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Women's rescue raises questions about handling of missing-person cases

Tuesday, May 7, 2013
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Amanda Berry, right, hugs her sister Beth Serrano after being reunited in a Cleveland hospital Monday. Berry and two other women were found Monday in a house near downtown Cleveland after being missing for about a decade. (AP Photo/Family photo courtesy WOIO-TV)

Transcript of long-missing woman's 911 call
A transcript of Berry's 911 call.


Caller: Help me. I'm Amanda Berry.

Dispatcher: You need police, fire, ambulance?

Caller: I need police.

Dispatcher: OK, and what's going on there?


Dispatcher: OK, and what's your address?

Caller: 2207 Seymour Avenue.

Dispatcher: 2207 Seymour. Looks like you're calling me from 2210.

Caller: Huh?

Dispatcher: Looks like you're calling me from 2210.

Caller: I can't hear you.

Dispatcher: Looks like you're calling me from 2210 Seymour.

Caller: I'm across the street; I'm using the phone.

Dispatcher: OK, stay there with those neighbors. Talk to police when they get there.

Caller: (Crying)

Dispatcher: OK, talk to police when they get there.

Caller: OK. Hello?

Dispatcher: OK, talk to the police when they get there.

Caller: OK (unintelligible).

Dispatcher: We're going to send them as soon as we get a car open.

Caller: No, I need them now before he gets back.

Dispatcher: All right; we're sending them, OK?

Caller: OK, I mean, like ...

Dispatcher: Who's the guy you're trying -- who's the guy who went out?

Caller: Um, his name is Ariel Castro.

Dispatcher: OK. How old is he?

Caller: He's like 52.

Dispatcher: And, uh -

Caller: I'm Amanda Berry. I've been on the news for the last 10 years.

Dispatcher: I got, I got that, dear. (Unintelligible) And, you say, what was his name again?

Caller: Uh, Ariel Castro.

Dispatcher: And is he white, black or Hispanic?

Caller: Uh, Hispanic.

Dispatcher: What's he wearing?

Caller (agitated): I don't know, 'cause he's not here right now. That's why I ran away.

Dispatcher: When he left, what was he wearing?

Caller: Who knows (unintelligible).

Dispatcher: The police are on their way; talk to them when they get there.

Caller: Huh? I - OK.

Dispatcher: I told you they're on their way; talk to them when they get there, OK.

Caller: All right, OK. Bye.


Source: Cleveland law department


Both times, police showed up, the neighbors say, but never went inside. Police also paid a brief visit to the house in 2004.

Now, after three women who vanished a decade ago were found captive at the peeling, rundown house Monday in a discovery that exhilarated the city, Cleveland police are facing questions for the second time in four years about their handling of missing-person cases and are conducting an internal review to see if they overlooked anything.

City Safety Director Martin Flask said Tuesday that investigators had no record of any tips or calls about criminal activity at the house in the years after the victims vanished, but were still checking their police, fire and emergency databases.





A 6-year-old girl believed to be Berry's daughter was also found in the home, said Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba. He would not say who the father was or where the child was born.

The women were reported by police to be in good health and were reunited with family members but remained in seclusion.



Police would not say how the women were taken or how they were hidden in the same neighborhood where they had vanished. Investigators also would not say whether they were kept in restraints inside the house or sexually assaulted.

Four years ago, in another part of town, Cleveland's police force was heavily criticized following the discovery of 11 bodies in the home and backyard of Anthony Sowell, who was convicted and sentenced to death.

The victims' families in the Sowell case accused police of failing to properly investigate the disappearances because most of the women were addicted to drugs and lived in an impoverished neighborhood. For months, the stench of death hung over the house, but it was blamed on a sausage factory next door.


This time, two neighbors said they called police to the Castro house on separate occasions in recent years.


Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of Castro's house in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. "They walked to side of the house and then left," he said.






Her aunt Sandra Ruiz told reporters that her niece had an emotional reunion with family members.

"She recognized everyone," Ruiz said, who asked that the family be given space.


Many of the women's loved ones and friends had held out hope of seeing them again, holding candlelight vigils and tacking missing posters on streetlights.



Over the past decade or so, investigators twice dug up backyards looking for Berry and continued to receive tips about her and DeJesus every few months, even in recent years. But few leads ever came in about Knight, who was the first of the three to disappear, vanishing at age 20 in 2002.

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This undated combination photo shows from left, Onil, Ariel, and Pedro Castro, three brothers arrested Tuesday in connection with a decade-old missing-persons case in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Cleveland Police Department)



Castro was a bass player in several salsa and Latin bands in Cleveland. But he lasted only two gigs with one group because he was always late, said Miguel Quinones, manager of Grupo Fuego.



