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US POLICE CONTINUED to interrogate three brothers today as grim details began to emerge about how three young Ohio women were kidnapped and held captive for 10 years in an unremarkable city home.
Cleveland police chief Michael McGrath said he expected the trio, a group of men in their fifties, to be charged later in the day, after a crime that left many wondering how it could have gone undetected for so long.
“We have confirmation they were bound and there were chains and ropes in the hall,” McGrath told NBC television’s Today Show, near the home in a working class district of Cleveland from which the women were rescued on Monday.
He said that until interviews with the victims are complete it will not be possible to describe in detail how they were treated, and said he could not confirm reports that the captives had had multiple pregnancies.
McGrath said the captives had been allowed outside “very rarely.”
Onil Castro, Ariel Castro and Pedro Castro (Photo: AP Photo/Cleveland Police Department)
“They were released out in the backyard once in a while I believe,” he said. “Their physical wellbeing was very good considering the circumstances.”
Currently, today, we are interviewing the suspects that were arrested here the night before last. They are talking.
Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, were freed from a home on Cleveland’s Seymour Avenue on Monday, around ten years after they had each disappeared in separate incidents.
Berry has a six-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, born while she was in captivity.
The occupant of the home in which the missing women were found, a 52-year-old former school bus driver of Puerto Rican origin called Ariel Castro, has been detained along with his brothers Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50.
Family reunion
Berry arrived at her sister’s home on Wednesday in an SUV with a police motorcycle escort to be welcomed by a verandah bedecked with balloons and messages of support and by a huge phalanx of news reporters
Her sister Beth Serrano emerged to make a brief statement.
Beth Serrano, Amanda Berry’s sister, speaks to the media today after Berry arrived home. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)
“I want to thank the public and media for their support and courage over the years. At this time our family would request privacy so my sister and niece and I can have time to recover,” she told a thicket of microphones and lenses.
“We appreciate all you have done for us throughout the past ten years. Please respect our privacy until we are ready to make our statements. And thank you,” she added, before breaking down in tears.
The crowd broke into applause when Serrano walked out and one woman gasped “Oh, that poor girl” as she was surrounded by cameras.
“It was overwhelming,” said 30-year-old Kim Szypulski as she rocked a stroller holding her 18-month-old son, adding that she lives in the neighborhood and often drives past the family’s “missing” poster.
Neighbours and friends wait for Amanda Berry’s arrival at her sister’s home today (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)
Neighbors have expressed shock that the young women — long feared dead — could have been held for so many years in an unassuming home belonging to a man who never raised any suspicions in the working class neighborhood.
The three were rescued after Berry managed to alert a neighbor, who broke down the door to free her and her daughter.
“I’m glad to be back”
Police responding to her desperate 911 emergency call found two more women in the detached home, a white-sided two-story detached property with American and Puerto Rican flags on the porch.
Berry’s grandmother Fern Gentry spoke to the once-missing teen by phone from Tennessee in a call broadcast by a local ABC News affiliate.
“I’m glad to have you back,” Gentry said.
“I’m glad to be back,” Berry said, in the first publicly released recording of her voice since the panicked 911 call after her escape.
“I thought you were gone,” the grandmother said.
“Nope, I’m here.”
Undated photographs of Amanda Berry (left) and Gina DeJesus (AP Photo/FBI)
Berry was last seen on April 21, 2003, when she left work at a fast food restaurant just a few blocks from her home.
DeJesus was 14 when she vanished while walking home from school on April 2, 2004. Knight, who was 20 at the time of her disappearance, was last seen at a cousin’s house on August 23, 2002.
Some reports have questioned how the police could have missed signs of the kidnapping for so long, but McGrath insisted that he was absolutely confident that his officers had not missed a chance for an earlier rescue.
Cleveland Police chief Michael McGrath answers questions about the case (AP Photo/Jason Miller)
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Very strong women to survive ten years of hell.
what d…head gives a red thumb for this comment ???
Ally I understand your initial emotion but having been a regular here on the journal, red thumbs like that are usually mistakes by people scrolling through the app and hitting it by accident, the journal are still trying to fix it. I am convinced this is why my own comments are red thumbed all the time. :p
Ally, 12 of the 53 d…heads who redthumbed you so far, not to mention all I’m about to get.
They fixed it in android in the last update..u can change ur like…
Your red button covers my screen when I scroll.
@ Stephen/all – thx for explaining. There I was thinking that there’s a lot of stupid people out there…………:) please don’t comment this one :)
The fact that he kept all the blinds shut,wouldn’t let anyone in (not even his son) and the house was a mile within all the abductions,should have given off alarm bells.Loud ones.
Thick American cops. What do you expect!!
You, Neil Harvey, are thick and rude.
Eh, no there’s eccentrics like this in housing estates across the country . . . Coz someone keeps their blinds down makes them a criminal??
You missed the point completely
Torture them, then execute them. Prison is too good fir them.
I’d rather let the other inmates deal with them.
Were u taught torture in training or just the ability to beat the shit of everyone?
Exactly Amy let them get raped for 10 years if that don’t reform them nothing will
Turns two of the brothers had nothing to do with it, so now you guys would be guilty of torturing and murdering two innocent people.
Did the brothers live at the house with this guy? I havn’t heard if that was the case or not, if they all lived in the same house I would suggest that the two brothers are just as guilty for allowing this to happen.
Can’t believe how the police did not think of searching every single house in the nearby area until they were found. They done it with the Boston bombers why not for these young girls? Really stupid policing.
Hindsight is wonderful.
A door to door could have spooked them into killing them leaving their bodies never to be found.
So when people go missing, everyone within say 1 sq km should have a search warrant issued for their homes? Do you really think that’s a realistic approach? People go missing every day in the US and this was in an urban area.
A door to door could have spooked them sure. But a good undercover perusing of each house that screamed it was hiding something like the one in which they were found would have been a very good start.
The thing is that there are so much racial tensions in the US that the police is scared of lawsuits for racial discriminations. White cops bullying Latinos, if you see what I mean.
Anyway, it’s still not an excuse. The cops in Austria had questioned Natasha Kampush captor and didn’t push it too far either and there was no issue of ethnicity there.
Stephen, you are being a bot naive.
Oh for Gods sake . . . People go missing here every day, how would you feel if cops turned up to search your house just because you lived in the same area?? Some people on here loose all common sense with emotive stories like this.
I don’t know…….there’s something not right about this……very hard to believe that happened in a built up area like that and no one knew for ten years……very strange.
Not that hard to believe it’s happended all over the world, we should just keep this in the media and shame the police and government to question what happens to these disappeared or “runaways” where are they. 3 Girls go missing in a very close proximity and nobody joins the dots together? no this is pure neglect on the so called police officers, they wouldn’t find the women unless they stood in Mc D or BK with a sign around their necks saying help me. In relation to the women I will pray for them, I can’t imagine what they went through I hope their families will give them strength.
Just look at their photo! If thats not a ad for Nutsvile !!! I don’t know what is …. The scary thing is out of 315 million people in the states that at least one in ten are nuts and sickos like this lot !
And where did this statistic come from?
Whereas in Europe um say Austria, this never happens. *sigh*
Do you just dislike Americans?
Time magazine
Dislike Americans ? Not at all some of my best friends are American
It would make a good film
It will make a great film
IgotAheadRush…. You could play Annie Wilkes:)
my lord those three men are butt ugly. yuck. rusty blade to the knackers for them. Only way.
Unbelieveable and terrifing… Doesn’t bare to imagine how they had to give birth… Shocking it Went unoticed for ten years….
Jesus the journal is full of experts…folks saying how the police should’ve done their job, others coming up with random stats on “nut jobs” in America…none of our experts actually know anything about the situation other than what has been read online or on the paper…
It’s a wonder our experts haven’t somehow managed to blame our Government
Is a poor area, and maybe the amount of ‘missing kids’ that show up an our later would just swamp the service.that’s just the way it is…:(
My point been, it’s just crazy what happened.
I just dont get how this cld happen !! At all !!
Terrible story…I can’t understand if they were allowed out in the garden occasionally why they didn’t ‘scream’ before now, do they get so ‘zombied’ or what, the houses were on top of each other????
They are obviously suffering from Stockholm syndrome. As much as they were abused they relied on this man for food and water and to keep them alive.
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