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Officials, Citing Miscarriages, Weigh Death Penalty in Ohio Case
(about 3 hours later)
CLEVELAND — A man accused of kidnapping and raping three women who were found alive in his home after a decade of captivity was ordered held on $8 million bail on Thursday.
CLEVELAND — As more grim details emerged Thursday about the long captivity of the three women rescued from imprisonment in a dilapidated home here, one official compared the victims to survivors of a P.O.W. camp, and prosecutors said they would seek murder charges against the man charged in the abductions, accusing him of forcing at least one of the women to miscarry.
The suspect, Ariel Castro, 52, appearing in court for the first time since his arrest on Monday, was arraigned in municipal court in Cleveland. Mr. Castro did not speak and kept his head down and his eyes lowered during the proceedings.
Timothy J. McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said the miscarriages, which at least one of the women described to the police, could be grounds for seeking the death penalty for the suspect, Ariel Castro. Mr. Castro, a former bus driver, enticed the women off the street with offers of a ride home, the authorities say.
The hearing came a day after Mr. Castro was charged with the rape and kidnapping of Amanda Berry, held 10 years; Gina DeJesus, held 9 years; and Michelle Knight, held 11 years. He was also charged in the kidnapping of the 6-year-old daughter Ms. Berry gave birth to during her captivity; the authorities said he would undergo a paternity test. The judge, Lauren Moore, set his bail at $2 million for each of the four cases.
During his first public appearance since his arrest Monday, Mr. Castro, 52, buried his lower face in a blue jacket at an arraignment in Cleveland Municipal Court, where bail was set at $8 million. He was arraigned on charges of rape and kidnapping in the abductions of Amanda Berry, held 10 years; Gina DeJesus, held 9 years; and Michelle Knight, held 11 years. He was also charged with kidnapping a daughter Ms. Berry gave birth to in captivity, who is now 6.
On Thursday afternoon, Timothy J. McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said he might seek the death penalty against Mr. Castro for the “traumatic decade-long ordeal that few among us are capable of ever understanding.” Mr. McGinty said he would consider filing aggravated murder charges related to Mr. Castro allegedly inducing miscarriages in the women.
Immediately after police officers broke into Mr. Castro’s fortified home on Seymour Avenue on Monday afternoon, Ms. Knight told her rescuers that Mr. Castro had impregnated her multiple times.
During the hearing, prosecutors described the decade of abuse as a “horrifying ordeal,” in which the women were beaten, bound and sexually assaulted. Mr. Castro’s lawyer argued for a lower bond, noting that he had lived in the city for 39 years and had no prior felony convictions.
“She stated that Ariel would make her abort the baby,” the police wrote in a report obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Castro would starve Ms. Knight for weeks, she told the police, then repeatedly punch her in the stomach “until she miscarried.”
Mr. Castro’s brothers Onil Castro, 50, and Pedro Castro, 54, also appeared in court on Thursday morning to sort out prior misdemeanor charges not related to the kidnapping case. The judge released the two brothers. Pedro Castro was fined $100 after pleading no contest to an open-container charge; and the charges against Onil Castro for drug abuse and having an open container were dismissed.
Mr. McGinty said at a news briefing that Ohio law allowed for the death penalty for “aggravated murder during the course of a kidnapping” and that he was studying whether to seek capital murder charges from a grand jury because of the forced miscarriages.
New details continued to emerge on Thursday about the kidnappings, including how the women had been abducted. In each case, the women accepted Mr. Castro’s offer of a ride home while they were walking down the street, according to a police report that included the first statements the women gave after their rescue. The report had a chilling detail: Mr. Castro's daughter was a close friend of one of the victims.
An official with knowledge of the investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that F.B.I. specialists had spent hours with each woman after their rescue, gathering enough information to charge Mr. Castro, but that they stopped short of making them relive their experience.
Ms. Berry was 17 when she was abducted as she left her job at a Burger King. Mr. Castro gained her trust by telling her that his son worked for the fast-food chain and offered her a ride home, according to the police report, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Their captivity was “depraved beyond your imagination,” the official said.
Ms. DeJesus, who was only 14 when she disappeared, was friends with Mr. Castro’s daughter Arlene Castro. Mr. Castro approached her with his daughter on April 2, 2004, according to the account Ms. DeJesus gave police. Shortly after, “Ariel came back without his daughter, and told Gina he would give her a ride to his house to meet up with his daughter,” the report said.
The women told the police that Mr. Castro had first kept them chained in the basement but eventually allowed them to live on the second floor. The official said the women later described how they “were brought into the room and out of the room, when the chains were on, when the chains were off,” as well as when they were rewarded with trips to the toilet visits and occasional showers.
The accounts by Ms. DeJesus and the other women were made immediately after officers freed them from Mr. Castro’s sealed-up house on Seymour Avenue, as they sat in a police vehicle. Since Mr. Castro’s arrest, news accounts have focused on the connections between the Castro and DeJesus families, including reports that Mr. Castro attended a vigil for the missing girl.
Although Ms. Berry and Ms. DeJesus returned to the homes of family members on Wednesday, Ms. Knight, now 32 and the longest held, remains in the hospital.
But in a description of Ms. DeJesus’s disappearance that Arlene Castro gave a year later in 2005, she apparently did not mention that her father spoke with Ms. DeJesus that day while she was present.
Unlike the two younger women, whose disappearances inspired vigils, posters and police task forces, Ms. Knight received much less attention, apparently because the police regarded her as a runaway. Her mother, Barbara Knight, described her as having “a mental condition,” according to a missing person’s report from 2002 released by the city. Ms. Knight was 21 when she disappeared and had fought with her mother’s partner.
In an interview with the television show “America’s Most Wanted,” Ms. Castro told of walking from school with her friend Gina. The two girls planned to spend the afternoon at Ms. DeJesus’s home. Ms. Castro said she borrowed 50 cents from her friend to call and ask for permission from her mother, who did not live with her father. “Mom said no, that I can’t go over to her house,” Ms. Castro said in the interview. The two girls parted. Ms. DeJesus disappeared shortly after.
When the police broke into Mr. Castro’s house, Ms. Knight threw herself into the arms of an officer, then said she was having trouble breathing, according to the initial police report. Emergency medical services were called.
The different accounts seemed to raise an important question: Did the police task force searching for Ms. DeJesus ever hear that Mr. Castro might have been one of the last adults to interact with her before she vanished?
She appeared malnourished at the hospital where the three women were first taken, the official with knowledge of the investigation said. When nurses offered food, “she was like a 6 year old with chocolate cake for the first time,” the official said.
Ed Tomba, the deputy police chief in Cleveland, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the police had never interviewed Mr. Castro before his arrest on Monday. A request for further comment from the police was not immediately returned.
Mr. McGinty, the prosecutor, pleaded with members of the news media here from far and wide not to pursue interviews with the women. Victim specialists with the F.B.I., he said, told him the women “need space and time” before officials press for details of their captivity needed for a prosecution.
On Wednesday, Ms. DeJesus, now 23, and Ms. Berry, 27, returned joyfully to their families’ homes. A day later, a half dozen news crews and photographers lingered across the street from Ms. Berry’s house, their cameras at the ready for any sighting of Ms. Berry or her child. At the DeJesus home, a blue tarp had been strung from the house to the adjacent garage, blocking the side yard from public view.
“We cannot have them subjected to 50 interviews and then go seek the interview to get the detailed evidence that we need,” Mr. McGinty said.
Ms. Knight, the oldest of the women and the longest held, was the only one who had not been released to relatives yet. She remained hospitalized in the MetroHealth Medical Center.
Mayor Frank G. Jackson also ordered police officials to stop divulging information about the case “outside of the established chain of command,” an apparent reference to leaks about the women’s captivity.
Trip
Gabriel reported from Cleveland, and Serge F. Kovaleski and Emma G. Fitzsimmons from New York. Steven Yaccino contributed reporting from Cleveland, and Erica Goode from New York. Research was contributed by Jack Begg, Kitty Bennett and Sheelagh McNeill.
Emma
G. Fitzsimmons and Serge F. Kovaleski contributed reporting from New York.
