[EPISODE 39] Ariel Castro: Abducted in Plain Sight

Kyle Risi: One of the most disturbing things about this is that he kept those girls locked away for over a decade in the way that he did. Yet, this jerk couldn't even go a month in captivity where everyone was treating him fairly, giving him food, treating with kind of humanity, and yet he couldn't handle it, yet he did that to all those girls.

Adam Cox: Yeah, well just think how much stronger and better people they are. 

Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium, an assembly of truths hidden in plain sight. 

Adam Cox: like, when you're trying to find your keys, and you know they're there, but you just can't find them. 

Kyle Risi: Do you honestly think that we would base an entire story around losing your keys?

Adam Cox: Well, you lose your keys a lot, 

Kyle Risi: so maybe. Yeah, but it's not podcast worthy, you knobhead. How you doing tonight, Adam? 

Adam Cox: I am good. I'm all good. Thank 

Kyle Risi: you. How are you? Yeah, not bad. What do you think of that clue? What do you think it could reasonably entail? I have no idea. Well, in today's episode of The Compendium.

Kyle Risi: We're actually delving into the disturbing case of the Ariel Castro kidnappings. Have you heard of this story before? No, I don't think I have. Well, the year is 2002, when a seemingly ordinary man from Cleveland, Ohio, manages to abduct and imprison three young girls. Who kind of vaguely knew him. But after kidnapping them, he would hold them captive for over a decade until their incredible escape in 2013. 

Kyle Risi: Today, though, rather than focusing on what he did to these girls, I wanted to hone in on the girls themselves. Because to call this a monster story only glorifies Ariel Castro and what he did. 

Kyle Risi: But if we focus on the girls and who they were, then I think we can safely call this story a survival story. Because to say that these women showed resilience is an understatement.

Kyle Risi: They continue to survive even though even through their darkest moments of this ordeal. And their names were Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina de Jesus. And in particular, I want to emphasize Michelle's story. She was the eldest of the three that were kidnapped, and whose story I invested kind of the most time researching.

Kyle Risi: And this isn't to say, of course, that Amanda and Gina's stories aren't equally as harrowing. They're all, showed determination and a will to survive. 

Kyle Risi: But Adam. I want you to prepare yourself for an episode that not only explores the depths of human depravity, but also shines a light on the incredible capacity for human endurance and the pursuit for justice in the face of overwhelming darkness.

Adam Cox: Wow. that's a big setup. 

Kyle Risi: And we're so excited about the story because it's it's such a awful, awfully sad story, but what makes it even more sad Is the women that were involved because they were just ordinary girls that had their whole lives ahead of them. They were pretty much teenagers or young adults when they were taken and 10 years of their lives were just stolen.

Kyle Risi: It's horrible. so That's the setup for today. But before we dive into this week's episode, shall we do introductions? Sure. So, for those of you tuning in for the very first time, I'm your host Kyle Risi. 

Adam Cox: And I'm your co host Adam 

Kyle Risi: Cox. You're listening to The Commendium Podcast, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We are a weekly variety podcast where I, Kyle Risi, tell Adam Cox all about a topic that I think you'll find both fascinating and intriguing.

Kyle Risi: From groundbreaking events to unforgettable people, we do this all in a simple one hour ish episode. Giving you just enough information to stand your ground at a social gathering. But before we get started, I hear something coming over the horizon.

Kyle Risi: Do you hear that? 

Kyle Risi: No. What do you mean? Oh wait, now I hear it. Ah, it's because we add this in post, don't we? Yep. 

Kyle Risi: So Adam, You're gonna love this one. Okay. So, this story comes out of North Dakota. So, this guy, Steve, and his girlfriend, Ina. They've been together for a decade, right? And out of the blue, Steve gets an email, and a distant relative has just died, and he's just inherited 30 million dollars.

Kyle Risi: So Steve, not so subtly, starts to tell all his friends that he's planning on ditching his girlfriend for a newer model when he gets the cash. Right. And Ina, or Ina, senses that trouble is obviously a pho, and she starts telling people that she believes that Steve is planning on leaving her when he gets the money, so Steve is supposed to meet with the lawyers at the airport to sign for the inheritance but suddenly he's sick and he starts feeling drunk without actually drinking anything at all and then he starts vomiting everywhere and then losing consciousness, and his friends are like, Damn, this is serious.

Kyle Risi: But Steve brushed it off. He says that's probably heatstroke. Ines insists that she's taking care of him. It's all fine. But... What did she do? 

Kyle Risi: Exactly. Next thing you know, Steve's gotten much worse. They call 9 9 and he dies. Oh my god. 

Kyle Risi: So everyone's first thought is that Ina has poisoned him? Yeah. And they're right, because tests show that Steve had antifreeze in his system, which Ina had been giving him inside his sweet tea for days. So Ina is arrested, her defense is that he must have smoked a cigarette that fell into the antifreeze.

Kyle Risi: Eventually, she confesses, and she says that she did it for the inheritance. Okay. And the cops are like, Why do you think that you would get any of the money it would all obviously go to his kids and she's like, Ah, but we've been together 10 years. So I'm his common law wife and they're like, that's a state by state thing and North Dakota.

Kyle Risi: We don't recognize that. So she ends up killing him for absolutely nothing. Really? But wait, there's more. 

Kyle Risi: Turns out that the 30 million inheritance that Steve was left. By some relative. It was actually sent by one of those Nigerian print scam scams. And yeah, there was no relative at all. and nobody questioned whether or not, like, who is this relative?

Kyle Risi: Like. Who are they? Where did they get the money from? Like, how did you not know that you had this rich relative? And it's because there's a random email that he received, and she goes and kills him for absolutely nothing. What is wrong with these people? I don't know! They're blatantly they're hillbillies. They're absolutely hillbillies. Uh, but 

Adam Cox: Yeah, poor Steve. I 

Kyle Risi: feel sorry for Steve. I know, obviously Steve's dead, yeah. 

Adam Cox: Uh, but to fall for a victim, those scam emails, like how do you fall for that? 

Kyle Risi: some of them are so badly written, so like, how? I have no idea how. I'd love to have seen that email. 

Adam Cox: And I can't believe that she was like, but I'm gonna get his money, right?

Adam Cox: And 

Kyle Risi: I was like, no, wow. Yeah, so I just giggle so hard. That needs to be a movie. Do you know who would be perfect in that role? Who? Who's the guy from The Hangover? 

Adam Cox: what was 

Kyle Risi: that? Gannafala... Gamaskanaki, or whatever his name is. He'd be perfect in that 

Adam Cox: film. What, the guy that gets fooled by some email and then dies?

Kyle Risi: Yeah, and he dies, yeah. Brilliant. Wow. Yeah, so that's all my latest news for this week. What have you got?

Adam Cox: Well this week, it's more of a, you know when you, reach a certain age, and then you write, and you find out, Oh, I was this many years old when I found out about this. 

Kyle Risi: yeah, okay. Have you got a specific? 

Adam Cox: yeah, so, this week, I didn't realise that Michelin Star Restaurants comes from Michelin Tyres.

Kyle Risi: Oh, there's a connection, is there? Yeah, so, um... Yeah, because, well actually, his logo is on the front of the... On front of the, the actual Michelin star guides.

Adam Cox: Really? Yeah. See I didn't even clock this. I did not put two and two together. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one out there.

Kyle Risi: Why, what did you find out? 

Adam Cox: So the reason the whole, um, Michelin guide was put together was to encourage people to get out and about and go driving and obviously use the Michelin tyres, right? So it's quite a good idea.

Adam Cox: It was free initially. I think came from France. Um, So it'd be things to do in Paris and stuff like that. Then one of the Michelin brothers found out that the guide was being used. To prop up a chair or, you know, open a door.

Adam Cox: And they were like, Oh, this is a, this is a free guide to you. And you're using it like this. So then changed it to then start selling it for money. So it cost seven francs when they started like printing it to be sold. And that's when they started introducing, um, the whole Michelin restaurants whereby they would send these mystery diners out.

Adam Cox: To go review these restaurants and then as a result, those that were really nice, they would then get a Michelin star and get featured in this guide. 

Kyle Risi: Wow, the more you know. So yeah, 

Adam Cox: so when there is a connection there, 

Kyle Risi: there's, yeah. And, but it was a byproduct of wanting to sell more tires.

Kyle Risi: Is that right? 

Adam Cox: Exactly that. It was to get people driving, create tourism. And the whole point is to search for these unforgettable experiences. So, 

Kyle Risi: yeah, there we go. Well, there you go. Sounds like we're all caught up on all the latest things.

Kyle Risi: So yeah, Ariel Castro. You've never heard of the story 

Adam Cox: before? Not the name, but then as soon as you started saying about, um, the girls being, held captive. It made me think of a few things. there's that film called Room, isn't there? With Brie Larson. 

Kyle Risi: I don't think it's the same story.

Kyle Risi: But, um, this was a huge story in the States when this broke. Because it happened under everyone's nose, in just a regular Fair enough. It was a bit of a, a bad neighborhood, but still it was on a res residential street.

Kyle Risi: Mm-Hmm. , which yeah, was unfathomable like that. You've got this monster living. This ordinary guy living in your neighborhood who is just taking women off the street. Horrible. But, like I said, today I want to focus on the girls mostly. And I want to paint a picture of who they were. Because I think, at the end of the day, remember, these women survived.

Kyle Risi: to kick us off, we're going to meet a young woman named Michelle Knight. Now, she was the first person to disappear, and she grew up poor. Now, early in life, she lived in a station wagon with her twin brothers, a cousin, and her parents.

Kyle Risi: And they frequently moved from place to place across, like, the worst parts of the neighbourhood. because of the instability in her family, she was expected to care for her younger siblings. She said that she didn't really have the means to take like a shower every single day or even brush her teeth.

Kyle Risi: So when she could, this was a big deal for her, especially for her and her siblings. She wanted to make sure that each time they got to brush their teeth, that it was a significant moment for them. So she cherished every opportunity that she got to do those types of things.

Kyle Risi: From a young age she was teased at school, mostly because of the way that she smelled her clothes were kind of never clean and she rarely got the chance to shower. Most of the clothes that she did own were from charity shops and they were typically like decades out of date.

Kyle Risi: So you can imagine like, no one's going to be getting rid of like. The latest trends up to a charity 

Adam Cox: shop. So I'm guessing she never was the most fashionable at school or anything like that. No, 

Kyle Risi: and kids are horrible, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't give her really a great start really. So over time, a male relative moves in with the family and he starts abusing her both physically and sexually, which caused Michelle to become really withdrawn within herself.

Kyle Risi: She does, however, find solace in some things like drawing. Mostly she drew families enjoying their time together, and in particular she had a real big love for wolves. So she also had a real passion for the horror genre. Reading and watching Stephen King films and books. And when she was 15, she decided that she wanted the abuse to stop.

Kyle Risi: And her living arrangements were kind of odd though. She would sleep wherever she could at night. But this guy who was abusing her, he would pretty much just find her. She would try sleeping in the closet and it just didn't work. So one night she put two sleeping pills in his drink which knocked him completely out.

Kyle Risi: She grabbed some things in her backpack and she slipped out of the bathroom window. Now Michelle is completely homeless and she starts living under an overpass where she sleeps in a rubbish bin. Jeez. So the only reason this works for is because Michelle is tiny. She's just four foot seven. So People nicknamed her Shorty. When she ran off she took a baseball bat with her that she had in her yard just to use that as a bit of protection. And to survive, she relied on having to steal food and get handouts from sympathetic people that would pass her by. Then one day she's approached by an 18, 19 year old guy under the overpass and his name is Sniper.

Kyle Risi: She's initially really nervous. So she's gripping her bat and she doesn't know what his intentions are. But he says that he wants to help her out. He knows that she doesn't have any food and definitely has no money and he offers her some help But he needs her to be a drug runner for him 

Kyle Risi: So even though this guy Sniper is getting Michelle involved into a load of dodgy activities He's actually really kind to her and when he takes her back to his house He introduces her to another drug runner From Saudi Arabia and his name is Roderick and they hit it off almost immediately.

Kyle Risi: They become super close friends, almost like brother and sister. So Michelle ends up living with him and Sniper tells Michelle that she can sleep in his room while he sleeps on the couch downstairs. And now she has access to a shower, food protection, and each week she receives just a little bit of money from him for her services as a drug runner.

Kyle Risi: A lot of people kind of judge this arrangement, but for her, this is literally the best that she's ever had it, right? It's got her off the streets and she essentially has a job and not a great job. 

Adam Cox: Yeah, it's a job in a loose sense.

Adam Cox: I don't know if you could put that on a 

Kyle Risi: CV. No, definitely not. She's terrible at running drugs. Sniper believes in her and he helps her out. He's trying to teach her kind of how to gauge people, how to talk the talk, and also know when to kind of like leave a situation or when to step up with a little bat. Remember she's tiny, she's four foot seven, so I don't imagine she's going to be the best drug runner. Or the most aggressive person. 

Adam Cox: And I don't know if I'd trust a guy called Sniper, but I guess, you know, she hasn't got like many 

Kyle Risi: options right now. Ah man, Sniper's such a street name though, do you know?

Kyle Risi: Like if you were like homeless or living on the street, you'd be like, hmm, I need a name. I need a street name. I know, Sniper. Or Dragon. Dragon. Dragon. 

Adam Cox: Better than Harold. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, Harold the drug runner. He also teaches her how to shoot a gun and he gives her a Glock 22. And he says like, when you're in a bad situation, Always run.

Kyle Risi: But if you can't, and if you're in fear of your life, that's when you use this gun. And at the same time, Roderick and Michelle's relationship as friends just blossoms. It's the first time that she's had a real close friend in her life. And they also have a lot in common. He's Arabic, and she says that she's part Arabic.

Kyle Risi: And Roderick gives her like this hijab scarf that his mother had made for him. And he says like, you're my sister. Like. I will die for you. So, and that means the absolute world to her because remember, she's not been someone who's had that many kind of great connection or kind of experiences with other people in her life.

Adam Cox: Yes. He probably acts more like family than her actual 

Kyle Risi: family did. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Like she's had it bad. So one day, the cops raid Sniper's Place, and Roderick and Michelle make it out, and they go to the only place that Michelle knows, which is the Overpass.

Kyle Risi: And she helps him find, like, a rubbish bin to sleep in. But obviously, he's really massive, he's really tall, so he can barely fit in one. But, so, his one doesn't really have a lid. It's really kind of weird, kind of, picturing them sleeping in these bins. But, I guess it's kind of, that's the thing that they do.

Kyle Risi: This is where they hang out while they can kind of work out what the next step is. But within a matter of days, a neighbor where Michelle's family lives spots her down on the underpass. And she thinks, great, I've been found out. sure enough, that woman calls her dad and she says, I know where your daughter is.

Kyle Risi: And within 20 minutes he shows up and he's going to pretty much discipline her for running away. She, of course, doesn't want to go, but he forces her back to the house, and that evening, that male relative that had been abusing her, shows back up and he whispers in her ear, you really thought that you could get away from me?

Kyle Risi: That's awful. And the abuse just starts again, 

Adam Cox: Do we know Not that it matters, but do we know who the relative 

Kyle Risi: is? No, for whatever reason, she's protecting him in her story in her book, but... I mean, that's a prerogative, right? Yeah, no, 

Adam Cox: absolutely. I just wondered if, yeah, you purposely left it out or what, actually, the public doesn't 

Kyle Risi: know.

Kyle Risi: I'm sure it might be out there, but not in this account. Michelle eventually becomes pregnant, not by the guy who's abusing her. 

Kyle Risi: She starts dating a guy soon after she was forced back home. And by all accounts, he is really nice to her. But not long after she becomes pregnant, she finds out that he's been dating someone else.

Kyle Risi: And when it comes down to him choosing her or the other woman, he chooses the other woman. And Michelle is just 17 years old.

Kyle Risi: So on the 24th of October, Michelle gives birth to a little boy who she calls Joey. By this point, her mum and dad had split up and her mum was seeing a new guy. He was an alcoholic named Carlos.

Kyle Risi: And Michelle says that. Her life was a complete dumpster fire and she was just desperate to build a better life for her and her son. So I guess she's like, I don't want my kid to go through all the crap that I went through and that my siblings went through.

Kyle Risi: So she's just determined to kind of do better, Yeah. And give her son the best start. So one day when Michelle is out submitting job applications for some care jobs that she's applying for. She leaves Joey with her mother and at some point her mother leaves the house leaving Joey with a very drunk Carlos and Joey is upset that his grandmother is nowhere to be found and ticked off that Joey won't settle.

Kyle Risi: Carlos grabs Joey by the leg and he ends up fracturing the leg He's fine. He's fine. He's fine. But Michelle takes him to the emergency room. And of course everyone there wants to know What's happened to Joey's leg, right? And how did he manage to sustain this kind of fracture? So Michelle lies and she says that he had an accident at the park.

Kyle Risi: But meanwhile, Carlos calls the hospital and tells them that he was the one who hurt Joey and explains that it was an accident. So I can understand where he's coming from. Like, he's, worried that... The kid's gonna get taken away, but it completely contradicts what Michelle has said. So the hospital knows that Michelle has lied, and they're concerned that the child might be, like, in a dangerous home.

Kyle Risi: Right. So social services get involved, and Joey is taken away from her, and he's placed into foster care, which is awful. he's the only thing that she's got in this world that means something to her. It's the only thing that's motivating her. To better her life. 

Adam Cox: Yeah, and I'm surprised 

Adam Cox: they would have taken away based on that. There must've been other things. 

Kyle Risi: I'm sure they probably looked into it and they're like, this is not the ideal kind of living arrangements for the kid.

Kyle Risi: And yeah, he got taken away. But the thing about the foster care system in the USA is that. Kids are often moving like many, many times within a matter of months and it's not always local. And remember, Michelle, like, if Michelle wants to visit, she has to do this all on her own dime and on their terms as well, the foster family's terms.

Kyle Risi: So in 2002, she's doing all that she can to prove that she's a good mother so that she can get Joey back. And so she has to attend all of her appointments, which are often towns apart. And of course. Michelle doesn't drive, right? She's doesn't have a job even. So at this point, she's moved out the house and she's moved in with her cousin, Lisa, who's about 10 years older than her.

Kyle Risi: And Lisa was like, don't worry. We're going to fix you up. You'll be fine. Um, this is a good house. We'll get Joey back. No problem. So Lisa introduces Michelle to some new people. And she meets a woman named Emily Castro, whose father was a bus driver called Ariel Castro. Right, 

Adam Cox: so we now meet the guy.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So, dun dun dun! So one day she's out with her cousin and she's trying to find out where this appointment is. It's kind of like a mediation appointment where she can go and meet the foster parents and then also spend some time with Joey. And she thinks it's somewhere downtown , but she can't really find anybody who knows where the exact office is.

Kyle Risi: So she's calling, but the office is like, tough luck, you need to get here. And at some point she tells her cousin, like, listen, just you go home. I'm going to call the office one more time and see if I can figure out where this is. Okay. So she decides to go into a family dollar store to ask for directions.

Kyle Risi: She thinks it's kind of in the area so maybe they know where it is. But in line behind her is a guy called Ariel Castro. And he asks her if she can help him find his bank. And she's like, what's your bank? And he tells her. And she's like, oh yeah, I know where that is.

Kyle Risi: And he says, well, you were just asking about your place. Maybe I can help you out. And she says, okay. And they get into his car. And she disappears. 

Adam Cox: Oh no, so actually get into his like private car, because you mentioned he was a bus driver. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, well, I mean he doesn't drive his own school bus around, right, if that's at the school.

Adam Cox: Well that's what made me think like, oh actually if he's going on a bus then maybe it'd help, but he's, she's got into his personal 

Kyle Risi: car. Yeah, and she knows who he is, right? True, okay. So it's a father of a friend of hers that she's met, so she, roughly knows him. 

Adam Cox: So didn't, not a complete stranger, and so at least they're for some connection, okay.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. And she's 21 years old. 

Kyle Risi: Now, Amanda Barry, she wants to be a fashion designer. And she's well known for keeping clothes organised, and she kind of arranges them by colour. She keeps her shoes organised by heel height. And she has a bit of a flair for designing clothes, and she wants to make it in fashion. 

Kyle Risi: at the time she was living with her mum, who was working really low end jobs, trying to keep them afloat. And she's often struggling to pay the bills. And Amanda's dad, he left years earlier, but he wasn't really known for contributing to the family in any meaningful way anyway.

Kyle Risi: And this really motivates Amanda to build a better life for herself and not to follow in her parents footsteps. And so she decides that she's going to go to college. Her hope was to earn enough money and then down the road to help out her mom.

Kyle Risi: Amanda was working at the local Burger King, which is situated on 110th and Lorraine Avenue, just four blocks away from where Michelle disappeared. So it's the day before her 17th birthday, and she's not in good mood because she's just not getting along with her mother at this point.

Kyle Risi: So her sister had told her over the phone how she and her husband had got into a massive fight, the reason why that's an issue is because her boss is her sister's husband .

Kyle Risi: So she's got to go to work and he's a manager. So she's going to be getting it in the ear from him as well. Right. With you. So another guy that worked there says, Hey, do you like want to get out of work early today? And she was always, yeah, she's well up for it because it meant that she could go home and stop getting ready for her birthday the next day.

Kyle Risi: She gets out of work early and she's figuring out how she's going to get a ride home. Her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up at the end of a shift. And so she wanted to be picked up early. So she's calling and she's texting. She just can't get through to him. This is 2003. So mobile phones are like only just becoming mainstream at this point.

Kyle Risi: So Amanda is heading home on foot and she sees a maroon van and what appears to be his daughter next to him. You know, like you see an older guy in a car and you see like a younger girl sitting next to him and you just assume that it's father and daughter. Yeah. She also thinks that she recognizes the girl that's in the car as well.

Kyle Risi: Okay. So while she's texting on her phone, the maroon van pulls up next to her and the guy says, Hey, do you need a ride? And even though she's not that far away from where she needs to be, she thinks, Oh, that's really nice of him. And she had seen the young girl in the van. She thought she recognized her from school, a woman called Angela Castro.

Kyle Risi: Angela Castro. Yeah. That's another daughter. This is his daughter. 

Kyle Risi: So when she gets in the van, she noticed that the girl is no longer in the van. And she starts feeling a little anxious, like maybe she wouldn't have got into the van if she'd known that the girl had gotten out.

Kyle Risi: Oh, okay. So they're driving towards her home and the man compliments her on her phone and he's asking loads of questions about it. It's not really unusual since phones are kind of new and novel back then. But eventually he says, do you want to go and see my daughter? She's currently at home, I can drop you around.

Kyle Risi: And she's like, sure I could visit. She wasn't really getting along with her mom at the time. So she thought to herself, like, yeah, I'll just go and socialize. So they head back to the, the guy's house and as they pull up into his property, he parks up and he asks, do you mind if I just check your phone?

Kyle Risi: Cause they've been talking about it this whole time. And then Amanda hands him the phone and then he says, hold on. I just got to go move the dog. And he's got a chow chained up in the back garden. So now he has a phone and he's around the back of the house and she's conscious. So she walks around with him.

Kyle Risi: And now he has control of the situation and Amanda disappears. Geez, 

Adam Cox: that is sneaky and conniving. Wow. This man is not 

Kyle Risi: nice. Not a nice guy, Adam.

Kyle Risi: So, it's about a year later. It's the 2nd of April, 2004. Gina de Jesus, I think, is how you pronounce it? De Jesus. De Jesus. Or de Jehasus. You can just call her de Jesus.

Kyle Risi: In fact, we'll just be calling her Gina from now on. I see. Sounds 

Adam Cox: like Gina of Jesus. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, maybe. So Gina's just 14 years old, and she's living with her parents, her brother, her sister, and her sister's two kids. And life for Gina is just completely ordinary. Her family get along really well, and by all accounts she was happy and she lives in a really stable household. So Gina was really shy, especially around teenagers.

Kyle Risi: And she would often kind of do that thing that kids normally do like they don't look adults in the eye. They're a little bit shy. Like it's not a big deal at all, but her mum thinks that she could be a little more confident.

Kyle Risi: Her dad would always take her to school and drop her off early so that she could wait outside for the school to open with some other kids and that might be a little bit of a way to socialise her as well.

Kyle Risi: Okay. Now the car that they were driving was a white Nissan. That's important. Because they bought this car through one of Gina's friends, named Arlene Castro. Another, so this is 

Adam Cox: another daughter. 

Kyle Risi: Another daughter. So there's three daughters so far. Noticing a pattern here? So at school Gina was placed in the class for slower learners. And she was often teased for obviously being picked up on that little smaller bus in America, they call it the short bus and it's that bus that picks up the. The more special needs kids, the private bus.

Kyle Risi: So she was really bullied for it. And this is the reason why her dad bought this Nissan so that he could be the one to drive it to school. So she wouldn't need to catch that bus every day. Really nice guy. Yeah. So on a positive note, Gina's grades are starting to pick up and her teachers were even telling her that she may even be able to move into regular classes at some point.

Kyle Risi: She's even told that she might even make it to college, which is a huge motivator she's hugely inspired by this because for a lot of her kind of early years, she was told that she was slow, like she wouldn't make it to anything. Like she, she was in a slow class, so she also knew it as well, right?

Kyle Risi: But to hear those words really motivated her. So she wanted to also be the very first person in her family to graduate from college as well. Oh cool. So Gina, she's really into skating, so one afternoon she's leaving school for the day and her friend Arlene, Castro, suggests that they go roller skating.

Kyle Risi: But Gina reminds her that she's grounded because her parents were caught smoking a cigarette in her room. Have you ever smoked a cigarette in your room? Like, at home? No. No? Why, 

Adam Cox: why? Why would you even, how do you think you could, unless, the 

Kyle Risi: parents smoked? My sister always did it. Always. But then your parents smoked, right?

Adam Cox: That's true. So that makes you think, okay, you can possibly get away with, The smell of smoke being in the house, 

Kyle Risi: right? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, that was a silly thing for me to say. I guess I guess So Arlene suggests that instead maybe her parents will let her come over to her house and hang out for a while Well, Arlene calls and Gina can tell that it's not going to work out at all.

Kyle Risi: So they cut their losses and they part ways and Gina is going off home. So it's about a 40 minute walk and while she's walking home, a Jeep Grand Cherokee pulls up and it's Arlene's dad. And he asks if Gina has seen Arlene. And she's like, yeah, I was just with her.

Kyle Risi: But she went that way and he says, great. Can you get in and help me find her? She's like, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? I was like, you wouldn't think anything off that, right? Yeah. You're my mate's dad. So she gets in. Gina disappears. Right. So. 

Adam Cox: So this was over the space of a couple of years? 

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: So like two years, a two year period, three girls go missing. Right. In the same neighborhood. So this is 105th and Lorraine Avenue. So We also have 106th, 110th and 105th on the same street. Right. Okay. So each of these girls have the same connection and that is to this man's kids. So, at this point, Michelle has been missing for about 15 months, and by all accounts, she was not missed by her family at all, which is just heartbreaking.

Kyle Risi: It's awful. Around about this time as well, the department investigating her disappearance tried to call her family to find out if she'd returned home. And because they can't get through to anyone, they just take her off the register. Really? Isn't that awful? I know they're busy, I know they've got a lot on, but you just take someone off the register.

Adam Cox: Surely you're still on a missing persons until otherwise. Until you 

Kyle Risi: know. Yeah. It's disgusting. I felt so awful when I heard about this. 

Adam Cox: So she was the person or girl that didn't have many family connections or anything, so. Do you think that she was picked on first because, you know, less people would miss her?

Kyle Risi: I don't think it was that calculated, if I'm honest. he knew who these girls were, and I think he just wanted someone, right?

Kyle Risi: But the other two girls, their families, they're constantly on the phone looking for any update on what might have happened to their daughters, right? they also fought to keep their daughter's disappearance in the media, because of course, as we know, that's like the most, one of the most important things you can do, right?

Kyle Risi: So, we have three women. They all go missing within five blocks of each other within a two year period. Mm-Hmm, . 

Kyle Risi: So should we go through where these women have gone? Yeah. 

Kyle Risi: So Michelle, Amanda and Gina, they were all taken to the same house on number 2, 2 0 7. Seymour Avenue, and this is just a two story house with a basement, four bedrooms, and one bathroom.

Kyle Risi: The windows were all boarded up with cardboard or carpeting. The front door of the house completely bolted shut so it looks really derelict already. 

Adam Cox: So this is a separate house to his house with his family. No, this is his house. Even with his 

Kyle Risi: girls?

Kyle Risi: Well... They're separated. Okay. Yeah. The daughters live with, their mother and their stepfather. Okay. So inside the house, completely dirty, completely trashed. There's food, there's rubbish littered all over the floors. And the person who lives at this house, of course, is Ariel Castro. So Ariel is someone who, as you can probably guess, didn't shower very often.

Kyle Risi: He drank a lot. He smoked marijuana. He was really into music. He was a bass player with a salsa band. So he's been a school driver for about maybe 22 years. Which kind of makes this a little more creepy to know that he was a bus driver, so he could have his eyes on bunch of kids. Yeah, it's almost like 

Adam Cox: he's using those bus trips to work out who his next victim was going to be. I wonder if he did that. And the fact that he used his daughters and the friendships to get at these girls. That manipulative bastard. 

Kyle Risi: I think it's a step above manipulation. It's just 

Adam Cox: gross. yeah, but it's just that, that to me is, you said that he's not calculated, but that is, he's using his daughters and their relationships to target these poor girls.

Kyle Risi: When I was reading this, there was a part of me that was like. Is he using his kids to lure these women in? I did wonder whether or not they were involved in some way. That's what 

Adam Cox: you made me think, and I don't know if honestly what That's how I interpreted it. Yeah, the way you said it, it's just that maybe there's a connection there.

Adam Cox: But 

Kyle Risi: there isn't. Okay. I think it was just being opportunistic. Okay, fine. In that sense. 

Kyle Risi: So when he brings the girls back to the house, their initiation is to be led down to the basement and chained up to a support pole. They are not fed and they're often brutally beaten and it's just a complete nightmare for these girls.

Kyle Risi: So he would also wrap them up and in these really heavy rusted chains, which he would wrap around their neck and around their stomach. And then he would also put like a motorcycle helmet over their head as a way to kind of muffle. They're screams .

Adam Cox: That is awful. So they're in the basement Chained up and I guess did he soundproof this 

Kyle Risi: place? that's why he used the helmet, right? he would sometimes put a sock in their mouth Mmm, and then take that shot and then put the helmet over there their heads as well.

Kyle Risi: So this is what would be considered that breaking in period. So what he's trying to do at this moment in time is trying to break them down mentally. And destroy their mental state. Uh, and then eventually he can kind of assert his control over them.

Kyle Risi: So as you know, Michelle Knight, she was obviously his first victim and she was left down the basement for weeks and weeks. I think it was like a total of like nine weeks. So when she is given food, it's usually like just an old sandwich from McDonald's, but Michelle has a mustard allergy so it's probably the worst scenario for anyone who's kidnapped, especially when you have no control over what food you're going to be getting, right?

Kyle Risi: Sure, yeah. Can't really be picky. No, you can't really be picky, but then also if you have a mustard allergy, like you know that you're just going to have this flare up, right? Yeah, yeah. He also doesn't unchain Michelle to use the bathroom that often. Instead, he just gives her like a bucket, which he would only like empty like once a week, if he remembered.

Kyle Risi: And often it would just be too late. So meanwhile, Michelle's not getting a clean change of clothes either. So she's just getting dingier and dingier. In between the abuse and her having trouble going to the bathroom, she's just getting dirtier and dirtier. And it's just completely dehumanising to these girls as well. 

Adam Cox: It sounds horrific. I can't imagine. That's nine weeks that she was left alone.

Adam Cox: And the fact that, you've already alluded, it does get It goes on way longer than nine weeks. I can't even imagine how they coped with this?

Kyle Risi: There comes a point where you just don't see any light at the end of the tunnel and these girls, they considered committing suicide, but luckily they continue to live in hope.

Kyle Risi: And we'll talk through like what drove them. To keep fighting forward because it is quite a sad story. We're just setting the scene at the minute, giving you an indication of who these girls were and what they went through, because I think it's important to know who they were as people.

Kyle Risi: And of course, she's living in filth, which is probably not something that she's very used to, but like he's living in filth anyway. Like he's. Pretty much a hoarder. He's living in this disgusting house where there's just shit. Everywhere. And also he has this washing machine in the basement that he keeps cash in.

Kyle Risi: That's why he keeps his money. Yeah, well he's on unemployment benefit, right? And he's worried that those benefits might be cut if they knew how much he was earning. So he just pops it into this washer downstairs in the basement.

Adam Cox: You could have kept that in a box, and then still use the 

Kyle Risi: washer. Exactly, exactly, that's probably why he's so dirty. He's using his washing machine as a bank, I guess. Stupid. 

Kyle Risi: Also throughout the house, many of the doors are just padlocked shut. Which he justifies, that he doesn't want someone breaking in and stealing his money. He would avoid any visitors as best he could saying that kind of the place was a mess or that his dogs were vicious or like there was nothing in the house to eat and remember he's got a family as well so they wouldn't come over and if they did come over he would kind of play the radio or the tv really really loud to mask any of the noises and visitors were only able to access through the back door which he would meet you on the front porch and then escort you around And people were only allowed in the kitchen. So people that did visit, they were only there for like 10 to 20 minutes, maximum. 

Adam Cox: That must have been really weird. Everyone's like, they go around here and they're like, we never go and sit down in his lounge. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, especially maybe if they were used to doing that, especially as kids, right? Then all of a sudden for like the last 10 years they're not allowed anywhere else other than the kitchen if they even visited at all I'm not even sure how often they did and the thought 

Adam Cox: I still would have thought you would have heard someone But I'm guessing it would have he's put a sock of the mouth that really must muffle the sound 

Kyle Risi: possibly Remember, there's three people in this house, right?

Kyle Risi: so the only rooms that were open were like the kitchen the bedroom and the bathroom everything else was locked. And he claimed that he just needed the locks because it was a rough neighborhood And people bought it. People thought it was okay.

Kyle Risi: What's really gross is that when he first kidnapped each of the girls, he would lie to them and tell them that he only needed them for like a couple months and that they would be home by Christmas or they'll be home by the summer or he'll let them go when he got another girl in. Can you imagine hearing that as well?

Kyle Risi: Like Knowing that, great, I've got some hope, but It means that I'm then passing the baton over to another person. 

Adam Cox: Someone's gonna come take my place, yeah. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, and they're gonna go through the abuse and the rape and everything that they're going through.

Kyle Risi: and even though the thought of going, Oh, it's okay, I can just put this up, this for two months. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah, it's horrible, isn't it? So they were physically attacked, sexually 

Kyle Risi: attacked. Everything. They were abused, they were beaten, they were punched, they were raped. Horrible. For 10 years. 10?

Kyle Risi: Oh my god. A decade. It's crazy. 

Kyle Risi: So about a year after Michelle is kidnapped, she hears him bring home another girl. And she's kind of happy, because two things. It's gonna be someone else around. But it's also sad because she knows that someone else is gonna be going through the exact same hell. And the torture that she's been going through.

Adam Cox: So Michelle is super well informed as well because Ariel has given her access to a TV. So she can see on the news that Amanda Barry has gone missing. She knows who this person is. She also knows that Ariel told her how he has a thing for blondes and Amanda Barry. So she puts two and two together, right?

Adam Cox: Ariel is such a monster. The thing is though, He was also unpredictable, especially towards Michelle. One minute, he would kind of act like he wanted to hang out with you and talk to you. I talk about normal things. And then the next thing he was just there to hurt you. 

Adam Cox: So the police are searching for at least Gina and Amanda. Remember they took Michelle off the missing kind of persons list. All they have is just one lead. Which they get just days after Amanda's abduction. Basically it's a phone call from her cell phone. And there is one call where it's just a hang up. And then another one where the man says, I'll bring her back in a few days.

Adam Cox: She's with me. And that's it. So the FBI tried to do something with this. And because they know which cell phone tower the call pinged from, they have a rough idea where the call was made. So they get an undercover van and they stake out in a car park close to where Michelle was last seen. And their equipment is monitoring for another call to come in.

Adam Cox: But Sadly no more calls come in and the thing is though eight days go by. She didn't have her phone charger with her. They weren't common at that time So it's not like she could get another phone charger. That phone is probably dead Yeah. 

Adam Cox: And so after eight days the FBI give up and they pull out what they didn't know is that the house Where they were being kept was less than a thousand feet away. So if, they , literally look across the street, there it is.

Adam Cox: That's cre that's weird, isn't it? That's, there's something ominous and scary and creepy about that. Yeah, right under your nose, all that was happening. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Gina's father was actually friends with Castro's neighbor and he would actually go over there occasionally and they would see Ariel and they would have beers together, chatting out in the garden. And Gina's father would talk about his missing daughter all the while. All the while, she's like a few feet away, stuck in the basement somewhere.

Kyle Risi: To this guy, telling him. Not knowing that her daughter, or she probably not knowing that her dad is just standing right outside. Yeah. Isn't that awful? That just makes it even worse. For years as well. Yeah, that's disgusting. 

Kyle Risi: So during the time when searches and vigils were taking place, this guy would show up and he would help out. He was donating money. He was even leading the prayer vigils that were taking place. And that motherfucker was Ariel Castro.

Kyle Risi: And people just thought that he was a nice guy around the neighborhood. there were suspects along the way. The first one was a guy called DJ, who was Amanda's boyfriend. And when he was asked, what do you think happened to Amanda? He said that he just didn't care what happened to her. And...

Kyle Risi: Harsh. Yeah, that is really harsh. And the only way they knew this was because they got one of his friends to kind of wear a wire and then ask him a bunch of questions. So the police search his car, and they do find some evidence of blood in the trunk, but it turns out that it's just chicken blood.

Kyle Risi: Which they think that he he picked up from the grocery store or something like that. There was also another man who would frequent the Burger King, where Amanda worked, he seemed to have an interest in her. And they checked him out, but yeah, none of that stuff went anywhere.

Kyle Risi: The only lead they had was that one phone call and that was it. And there was nothing they could do after eight days because mobile phones weren't that mainstream. Do you think maybe that's why they standardized chargers?

Adam Cox: There's probably a number of reasons. I don't know if a commercial element, so you can use them everywhere and stuff. Um, but maybe they're not as sophisticated, you know, with find my phone and everything else because even now, like, isn't there like a small amount of charge, even when your phone switches off to be able to do 

Kyle Risi: that? I know with my iPhone there is. In fact, they make it difficult to turn the bloody thing off. 

Adam Cox: Um, so yeah, the thought there's only one lead, usually there's a couple, but the fact there was only one. Yeah. It's really 

Kyle Risi: unlucky. Really unlucky.

Kyle Risi: So as we know, all three of the girls were raped in Castro. Of course, didn't wear any protection, so they would often fall pregnant, and in Michelle's case, this happens five times. What? And every time, he would beat and punch her in the stomach, hit her with a dumbbell, push her down the stairs, anything that he could do to cause a miscarriage.

Kyle Risi: Eventually, Amanda ends up getting pregnant and Castro says that he wants to keep this baby. And in Amanda, he believes, this is disgusting, he believes that he's found his wife. 

Adam Cox: God, that's ridiculous. 

Kyle Risi: And he tells her as much as well. So he treats her kind of a little bit differently to the other girls.

Kyle Risi: But he's still a brutal monster. Don't get me wrong. Like any kind of, a bit of kindness is nothing compared to what he's physically doing, but he thinks he honestly thinks that he can just take the baby around. To his relatives house and just show it off and he does and he tells them that it's his girlfriend's baby and Amanda does not Want to have this baby at all, for obvious reasons But she is forced to give birth to the baby in like a kid's plastic pool in the basement And Michelle is brought downstairs to help with the childbirth.

Kyle Risi: But when the baby is born, it's not able to breathe at all So Amanda has to do mouth to mouth on the baby and Kashera threatens her that if the baby dies, she will die. So Michelle manages to save the baby. 

Adam Cox: Wow, that is incredible these are young girls, right? Yeah. And they know how to deliver and resuscitate a child, a baby? 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's all Michelle. She's, she's slightly older than everyone else, but she knows how to take care of people. I think she's got like a wisdom in her, do you know what I mean? Like Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Obviously than the other girls.

Kyle Risi: She had a son. Yeah, of course she had a son, so she knows these things as well. But, but even still, that's, yeah, it's incredible. Usually 

Adam Cox: if you are going to hospital and you're giving birth, I don't think you're paying attention of what you need to do. Like, of all the things that go on to look after a baby, 

Kyle Risi: right? Yeah, exactly. And she does it. She gives it mouth to mouth, and the baby is born and they call her Jocelyn.

Kyle Risi: So as the years go on, there's now this little kid that's running around this house and Castro is being a little bit more lenient with the chains, especially with Amanda. After all, she's obviously Jocelyn's mother and she needs to take care of the kid. 

Kyle Risi: So he's eased up on the chains, but he threatens the girls constantly that he will shoot them if they try anything. So if they try to leave or anything, it works because years go by and there's never ever been a single attempt to break out. 

Adam Cox: Are they all living in the same room or do they have separate rooms?

Kyle Risi: He keeps them separate. He does keep them separate. Yeah, largely he keeps them separate. He doesn't like them hanging out together, especially hanging out with Michelle. I wonder why as well. I reckon she's just a firecracker. right?

Kyle Risi: Like she, she could like start a riot. I reckon so. I reckon so. She's tiny, but she's a force. So I I think she was maybe a little bit harder to crack. Possibly because of, I don't know, her past. I don't know.

Kyle Risi: He would set up these tests where he'll leave one of the doors unlocked and then he'll act like he's left the house. And then if they come out, he'll be standing there waiting. And then if they do come out, he'll beat the absolute shit out of them as punishment.

Kyle Risi: And the girls like really band together. If one of them has been punished, the other two will save the other one food. So they are a team, even though they're Separated to a degree. He tries his best to keep them unconnected.

Kyle Risi: Now Jocelyn, she's running around the house a lot more and it's getting more and more difficult to keep her concealed. One of the neighbours actually sees her walking around the backyard and he asked like, who is that? I saw like this little tiny toddler just walking around your back garden.

Kyle Risi: And he's like, yeah, it's my granddaughter. And he'll show like a photograph of Jocelyn to his daughters. And he'll say look, this is my girlfriend's daughter. But because of the strong family resemblance, the kids are like, are you sure that's not your kid?

Kyle Risi: Cause it looks just like him. It's like a mini walking, talking. Little Castro. She's adorable by all accounts. Yeah, 

Adam Cox: did he really have a girlfriend? No. So that's really funny that he's going to his kids and going, my girlfriend. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah. That is so messed up. It is really messed up, isn't it? I don't know how he figured he would get away with this. Is he 

Adam Cox: mentally okay? I mean, he's not, but as in is there something, was he diagnosed with anything? No, I don't think so.

Kyle Risi: So he is just a dick? I think he's just an absolute monster. Wow.

Kyle Risi: But this is not a monster story. No, it's a Bible. It's a survival story.

Kyle Risi: So like I said earlier on throughout this entire turmoil the girls are kept in separate rooms And they very rarely are let out of their retrospective rooms.

Kyle Risi: And Michelle He doesn't really want her out at all really like he might let her out if it's like Jocelyn's birthday and then he might never come downstairs and At the end of the party to maybe spend the last few minutes with them. But other than that, she's always chained up in her room.

Kyle Risi: And he's really cruel towards her. He often tells her that she's ugly and that no one would want her. And even tells her that that, none of her family tried to even look for her after she disappeared, which I think is just awful. It is so cruel. 

Kyle Risi: This is another example of how cruel it was. In the early days after Amanda was taken, he would let her listen to some of the voice messages that were left on her mobile phone.

Kyle Risi: But at the point when her mother was just about to speak, he would then just end the call, which is vile. There's just another way for him to torture them. 

Adam Cox: That is, uh, I hope he's rotting, or if not dead. 

Kyle Risi: So even though he allows them to watch TV and listen to the radio, he has one house rule, and that is no one is allowed to watch anything starring black people or listen to any music by any black artists on the radio.

Adam Cox: So to add to all this, he's racist. 

Kyle Risi: He's a big fat racist as well. Oh God. and if they did, particularly with Michelle, he would come in and just beat the shit out of her. So he was just a racist piece of shit. And the girls really suffered psychologically as well. 

Kyle Risi: They, they just couldn't work out like why this was happening to them and like why God hadn't stopped this. Or why even the police hadn't even broken down the door yet. Because they knew that the families were still looking for them. But the fact that they hadn't found them yet.

Kyle Risi: Because you grow up your whole life believing that justice will always prevail, right? But they've been in this situation for 10 years, and it's still going on and there's no sign that it's stopping. 

Adam Cox: I guess if there's no, signs or, evidence to suggest that he's... it's him, he's done such a good job in covering his tracks and doing what he's done, and probably there was less surveillance around then, at the time, less tech, so maybe it was easier to 

Kyle Risi: do that.

Kyle Risi: Same time, we're talking like 2003, 2004, this is what, like 2007, 8, 9 by now? 

Adam Cox: true, that's, yeah, good point actually, by this point you'd think it would have stepped up a gear. It's crazy, it 

Kyle Risi: just goes to show there's some parts of this world that, even in developed countries, where there aren't eyes.

Kyle Risi: Mm. On everything. Yeah,

Kyle Risi: they also like really questioned like whether or not they would make it just another month They were literally living month to month And there were times where Michelle would go without food for two weeks at a time especially when she was pregnant because that was just one of the Ways that he would ensure that she had a miscarriage by just not feeding her at one point Every single one of them considered taking their lives In the first six months, they just could not imagine surviving in that environment any longer, but they managed to endure for over a decade in captivity, which is just incredible.

Kyle Risi: And I think this is less, like I said, this is less of a story about a monster and more of a story about survival and the persistence of the human will to live. 

Adam Cox: So I guess for Amanda, she's got a child, right? and I'm guessing at this point she has connected or bonded with that child.

Adam Cox: Maybe not initially, but now has. So she has something to fight for, right? Wanting to get out maybe? Not saying that none of them did, but she wants to have a future for her child. What was driving the others? 

Kyle Risi: Well, it's exactly the same thing. It's Jocelyn. So it's ultimately Jocelyn. was the thing that reinvigorated the girls into continuing to survive, essentially.

Kyle Risi: So there's so many heartbreaking stories as well that they go through. obviously I'm not going to go through some of the most graphic ones because there's just no point. We know that they've obviously gone through hell. But, some of the stories that they've told as well, they've all relayed through the books that a lot of them wrote.

Kyle Risi: And the girls were allowed, while they were in captivity, to keep a diary for a while. Ariel brought home some journals that they could write in and he said you can write in whatever you like Just as long as you don't name any names essentially He even told Amanda at one point that she could write a letter home to a family but just before got sent She broke a house rule and he just handed the letter back and he said it's not going anywhere now So she had that one chance to kind of write home.

Adam Cox: I wonder if he would have gone through it though. I don't know. Do you reckon? It doesn't seem like the guy that's that. 

Kyle Risi: No. That would do that. Yeah, that's possible. And also like when those journals that they were keeping, like when they ran out of pages, they started writing on napkins from the fast food restaurants that they were given.

Kyle Risi: And for a while, Amanda would keep a record of every single time that she was attacked using an "x" within her book, because she was adamant that she was going to survive and she wanted him to be punished for every single act that he committed against her.

Kyle Risi: But eventually she just stopped keeping accounts because looking back over all the "x's" just started to hurt and she just couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, that's a heartbreaking when your 

Adam Cox: page is like filled with X's I imagine. Yeah, it must be like, you know What is this probably enough? Yeah, I don't need to count any more 

Kyle Risi: horrible And like I said, ultimately it was Jocelyn That was the thing that reinvigorated the girls into surviving and it's this little toddler that gave them that sense of hope Because there's just this innocent kid just running around and she's so happy to see everyone, you know what I mean?

Kyle Risi: And she really did have the run of the house because he wasn't exactly gonna chain her up at all. She would literally say to him like listen, mister You need to start unlocking some of these doors around here because I can't get to where I need to be So Jocelyn was the key to essentially ending all of this because he does he starts unlocking some of the doors a bit more and give them a bit more leniency and become a bit lax I guess with it.

Kyle Risi: Well I mean that's the thing Jocelyn is asking for these doors to be unlocked and whether or not he decided He would do this for the child or whether or not he just assumed that he had total control over the situation because it's been like, what, 10 years at this point and none of them have tried to escape 

Kyle Risi: And how old's Jocelyn at this point? So 

Adam Cox: she's around about six now. Six, okay, so she should be in school but not.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, she should be in school. She does go to school. Does she? Yeah, I'll talk to you about that in just a second.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, because they've been held captive for 10 years now. So he thinks that if they're gonna try to escape, they probably would have done it by now. So a while later, he tells Justin that he's going to his mum's house.

Kyle Risi: And he mistakenly leaves Amanda's door unlocked and she figures this out pretty quickly and she asks Jocelyn like, where is he? And she says he's gone to mum's house. Now with this information, she knows that he's not just hiding around the corner or downstairs waiting. For her to come out of the room and do a little test. so from experience of him visiting his mom in the past, she knows that he's probably going to be gone quite a long time. 

Kyle Risi: So this is May the 6th, 2013. It's about 6 PM and Amanda makes her way downstairs and she sees a neighbor on the other side of the street and she starts screaming out through the mail slot on the door.

Kyle Risi: and one of them, Charles Ramsey, notices the screaming and along with his friend Miguel, they hurry over to the front door. On the bottom half of the door is like a piece of flimsy sheet metal and it's fitted more to keep people in rather than keep people out, which means that you can easily kick through this piece of sheet metal. and he's able to bust kind of the bottom half of the door and Amanda crawls out and she just hugs him and Charles says, I knew something was wrong when a pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms.

Kyle Risi: And she was able to get to a neighbor's house with the help of Charles and Miguel and they called 911. And when the police show up, Amanda tells them about the other two girls that are in the house. And she's. That Castro is just going to come back at any moment and Michelle and Gina, they are beside themselves.

Kyle Risi: They have no idea what's going on. Remember they're locked up in their bedrooms upstairs or in down in the basement. And all they hear is banging on the front door and they think it's literally a home invasion or something. And they just lay low thinking that they're going to be shot or killed at any point because he's always threatened that he's.

Kyle Risi: It could happen. So it's not until the two police officers show up in the room that the girls are in that they realize that they're safe and they've finally been rescued. And Michelle is in a tragic state, Adam. they immediately work to get her to hospital because she's that badly battered.

Kyle Risi: And she's also severely underweight and she's got a serious... bacterial infection as well. So it's, Adam, it's so bad that they put her in hospice care because they think that she's only got a few days to live. Really? Can you imagine surviving 10 years held captive in that hell, only for them to say, we think you're going to die in the next few 

Adam Cox: days.

Adam Cox: That is, that, oh my god, that'd be, what would you be going through your mind at that point where you're like, I've done everything else to survive. 

Kyle Risi: It's crazy. She's not going to die though, because she is a 100 percent survivor. She has survived the other 10 years and and she's not done that for nothing. She's not going to die. So you can calm down.

Kyle Risi: So Michelle remembers like what she was doing just before she got abducted. And that was that she was fighting for her son, right? So that's what gave her strength to just keep going on and getting out of the hospice. When she did get better, she did hope that she could connect with her son, but social services told her that, like, he's been with the foster family for so long now that they consider him their son, and they don't advise you get involved that's horrible. It's horrible, isn't it? So they advise her to not visit because yeah, it would be something that he wouldn't be prepared for. The only thing that she asked for, though, are just some pictures of him. Throughout the years, I feel awful for Michelle. So awful. Her life, her backstory, and also everything that she went through, she was treated the worst.

Kyle Risi: How long was 

Adam Cox: she in the 

Kyle Risi: hospice for? So I think like three or four 

Adam Cox: weeks. Three or four weeks. Okay. And the fact that her, I guess all her vitals and signs and everything like that. Mm-Hmm. , which is not, not good. 

Kyle Risi: No. Bless her. Horrible.

Kyle Risi: Michelle said that while she survived being held captive for all these years, learning how to survive moving forward was the next hurdle. And they kept hearing over and over that like, you're rescued, like the nightmare is over, but to them, a whole new nightmare was now beginning because they had lost.

Kyle Risi: 10 years of their life. Because like when you're abducted, remember, like time stops for you completely. You stop learning, you stop growing psychologically. And they're now in their 20s but they haven't progressed past their teens or their early 20s in Michelle's case. Like they just haven't lived at all.

Kyle Risi: So for them, there's still these teenagers in like these older, more battered bodies, essentially, raped and abused. It's disgusting. It feels so bad for these kids.

Kyle Risi: And for Michelle, she isn't exactly walking out of 2207 Seymour to her loving family, right? She has to build everything from nothing. Again, all herself, all of herself. Michelle talks about how she watched an interview that her mother had given sharing these happy kind of memories and Michelle's response was like, who is she talking about? cause it's not me. Like I didn't do any of those things. And I mean, that's really tragic. So she's starting from nothing and she doesn't want anything to do with the family because she's already gone through hell. She's probably thinking to herself, I've gone through all this shit. This is it.

Kyle Risi: I'm not going back to an abusive family. Yeah, that is it now. And I don't blame her. You got to cut out the toxicity, right?

Kyle Risi: All the girls share the same sentiment that the thing that ultimately carried them through the final six years of captivity was that little girl Jocelyn. And they wanted to make sure that she had Childhood as they possibly could make it. And so Amanda would request that Ariel bring stuff back home for her, like coloring books, pens, and pencils.

Kyle Risi: And when Justin was around kind of school age, Amanda would say, okay, it's time to go to school. And they would walk around the living room, pretending to walk to school before then go into the area that they had set up. Where they were teacher, which I think is just so incredible that the small kid that was born under such tragic circumstances was the thing that gave them all that purpose to survive.

Kyle Risi: Because in this situation, when you think about it, surviving is a lot to ask of someone, right? And somehow they did it. They found that that strength to, to do it. And it was because of that girl, because without her, they probably would have just. Committed suicide, right? Yeah, because they all talked about how they considered it.

Kyle Risi: So do you want to find out what happened to Castro? 

Kyle Risi: I 

Adam Cox: mean, I feel like we have to not that I care In any way shape or form other than I hope that he got what he deserved 

Kyle Risi: So police tracked him down pretty quickly and he was with his brother And they pulled into a McDonald's and there was a cop on either side of the car demanding Castro's ID and the cop pulls out a gun and says, you guys got to get out of the car. 

Kyle Risi: So Castro had another brother who was asleep at home, at his place when the house was raided and they take all three of them to jail. So none of them are told. Why they've been arrested. Finally word got back to the three that they've been arrested for kidnapping and cashier's brothers were like what the fuck? 

Kyle Risi: One of his brothers thought that he'd been arrested for like an unpaid parking ticket, right? The other brother kind of had an idea that maybe it was Castro just based on the way that he was acting because he was just really quiet and then Castro turns around to him and says, yeah, you're never going to see me again.

Kyle Risi: Really? So he was like, okay, you've done something bad. 

Kyle Risi: Before the kidnapping Castro was having a lot of issues with his you.

Kyle Risi: then wife Grimelda, who had gone through years and years of abuse under his hand.

Kyle Risi: He would often lock her in the house. He would force her to wear clothes that covered up her entire body and she was never allowed to go anywhere or talk to anyone at all.

Kyle Risi: But after years of beating her up, her family decided that they were going to step in because it wasn't like Grimelda was going to do it herself, right? She wasn't going to take action against him on her own accord. So one day, her father and her brother shows up and they just beat the heck out of him, right?

Kyle Risi: And when he gets up, he's like, smiling, smugly, and he's like, yeah, let's, let's see what happens. Yeah. And you can just get that sense of like, what kind of a monster is, right? Yeah, yeah. She doesn't care. So then, one day at the hospital, Grimelda meets a security guard named Fernando Colón. Colón? Colón. Yeah, C O L O N.

Kyle Risi: Mr. Colón. Mr. Colón. Interesting. And he convinces her, like, just to leave. And so she does, she takes the kids, except for Angela, the eldest. And Grimelda ends up having a kid with Fernando. And, at some point, they get married. 

Kyle Risi: But this really pisses Casho off, and he starts accusing... Fernando of sexually abusing his daughters, which just starts this whole massive legal mess.

Kyle Risi: It gets sorted out in the end, and he's fine. But he stands his ground and he sticks with Grimelda. So he's just a complete and utter piece of shit. 

Kyle Risi: So Castro is charged, he goes to court, and he's found guilty. Although, throughout most of the trial, he maintains that he was innocent. And in his mind...

Kyle Risi: Exactly. In his mind, he believes that he wasn't as bad as the girls were saying that he was. And he genuinely tried to argue that there was harmony in the house. 

Adam Cox: Oh, shut up. What? Don't you dare try and say that you're misunderstood. You absolute... I'm not going to say the word. That's 

Kyle Risi: his defense. So he tries to play the sympathy card by saying that he was sexually molested by another boy growing up and that his mother was really mean to him.

Adam Cox: Oh, boo hoo.

Adam Cox: I'm not obviously saying the molestation. No. Terrible. But you know, depending on that, for what he did. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. Not gay. Come on does your mum being mean to you kind of hold up against Michelle's life? Yeah. After everything she's been through.

Kyle Risi: He also puts a lot of blame on the girls themselves. So during his interrogation video, which you guys must watch. he actually says, There were security cameras around, why did you not catch me? He was like, why did they get into the car? Why? It's their fault. Like, what were they wearing at the time?

Kyle Risi: Oh, they were asking for it. They're 

Adam Cox: asking for, they're asking to be kidnapped for 10 years. I swear to God. By wearing a slightly shorter skirt than I don't think that was the case. I mean, that's what I'm trying to say. Is he trying to make out that they were being That's 

Kyle Risi: exactly what he was trying to say. Too sexual. Yeah, that's exactly what he was trying to say. So the charges issued by a grand jury against Castro are 977 counts.

Kyle Risi: That's 512 counts for kidnapping. 446 counts for rape, seven counts for gross sexual imposition. Six counts for assault, three counts for child endangerment, two counts for aggravated murder, in which Castro is accused of intentionally causing the termination of a pregnancy and one counts of possessing criminal tools, 

Adam Cox: criminal tools.

Adam Cox: Uh, what about the, so you said 500 counts of kidnap? 

Kyle Risi: Yeah. I don't know, why, like. Every day that they're held, or every month that they're held, I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting how that How that's broken down. Yeah. Maybe there are all the instances where they try to leave and, I don't know.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. How do you go through all the instances, over a 10 

Adam Cox: year period? Or do you say like, one kidnapping usually lasts on average 90 days. So, just, I 

Kyle Risi: don't know. Maybe they calculate it in some way. Yeah, that's weird. But, on the first of August 2013, he's sentenced and given Life plus a thousand years good because of the miscarriages that he caused I mean they did consider the death penalty and I don't advocate for the death penalty at all But I mean, hey, of course you cause like six miscarriages I mean, I'm not for him a thousand years enough for me a thousand years is enough.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess so but yeah, but Ariel doesn't actually serve much of his sentence at all because a month into his sentence He hangs himself in his cell and the guards are supposed to be watching and checking on him every 30 minutes.

Kyle Risi: One of the most disturbing things about this is that he kept those girls locked away for over a decade in the way that he did. Yet, this jerk couldn't even go a month in captivity where everyone was treating him fairly, giving him food, treating with kind of humanity, and yet he couldn't handle it, yet he did that to all those girls.

Adam Cox: Yeah, well just think how much stronger and better people they are. Exactly. 

Kyle Risi: In Michelle's book she says the thing that made all of this easier for her to handle was that it was important for her that she outlived him.

Kyle Risi: And she did, she outlasted him, right? She was stronger than him. In fact, in the book, she talks about how she only ever referred to him as dude. But she said that after it was all finally over, the rescue, the court case, the sentencing and his death, she realized that I can use his name now. what's he going to do?

Kyle Risi: Is he going to come and get me? No. So she could finally use his name and she calls him Ariel Castro because he's got no power over her. And, uh, during the trial, the girls gave victim impact statements to tell him face to face, like how he had impacted them. And Amanda and Gina chose not to speak. Instead, they kind of like, their relatives spoke on their behalf, they read out a letter.

Kyle Risi: But Michelle was like, I need to speak, because it was important to her that it wasn't merely enough to survive and make it out of there. Only to have this monster trying to distort things in front of this jury and make out that he was a victim. She wanted to kind of look him in the face. And set the record straight, this girl for a four foot seven tiny girl is just a force to be reckoned with. 

Kyle Risi: She is so like, what's the, I don't know what the word is like. Formidable? She's a formidable girl. Yeah. 

Kyle Risi: So remember the day that Amanda went missing. So the reason Cassia's house was because. She wasn't talking to her mum, remember? So the last conversation that she had with her mother didn't end on a good note. Yeah. And her mother ended up dying in 2006 while Amanda was still in captivity.

Kyle Risi: And so not only did Kasher rob her of so much already, but he also took away her last moments with her mother. I don't even know what to say to that. Yeah. So like I said, each of the girls has written their own books. Check them out, support these girls.

Kyle Risi: Michelle changed her name. She's now Lily Rose Lee. And her book is called Finding Me. A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed. 

Kyle Risi: Amanda and Gina DeJesus, they wrote a book, Hope, A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland. And since then, Gina's gone on to help with law enforcement, with recovering missing children.

Kyle Risi: And it's part of supporting children when they're finally found and getting them rehabilitated. 

Kyle Risi: That's really nice And something that really resonated with me was that michelle said When asked like how did you get through it? and how are you not broken and the response was that If you already went through torture in your life, you can't be broken twice You can only survive 

Kyle Risi: And that is the story of The survival of Michelle Knight, Amanda Barry, and Gina DeJesus.

Kyle Risi: I 

Adam Cox: can't believe that. I can't believe this even happened. It was 

Kyle Risi: awful for 10 years. 

Adam Cox: And how come Michelle changed her name? I don't know, is it a fresh start? Does she want to be referred to as Michelle, or? 

Kyle Risi: I don't know, I just get the inkling that it makes sense that she changed her name. And do you know what?

Kyle Risi: It's an awesome name. Lily Rose Lee. That's nice. Yeah, so I guess it's just a fresh start, right? It symbolises a rebirth, almost. she can be whoever she wants. And I think she's like, she's in her thirties now. She looks great. they're all healthy. They've got their own lives. It must be awkward for Amanda, I guess. Having Jocelyn. Because, of course, that's a daughter, right? 

Adam Cox: Yeah, and the father. That's a, oh, who's my 

Kyle Risi: dad? Yeah, and I'm sure she has come to peace with it. And she sees it differently. But for someone who's very fresh to it, I would look at that and go, that, that's strange. But also at the same time, she's just a little girl, right?

Kyle Risi: She's innocent. And she was the thing that saved them all? Yeah. 

Adam Cox: I mean, that's, I think. If that was you, I'm trying to imagine if you learn out that that, you know, that was your father and stuff, because you couldn't hide that from her. Because if you just look up your name, people Google their name, don't they?

Adam Cox: And they would find all this news information. Um, but I guess knowing that actually you helped your mom survive and these other two women, maybe you'd have, I don't know, come to some sort of, um, understanding or peace with that. Yeah. Wow. That was an incredible survival story. 

Kyle Risi: Shall we do the outro? Yeah.

Kyle Risi: So we come to the end of another episode of the Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. If you found today's episode both fascinating and intriguing, then subscribe and leave us a review. Don't just stop there though, schedule your episodes to download automatically. As soon as they become available, we are on Instagram at the Compendium Podcast, so stop by and say hi or visit us at our home on the web@thecompendiumpodcast.com.

Kyle Risi: We release every Tuesday and until then, remember, not all monsters live under the bed. Sometimes they live at see more avenue. 

Kyle Risi: you later. 

Kyle Risi: See you.