Hope: A Memoir of Survival

by Amanda Berry

He’s cutting his hair again. He’s so in love with himself. He spends more time looking at himself in the mirror than any girl does. He’s always trimming his mustache and beard, cutting the little hairs out of his nose and ears, snipping his eyebrows. He thinks he’s so attractive. Dude, you’re old. And fat and nasty and hairy. Looking in the mirror’s not going to help! I wish I could say that to him, but I don’t want to get smacked.

She had never been inside a church before. I’ve taught her a lot about Jesus, but she’s never seen an altar or rows of pews. She told me that she saw a statue of Jesus and hugged it—so sweet! Then the two of them knelt down, bowed their heads, and prayed together. I taught her to pray in this room. At night we kneel together at the side of the bed, fold our hands, and pray for “Mamaw,” my mom. We pray for my dad and Beth and our whole family, too, then we climb into bed.

I bet she prays for my parents in church just like she does here. I wonder what he says to God.

She is the only happy person in this house, and I love her. But I can’t stand being here anymore, so isolated and cut off from the world. I am twenty-one. I was fourteen when he took me and I feel like I’m still stuck at fourteen.

Michelle says no one will ever come and rescue us, and that we will all die here.

I used to dream of killing him with the rat poison that he sprinkles in our room because of the mice in this house. I could never figure out how to do that, and I think it’s a lot easier to talk about killing someone than to actually do it.

I’m having trouble breathing. I feel the walls closing in on me. I’m done hoping that he will e...

DeJesus liked Castro but often found him to be an argumentative know-it-all who was easily upset when he didn’t get his way, someone who argued for the sake of arguing.

He often raged that the world was against him, especially women. The clubs they played together were often filled with beautiful women, and DeJesus watched with amusement as Castro hit on them endlessly, never missing a chance to ask one of them to dance. They were usually much younger and always shot him down, which infuriated him.

“Dude, man, you’re a glutton for punishment. You look like an idiot with those girls,” DeJesus told him. “Fuck those bitches. Fuck them all,” Castro said. “Don’t they know who I am? I’m a musician!” “Whoop-dee-do!” DeJesus said, teasing his friend. “You may be a musician, but you’re a friggin’ school bus driver. Who the hell wants to date a school bus driver? You’re nobody special. Neither am I.” “Fuck you, Tito,” Castro said.

Every day my prayers are the same: I ask God to give my parents a sign that I am alive and to please, please, please give someone a sign that we are right here inside 2207 Seymour Avenue.

Castro didn’t kneel or say a prayer, or show any sign of emotion, but did manage to take a cell phone photo of Nilda’s body without anyone noticing.

He abused Nilda in this very same house. I guess after she left, he missed having a woman to treat like his property, so he started kidnapping other women.

I’ve learned to try to make any comfort last. For five hours I have been out in the fresh air. For years I have been inside dreaming about coming outside, hopping the fence and screaming for help, and now that I’m here I don’t do a thing but breathe the air and play with my daughter. I am not going to do anything to make him change his mind and take away this tiny bit of happiness.

I wake up and turn on the TV. Channel 3 has breaking news: SEARCH FOR AMANDA BERRY. Some guy in prison told the police that he killed me and buried me in an empty lot at West 30th Street and Wade Avenue. That’s two blocks from here! They’re showing footage from the news helicopters flying right over my head. I hear them! Come get me! I’m alive! You are so close! I wish I could smash a hole

in the roof and signal to the helicopters.

If I could bust out of here I could run over there in two minutes.

It’s making me insane that they are so close. But I’m going even crazier worrying about Beth. She thinks they are going to find my bones.

He sits on my bed to watch the news and after a while says, “This is crazy.” He usually laughs when the police are chasing the wrong lead, but this time he is nervous and fidgety because they are so close by. I think it also scares him that my disappearance is still such...

He had a lousy family life growing up, and a terrible relationship with his ex. Maybe that’s partly what this has all been about, why he stole our lives, why he let me have a baby. He wants that perfect little family he never had. He’s created his own world and he doesn’t realize it’s fake. I feel sorry for him. I’m grateful that he went out of his way today to make us happy. I have never felt closer to him than I do at this moment. But I also know that if I had the chance to kill him right now to get free, I would do it without a second thought.

I feel invisible. People are outside, walking and driving by. I wonder if my mom is at my aunt’s house just down the street? How can nobody know I’m here? I’m so worried that this is how the whole rest of my life will be.

My friends have had their quinceañera and Sweet Sixteen parties, graduated, found jobs, and maybe even gotten married. It’s hard to think about the nine birthdays, the nine Christmases, and all the fun in between that I’ve missed with my family and friends. I was in seventh grade when I walked into this house. Now I’m twenty-three.

I used to like to sing and dance with her to the music on our radio. When Rihanna or Adele came on, I knew all the words and got up and danced around the room. Even with the chain on my ankle, it felt good. Now I feel like a block of ice in a freezer.

“Please get up, Chelsea. Will you color with me?” Jocelyn wants to play, but even that is hard.

I used to make her laugh. Now she is trying to do the same for me. When I ask him when I can go home, he always says, “One day.” But that day never comes. I am so tired of his lies. I used to like to go downstairs to do the laundry or the dishes just to get out of this room. Now when he makes me go down to clean, I only want to go back to bed. I don’t want to be around people. When he sends me back upstairs and locks me inside this closet, I feel relieved. Finally, I think, I can lie down.

Today I turn twenty-seven, and I feel nothing but anger and resentment. I never finished high school, or learned to drive. I haven’t talked on a telephone since I was sixteen. I have spoken to only four people in ten years, and one of them is my kidnapper. I wonder what it’s like to send a text or an e-mail or use an iPad or Twitter—all the stuff I see on TV. I hate him for sealing me off from the world, especially today, on another lost birthday.

I guess people can’t keep hoping for a miracle forever.

According to Greta.

There are so many cops here now. He can’t get to us anymore.

We drive to the corner and turn left.

We are off Seymour Avenue, finally and forever.

Wolford admitted he had fabricated the story. The police and FBI never figured out why, but ultimately they concluded that Wolford might simply have wanted a chance to get out of prison for a few days. In January 2013, a judge added four and a half years to his sentence.

Brill and Hageman knew that half the police cars in Cleveland were already on Seymour Avenue, so they decided to look for the Miata. They started driving east on Clark Avenue, a busy main road not far from Castro’s house. And there it was: just up ahead, a blue Miata was pulling up to a stop sign with two Hispanic males in their fifties in the two-seater convertible. As the police moved closer, the driver of the Miata saw the cruiser and made eye contact with the officers. Brill and Hageman were waiting for “the look,” the expression they see on the faces of car thieves, drunk drivers, or any other driver who doesn’t want to attract police attention: a guilty look, then a careful effort to direct their attention anywhere but at the officers. The Miata driver did none of that. He seemed totally calm.

Throughout it all Castro sat silently on a wooden chair beneath the cell’s neon light. He never asked a single question about why he was being held.

At the moment Amanda was kicking out the door of 2207 Seymour Avenue, Nancy Ruiz was preparing dinner for her sister Janice three blocks down the

street. Janice lived there with two other sisters, a nephew, and his family. She had suffered a stroke a week earlier and had been released from the hospital that afternoon. The house had been in the family for about fifty years, and its fresh white paint and tidy yard made it stand out on an otherwise run-down block. Nancy was cooking a chicken stew while Janice rested in her bedroom. Her doctors had said that Janice needed quiet, so Nancy had drawn the curtains and shut off her phone and the TV to make sure nothing disturbed her. Outside, though, Nancy heard a commotion—sirens and people shouting. She didn’t think much of it, but then the door swung open and her older sister Sandra burst in and shouted, “They found three girls in a basement down the street!” Nancy froze.

I think if Ariel Castro were standing here right now, she would kill him.

They ask me if I want a shower. God, I would love a shower, a long one, without worrying about someone pawing me. Just a hot, peaceful shower. I can’t remember the last one I had. It used to be my favorite thing. Today—Monday—was my bath day anyway. He had a schedule in the house. It depended on the season and the weather, but usually Jocelyn and I got to take a shower every four or five days. Tonight it was going to be our turn to go downstairs to use the shower. They lead us to a big bathroom. It’s so clean! I close the door and lock it, and Joce and I stand under the hot water, soaking and shampooing and scrubbing. It’s been ten years since I have been able to use all the soap and shampoo I want. I close my eyes and breathe in the sweet smells. I’m so happy it almost makes me cry. As we’re scrubbing, the diamond stud in my ear falls out and slips down the drain. He used to wear it and then gave it to me. This seems like a fitting moment to have that little trace of him disappear forever.

Gina and I would often daydream about a buffet where you could eat whatever you wanted and all you wanted. I eat pancakes and doughnuts and orange juice, and I ask the man at the omelet station to make me one with ham and cheese and onions. I can’t believe how much I’m eating. I haven’t seen this much food in ten years. So many choices! Then, back in the room, in a bed with big pillows and soft sheets that smell like soap, I fall into a slumber so deep and happy that I could sleep forever. And for the first time since I was sixteen, I’m actually looking forward to waking up.

I’m going to die in prison, but I didn’t do all that stuff you guys say I did.” Guerra looked at Castro staring back at him through the bars and saw that he was cool, unemotional, and resigned. And Guerra thought to himself, he’s been living this lie for so long that he actually believes it.

I just want to put an end to my life, and let the Devil deal with me.

While investigators searched Castro’s house, other officers scoured the neighborhood to make certain they weren’t missing any accomplices or clues. Across the street and three doors down from Castro’s house, police arrested Elias Acevedo Sr., a convicted sex offender who had moved in with his mother but failed to register his new address with police. He was jailed for that offense, and while he was incarcerated police linked his DNA to an unsolved 1993 rape. The further they looked into that case, the more they also began to suspect Acevedo in the unsolved disappearance of Christina Adkins, who was eighteen and pregnant when she went missing in January 1995. Encouraged by the fact that Amanda, Gina, and Michelle had been found alive after so many years, FBI agent Andy Burke began reviewing cold cases. Burke noticed inconsistencies in police reports about Adkins’s disappearance—one witness seemed to have given police a false name and date of birth. After pulling the original files and reinterviewing people involved in the case, Burke discovered that that witness was Acevedo. Acevedo ultimately confessed to killing Adkins, as well as Pamela Pemberton, a thirty-year-old whose body was found in 1994. He then led police to an area off I-90 near downtown Cleveland and pointed to a manhole cover. When officers lifted it, Burke shined his flashlight twenty feet down into an old concrete storm sewer and saw Christina Adkins’s skull.

He repeatedly used the word “consensual” to describe his sexual relationship with his captives. He claimed he had never been violent and that none of the victims had ever cried while he was having sex with them.

During the course of the four-hour interview Castro never apologized for what he had done and cried every time Jocelyn’s name was mentioned.

For ten years, I lived in a world controlled by one selfish man. Now I live in a world of kindness, where total strangers help me and ask for nothing in return.

Castro had already pleaded guilty to 937 felony counts, with many details of the indictment drawn from Amanda’s diaries, and today was his sentencing hearing. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, an outspoken former judge, said 937 was a “conservative” number of the possible counts against Castro. He described Castro as “evil incarnate.”

In exchange for the guilty plea, McGinty had not sought the death penalty, and the case was wrapped up at remarkable speed—less than ninety days from arrest to sentencing. Castro had agreed to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus a thousand years—a sentence intended to convey the community’s revulsion at his crimes. McGinty also said it was a message to other criminals who might want to become famous by copying Castro. All that was left now was for Judge Michael Russo to formally accept the deal at the sentencing. Wooley, Hilow, and Kimmel wanted a low-key hearing. Given the extraordinary interest in the case, they had no desire to have Amanda, Gina, and Michelle endure a very public confrontation with Castro. The county prosecutor, an elected official who never shied away from the media spotlight, disagreed. McGinty said Castro’s crimes should be aired as publicly and in as much detail as possible. He said he wanted to leave no doubt in Judge Russo’s mind that he should approve the sentencing deal, and to leave a court record so damning that no judge, even decades in the future, would ever consider letting Castro out of prison. He wanted all the victims to testify.

She lives not as a victim, but as a survivor. Her insurmountable will to prevail is the only story worth discussing.”

Then she turned to the defense table and faced Castro directly. “To Ariel Castro: Que Dios se apiade de su alma.” May God have mercy on your soul.

Then she addressed Castro: “I spent eleven years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all that happened, but you’re going to face hell for eternity.”