The Cleveland Captives: What Really Happened?

-POLICE RADIO:

-Help me, I'm Amanda Berry! I've been missing for 10 years and I'm here, I'm free now!

This is the story of three girls who, in two years,

all went missing from the same street.

Michele Knight, 21, kidnapped August, 2002.

Amanda Berry, almost 17, kidnapped April, 2003.

And Gina DeJesus, aged 14, kidnapped April, 2004.

Until May, 2013, they were held captive inside this house

by a 52-year-old school bus driver and musician. His name?

Ariel Castro.

-POLICE RADIO:

-We found them.

So, who is the man who held the girls captive in a busy urban neighbourhood for 10 years?

And how did he remain undetected?

'I'm Rick Edwards, and I've come to the United States

'to meet the people who live close to Ariel Castro.'

His mother would come to see him

and he would check her out from the porch or come and talk to her.

He wouldn't let her in the house.

I go inside the hospital to hear from the medical team

who treated the girls.

I did notice that the girls wanted to be together,

so every time we would kind of separate them, they would come search for each other.

Inside 2207 Seymour Avenue,

what Castro told a friend who heard strange noises upstairs...

I asked him, "What is these noises coming from?"

And he said he had some dogs.

And inside the Castro family,

why they want to meet the daughter he fathered in captivity.

She's our cousin. She's our blood.

And I want her to know that she doesn't have monster in her blood.

So why did nobody know that this ordinary house in this ordinary street

was actually a prison?

I've come to speak to the people here in the US city

of Cleveland to find out what really happened.

CROWD CHEERS

This is a miracle. This does not happen.

People do not come out alive out of this.

This is Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States,

a city that I know very little about.

This area, downtown, looks nothing like the Cleveland

that I've seen depicted in recent press coverage.

It feels like a shiny, friendly American city.

And yet somewhere very near here, three young women were held

in a house captive for 10 years

and subjected to unimaginable horrors, horrors that we don't even know the details of yet.

It's hard to believe, it's hard to comprehend.

I want to find out more.

It is around 5.45pm, May 6th, 2013.

A sunny spring evening on Seymour Avenue on Cleveland's west side.

This is a neighbourhood of mainly first-generation immigrants on low incomes.

Aurora Marti, from Puerto Rico, is sitting outside

when she hears shouts from the house over the road.

With her sons present, she tells what happens next.

-TRANSLATION:

-We were talking when we hear a shout.

I looked in front of the house

and it was Amanda Berry shouting for help with her hand like this.

She could poke her arm through a gap in the door.

The door was chained shut so I couldn't really see her.

She did this. "I said, help me, my name is Amanda Berry!"

Amanda's shouts are also heard by another neighbour, Charles Ramsey.

I'm eating my McDonald's. I come outside.

I see this girl going nuts, trying to get out of the house.

So I go on the porch.

I go on the porch and she says, "Help me get out."

"I've been here a long time."

So, you know, I figured it's a domestic violence dispute.

My neighbour Angelo went over there and kicked a hole in the door.

Then they broke the chain.

There was another part that Angelo broke, and she was able to get out.

Both of them were screaming.

At 5.48, another neighbour's mobile phone captures the scene.

Amanda Berry is out of the house and carrying a small child.

She comes out with a little girl, and she says, "Call 911.

"My name's Amanda Berry."

I'm calling the 911 for Amanda Berry? I thought this girl was dead. You know what I mean?

But the drama isn't over yet.

2207 Seymour Avenue is owned by a man named Ariel Castro.

He's gone out but could return any moment.

I felt really scared he was going to come back

and there was nothing I could do.

He always came and went.

My neighbour shouted to me, "Grab them

"and bring them inside or he kill us!"

At 5.52, the dispatcher calls in a squad car.

At 5.55, a neighbour's phone records police breaking into 2207 Seymour Avenue.

The police arrived. She ran over and hugged them.

They straightaway put her inside the police car.

When she was inside the car, she told them there were two more women.

See, the girl Amanda told the police, "I ain't just only one.

"It's some more girls up in that house."

And when they came out was just astonishing,

because I thought they would come up with nothing.

So they brought the other two out and took them to hospital.

The other two girls were naked.

They brought them down wrapped in blankets.

He had them up there chained, naked.

So, Paul, talk me through the sequence of events for you on May 6th, the evening.

I just got home from work.

It was about 14 minutes after six.

I got a phone call from somebody highly placed telling me

that they'd found Gina and Amanda.

My reaction was shock that they'd been found, but then he said,

"And a third girl." I said, "There's another body?"

He said, "No, alive." And I was dumbfounded.

At 6pm, a call goes out to trace Ariel Castro.

At 6.16, police track him down.

We've got Onil Castro

and Ariel Castro incarcerated down here at McDonald's.

You know, the neighbours say they had no idea whatsoever.

They are absolutely stunned. They describe this man as very friendly.

He would come out to get his mail.

He would chat and strike up conversation.

But they never saw any of the young women.

They never even suspected whatsoever.

But right now, here on Seymour Avenue,

there is incredible joy here in this neighbourhood.

Hundreds of news crews descend on Seymour Avenue.

Normal programming is suspended.

Live coverage takes over from night to next morning.

Good morning. Just a half a block away from suspect Ariel Castro's home,

his uncle, who works at this convenience store.

We spoke exclusively to Julio Castro about his nephew

to get his family's reaction.

Two days after the three women are found,

Ariel Castro is charged with four counts of kidnapping

and three counts of rape.

Bail is set at 8 million. He does not enter a plea.

With respect to Mr Castro, he's waiving examination on each case.

With respect to bond on Mr Castro, Mr Castro is 52 years old,

he has lived in the area for 39 years,

he is on unemployment compensation,

and to the best of my knowledge he has no convictions

for felonies or serious misdemeanours.

So what did really happen all those years ago here in Cleveland?

And why did it take more than 10 years to find three young women,

two of them teenagers,

who were snatched off the street and kept captive in a residential house?

Let's start at the beginning.

Michele Knight was last seen here on the corner of Lorain Avenue

on West 106th Street on August 22nd, 2002.

Less than a year after that, and just four blocks that way,

at West 110th Street, again on Lorain Avenue, Amanda Berry was last seen.

That was on April 21st, 2003.

Less than a year after that, on April 2nd, 2004,

Gina DeJesus was seen at that phone box

on the corner of West 105th Street and Lorain Avenue.

All Lorain Avenue.

It seems that Ariel Castro took all of these girls from the same street.

When the first of the three captives goes missing, there's no publicity.

The victim is Michele Knight.

It's August 22nd, 2002. Michelle is 21.

She is last seen at her cousin's house

near West 106th Street and Lorain Avenue.

Her grandmother recalls for me the events of the day.

When we first realised she didn't come home one day,

I guess she went to the store or something over 106th,

and she never came back.

We just thought that maybe she had walked to somebody's house to visit,

so we didn't take no mind to it

until her mother had called the police

and they said they couldn't do nothing about it for 48 hours

or something, till they know if she's missing or not.

We kept looking for her walking around,

putting stuff on like the poles, putting up flyers...

'Michele Knight's life was hard.

'She'd reportedly been assaulted at school and dropped out at 17

'because she was pregnant.

'Her child was taken away by social services

'just before she disappeared.

'A missing persons report filed by her mother

'shows Michele is wearing blue shorts and a white T-shirt.

'She has mental abnormalities and is often confused by her surroundings.

'Her nickname is Shorty.'

At what point did you feel that you might never see Michele again?

It took me, I would say,

pretty much till about nine months, I would say,

I started kind of giving up hope.

Yet my heart was saying that she was still out there someplace.

After 15 months,

the police take Michelle off the missing persons list.

To all intents and purposes,

Michele Knight has vanished off the face of the earth.

But by this time, Ariel Castro has struck again.

The victim is Amanda Berry.

It's April 21st, 2003, the day before her 17th birthday.

Amanda's heading home from her evening shift at Burger King on Lorain Avenue.

She calls her sister to cancel her lift.

Someone else is driving her home.

Originally it was thought that Amanda had run away from home.

Then, a week later, a call was made from Amanda's mobile phone to her mother.

The caller said that Amanda was fine

and that she'd be coming home in a couple of days.

The police and the FBI concluded that Amanda wasn't a runaway, she was a missing person.

People can sit back and say, "Oh, this will never happen to my child."

Well, guess what? It happened to my niece!

Amanda's disappearance is big news.

Her family, led by her mother, Louwanna Miller,

does everything possible to keep people looking for Amanda.

Her mother even agrees to go on television to ask a TV psychic

if Amanda is alive.

Before an audience, she's told her daughter is dead.

So you don't think I'll ever see her again?

Yeah, in heaven, on the other side.

I can't understand why.

She was such a good girl.

Investigators dug into a prisoner's tip.

Nothing of evidentiary value, nothing found in the dirt at all.

'Cleveland police still don't know where Amanda Berry is.

'But they know where she isn't.

'And, for her family tonight, that's enough.'

Day by day, I just think, "Either she'll come home

"or, one day, I'm going to find my peace."

Almost a year later, the third captive is taken.

It's April 2nd, 2004.

Gina DeJesus, aged 14, is on her way home from school.

She's at the junction of West 105th Street and Lorain Avenue.

A car pulls up.

She recognises the driver as Mr Castro,

the father of one of her friends.

Castro offers Gina a lift home.

Her family realise something's wrong

when she isn't home at her usual time.

Gina's reported missing.

One of the most uncomfortable facts about this story

is that the DeJesus and Castro families know each other well.

Nancy Ruiz, Gina's mother,

grew up with Ariel Castro in the same neighbourhood.

When Gina's family held vigils for their daughter,

Castro would play music, dedicate songs to her and hug Gina's mother.

He also joined searches and handed out flyers.

With two teenagers disappearing from the same neighbourhood

in less than a year, people are angry and demanding action.

Volunteers publicise appeals for Amanda and Gina

but Cleveland TV reporters fear the worst.

Gina and Amanda, about a year apart...

Something's wrong. Something doesn't add up here,

because coming home from school, working at a Burger King,

these are not bad kids. And the proximity of...

a couple of blocks apart, it just didn't add up, so that's why

I think these two cases got such attention from the media.

It didn't necessarily help.

If you see it, say it.

On April 22nd this year, two weeks before the discovery,

local TV marks the tenth anniversary of Amanda Berry's disappearance.

If she is still alive, tomorrow will be Amanda Berry's 27th birthday.

The 17-year-old disappeared walking home from work,

which was at this Burger King on West 110th and Lorain.

A decade's worth of investigation drummed up lots of leads

but no real answers here.

But someone does have the answer.

He's the man who kidnapped Michelle, Amanda and Gina

and drove them three miles away to his ordinary-looking house,

where they've been captive for ten years.

His name is Ariel Castro.

So who is Ariel Castro?

And how was he able to maintain a job, a social life,

be a member of this community,

yet keep three women hidden in his house for so long?

From his Facebook page, he just looks like an ordinary guy.

28 friends...

just a catalogue of banal posts,

some of which seem sinister or loaded in retrospect but...

He posted this four days before the girls were found.

He shared a post which reads...

"Do not lose sight of the fact that it's the child suffers."

He said, "True that."

Actually, all totally innocuous.

But, then, why wouldn't they be?

He's hardly going to write something incriminating.

It occurs to me that, in fact, social media

provides the perfect opportunity for someone like this

to present an artifice of normality.

It seems that no-one suspected the man

who played bass in a local salsa band.

Ariel Castro was also protected by his family's reputation.

The Castros are said to be pillars of the Puerto Rican community

in Cleveland's West Side.

His cousin, Maria Montes, agreed to speak to me.

She describes Ariel Castro's immediate family as tightknit.

How close were you to Ariel?

Um, well...

we were very close when we were younger.

He was not born and raised here in Cleveland.

He was born in Puerto Rico,

with his other brothers and sister.

They were very close.

I mean, they were raised in the same home,

they were raised by a single mum.

His mum, after she had divorced from my uncle, she never remarried.

She dedicated her life to raising her children. And...

they were close.

Javier and Daniel Marti went to the same school as Ariel Castro.

I've known him, I mean, you know,

all throughout high school and junior high, his whole family.

He's got a great family. I mean, the guy was just a regular Joe.

He was outgoing, smart, very talented -

played a bass, played in band,

he would play softball every once in a while.

-He was always, like, into cars and everything and...

-He loved his cars.

-Yeah, he had nice cars, bikes.

-He loved his cars.

-Yeah.

He was just a regular kid.

Ariel Castro moved into 2207 Seymour Avenue in 1992,

with his wife and four children.

He bought his house from his uncle

and started living there with his wife.

But, soon, things were going wrong.

His neighbours, people who'd known him from school,

remember it was a time of horrible domestic violence.

He was a wife-beater.

-He was a wife-beater. He always beat his wife.

-Yeah, he was.

You know, she used to run out of the house and stuff and...

a couple of times, she came over to use the phone, to call the police.

But we never... I mean, never got into...

because you don't get into matrimonial disputes.

Court records show that Castro struggles to control his temper.

He's been accused of attacking his former wife,

who suffered broken ribs, a broken nose, dislocated shoulders

and a blood clot on the brain.

However, she dropped the charges and the only consequence for Castro

seems to have been losing custody of their children.

After he got a divorce, he always kept to himself.

-Yeah, he was the quiet type after that.

-Real quiet, kept to himself.

-Yeah.

-Like locked up. Secluded in the house.

-Right.

-Nobody went to the house.

-No.

We always found that strange, though.

I mean, me and my ex-wife would...

talk about that. How that guy was weird.

Neighbours say he was guarded about who could come in his home,

and that he only entered and exited through the back door.

His mother would come to see him.

He would check her out from the porch or come and talk to her in the car.

-He wouldn't let her in the house.

-Never went inside the house, never.

You wouldn't stay too long in the backyard. He'd walk you out.

He'd walk you out of the backyard.

Remember that day we was drinking back there?

Yeah, we had a couple of beers back there

but then, after a minute, I mean...

we had to come out.

Castro was carefully concealing the prisoners held captive

inside 2207 Seymour Avenue.

To the outside world, he was living a normal life.

During the day, he'd drive a school bus in Cleveland -

a job he'd had for 22 years.

At night, he played bass guitar in a salsa band.

I have come to Belinda's Nightclub in Cleveland,

to meet Tito and William.

They've known Ariel Castro for 20 years

and say he's one of the top bass guitarists they've played with.

My God, what I can say about Ariel as a musician?

One of the best musicians around.

In this city, three bass players that are the best.

And he was one of them.

Did you feel that you knew him?

Ariel was a person... He wanted to go dance,

he would go and try and dance with somebody.

And they would say no. Go back, say no. Go back, say no.

And I'd tell him, "Come on, man. You'll embarrass yourself." He'd say, "No, I want to dance."

I would say, "Dude, if they don't want to dance with you,

"you can't force them to dance with you."

He'd say, "Yeah, but look who I am, I'm a bass player, I'm on stage."

I'm like, "Who cares?

"You can be Liberace or you could be the President.

"If they don't want to dance with you, you can't force them to."

And were you friends outside of music as well?

Yes, but not to a personal point where...

He kept his personal life very...personal, if you will.

He never talked about it and us, as musicians, you know,

if somebody wanted to keep their personal life

away from the business, we respect that.

It's not our problem.

So personal, his family say that he even kept his secrets

from those closest to him, such as his two brothers,

who were first arrested with Castro but then released without charge.

I keep hearing people say,

"How did these brothers not know

"that their brother was doing this?

"Don't you visit your brother's home?"

I mean, he was a bachelor. So he lived alone.

He probably made a lot of excuses, you know?

"Oh, the house is a mess."

You know, "Oh, I don't have anything in my refrigerator."

You know, I am sure that's probably

how he kept people away from the home.

And we've been hearing that...

Ariel actually went out on some of the searches

and took part in some of the vigils.

Right.

Why would you think he would do something like that,

knowing that he was the person that had...Gina?

Um...the only thing that I can possibly assume...

is that perhaps...

he wanted to...

kind of have an inside track.

Did they suspect something?

Could they possibly know something?

I have no way of knowing what went on in the mind...

of a person who is such a monster

that he could look that mother in the face

and ask her how she was and how she was doing.

I just don't...I don't understand how he did any of what he did

but how do you look at that family

and pretend like nothing is wrong and pretend like you're caring for them?

That is so chilling.

What were conditions like for Amanda, Gina

and Michelle all those years?

2207 Seymour Avenue seems pretty ordinary.

Four bedrooms, one bathroom, a basement, no air conditioning.

Details are starting to emerge of what happened inside.

For the three women and young child who were trapped here,

the house is both a prison and a torture chamber.

This 3-D model shows that it's always dark with windows

boarded up or covered.

Inside there are three floors and a basement.

Castro lives on the ground floor.

He locks all the rooms upstairs and locks the basement

and it's the basement where he first brings the women.

It's small, dark and damp with a low ceiling.

He chains them to the wall.

Really hard for me to know

what she had to go through for the last 10 or 12 years.

It was a living hell.

They were chained to the walls to the basement.

Castro appears to treat the women differently.

With Michelle Knight getting the worst punishment.

The police assert that she was raped repeatedly

and became pregnant several times.

But every pregnancy was miscarried

when Castro punched her in the stomach.

It just really hurts me to think that he had turned around

and beated her in the stomach just to have her miscarry

so she couldn't have his kids.

So have you thought about what Ariel Castro wanted Michelle for?

Well, I think that

he wanted her as a sex slave...

to do whatever...

whatever he wanted her to do.

That must make you angry.

Yes, it does.

It makes me very angry to know that a human being would do

something like that to another human.

She was just terrified for all their lives, for what he might do to them.

So I guess that's why in a way that she had went along with what he said.

Them and...them two and her lived a living hell in that house.

According to police and according to police reports,

the house was kind of described as a prisoner-of-war camp.

We were told that duct tape was used

when Castro left the house for any length of time.

He would duct tape their mouth.

So, we now know that the outside front door was padlocked shut.

We know that the bedroom doors were padlocked.

We know that they were chained in the basement for some

period of time, both from the ceiling and from the wall.

We know that they were starved, we know that they were punched

and beaten.

They were really scared. They were scared of...

To them, he was a monster.

And that monster they didn't want to deal with.

So whatever he said, they did, you know?

And that's the horrible thing about that, that I see,

he had them out once in the garage.

I know he's got a big gate.

He's gone at them, "Scream!

"All three of you, scream at the top of your lungs."

Too scared to scream. Too terrified to scream.

He manipulated them, you know, in such a way that

he had full control over three women in the house.

And while Gina DeJesus is locked up in the house, her father is

visiting the neighbours just across the street.

Gina's father, yeah, he came around a few times and...

I remember him coming over a few times and I...

I remember him coming over and talking...

One time, I talked to him and I was telling him how sorry I felt.

That girl was, like, 40 feet away from him and nobody knew nothing.

They made a big hole over here down the block,

looking for remains of them girls

and I remember sitting with Ariel talking about that,

how a person could do... take these girls and he would say,

"What kind of person would do that?"

And all the time it was him and he had them girls up there.

You know what he did?

He went and got the tape, the crime-scene tape,

he helped the police put up...

I've seen that with my own eyes, put up the crime-scene tape

around the street so people won't go over there.

When Gina DeJesus came up missing, he gave money so...

to her father or something, he made a donation

so they could keep searching for her and he had her all the time.

As days become weeks and then months and years in that tiny, dark space,

the women probably lose track of time.

They live on a diet of fast food brought to them by their kidnapper.

The girls down the street comment that they..

They would see him with big bags of McDonald's early in the morning.

They ate McDonald's for 10 years.

'In later years, Castro allows them

'to live in separate rooms on the first floor where slits were

'found cut into the doors as if to allow food to be slid in and out.

'It appears the women only come outside only

'twice during their decade in captivity.

'Wearing disguises, they take a short walk in the yard.

'Ricky Sanchez knew Castro for many years

'and went inside the house just days before the women escaped.'

When was the last time you came to the house?

Last time I came here, it was last Thursday before it happened.

So that was the 2nd?

-The 2nd.

-And why did you go over?

-Er...

I came here cos because we became friends on Facebook

and he saw a British guitar that I had for sale

and he liked it pretty much and he wants me to come here

and show it to him, so then I spent about two hours in the house.

A young girl came, she show up from the back...

..and he approached her,

he grabbed her by the arm and he asked her to say hi to me.

I said hi to her but she never said hi to me

and then he said that that was his granddaughter.

Was there anything else that you kind of noticed

when you were in the house?

There were some type of, like, noises that I hear.

I don't know exactly where the noises came from and I asked him,

"What are these noises coming from?" And he said that he had some

dogs in the second level of the house, the second floor.

Knowing what you know now, knowing what you might have heard,

what those noises might have been, how does that make you feel?

When I heard the news at first,

when it came out on Monday, I couldn't even believe.

I went home and started looking at the news,

really deep into the news, and when I saw it was him, I saw

the picture, I could not believe, I was just inside the house.

The little girl Ricky spoke to is not Castro's granddaughter,

she's his daughter Jocelyn.

On Christmas Day 2006, Amanda Berry aged 20 gives birth

to her in a paddling pool in the basement.

Michelle Knight is put in charge of the delivery.

She says Castro threatens to kill her if the baby dies.

Michelle keeps the baby alive with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

One of Castro's older daughters recalls seeing a picture.

He showed me a picture that was on a cellphone randomly and he said,

"Look at this cute little girl."

It was a face shot and I said, "She's cute, who is that?"

you know, and he said, "This is my girlfriend's child."

And I said, "Dad, that girl looks like Emily."

Emily's my younger sister and he said,

"No, that's not my child, that's my girlfriend's child by somebody else."

Cleveland June 2008 - the moment

when the local police did catch up with Ariel Castro.

Arresting officer Jim Simone doesn't know it but Castro has

already kidnapped three girls and is holding them captive in his house.

I stopped him on a traffic violation in June of 2008.

He didn't have a licence.

The plates did not belong to that particular motorcycle.

Normally I would have arrested him, had he given me any back talk,

had been flippant with me or made some remark.

I'd have slipped the cuffs on him and taken him to jail.

He mentioned the fact that he was a school bus driver.

I didn't want to take him to jail

and have him lose his job over a traffic violation.

I didn't arrest him.

I gave him a ticket and let him push the bike home.

I did a check on him. All these cars have computers

and you can do a background check on anybody.

He only had a few traffic violations and no criminal background.

With that, I gave him the tickets and let him go.

I made 10,000 arrests as a policeman.

That's not traffic tickets, that's 10,000 people I've put

handcuffs on thrown in the back of the car and took them to jail.

There are times when you're amazed how bad it gets.

Jim has been a Cleveland cop for 38 years.

18 patrolling the second district which includes Seymour Avenue.

I went past this house 1,000 times. Nothing at that house

drew my attention, even with the crime-scene tape around it.

It was just a house on Seymour.

Yet in that house, there was

a heinous crime being committed every second of every day for ten years.

While police incompetence features highly in many of America's

most notorious kidnap cases, the failure to find Castro

and the Cleveland captives may be down to something else.

The missing persons database kept by the Cleveland police

department has over 100 names on it as of last week with nearly

half of them missing all year.

When you look at this list of names,

you get an idea of how swamped the police are.

Do they have the resources to cope?

In the Second District alone, which is where Castro's house is,

71 people are missing right now.

The number of detectives assigned to work on cases of missing

people is one.

Do you feel like the police have done a good job?

No, I think that they could have done a better job

than what they were doing, especially for her.

Do you feel there's enough resources at the police's disposal to

successfully look for these kids that go missing?

No.

No, there's not. We handle a realm of things.

It's not just the missing persons. It's the auto theft.

It's the burglaries. It's the rape.

The B and Es, the shooting, the homicide.

In reality, the chief may want to contradict me later on,

we're stretched thin.

You don't have the man hours to invest in a major investigation.

When I was a young policemen, it was about catching the bad guy.

Today, it's how much is it going to cost us to catch the bad guy?

If it costs too much, it's set aside.

What happens, they make the initial investigation, then we wait.

We wait for the body to be found, or in this case,

for some amazing rescue.

..members of the community who still want to know what happened to her.

Just two weeks before the amazing rescue,

local TV marks the tenth anniversary of Amanda Berry's disappearance.

No-one knows she's alive and in a house just a few miles away.

The vigil just breaking up in the last five minutes and those

who were in attendance today and everyone around here

and the city to know it's never too late to do the right thing.

No tip, no clue, is too small.

The clue is provided by Ariel Castro himself.

He's gone out but hasn't chained up all of his captives.

Finally, he's made a mistake.

Was he good or what?!

What kind of person would do something like that? He slipped.

Amanda Berry can see the front door open

though the outer storm door made of thin wire mesh is bolted shut.

Often Castro would test his captives by leaving doors unlocked.

He beats them if they try to get out.

Because Amanda can see Aurora Marti on the porch opposite,

she goes for it.

-'Help me. I'm Amanda Berry.

-Do you need police, fire or ambulance?

-'I need police.

-OK, what's going on there?

'I've been kidnapped and I've been missing for 10 years and I'm here.

'I'm free now.'

On a day that will long be remembered, Charles Ramsey's

account of the break-out makes him an instant internet legend.

I knew something was wrong

when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms.

Something is wrong here!

Dead giveaway.

'From Seymour Avenue, ambulances rush Michelle, Amanda,

'Gina and the child to the local hospital.

'Gerald Maloney is the admitting doctor.'

-You were in charge of their care for the evening.

-Yes.

They came in by ambulance and there was a lot of law enforcement

officers, Both local police and FBI,

with them as well at that point.

It was fairly chaotic when everybody came in initially.

There were a lot of people here.

There was a lot of energy, good energy.

Where were the girls taken immediately when they arrived?

They were taken to the rooms behind us.

-Would it be possible to have a look?

-Absolutely.

'It's the first time any cameras have been allowed into the room

'where Amanda, Michelle and Gina were examined.'

We did an exam, checked their head, neck,

body extremities looking for any injuries or medical issues.

Too often, we hear the end to these stories...

We don't hear of people being found

and being alive.

It's usually finding remains.

We're very excited they were alive.

We were very excited we were the first safe harbour for them

after they'd been rescued.

Nurse Betsy Martinez is a neighbour of the DeJesus family and has

a daughter the same age as Gina.

She's on duty on May 6th and is just about to have dinner

when her boss breaks the news that will live with her for ever.

They found the man that had Berry and Gina DeJesus. I could not...

I didn't understand. Who?

I kept saying, "Who?" He said, "Amanda Berry and Georgina DeJesus."

I was in awe about it. He was, "I need somebody back there with them."

Forget dinner, I'm on my way in.

I dropped my purse, ran back into the trauma bays

when I noticed Georgina and Amanda Berry walking in.

It was a big deal to me cos it was like hitting home.

I remember seeing Georgina and I hugged her and said, "Welcome home."

I tried to do some nursing and get her vital signs

and I was just in awe about it. I kept staring at her.

I couldn't believe that I was sitting next to her.

Then to see Amanda Berry and her beautiful child.

It was confusion, but I had to do my job and stay professional first.

What I thought was professional was to love them and let them

know that they were safe. You were crying, you were happy, you were sad.

It wasn't about what happened to them. It was welcome home.

"We've been looking for you for a decade. What can I get for you?

"What can I do for you?"

It was a very emotional and exciting day to have the pleasure...

to see her father and her mother and sister walk in.

To see them for that first moment. You got butterflies.

You got goose bumps.

You try to wipe your tears and stay professional but I couldn't help it.

How did the girls seem?

They were still trying to get their surroundings.

They were, like, "Who are you?"

I made sure that everyone introduced themselves.

So they knew that they were workers here. They were safe.

I did notice that the girls wanted to be together.

Every time we would separate them,

they would come search for each other.

They kept asking for the other one. We had to let them know,

"They're just around the corner. They're here."

You could tell that they had a bond.

You mention that you're from the neighbourhood.

What was the effect at the time when the girls disappeared?

You could not go anywhere in Cleveland

and not know Amanda Berry's name or Georgina.

You could not go anywhere in Cleveland...

There were signs everywhere. The family never gave up.

I could not believe that they were alive. I did not...

This doesn't happen.

This is a miracle that I will probably never see again in my life.

This does not happen. People do not come alive out of this.

I remember one time, pinching Georgina and she's like,

"Why did you do that?" And I'm like, "Because you're here.

"This is not a dream."

It was that amazing.

After 10 years of waiting, relatives

and neighbours can finally celebrate. But there's also anger.

Some like Gina's uncle struggle for control.

I want to bust down and cry right now.

-But...

-Tears of relief?

-Yeah.

And I don't know if you can print this or put this on the air

but if I got my hands on that guy...

Amanda Berry had made the news for 10 years as a missing person.

Now it's a different story. From the sister who dreamed of her

coming home, a plea for privacy.

I just want to say we are so happy to have Amanda

and her daughter home.

I want to thank the public and the 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.

Amanda learns that, in 2006, three years after her kidnap,

her mother had died.

Louwanna Miller had never stopped fighting

for her daughter to be found.

Friends say she never recovered from Amanda's disappearance.

Gina had been taken aged 14.

She returns to her parents as a 23-year-old.

We want to have a block party and close the street down.

CHEERING

That's the best...

That's the best Mother's Day present any mother could have.

CHEERING

CHEERING

-REPORTER:

-She gave a big thumbs up as she got out of the van.

There she goes, in the green.

Michelle's condition is more serious.

She leaves hospital five days later but doesn't go home to her family.

Instead, she goes to Gina's house.

I have come to Gina's house and it is actually very confusing.

I don't really know how to feel.

The banner suggests celebration

and, yet, is this a celebration?

The police tape is a very stark reminder that something

terrible has happened.

The 14-year-old girl on that missing poster is gone.

Who is she now?

We know that Gina and Michelle are in that house.

It's interesting that, having been forced together for nearly

nine years, Gina and Michelle are now choosing to be together.

I assume because they have grown to rely upon one another.

So I don't really feel comfortable staying here any longer

because both girls obviously want privacy

and don't want cameras outside their house the whole time.

I'm kind of looking at that tarpaulin and this is speculation

but I assume that the last thing that either of them want is to be

cooped up inside a house after being cooped up inside a house for

so long so they have had to put the tarpaulin across the backyard

so they can still maintain a degree of privacy.

Michelle's grandmother is still waiting to see her.

We've was told that she didn't want to see us at all

so that kind of really hurt all of us to figure...

You know, to think that all these years that she didn't want to see us.

So we was all kind of frustrated and crying and all this

because if somebody would come up to you and say,

"Well, your daughter or your granddaughter

"don't want to see you,"

it would kind of hurt you or break your heart

and that's kind of what it was doing to us.

We thought, kind of, that she was blaming us

for not giving her the attention like Amanda's and Gina's family did.

Do you think that, from what you have seen of the press coverage,

your family has been represented in a good light?

Well, we heard that...

It was going around in there that, as a family, we was beating her,

tormenting her, we was abusing her, um...

..we didn't care about her or nothing because we didn't look for her.

That's not the truth. That's not the truth at all.

So, if he is found guilty, what punishment should

Ariel Castro now face - life in prison or the death penalty?

The death penalty is on the statute in Ohio

and prosecutors say that they will press for it

if it is found that Castro forcibly caused any of the women to miscarry.

In Ohio, a foetus has personhood

so, as a person, that can be construed as murder.

The county prosecutor, Timothy McGinty,

has said he intends to pursue that and see

if the claims that he forced miscarriages five times is true.

I suppose medical testing could figure that out in some fashion.

I'm certainly not a doctor but, yeah, a foetus as a person,

has personhood in Ohio, therefore the murder charge.

And if a murder is committed in the commission of another crime,

it would be aggravated murder and that would be the death penalty.

For multiple murders is another aggravating circumstances.

In that case, we have the death penalty in Ohio

and he could be executed.

Talking about the death penalty, I think that's too easy for him.

I think they should just make him suffer

like he made them girls suffer.

He needs to suffer. The death penalty is way too easy.

As far as it goes, if they give him the death sentence,

the death penalty, that's fine.

But I'd really like to see him get more than that.

I'd like to really see him suffer as they had to suffer.

Justice needs to be served here, for sure.

He should never see the day of light again in his life.

He'll never see the daylight again.

Whatever he did to those girls, you can rest assured that while

he is in the penitentiary it's going to be very, very difficult for him.

Cos there is a hierarchy in a jail.

At the top of the list is the police-killer.

He is the number one guy.

It goes all the way down and the bottom social rung

in the jail are perverts and sexual deviants.

Because even the murderers have mothers, sisters and kids.

No-one wants to be in Ariel Castro's shoes right now.

What do you think should happen to Ariel Castro?

-Are you asking me as a policeman or a father?

-Both.

As a father, I have three daughters, I think that

Ariel Castro should be brought out onto the streets

and handcuffed to that telephone pole

and we go get the fathers of those three girls and give them

Louisville Sluggers and go, "There he is.

"Do what a father would do."

As a police officer, I am bound by oath.

There are things that you know you would love to do,

that the person deserves it, but you can't do that.

The county prosecutor is currently

preparing the case against Ariel Castro.

Right now he is going to present evidence to a county grand jury

and by every indication he is going to seek additional charges.

He is looking at filing charges for every day each woman was

kidnapped, every time that they were raped

and every time there was a lost pregnancy.

I don't believe there is a torture law in Ohio but there

really doesn't need to be one for him to seek the death penalty.

This is a very hard-nosed, aggressive prosecutor.

He not only sounds tough,

he is tough and I think he will seek the maximum penalty.

But Ariel Castro's defence team has said that he intends to plead

not guilty to all charges.

I spoke with his attorneys.

His attorneys told me that Castro has not confessed to any crime.

In fact, the attorneys call him a regular guy who has a heart

and who loves his child.

I think that the initial portrayal by the media

has been one of a, quote, monster

and that's not the impression that I got

when I talked to him for three hours.

This is the initial stages of the investigation

by the prosecutor's office as well as the defence

but it is to be expected that it will be a not guilty plea to all charges.

For his victims, Michelle, Amanda and Gina,

this will lengthen the legal proceedings.

Meanwhile, his cousin Maria wants to convince them

that the Castros are a good family.

As a family, the Castros, we are

so incredibly sorry that these horrible things happened

to them at the hands of someone

that is a part of our family.

Or was a part of our family.

You know, I would love nothing more than for, one day,

for these girls to be able to meet the rest of us

in one of our family gatherings or one of our family reunions

and...and see the good people that are a part of this family,

the happy people that are a part of this family,

the people that are generous and kind and loving

and...and I would love for them to experience that.

I would love nothing more than to meet that little girl Jocelyn.

I mean, it's been proven now that she is his child.

That means she's our cousin. She is our blood.

And I want her to know that she doesn't have monster in her blood.

She has good, kind, generous, loving blood.

If there is a positive message that survives this story, it is

perhaps one of strength in the face of terrible circumstances.

There is the incredible strength of the three women,

Michelle, Amanda and Gina, who survived together, defied their

captor and are now receiving the best psychological and medical care.

Strength is also being displayed by the people of Cleveland.

Their initial joy and relief was quickly overtaken by fear and guilt.

I have heard people talk about being scared of their neighbours,

feeling that they can't trust anyone.

But now a new mood is detectable.

People are talking about how to make changes

to ensure that this never happens again.

The phrase that I keep hearing is, "We are our brother's keeper."

CHANTING: Gina! Gina! Gina!

CHEERING

-REPORTER:

-There she goes, in the green.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd