Police Report Reveals How Ohio Kidnapping Victims Escaped After 10 Years
REUTERS/John GressAriel Castro appears in court for his initial appearance in Cleveland, Ohio, May 9, 2013. Ohio kidnapping victim Amanda Berry told police she escaped her suspected abductor, Ariel Castro, after he forgot to lock the "big inside door" of his home, according to a police report obtained by Tom Meyer of NBC affiliate WKYC.
The police report, based on initial conversations with the victims after they escaped on on Monday, provides new details about the decade of terror experienced by the three Cleveland women who were abducted between 2002 and 2004.
Berry still had to get past a locked storm door, and told police she was afraid to break it open because "she thought Ariel (Castro) was testing her."
She began kicking the door and screaming, and was noticed by neighbor Charles Ramsey.
"So I go over there ... and I say, 'Can I help? What’s going on?' Ramsey told WKYC. "And she says, 'I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been in this house a long time. I want to leave right now.'"
Ramsey told reporters he then kicked in the door.
The report details how the girls were apparently abducted.
Knight said Castro offered her a ride home in August 2002, the report said.
Berry said that in April, 2003 she was walking home from her job at Burger King when Castro, who told her that his son also worked at Burger King, offered her a ride home.
DeJesus told police that in April 2004 Castro approached her with Castro's daughter, who went to school with DeJesus, before returning without his daughter and offering DeJesus a ride to his house so that the girls could hang out.
The report also details the birth of Berry's 6-year-old daughter, who was also freed after police arrived.
From WKYC:
With her captor standing nearby and threatening her life, Michelle Knight was forced to deliver the baby of Amanda Berry as Berry lay in a plastic baby pool to help contain "the mess," according to a police report obtained by Channel 3 News.
"Michelle stated that Ariel told her that if the baby died, that he'd kill her," the police report states.
APDetails of how Castro concealed the victims in his home are also in the report.
Initially Castro kept Berry, Knight, and Gina DeJesus chained up in the basement, but he eventually let "them free from the chains [so they could] live upstairs on the second floor of Castro's Seymour Avenue home," according to the report.
When he allowed the women outside to the backyard, "they had to wear wigs and sunglasses and keep their heads down."
Castro also made sure that six-year-old Jocelyn did not know the real names of Knight or DeJesus, the report states, in case she spoke their names in public when Castro took her out of the house.
Castro, 52, has been charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.