According to school board records, in , he left a special-education student alone in a parked bus while he bought a burger. Five years later he was suspended for an illegal turn while children were aboard. In , he was suspended again for using the bus to go shopping.
But the final straw came later in the year when he left his vehicle unlocked and unattended two blocks from his home. At a hearing on 1 August, Castro was sentenced to a lifetime in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 1, years. Castro made a rambling statement to the court in which he appeared to lay blame for the crimes on an addiction to sex and on the FBI for failing to properly investigate the abductions. He added: "I'm not a violent predator… I'm not a monster, I'm a normal person.
I have an addiction, just like an alcoholic has an addiction. He was found hanging in his cell on 3 September, and prison staff were unable to revive him. What the suspects' neighbours saw. Police hail rescued Ohio women. A year later, he abducted year-old Gina DeJesus as she returned home from middle school.
The disappearance of Berry and DeJesus alarmed the community, and their families were on the news constantly pleading for their return. Knight told authorities she got pregnant five times and each time, Castro used vicious and violent methods to end the pregnancy. With the help of others in the neighborhood, Berry alerted authorities.
I didn't care how dirty it was I kissed that ground. I kissed that ground and thanked God that He helped us get out of there. The women were taken to the hospital, where Knight was found to be in the worst condition of the three. Still, she refused to be defeated. Knight remembered singing and dancing while receiving treatment. Castro pleaded guilty to criminal counts of rape, kidnapping and aggravated murder and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus a thousand years.
Now your hell is just beginning. Your picture was on the mantelpiece in his house. She said she was friendly with Amanda's mother and went out looking for Amanda every Sunday. In the recording studio, Michelle and Mitchell make for an odd couple.
He is tall, gangly and serious, with a face straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting; she is small, rounded and giggly. They met at a fundraiser, where he told her he had written a song that he thought she might like. He had read how much she loved music, how important it had been. Castro gave her a battered radio, and she did her best to keep it going.
She adores hip-hop Drake is her idol but Castro, who was mixed race, hated her playing "black" music. Did she ever ask him what difference it made? Then I got punched in the face, and I've still got the scar. When Knight came out of captivity, her jaw was so badly damaged that she slurred her speech. Now she speaks more clearly. For six months after her release, she lived in sheltered accommodation where most of the residents were elderly. Today she lives in a beautiful one-bedroom apartment in the smart bit of Tremont, where she can afford the rent because of her substantial book advance and various trusts that have been established for her.
There are birthday cards all over the kitchen table. How would she have celebrated last year? We would have a candy bar and we'd sing Happy Birthday to each other, and we'd blow out a candle we were holding in our hand or that we actually tried to stuff on to the candy bar, which was incredibly hard. The same with Amanda, but she would sometimes get a cake. We would try to celebrate the best we could. We'd write each other cards. Castro kidnapped Berry a year after he took Knight, one day before Berry's 17th birthday.
A year later he kidnapped year-old Gina DeJesus. Knight is convinced she was kidnapped only because Castro thought she was far younger than Was there any comfort in knowing there were other girls in the house?
Yes, she says, but her overwhelming feeling was pity. I didn't deserve to be here. Everything that happened from that day was just going to be a big old mess. It's a tragedy because you know exactly what she's going to go through, and she ain't going to like it. And you don't know how she will react to it. In their decade together, she and DeJesus built up a remarkable relationship, with Knight fulfilling a maternal role.
For most of the time, the two girls were either shackled or locked in a dark room together. Berry was given her own room, which she later shared with her daughter.
DeJesus and Knight listened to music together, read together, ate together, went to the bathroom together a plastic toilet that was emptied infrequently. They had no choice. They looked out for each other when they were feeling ill, gave each other hope, talked about a future that they had to believe was possible. Castro was born in Puerto Rico in and moved to America as a child. His partner Grimilda Figueroa and four children left him, and Cleveland, in Three years earlier, he had been arrested for assaulting Figueroa but not charged.
She died in , but her sister claimed he had broken his partner's nose, ribs and arms and thrown her down a set of stairs, cracking her skull. Castro's two brothers lived locally, and were initially thought to have been involved in the kidnaps.
But Knight insists they were not. Yes, he would invite them back to Seymour Avenue, but the girls were locked upstairs or in the cellar. They'd have a six-pack before they came over to the house, and they wouldn't recognise noise because the radio was on. Knight says Castro blamed his behaviour on sexual abuse he had suffered as a child.
But he said, 'In return, I'll hurt you. Got to go faster and faster. In court, psychiatrist Dr Frank Ochberg provided a written evaluation in which he said Knight had suffered "the longest and most severely" of the three women. Knight agrees, and thinks this is because she wouldn't acknowledge the distress he caused her.
I'd smile back. You really think that hurts? I became numb to the pain. I was like, is that all you can do? I knew that if I gave him the satisfaction, he'd feed off it. That's what fed his fire. Even the food she received was worse than the others'. She talks about the time she first met DeJesus, who had been told by Castro to take her a meal. I hate Chinese chicken, especially the way he got it. It wasn't tasty.
He would wait at least a week or two till he handed it to me. It was whatever the others didn't finish. After a while I noticed they got more and better food than me, and most of the time it was fresh. Did he ever show her kindness? She talks about the time he bought her a dog, and her eyes well up. I cherished it. I named it Lobo. I thought, this is going to be amazing. I have somebody I can take care of. A few weeks later, Castro attacked Knight in front of Lobo. Then he went downstairs and got a bag to put him in, and threw it in the garbage bin like it was trash.
I find myself confusing her captivity with prison. She doesn't notice. Not under any circumstances would I kill a child like that. No matter what I went through. Since his arrest, Castro has shown little remorse for his crimes. While in custody, he asked to see Berry's child, a request the court denied. In court, Castro insisted, "I'm not a monster. I'm sick. As for Castro, as Knight told him at his sentencing hearing, his "hell is just beginning. In a strange turn of events, Castro was found hanged in his prison cell at the Correction Reception Center in Orient, Ohio, at p.
After prison medical staff tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate Castro, he was transported to the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, roughly 20 miles outside of the Orient. At p. The following month, speculation surfaced that Castro's death might not have been a suicide, but rather, caused by auto-erotic asphyxiation — a sexual act in which an individual achieves pleasure through choking themselves, ultimately causing them to lose consciousness.
Countering those assertions, the medical examiner who conducted Castro's autopsy, Jan Gorniak of Ohio, stated that she wholly believed that Castro had planned his death. I saw the ligature. I saw the pictures of the cell," Gorniak said, according to a report by CNN. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.
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