Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland (12 page)

When they listened to the message, at first they heard only muffled sounds, like the caller’s phone was in a purse or a pocket—as if someone had inadvertently “pocket dialed” them. Then they heard the voice of a young woman, sounding terrified, screaming, “Get away from me!”

Angie and Sam were so shaken that they called the police. When officers came to their house and listened to the message, they said it was probably a prank call.

“Didn’t a girl come up missing around here?” Angie asked them.

Gina DeJesus’s disappearance two weeks earlier had been covered extensively by the local news, and Angie’s sister Arlene had been the last person to see Gina. Angie wondered if Gina, or someone holding her, had called her.

“Does Gina DeJesus know your phone number?” the officer asked.

“No,” she said.

“Why would she be calling you?” the officer asked.

“I don’t know,” Angie said.

The officers called a detective to come out and listen to the tape. After making a recording of it, he asked Angie if Gina had ever been to her house. Angie said she didn’t know Gina, and that Gina would have had no way of knowing her phone number.

Brian Heffernan passed the one-minute, forty-nine-second tape on to the FBI, and Tim Kolonick brought it to Nancy’s house and played it for her. Nancy thought it was Gina’s voice.

The FBI checked Angie’s phone records and traced the call to a cell phone belonging to a woman, who had lent it to her boyfriend, Richard Rogers. They interviewed Rogers, a local roofer, and he said that he had been at a family party at the time with many young teens, including his two kids, who had been fooling around, dialing random numbers. They didn’t remember who they called or what they said.
*

April 2004: Suspects and Leads

Early in their investigation of Gina’s case the FBI focused on Fernando Colon, Arlene Castro’s stepfather, as a suspect.

When the two girls said their good-byes at the phone booth on the day Gina disappeared, Arlene crossed the street and walked directly to Westown Square, where Colon worked as a security guard, and he gave her a ride to their house on West 106th Street, only a few blocks away. The FBI figured that Colon would have needed no more than five minutes to drop Arlene off and then go back for Gina. Colon raised red flags for the FBI because he knew Gina, he carried a gun, and he had opportunity.

Five days after Gina had gone missing, the FBI picked up Colon for questioning. The FBI was familiar with Colon, as they had recently given him an award for helping them solve a bank robbery at Westown Square. While he was being questioned downtown, agents searched his car and his office, using Luminol to look for traces of blood, but they found nothing. Colon agreed to a lie-detector test, which he passed.

Colon and the FBI have starkly different memories of one aspect of his interrogation that day. Colon insists he told the agents that they were talking to the wrong man, and that they should turn their attention instead to Arlene’s biological father, Ariel Castro. He claims he informed them that Castro not only knew Gina but was a violent man who had been abusive to Arlene’s mother, Grimilda Figueroa. Kolonick and Torsney insist that Colon never mentioned Ariel Castro.

 • • • 

The FBI pulled police and court records listing sex offenders, parolees, and people with outstanding arrest warrants who lived in Gina’s and Amanda’s neighborhoods. Courts are often so backlogged that police can’t keep up with warrants issued for everything from assaults to traffic violations and Torsney started serving these outstanding warrants to get access to hundreds of homes to check for any signs of the missing girls. Sex offenders, those convicted of possessing child pornography, forcible rape or other crime involving a sex act, were a particular focus. Required by law to register their address, dozens were living in Amanda’s 44111 zip code and the FBI paid special attention to them, because sex offenders often repeat their crimes and are frequently linked to missing-children cases.

 • • • 

When the kids at Wilbur Wright reported seeing a suspicious Hispanic man driving a white car, it immediately reminded police of Amanda’s boyfriend, DJ Diaz. They had been keeping a close eye on DJ for the past year, but had never found any evidence linking him to Amanda’s case.

On Saturday, eight days after Gina’s disappearance, police spotted him driving a stolen car, arrested him, and got a search warrant for his house. They found plenty of marijuana but nothing to suggest that he was abducting girls.

 • • • 

Three weeks after Gina went missing, the FBI brought Arlene Castro in to be hypnotized.

Arlene, distraught about her friend’s disappearance, was eager to help police in any way she could. Investigators wanted to see if hypnosis could help her remember any detail—a car, a person, anything that she hadn’t already mentioned.

Heffernan and Kolonick sat with Arlene’s mother, Nilda Figueroa, during the session, which was conducted by a psychologist hired by the FBI. Arlene, who was thirteen, recounted events exactly as she had told police in her statement. There was nothing more.

 • • • 

In early May 2004, Torsney stood on Lorain Avenue near where Gina was taken and where Amanda had disappeared the year before and wondered if a serial killer was at work on this stretch of road. He and Kolonick feared that a careful killer had taken the two girls, then dropped their bodies in some Dumpster that had been carted off to a landfill.

Both men knew that the odds were against Amanda still being alive a year after her disappearance. But it was possible, they kept telling themselves. They spent a lot of time with Gina’s and Amanda’s families and they badly wanted to solve their cases.

One May afternoon, Torsney stared up at the apartment windows overlooking Lorain and had an idea. He climbed the stairs of one of the buildings on the street and knocked on a door. The man who answered was clearly drunk, but his apartment had a perfect panoramic view of Lorain Avenue.

Torsney proposed a deal: The FBI would set up video surveillance gear in the man’s apartment for a few weeks, and they would pay him for his trouble. He happily agreed.

FBI technicians positioned thousands of dollars’ worth of video cameras in the space, which recorded every person and car that passed on Lorain. Agents pored over the hours of footage but didn’t find anything useful.

The surveillance continued for several weeks. Then one day when an FBI agent came to put in a new set of blank tapes, he discovered that all the expensive gear was gone. The man who lived there said it had been stolen by burglars.

May 2004: Friends

Gina

It’s May 7. I know that because they mentioned the date on TV, and that means I’ve been here a month and five days. I’m on the news all the time and I keep waiting for the cops to break down the door and rescue me. Where are they?

He keeps asking if I’m a virgin.

“Of course I am. I’m only fourteen.”

“When we have sex,” he tells me, “I’m going to get, like, a hundred points, because you’re a virgin.”

When we have sex
. His words ring in my ears, and I’m scared he’s going to rape me. A hundred points? What is he talking about?

I start talking about my mom and dad, hoping he’ll feel guilty because he knows them.

“If I knew you were Felix’s daughter, I would have left you alone,” he replies.

Why is he claiming that he didn’t know who I was? When he was stalking me, he saw me walk into my house. He knew I was Arlene’s friend and saw me with her just before he took me. Does he just like to lie?

We watch TV for a while until he says, “Let’s go talk in the living room.”

I never know what he’s thinking. Why do we have to talk in the living room? But I do what he says because I have no choice. He says he’ll put me back in the basement if I don’t obey him.

I sit down on the couch.

He stands in front of me and starts to take off his clothes.

“What are you doing?” I ask, terrified.

“Just shut up and take your clothes off.”

“No!” I shout, but he’s on top of me in a second, tugging at the sweatpants and T-shirt he makes me wear. And then he rapes me.

He’s so much bigger than I am and hurts me horribly as he slams against me. He seems angry, like he wants to hurt me as much as he can. I’m screaming and crying and beating him back, but it’s useless.

I’m crying and bleeding. I’ve been terrified he would do this. But having this old pig on top of me was even more horrible than I’d imagined. He just took something I’ll never get back. I want to die. I try to cover myself with my clothes.

“We gotta celebrate!” he says, standing up and pulling his pants back on. “That was your first time!”

He goes to the kitchen and returns with a bottle of red wine and two glasses, then pours one for each of us.

“Now you’ll never forget me,” he says. “I was your first, and you never forget your first.”

I can’t look at him.

He makes me take a drink. I have never had wine before, and it tastes awful.

 • • • 

Now that he’s started raping me, he can’t stop.

It’s three or four times every day.

Day after day it’s the same: He comes in, takes off his clothes, and climbs on me. He’s so hairy everywhere, even his butt. He’s the most disgusting man I can imagine.

He makes me look at him and tell him all this ridiculous stuff.
“I love it.” “I want it.” “You’re so sexy.”
If I don’t say it, he yells at me and makes it hurt more.

He doesn’t even unchain me.

 • • • 

“Do you want a friend?” he asks one day.

He knows I do. I’m desperately lonely and I have nobody to talk to but him. I’ve told him how much I miss my parents, my brother and sister, my cousins and friends. I have been here for over a month.

“I can go kidnap your friend Chrissy to keep you company,” he says.

“No!” I scream. I told him once that I missed Chrissy, and I should never have mentioned her name.

“Well, if you help me clean up, I’ll bring one of the other girls here to talk to you,” he says. “But only if you do what I tell you to.”

I’m almost always alone. He knows how sad I am, so he’s started giving me cigarettes, a lot of them. It feels weird to smoke so much, since I got grounded for sneaking just one cigarette at home. Now I’m going through a pack every other day because I have nothing else to do.

He gives me alcohol, too. I can’t stand the taste of wine or beer, but Mike’s Hard Lemonade is okay.

I wonder how the other girls are dealing with him. He says Amanda doesn’t like to talk to anyone and keeps to herself. A couple of times Michelle and I have both been downstairs together, but he didn’t let us talk, except to say hello.

Now he tells me that he’s going to take me over to Michelle’s room. But he has rules, like always. “You can talk to her, but you can’t tell her your real name,” he says. “Tell her you’re Arlene.”

“I look older than Arlene,” I remind him. “She’s only thirteen, and I’m fourteen. I’ll say I’m your daughter Emily.”

I don’t want to do every little thing he says. If he is going to make me pretend I’m somebody else, at least I can pick who it is.

“All right, I don’t care,” he says.

He unlocks me from the radiator but leaves the chain around my stomach, then walks me to Michelle’s room down the hallway. She is sitting on her bed, but I can see her chain sticking out from under the blanket.

“My daughter wants to say hi,” he tells her.

“I’m Emily,” I say.

She looks at me curiously and says, “I’m Michelle Knight.”

That’s the first time I’ve heard her full name. I’m dying to talk to her more. I wonder how she got here. I wonder if he treats her as badly as he treats me.

But he’s standing right there, so we talk about nothing much, just TV and music.

“I like to do people’s hair,” I say. “I could do yours sometime if you want.”

“That would be nice,” she says, smiling.

We try to talk more but he cuts us off, snapping, “That’s enough.”

“Nice talking to you,” I tell her.

 • • • 

A couple of days later, he tells me I can come downstairs and fix Michelle’s hair.

“You can use the bathroom. There’s a mirror in there.”

I’m happy to have something to do. I am learning to read his moods and right now, thank God, he seems to be in a good one. He’s not yelling that I’m “good for nothing” and calling me mean names. When that happens I know not to talk to him, or even look at him. But when he’s in a good mood, I can get favors, like the other day when I asked for an empty cardboard box to draw on.

“I need some rubber bands,” I tell him as we go into the bathroom. He must have some in all his piles of junk. He doesn’t throw anything away. There are rows of big plastic pop bottles filled with water sitting in the closets and the hall. He says they’ll be handy if there’s ever a fire. That makes me wonder: What would happen to us if the house caught fire and we were locked in our rooms?

I don’t want to push my luck, but I also ask: “I see you have some hair gel. Can I use a little bit?”

“Sure,” he says.

Why is he being nice today?

I bring a kitchen chair into the bathroom, and Michelle sits down. I ask her how she’d like her hair.

“I’m going to be right here in the kitchen,” he warns us, “and I can hear everything.”

I start styling her hair, and we talk about music and clothes. He ducks in, says Michelle’s hair looks good, and then goes into the living room. I lean over and whisper in her ear, “I’m not really Emily. I’m Gina DeJesus.”

“I know who you are,” she whispers back. “I’ve seen you on TV.”

He walks back into the kitchen, and we go back to talking about hair.

May 23, 2004:
America’s Most Wanted

Gina

“You want to see your family on TV?”

“Of course I do!” I tell him.

“Amanda recorded
America’s Most Wanted
, and your family is on it. Let’s go watch.”

The guy who kidnapped me wants me to watch a TV show about my kidnapping! He unchains me, and we walk into Amanda’s room, directly across the hallway. I have seen her a couple of times, but we haven’t talked. One time our doors were open at the same time, and we waved to each other, but that was it.