CLEVELAND – The man charged with kidnapping and raping three young women imprisoned in his Cleveland home for years is a "big bully" who apparently used chains and ropes to restrain his victims and let them outside just two times, to go into the garage, police said Wednesday as more details emerged about the accused's violent past.
Ariel Castro, 52, was to make his first court appearance Thursday morning, Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba said. He said Castro had waived his right against self-incrimination and had provided a detailed statement.
Later, Tomba described Ariel Castro as "the big bully" of his brothers, Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50, who appear to have known nothing about their sibling's secret life. "You didn't get into his house," Tomba added. "This guy, he ran the show. He … acted alone."
The brothers were to appear in court Thursday in connection with some misdemeanor warrants but could go free immediately afterward.
Officials refused to comment on some media accounts, including that there were multiple pregnancies among the women — Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus — during their captivity, that Berry gave birth in a plastic baby pool, and that Knight helped to deliver the infant as Castro threatened to kill her if the child died.
Cleveland's WKYC news quoted a police report as saying that the newborn stopped breathing, so Knight placed her mouth over the baby's and "breathed for her." Knight also told police that she became pregnant but was starved and repeatedly punched in the stomach until she miscarried, the report said.
Neither the women nor Berry's child was allowed to see a doctor, and officials said the women only recalled being let out of the house twice. They never were permitted off the property, and Tomba said hats and wigs found in the basement were used by the women when they went into the garage.
The image that neighbors had of Castro as a friendly man who enjoyed playing bass guitar was in sharp contrast to the portrait that emerged from court documents and from interviews. They painted a picture of an abusive and vindictive man who for years beat up the mother of his children and threatened to kill her, and who frightened her out of testifying to a grand jury.
Grimilda Figueroa, who had three daughters and one son with Castro between 1981 and 1990, said in court documents that in the years they were together, he twice broke her nose and some ribs, knocked out one of her teeth, and dislocated each of her shoulders.
The triple escape this week raised hopes among the families of other missing Cleveland women that Castro could help solve those cases. Among the missing is Ashley Summers, who was 14 when she disappeared in 2007 in the same area as the other abductions. Asked about Summers, Tomba said: "As of right now, we don't anticipate any other victims where he is the suspect."
