What do you want to bet the guards took an extended coffee break...
& supplied the extension cord :evil:
well played, ariel, well played
now let's talk about the money saved, yes/no? annually it was going to cost, what? $40,000.00 - 50,000.00 or more; this isn't counting medical bills that would have accrued
mostly he meets his maker. the cruel amazement will be dazing for his soul. goodnight, fucker
he's also a fucking weak little shithead. he could not last being held captive but he sure as shit demanded three women live that way. puke bag
My first thought was that shouldnt the jail cells that hold these scum bags come equipped with a noose?
That actually isn't the worst idea. I don't support the death penalty, but the more people like this that choose to kill themselves the better.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
On the one hand I am glad my state tax dollars wont go to feed , house, provide medical care to this "human" being anymore, I would have liked to see him serve far longer than what amounted to 4 months since his arrest.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
READ THE UPDATED STORY: Officials Call For Answers After Cleveland Kidnapper Hanged Himself In Prison Cell
---
Ohio Rehabilitation and Correction officials said convicted kidnapper Ariel Castro was found hanging in his prison cell at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient.
Officials told 10TV that Castro was found hanging in his cell around 9:20 p.m.
Prison medical staff began performing lifesaving measures. Castro was transported to The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at 10:52 p.m.
JoEllen Smith, spokesperson with the Ohio Rehabilitation and Correction, said Castro died from an apparent suicide.
Castro was sentenced to life in prison for holding three women captive in Cleveland for more than a decade and raping them repeatedly.
Castro was not a part of the general prison population and was isolated from other inmates for his own protection because of his high profile.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson released the following statement:
"Our focus remains on the well-being of the survivors of Seymour Avenue. It is our sincere hope that they will continue to heal and recover. I ask the community to continue to respect the privacy of the survivors so that they can move forward with their lives."
Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for the latest.
Orient is just south of Columbus. Facility used to be a medium security prison. Reconfigured system several years ago. ALL prisoners , this is there first stop in Ohio's system. They are evaluated and sent to the appropriate prison based on that evaluation.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"...Dimitri...He talks to me...'.."The Ghost of Greece..".
"..That's One Happy Fuckin Ghost.."
“..That came up on the Pillow Case...This is for the Greek, With Our Apologies.....”
speaking of a short bit being served on his prison time
i woulda had him off'ed awhile back.
anyhow, isn't it amazing how he abducted & held captive three girls (that grew into women) for years on end, beat, raped & tortured & who knows what else.. oh yeah, starved to terminate a birth. chaining these women up & finally having a birth done at the house all while terrorizing the ladies with threats if the baby died during delivery.
keeping these ladies under lock & key, even boarding up windows.
dude's a freak who couldn't take what he dished out, but he was even living in nicer conditions than what he provided.
rot in eternity you stinkin bastard,
chad
p.s. i wonder if his neck snapped from his weight & if he had jumped off something?
speaking of a short bit being served on his prison time
i woulda had him off'ed awhile back.
anyhow, isn't it amazing how he abducted & held captive three girls (that grew into women) for years on end, beat, raped & tortured & who knows what else.. oh yeah, starved to terminate a birth. chaining these women up & finally having a birth done at the house all while terrorizing the ladies with threats if the baby died during delivery.
keeping these ladies under lock & key, even boarding up windows.
dude's a freak who couldn't take what he dished out, but he was even living in nicer conditions than what he provided.
rot in eternity you stinkin bastard,
chad
p.s. i wonder if his neck snapped from his weight & if he had jumped off something?
Couldn't agree with you more, Chadwick. What a cowardly POS.
2013 Wrigley, Pittsburgh, Buffalo
2014 Cincy, Detroit, Moline, & Milwaukee
2015 Central Park
2016 Lexington, Ottawa, Toronto 1 & 2, Boston 1 & 2, Chicago 1 & 2 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony 2018 Seattle 1 & 2, Missoula, Chicago 1
READ THE UPDATED STORY: Officials Call For Answers After Cleveland Kidnapper Hanged Himself In Prison Cell
---
Ohio Rehabilitation and Correction officials said convicted kidnapper Ariel Castro was found hanging in his prison cell at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient.
Officials told 10TV that Castro was found hanging in his cell around 9:20 p.m.
Prison medical staff began performing lifesaving measures. Castro was transported to The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at 10:52 p.m.
JoEllen Smith, spokesperson with the Ohio Rehabilitation and Correction, said Castro died from an apparent suicide.
Castro was sentenced to life in prison for holding three women captive in Cleveland for more than a decade and raping them repeatedly.
Castro was not a part of the general prison population and was isolated from other inmates for his own protection because of his high profile.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson released the following statement:
"Our focus remains on the well-being of the survivors of Seymour Avenue. It is our sincere hope that they will continue to heal and recover. I ask the community to continue to respect the privacy of the survivors so that they can move forward with their lives."
Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for the latest.
Orient is just south of Columbus. Facility used to be a medium security prison. Reconfigured system several years ago. ALL prisoners , this is there first stop in Ohio's system. They are evaluated and sent to the appropriate prison based on that evaluation.
His REAL sentence would have been to place him in general population, just to see how well he could survive. Giving him just a taste of his own medicine. What a creep.
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
He took the coward's way out. His victims wanted him to be in prison the rest of his life, thinking about what he did every miserable day. I hope there is a hell and I hope he is being tormented eternally. I remember when Amanda Berry went missing. My girlfriend was teaching at her school. The whole community rallied around finding her and no luck. So many people suffered because of that whack job!!! I fell asleep last night with the T.V. on and woke up at 12:20 a.m. to Breaking News: Ariel Castro dead etc. And my first thought was- what a loser!!!
the guy is dead....it's over, no more opinions on what should have happened to him no nothing concerning him now how about some ideas on how to help the victims involved ?
the guy is dead....it's over, no more opinions on what should have happened to him no nothing concerning him now how about some ideas on how to help the victims involved ?
Godfather.
As a resident taxpayer of this state , I'd like to know how he was able to do this while under the supervision he had. Kinda seems like misspent money to me.
As for the women, let them be. THEY should get to dictate how media intrusion goes in their lives. I also hope the city of cleveland has a fund set up for them specifically to help recover from this.
As for him being dead and not saying anything more? There is more to this story that will come out, such as this.....
Report: Ohio kidnapper called mother of victim
Friday September 6, 2013 8:00 AM
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A report says that Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro called the mother of one of his victims while she was in captivity and told her she was OK.
Castro also told investigators during a videotaped interrogation that opportunities were missed for capturing him while he held the women he kidnapped.
Castro says in the video obtained by NBC's "Today Show" and first reported Friday that he called the mother of Amanda Berry and told her that Berry was OK and was his wife now.
He says he hung up and they didn't have a conversation.
Berry's mother died before Berry was freed in May.
Castro told investigators video surveillance near the school of another victim should have tipped police to him.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
the guy is dead....it's over, no more opinions on what should have happened to him no nothing concerning him now how about some ideas on how to help the victims involved ?
As a resident taxpayer of this state , I'd like to know how he was able to do this while under the supervision he had. Kinda seems like misspent money to me.
As for the women, let them be. THEY should get to dictate how media intrusion goes in their lives. I also hope the city of cleveland has a fund set up for them specifically to help recover from this.
As for him being dead and not saying anything more? There is more to this story that will come out, such as this.....
Report: Ohio kidnapper called mother of victim
Friday September 6, 2013 8:00 AM
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A report says that Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro called the mother of one of his victims while she was in captivity and told her she was OK.
Castro also told investigators during a videotaped interrogation that opportunities were missed for capturing him while he held the women he kidnapped.
Castro says in the video obtained by NBC's "Today Show" and first reported Friday that he called the mother of Amanda Berry and told her that Berry was OK and was his wife now.
He says he hung up and they didn't have a conversation.
Berry's mother died before Berry was freed in May.
Castro told investigators video surveillance near the school of another victim should have tipped police to him.
what? someone can't hang themselves in 29 minutes? every 30 minutes a guard checked on him. as soon as the officer walked away castro put his head throw a taught noose & stepped off into the black, a perfect place for him.
why are you so concerned? misspent money? your state just saved a lot of money by this freak offing himself. if i were a ohio taxpayer i'd be dancing
The last time I saw my father was about five months ago. I was in Cleveland for the weekend, and he asked me to stop by his house before I hit the road back to Columbus.
When I pulled up, he poked his head out from the back of the house and waved me to the backyard. I remember commenting to him that another of the neighboring houses looked freshly boarded up, and we recalled memories of my childhood friends who lived there decades ago. Today, the houses themselves are just memories, and so is my father, Ariel Castro.
I'm still shell-shocked from the way these past several months unfolded. Instantly, my father became one of the most hated men alive. In no time, reporters from around the world demanded to know who this man was and what kind of background he came from. Just like that, my father went from captured to convicted to imprisoned to dead.
The initial media crush was surreal. Cameras showed up at my workplace, reporters blasted my Facebook friends for information about me. The national networks set up shop, and I watched as person after person who barely knew my father lined up to get their moment on national television. I hid at a friend's house after the news broke because I was shaken to the core, and I didn't want to be forced to grieve with cameras and microphones pointed at me.
When I eventually returned home, I found dozens of business cards, notes and letters slipped under my door. Everyone wanted a moment of my time. But reporters weren't my only visitors -- thieves were, too. Someone pried open my front door and ransacked the place, carving "Bitch" in the door before leaving. The next jolt wasn't far behind, when a documentary on a major news network plastered a picture of me that it had lifted from my Facebook page over a picture of my father's house. They thought I was him and he was me.
That, however, was exactly what I wanted to scream from the rooftops. I am not my father, and I can't explain his actions or be held accountable for something I never knew he was doing. When I was finally ready, I gathered my thoughts and spoke out on a national stage, and the experience went a long way toward helping me move forward with my life. All that was left was to retrieve any old pictures and belongings from 2207 Seymour and try not to look as my childhood home was ceremoniously torn down.
I was horrified and disgusted and angered when I got the news of the unthinkable crimes my father committed. I still am. He deserved to pay for his actions, every day of those 1,000 years he could possibly serve. My anger with him kept me from visiting him in prison, even when he was moved to a facility just 20 minutes away from my doorstep. Coping would have to come before any possibility of a change of heart. But after mere weeks, that window slammed shut.
It took awhile for the reality of it all to set in. I steeled myself yet again after my father's death. It was all I could do. I had reporters, in revoltingly poor taste, seeking me out for a knee-jerk reaction, wanting to know the whereabouts of my father's remains, waiting for me outside the Franklin County coroner's office. I just wanted to get through those horrible days without NewsChannel 5 breathing down my neck.
I learned long ago that it's not worth the effort to actively hate someone who will always be in your life. An uncle told me at my mother's funeral, barely a year before we found out with the world what my father had done, that I shouldn't hate my father for everything he had already put us through. God would take care of him, he said. Both of my parents are gone now, and my father's punishment is between he and his Maker. Hate isn't going to do anyone any good.
Instead of bidding goodbye and good riddance to Ariel Castro, the question should be, now what? If my father's life and death can lead to changes in how we deal with sexual predators, domestic violence, mental illness and, yes, prison safety, then we should have those discussions. If we can prevent a repeat here or anywhere, then justice truly will have been served amid all the broken pieces my father left behind.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
He’s just not sure that he can, or that he will, or that he should.
He’s not afraid. He’s a big man. He’s a smart man. He knows the streets of Cleveland as well as anyone. He’s unabashed about his love for his hometown.
Yet, he’s uncertain. He’s not sure what it now means to be Ariel Anthony Castro, son of the infamous Ariel Castro, especially back home in Cleveland. He’s not sure of the reception or the possible contempt this passionate, often unforgiving city will hold for a man born with what turns out to be the most despised name imaginable.
He’s not sure what it means to be the other Ariel Castro in the wake of his father’s incalculable deceit, stunning depravity and unforgivable crimes. He’s not sure what it means to be an unwitting prodigal son of Cleveland.
Ariel Anthony Castro, the 31-year-old son, who often went by his middle name, Anthony, when he was growing up in his late father’s house on Seymour Avenue, was at an early dinner on the afternoon of May 6th when calls started flooding his cell phone.
He had just gotten off work from his job as a customer service representative at a Columbus bank, and the ringer on his personal phone was off. That proved a good thing.
The meal with Trevor, his best friend, would be the last one Castro would enjoy before his name and public profile would be inalterably shattered.
"All of the messages basically said the same thing: A guy in a blue car, in his 50’s had been arrested. And that they had found Amanda, Gina and some other girl, alive, at a house on Seymour Avenue," Castro recalled Tuesday evening from Trevor’s Columbus apartment.
At that point he started feverishly returning phone calls. The second call was to his sister, Arlene, who lives in Fort Wayne, Ind., and was the last person known to have seen Gina alive in 2004.
"Did you hear the news," he practically shouted into the phone.
"Yes," was his sister’s equally emotional response.
"My sister was so excited. She had worried so much about Gina for all those years. She had felt so much guilt that she was with her just before she went missing. This was surreal."
"’Yeah, we’re going to go out and party tonight,’" Castro remembers Arlene "Rosie" Castro telling him before getting off the phone.
The next returned call was to his aunt, his mother’s sister, someone who also had closely followed the ordeal of the missing, long presumed dead, girls.
Castro instantly sensed that something was wrong with her tone, though. It was not celebratory. It was troubled, almost heavy.
"Think about it, Anthony. The guy they arrested is 52, drives a blue car and lives alone in a house on Seymour. Think about it."
"Anthony, I think they arrested your father."
But the son wasn’t having any of this. He denied it. He kept telling his aunt that she was wrong. Then he rushed her off the phone.
It didn’t occur to him to ask how she spoke with such conviction about the certainty that Ariel Castro, his father, was the man who had made Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight all disappear between 2002 and 2004. It didn't occur to him ask what kind of rumors were already sweeping over the near westside community.
But then, within hours, he heard a television report of the now famous 9-1-1 call that Amanda Berry made to Cleveland police. It knocked the wind out of him.
Help me. I’m Amanda Berry.
I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years, and I’m here. I’m free now.
Cleveland Dispatcher: Who’s the guy you’re trying – who’s the guy who went out?
Amanda Berry: Um, his name is Ariel Castro.
That’s when the son’s heart sank. That’s when Ariel Castro, the son, said he understood that his father, his namesake, had been unmasked as something far worse than he could have ever imagined.
That’s when he began to have flashbacks. He remembered as a boy also running out of the house to get help for his mother who was being beaten, yet again.
He suddenly remembered making a similar emergency call to Cleveland police 20 years earlier, when Castro inflicted a savage Christmas Day beating on Grimilda "Nilda" Figueroa, two months after she had come home from brain surgery.
"When I heard Amanda Berry’s voice … when I heard her say his name, I knew that he was guilty. I mean who would make that up? Who would come up with a name like Ariel Castro or invent that kind of story?"
Since that fateful day in May, Castro’s life has been a continuing series of painfully-refreshed childhood memories and haunting questions. He continues to recall incidents and behaviors that long foreshadowed his father’s crimes.
"My father was always very secretive. Growing up on Seymour Avenue there were parts of the house we weren’t allowed in. He kept a lock on the attic and on the basement door, on the garage. He nailed the windows shut. It didn’t seem so weird at the time."
But now that the three captive women are free, now that the elder Castro is dead, having hung himself one month into his life sentence, sordid truths about his possessive and savage nature are being revealed.
castro2.jpgAriel "Anthony" Castro and mother Grimilda "Nilda" Figueroa, summer 2011. (Photo courtesy of Ariel "Anthony" Castro)
Up until Nilda Figueroa found the strength to finally leave Seymour Avenue with young Ariel and the couple’s three daughters in tow, Castro, whom she never married, would often lock her in the house when he was away.
Because of his own jealousies, he would literally incarcerate her, making wild, ungrounded accusations alleging infidelity to justify her home detention. She was his first prisoner.
The son says he now understands that his mother, who died in 2012 in Indiana, stayed with Castro as long as she could out of fear for her life. But she also stayed out of loyalty and compassion for her children.
Memories of the fear he often felt as a boy, whenever his father’s car pulled into the Seymour Avenue driveway at night have returned – a daily homecoming fear that he says he suspects Gina, Amanda, and Michelle undoubtedly confronted for the better part of a decade.
He remembers now how fiercely he determined as a young boy not to become anything like his father.
After graduating with a degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University in 2004 and accepting a copy editing position with the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Castro attempted on occasion to reach out to his father. When he returned to Cleveland, he would sometimes call or attempt to visit with him.
But the conversations were always superficial and mostly confined to the driveway, the front porch or the backyard of the Seymour Avenue home.
"I could sense that he didn’t want me in the house, but I didn’t know why. I just assumed that it was a continuation of his eccentric ways. I chalked it up to him not really wanting a relationship with me at that point."
"I’m horrified by the thought that each time I visited the house after I graduated from college that all of those girls were already being held and tortured."
Perhaps there is sociopathic irony in the fact that Castro took three girls captive. Before Nilda left with their three daughters in the late 90’s, Castro reportedly doted on his girls – while heaping regular physical abuse on the son and the mother.
"He treated my sisters like daddy’s girl. There was no abuse directed towards them. As a boy, I sometimes resented it. I saw how they were treated differently than I was. He used to beat me. When I think about it now, I think it was out of frustration. He saw how I was trying to protect my mother from him."
When the family was permitted last month to retrieve personal items from the Seymour Avenue home hours before it was razed, Ariel found an eighth-grade photo which brought back another painful memory. It was a snapshot of his 8th grade induction into the National Junior Honor Society at Wilbur Wright Middle School. His mother and grandmother were both there to proudly celebrate him.
But when he walked into the house and showed the certificate to his father, a Cleveland public schools’ bus driver, the true nature of their relationship was revealed.
"Who cares about that. You don’t do anything around here," Castro remembers his father snapping, and destroying what had been a proud moment in his life.
Castro quit his job at the Indiana newspaper in 2011 after seven years. The evening work hours and social isolation of a small Indiana town had become unbearable. He wanted to come back to Ohio. He wanted a social life.
He looked for journalism jobs in Columbus and Cleveland but couldn’t find work in the rapidly changing news industry. About a year ago, he landed the banking job in Columbus. But he continued to keep an eye on Cleveland. He wanted to come home. He still dreamed of working for his hometown newspaper.
Then Amanda Berry escaped from his childhood home and just as quickly as the world knew of Charles Ramsey and his appetite for hamburgers, media vultures from around the world found him. His former peers, who could find no room for him within the industry, suddenly tracked him to his phone, his home and his job within hours.
"I have no idea how they found me so quickly, but within hours I was getting phone calls and text from media everywhere."
"There were literally dozens of reporters with cameras showing up at the bank. They were calling and pretending to be customers, saying they had business with me. They were misrepresenting themselves just to get me on the phone or to speak with me in person."
"I understood the initial crush. This was a bizarre international news story. But it didn’t let up. They were very aggressive. They wouldn’t back off. They were disruptive at my job and at my home."
As an experienced journalist, Castro understood the feeding frenzy, he just didn’t understand the crudeness, the sloppiness, the lack of tact. He was only beginning to understand what it meant to be the son of the late Ariel Castro.
CNN taught him the cruelest lesson of his new life in June when it aired an Anderson Cooper documentary called The Madman in My Life. To many people in media, apparently, there was to be no distinction between he and his father.
The network used his face superimposed over the Seymour Avenue house in Anderson's documentary.
"In a previous airing of this documentary, a photo of Ariel Castro’s son was mistakenly used to depict Ariel Castro," CNN later reported. "Ariel Castro’s son was not in any way involved in the kidnapping or crimes his father is accused of committing."
"We apologize for the error."
Castro doesn’t buy the apology. He says the photo in question was lifted from his Facebook page. He doesn’t believe it was a mistake.
Certain local television stations haven’t been any more tactful or professional in their coverage either, he alleges. He names reporters who have harassed him about everything, from requesting an interview when he picked up his father’s death certificate to the media’s intrusion when Castro’s family went to retrieve his body.
"I’m not asking for sympathy. We all know who the true victims are. But is it alright for them to continue to do this, to hound me, because my name is Ariel Castro? Are they allowed to continue to cross the line in deliberate bad taste because my father was a criminal?"
Which brings us back to a couple of central questions confronting the most unfortunate prodigal. Can Ariel Anthony Castro come home again? Or will he always be judged – and rejected – for the sins of his father.
Is his hometown big enough to allow for Ariel Anthony Castro to live in the shadow of Ariel Castro? Perhaps an even more important question for a young man still coming to grips with the haunting legacy of his father is whether he can ever again fully and safely rekindle his love affair with Cleveland? Can he navigate the tough challenges that Seymour Avenue will continue to pose at the most unexpected turns?
"When my father used to beat me, he would sometimes tell me how fortunate I was to have a father. He always said he didn’t have one. But the whole time, I would be thinking, ‘I wish I didn’t have one either.’ "
Due to the most horrific of circumstances, a child’s dream has belatedly come true. What now remains to be seen is whether a young man’s dream to return home and create a successful life for himself will also come to fruition in the absence of the father.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Anyone with half a brain could easily surmise the anguish those kids live with on a minute by minute basis. Their peaceful pasts were wiped out by the reality that there father was a ghoul. Their current realities are one that has them look at their shoes when they pass by people on the streets.
They should not be made to feel like an extension of that sick bastard. They are victims as well.
He’s just not sure that he can, or that he will, or that he should.
He’s not afraid. He’s a big man. He’s a smart man. He knows the streets of Cleveland as well as anyone. He’s unabashed about his love for his hometown.
Yet, he’s uncertain. He’s not sure what it now means to be Ariel Anthony Castro, son of the infamous Ariel Castro, especially back home in Cleveland. He’s not sure of the reception or the possible contempt this passionate, often unforgiving city will hold for a man born with what turns out to be the most despised name imaginable.
He’s not sure what it means to be the other Ariel Castro in the wake of his father’s incalculable deceit, stunning depravity and unforgivable crimes. He’s not sure what it means to be an unwitting prodigal son of Cleveland.
Ariel Anthony Castro, the 31-year-old son, who often went by his middle name, Anthony, when he was growing up in his late father’s house on Seymour Avenue, was at an early dinner on the afternoon of May 6th when calls started flooding his cell phone.
He had just gotten off work from his job as a customer service representative at a Columbus bank, and the ringer on his personal phone was off. That proved a good thing.
The meal with Trevor, his best friend, would be the last one Castro would enjoy before his name and public profile would be inalterably shattered.
"All of the messages basically said the same thing: A guy in a blue car, in his 50’s had been arrested. And that they had found Amanda, Gina and some other girl, alive, at a house on Seymour Avenue," Castro recalled Tuesday evening from Trevor’s Columbus apartment.
At that point he started feverishly returning phone calls. The second call was to his sister, Arlene, who lives in Fort Wayne, Ind., and was the last person known to have seen Gina alive in 2004.
"Did you hear the news," he practically shouted into the phone.
"Yes," was his sister’s equally emotional response.
"My sister was so excited. She had worried so much about Gina for all those years. She had felt so much guilt that she was with her just before she went missing. This was surreal."
"’Yeah, we’re going to go out and party tonight,’" Castro remembers Arlene "Rosie" Castro telling him before getting off the phone.
The next returned call was to his aunt, his mother’s sister, someone who also had closely followed the ordeal of the missing, long presumed dead, girls.
Castro instantly sensed that something was wrong with her tone, though. It was not celebratory. It was troubled, almost heavy.
"Think about it, Anthony. The guy they arrested is 52, drives a blue car and lives alone in a house on Seymour. Think about it."
"Anthony, I think they arrested your father."
But the son wasn’t having any of this. He denied it. He kept telling his aunt that she was wrong. Then he rushed her off the phone.
It didn’t occur to him to ask how she spoke with such conviction about the certainty that Ariel Castro, his father, was the man who had made Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight all disappear between 2002 and 2004. It didn't occur to him ask what kind of rumors were already sweeping over the near westside community.
But then, within hours, he heard a television report of the now famous 9-1-1 call that Amanda Berry made to Cleveland police. It knocked the wind out of him.
Help me. I’m Amanda Berry.
I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years, and I’m here. I’m free now.
Cleveland Dispatcher: Who’s the guy you’re trying – who’s the guy who went out?
Amanda Berry: Um, his name is Ariel Castro.
That’s when the son’s heart sank. That’s when Ariel Castro, the son, said he understood that his father, his namesake, had been unmasked as something far worse than he could have ever imagined.
That’s when he began to have flashbacks. He remembered as a boy also running out of the house to get help for his mother who was being beaten, yet again.
He suddenly remembered making a similar emergency call to Cleveland police 20 years earlier, when Castro inflicted a savage Christmas Day beating on Grimilda "Nilda" Figueroa, two months after she had come home from brain surgery.
"When I heard Amanda Berry’s voice … when I heard her say his name, I knew that he was guilty. I mean who would make that up? Who would come up with a name like Ariel Castro or invent that kind of story?"
Since that fateful day in May, Castro’s life has been a continuing series of painfully-refreshed childhood memories and haunting questions. He continues to recall incidents and behaviors that long foreshadowed his father’s crimes.
"My father was always very secretive. Growing up on Seymour Avenue there were parts of the house we weren’t allowed in. He kept a lock on the attic and on the basement door, on the garage. He nailed the windows shut. It didn’t seem so weird at the time."
But now that the three captive women are free, now that the elder Castro is dead, having hung himself one month into his life sentence, sordid truths about his possessive and savage nature are being revealed.
castro2.jpgAriel "Anthony" Castro and mother Grimilda "Nilda" Figueroa, summer 2011. (Photo courtesy of Ariel "Anthony" Castro)
Up until Nilda Figueroa found the strength to finally leave Seymour Avenue with young Ariel and the couple’s three daughters in tow, Castro, whom she never married, would often lock her in the house when he was away.
Because of his own jealousies, he would literally incarcerate her, making wild, ungrounded accusations alleging infidelity to justify her home detention. She was his first prisoner.
The son says he now understands that his mother, who died in 2012 in Indiana, stayed with Castro as long as she could out of fear for her life. But she also stayed out of loyalty and compassion for her children.
Memories of the fear he often felt as a boy, whenever his father’s car pulled into the Seymour Avenue driveway at night have returned – a daily homecoming fear that he says he suspects Gina, Amanda, and Michelle undoubtedly confronted for the better part of a decade.
He remembers now how fiercely he determined as a young boy not to become anything like his father.
After graduating with a degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University in 2004 and accepting a copy editing position with the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Castro attempted on occasion to reach out to his father. When he returned to Cleveland, he would sometimes call or attempt to visit with him.
But the conversations were always superficial and mostly confined to the driveway, the front porch or the backyard of the Seymour Avenue home.
"I could sense that he didn’t want me in the house, but I didn’t know why. I just assumed that it was a continuation of his eccentric ways. I chalked it up to him not really wanting a relationship with me at that point."
"I’m horrified by the thought that each time I visited the house after I graduated from college that all of those girls were already being held and tortured."
Perhaps there is sociopathic irony in the fact that Castro took three girls captive. Before Nilda left with their three daughters in the late 90’s, Castro reportedly doted on his girls – while heaping regular physical abuse on the son and the mother.
"He treated my sisters like daddy’s girl. There was no abuse directed towards them. As a boy, I sometimes resented it. I saw how they were treated differently than I was. He used to beat me. When I think about it now, I think it was out of frustration. He saw how I was trying to protect my mother from him."
When the family was permitted last month to retrieve personal items from the Seymour Avenue home hours before it was razed, Ariel found an eighth-grade photo which brought back another painful memory. It was a snapshot of his 8th grade induction into the National Junior Honor Society at Wilbur Wright Middle School. His mother and grandmother were both there to proudly celebrate him.
But when he walked into the house and showed the certificate to his father, a Cleveland public schools’ bus driver, the true nature of their relationship was revealed.
"Who cares about that. You don’t do anything around here," Castro remembers his father snapping, and destroying what had been a proud moment in his life.
Castro quit his job at the Indiana newspaper in 2011 after seven years. The evening work hours and social isolation of a small Indiana town had become unbearable. He wanted to come back to Ohio. He wanted a social life.
He looked for journalism jobs in Columbus and Cleveland but couldn’t find work in the rapidly changing news industry. About a year ago, he landed the banking job in Columbus. But he continued to keep an eye on Cleveland. He wanted to come home. He still dreamed of working for his hometown newspaper.
Then Amanda Berry escaped from his childhood home and just as quickly as the world knew of Charles Ramsey and his appetite for hamburgers, media vultures from around the world found him. His former peers, who could find no room for him within the industry, suddenly tracked him to his phone, his home and his job within hours.
"I have no idea how they found me so quickly, but within hours I was getting phone calls and text from media everywhere."
"There were literally dozens of reporters with cameras showing up at the bank. They were calling and pretending to be customers, saying they had business with me. They were misrepresenting themselves just to get me on the phone or to speak with me in person."
"I understood the initial crush. This was a bizarre international news story. But it didn’t let up. They were very aggressive. They wouldn’t back off. They were disruptive at my job and at my home."
As an experienced journalist, Castro understood the feeding frenzy, he just didn’t understand the crudeness, the sloppiness, the lack of tact. He was only beginning to understand what it meant to be the son of the late Ariel Castro.
CNN taught him the cruelest lesson of his new life in June when it aired an Anderson Cooper documentary called The Madman in My Life. To many people in media, apparently, there was to be no distinction between he and his father.
The network used his face superimposed over the Seymour Avenue house in Anderson's documentary.
"In a previous airing of this documentary, a photo of Ariel Castro’s son was mistakenly used to depict Ariel Castro," CNN later reported. "Ariel Castro’s son was not in any way involved in the kidnapping or crimes his father is accused of committing."
"We apologize for the error."
Castro doesn’t buy the apology. He says the photo in question was lifted from his Facebook page. He doesn’t believe it was a mistake.
Certain local television stations haven’t been any more tactful or professional in their coverage either, he alleges. He names reporters who have harassed him about everything, from requesting an interview when he picked up his father’s death certificate to the media’s intrusion when Castro’s family went to retrieve his body.
"I’m not asking for sympathy. We all know who the true victims are. But is it alright for them to continue to do this, to hound me, because my name is Ariel Castro? Are they allowed to continue to cross the line in deliberate bad taste because my father was a criminal?"
Which brings us back to a couple of central questions confronting the most unfortunate prodigal. Can Ariel Anthony Castro come home again? Or will he always be judged – and rejected – for the sins of his father.
Is his hometown big enough to allow for Ariel Anthony Castro to live in the shadow of Ariel Castro? Perhaps an even more important question for a young man still coming to grips with the haunting legacy of his father is whether he can ever again fully and safely rekindle his love affair with Cleveland? Can he navigate the tough challenges that Seymour Avenue will continue to pose at the most unexpected turns?
"When my father used to beat me, he would sometimes tell me how fortunate I was to have a father. He always said he didn’t have one. But the whole time, I would be thinking, ‘I wish I didn’t have one either.’ "
Due to the most horrific of circumstances, a child’s dream has belatedly come true. What now remains to be seen is whether a young man’s dream to return home and create a successful life for himself will also come to fruition in the absence of the father.
he was very affraid, not a big man nor a strong man nor was he smart. he was the complete opposite of all things, brave, smart & strong. castro was a weak souled, weak minded little fool of a male... not a man but a thing that housed a penis...
He’s just not sure that he can, or that he will, or that he should.
He’s not afraid. He’s a big man. He’s a smart man. He knows the streets of Cleveland as well as anyone. He’s unabashed about his love for his hometown.
Yet, he’s uncertain. He’s not sure what it now means to be Ariel Anthony Castro, son of the infamous Ariel Castro, especially back home in Cleveland. He’s not sure of the reception or the possible contempt this passionate, often unforgiving city will hold for a man born with what turns out to be the most despised name imaginable.
He’s not sure what it means to be the other Ariel Castro in the wake of his father’s incalculable deceit, stunning depravity and unforgivable crimes. He’s not sure what it means to be an unwitting prodigal son of Cleveland.
Ariel Anthony Castro, the 31-year-old son, who often went by his middle name, Anthony, when he was growing up in his late father’s house on Seymour Avenue, was at an early dinner on the afternoon of May 6th when calls started flooding his cell phone.
He had just gotten off work from his job as a customer service representative at a Columbus bank, and the ringer on his personal phone was off. That proved a good thing.
The meal with Trevor, his best friend, would be the last one Castro would enjoy before his name and public profile would be inalterably shattered.
"All of the messages basically said the same thing: A guy in a blue car, in his 50’s had been arrested. And that they had found Amanda, Gina and some other girl, alive, at a house on Seymour Avenue," Castro recalled Tuesday evening from Trevor’s Columbus apartment.
At that point he started feverishly returning phone calls. The second call was to his sister, Arlene, who lives in Fort Wayne, Ind., and was the last person known to have seen Gina alive in 2004.
"Did you hear the news," he practically shouted into the phone.
"Yes," was his sister’s equally emotional response.
"My sister was so excited. She had worried so much about Gina for all those years. She had felt so much guilt that she was with her just before she went missing. This was surreal."
"’Yeah, we’re going to go out and party tonight,’" Castro remembers Arlene "Rosie" Castro telling him before getting off the phone.
The next returned call was to his aunt, his mother’s sister, someone who also had closely followed the ordeal of the missing, long presumed dead, girls.
Castro instantly sensed that something was wrong with her tone, though. It was not celebratory. It was troubled, almost heavy.
"Think about it, Anthony. The guy they arrested is 52, drives a blue car and lives alone in a house on Seymour. Think about it."
"Anthony, I think they arrested your father."
But the son wasn’t having any of this. He denied it. He kept telling his aunt that she was wrong. Then he rushed her off the phone.
It didn’t occur to him to ask how she spoke with such conviction about the certainty that Ariel Castro, his father, was the man who had made Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight all disappear between 2002 and 2004. It didn't occur to him ask what kind of rumors were already sweeping over the near westside community.
But then, within hours, he heard a television report of the now famous 9-1-1 call that Amanda Berry made to Cleveland police. It knocked the wind out of him.
Help me. I’m Amanda Berry.
I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years, and I’m here. I’m free now.
Cleveland Dispatcher: Who’s the guy you’re trying – who’s the guy who went out?
Amanda Berry: Um, his name is Ariel Castro.
That’s when the son’s heart sank. That’s when Ariel Castro, the son, said he understood that his father, his namesake, had been unmasked as something far worse than he could have ever imagined.
That’s when he began to have flashbacks. He remembered as a boy also running out of the house to get help for his mother who was being beaten, yet again.
He suddenly remembered making a similar emergency call to Cleveland police 20 years earlier, when Castro inflicted a savage Christmas Day beating on Grimilda "Nilda" Figueroa, two months after she had come home from brain surgery.
"When I heard Amanda Berry’s voice … when I heard her say his name, I knew that he was guilty. I mean who would make that up? Who would come up with a name like Ariel Castro or invent that kind of story?"
Since that fateful day in May, Castro’s life has been a continuing series of painfully-refreshed childhood memories and haunting questions. He continues to recall incidents and behaviors that long foreshadowed his father’s crimes.
"My father was always very secretive. Growing up on Seymour Avenue there were parts of the house we weren’t allowed in. He kept a lock on the attic and on the basement door, on the garage. He nailed the windows shut. It didn’t seem so weird at the time."
But now that the three captive women are free, now that the elder Castro is dead, having hung himself one month into his life sentence, sordid truths about his possessive and savage nature are being revealed.
castro2.jpgAriel "Anthony" Castro and mother Grimilda "Nilda" Figueroa, summer 2011. (Photo courtesy of Ariel "Anthony" Castro)
Up until Nilda Figueroa found the strength to finally leave Seymour Avenue with young Ariel and the couple’s three daughters in tow, Castro, whom she never married, would often lock her in the house when he was away.
Because of his own jealousies, he would literally incarcerate her, making wild, ungrounded accusations alleging infidelity to justify her home detention. She was his first prisoner.
The son says he now understands that his mother, who died in 2012 in Indiana, stayed with Castro as long as she could out of fear for her life. But she also stayed out of loyalty and compassion for her children.
Memories of the fear he often felt as a boy, whenever his father’s car pulled into the Seymour Avenue driveway at night have returned – a daily homecoming fear that he says he suspects Gina, Amanda, and Michelle undoubtedly confronted for the better part of a decade.
He remembers now how fiercely he determined as a young boy not to become anything like his father.
After graduating with a degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University in 2004 and accepting a copy editing position with the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Castro attempted on occasion to reach out to his father. When he returned to Cleveland, he would sometimes call or attempt to visit with him.
But the conversations were always superficial and mostly confined to the driveway, the front porch or the backyard of the Seymour Avenue home.
"I could sense that he didn’t want me in the house, but I didn’t know why. I just assumed that it was a continuation of his eccentric ways. I chalked it up to him not really wanting a relationship with me at that point."
"I’m horrified by the thought that each time I visited the house after I graduated from college that all of those girls were already being held and tortured."
Perhaps there is sociopathic irony in the fact that Castro took three girls captive. Before Nilda left with their three daughters in the late 90’s, Castro reportedly doted on his girls – while heaping regular physical abuse on the son and the mother.
"He treated my sisters like daddy’s girl. There was no abuse directed towards them. As a boy, I sometimes resented it. I saw how they were treated differently than I was. He used to beat me. When I think about it now, I think it was out of frustration. He saw how I was trying to protect my mother from him."
When the family was permitted last month to retrieve personal items from the Seymour Avenue home hours before it was razed, Ariel found an eighth-grade photo which brought back another painful memory. It was a snapshot of his 8th grade induction into the National Junior Honor Society at Wilbur Wright Middle School. His mother and grandmother were both there to proudly celebrate him.
But when he walked into the house and showed the certificate to his father, a Cleveland public schools’ bus driver, the true nature of their relationship was revealed.
"Who cares about that. You don’t do anything around here," Castro remembers his father snapping, and destroying what had been a proud moment in his life.
Castro quit his job at the Indiana newspaper in 2011 after seven years. The evening work hours and social isolation of a small Indiana town had become unbearable. He wanted to come back to Ohio. He wanted a social life.
He looked for journalism jobs in Columbus and Cleveland but couldn’t find work in the rapidly changing news industry. About a year ago, he landed the banking job in Columbus. But he continued to keep an eye on Cleveland. He wanted to come home. He still dreamed of working for his hometown newspaper.
Then Amanda Berry escaped from his childhood home and just as quickly as the world knew of Charles Ramsey and his appetite for hamburgers, media vultures from around the world found him. His former peers, who could find no room for him within the industry, suddenly tracked him to his phone, his home and his job within hours.
"I have no idea how they found me so quickly, but within hours I was getting phone calls and text from media everywhere."
"There were literally dozens of reporters with cameras showing up at the bank. They were calling and pretending to be customers, saying they had business with me. They were misrepresenting themselves just to get me on the phone or to speak with me in person."
"I understood the initial crush. This was a bizarre international news story. But it didn’t let up. They were very aggressive. They wouldn’t back off. They were disruptive at my job and at my home."
As an experienced journalist, Castro understood the feeding frenzy, he just didn’t understand the crudeness, the sloppiness, the lack of tact. He was only beginning to understand what it meant to be the son of the late Ariel Castro.
CNN taught him the cruelest lesson of his new life in June when it aired an Anderson Cooper documentary called The Madman in My Life. To many people in media, apparently, there was to be no distinction between he and his father.
The network used his face superimposed over the Seymour Avenue house in Anderson's documentary.
"In a previous airing of this documentary, a photo of Ariel Castro’s son was mistakenly used to depict Ariel Castro," CNN later reported. "Ariel Castro’s son was not in any way involved in the kidnapping or crimes his father is accused of committing."
"We apologize for the error."
Castro doesn’t buy the apology. He says the photo in question was lifted from his Facebook page. He doesn’t believe it was a mistake.
Certain local television stations haven’t been any more tactful or professional in their coverage either, he alleges. He names reporters who have harassed him about everything, from requesting an interview when he picked up his father’s death certificate to the media’s intrusion when Castro’s family went to retrieve his body.
"I’m not asking for sympathy. We all know who the true victims are. But is it alright for them to continue to do this, to hound me, because my name is Ariel Castro? Are they allowed to continue to cross the line in deliberate bad taste because my father was a criminal?"
Which brings us back to a couple of central questions confronting the most unfortunate prodigal. Can Ariel Anthony Castro come home again? Or will he always be judged – and rejected – for the sins of his father.
Is his hometown big enough to allow for Ariel Anthony Castro to live in the shadow of Ariel Castro? Perhaps an even more important question for a young man still coming to grips with the haunting legacy of his father is whether he can ever again fully and safely rekindle his love affair with Cleveland? Can he navigate the tough challenges that Seymour Avenue will continue to pose at the most unexpected turns?
"When my father used to beat me, he would sometimes tell me how fortunate I was to have a father. He always said he didn’t have one. But the whole time, I would be thinking, ‘I wish I didn’t have one either.’ "
Due to the most horrific of circumstances, a child’s dream has belatedly come true. What now remains to be seen is whether a young man’s dream to return home and create a successful life for himself will also come to fruition in the absence of the father.
he was very affraid, not a big man nor a strong man nor was he smart. he was the complete opposite of all things, brave, smart & strong. castro was a weak souled, weak minded little fool of a male... not a man but a thing that housed a penis...
Chad, that was referencing the son, Ariel Anthony Catro. The son who was beaten and abused by his poor excuse of a father.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
i know what the letter says. i am saying castro is a weak, evil fool who is not a man.
I get it now. Since the article was centered around the son more than the dad, I think you can understand my confusion by your post.
it's ok, mickey. yours & my hearts are both in the right place. & to be honest i did not read the letter in its entirety. this mistake as proven to get the better of me on here where i make a comment stupid as shit all because of not fully reading a submitted post. i blame slayer, 'seasons in the abyss' played at full volume
i know what the letter says. i am saying castro is a weak, evil fool who is not a man.
I get it now. Since the article was centered around the son more than the dad, I think you can understand my confusion by your post.
it's ok, mickey. yours & my hearts are both in the right place. & to be honest i did not read the letter in its entirety. this mistake as proven to get the better of me on here where i make a comment stupid as shit all because of not fully reading a submitted post. i blame slayer, 'seasons in the abyss' played at full volume
its all good.
both articles I posted speak to our culture(both the public at large and the media) and gotta have info now, rather than wait for correct info, ya know? Reactionary , rather than a measured response based on best known info to make an informed decision.
read a quote attributed to Jesus in a gospel not included in the bible, "become a passerby" , certainly not all things require my attention or action, but soem do.
The more I can learn about guys like these , the better I am able to discern whats important for me to pay attention to. All of that comes down to trusting your gut , that "somethings off here" feeling. I'm sure many on that street felt that way over the years.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The last time I saw my father was about five months ago. I was in Cleveland for the weekend, and he asked me to stop by his house before I hit the road back to Columbus.
When I pulled up, he poked his head out from the back of the house and waved me to the backyard. I remember commenting to him that another of the neighboring houses looked freshly boarded up, and we recalled memories of my childhood friends who lived there decades ago. Today, the houses themselves are just memories, and so is my father, Ariel Castro.
I'm still shell-shocked from the way these past several months unfolded. Instantly, my father became one of the most hated men alive. In no time, reporters from around the world demanded to know who this man was and what kind of background he came from. Just like that, my father went from captured to convicted to imprisoned to dead.
The initial media crush was surreal. Cameras showed up at my workplace, reporters blasted my Facebook friends for information about me. The national networks set up shop, and I watched as person after person who barely knew my father lined up to get their moment on national television. I hid at a friend's house after the news broke because I was shaken to the core, and I didn't want to be forced to grieve with cameras and microphones pointed at me.
When I eventually returned home, I found dozens of business cards, notes and letters slipped under my door. Everyone wanted a moment of my time. But reporters weren't my only visitors -- thieves were, too. Someone pried open my front door and ransacked the place, carving "Bitch" in the door before leaving. The next jolt wasn't far behind, when a documentary on a major news network plastered a picture of me that it had lifted from my Facebook page over a picture of my father's house. They thought I was him and he was me.
That, however, was exactly what I wanted to scream from the rooftops. I am not my father, and I can't explain his actions or be held accountable for something I never knew he was doing. When I was finally ready, I gathered my thoughts and spoke out on a national stage, and the experience went a long way toward helping me move forward with my life. All that was left was to retrieve any old pictures and belongings from 2207 Seymour and try not to look as my childhood home was ceremoniously torn down.
I was horrified and disgusted and angered when I got the news of the unthinkable crimes my father committed. I still am. He deserved to pay for his actions, every day of those 1,000 years he could possibly serve. My anger with him kept me from visiting him in prison, even when he was moved to a facility just 20 minutes away from my doorstep. Coping would have to come before any possibility of a change of heart. But after mere weeks, that window slammed shut.
It took awhile for the reality of it all to set in. I steeled myself yet again after my father's death. It was all I could do. I had reporters, in revoltingly poor taste, seeking me out for a knee-jerk reaction, wanting to know the whereabouts of my father's remains, waiting for me outside the Franklin County coroner's office. I just wanted to get through those horrible days without NewsChannel 5 breathing down my neck.
I learned long ago that it's not worth the effort to actively hate someone who will always be in your life. An uncle told me at my mother's funeral, barely a year before we found out with the world what my father had done, that I shouldn't hate my father for everything he had already put us through. God would take care of him, he said. Both of my parents are gone now, and my father's punishment is between he and his Maker. Hate isn't going to do anyone any good.
Instead of bidding goodbye and good riddance to Ariel Castro, the question should be, now what? If my father's life and death can lead to changes in how we deal with sexual predators, domestic violence, mental illness and, yes, prison safety, then we should have those discussions. If we can prevent a repeat here or anywhere, then justice truly will have been served amid all the broken pieces my father left behind.
Mickeyrat, I thought for a second that you were Castro's son posting about it and I was all :shock: :shock: :shock: .
I am not sure how I am supposed to feel about this letter or whatever. Am I supposed to feel bad? I do feel sorry for the guy, having such a sicko for a dad and having to deal with the media fallout.... is that the appropriate emotion? .... There is a lack of surprise or shock in his words - just something about them. I wonder if he knew something? He was his son.... seems possible that he could have, and was just to on scared and messed in the head about his dad to do anything. Or not. Who knows. There is something a bit odd about the letter though.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
I'm not sure there's a normal way to write a letter describing how your whole life was blasted to pieces in the space of a few hours. He sounds to me like a man seeking catharsis, and just trying to make sense of an insane situation.
He probably wrote the piece for himself rather than us.
Coroner rebuts theory that Cleveland kidnapper died in sexual act
View Larger
Related Items
Ariel Castro report (PDF)
Director views inmate suicides as failures; new steps being taken
State probes 2nd high-profile prison suicide in month
Video: Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro found dead
By Darrel Rowland and Alan Johnson
Thursday October 10, 2013 4:35 PM
The investigation of this year's second high-profile suicide in Ohio prisons once again faults corrections officers for failing to complete their rounds and falsifying records to show they did.
Also, new details reveal for the first time that there is a possibility that Ariel Castro might not have been trying to kill himself, but was instead performing a sexual practice called auto-erotic asphyxiation. However, Franklin County Coroner Dr. Jan Gorniak discounts that possibility for Castro, who was found dead on Sept. 3 in his cell at the Corrections Reception Center in Orient, south of Columbus.
Today’s findings that Castro’s prison guards Caleb Ackley, 26, and Ryan Murphy, 27, neglected their duty echo results of the probe of the Aug. 4 suicide of Death Row inmate Billy Slagle in which two officers were suspended for failing to make rounds and creating fraudulent records. All four officers are suspended with pay pending further disciplinary action.
“Rounds were not properly completed. Post log books were falsified. There was no satisfactory verification process in place. Shift supervisors were not given clear direction on verification procedures and expectations. ... Corrections officers were utilizing fire escape doors as shortcuts between segregation pods and floors,” the Castro report said.
Just as in the Slagle suicide, the head of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association challenged the investigative findings by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. They charged that the prison administration has a “pattern of scapegoating front-line workers after a spate of high profile prison suicides.”
“Why isn’t DR&C focused on the systemic and more dangerous problems of increased violence, overcrowding or the need for mental health services in our prisons?” union President Christopher Mabe said in a statement. “It appears that DR&C is trying to deflect criticism and, ultimately, ignore the real problems at hand. Instead, once again, they are scapegoating our officers who are just trying to get their jobs done in an extremely challenging environment.”
Prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said as a result of the findings in the suicide cases the agency is “putting in place statewide a system of supervisors conducting random checks to verify that rounds are being conducted according to policy. This will be done on a weekly basis.”
Smith said that despite the union’s assertion, the number of employees working in high security and restrictive housing settings has not been reduced. However, the agency has reduced the overall number of corrections officers by several hundred due to cutbacks.
Smith said prisons Director Gary Mohr is meeting this week with Fred Cohen and Lindsay Hayes, independent consults hired by the agency to review the agency’s suicide prevention policies and make recommendations.
Castro, 53, pleaded guilty to nearly 1,000 counts related to his imprisonment of three women in his Cleveland home for a decade, including aggravated murder – for forcing one of the victims to miscarry — kidnapping, rape and other crimes. He had been in prison for only about a month when he died.
Corrections officers were supposed to check on Castro every half hour, notes the report, which was partially censored. However, log entries verifying of at least five of those checks were falsified, investigators found. But the check less than a half-hour before Castro’s body was found was completed properly, as was the one in which the discovery was made. He died by hanging himself with a sheet attached to a window hinge in his cell, Gorniak determined.
The probe noted that Castro left no suicide note, expressed no suicidal inclinations during family visits and showed no suicidal tendencies in several assessments. He did however complain that he feared his food was being poisoned.
The report says that Castro’s “pants and underwear were pulled down to his ankles. The relevance of this finding is unclear. These facts, however, were relayed to the State Highway Patrol for consideration of the possibility of auto-erotic asphyxiation.”
Gorniak rejects that speculation.
“I’m standing by my ruling. Hanging by suicide,” she said. “Based on the totality of the scene, the pieces don’t fit that puzzle. I have ruled that out.”
Gorniak said she was never told that Castro was found hanging with his pants at his ankles. But she said that is not likely relevant.
“Our job isn’t to determine why people kill themselves. The only people who know why aren’t here to answer for themselves.”
Gorniak said she found no semen in her autopsy of Castro’s body.
Castro also had filled out informal complaint forms but never turned them in. “Castro generally complains about verbal harassment from other inmates and staff; however, he did not provide any names or detailed facts sufficient for the (investigative) team to conduct a further investigation into these allegations. These documents also contain multiple references to Castro’s fear that someone was tampering with his food.” They found the latter allegations baseless.
Castro apparently flushed some of his meals down the toilet, then complained that not eating was causing him health problems. Investigators found those complaints coincided with two visits by medical staff on Aug. 14 in response to complaints by Castro about “chest pains, dizziness, nausea and concerns about his food not properly being prepared.”
Castro showed an interest in being placed in “protective control” after prison officials told him he would not be safe in some prison areas.
The report also faulted the response time of the MedCare ambulance, which took 34 minutes to get to the prison after being called; the state’s contract requires a 15-minute response time, or to call another ambulance company if they couldn’t make the run.
“As a result, Castro was not en route to (Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center) OSUMC until nearly an hour after he was discovered,” the report says. “There is no indication, however, that the delay had an effect on the ultimate outcome.” Investigators recommended the MedCare contract be terminated unless the state gets assurances of improvements.
Castro was found at 9:18 the night of the death. He was pronounced dead at the hospital about an hour and a half later.
Castro was found facing the cell door with his knees bent, according to Franklin County coroner's office notes. The hinge was almost 7 feet from the floor of the cell. Police reports listed Castro at 5 feet 7 inches tall. Prison officials had to get a tool to cut the sheet from his neck, today’s report says.
Two sheets of paper were found in the cell, one with Bible verses written on it and the other with the names of Castro's children and grandchildren, the notes said. A photo display of his family members and Bible open to chapters 2 and 3 of the book John were also found.
Castro was four weeks into a sentence of life without parole plus 1,000 years when he killed himself. His body was released to his son in Columbus.
<!-- e --><a href="mailto:drowland@dispatch.com">drowland@dispatch.com</a><!-- e -->
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Comments
Yeah, he said there was a lot of harmony in the house
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
From our local news station
http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/201 ... Death.html
ORIENT, Ohio -
READ THE UPDATED STORY: Officials Call For Answers After Cleveland Kidnapper Hanged Himself In Prison Cell
---
Ohio Rehabilitation and Correction officials said convicted kidnapper Ariel Castro was found hanging in his prison cell at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient.
Officials told 10TV that Castro was found hanging in his cell around 9:20 p.m.
Prison medical staff began performing lifesaving measures. Castro was transported to The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at 10:52 p.m.
JoEllen Smith, spokesperson with the Ohio Rehabilitation and Correction, said Castro died from an apparent suicide.
Castro was sentenced to life in prison for holding three women captive in Cleveland for more than a decade and raping them repeatedly.
Castro was not a part of the general prison population and was isolated from other inmates for his own protection because of his high profile.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson released the following statement:
"Our focus remains on the well-being of the survivors of Seymour Avenue. It is our sincere hope that they will continue to heal and recover. I ask the community to continue to respect the privacy of the survivors so that they can move forward with their lives."
Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for the latest.
Orient is just south of Columbus. Facility used to be a medium security prison. Reconfigured system several years ago. ALL prisoners , this is there first stop in Ohio's system. They are evaluated and sent to the appropriate prison based on that evaluation.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"..That's One Happy Fuckin Ghost.."
“..That came up on the Pillow Case...This is for the Greek, With Our Apologies.....”
i woulda had him off'ed awhile back.
anyhow, isn't it amazing how he abducted & held captive three girls (that grew into women) for years on end, beat, raped & tortured & who knows what else.. oh yeah, starved to terminate a birth. chaining these women up & finally having a birth done at the house all while terrorizing the ladies with threats if the baby died during delivery.
keeping these ladies under lock & key, even boarding up windows.
dude's a freak who couldn't take what he dished out, but he was even living in nicer conditions than what he provided.
rot in eternity you stinkin bastard,
chad
p.s. i wonder if his neck snapped from his weight & if he had jumped off something?
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
Couldn't agree with you more, Chadwick. What a cowardly POS.
2014 Cincy, Detroit, Moline, & Milwaukee
2015 Central Park
2016 Lexington, Ottawa, Toronto 1 & 2, Boston 1 & 2, Chicago 1 & 2
2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
2018 Seattle 1 & 2, Missoula, Chicago 1
His REAL sentence would have been to place him in general population, just to see how well he could survive. Giving him just a taste of his own medicine. What a creep.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Godfather.
As for the women, let them be. THEY should get to dictate how media intrusion goes in their lives. I also hope the city of cleveland has a fund set up for them specifically to help recover from this.
As for him being dead and not saying anything more? There is more to this story that will come out, such as this.....
http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/ape ... icide.html
Report: Ohio kidnapper called mother of victim
Friday September 6, 2013 8:00 AM
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A report says that Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro called the mother of one of his victims while she was in captivity and told her she was OK.
Castro also told investigators during a videotaped interrogation that opportunities were missed for capturing him while he held the women he kidnapped.
Castro says in the video obtained by NBC's "Today Show" and first reported Friday that he called the mother of Amanda Berry and told her that Berry was OK and was his wife now.
He says he hung up and they didn't have a conversation.
Berry's mother died before Berry was freed in May.
Castro told investigators video surveillance near the school of another victim should have tipped police to him.
The 53-year-old Castro committed suicide in prison Tuesday night.
©2013 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
http://clevelandcourage.org/
what? someone can't hang themselves in 29 minutes? every 30 minutes a guard checked on him. as soon as the officer walked away castro put his head throw a taught noose & stepped off into the black, a perfect place for him.
why are you so concerned? misspent money? your state just saved a lot of money by this freak offing himself. if i were a ohio taxpayer i'd be dancing
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
The last time I saw my father was about five months ago. I was in Cleveland for the weekend, and he asked me to stop by his house before I hit the road back to Columbus.
When I pulled up, he poked his head out from the back of the house and waved me to the backyard. I remember commenting to him that another of the neighboring houses looked freshly boarded up, and we recalled memories of my childhood friends who lived there decades ago. Today, the houses themselves are just memories, and so is my father, Ariel Castro.
I'm still shell-shocked from the way these past several months unfolded. Instantly, my father became one of the most hated men alive. In no time, reporters from around the world demanded to know who this man was and what kind of background he came from. Just like that, my father went from captured to convicted to imprisoned to dead.
The initial media crush was surreal. Cameras showed up at my workplace, reporters blasted my Facebook friends for information about me. The national networks set up shop, and I watched as person after person who barely knew my father lined up to get their moment on national television. I hid at a friend's house after the news broke because I was shaken to the core, and I didn't want to be forced to grieve with cameras and microphones pointed at me.
When I eventually returned home, I found dozens of business cards, notes and letters slipped under my door. Everyone wanted a moment of my time. But reporters weren't my only visitors -- thieves were, too. Someone pried open my front door and ransacked the place, carving "Bitch" in the door before leaving. The next jolt wasn't far behind, when a documentary on a major news network plastered a picture of me that it had lifted from my Facebook page over a picture of my father's house. They thought I was him and he was me.
That, however, was exactly what I wanted to scream from the rooftops. I am not my father, and I can't explain his actions or be held accountable for something I never knew he was doing. When I was finally ready, I gathered my thoughts and spoke out on a national stage, and the experience went a long way toward helping me move forward with my life. All that was left was to retrieve any old pictures and belongings from 2207 Seymour and try not to look as my childhood home was ceremoniously torn down.
I was horrified and disgusted and angered when I got the news of the unthinkable crimes my father committed. I still am. He deserved to pay for his actions, every day of those 1,000 years he could possibly serve. My anger with him kept me from visiting him in prison, even when he was moved to a facility just 20 minutes away from my doorstep. Coping would have to come before any possibility of a change of heart. But after mere weeks, that window slammed shut.
It took awhile for the reality of it all to set in. I steeled myself yet again after my father's death. It was all I could do. I had reporters, in revoltingly poor taste, seeking me out for a knee-jerk reaction, wanting to know the whereabouts of my father's remains, waiting for me outside the Franklin County coroner's office. I just wanted to get through those horrible days without NewsChannel 5 breathing down my neck.
I learned long ago that it's not worth the effort to actively hate someone who will always be in your life. An uncle told me at my mother's funeral, barely a year before we found out with the world what my father had done, that I shouldn't hate my father for everything he had already put us through. God would take care of him, he said. Both of my parents are gone now, and my father's punishment is between he and his Maker. Hate isn't going to do anyone any good.
Instead of bidding goodbye and good riddance to Ariel Castro, the question should be, now what? If my father's life and death can lead to changes in how we deal with sexual predators, domestic violence, mental illness and, yes, prison safety, then we should have those discussions. If we can prevent a repeat here or anywhere, then justice truly will have been served amid all the broken pieces my father left behind.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
posting.php?mode=reply&f=13&t=209073
COLUMBUS -- Ariel Castro hopes to come home.
He’s just not sure that he can, or that he will, or that he should.
He’s not afraid. He’s a big man. He’s a smart man. He knows the streets of Cleveland as well as anyone. He’s unabashed about his love for his hometown.
Yet, he’s uncertain. He’s not sure what it now means to be Ariel Anthony Castro, son of the infamous Ariel Castro, especially back home in Cleveland. He’s not sure of the reception or the possible contempt this passionate, often unforgiving city will hold for a man born with what turns out to be the most despised name imaginable.
He’s not sure what it means to be the other Ariel Castro in the wake of his father’s incalculable deceit, stunning depravity and unforgivable crimes. He’s not sure what it means to be an unwitting prodigal son of Cleveland.
Ariel Anthony Castro, the 31-year-old son, who often went by his middle name, Anthony, when he was growing up in his late father’s house on Seymour Avenue, was at an early dinner on the afternoon of May 6th when calls started flooding his cell phone.
He had just gotten off work from his job as a customer service representative at a Columbus bank, and the ringer on his personal phone was off. That proved a good thing.
The meal with Trevor, his best friend, would be the last one Castro would enjoy before his name and public profile would be inalterably shattered.
"All of the messages basically said the same thing: A guy in a blue car, in his 50’s had been arrested. And that they had found Amanda, Gina and some other girl, alive, at a house on Seymour Avenue," Castro recalled Tuesday evening from Trevor’s Columbus apartment.
At that point he started feverishly returning phone calls. The second call was to his sister, Arlene, who lives in Fort Wayne, Ind., and was the last person known to have seen Gina alive in 2004.
"Did you hear the news," he practically shouted into the phone.
"Yes," was his sister’s equally emotional response.
"My sister was so excited. She had worried so much about Gina for all those years. She had felt so much guilt that she was with her just before she went missing. This was surreal."
"’Yeah, we’re going to go out and party tonight,’" Castro remembers Arlene "Rosie" Castro telling him before getting off the phone.
The next returned call was to his aunt, his mother’s sister, someone who also had closely followed the ordeal of the missing, long presumed dead, girls.
Castro instantly sensed that something was wrong with her tone, though. It was not celebratory. It was troubled, almost heavy.
"Think about it, Anthony. The guy they arrested is 52, drives a blue car and lives alone in a house on Seymour. Think about it."
"Anthony, I think they arrested your father."
But the son wasn’t having any of this. He denied it. He kept telling his aunt that she was wrong. Then he rushed her off the phone.
It didn’t occur to him to ask how she spoke with such conviction about the certainty that Ariel Castro, his father, was the man who had made Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight all disappear between 2002 and 2004. It didn't occur to him ask what kind of rumors were already sweeping over the near westside community.
But then, within hours, he heard a television report of the now famous 9-1-1 call that Amanda Berry made to Cleveland police. It knocked the wind out of him.
Help me. I’m Amanda Berry.
I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years, and I’m here. I’m free now.
Cleveland Dispatcher: Who’s the guy you’re trying – who’s the guy who went out?
Amanda Berry: Um, his name is Ariel Castro.
That’s when the son’s heart sank. That’s when Ariel Castro, the son, said he understood that his father, his namesake, had been unmasked as something far worse than he could have ever imagined.
That’s when he began to have flashbacks. He remembered as a boy also running out of the house to get help for his mother who was being beaten, yet again.
He suddenly remembered making a similar emergency call to Cleveland police 20 years earlier, when Castro inflicted a savage Christmas Day beating on Grimilda "Nilda" Figueroa, two months after she had come home from brain surgery.
"When I heard Amanda Berry’s voice … when I heard her say his name, I knew that he was guilty. I mean who would make that up? Who would come up with a name like Ariel Castro or invent that kind of story?"
Since that fateful day in May, Castro’s life has been a continuing series of painfully-refreshed childhood memories and haunting questions. He continues to recall incidents and behaviors that long foreshadowed his father’s crimes.
"My father was always very secretive. Growing up on Seymour Avenue there were parts of the house we weren’t allowed in. He kept a lock on the attic and on the basement door, on the garage. He nailed the windows shut. It didn’t seem so weird at the time."
But now that the three captive women are free, now that the elder Castro is dead, having hung himself one month into his life sentence, sordid truths about his possessive and savage nature are being revealed.
castro2.jpgAriel "Anthony" Castro and mother Grimilda "Nilda" Figueroa, summer 2011. (Photo courtesy of Ariel "Anthony" Castro)
Up until Nilda Figueroa found the strength to finally leave Seymour Avenue with young Ariel and the couple’s three daughters in tow, Castro, whom she never married, would often lock her in the house when he was away.
Because of his own jealousies, he would literally incarcerate her, making wild, ungrounded accusations alleging infidelity to justify her home detention. She was his first prisoner.
The son says he now understands that his mother, who died in 2012 in Indiana, stayed with Castro as long as she could out of fear for her life. But she also stayed out of loyalty and compassion for her children.
Memories of the fear he often felt as a boy, whenever his father’s car pulled into the Seymour Avenue driveway at night have returned – a daily homecoming fear that he says he suspects Gina, Amanda, and Michelle undoubtedly confronted for the better part of a decade.
He remembers now how fiercely he determined as a young boy not to become anything like his father.
After graduating with a degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University in 2004 and accepting a copy editing position with the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Castro attempted on occasion to reach out to his father. When he returned to Cleveland, he would sometimes call or attempt to visit with him.
But the conversations were always superficial and mostly confined to the driveway, the front porch or the backyard of the Seymour Avenue home.
"I could sense that he didn’t want me in the house, but I didn’t know why. I just assumed that it was a continuation of his eccentric ways. I chalked it up to him not really wanting a relationship with me at that point."
"I’m horrified by the thought that each time I visited the house after I graduated from college that all of those girls were already being held and tortured."
Perhaps there is sociopathic irony in the fact that Castro took three girls captive. Before Nilda left with their three daughters in the late 90’s, Castro reportedly doted on his girls – while heaping regular physical abuse on the son and the mother.
"He treated my sisters like daddy’s girl. There was no abuse directed towards them. As a boy, I sometimes resented it. I saw how they were treated differently than I was. He used to beat me. When I think about it now, I think it was out of frustration. He saw how I was trying to protect my mother from him."
When the family was permitted last month to retrieve personal items from the Seymour Avenue home hours before it was razed, Ariel found an eighth-grade photo which brought back another painful memory. It was a snapshot of his 8th grade induction into the National Junior Honor Society at Wilbur Wright Middle School. His mother and grandmother were both there to proudly celebrate him.
But when he walked into the house and showed the certificate to his father, a Cleveland public schools’ bus driver, the true nature of their relationship was revealed.
"Who cares about that. You don’t do anything around here," Castro remembers his father snapping, and destroying what had been a proud moment in his life.
Castro quit his job at the Indiana newspaper in 2011 after seven years. The evening work hours and social isolation of a small Indiana town had become unbearable. He wanted to come back to Ohio. He wanted a social life.
He looked for journalism jobs in Columbus and Cleveland but couldn’t find work in the rapidly changing news industry. About a year ago, he landed the banking job in Columbus. But he continued to keep an eye on Cleveland. He wanted to come home. He still dreamed of working for his hometown newspaper.
Then Amanda Berry escaped from his childhood home and just as quickly as the world knew of Charles Ramsey and his appetite for hamburgers, media vultures from around the world found him. His former peers, who could find no room for him within the industry, suddenly tracked him to his phone, his home and his job within hours.
"I have no idea how they found me so quickly, but within hours I was getting phone calls and text from media everywhere."
"There were literally dozens of reporters with cameras showing up at the bank. They were calling and pretending to be customers, saying they had business with me. They were misrepresenting themselves just to get me on the phone or to speak with me in person."
"I understood the initial crush. This was a bizarre international news story. But it didn’t let up. They were very aggressive. They wouldn’t back off. They were disruptive at my job and at my home."
As an experienced journalist, Castro understood the feeding frenzy, he just didn’t understand the crudeness, the sloppiness, the lack of tact. He was only beginning to understand what it meant to be the son of the late Ariel Castro.
CNN taught him the cruelest lesson of his new life in June when it aired an Anderson Cooper documentary called The Madman in My Life. To many people in media, apparently, there was to be no distinction between he and his father.
The network used his face superimposed over the Seymour Avenue house in Anderson's documentary.
"In a previous airing of this documentary, a photo of Ariel Castro’s son was mistakenly used to depict Ariel Castro," CNN later reported. "Ariel Castro’s son was not in any way involved in the kidnapping or crimes his father is accused of committing."
"We apologize for the error."
Castro doesn’t buy the apology. He says the photo in question was lifted from his Facebook page. He doesn’t believe it was a mistake.
Certain local television stations haven’t been any more tactful or professional in their coverage either, he alleges. He names reporters who have harassed him about everything, from requesting an interview when he picked up his father’s death certificate to the media’s intrusion when Castro’s family went to retrieve his body.
"I’m not asking for sympathy. We all know who the true victims are. But is it alright for them to continue to do this, to hound me, because my name is Ariel Castro? Are they allowed to continue to cross the line in deliberate bad taste because my father was a criminal?"
Which brings us back to a couple of central questions confronting the most unfortunate prodigal. Can Ariel Anthony Castro come home again? Or will he always be judged – and rejected – for the sins of his father.
Is his hometown big enough to allow for Ariel Anthony Castro to live in the shadow of Ariel Castro? Perhaps an even more important question for a young man still coming to grips with the haunting legacy of his father is whether he can ever again fully and safely rekindle his love affair with Cleveland? Can he navigate the tough challenges that Seymour Avenue will continue to pose at the most unexpected turns?
"When my father used to beat me, he would sometimes tell me how fortunate I was to have a father. He always said he didn’t have one. But the whole time, I would be thinking, ‘I wish I didn’t have one either.’ "
Due to the most horrific of circumstances, a child’s dream has belatedly come true. What now remains to be seen is whether a young man’s dream to return home and create a successful life for himself will also come to fruition in the absence of the father.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
They should not be made to feel like an extension of that sick bastard. They are victims as well.
A horrible man who hurt a lot of people.
he was very affraid, not a big man nor a strong man nor was he smart. he was the complete opposite of all things, brave, smart & strong. castro was a weak souled, weak minded little fool of a male... not a man but a thing that housed a penis...
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
both articles I posted speak to our culture(both the public at large and the media) and gotta have info now, rather than wait for correct info, ya know? Reactionary , rather than a measured response based on best known info to make an informed decision.
read a quote attributed to Jesus in a gospel not included in the bible, "become a passerby" , certainly not all things require my attention or action, but soem do.
The more I can learn about guys like these , the better I am able to discern whats important for me to pay attention to. All of that comes down to trusting your gut , that "somethings off here" feeling. I'm sure many on that street felt that way over the years.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I am not sure how I am supposed to feel about this letter or whatever. Am I supposed to feel bad? I do feel sorry for the guy, having such a sicko for a dad and having to deal with the media fallout.... is that the appropriate emotion? .... There is a lack of surprise or shock in his words - just something about them. I wonder if he knew something? He was his son.... seems possible that he could have, and was just to on scared and messed in the head about his dad to do anything. Or not. Who knows. There is something a bit odd about the letter though.
He probably wrote the piece for himself rather than us.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories ... eport.html
Coroner rebuts theory that Cleveland kidnapper died in sexual act
View Larger
Related Items
Ariel Castro report (PDF)
Director views inmate suicides as failures; new steps being taken
State probes 2nd high-profile prison suicide in month
Video: Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro found dead
By Darrel Rowland and Alan Johnson
Thursday October 10, 2013 4:35 PM
The investigation of this year's second high-profile suicide in Ohio prisons once again faults corrections officers for failing to complete their rounds and falsifying records to show they did.
Also, new details reveal for the first time that there is a possibility that Ariel Castro might not have been trying to kill himself, but was instead performing a sexual practice called auto-erotic asphyxiation. However, Franklin County Coroner Dr. Jan Gorniak discounts that possibility for Castro, who was found dead on Sept. 3 in his cell at the Corrections Reception Center in Orient, south of Columbus.
Today’s findings that Castro’s prison guards Caleb Ackley, 26, and Ryan Murphy, 27, neglected their duty echo results of the probe of the Aug. 4 suicide of Death Row inmate Billy Slagle in which two officers were suspended for failing to make rounds and creating fraudulent records. All four officers are suspended with pay pending further disciplinary action.
“Rounds were not properly completed. Post log books were falsified. There was no satisfactory verification process in place. Shift supervisors were not given clear direction on verification procedures and expectations. ... Corrections officers were utilizing fire escape doors as shortcuts between segregation pods and floors,” the Castro report said.
Just as in the Slagle suicide, the head of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association challenged the investigative findings by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. They charged that the prison administration has a “pattern of scapegoating front-line workers after a spate of high profile prison suicides.”
“Why isn’t DR&C focused on the systemic and more dangerous problems of increased violence, overcrowding or the need for mental health services in our prisons?” union President Christopher Mabe said in a statement. “It appears that DR&C is trying to deflect criticism and, ultimately, ignore the real problems at hand. Instead, once again, they are scapegoating our officers who are just trying to get their jobs done in an extremely challenging environment.”
Prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said as a result of the findings in the suicide cases the agency is “putting in place statewide a system of supervisors conducting random checks to verify that rounds are being conducted according to policy. This will be done on a weekly basis.”
Smith said that despite the union’s assertion, the number of employees working in high security and restrictive housing settings has not been reduced. However, the agency has reduced the overall number of corrections officers by several hundred due to cutbacks.
Smith said prisons Director Gary Mohr is meeting this week with Fred Cohen and Lindsay Hayes, independent consults hired by the agency to review the agency’s suicide prevention policies and make recommendations.
Castro, 53, pleaded guilty to nearly 1,000 counts related to his imprisonment of three women in his Cleveland home for a decade, including aggravated murder – for forcing one of the victims to miscarry — kidnapping, rape and other crimes. He had been in prison for only about a month when he died.
Corrections officers were supposed to check on Castro every half hour, notes the report, which was partially censored. However, log entries verifying of at least five of those checks were falsified, investigators found. But the check less than a half-hour before Castro’s body was found was completed properly, as was the one in which the discovery was made. He died by hanging himself with a sheet attached to a window hinge in his cell, Gorniak determined.
The probe noted that Castro left no suicide note, expressed no suicidal inclinations during family visits and showed no suicidal tendencies in several assessments. He did however complain that he feared his food was being poisoned.
The report says that Castro’s “pants and underwear were pulled down to his ankles. The relevance of this finding is unclear. These facts, however, were relayed to the State Highway Patrol for consideration of the possibility of auto-erotic asphyxiation.”
Gorniak rejects that speculation.
“I’m standing by my ruling. Hanging by suicide,” she said. “Based on the totality of the scene, the pieces don’t fit that puzzle. I have ruled that out.”
Gorniak said she was never told that Castro was found hanging with his pants at his ankles. But she said that is not likely relevant.
“Our job isn’t to determine why people kill themselves. The only people who know why aren’t here to answer for themselves.”
Gorniak said she found no semen in her autopsy of Castro’s body.
Castro also had filled out informal complaint forms but never turned them in. “Castro generally complains about verbal harassment from other inmates and staff; however, he did not provide any names or detailed facts sufficient for the (investigative) team to conduct a further investigation into these allegations. These documents also contain multiple references to Castro’s fear that someone was tampering with his food.” They found the latter allegations baseless.
Castro apparently flushed some of his meals down the toilet, then complained that not eating was causing him health problems. Investigators found those complaints coincided with two visits by medical staff on Aug. 14 in response to complaints by Castro about “chest pains, dizziness, nausea and concerns about his food not properly being prepared.”
Castro showed an interest in being placed in “protective control” after prison officials told him he would not be safe in some prison areas.
The report also faulted the response time of the MedCare ambulance, which took 34 minutes to get to the prison after being called; the state’s contract requires a 15-minute response time, or to call another ambulance company if they couldn’t make the run.
“As a result, Castro was not en route to (Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center) OSUMC until nearly an hour after he was discovered,” the report says. “There is no indication, however, that the delay had an effect on the ultimate outcome.” Investigators recommended the MedCare contract be terminated unless the state gets assurances of improvements.
Castro was found at 9:18 the night of the death. He was pronounced dead at the hospital about an hour and a half later.
Castro was found facing the cell door with his knees bent, according to Franklin County coroner's office notes. The hinge was almost 7 feet from the floor of the cell. Police reports listed Castro at 5 feet 7 inches tall. Prison officials had to get a tool to cut the sheet from his neck, today’s report says.
Two sheets of paper were found in the cell, one with Bible verses written on it and the other with the names of Castro's children and grandchildren, the notes said. A photo display of his family members and Bible open to chapters 2 and 3 of the book John were also found.
Castro was four weeks into a sentence of life without parole plus 1,000 years when he killed himself. His body was released to his son in Columbus.
<!-- e --><a href="mailto:drowland@dispatch.com">drowland@dispatch.com</a><!-- e -->
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
its highly relevant if he died during an act of auto erotic asphyxiation.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14