The Ariel Castro Kidnappings

Between 2002 and 2004, Ariel Castro, a school bus driver in Cleveland, Ohio, abducted three young women — Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus — individually, luring them to his house on Seymour Avenue under various pretexts. He held all three captive in his home for approximately a decade, chaining them to walls, starving them, and subjecting them to repeated rape and severe physical abuse. Michelle Knight was impregnated multiple times; Castro forced miscarriages through starvation and beatings. The three women lived in near-total isolation in the house while neighbors noticed nothing unusual. Amanda Berry gave birth to a daughter in captivity in 2006, and the child grew up in the house. The women found ways to communicate and support one another, and occasionally glimpsed the outside world through windows. Despite the address being a known location, police never conducted a direct search of Castro's home during the years of captivity. On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry managed to break through a locked storm door and call for help from a neighbor's phone. Police arrived, freed all three women and the child, and arrested Castro within hours. He pleaded guilty to 937 counts including murder — due to his forced termination of Michelle Knight's pregnancies — kidnapping, and rape, and was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years without parole. Castro was found hanging in his prison cell on September 3, 2013, just one month after his sentencing. Prison officials ruled it a suicide. The case prompted widespread scrutiny of Cleveland police procedures and the failure to investigate more aggressively when the women were first reported missing. Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus all went on to write memoirs about their survival and recovery.