The Monster From Cleveland, Ohio, Ariel Castro, Has Been Charged With KIDnappings And Rapes Of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus And Michelle Knight. Let's Just Say That Death Is To Easy Of A Penalty For The PUNK!

Cleveland Man Charged With Rape and Kidnapping

CLEVELAND — About the time that neighbors kicked in a front door to free three women abducted and long imprisoned, the man charged with their kidnapping was idling away a spring afternoon at his mother’s home.

The authorities in Cleveland charged Ariel Castro with with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

Beth Serrano, the sister of Amanda Berry, spoke to reporters after Ms. Berry arrived at her home on Wednesday.

The man, Ariel Castro, 52, crossed the street to borrow a lawn mower on Monday afternoon from a neighbor to cut his mother’s postage stamp lawn, then left with a brother to spend the afternoon drinking, neighbors said.

It was typical of the outwardly mundane life Mr. Castro lead, which apparently included outings with a daughter he is believed to have fathered with one of the captives. Meanwhile, inside his house on Seymour Avenue, the three women, who last celebrated birthdays with their families about a decade ago, saw year after year perversely marked by Mr. Castro’s serving of a cake on each woman’s “abduction day,” according to one victim’s cousin.

On Wednesday, 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 with kidnapping the 6-year-old daughter Ms. Berry gave birth to, and the authorities said he would undergo a paternity test.

In their years as prisoners, the women never left the house except for two brief visits to the adjacent garage, the police said.

“What the circumstances were inside that home and the control he may have had over those girls, we don’t know,” said Ed Tomba, deputy chief of the Cleveland police, in announcing the charges. “That’s going to take us a long time to figure out.”

No charges were brought against the two brothers of Mr. Castro, who were arrested with him: Onil Castro, 50, and Pedro Castro, 54. Mr. Tomba said investigators were convinced after interviewing the victims that the other brothers had no involvement or knowledge. “Ariel kept everybody at a distance,” Mr. Tomba said, speaking at a news conference crowded with reporters from around the country and abroad.

He declined to give details of the women’s captivity. But as two of the women, Ms. DeJesus, now 23, and Ms. Berry, 27, returned joyfully to their family’s homes, descriptions of their ordeal began to emerge. The police confirmed earlier Wednesday that chains and rope were found inside Mr. Castro’s house, and that the women were sometimes bound. A cousin of Ms. DeJesus, who disappeared in 2004 at age 14 while walking from school, said the women were “kept in the basement like dogs.”

The cousin, who asked not to be named to protect the family’s privacy, said relatives spoke by speakerphone with Ms. DeJesus before her return. Although she asked relatives not to ask her about her captivity, she described the way Mr. Castro marked the anniversaries of the kidnappings by serving dinner and a cake. “He would celebrate their abduction day as their new birthday,” the cousin said.

Neighbors of the Castro family — which owns at least two other homes in the Tremont district of Cleveland — recalled Mr. Castro visiting with a young girl they suspected was Ms. Berry’s daughter.

Nelson Martinez, 54, a cousin of Mr. Castro, said Mr. Castro visited him in Parma, Ohio, with a child he introduced as his granddaughter two or three years ago.

“She looked healthy and happy and looked as though she liked being with her ‘granddaddy,’ ” Mr. Martinez said. “She had on clean clothes, like a normal little girl, and she seemed alert and talked.”

The disappearances of Ms. Berry, last seen leaving work in her Burger King uniform in 2003, and Ms. DeJesus, who was last seen a year later in the same neighborhood, were major news in Ohio for years. Volunteers distributed posters to other cities, and vigils were held on the anniversaries of the victims’ last sightings.

The third woman, Michelle Knight, disappeared in 2002, but because she was an adult, the authorities suspected that she was a runaway; her case received much less attention. Ms. Knight, the only one of the women not released to relatives, remains hospitalized in the MetroHealth Medical Center.

Since the discovery of the women less than five miles from the neighborhood on Lorain Avenue where all three disappeared, some residents have angrily questioned whether the police did all they could.

On Wednesday the city released portions of the original missing persons reports that showed that dozens of officers were involved in the investigations of Ms. Berry and Ms. DeJesus. Authorities also knocked down accounts that have circulated this week of sightings of the women at Mr. Castro’s home, denying that the police had received calls.

Mike DeWine, the attorney general of Ohio, said he was not sure the police could have done much more. “I’m sure this will be studied to death,” he said. “Any time you have a case like this, all of us go back and say, ‘What else could we have done?’ ”

Mr. Castro has been unemployed since last November after two decades as a Cleveland school bus driver. He was fired after a third disciplinary problem, according to school district reports. The house he owns where the women were discovered is in foreclosure.

Other records show that he fought violently with a former wife, Grimilda Figueroa, who had full custody of their children, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland reported. According to a 2005 complaint she filed in domestic relations court, Ms. Figueroa suffered a broken nose, broken ribs and two dislocated shoulders, The Plain Dealer said. Her lawyer, Robert Ferreri, said in the filing that Mr. Castro “frequently abducts daughters and keeps them from their mother.” Ms. Figueroa died last year.

Mr. Martinez recalled a visit to Mr. Castro’s home before the three girls’ disappearance and called him a hoarder. “There was junk everywhere,” he said. “It was nasty and dirty.”

“What was very weird was that he had built himself a shack that looked like a cardboard tent with blankets in the living room,” Mr. Martinez added. Mr. Castro slept in the enclosure in the living room to save money on heat, he said.

Before noon, a motorcade escorted by police motorcycles pulled up to the home of Ms. Berry’s sister, Beth Serrano, festooned with balloons, stuffed animals and a “Welcome Home” sign, and several people hurried into the residence, with at least one person holding a child.

At the home of Ms. DeJesus, a crowd chanted “Gina! Gina!” as she arrived home and walked into the house with her face covered, while friends and relatives hugged in the front yard. Her aunt, Sandra Ruiz, made a brief statement outside the home, thanking the authorities and the community for their help.

The city of Cleveland on Wednesday released segments of audiotape from the dispatch call that sent a police cruiser to Seymour Avenue in response to a 911 call Ms. Berry placed after being freed by two neighbors who had heard her cries. The call, made from a house across the street, initially went out as a Code 1, or nonurgent, call. The dispatcher said a woman had called saying that she was Amanda Berry and had been kidnapped for 10 years.

Soon after the cruiser arrived at the house where Ms. Berry was waiting, an officer was heard to say, “This might be for real.”

A few minutes later, in another tape segment, the officers’ voices took on urgency. “There might be others in the house,” an officer said, sounding stressed and somewhat bewildered. Then, “Gina DeJesus might be in this house, also.”

In a later segment, an officer is heard to say: “We found them. We found them.”