The Cleveland Captive Teens Case

[Celine]

just when i thought the world would stop spinning.


http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/lo...-Berry-and-Gina-DeJesus-found-alive?hpt=hp_t2

Cleveland police: Missing teens Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus found alive, appear to be OK

CLEVELAND - Cleveland police said missing teens Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and a third woman were found in a west side house on Monday.

Hundreds of people gathered in the streets near 2207 Seymour Avenue in Cleveland, where the women were discovered. Cleveland police said Berry, DeJesus and Michelle Knight are alive, talking and appear to be OK.

“I heard screaming… And I see this girl going nuts trying to get outside,” said Charles, a neighbor who found the women. “I go on the porch and she said ‘Help me get out. I’ve been here a long time.’ I figure it was domestic violence dispute."

“She comes out with a little girl and says ‘Call 911, my name is Amanda Berry’… When she told me, it didn’t register.” He said he made the call and gave Berry the phone. When police arrived, officers asked him if he knew who he rescued.

A witness who spoke Spanish told NewsChannel5's Stephanie Ramirez that he helped break down the door. He said there was a child who was about 4 or 5 years old with Berry, as well as other children inside the house. He said he recognized Berry from posters.

Officers have a suspect in custody. There will be a media briefing Tuesday morning.

Berry was last seen in 2003 when she was called her sister to say she was getting a ride home from work at the Burger King on West 110th Street and Lorain Avenue. She was set to turn 17 the day after her disappearance. Her mother died of heart failure in 2006.

On April 2, 2004, 14-year-old DeJesus went missing while walking home from Wilbur Wright Middle School. She was last seen around West 105 Street and Lorain Avenue. Her mother, Nancy Ruiz, said she believed DeJesus was sold into human trafficking.

“I always said it from the beginning; she was sold to the highest bidder,” Ruiz said in April 2012.

The remaining families of both women went to MetroHealth Medical Center, where they will be reunited. FBI agents were also at the hospital Monday night as family and friends flocked to see the women.

"I am thankful that Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight have been found alive. We have many unanswered questions regarding this case and the investigation will be ongoing. Again, I am thankful that these three young ladies are found and alive," Mayor Frank Jackson said.

Last summer, there was a break in Berry case that turned out to be an inmate’s hoax. Robert Wolford, 26, told authorities that Berry’s body was in a vacant lot in Cleveland. Police searched at West 30th Street and Wade Avenue in July with backhoes, but nothing was found. Wolford was sentenced to four and half years in prison after pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, making a false report and making a false alarm.





there are some sick nut jobs in this world and it just will not stop.

 

[nfbs]

Sad story but that interview with the neighbor who saved them is really funny

 

[Ninja'd]

http://www.cleveland.com/brett/blog/index.ssf/2013/02/amanda_berrys_mother_louwana_m.html

Every few months she called.

She always wanted the impossible: Find Mandy.

She wanted me to do more. Write another story. Call the FBI. Get the TV cameras rolling.

“Please, honey,” she begged.

She always called me honey, though she was younger than I.

I never met anyone like Louwana Miller, whose daughter Amanda Berry vanished after her shift at Burger King on April 21, 2003. She had told her sister on a cell phone, “I’ve got a ride. I’ll call you back.” Then she vanished between Burger King and her home a few blocks away on West 111th.

Louwana lived in the upstairs of an old house. When I knocked from the porch, she hollered for me to come up.

“Shut the damn door,” she barked.

She wasn’t crying. She didn’t act the way moms of missing children do on TV, delicately wiping tears with folded tissues while whispering pleas for help.

Louwana was angry. She chain-smoked Marlboros. She didn’t trust the police, so she put her own phone number on the fliers.

She would cuss out the very people who tried to help her, then she would apologize and sob like a baby, tears rolling down her big, puffy cheeks.

When I was there, she was watching a psychic on Montel. “We need her,” Louwana hollered at the TV as a friend wrote down the number.

Before that psychic did her in, Louwana tried everything else.

She pestered the police and FBI for clues. She got people to knock on doors, staple fliers on telephone poles, hold candlelight vigils and prayer rallies.

She begged the media for more coverage, and we let her down.

She called me, angry, the day she saw the TV news offer a reward for a missing dog.

“What about my Mandy?” she bellowed. She called when CNN covered the woman missing in Aruba.

“How come she gets so much publicity?” she cried.

She told me she named Amanda from a Conway Twitty song, “Amanda, the light of my life.” She still bought Christmas presents for Amanda and sat on her bed listening to her music.

Louwana started every conversation angry, cried in the middle, and ended saying, “Thank you for doing whatever you can, honey.”

The last time we spoke, she demanded, “I want her on the news. She’s faded away from the whole world. It just kills me. This is killing me.” It finally did.

She got her wish to see psychic Sylvia Browne, who told her about a short, stocky Burger King customer in his 20s wearing a red fleece coat. The psychic said Mandy died on her birthday, that she didn’t suffer, that her black hooded jacket was in a Dumpster with DNA on it.

The psychic promised, “You’ll see her in heaven.” That was Louwana’s final hope.

Around Christmas I heard Louwana was in the hospital. It still shocked me when she died Thursday. I couldn’t help thinking of how she took the faded yellow ribbons off the front yard fence, washed them and put them on Mandy’s bed. How she cried, “No one cares.”

The truth is no one cared as much as she did. No one could. She was a mother facing a fate worse than death: not knowing.

Every time I called the FBI, special agent Bob Hawk, who has since retired, would tell me, “We are working on it every day. We haven’t given up.”

Louwana did.

She died of heart failure.

**** psychics

 

[AstroTurf]

madness
going to be another sex slave story I guess.

 

[LazyLion]

Screams to Neighbour Help Free Girls

Two women who disappeared as teenagers and were given up for dead, and a third who was 20 when abducted, were rescued Monday from a Cleveland, Ohio, neighbourhood after one of them escaped with the help of a neighbour.

Amanda Berry, who was 16 when she disappeared in 2003 on her way home from her job at a fast-food restaurant, managed to alert police while her captor, a 52-year-old man, was out of the house.

"I've been kidnapped and I've been missing for 10 years and I'm here, I'm free now," she said in an urgent voice to the 911 emergency operator, according to a recording released by police.

Anxious over the questions from the operator about what clothes her captor was wearing, she shouted, in frustration: "I don't know because he's not here right now and that's how I got away."

When the operator said police would be on their way as soon as a car was available, she cried with impatience and fear: "I need them now before he gets back!"

Three brothers have been arrested, including Ariel Castro, 52, the man who owned the house, said Ed Tomba, Cleveland's deputy police chief chief. The other brothers were 50 and 54 years old. The FBI - federal police - were searching the house, Tomba said.

According to news reports, Berry's captor also held Gina DeJesus, who disappeared at age 14 in 2004, and Michelle Knight, who disappeared in 2000 at age 20. Police freed the other two women when they raided the house, the reports said.

The women were allegedly held in an ordinary wood-frame house in a Hispanic neighbourhood of the northern Ohio city, less than a kilometre from where the families of Berry and DeJesus lived. Little was reported about Knight.

Vigils, photos, posters and regular local media coverage kept alive the cases of Berry and DeJesus in the public mind, so that when Berry grabbed the opportunity to yell for help, a neighbour responded.

Just last month, a local television station had done a 10-year-missing story about Berry. And two weeks ago, the families held a vigil in the neighbourhood, according to Cleveland City Council member Brian Cummins in an interview broadcast on CNN.

Charles Ramsey, who lived next door to the house, described how he had been eating his McDonald's lunch when he heard Berry's screams and saw her arm waving through a crack in the door. She was "going nuts trying to get outside," Ramsey told ABC NewsNet 5 in Cleveland.

He rushed to the front porch, but the door was barred, so he kicked it in. When Berry finally emerged, there was a 3-year-child with her, Ramsey said. He placed the call to 911, saying he was calling on behalf of Amanda Berry - then paused to tell the operator: "I thought she was dead."

Neighbours said they never noticed anything amiss in the house. Ramsey said there was "not a clue that there was anybody else in the house" when he shared backyard picnics with the captor. "I barbecued with the dude," Ramsey said.

After the rescue, her brother-in-law confirmed in an interview with 19 ActionNews that Berry had had a child while in captivity, and the family was looking forward to meeting her. A photo taken in the Metro Health hospital, where the four victims were taken, showed two adult women and a child, laughing and hugging each other.

Dr Gerald Maloney, an emergency room physician at Metro Health, told reporters that they all appeared to be "in fair condition" at the moment.

"This isn't the ending we usually hear to these stories, so we're very happy for them," Maloney said.

Celebrations broke out across the Ohio city over the news of the rescue.


Source : Sapa-dpa /pk
Date : 07 May 2013 09:12

 

[blunomore]

I suppose the captor drugged them for most of the time. I just wonder how, in 10 years, they never had an opportunity for escape.

 

[Celine]

I suppose the captor drugged them for most of the time. I just wonder how, in 10 years, they never had an opportunity for escape.

also wondered that blu. there were 3 of them who grew to adults. i can't help thinking that by then they could have all 3 over powered him. he couldn't have fought them all off if the 3 of them ganged up on him. unless he kept them all separately. it would also seem that they have children from him UGH!!!!

 

[hellfire]

I suppose the captor drugged them for most of the time. I just wonder how, in 10 years, they never had an opportunity for escape.

Locked in a cellar?

 

[The_Ogre]

also wondered that blu. there were 3 of them who grew to adults. i can't help thinking that by then they could have all 3 over powered him. he couldn't have fought them all off if the 3 of them ganged up on him. unless he kept them all separately. it would also seem that they have children from him UGH!!!!

Stockholm Syndrome perhaps

 

[Electron1]

Unbelievable how these psycopaths get away with this, and the neigbours know nothing.

 

[blunomore]

I see that there were 3 men (brothers, I think) involved in this. Maybe that is why they could never overpower them and flee. But how e.g. did they deal with never taking them out of the house .... one of them had a baby - never went to the hospital for the birth, nobody ever got ill? Odd.

 

[hellfire]

I see that there were 3 men (brothers, I think) involved in this. Maybe that is why they could never overpower them and flee. But how e.g. did they deal with never taking them out of the house .... one of them had a baby - never went to the hospital for the birth, nobody ever got ill? Odd.

home births, over the counter medicine. If they died, they would've gotten a backyard burial

 

[Ecco]

Sad story but that interview with the neighbor who saved them is really funny

Heard that, what a laugh

 

[Ecco]

Stockholm Syndrome perhaps

Has to be.

People can break out of jails (watched a show on Alcatraz on Dstv this weekend). Over 10 years, there must have been opportunities to escape.

 

[LazyLion]

Hope for Madeleine McCann's Parents

The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann said Tuesday they have been given hope by the discovery of three women kidnapped in the United States a decade ago.

"The discovery of these young women reaffirms our hope of finding Madeleine, which has never diminished," Kate and Gerry McCann said, a week after marking the sixth anniversary of their daughter's disappearance.

Madeleine was three when she vanished from the family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz on Portugal's south coast in May 2007, while her parents were at dinner.

The toddler's disappearance sparked an intense media frenzy and an international police investigation.

The couple said on Tuesday that the case of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight -- who all went missing in the US city of Cleveland a decade ago, and were found in a house on Monday -- was "further evidence that children are sometimes abducted and kept for long periods".

"So we ask the public to remain vigilant in the ongoing search for Madeleine," the McCanns said.

"Our thoughts are with the women in America and their families."

A potential new lead in the McCann case came to nothing earlier this year when DNA from a girl in New Zealand bearing striking resemblance to Madeleine proved that it was not her.


Source : Sapa-AFP /pd
Date : 07 May 2013 21:02

 

[Pixelatedzee]

Realized how negative the news had made me when I expected the article to mention the recovery of their body's. it's graeat that they alive and well

 

[Celine]

The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann said Tuesday they have been given hope by the discovery of three women kidnapped in the United States a decade ago.

"The discovery of these young women reaffirms our hope of finding Madeleine, which has never diminished," Kate and Gerry McCann said, a week after marking the sixth anniversary of their daughter's disappearance.

Madeleine was three when she vanished from the family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz on Portugal's south coast in May 2007, while her parents were at dinner.

The toddler's disappearance sparked an intense media frenzy and an international police investigation.

The couple said on Tuesday that the case of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight -- who all went missing in the US city of Cleveland a decade ago, and were found in a house on Monday -- was "further evidence that children are sometimes abducted and kept for long periods".

"So we ask the public to remain vigilant in the ongoing search for Madeleine," the McCanns said.

"Our thoughts are with the women in America and their families."

A potential new lead in the McCann case came to nothing earlier this year when DNA from a girl in New Zealand bearing striking resemblance to Madeleine proved that it was not her.


Source : Sapa-AFP /pd
Date : 07 May 2013 21:02

for me i feel the problem with this case is that little madelaine was so young when she was abducted, she may not remember much as she grows older.

 

[LazyLion]

Community Shudders at Long Captivity

Ten years after watching Amanda Berry walk out of work for the last time, Darrell Ford stood transfixed behind a US police barricade picturing the horrors she must have endured.

"For ten years -- what was he doing to her?" Ford asked Tuesday as FBI forensic experts scoured the house in Cleveland, Ohio where Berry and two other women were held captive for around a decade until Berry's dramatic escape.

"It's just crazy," he told AFP.

Like Berry, Ford was just a teenager when they worked together at a Burger King restaurant in the working class neighborhood. He was working the night she disappeared: April 21, 2003, the day before her 17th birthday.

"She was supposed to get a ride home," the slight young man said as his three year-old son played with their dog at his side.

"We thought she was dead the whole time."

While he is grateful Berry is alive, Ford said he's worried she will have a hard time recovering from her ordeal.

Police have released few details about how Berry and fellow captives Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight -- who went missing at different times --were treated during what must have been long and terrible years.

They have confirmed that Berry, now 27, has a six-year-old daughter, apparently born while she was in captivity.

DeJesus was just 14 when she vanished on her way home from school on April 2, 2004. Knight, who was 20 at the time of her disappearance, was last seen at a cousin's house on August 23, 2002, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Their families were overwhelmed by the longed-for but unexpected escape and the hordes of reporters and well-wishers who descended on their homes.

"I am begging, begging everyone just to support our family by not crowding us, give us air to breathe," DeJesus's aunt Sandra Ruiz told reporters.

"All three girls, God works in mysterious ways ... It's just unbelievable, unbelievable. These girls, these women are so strong, stronger than I am. And they all have a positive attitude."

The women were found in the home of Ariel Castro, 52, a school bus driver who has been arrested along with his brothers: Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50.

American and Puerto Rican flags hang from the porch of the modest two and a half storey white house with a red roof.

At least one window is boarded up, but that is not unusual on this low-income street, with several abandoned homes and a history of crime.

What stands out is the twisted metal where the bottom of the front door was pulled apart by neighbor Charles Ramsey after he heard Berry's cries for help.

Shocked residents told AFP they had no idea that the man who would sometimes grill food in his yard and share it with neighbors could have had such a grim secret locked away.

"It's like having a snake in the street," said Joe Torres, a stocky and heavily-tattooed 32-year-old cook.

"No one heard anything, anything," he said as he stood by his parents' home, the front lawn strewn with children's toys.

"I don't know where he had those girls. Maybe he kept them quiet?"

Ecstatic friends and relatives meanwhile poured in and out of the nearby DeJesus family home, where two huge signs declared: "Welcome home Gina!"

Police cordoned off the house to give the family privacy, but relatives could be seen hugging and sitting in the yard behind a wall of balloons that were tied to the fence.

Neighbors and well-wishers gathered outside the yellow police tape, and some were allowed to slip under briefly to leave stuffed toys under a missing poster tied to the fence with a faded picture of Gina before she was kidnapped.

"It's just a miracle. We're really glad they're all safe," said Jan Zagorski, 62, who drove over from a nearby suburb.

It was quieter outside Berry's sister's house, where the porch was filled with stuffed animals and signs declaring "Welcome home Amanda," and "We never lost hope, Mandy." It didn't look like anyone was home.

Amanda's missing poster was still tied to a tree with a yellow ribbon out front.

Lissa Ruiz, 13, brought a little brown bear to add to the pile outside. She went to school with Berry's niece, who had talked about how hard the disappearance was on the whole family.

The story made her worry about her own safety -- even in this middle class neighborhood -- and she understood why her mother tried to keep her close.

Ruiz said she was stunned when she heard Berry had been found alive after all this time.

"I started crying and was really happy for them, because nothing better could happen... Most of these stories don't have a happy ending," she said.


Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 08 May 2013 08:33

 

[Ninja'd]

http://fox8.com/2012/07/19/source-authorities-searching-for-amanda-berrys-remains/

Posted on: 8:28 am, July 19, 2012

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The search for Amanda Berry is over. For the past two days, excavating crews dug through an empty lot after receiving a tip from a convict who claimed he knew where the missing teen was buried.

Around 2:30 Friday afternoon, crews completed their search at a small lot on West 30th Street and Wade Avenue in Cleveland, but were not able to locate any remains.

Cleveland resident Pedro Castro said, “That’s a waste of money.”

“You’re dealing with a criminal. We obviously thought we had enough that we obtained a search warrant,” said Cleveland Police Chief Deputy Ed Tomba.

Cleveland Police 1st District Commander Thomas McCartney said the search proved to be frustrating.

 

[LazyLion]

Kidnap Survivors Offer Comments

Famous kidnapping survivors Jaycee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart have words of wisdom for the three women found this week in Cleveland years after their disappearance.

Dugard was abducted from a California bus stop in 1991 at age 11 and held captive for 18 years in a backyard, where she gave birth to two children conceived by rape. She made an oblique reference Tuesday to the Cleveland case as she accepted an award in Washington from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"What an amazing time to be talking about hope, with everything that's happening," she said in her brief remarks. She urged the hundreds of people at the annual awards gala not to give up on missing children. "Just urge yourself to care," she said.

The Cleveland women, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, went missing about a decade ago, when they were in their teens or early 20s. They were rescued Monday after Berry kicked out the bottom portion of a locked screen door and used a neighbor's telephone to call the emergency dispatcher. The owner of the home and his two brothers have been arrested, but no charges have been filed.

Dugard, in a statement released earlier through her publicist, said the women need a chance to heal and reconnect with the world. She said that the human spirit is resilient and that the case reaffirms that people should never give up hope.

Dugard's mother, Terry Probyn, said in Washington that she understood what the relatives of the Cleveland victims were going through.

"I feel the same relief and the same joy that I felt when Jaycee was returned to me safely after 18 hellish years," Probyn said. "I never doubted for one minute that I would someday be reunited with my daughter."

John Ryan, CEO of the center, praised the vigilance of investigators in Cleveland, saying they followed up on tips and never forgot about the missing women.

"There are other missing children out there that are only a phone call away from getting away from their predators," Ryan said. "I have every hope and confidence that this will lead to future recoveries."

Ryan said the three women would likely be honored by his group in the future. "I think they're going to be at the top of the list," he said.

In comments Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Smart said she was overjoyed to hear about the happy ending for the Cleveland women, who escaped Monday after being missing a decade.

She said the ordeal highlights the importance of the public staying alert and vigilant. She advised the women to focus on moving forward and let go of the past. Smart says it's also important for others to respect the privacy of those women as they recover from the decade-long ordeal.

Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom in Salt Lake City when she was 14. She was freed nine months later when she was found walking with her captor on a suburban street in March 2003.


Source : Sapa-AP /aw
Date : 08 May 2013 06:53