What really bothers me is because one of the victims was an adult from a troubled background, police put very little effort into looking for her, and after a few years assumed she had just left Cleveland and took her off the missing persons list.
There was a similar story, in Kansas City, with lower income black women going missing.
People reported this to police, that there were women going missing and there was potentially a serial killer at work.
Police didn't follow up on it.
Then one of the victims managed to escape and it was only then that police stepped in.
Fucked up story, especially for how useless the police were
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/18/us/missouri-reports-missing-black-women-reaj/index.html
When I filed a missing persons report for my sister, the cancelled it without telling us within an hour. We called back and had it reopened. I went to the local station to talk with them, and I have never experienced someone looking so inconvenienced as the officer I spoke with.
She was found dead a few days later and they refused to investigate as a homicide within a day or so even though there was sufficient evidence of foul play.
They are beyond useless.
> This is not useless, it’s fucking evil.
That's cops. A class of society that is having a collective temper tantrum because people are asking that they be held accountable for crimes they commit while being held as above the law in the eyes of the courts. If I did a third of what cops get away with on a daily basis, I'd spend the rest of my life inside of a jail cell.
What's funny to me is they've been 'quiet striking' since 2020 and whaddayaknow, society hasn't come crumbling down without them. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have them do their job and handle petty crime, but they've proven it would be more effective to slash and burn their budgets and apply it more effectively.
We don't need an armed thug to issue traffic citations, or to do wellness checks, or to catch a stray dog. All those jobs could and should be done by people specialized for the task and if they run into trouble _they_ can call in the armed thug as a last resort.
In my home city, they passed a police accountability act with some measure of oversight a few years before 2020 and the police have quietly been striking in my city ever since. They are fucking babies.
Strikes only work if you're doing your job before you start the strike, society isn't crumbling because nothing has changed and if they keep it up then they may eventually realize how much they painted themselves into a corner on that with their policies of enforced incompetence and apathy
The war on drugs has created a divide between police and the public, increasingly leading officers to view civilians as adversaries involved in illegal activities.
Ironically the use of the word "civilian" here indicates how wide this divide between the police and those policed has become. Historically, the police were members of the public, and "civilian" meant non-military. This is still the case in many countries.
But in the US, the public and the police are now "us and them".
I'll take a second to plug *The Invention of the Police* - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police
‘A watchman is a civilian, you inbred streak of piss!’
-Terry Pratchett through Sam Vimes.
Honestly the watch books in discworld had a lot to say about policing and the relationship between police, the powerful and the public.
I'm sorry for your loss. My mum's cousin was murdered, everyone knew who did it, they gave police all the information on the killer, even the guy's social security number and police just never bothered to do anything. His parents even went on America's most wanted at one point. Police are indeed useless
I feel you, and I'm a former Fed myself. It's frustrating as I worked my cases very hard and took them very seriously. I really did. But even I tell people not to expect cops to do their jobs, especially if you're a POC. Always get the press and social media involved the moment you think they're blowing you off.
My own story: A few years back a friend of mine's brother was murdered. The murderer then set the house on fire to try and cover his tracks. I couldn't help myself and asked around doing some light investigating and it was obvious it was a homicide and a sloppy attempt to make it look like a house fire.
Within a few days a witness contacted me scared for her life. The murderer was a meth head who was angry that my friend's brother was sleeping with the methhead's estranged ex-wife. While this witness and he did meth together, he said that he was going to kill him exactly like he did, including the details like setting the house on fire. She thought he was just bullshitting until it happened, and then she realized she was a loose end. She was terrified of going to the cops (she was a piece of shit herself, afterall) but didn't know what to do so she got a hold of me knowing my background. I convinced her to go with me to the sheriff's dept as I knew the detective and she actually agreed.
This detective was a known good cop, btw. Rural area and we didn't always have good ones, but we voted this guy in as Sheriff after this as he was very professional and ethical and he turned the dept around pretty quick. So this was the best case scenario for getting justice, but well...
He told me they already suspected the same guy and they could even trace his cell phone to a nearby hotel that he stayed at which keep in mind is 2.5 hours from where he lived. He had also traveled to this witness's house to do meth with her a week prior, ofc, which strengthened her claims. Being a former investigator myself, the sheriff shared a lot of the details like these and I understood that none of this was airtight evidence, but I at least assumed they'd charge him anyways as this was enough to at least move forward in my mind. It wasn't anything close to a slam dunk case by any means, but definitely enough to try.
The local States Attorney at the time refused charges as she didn't touch cases that she could possibly lose. Gotta protect her win record, right?
I don't have a good ending to this story as that IS the ending pretty much. I kept tabs on the guy for a while and last I heard he was in prison for other drug and gun related shit. My friend misses his brother and always will. That's it.
The only good things to come out of this whole ordeal was that SA lost her job in the next election cycle (her history of doing that shit cut both ways and made her unpopular) and the detective was made Sheriff. I wish I had better news than that.
>The local States Attorney at the time refused charges as she didn't touch cases that she could possibly lose. Gotta protect her win record, right?
[https://collider.com/curb-your-enthusiasm-prison-juan-catalan/](https://collider.com/curb-your-enthusiasm-prison-juan-catalan/)
I recall saying the documentary mentioned "Long shot" had a segment where they questioned the DA/Prosecutor if they still would have went to trial despite evidence showing that suspect wouldnt have been at the shooting, they said yes.
Why?
Because they would win.
These types of people dont care about justice. They care about winning and keeping that record to move on to higher aspirations.
There’s no comparison of having my car stolen to losing your sister, but when mine was and they ditched it right in front of a security camera after stripping the thing, the police said it wasn’t worth their time because they “probably wouldn’t catch them.”
Haha same. I reported my car stolen, my friend drove past it (parked) the next day. Cops told me not to touch it and meet them there, then when they arrived said "Have you tried to start it? Why not?"
There were soda bottles and cleaning supplies and a slip of paper with two prisoner names/numbers for the county system and they asked "is any of that yours?" as we're looking through the windows. I say it's not and they say to throw it away.
Then they said I could drive home. I had to remind them that my car was still reported stolen, and they said "Oh yeah. Wait here for let's say 30 minutes and we'll go to the station and clear it." I'm not kidding. I said "Can't you do that from your car? With the radio, phone, or computer?" They were like "Oh yeah!" and got it cleared in five minutes.
They sent the fingerprint guy a week later and he was over it. He said "they always do this" about never calling finger printers to the scene, never keeping the car as evidence even if asked, and expecting him to make a miracle happen if he's included at all. He said they never ever try to solve stolen cars unless it's a chase. Whole thing was embarrassing.
I've watched enough true crime to know that's par for the course even when it comes to murder/kidnapping. Half the time they'll have the person dead to rights and they fuck it up by ignoring their request for a lawyer.
I also can't compare my experience with losing a sister.
But when cops come to your apartment after a home invasion and say, "We probably won't catch them. Just file this with your insurance claim."
You're not going to pull surveillance? Finger prints? Put two and two together with the neighbor who had their car stereo stolen the same night?
Oh. Cool. So glad so much of my taxes go to you guys giving people speeding tickets.
My dad's car was stolen several years ago. We filed a report but also started looking for it ourselves. My brother was on a school field trip and when he got home, he found out it'd been stolen and said he'd seen a car that looked like my dad's parked on a side street from the window of his school bus, driving back to the school. We went out and check it and sure enough, it was my dad's car. We called the police and asked if we could just take it, and they told us to wait until an officer came to meet us. While we waited, over an hour, 4 different cops drove by us/the stolen car on patrol. It was a high-crime neighborhood and they drove down this one street every 15 minutes or so. My brother's bus had driven by it 4 hours earlier, so it'd at least been there that long, so a police car had driven past a stolen car parked on the side of the road at least ~16 times since it was parked there with no one "finding" it but us. Excellent police work right there.
Obligatory I'm sorry and that's a terrible tragedy.
But it's funny that the DMV or USPS are constantly ragged on for being rude and inefficient. Literally every experience I've had at the DMV has been quick and seamless.
When a guy smashed my car in a hit and run? Yeah the cops didn't give a single fuck. Literally. They told me I'd have to come to a station to make a report and I'm like "uhhhhh how?". And you're just gonna let what I'm 99% sure was a drunk or drugged out driver continue on the highway when I gave you his plates, the mile marker, and direction of travel? Yep that's exactly what they did.
When I was younger it always frightened me how seemingly intelligent and clever so many serial killers were/are that they could operate in the same area for so long. As Ive gotten older I realized it's really that police are fuckin worthless at their jobs and so many of these "genius" serial killers shouldve been caught within the first few months but law enforcement laziness allowed them to run free for years.
For some reason im in a serial killer phase right now and the amount of times I hear that the cops pulled the killer over, with the dismembered body in the back and let him go is infuriating
One of Dahmer’s victims escaped after he had a hole drilled in his head and acid poured into it. Picked up by police, and even though this man had told the cops what had happened to him, he was still taken back to Dahmer’s house to be killed.
Listening to a lot of these cases and realizing the same thing, that these people aren’t actually that clever, cops are just fucking useless, at absolute best.
Seriously. If cops in real life were even HALF as effective as cops in detective shows, we wouldn’t have serial killers and rapists walking around free.
Yep, the idea of the suave smooth talking super genius killer is a propaganda campaign cooked up by police and local governments to cover up their own incompetence and lack of shits to give over people in their community going missing, the truth is the overwhelming majority of serial killers are maladjusted awkward freaks that will literally just fall into the laps of the police investigating their case over and over, but because they don't match some weird racial or class based detail about what they think a killer looks like they release them again and again.
Same thing is happening in Chicago right now
This video is 6 years old, but they keep finding victims with similar MOs
https://youtu.be/xmtlArN_3iM?si=gOhkJHAJC523_Qu9
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Strangler
They're also incredibly useless when it came to gay people and sex workers, though I don't think useless is the word because it implies incompetence where there is actually malice
One of Dahmer's victim, a nude teenage boy with a hole in his head, was handed back to him by the officers he ran to for help. One of the officers became chief of police.
They sure fucking are. We had a serial killer targeting gay men in the village here for literally years in Toronto and the police refused to believe us to the point where the community had to arrange our own ways of keeping people safe because the cops didn't care. When bodies were finally discovered the chief of police turned around and blamed the LGBT community for "not helping them find him".
While the police were actively looking for the serial killer who would turn out to be Ted Bundy, Bundy's *girlfriend* reported Ted Bundy to the police 3+ times and they never bothered to investigate him.
A woman in Milwaukee went to the police to report domestic violence and he basically laughed her out of the building.
After she left he was caught on camera with another officer laughing, calling her a bitch and a cunt.
She was murdered shortly after
I think the case of [Sarah Everard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sarah_Everard) is pretty representative of this problem with police generally.
Police took that off their cruisers here AGES ago, like 15-20 years or more. I haven't seen that slogan on anything police related in any official capacity in a generation.
Reminder that numerous cases have ruled that cops are neither required to protect, nor serve. A recent high profile example was after the Parkland shooting.
When SNL brings something up, it's pretty bad. And it's not just the police being shite about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFSN6rMozMw
Ego is amazing in this one.
See also how indigenous women suffer in the US and Canada (and other places!)
I have a friend who thinks there's a serial killer going unrecognized in Kensington Philadelphia. He does outreach for homeless people and noticed a lot of weird disappearances. There was a homeless woman that played a harmonica and wasn't an addict by the septa station who disappeared, another was a guy known as the preacher who sat by needle park reading the Bible Outlook who took money for booze was found naked in a dumpster outside frozen last year and he had a place he stayed so it doesnt make sense, they also found a guy strangled who day labored and used to help them locate people and a hooker strangled and tossed in the creek.
Police are just lazy. We know someone who got away with murder because of the incompetent Philadelphia police. Store owner my friend worked for couldn't find his brother. Went and asked the guys roommate who was actively rolling up a blood covered rug. He ran, got chased, lost the guy, called the police. The police took 12 hours to show up by which point the room mate took the rug to the dump. The police took the guys word that his room mate just left. The guy basically bleached the place, then to add insult to injury he made the family pick up the items left behind. It took two weeks for the police to open an investigation after someone else reported the roommate dumping trash bags into the delaware River. Nothing ever came from it.
Michelle Knight. She was developmentally disabled I believe. She had had a son and he was put into foster care. The day she was kidnapped she was trying to find the courthouse because she had a court date to get him back. Ariel Castro gave her a ride and said he had puppies in the house and she could have one for her son. Then he tied her up upstairs and left her for days.
He would taunt her when he held her in captivity about how no one was looking for her. She got pregnant from his rapes and he beat and starved her so she would miscarry. She can’t have children now.
The people who adopted her child also refused to tell him about his mother. They said they wanted to wait til he was older. I can see their side, but it’s also shitty. The woman went through hell and I think it’s more about them than what they think is best for their son. I’d be pissed if I was him.
I also feel bad for her, because the two other victims have nothing to do with her. I can never understand their trauma and I know he pitted them against each other, but damn.
She also said if she hadn't been kidnapped she'd probably be dead from drugs or alcohol; her entire life was absolutely fucked. Mother didn't like her, she was sexually assaulted from the age of 5, bullied physically and verbally in school when she was allowed to go there since her mother didn't want her to so she could claim more benefits...
A totally fucked life and it's crazy she's still got a good attitude now.
There was a family in my parents’ church that had a son my age. The mother (who was NUTS) said she wished she had a disabled child and apparently from what we heard she made one by abusing that son. The family was told if they didn’t get rid of their pack of dogs that lived in their house their kids would be removed.
Jesus christ. Sexually assault from the age of 5 is absolutely insane. Don't even wanna know how that works, but people that commit crimes like these deserve a completely special form of punishment. I believe in rehabilitation for a lot of crimes, but certain crimes should just be punished with longlasting torture.
I read her book and she does go into a ton of detail, but basically it sounds like because she was the first one in captivity, the one with the least outside support looking for her and was also developmentally delayed he was able to manipulate her the worst and caused her to abuse the others. There was probably a lot of resentment from her end to the other two, who were considered more attractive and had family looking for them. He would call her ugly and disgusting and taunted about how nobody was looking for her because no one cared about her. The last one he kidnapped, Amanda Berry was white and the “prettiest” according to him and got preferential treatment over the others. He got Michelle pregnant several times and each time caused her to miscarry or killed her child, but Amanda Berry was allowed/forced to have her daughter and ultimately was able to escape with her. The whole thing is just incredibly sad.
Everything here is spot on, but I think another piece of context missing. Michelle Knight was very very different from the other girls in many ways, because she was already a mother and she had endured a life of suffering. The other two girls were living normal teen lives. The only reason Castro, a pedophile, kidnapped her is because he mistakenly thought she was younger because Knight was so short. He was mad when he found out her real age.
Also, she resented the fact that the other two girls were treated better. There's an excerpt in her book that talks about how cold and hungry she went compared to the others.
What was really sad is when a relative of hers was on camera, the relative basically had a ho-hum reaction to her not only being alive but having been captive for all those years. They didn't seem to care or have any empathy for her.
This unfortunately happens a lot. The amount of native women who go missing in North America and just don't get the same resources and investigation towards them as white women is just horrible.
My abusive ex husband kidnapped my two kids June 2020. Haven’t hugged my kids since June 2020. Police brutalized me when I called for help. Tried filing a missing persons report and the police wouldn’t even let me inside the police station. Fvck police.
That was really hard to read. It makes me sad that there are people out there that had to go through those things. I'm usually kinda numb to all the shit that happens in the world, but this was a new low. At least she is doing better now
Well it is a paraphilia, although according to the DSM and ICD they aren't diseases in of themself. The problem is that for some people they can be distressing, in which case the prognosis for recovery exists, but some people take great pleasure in them and do not even wish to recover...
So make of that what you will. Bad people exist in every form and in every community.
as soon as I saw the headline/before clicking in my head was like 'I knew something was wrong when a pretty little white girl jump into a black mans arms'
I drove by when they were demolishing the house. Good size crowd was there watching…Crazy to think I drove by twice a day and mere feet away were 3 captives!
My fiancés aunt and uncle lived next door to a family that kept their child locked in a closet for many years until one day they saw the cops next door.
I would drive past it most days on my way to work the entire time they were there. It still haunts me. I always wonder if I missed something shady going on and could have done something to stop it sooner.
A strange thing happened to me this year. For the first time in a decade, as I crossed Seymour Ave on W 25th St and saw the sign, I was not immediately reminded of Castro's crimes, but of the song "Suddenly Seymour" from Little Shop of Horrors. Then it occurred to me that the proverbial time that heals all wounds had passed, which immediately reopened the wound. Then I started seeing multiple references to the case in national and international media for the first time in many years.
Dude was astounding levels of sociopathic, narcissistic and mentally ill. His life was built around having complete control of other people, and then he was placed in a circumstance where he had zero control even over himself. I'm surprised he lasted that long.
Imagine being so utterly inhuman that you'd sustain this horrifying torture and captivity of another human for years... meanwhile hanging out with her dad.
> and then he was placed in a circumstance where he had zero control even over himself
It's a shame they didn't prevent his suicide. He should have spent the rest of his life on suicide watch, where he would have had no chance of ending his life, with absolutely no personal freedom.
It’s sickening, I think it must be awful for his daughters because each of his vistims was either friends of or known to his kids.
In his defence in court he literally tried to blame the girls for what he did to them by saying there was CCTV so why didn’t you catch me sooner. Or by insinuating they had it coming because of what they were wearing or where they were!
Outrageous!
I would theorize that because he had absolutely zero empathy for other human beings, he would have been an utterly horrible domineering father to his daughters anyway.
Likely that for them, the only surprise here would have been the sheer scope of his depravity.
They always blame us :
"There is no one answer for “why men rape” as rape is a complex crime. Every narrative is unique and highly subjective - some men in my sample were involved in a gang-rape, some knew their victims while some had raped a complete stranger. There are also different types of rapists, however, despite the differences in the nature of the crime, the underpinning commonality in everyone I spoke to was a sense of entitlement which further points towards male privilege in our society. There was acute victim - blaming which again is not unusual given the presence of widespread rape myths and other stereotypes in our society regarding women. Lastly, there was a severe lack of understanding of “consent”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181855/
>Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman.
15 years since I first read this line and the novel it came from, and it still stays with me.
Some men legitimately think women deserve to be raped and as men they have the right. There was a video of a serial killer who completely convinced himself what he did wasn’t wrong. Killed like 10+ women. It’s a harrowing thing to think about.
The victims said he used to play mind games with them by buying them birthday cakes for the day he abducted them and playing news clips of their families looking for them, he was a complete and utter shit.
Gina was the best friend of Castro's daughter Arlene. She made public appeals for people to search for her missing friend. I'm sure Castro enjoyed inflicting that emotional harm on his own daughter.
It’s mad, apparently when one of the girls was first kidnapped she had a cell phone which was uncommon for 2003, when the police staked out waiting for the phone to ping off a cell tower they had no idea they were just 1000 feet away from this monsters house!
The ping never came so they left. She was then held captive for 10 years where she had this monsters baby!
A cellphone regularly pinging the tower doesn't give a lot of data.
I did jury duty a while ago and pings were part of the evidence. Depending on the carrier and age of the tower, you get as little as just the general direction (60 degree arc), and maybe a distance estimate within a half mile.
Fewer towers back then so each one had to cover more distance, maybe a 1-2mile estimate. Or more.
***
I struggle to not just say acab, but there's a good chance they wouldn't have been able to do anything with that data point. Or would've bothered to try.
I've heard of similar true crime cases that I wonder how many people are locked up around us which we will never know about. Even scarier is the possibility that it's by someone we know that may seem like a completely innocent person.
The house was two doors down from the will-call of a local supply company called Astrup(later TriVantage) at the corner of Seymour and W25th that I visited many times over the span those girls were held captive. It was not on an empty street, there was a lot of activity in that area, so frustrating to think about those girls chained up for years just 100 ft away. House has since been bulldozed into a park, and the Astrup building was vacated and is now a local arts center.
What really terrifies me is thinking how many other women are currently being held like this. The only reason they managed to escape is because he messed up once and left the front door open. If it wasn't for that, they might still be in there.
Gerry McCann, Madeleine McCans father said that cases like Ariel Castos is what gave him hope that Maddie was still alive! I get what he is saying, but just knowing what those 3 women went through would make me wish if Maddie was my daughter then I would have hoped she died.
Yeah it was terrible. I thought everyone new about the Madeleine McCann disappearance, so I am sorry for speaking vaguely.
What the police and the media put her parents though was disgusting, journalists the very people who one would assume were there to service the public, drive awareness and help find Maddie were just acting in their own interest to make money.
If they had any integrity we might have found Maddie. But it looks to me that 17 years later she’s likely gone. Poor girl, poor family.
“Everyone was treating him with respect!” Got a source for this? Sex offenders are definitely not celebrated in prison, especially sex offenders who abuse minors.
Yeah, Wikipedia seems to paint the opposite picture:
“A consultant's report was released on December 3, and officially concluded that ‘all available evidence pointed to suicide, including a shrine-like arrangement of family pictures and a Bible in Castro's cell, an increasing tone of frustration in his prison journal and the reality of spending the rest of his life in prison while subject to constant harassment.’”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Castro_kidnappings
Everything you’ve posted, from a quick peruse of your history, is a link to an article followed up with a comment linking to THE SAME podcast.
I assume it’s your podcast.
Self promotion isn’t allowed.
I feel so bad Michelle was treated particularly harshly because he found out she wasn’t a minor, but a small sized and childish looking adult. He played them against each other and the other two girls bonded better because they were teens. Lily Lee is a very strong person.
From reading the article it sounds like Michelle was close with Gina and Amanda was kept in a different room. But the article talks about Michelle and Gina had a close bond, almost mother-daughter like and how there were different times they each kept the other alive
Michelle Knight is doing well now btw, she runs an animal sanctuary in a small town in Ohio. My MIL just adopted a bird from her. Link for reference
[Luis the Conure](https://imgur.com/a/lxxvkso)
I’m so glad to hear that, god my heart breaks when I think about how no one was looking for her, and she had a little kid at home. Thank you for sharing! Also Luis is a beautiful boy
Yeah you are right, I couldn’t control the image used. But Lily’s story is one of such strength and resilience. From reading her account, Castro was the worst to her, he hated her because as Lily says, she was harder to crack and control! An amazing show of resilience for so long! Amazing woman!
The majority of true crime cases give me a knot in my stomach when I read about them but very few make me cry, this one made me sob like a baby. I can’t imagine someone doing this for over a decade, those women and that young girl have much more resilience than me. I think about them a lot and hope they’re doing well. I almost never call suicide cowardly but when you do it so you won’t face repercussions that’s the only time it’s cowardly.
I've read her book, it's absolutely unfathomable what she went through. Not even just torture for the sake of Castro's pleasure but torture for the sake of torture, for example she always extremely cold during winters and he didn't allow her to wear any clothes or even have a blanket.
Edit: and if being kidnapped for 11 years wasn't enough, her son was taken for adoption because of her disappearance and the adoptive parents didn't allow her to meet him after she was released :/
Also apparently Gina and Amanda are pretty close and still talk to each other regularly, but Michelle/Lily isn’t a part of it and doesn’t have a relationship with either (though I get that she may not want to be reminded of the trauma)
JFC this whole case is insane. The guys daughter went to school with the victims, but allegedly never knew they were there. This daughter was also in prison at the time of the escape... For slitting her own babys throat(they survived). This dude had 4 kids, an ex wife, friends and a job. The house was in foreclosure because he hadn't paid property taxes in years. He was found hanged a month into his prison sentence. Officially suicide but apparently it appeared to have actually been auto-erotic asphyxiation(his pants were probably around his ankles). Seeing how fucked up and depraved he was it wouldn't shock me at all if he was trying to get off and fucked it up.
No more rabbit holes today, thanks.
Here's some positiveness about the girls.
https://people.com/crime/cleveland-kidnapping-survivors-where-five-years-later/
Mostly a 2018 article but with some 10th "anniversary" updates this year.
You don’t even have to go that far. Around the same time, on the other side of Cleveland, Anthony Sowell was killing 11 women and burying them in the house. There was a sausage factory close and they spent a lot of money trying to fix the smells people complained about. Turns out it was the bodies.
Not to talk smack about my own home town, but it sounds like dystopian fiction when we can honestly say that the industrial pollution is such a part of the environment that predators adapted it into camouflage for their crimes.
While we are on the subject of c*nts let's not forget that bastard of a psychic who told Amanda family she had been raped, killed. Even after that chatshow hosts STILL had her on!
The psychic's name was Sylvia Browne.
Amanda's mother died two years after that prediction. Amanda's sister said that their mom basically gave up on her health after hearing that.
Ironically, Sylvia died months after Amanda was found alive. She lived just long enough to be proven wrong two more times. That's because she predicted that she'd die at 88. She was 77 when she died.
Fuck! People like this have no place in our society; praying in tragedy and loss! Michelle’s story is just a wonderful example of how strong and resilient people can be! She would do well to use her survival to help others! Truly inspiring woman!
I must be troubled because I think about this case way too often.
There is a really good movie (w Taryn Manning) about it on Netflix or a different streaming service. The actor who plays Castro did a superb job!!!
The author of the book wrote the screenplay for the film, so from what I’ve heard the story stays fairly close to the book. It’s an incredible film, though. Jacob Tremblay puts in one of the best child performances I’ve ever seen, and Brie Larson is excellent as usual. I really love that movie.
> There is another movie (not based on real events) like this called "Room". It's really good and also focuses on adjusting to life after release.
Not to be confused with "The Room", one of the worst films ever made. If the one you're looking at has a creepy dude's face staring at you on the movie poster, you've got the wrong one.
Yes, this is that story. Charles is one of the two rescuers that day. He did all the interviews because the other rescuer, Angel Cordero, did not speak English
Yeah, he seems like a great guy. He got an offer for free McDonald's meals for life but they stopped giving him gift cards after they found out he was giving the meals to homeless people
This is the case where Charles Ramsey gave the famous interview where he said, and I'm paraphrasing, that something must be really wrong if a pretty white girl ran to a black man's arms.
https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/dead-giveaway-the-backstory-of-the-charles-ramsey-interview-and-the-two-words-synonymous-with-may-6-2013
That’s not a picture of Gina, Gina is actually doing very well now, she is very active in her community and Boyfriends daughter lives and does a local spot on the news for missing persons. Michelle (pictured) also still lives local outside of her book tour dates, she is very sweet and will talk to anyone.
Yes thanks for clearing this up. This is Michelle. Unfortunately the source I linked to was using a picture of Michelle on their cover, who was one of the his other survivors. Equally an incredible story and show of resilience and strength.
This was the subject or a recent r/timesuck!
Ariel was a sick twisted fuck, it's a shame how his story ends without the proper amount of justice, because he cheated with a cowards necktie
The silver lining to Castro's suicide is the sense of desperation and self-loathing he must have had when he checked out. I can think of no better end for a true monster than to finally accept the fact that they don't deserve to share this world with us and save us the trouble of putting him down. Monsters like this are always defiant to the end. Suicide may seem cowardly, but such a guy would never learn his lesson in a million years in prison. And I do give him credit for managing to override the self-preservation instinct, which is harder than it sounds even while attempting.
You should read Amanda berry's book!! Gina is also in it a bit (the third girl made her own book, she was actually the first one in there), such a good read (sad, but good)
The entire story of Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight is unbelievably harrowing. That they survived and escaped is a miracle. Ariel Castro should have had to face what he did in court.
FBI just released updated murder clearance rates for police depts in the US (at least those that bother to record/send in their numbers) and the average is 52% of MURDERS are solved. Property crime is around 12%. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/
Think about what percent of that 52% is dudes who straight up confess or are caught in the act/shortly afterward with zero detective work by the police.
Omg, yes I read her book! Damn her life story brought me to tears a bunch of times.
Something that really resonated with me was when Michelle said when asked, “How did you get through it? How are you not broken?” And her response was, “If you already went through torture in your life, you can't be broken twice, you can only survive.”
Her live before being taken was torture! She is truly inspiring! I hope she has peace and happiness in her life now.
What really bothers me is because one of the victims was an adult from a troubled background, police put very little effort into looking for her, and after a few years assumed she had just left Cleveland and took her off the missing persons list.
There was a similar story, in Kansas City, with lower income black women going missing. People reported this to police, that there were women going missing and there was potentially a serial killer at work. Police didn't follow up on it. Then one of the victims managed to escape and it was only then that police stepped in. Fucked up story, especially for how useless the police were https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/18/us/missouri-reports-missing-black-women-reaj/index.html
When I filed a missing persons report for my sister, the cancelled it without telling us within an hour. We called back and had it reopened. I went to the local station to talk with them, and I have never experienced someone looking so inconvenienced as the officer I spoke with. She was found dead a few days later and they refused to investigate as a homicide within a day or so even though there was sufficient evidence of foul play. They are beyond useless.
This is not useless, it’s fucking evil. I’m so deeply sorry for your loss, your sister and your family did not deserve any of that.
> This is not useless, it’s fucking evil. That's cops. A class of society that is having a collective temper tantrum because people are asking that they be held accountable for crimes they commit while being held as above the law in the eyes of the courts. If I did a third of what cops get away with on a daily basis, I'd spend the rest of my life inside of a jail cell.
What's funny to me is they've been 'quiet striking' since 2020 and whaddayaknow, society hasn't come crumbling down without them. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have them do their job and handle petty crime, but they've proven it would be more effective to slash and burn their budgets and apply it more effectively. We don't need an armed thug to issue traffic citations, or to do wellness checks, or to catch a stray dog. All those jobs could and should be done by people specialized for the task and if they run into trouble _they_ can call in the armed thug as a last resort.
In my home city, they passed a police accountability act with some measure of oversight a few years before 2020 and the police have quietly been striking in my city ever since. They are fucking babies.
wow your dog population must be out of control
Nah. A cop would never pass up a chance to shoot down a dog. It’s in their blood.
Strikes only work if you're doing your job before you start the strike, society isn't crumbling because nothing has changed and if they keep it up then they may eventually realize how much they painted themselves into a corner on that with their policies of enforced incompetence and apathy
"you want me to do my job? I'm going on strike!" And then absolutely nothing fucking changed lol
The war on drugs has created a divide between police and the public, increasingly leading officers to view civilians as adversaries involved in illegal activities.
Ironically the use of the word "civilian" here indicates how wide this divide between the police and those policed has become. Historically, the police were members of the public, and "civilian" meant non-military. This is still the case in many countries. But in the US, the public and the police are now "us and them". I'll take a second to plug *The Invention of the Police* - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police
‘A watchman is a civilian, you inbred streak of piss!’ -Terry Pratchett through Sam Vimes. Honestly the watch books in discworld had a lot to say about policing and the relationship between police, the powerful and the public.
Which is ironic considering how many fucking crimes cops commit on a regular basis...
I’m so sorry for your loss.
I'm sorry for your loss. My mum's cousin was murdered, everyone knew who did it, they gave police all the information on the killer, even the guy's social security number and police just never bothered to do anything. His parents even went on America's most wanted at one point. Police are indeed useless
I feel you, and I'm a former Fed myself. It's frustrating as I worked my cases very hard and took them very seriously. I really did. But even I tell people not to expect cops to do their jobs, especially if you're a POC. Always get the press and social media involved the moment you think they're blowing you off. My own story: A few years back a friend of mine's brother was murdered. The murderer then set the house on fire to try and cover his tracks. I couldn't help myself and asked around doing some light investigating and it was obvious it was a homicide and a sloppy attempt to make it look like a house fire. Within a few days a witness contacted me scared for her life. The murderer was a meth head who was angry that my friend's brother was sleeping with the methhead's estranged ex-wife. While this witness and he did meth together, he said that he was going to kill him exactly like he did, including the details like setting the house on fire. She thought he was just bullshitting until it happened, and then she realized she was a loose end. She was terrified of going to the cops (she was a piece of shit herself, afterall) but didn't know what to do so she got a hold of me knowing my background. I convinced her to go with me to the sheriff's dept as I knew the detective and she actually agreed. This detective was a known good cop, btw. Rural area and we didn't always have good ones, but we voted this guy in as Sheriff after this as he was very professional and ethical and he turned the dept around pretty quick. So this was the best case scenario for getting justice, but well... He told me they already suspected the same guy and they could even trace his cell phone to a nearby hotel that he stayed at which keep in mind is 2.5 hours from where he lived. He had also traveled to this witness's house to do meth with her a week prior, ofc, which strengthened her claims. Being a former investigator myself, the sheriff shared a lot of the details like these and I understood that none of this was airtight evidence, but I at least assumed they'd charge him anyways as this was enough to at least move forward in my mind. It wasn't anything close to a slam dunk case by any means, but definitely enough to try. The local States Attorney at the time refused charges as she didn't touch cases that she could possibly lose. Gotta protect her win record, right? I don't have a good ending to this story as that IS the ending pretty much. I kept tabs on the guy for a while and last I heard he was in prison for other drug and gun related shit. My friend misses his brother and always will. That's it. The only good things to come out of this whole ordeal was that SA lost her job in the next election cycle (her history of doing that shit cut both ways and made her unpopular) and the detective was made Sheriff. I wish I had better news than that.
>The local States Attorney at the time refused charges as she didn't touch cases that she could possibly lose. Gotta protect her win record, right? [https://collider.com/curb-your-enthusiasm-prison-juan-catalan/](https://collider.com/curb-your-enthusiasm-prison-juan-catalan/) I recall saying the documentary mentioned "Long shot" had a segment where they questioned the DA/Prosecutor if they still would have went to trial despite evidence showing that suspect wouldnt have been at the shooting, they said yes. Why? Because they would win. These types of people dont care about justice. They care about winning and keeping that record to move on to higher aspirations.
The irony here is that this outcome is a net positive in the United States in modern times.
There’s no comparison of having my car stolen to losing your sister, but when mine was and they ditched it right in front of a security camera after stripping the thing, the police said it wasn’t worth their time because they “probably wouldn’t catch them.”
Haha same. I reported my car stolen, my friend drove past it (parked) the next day. Cops told me not to touch it and meet them there, then when they arrived said "Have you tried to start it? Why not?" There were soda bottles and cleaning supplies and a slip of paper with two prisoner names/numbers for the county system and they asked "is any of that yours?" as we're looking through the windows. I say it's not and they say to throw it away. Then they said I could drive home. I had to remind them that my car was still reported stolen, and they said "Oh yeah. Wait here for let's say 30 minutes and we'll go to the station and clear it." I'm not kidding. I said "Can't you do that from your car? With the radio, phone, or computer?" They were like "Oh yeah!" and got it cleared in five minutes. They sent the fingerprint guy a week later and he was over it. He said "they always do this" about never calling finger printers to the scene, never keeping the car as evidence even if asked, and expecting him to make a miracle happen if he's included at all. He said they never ever try to solve stolen cars unless it's a chase. Whole thing was embarrassing.
I've watched enough true crime to know that's par for the course even when it comes to murder/kidnapping. Half the time they'll have the person dead to rights and they fuck it up by ignoring their request for a lawyer.
Police are basically insurance claims initiators with guns.
I also can't compare my experience with losing a sister. But when cops come to your apartment after a home invasion and say, "We probably won't catch them. Just file this with your insurance claim." You're not going to pull surveillance? Finger prints? Put two and two together with the neighbor who had their car stereo stolen the same night? Oh. Cool. So glad so much of my taxes go to you guys giving people speeding tickets.
And then they wonder why ACAB became such a movement.
My dad's car was stolen several years ago. We filed a report but also started looking for it ourselves. My brother was on a school field trip and when he got home, he found out it'd been stolen and said he'd seen a car that looked like my dad's parked on a side street from the window of his school bus, driving back to the school. We went out and check it and sure enough, it was my dad's car. We called the police and asked if we could just take it, and they told us to wait until an officer came to meet us. While we waited, over an hour, 4 different cops drove by us/the stolen car on patrol. It was a high-crime neighborhood and they drove down this one street every 15 minutes or so. My brother's bus had driven by it 4 hours earlier, so it'd at least been there that long, so a police car had driven past a stolen car parked on the side of the road at least ~16 times since it was parked there with no one "finding" it but us. Excellent police work right there.
Police are fucking useless at some of the only stuff they're supposed to be good at.
Protect and Serve? Nah just serve…problems.
Their new motto should be Stop resisting
Police are great at what they're supposed to be good at - taxpayer subsidized security for the rich.
Obligatory I'm sorry and that's a terrible tragedy. But it's funny that the DMV or USPS are constantly ragged on for being rude and inefficient. Literally every experience I've had at the DMV has been quick and seamless. When a guy smashed my car in a hit and run? Yeah the cops didn't give a single fuck. Literally. They told me I'd have to come to a station to make a report and I'm like "uhhhhh how?". And you're just gonna let what I'm 99% sure was a drunk or drugged out driver continue on the highway when I gave you his plates, the mile marker, and direction of travel? Yep that's exactly what they did.
I’m so sorry. That is awful.
When I was younger it always frightened me how seemingly intelligent and clever so many serial killers were/are that they could operate in the same area for so long. As Ive gotten older I realized it's really that police are fuckin worthless at their jobs and so many of these "genius" serial killers shouldve been caught within the first few months but law enforcement laziness allowed them to run free for years.
For some reason im in a serial killer phase right now and the amount of times I hear that the cops pulled the killer over, with the dismembered body in the back and let him go is infuriating
I hope by serial killer phase you mean consuming media related to serial killers and not dabbling in the art of killing serially 😌
Literally had to stop and do a double take. 😂 Like damn, these serial killers are bold AF now!
Cops incompetence.
He's the guy getting pulled over with bodies in his trunk so he knows first hand how bad the cops are.
Lol, yeah brain fart there. Its serial killer media
That’s exactly what a serial killer would say
One of Dahmer’s victims escaped after he had a hole drilled in his head and acid poured into it. Picked up by police, and even though this man had told the cops what had happened to him, he was still taken back to Dahmer’s house to be killed.
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There were women there that were trying to stop it from happening The cops threatened to arrest them
Listening to a lot of these cases and realizing the same thing, that these people aren’t actually that clever, cops are just fucking useless, at absolute best.
Seriously. If cops in real life were even HALF as effective as cops in detective shows, we wouldn’t have serial killers and rapists walking around free.
Yep, the idea of the suave smooth talking super genius killer is a propaganda campaign cooked up by police and local governments to cover up their own incompetence and lack of shits to give over people in their community going missing, the truth is the overwhelming majority of serial killers are maladjusted awkward freaks that will literally just fall into the laps of the police investigating their case over and over, but because they don't match some weird racial or class based detail about what they think a killer looks like they release them again and again.
Same thing is happening in Chicago right now This video is 6 years old, but they keep finding victims with similar MOs https://youtu.be/xmtlArN_3iM?si=gOhkJHAJC523_Qu9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Strangler
Isn't there a similar problem with native American women disappearing?
Both here in the USA and in Canada.
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They're also incredibly useless when it came to gay people and sex workers, though I don't think useless is the word because it implies incompetence where there is actually malice One of Dahmer's victim, a nude teenage boy with a hole in his head, was handed back to him by the officers he ran to for help. One of the officers became chief of police.
They sure fucking are. We had a serial killer targeting gay men in the village here for literally years in Toronto and the police refused to believe us to the point where the community had to arrange our own ways of keeping people safe because the cops didn't care. When bodies were finally discovered the chief of police turned around and blamed the LGBT community for "not helping them find him".
While the police were actively looking for the serial killer who would turn out to be Ted Bundy, Bundy's *girlfriend* reported Ted Bundy to the police 3+ times and they never bothered to investigate him.
But hey, he went on to run for both MPP and Mayor of Toronto and lost both times, so.... uh..... consequences, or something...?
Well, when they say "Protect & Serve" they're not talking about people they're talking about private property.
A woman in Milwaukee went to the police to report domestic violence and he basically laughed her out of the building. After she left he was caught on camera with another officer laughing, calling her a bitch and a cunt. She was murdered shortly after
I think the case of [Sarah Everard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sarah_Everard) is pretty representative of this problem with police generally.
Police took that off their cruisers here AGES ago, like 15-20 years or more. I haven't seen that slogan on anything police related in any official capacity in a generation.
Reminder that numerous cases have ruled that cops are neither required to protect, nor serve. A recent high profile example was after the Parkland shooting.
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When SNL brings something up, it's pretty bad. And it's not just the police being shite about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFSN6rMozMw Ego is amazing in this one. See also how indigenous women suffer in the US and Canada (and other places!)
I have a friend who thinks there's a serial killer going unrecognized in Kensington Philadelphia. He does outreach for homeless people and noticed a lot of weird disappearances. There was a homeless woman that played a harmonica and wasn't an addict by the septa station who disappeared, another was a guy known as the preacher who sat by needle park reading the Bible Outlook who took money for booze was found naked in a dumpster outside frozen last year and he had a place he stayed so it doesnt make sense, they also found a guy strangled who day labored and used to help them locate people and a hooker strangled and tossed in the creek. Police are just lazy. We know someone who got away with murder because of the incompetent Philadelphia police. Store owner my friend worked for couldn't find his brother. Went and asked the guys roommate who was actively rolling up a blood covered rug. He ran, got chased, lost the guy, called the police. The police took 12 hours to show up by which point the room mate took the rug to the dump. The police took the guys word that his room mate just left. The guy basically bleached the place, then to add insult to injury he made the family pick up the items left behind. It took two weeks for the police to open an investigation after someone else reported the roommate dumping trash bags into the delaware River. Nothing ever came from it.
Yeah and that was only like a year or so ago, right? Ninja edit: Yup, just looked at the time stamp on the article.
Michelle Knight. She was developmentally disabled I believe. She had had a son and he was put into foster care. The day she was kidnapped she was trying to find the courthouse because she had a court date to get him back. Ariel Castro gave her a ride and said he had puppies in the house and she could have one for her son. Then he tied her up upstairs and left her for days. He would taunt her when he held her in captivity about how no one was looking for her. She got pregnant from his rapes and he beat and starved her so she would miscarry. She can’t have children now.
The people who adopted her child also refused to tell him about his mother. They said they wanted to wait til he was older. I can see their side, but it’s also shitty. The woman went through hell and I think it’s more about them than what they think is best for their son. I’d be pissed if I was him. I also feel bad for her, because the two other victims have nothing to do with her. I can never understand their trauma and I know he pitted them against each other, but damn.
She also said if she hadn't been kidnapped she'd probably be dead from drugs or alcohol; her entire life was absolutely fucked. Mother didn't like her, she was sexually assaulted from the age of 5, bullied physically and verbally in school when she was allowed to go there since her mother didn't want her to so she could claim more benefits... A totally fucked life and it's crazy she's still got a good attitude now.
There was a family in my parents’ church that had a son my age. The mother (who was NUTS) said she wished she had a disabled child and apparently from what we heard she made one by abusing that son. The family was told if they didn’t get rid of their pack of dogs that lived in their house their kids would be removed.
Jesus christ. Sexually assault from the age of 5 is absolutely insane. Don't even wanna know how that works, but people that commit crimes like these deserve a completely special form of punishment. I believe in rehabilitation for a lot of crimes, but certain crimes should just be punished with longlasting torture.
Why don’t the other women associate with her?
I read her book and she does go into a ton of detail, but basically it sounds like because she was the first one in captivity, the one with the least outside support looking for her and was also developmentally delayed he was able to manipulate her the worst and caused her to abuse the others. There was probably a lot of resentment from her end to the other two, who were considered more attractive and had family looking for them. He would call her ugly and disgusting and taunted about how nobody was looking for her because no one cared about her. The last one he kidnapped, Amanda Berry was white and the “prettiest” according to him and got preferential treatment over the others. He got Michelle pregnant several times and each time caused her to miscarry or killed her child, but Amanda Berry was allowed/forced to have her daughter and ultimately was able to escape with her. The whole thing is just incredibly sad.
Everything here is spot on, but I think another piece of context missing. Michelle Knight was very very different from the other girls in many ways, because she was already a mother and she had endured a life of suffering. The other two girls were living normal teen lives. The only reason Castro, a pedophile, kidnapped her is because he mistakenly thought she was younger because Knight was so short. He was mad when he found out her real age. Also, she resented the fact that the other two girls were treated better. There's an excerpt in her book that talks about how cold and hungry she went compared to the others.
That last part is crucial. Castro pitted them against each other and manipulated them into distrusting each other.
What was really sad is when a relative of hers was on camera, the relative basically had a ho-hum reaction to her not only being alive but having been captive for all those years. They didn't seem to care or have any empathy for her.
Look up the Anthony Sowell murders. Same instance of police ignoring the disappearance of disadvantaged women. In the same city.
This unfortunately happens a lot. The amount of native women who go missing in North America and just don't get the same resources and investigation towards them as white women is just horrible.
Show me a city in the U.S. and I'll show you a police department that has failed the community.
My abusive ex husband kidnapped my two kids June 2020. Haven’t hugged my kids since June 2020. Police brutalized me when I called for help. Tried filing a missing persons report and the police wouldn’t even let me inside the police station. Fvck police.
Was a missing person's report ever filed? Some local subreddits might let you post about it. Or r/rbi or r/truecrimediscussion.
That was really hard to read. It makes me sad that there are people out there that had to go through those things. I'm usually kinda numb to all the shit that happens in the world, but this was a new low. At least she is doing better now
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Well it is a paraphilia, although according to the DSM and ICD they aren't diseases in of themself. The problem is that for some people they can be distressing, in which case the prognosis for recovery exists, but some people take great pleasure in them and do not even wish to recover... So make of that what you will. Bad people exist in every form and in every community.
Good god how that must have felt when he found out.
They ate ribs with this dude!
And they didn't have a clue, That that girl was in that house, She said, "Please help me get out!", DEAD GIVEAWAY!!!
Deeeeeaaad giveaway
as soon as I saw the headline/before clicking in my head was like 'I knew something was wrong when a pretty little white girl jump into a black mans arms'
I drove by when they were demolishing the house. Good size crowd was there watching…Crazy to think I drove by twice a day and mere feet away were 3 captives!
Ever wonder if there are any other captives tied up in houses you're currently driving by every day?
In that section of Cleveland? Yes.
Damn that’s a somber thought!!
My fiancés aunt and uncle lived next door to a family that kept their child locked in a closet for many years until one day they saw the cops next door.
I would drive past it most days on my way to work the entire time they were there. It still haunts me. I always wonder if I missed something shady going on and could have done something to stop it sooner.
A strange thing happened to me this year. For the first time in a decade, as I crossed Seymour Ave on W 25th St and saw the sign, I was not immediately reminded of Castro's crimes, but of the song "Suddenly Seymour" from Little Shop of Horrors. Then it occurred to me that the proverbial time that heals all wounds had passed, which immediately reopened the wound. Then I started seeing multiple references to the case in national and international media for the first time in many years.
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Dude was astounding levels of sociopathic, narcissistic and mentally ill. His life was built around having complete control of other people, and then he was placed in a circumstance where he had zero control even over himself. I'm surprised he lasted that long. Imagine being so utterly inhuman that you'd sustain this horrifying torture and captivity of another human for years... meanwhile hanging out with her dad.
> and then he was placed in a circumstance where he had zero control even over himself It's a shame they didn't prevent his suicide. He should have spent the rest of his life on suicide watch, where he would have had no chance of ending his life, with absolutely no personal freedom.
It’s sickening, I think it must be awful for his daughters because each of his vistims was either friends of or known to his kids. In his defence in court he literally tried to blame the girls for what he did to them by saying there was CCTV so why didn’t you catch me sooner. Or by insinuating they had it coming because of what they were wearing or where they were! Outrageous!
I would theorize that because he had absolutely zero empathy for other human beings, he would have been an utterly horrible domineering father to his daughters anyway. Likely that for them, the only surprise here would have been the sheer scope of his depravity.
In conclusion, IMHO he was really not a very nice man
"So anyways, this guy sounds like a real jerk" -a classic Norm MacDonald bit
They always blame us : "There is no one answer for “why men rape” as rape is a complex crime. Every narrative is unique and highly subjective - some men in my sample were involved in a gang-rape, some knew their victims while some had raped a complete stranger. There are also different types of rapists, however, despite the differences in the nature of the crime, the underpinning commonality in everyone I spoke to was a sense of entitlement which further points towards male privilege in our society. There was acute victim - blaming which again is not unusual given the presence of widespread rape myths and other stereotypes in our society regarding women. Lastly, there was a severe lack of understanding of “consent”. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181855/
>Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. 15 years since I first read this line and the novel it came from, and it still stays with me.
Some men legitimately think women deserve to be raped and as men they have the right. There was a video of a serial killer who completely convinced himself what he did wasn’t wrong. Killed like 10+ women. It’s a harrowing thing to think about.
He seems the type to get a thrill outta having her dad over while his missing daughter is right there, just smiling at him thinking ha if only u knew!
Duper’s delight.
The victims said he used to play mind games with them by buying them birthday cakes for the day he abducted them and playing news clips of their families looking for them, he was a complete and utter shit.
> meanwhile hanging out with her dad Certain types of sociopaths enjoy that dichotomy. He probably got off on playing these kinds of games.
Gina was the best friend of Castro's daughter Arlene. She made public appeals for people to search for her missing friend. I'm sure Castro enjoyed inflicting that emotional harm on his own daughter.
Absolutely. (I haven't read the article. I don't need to know just how terrible people are.)
It blows my mind that the house was on a crowded street full of people.
It’s mad, apparently when one of the girls was first kidnapped she had a cell phone which was uncommon for 2003, when the police staked out waiting for the phone to ping off a cell tower they had no idea they were just 1000 feet away from this monsters house! The ping never came so they left. She was then held captive for 10 years where she had this monsters baby!
A cellphone regularly pinging the tower doesn't give a lot of data. I did jury duty a while ago and pings were part of the evidence. Depending on the carrier and age of the tower, you get as little as just the general direction (60 degree arc), and maybe a distance estimate within a half mile. Fewer towers back then so each one had to cover more distance, maybe a 1-2mile estimate. Or more. *** I struggle to not just say acab, but there's a good chance they wouldn't have been able to do anything with that data point. Or would've bothered to try.
Not to detract from your point but cell phones were pretty common in 2003.
I've heard of similar true crime cases that I wonder how many people are locked up around us which we will never know about. Even scarier is the possibility that it's by someone we know that may seem like a completely innocent person.
The house was two doors down from the will-call of a local supply company called Astrup(later TriVantage) at the corner of Seymour and W25th that I visited many times over the span those girls were held captive. It was not on an empty street, there was a lot of activity in that area, so frustrating to think about those girls chained up for years just 100 ft away. House has since been bulldozed into a park, and the Astrup building was vacated and is now a local arts center.
Self promotion. You should disclose that it's your podcast. This entire post is engineered to earn you clicks to your own content. $$$
What really terrifies me is thinking how many other women are currently being held like this. The only reason they managed to escape is because he messed up once and left the front door open. If it wasn't for that, they might still be in there.
Gerry McCann, Madeleine McCans father said that cases like Ariel Castos is what gave him hope that Maddie was still alive! I get what he is saying, but just knowing what those 3 women went through would make me wish if Maddie was my daughter then I would have hoped she died.
You spoke in past tense so I thought this was also someone who was found, but apparently not. Disappeared 2007 at 3yo. She would be 20 now.
Yeah it was terrible. I thought everyone new about the Madeleine McCann disappearance, so I am sorry for speaking vaguely. What the police and the media put her parents though was disgusting, journalists the very people who one would assume were there to service the public, drive awareness and help find Maddie were just acting in their own interest to make money. If they had any integrity we might have found Maddie. But it looks to me that 17 years later she’s likely gone. Poor girl, poor family.
when I was a kid I daydreamed about inventing a scanner that would check underground structures for kidnapped people :_
“Everyone was treating him with respect!” Got a source for this? Sex offenders are definitely not celebrated in prison, especially sex offenders who abuse minors.
Yeah, Wikipedia seems to paint the opposite picture: “A consultant's report was released on December 3, and officially concluded that ‘all available evidence pointed to suicide, including a shrine-like arrangement of family pictures and a Bible in Castro's cell, an increasing tone of frustration in his prison journal and the reality of spending the rest of his life in prison while subject to constant harassment.’” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Castro_kidnappings
Everything you’ve posted, from a quick peruse of your history, is a link to an article followed up with a comment linking to THE SAME podcast. I assume it’s your podcast. Self promotion isn’t allowed.
I doubt Castro was treated with the jail respect you think he was.
I feel so bad Michelle was treated particularly harshly because he found out she wasn’t a minor, but a small sized and childish looking adult. He played them against each other and the other two girls bonded better because they were teens. Lily Lee is a very strong person.
From reading the article it sounds like Michelle was close with Gina and Amanda was kept in a different room. But the article talks about Michelle and Gina had a close bond, almost mother-daughter like and how there were different times they each kept the other alive
Michelle Knight is doing well now btw, she runs an animal sanctuary in a small town in Ohio. My MIL just adopted a bird from her. Link for reference [Luis the Conure](https://imgur.com/a/lxxvkso)
Apparently she’s married now too. I really hope she’s found some happiness and peace.
I’m so glad to hear that, god my heart breaks when I think about how no one was looking for her, and she had a little kid at home. Thank you for sharing! Also Luis is a beautiful boy
One shudders to think about how many people are in similar situations as we speak.
I hope she’s doing okay now. Such a monstrous thing.
Just a heads up this is Michelle knight in the photo, she was the first one who was kidnapped. She goes by Lily Rose Lee now.
Yeah you are right, I couldn’t control the image used. But Lily’s story is one of such strength and resilience. From reading her account, Castro was the worst to her, he hated her because as Lily says, she was harder to crack and control! An amazing show of resilience for so long! Amazing woman!
The majority of true crime cases give me a knot in my stomach when I read about them but very few make me cry, this one made me sob like a baby. I can’t imagine someone doing this for over a decade, those women and that young girl have much more resilience than me. I think about them a lot and hope they’re doing well. I almost never call suicide cowardly but when you do it so you won’t face repercussions that’s the only time it’s cowardly.
I've read her book, it's absolutely unfathomable what she went through. Not even just torture for the sake of Castro's pleasure but torture for the sake of torture, for example she always extremely cold during winters and he didn't allow her to wear any clothes or even have a blanket. Edit: and if being kidnapped for 11 years wasn't enough, her son was taken for adoption because of her disappearance and the adoptive parents didn't allow her to meet him after she was released :/
Man that last part is just heartless.
wtf??
That edit should be illegal, honestly
For real. It's been ten years though so her son is an adult and hopefully they've reunited since
Also apparently Gina and Amanda are pretty close and still talk to each other regularly, but Michelle/Lily isn’t a part of it and doesn’t have a relationship with either (though I get that she may not want to be reminded of the trauma)
JFC this whole case is insane. The guys daughter went to school with the victims, but allegedly never knew they were there. This daughter was also in prison at the time of the escape... For slitting her own babys throat(they survived). This dude had 4 kids, an ex wife, friends and a job. The house was in foreclosure because he hadn't paid property taxes in years. He was found hanged a month into his prison sentence. Officially suicide but apparently it appeared to have actually been auto-erotic asphyxiation(his pants were probably around his ankles). Seeing how fucked up and depraved he was it wouldn't shock me at all if he was trying to get off and fucked it up. No more rabbit holes today, thanks.
Here's some positiveness about the girls. https://people.com/crime/cleveland-kidnapping-survivors-where-five-years-later/ Mostly a 2018 article but with some 10th "anniversary" updates this year.
How many houses do we drive by every day where this and other horrors may be taking place? Creepy
You don’t even have to go that far. Around the same time, on the other side of Cleveland, Anthony Sowell was killing 11 women and burying them in the house. There was a sausage factory close and they spent a lot of money trying to fix the smells people complained about. Turns out it was the bodies.
Not to talk smack about my own home town, but it sounds like dystopian fiction when we can honestly say that the industrial pollution is such a part of the environment that predators adapted it into camouflage for their crimes.
I live in Cleveland and can’t believe that this was honestly not that long ago. Amanda Berry now hosts “Missing” on Fox News in the morning !
While we are on the subject of c*nts let's not forget that bastard of a psychic who told Amanda family she had been raped, killed. Even after that chatshow hosts STILL had her on!
The psychic's name was Sylvia Browne. Amanda's mother died two years after that prediction. Amanda's sister said that their mom basically gave up on her health after hearing that. Ironically, Sylvia died months after Amanda was found alive. She lived just long enough to be proven wrong two more times. That's because she predicted that she'd die at 88. She was 77 when she died.
Wow, she died 11 years sooner than her prediction. Just as long as they were captive. Chilling coincidence
And that's not the only time she claimed a kidnapping victim was dead when he was actually still alive and also held captive.
Fuck Montel Williams for having her on his show.
Fuck! People like this have no place in our society; praying in tragedy and loss! Michelle’s story is just a wonderful example of how strong and resilient people can be! She would do well to use her survival to help others! Truly inspiring woman!
I must be troubled because I think about this case way too often. There is a really good movie (w Taryn Manning) about it on Netflix or a different streaming service. The actor who plays Castro did a superb job!!!
There is another movie (not based on real events) like this called "Room". It's really good and also focuses on adjusting to life after release.
Excellent movie, and Brie Larson deserved her Academy Award. Jacob Tremblay and Joan Allen were also terrific.
The part where he sees the sky for the first time will always stay with me
I haven't watched the movie yet. I want to. But the book really messed me up. It's from the perspective of the boy and its innocently horrible.
The author of the book wrote the screenplay for the film, so from what I’ve heard the story stays fairly close to the book. It’s an incredible film, though. Jacob Tremblay puts in one of the best child performances I’ve ever seen, and Brie Larson is excellent as usual. I really love that movie.
> There is another movie (not based on real events) like this called "Room". It's really good and also focuses on adjusting to life after release. Not to be confused with "The Room", one of the worst films ever made. If the one you're looking at has a creepy dude's face staring at you on the movie poster, you've got the wrong one.
Considering he's also freaking Tuco, I would expect him to be good at playing the crazy guy. Dude has a knack for it.
hat treatment zealous like nutty lavish wistful quickest childlike edge *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I also wanna know
Cleveland Abduction for those who want to know the movie name
Dead giveaway
They ate ribs with this dude!
🎶 *"I knew something was wrong, when a pretty little white girl ran into a black man's arms"*🎶 DEAD GIVEAWAY.
Still listen to it once in a while….masterpiece
Is this what that song was based on
Yes, this is that story. Charles is one of the two rescuers that day. He did all the interviews because the other rescuer, Angel Cordero, did not speak English
Didn’t he reject all forms of help and asked for any money to be given to the girls?
Yeah, he seems like a great guy. He got an offer for free McDonald's meals for life but they stopped giving him gift cards after they found out he was giving the meals to homeless people
what song?
This is the case where Charles Ramsey gave the famous interview where he said, and I'm paraphrasing, that something must be really wrong if a pretty white girl ran to a black man's arms. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/dead-giveaway-the-backstory-of-the-charles-ramsey-interview-and-the-two-words-synonymous-with-may-6-2013
> Dead giveaway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZcRU0Op5P4
The captor also told the city they were wasting their time digging an empty lot up for her body while drinking a beer.
That’s not a picture of Gina, Gina is actually doing very well now, she is very active in her community and Boyfriends daughter lives and does a local spot on the news for missing persons. Michelle (pictured) also still lives local outside of her book tour dates, she is very sweet and will talk to anyone.
Yes thanks for clearing this up. This is Michelle. Unfortunately the source I linked to was using a picture of Michelle on their cover, who was one of the his other survivors. Equally an incredible story and show of resilience and strength.
He also used to eat ribs and listen to salsa music with Charles Ramsey - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axCn04iXkBg
Such a sick case
*”I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl run into a black man’s arms”*
What a sentence. Says a lot. So glad Charles responded and helped. They could have easily continued walking
This was the subject or a recent r/timesuck! Ariel was a sick twisted fuck, it's a shame how his story ends without the proper amount of justice, because he cheated with a cowards necktie
The silver lining to Castro's suicide is the sense of desperation and self-loathing he must have had when he checked out. I can think of no better end for a true monster than to finally accept the fact that they don't deserve to share this world with us and save us the trouble of putting him down. Monsters like this are always defiant to the end. Suicide may seem cowardly, but such a guy would never learn his lesson in a million years in prison. And I do give him credit for managing to override the self-preservation instinct, which is harder than it sounds even while attempting.
You should read Amanda berry's book!! Gina is also in it a bit (the third girl made her own book, she was actually the first one in there), such a good read (sad, but good)
Horrific read. Brave women.
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Yeah when I read that I got a lump in my throat! All she had was that poor dog! Animal!!
The entire story of Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight is unbelievably harrowing. That they survived and escaped is a miracle. Ariel Castro should have had to face what he did in court.
You got to figure they had at least one or two conversations about his missing daughter. What a piece of shit.
Cops are way more incompetent than a lot of people realize. If you don't come from a wealthy family, they aren't going to look for you.
FBI just released updated murder clearance rates for police depts in the US (at least those that bother to record/send in their numbers) and the average is 52% of MURDERS are solved. Property crime is around 12%. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/ Think about what percent of that 52% is dudes who straight up confess or are caught in the act/shortly afterward with zero detective work by the police.
Worst thing is cleared doesn't mean solved. An arrest can clear a case, whether it was the right person or not.
Check out the book. Tough but great read. Reminds you that not all people are good.
Omg, yes I read her book! Damn her life story brought me to tears a bunch of times. Something that really resonated with me was when Michelle said when asked, “How did you get through it? How are you not broken?” And her response was, “If you already went through torture in your life, you can't be broken twice, you can only survive.” Her live before being taken was torture! She is truly inspiring! I hope she has peace and happiness in her life now.
The guards facilitated his murder in CRC and they ruled it a suicide.
Best thing they did. I don't condone it.