is, for many people, one of the most lurid narratives ever told in the United States.
The torment experienced by three young people before the perversion of this man leaves for reflection the importance of people’s mental health, as well as the relationship that may exist between the conditions of a person’s childhood with the acts in his adulthood.
(Also: The unresolved career-ending death of Hollywood’s highest-paid actor.)
Who was Ariel Castro?
Ariel Castro was a Puerto Rican citizen, born in 1961. He was the husband of Grimilda Figueroa and the father of three children: Anthony, Ariel and Arlene, who suffered all kinds of physical and psychological abuse.
The family, with the aim of fulfilling the ‘American dream’, sailed from the Caribbean island to the United States to start a new life, which he fulfilled by settling in Cleveland, in the state of Ohio.
His ex-wife assured before the American media that the blows and humiliations that she and her children received from him were their daily bread; even after her divorce in 1996, since the abuse dates back to 2005.
(You may be interested: The two friends who planned a double murder because they were not allowed to see each other).
They were 14, 17 and 21 years old. His kidnapper was called Ariel Castro and was nicknamed “The Cleveland Monster” and his house “House of Horror”. This is the basement where the women spent 11 years locked up without seeing the sun. pic.twitter.com/zN2Ja4sdEM
— Thomas Hodgers (@tomashdg) May 2, 2020
Broken ribs and teeth and even a blood clot in the brain were some of the injuries Grimilda suffered at the hands of Ariel, who also had the habit of keeping their relatives locked up at home for long periods of time, with little food and water.
Paradoxically, the man had a reputation for being hard-working and helpful in his community, as he came across as a funny, pleasant and happy guy.
Ariel earned his living as a school bus driver, a job he did for 22 years; until he was fired for aggressive behavior. From that fact, those close to him began to tie up loose ends in the face of his mysterious lifestyle.
The predator
Year 2002. His first kidnapping was effective with Michelle Knight, who was approached after she left the house of a relative to go to the courts, because she was going to fight for the custody of her son.
(Also read: Kasia from Qatar: the tragic end of the princess who said she lived in a ‘golden cage’).
Ariel, in a red truck (typical suspense movie scene made in hollywood), offered him a lift to his destination. Michelle accepted Castro’s proposal, apparently suspecting nothing wrong with the stranger. Serious mistake.
A similar case was with Amanda Berry a year later, who was one day away from her 17th birthday. The man kidnapped her after the teenager left work at a Burger King in the city. Castro told her that he was the father of a colleague of hers and offered to take her home. It was all an obvious lie.
Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight – 11 years kidnapped.
This case is creepy. These three women were kidnapped in Cleveland, USA. One in 2002, another in 2003 and the last one in 2004. The police could not connect the dots and connect the disappearances. pic.twitter.com/ovo7gj8lWX
— Thomas Hodgers (@tomashdg) May 2, 2020
Already in 2004, he managed to kidnap Gina DeJesus. At the time, the young woman was 14 years old and a friend of her daughter, Arlene. The man promised to take her to her relative’s house to visit her, but he ended up taking her to another residence, since he no longer lived with his family.
Already with three women kidnapped, Castro proceeded to lock them in the basement and separate them into different ‘rooms’ that were there, in order to ensure that they did not escape.
Abuse after abuse after abuse…
Under Castro’s custody, Michelle, Amanda and Gina suffered all kinds of violence from him: little food and inhibition; as well as vulgar comments, humiliation, beatings, torture, rape and death threats.
(We recommend: Heirless: The Man Who Secretly Left a Fortune to 100 Unknown Relatives.)
“They were imprisoned in their dungeons, tied with chains. It was like a sexual torture room in which this guy made his sickest fantasies come true, ”explained one of the agents in charge of the investigation.
The mistreatment could be repeated several times throughout each day of the 10 years they were in captivity.because it was evident that Ariel really enjoyed what he constantly did to them (something that he would confess at his trial).
This case is really shocking and makes you rethink how far human perversity can go. He chained them all with chains that he specially designed to torture them. He raped and tortured them for eleven years without rest. pic.twitter.com/HS8q7rqheu
— Thomas Hodgers (@tomashdg) May 2, 2020
One of the man’s customs was to play with their little foodsince according to the researchers, “he gave food to one of them and forced the other two, who had not eaten for a long time, to watch how he ate it.”
However, the times that the kidnapped women were able to eat while under their yoke do not compare to the number of times that they were raped on a daily and habitual basis.
Amanda, at the time of her rescue by the Police, recalled that in the first days of her kidnapping Ariel asked her if she needed anything, to which she replied that she wanted a notebook and a pencil to draw. In reality, she used that notebook to keep track of how many times a day she was sexually abused by her kidnapper. There were records of up to five outrages on the same day.
“I knew that she would eventually be released. I wanted my family to know what I went through, how horrible it was. I wanted (Castro) to be held accountable for it,” she recalled.
Amanda also confessed that she was pregnant as a result of one of the rapes, so Ariel had no mercy on her: “I started having labor pains throughout the day, but I didn’t know what it was. I had to go to the bathroom and I heard something was broken but I didn’t know what it was. He said, ‘I think your water broke.’ So he took me upstairs to my room and brought me a (plastic) paddling pool. I had to be there until I gave birth because I didn’t want it to dirty the bed.”
(You can read: Mystery solved: this is what happens in your stomach when you swallow gum).
One of the women had 5 abortions during the time she was kidnapped. Another told “The more we cried and showed him our pain and sadness, it was as if that gave him more energy, so we had to learn not to cry, not to show him pain”
— Thomas Hodgers (@tomashdg) May 2, 2020
Michelle played labor that day, confessing, “When I was assisting Amanda, I noticed how blue she was. She wasn’t breathing. I took her in my arms and revived her for five minutes. Castro warned me that if the baby died, she would kill me.”
She, for her part, was the one who suffered the most in terms of beatings. The first kidnapped by Castro assured that she suffered five abortions caused by the threshing that her captor gave her: “He jumped over and over again, with both feet together, on my belly. At that moment I thought she was going to die.”
Gina was also not spared from Ariel’s outrages, because in addition to the rapes, the beatings she received were so severe that they resulted in disfigurements on her face, which made it difficult for the police to recognize her when she was released.
‘The devil will take care of me’
On May 6, 2013, after about a decade in hell, the trio of abductees managed to be rescued by the Cleveland Police. The three of them were already determined to get out of their kidnapping once and for all.
Amanda recounted that she saw an opportunity to ask anyone for help while her captor was away from home: “I tried to open the door, that green door, and there was the padlock, but there was a gap just where my arm could fit through and I started waving it around like crazy screaming: ‘Somebody help me please!’”
Fortunately, a neighbor in the area was nearby, named Charles Ramsey, who called the Police after the calls for help.
(More: The Story Behind the New York Skyscraper That Doesn’t Have a Window.)
“I was kidnapped, I’ve been missing for ten years and I’m here,” Amanda said at the time, when the neighbor came over with the phone for her to talk to the officers.
Finally, the authorities arrived at the scene and managed to bring Amanda, Michelle and Gina back to see the light of day after ten long years of violent and traumatic captivity.
The Police, very intelligent, decided to wait for Ariel Castro at his home instead of going to look for him, because that way it would be easier to capture him. They were right. They received the kidnapper as if it had been a surprise party, but while he arrived, they took charge of gathering evidence against him.
Some of the recovered objects were letters written by Ariel himself, in which he recorded and admitted all the perversities he committed with his kidnapped, as well as a kind of ‘self-criticism’, confessing that he was “a sexual predator who needed help”.
Finally Ariel Castro, 52 years old, faced a total of 977 charges, mainly for kidnapping, rape and torture; in addition to reckless homicides and violent clandestine abortions. Sentence? At first, the Ohio State Attorney’s Office requested the death penalty, but after negotiations and provision of relevant information by the accused, he was granted a life sentence, plus a thousand years behind bars.
“My porn addiction and sexual problems have affected me mentally. I was a victim of child abuse and that has gotten worse. I am not a monster. I’m sick. I think that I am also a victim”, Castro confessed in one of his hearings.
The ‘Cleveland monster’ was taken to the Eastern Ohio Correctional Facility, under special protection, as he had a cell to himself and prison guards had 30-minute shifts to watch him.
However, this security measure only lasted a month, Well, Ariel Castro ended up taking his own life by hanging himself with a blanket. “I want to end my life and let the devil take care of me,” he wrote in one of the letters found by the police in his house.
Meanwhile, Amanda, Michelle and Gina had a severe recovery stage, as they underwent psychiatric intervention due to the anxiety and depression that their captor was responsible for building in them for an entire decade, in addition to a strict diet to get out of the state of severe malnutrition in which they were.
Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry immortalized their memories in a book called ‘Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland’, in addition to giving interviews for different media in their country and the world.
You can also read:
‘Kaiser’: the sought-after footballer who never played a game in his 20-year career
The life of the ‘dirtiest man in the world’: he lasted more than six decades without bathing
The school excursion that ended in tragedy and killed more than 200 young people
A fossilized snail and a giant ball, among the strangest houses on Airbnb
The most extreme house of horror – you get paid almost $100 million if you make it to the end
Trends WEATHER
#Terror #Cleveland #kidnapped #abused #young #people #basement #years