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WOMAN: I just want people to know that she's still missing.
And, if anybody out there has a heart and they know anything
that happened to Amanda,
just please pick up the phone and call the police department.
I saved a lot of things.
And I'm not sure why.
I can't believe that I'm sitting here talking about it.
Oh, God, I shouldn't say this.
NEWSREADER: Amanda disappeared on her way home after leaving her job
at Burger King on West 100th, 10th and Lorraine,
a day before her 17th birthday.
I just need to know. It's killing me.
I need to find out what happened with my daughter.
That story, sure,
it was probably the most important story of my whole career.
Welcome back, everyone. Cleveland Police are asking for your help
to find a missing 14-year-old girl.
Her name is Georgina DeJesus.
She's been missing since after school yesterday.
I wanted to know what kind of evil would do something like this.
Can I tell this story? I don't think I should.
Cleveland Police detectives and now 15 FBI agents
aggressively working this mysterious disappearance.
Amanda Berry vanished, seemingly into thin air.
It's a life and death thing.
Whoever got 'em, let these two children go home.
I had no idea that evil could be so...
..close.
Mark. My name's Bill Safos.
I was a television reporter for
many, many years. 33 years, maybe.
When my family emigrated to the US from Greece, I was the youngest.
We bought our first TV.
I remember, you know, my brother and I were so excited.
And my brother wanted cartoons and things that kids watch.
But then I got used to watching the news and trying to figure out
what they were saying and I learned to speak English and I translated.
I told my dad what was happening.
Back then, Ohio State had a great journalism programme,
and that's where I wanted to go
and I ended up getting a job at the NBC station there in Columbus.
Take a look at Court Street today. Things pretty much back to normal.
You can see most of the shops are open,
everything as a matter of fact is open.
'You know, I never wanted to sit in the TV station all day long.'
They toppled buildings and destroyed lives
and, at the same time, they strengthened the American spirit.
We have, joining us...
'I wanted to go out and meet people and do different things every day.'
I just loved doing it.
Until...
..the day I met Louwana Miller.
I remember sitting in the newsroom and I saw these people, you know,
we'd get a lot of people coming into the TV station.
So there's people coming and going all day long.
But some, for some reason, they caught my eye.
And I said, "Hey, who are those people?
What's their deal?" And the receptionist is, like,
"Oh, it's a mom whose daughter is missing."
And right away, within the first few minutes,
I knew it was the real deal.
That when Louwana's daughter, Amanda, didn't come home,
that something was wrong.
Somebody has this kid and we gotta do something now.
Amanda worked at Burger King.
And Louwana told me Amanda never liked to walk home.
It isn't the best of neighbourhoods,
so Louwana said she always got a ride home
or we would tell her to wait.
But that night, they were on the phone together
and Amanda says, "I have a ride."
She kept saying, "Amanda would have never got in a car with a stranger.
That was her big thing.
"She would have never got in a car with a stranger."
And I know she didn't run away,
because she had a good life at home.
I can't see nothing.
You have to do this.
I don't know how to do it.
Just in case?
He's waiting too.
Yeah. (LAUGHS) Take it back.
(LAUGHS) What?
(INDISTINCT CHATTER CONTINUES)
I was 12 years old, it was 2003,
when she came up missing.
I looked up to her.
In school, she was, like, as far as I know,
she was a straight A student.
And she would tutor me sometimes,
you know, with math and stuff like that.
I would always hang out in her bedroom
and play Super Nintendo in her Play Station.
She loved to write music and R&B, and she loved shoes.
She loved, like, name brand stuff,
like, you know, just anything name brand.
I just keep hoping that
she's out there somewhere
and she'll come home.
Amanda Berry's mother has spent days wandering about
and searching for her 17-year-old daughter.
Trying to hang in there.
She held my feet to the fire. She wanted it in every newscast.
"I wanna see Mandy on the news, I want her picture...
I want people to, you know... Cos somebody saw something.
Somebody knows something, so put her picture on TV.
Help me. Please, help me."
I want my daughter home, man,
and if she can't come home,
I just wanna know where she's at.
Most people thought she ran away...
..even the police officer that came that night.
So, it took a while before they, you know,
"Hey, maybe something happened here."
This wasn't your typical missing person case.
There was no crime scene, there was no witnesses.
So detectives went out and started, well, they talked to the family,
talked to the people at Burger King.
They talked to friends, schoolmates,
and just tried to get as much information as they could.
There were a lot of tips that you have to disprove and run 'em down.
There was just nothing to 'em.
Louwana Miller sits by the phone.
It rings often, but it's never the call she wants.
But tonight, Cleveland FBI says a phone call to Amanda's mother
one week after her daughter's disappearance may hold the key.
I get a phone call and it's an unknown male
who just says that Mandy's with him and she's all right.
So I just kept him on the phone for as long as I could,
to see if I could hear maybe my daughter in the background.
And then what? Then he hangs up.
When the phone call happened,
Louwana called me and told me about it.
She's, like, "You're not gonna believe this.
I got a phone call," she said, "from the guy that has Mandy."
He told me not to worry about her and she's fine.
But he called me from her cell phone.
I remember telling her, "Well, that's great,
because the FBI's gonna be able to figure out where he is."
They can track that stuff.
FBI got the Chronicle people involved
and were using equipment that I didn't know existed.
We believed that call bounced off one particular tower.
So what we did was, we went for that tower
and we drew a slice of the pie, like this.
And went and knocked at every door, interviewed every person,
searched every vacant cemetery.
It gave me hope that, you know what? She's alive.
She's in a house, an apartment or location somewhere,
and that there's a chance that we will find her.
When Louwana found out the tower that that cell phone call hit,
she was...obsessed.
We went there, saw the tower, we were in that neighbourhood.
Louwana told me, "I feel my daughter, Bill.
I know she's alive and she's somewhere close to me."
And she was so right. She was so right.
And it's so crazy that we were so close.
(LATIN DANCE MUSIC)
(HORN HONKS) MAN: Hey!
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
I grew up around here as a kid,
pretty much my whole life, until when I graduated.
My high school was right down the street there.
And this was a very, very tight-knit
predominantly Puerto Rican neighbourhood.
So everyone pretty much knew each other,
everybody hung out with each other. The families all knew each other.
And it was a great place to grow up in.
We all pretty much had each other here.
The Castro family was one of the first families
to come from Puerto Rico into Cleveland.
They were well-known.
Cessi Castro, I have nothing but the utmost respect for him.
He was almost like a father to my father.
And I literally grew up
in that store that he owned.
So this is Cessi's store, was Cessi's store.
That's where we would meet for our Christmas parties.
We'd go back there, play music and everybody hung out with each other.
Cessi Castro was Ariel Castro's uncle.
Ariel Castro lived literally down the street.
I mean, from the corner store to where his house was,
I think it's half a block.
I'm sitting on this front porch every day and I'm looking.
Puerto Rican dude across the street.
I said, I said, "Look, sit right here, let me talk to you."
"This dude next door, what's his name?"
"Ariel." "Why is his house boarded up?"
I don't see no air conditioning unit.
it's gotta be stifling in that house.
I'm outside dying right now, right.
He's like, "He's Puerto Rican." "Well, you're Puerto Rican."
I go, "I see your mother got Central Air.
Why is that house boarded up?" "You ask too many questions."
"Is that right?"
I want to know why he lived that way.
It was something about him that captivated me,
but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Tattered fliers are all that's left to remind us
that Amanda Berry vanished almost six months ago.
I just want people to know that she's still missing.
If anybody out there has a heart,
and they know anything
that happened to Amanda,
just please pick up the phone and call the police department.
Louwana was just very upset.
I mean, she would see on the news a dog missing
and she got very upset that
the dog got that much time on the news and Amanda didn't.
I'll never forget that.
She even called up all the stations.
She did everything. She was very upset with that.
I told them that I would fight
and try and put Mandy's picture on the air as much as I can.
But if she didn't see her daughter's picture on the 11 o'clock news,
at 11:30, my phone was ringing and she'd be like,
"Bill, why wasn't Mandy's picture on the news?"
And she would, like, scream and yell
but, in the middle of all this sobbing,
crying, it was just like... (SIGHS)
So, I let her, for the next, you know, three hours,
you know, I'd put the phone on my pillow
and eventually I would fall asleep and she'd still be screaming at me.
But, um, and then I'd wake up, you know,
to go to work at 3:00am to do the morning show
and she'd still be on the phone.
I'd be like, "OK, I gotta get to work."
If anybody knows anything about my daughter...
..I wish somebody would come forward,
cos somebody out there knows something.
After the story and the case started to get cold,
Louwana, like any parent who never got to see their kid again
would get frustrated and worried
and think that police and the FBI aren't doing enough.
So, Louwana arranged for the FBI to come to her house.
I was in the living room when he got there and I'm like,
"Oh, my God, Louwana, I'm leaving.
I'll call you. Call me when he leaves."
"No, Bill, you're not leaving."
And her friend was there too and they pushed me in the bedroom
and she's like, "Lay on the floor."
And then she took the bedspread from the bed
and just kind of like covered me up.
And the two of 'em went onto the living room and this FBI agent's,
you know, discussing all kinds of things that definitely are interesting.
I wish I had a notepad.
But they must have had a list there and they were going down,
talking about people of interest.
You know, who might end up being suspects, or whatever.
Well, next thing I know, her friend brought it into me and was like,
"Here." I'm like, "You guys did not just take that from an FBI agent!"
And I'm like, "Oh, my God, they're gonna get me in trouble
for interfering with this guy's official business."
And, um... But, of course, I was like, I'm like, looking.
And that's the list that Louwana and I started looking at
and those are the people we started spying on,
doing our own surveillance.
There were all sorts of people,
there were sex offenders in the neighbourhood, drug dealers...
After going through that whole list, she wasn't satisfied,
but she wasn't as upset that they weren't finding anything,
because we weren't finding anything either.
Thank you all very much for being here. I appreciate it.
She was determined to get her daughter home. No, she didn't care.
She thought they weren't gonna do it, she was gonna do it herself.
And, um...
If she wasn't gonna do it herself, she was gonna make me do it.
But, uh, and somehow, I listened to her,
because it was the right thing to do.
Not the right thing here, but the right thing here, it was. It was.
She could rely on him for everything, always.
And so, she goes, "Let's go shop." And I said, "OK", I said,
"What do you wanna do?" She goes,
"I wanna buy Bill a nice shirt and tie."
She's like, "It's a blue shirt and a tie and I want you to wear it,
the day Mandy comes home."
And I said, "OK."
(NEWS JINGLE)
Welcome back, everyone.
Cleveland Police are asking for your help tonight,
to find a missing 14-year-old girl.
Here is her picture. Her name is Georgina DeJesus.
The teen's family says she's been missing
since after school yesterday and does not...
I was shocked, it was another girl, the same neighbourhood,
the same body type, it just seemed like the same story.
But exactly almost to the day, a year later.
She does not have a history of running away.
She goes by the name Gina.
Please call Cleveland Police, if you've seen her.
Right away, I just got this horrible feeling that...
..this might be related to Amanda.
It started out as a beautiful day for me, you know, same routine.
I woke up, I gave her a hug and a kiss, told her I loved her,
she left with her father that took her to school in the morning.
At 2:30, three o'clock, she didn't come home.
So I was, "Wait a minute, let me give her 30 minutes,
cos maybe she stopped.
She's probably joking around with the other kids and that,"
which would be a normal routine for her.
But, when I noticed 30 minutes went by,
that's when I got really worried,
because she should have had been home.
My mom was like, "There's something going on."
"Mom, what are you talking about?" She's like, "Gina isn't home yet."
I'm like, "She probably went to her friend's house."
"No, it's too late, I've called her friends.
No-one has seen her.
Mayra, something's wrong."
I drove back to the school, I must have searched
for at least a good hour.
Didn't see nothing. Nobody's around.
Got back in the car, went back to the house.
Right there and then I started feeling Gina's in a lot of trouble.
Another emotional day, as a family hopes for the safe return of
their 14-year-old daughter.
Searching for Gina, after she disappears without a trace.
You know, she left school, she walked to her friend,
they wanted to have a sleepover,
at least get together after school, they went to a pay phone.
The friend left.
And Gina was last seen walking eastbound on Lorraine.
That's what we knew.
We went over the area, there's cameras everywhere.
Closed down all four streets
of that whole area on Fitz and Lorraine,
which is kind of a big, busy area.
And then let the dog do his thing,
and the dog went to the pay phone in the exact location,
where we knew she last was and nothing after that.
Hundreds of people, including Gina's family,
met at this phone booth on West 105th and Lorraine Avenue,
for a candlelight vigil and prayer.
This is the last place Gina was seen on Friday.
Her friend, Arlene Castro, was with her before they parted ways.
The last thing she said to me was, "You owe me 50 cents."
Felix, her father, got the rest of my children together
and two of my nephews, part of his family.
They were literally looking into dumpsters for my daughter.
Didn't sleep, didn't eat.
I wasn't thinking of none of that.
My days went where I wanted to get and find my daughter.
I wanted my daughter home.
Oh!
(LAUGHS)
Oh, yeah.
I think I didn't do my job very well.
This is for who?
As a protector,
I put it on my fault that this happened to my child.
I felt that I, right there and then, that I have failed.
I'm sitting in the editorial meetings and somebody said,
"Oh, there's another missing girl. Who wants to cover it?"
This one is on the west side of Cleveland.
They gave a little bit of background on it
and then they said her name was "Gina DeJesus".
"Hm, that sounds Puerto Rican." So I say, "Hey, I'll take the story,"
because I felt that me being Puerto Rican would maybe help them
feel a little bit more comfortable.
So I went over, and Nancy does the interview and she goes,
"My daughter did not run away."
I said, "What? Are you sure?"
She goes, "Yeah. Why would she run away?" She had no issues with us.
There's no way my daughter ran away."
In my heart, I know she's still out there and, in my heart,
I think, maybe, going with the mother's intuition...
..I couldn't feel her being gone.
I would tell Nancy, like, "Are you sure she's not dead?"
She goes, "Nope, my daughter's not dead. I know my daughter's alive.
I would feel it if my daughter was dead.
Somebody has her. Somebody has her."
And we still have the hope that she is gonna walk through our door.
If by chance, if she can see this, I just tell her,
just to keep her faith
and that we will find her and she will be coming home.
I watched the news to see my parents on there.
My name is Janet DeJesus.
My mom and dad's named Nancy and Felix.
It helped, seeing my parents on TV,
so I would cry sometimes
and then I'd be like,
"They're still out there."
It gave me hope and I think that's what really kept me going.
That day, I'd get up like a normal day.
School was let out at, like, 2:30, and I had my bus money,
but sometimes I liked to just walk home with my friends.
And I was like, "You wanna come over and hang out?"
She's like, "I have to call my mom."
So I gave her 50 cents to call her mom
and she asked her mom and she said no.
And she went one way, I went the opposite way.
Her dad was, I guess, watching us
and he looked up and asked me if I'd seen his daughter.
He asked me if I'd help him find her and I said, "OK."
I finally got a little nervous, cos he didn't turn around,
but then he said, he needed to get something from his house.
I was like, "OK." And I was like, I guess in my own way,
tried to convince myself that, "No, I know him, he's my friend's dad.
He knows my parents."
So I didn't really think nothing of it.
Well, he asked me to help him bring out the speaker
and he just closed the door.
Turned out to be the basement and he told me that I couldn't go home.
My own thing was to try to get out of the house
and get back home to my parents.
And I was trying to figure out how to like, undo the lock,
but I couldn't, because my hands was tied and my mouth was taped.
I don't wanna talk about what he did to me.
I don't wanna go there.
Tomorrow night at 9:00pm,
the entire nation will get a chance to join the hunt for Gina DeJesus.
The 14-year-old's disappearance will be featured on
Fox's America's Most Wanted.
Meanwhile, local law enforcement authorities and the FBI
continue to search for signs of the teen.
It was bad, but it went from bad to worse,
because you're also dealing...
You're only human and you're also dealing with your own community
and, you know, when you go to church or go to the store,
you see that sign up and you're like,
"What happened? What's going on?"
So it... Not only as a policeman, you have to do your job,
but now you're dealing with somebody from your community.
Literally, I mean, I knew her father Felix many years
and, um...
Yeah, it takes more of a toll on you as a person from the community.
It doesn't mean another policeman from another city doesn't care,
what I'm saying is you're dealing with somebody from your community.
From your nationality. Your people.
And it takes major... It takes a major toll on you,
mentally and physically.
At first, I didn't make the connection
between the two missing girls,
and it was Bill who made the connection between Amanda and Gina.
He goes, "Lydia, I'm telling you now,
these two cases are connected."
I said, "How do you know?" He goes, "I don't know, it's just a feeling.
I just think they're connected."
I kept asking the police, "Did you connect the cases?"
I kept asking the FBI, "Are the cases connected?"
"No, no, we can't connect them.
You know, we can't connect them officially."
I thought, well, we gotta, you know...
"If the police aren't gonna connect the stories and talk about
the similarities, we have to point them out."
I said, "I think we should introduce the two families.
I think they would like to meet."
Oh, my God, I don't know what to say to you,
because I've waited for a whole year.
I just hope you don't have to wait as long as me, man.
So we all met at Louwana's house and sat down and put our heads together
and tried to come up with
some kind of lead or suspect.
And one of the ways that I thought of was
that we check all the employees at that middle school
that Amanda had went to and that Gina was still going to.
So we asked the schools for all the personnel files
of the teaching and non-teaching staff there.
And one of the people was a janitor at that school.
He was a convicted rapist, who had served his time, got out.
And I remember, I was like,
"Oh, my God! How did this rapist get a job?"
And could he have anything to do with their disappearance?
He knew that we wanted to question him, so he ran away from us.
He ended up getting in his car and speeding away.
Oh, God, I shouldn't say this.
He ended up going home and he ended up killing himself, committing...
I mean, he shouldn't have taken his own life.
All we wanted to do was ask him questions.
He already paid his debt to society.
It wasn't his mistake that Cleveland Schools hired him,
they shouldn't have, they should have done the background checks.
But we were so close.
It wasn't that former employee, but it was a former employee.
My name's Ignacio Miranda.
I was a band director for the group, Sinte.
I'm working at the library, cleaning, you know,
and actually doing a lot of the yard work outside.
I see a school bus pull up.
I see a man get out, comes over.
And he says, "Hey, I hear you're looking for a bass player.
My name's Ariel Castro."
I talked to him for a little while and ended up going to his house
shortly after, just to see what he could do.
He lived along on Seymour.
I got to listen to him play. I said,
"Well, he's actually a really good musician, he can really play."
You know, we were following each other, we didn't really need
the sheet music, we didn't need any of it, we were just playing.
Then I wanted to go to the restroom before I made it home and I said,
"Hey, is it OK if I use your restroom?"
And he says, "Didn't your mom train you any better?
You're not supposed to go somebody else's house
and ask them to use their restroom.
I'm like, "OK, whatever, dude." And I walked off.
Still, we proceeded to have him in our band.
We played around different, west side of Cleveland, you know,
Belindas Nightclub was one we used to play.
Once we started getting a little bit more people wanting us to play,
we got offered a gig at Pittsburgh and he said, "No, I'm not doing it.
You guys figure it out, but I'm not going."
He was willing to go a half hour away, or an hour away,
but he couldn't go any further than that.
Amanda Berry disappeared the night before she would have turned 17
and, in a poignant tribute, her family is marking her 18th birthday
with a solemn vigil and a plea for help.
It's been so long, I can't take it any more.
All I need is an answer.
You know, the knowing's not the hardest part.
Not knowing is the hardest part.
Louwana Miller, very beautiful woman,
and suffered so much of not knowing about her daughter.
You know, so we share that mutual feeling, you know,
on, we knew our daughter was out there.
Her family's pain is shared by the parents of Gina DeJesus,
the 14-year-old Cleveland girl who disappeared five blocks from
the spot Amanda Berry was last seen.
Gina's father is convinced that both girls were abducted.
Now, whoever's got them, let them go, please.
Wherever you got 'em, let these two children go home.
CROWD: Amanda and Gina!
Now!
I felt for everyone that was on the TV looking for Gina and Amanda.
My name is Michelle Knight
and I was abducted before Gina and Amanda.
Nobody was looking for me.
Who do we want? CROWD: Gina!
When do we want her? Now!
I was in the house two years before Gina.
No-one interviewed or arrested has been connected to this case.
Nobody ever deserves to go through
something like what we went through, ever.
Not even our worstest enemy.
The years of living in his house
was filled with torture, rape and verbal abuse.
His whole persona was terrifying.
He turned into Jekyll and Hyde, like, he was nice one moment,
then he just turned into this horrible monster.
That particular day, I needed to go to an appointment.
Unfortunately, they did not give me the correct address.
I ended up going to two wrong places.
So, I was asking the store manager, "Do you know where this place is?"
And the person that was walking in the store,
he overheard the conversation and said,
"Hey, I know where that's at."
So, quickly, I recognised him and I'm like, "Oh, you're Emily's dad."
She was a friend at the time.
So I got in the car, it was an old truck,
very ugly reddish-orange.
Didn't really think nothing of it.
We started talking about his daughter and I remember saying,
"You're going the wrong way."
He said, "Oh, I gotta stop at my house."
I was in his backyard and he was just talking about his daughter
and then, for some reason, we got onto puppies.
He asked me would I like to give one to my son?
And I said, "Oh, that would be wonderful."
As I got out of the car, he said, "I gotta lock the gate."
I was like, "OK." And then I was like,
"Hey, why did you lock the gate?"
He was like, "It's a bad neighbourhood."
So I was like, "OK, OK."
The area that we came through was the kitchen.
As we walked up the stairs,
I didn't hear no sounds of puppies.
So I got a little bit more scared.
As we got fully up there, he shoved me into a room and shut the door.
And said, "You'll never see home again."
I panicked, I just dropped to the floor, begging him to let me go.
And as he was looking through my stuff,
he started ripping pictures up, he started cutting my ID up,
he asked me, did I have a cell phone on me?
He even, like, took off my clothes.
He took an extension cord
and he wrapped it around my arms and my legs...
..and stuffed a sock in my mouth.
And put the extension cord around my neck
and then I was hanging
from a rod that went across the room.
I was literally hanging there, my legs, my feet, my arms,
all parts of my body just went completely numb.
I couldn't move.
I was like, frozen.
I was like, I don't even know what was going on.
All I know is like, I was crying.
I was thinking of my son.
That's the only thing that was keeping me holding on,
cos I didn't know how to keep hanging on at that point,
I just wanted to go.
I just wanted to leave earth.
Every day, I would ask so many questions.
"Don't ask us anything about Ariel's house any more."
I just got a gut feeling. "That don't get you nowhere,
you need credible evidence." "I know, I just got a feeling."
In my heart, I was having panic attacks and didn't know why.
Over this little short Puerto Rican dude.
So I watched him, got nothing.
Watched him, got nothing. Watched him. He'd do normal shit.
Drive the school bus, he hangs with children.
I see people letting him watch their children.
This is normal, listening to rock and roll, listening to the Beatles,
he's gotta be normal listening to the Beatles, right? There you go.
I here all morning, right?
OK, so he's normal.
We had a, I guess, what they'd consider a long conversation,
over some pizza and some soda...
..about his childhood.
He did have a horrible childhood.
But it's like I told him,
"Just because you have a horrible childhood
doesn't mean you have the right to continue the abuse."
I was trying everything in my power to change his heart,
change his mind.
And people need help.
And he definitely needed.
Oh, he comes in with a gun and then he's like, "Wanna play a game?"
"We're gonna play Russian Roulette." And I said, "Sure."
I was 14, I didn't even know what Russian Roulette was.
Michelle was like, "No, I don't wanna play that."
So, then, so it's just me and him playing.
I just wanted to turn the gun to him and say goodbye.
But, I was too scared.
And I really didn't think there were bullets in the gun.
But then he showed us that there was a bullet in there.
He spinned it and then he was like, "Put it to your head
and then pull the trigger and, if you die, then you die."
So then, I said, "OK." I'm thinking, "What do I got to lose?"
The bullet wasn't there, so I got really lucky.
So, and then he gave me the gun, then he's like, um,
"If you pull the trigger, that means you hate me.
If you don't pull the trigger, that means you don't hate me."
She took the gun and she went to pull it.
And was like, "Are you sure you wanna do this?
Are you positive."
I was like, "Oh, go ahead."
I sat back and I just let it happen.
So I pulled the trigger hoping that the bullet was there.
And it wasn't.
So, I guess I let him know that I really didn't like him.
Maybe I thought I could help because they thought
their daughters were alive, so that's why I was...
..so dead set on doing what I was doing.
It's like nobody cares any more
she's been gone so long.
But I ain't gonna stop.
Louwana wanted to meet that psychic, Sylvia Browne.
She thought that Sylvia could help.
I'm just like, "That is BS."
It was not what I wanted to do, but eventually I'm like, "Fine."
My management helped arrange
for Louwana to be a guest and meet Sylvia.
What is this gift and why do you have it and he don't?
Is this...? What... What is psychic? I don't know what it is.
What do you believe it is? I believe that it comes from God.
I am because I am.
And finally it came time
and Sylvia turned to her and said...
"I'm sorry. Your daughter's dead.
She's in water." Bam, bam!
And the camera goes real close to Louwana and I'm like...
I almost like jumped up and started screaming.
I just hate that she's not alive, honey.
I'm like, "What?
Crap.
How can you say that to her?
You don't know that her daughter is in the water.
You don't know that her daughter is...
For years this woman has believed in her heart, in her soul
that her daughter is alive
and you just come up with this freaking bullshit."
She was so crushed.
It...stomped on her soul.
Her sp... Her spirit, her hope.
It's so dark these times.
Right, right.
I gotta do it. This is our America.
She was upset for a long time.
I was trying to comfort her in every way.
Hanging off of you, man.
But she just was not feeling good.
She wasn't eating right.
But it was Amanda's disappearance, but physically she was sick.
Her family called me up and said,
"Hey, Bill... Louwana's real sick.
You've become part of our family, Bill,
and we want you there with us."
And when I walked in that hospital room and saw her,
I mean I was just like... It took...
(SIGHS) It was just so sad.
I went over and grabbed her hand, I said, You're gonna be fine.
You're gonna be fine." She started to squeeze my hand.
I said, "I know what you wanna tell me.
To make sure Mandy's picture is on the news all the time and trust me,
I'm gonna do that but you're gonna have to get better and help me.
So get better and get out, in a couple of days and help me.
Remind me, no, we'll do this together.
We'll bring Mandy home."
It was so sad that she was going to leave this earth
without knowing where her daughter was.
It was so unfair. Nobody should ever have to go through that.
I just couldn't help her get her kid home and it bugs me.
(WEEPS)
I was the actual one that let her know that her mom had passed away.
It was very hard to process and I really felt for her.
I tried my best to do what I could inside of a house
that nobody should've ever been in.
As the days gone past of being in the house,
I had ended up getting pregnant about five times.
They were all aborted in abusive ways.
Some starved.
Some, I was beat.
I was thrown downstairs.
I was also hit with a barbell more than once.
He told me that we could never have a kid here, it would be too loud.
So my question was to him, "Why get a girl pregnant
if you're gonna make them suffer horrendous abuse?"
I end up getting hit more because I guess I was too mouthy for him.
So I basically told him,
"This will be the last time you abort a child
cos I won't let it happen."
Amanda got pregnant as well.
I was scared for that child.
I was scared for her.
I was scared that she might not make it, we're not in a hospital.
Anything could go wrong.
Anything.
He told me before anything,
if the child got hurt or sick or anything
for that matter during the process of delivery,
that he would kill me.
And I believed him. I believed that he would actually do it.
When the baby came out, it didn't make a sound.
You have to clear the lungs.
So I had to smack it out, from the back,
like, up above her upper back.
I had to go like this so she can cough it out,
so she can finally start to go, "Aaargh!"
And then she started crying and that was the amazing part about it
is that I was able to deliver,
help deliver a baby and it was a miracle.
Give me a second, I gotta take a break.
I'm so glad that she was able to have her
and that she came out very wonderful, with all ten toes
and all ten fingers and a very gorgeous little smile.
Amanda had a baby and she had...
Uh, it definitely did kind of change a little bit for us.
When the baby was born, that's when he decided
to permanently take the chains off and padlock our doors.
There was an emotional chain.
Where he had scared us so much that I feared running.
He always used each other against us.
Like, for instance, he would say,
"Well if you try to run, I'll kill her."
Or, "If you try to do this, I'll kill you."
He would use things like that against us
so we would be afraid to run.
I remember one time he told me that, if I tried anything,
he would hang me from my ankles so the blood could rush to my head,
so I didn't try anything, but I always wanted to escape,
but I just couldn't get out.
(SIGHS)
Yeah.
This is an FBI sketch of what they thought the person of interest
in Gina's disappearance looked like and it's...
..it's haunting how close it ended up being of him at that age.
The FBI released this composite sketch.
They said a man driving a light-coloured small car
was wanted in connection with Gina's disappearance.
The first thing that came to my mind, I said...
.."I think I know this person."
I kept wondering where I'd met this person,
cos I...
He looks familiar.
And I showed it to my two oldest brothers and they like,
"We know that person. Whoever this is, we've seen him somewhere.
But we can't put our finger on it."
We have over 3,000 people in the City of Cleveland
searching for whoever took my daughter.
The father of Gina DeJesus, missing now for four years,
says he won't rest until both girls are found.
It's been four years for my family.
Now it's five years for theirs.
Please help both of our families.
It was hard watching my dad.
Listening to him crying in the middle of the night
when no-one was up or he assumed we were not up
and it would just hurt because my dad sacrificed everything for us.
Where is Gina?
(INDISTINCT CHANTING)
As the years went on, the newsroom didn't want it any more.
They're like, "Oh, no, I don't wanna hear anything else
about those runaway girls. We don't need to cover them any more."
And then, you know, Nancy would call and say,
"Hey, you know, we're having this today. Can you stop by?"
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
So I'd go and talk to the producer and I said,
"Look, I'm gonna give you the story and then some.
But please, please fit in something to talk about the missing girls."
Keeping Gina's memory alive is all they can do.
Tips are still coming, and as long as we can take it to the media
and shows, my daughter...
People do call.
I just don't think that there was as much interest on it
as there was for the families, myself and Bill,
because we believed them.
The two cousins that were around Gina's age,
that she grew up with, they were growing up.
They were becoming junior high school students,
high school students and those were definitely hard times for me
because it was like Gina would be doing this.
Sometimes I didn't sleep, and I would just stay up and just,
just think of my family and what they were doing...
..and did they have a good day, you know?
Sometimes I was mad at the world cos I was stuck.
Almost exactly a year after Amanda disappeared,
Gina DeJesus vanished five short blocks away.
Over the years, their families have become one.
After eight years, the crowd has dwindled.
In the beginning when I was first kidnapped,
they were on the news, like, all the time.
So I was like, "Yeah," all the time.
And then, like, after, like, years went by,
it was just the anniversary.
So that's like once a year I'd get to see my family.
And tomorrow marks Amanda Berry's 25th birthday. The FBI...
He made us have a different name cos he didn't want the child,
Jocelyn, to know who we really are,
because not only was we able to see the news,
she was able to see the news as well.
So, as she started getting older,
she started talking, she started noticing things.
I thought it was his grand-daughter.
Wherever they'd go, he'd always got his hand, she never walks alone.
He bought her one of those little tight things,
she's got a Barbie key, you know?
He's walk on the side of her, he spoiled that girl rotten.
So, in my head, he's a good grandparent.
Well, that's his daughter.
But who knew that?
In 2012, we received a letter from an individual named Robert Wolford.
He was incarcerated in a prison, a state prison, in Southern Ohio.
In the letter, the individual had stated that he was responsible
for the disappearance of Amanda
to include being responsible for killing Amanda.
Using a cadaver dog two police officers and an FBI evidence team
search and sift dirt in a vacant lot.
There was some credibility to the location.
A couple of days after Amanda had gone missing,
her mother received a phone call from her cell phone.
What was interesting to us about Wolford was
the area that he had claimed that he had buried Amanda
fell within that cell phone range.
For two long days, Cleveland Police, FBI agents
and city workers worked nearly around the clock
looking for possible remains of Amanda Berry.
By 2:30 this afternoon, heavy equipment used
to dig up this empty lot left.
Police cleared out, the search was over.
There were negative results for any human remains
and that's when he admitted to us that he made the whole story up.
He wanted to get out of the jail that he was in for a little bit
and by coming up with the story and saying that he was involved,
that was a way for him to do it.
As remote as it is, there's still hope for the family.
Maybe somewhere this girl's still alive.
The messed up part about it is that they were so close.
So close and we couldn't do anything.
We couldn't let 'em know we were here.
We couldn't scream.
So close but so far away.
And he laughed.
He laughed about it.
And he said, "You're never gonna get found.
They're this close, and they still haven't found you."
I just was sitting there drawing.
Me and Gina was talking and I turned to her and said,
"Hey, what if today is the day that we go home?
Wouldn't that be amazing?" And she said, "Yeah that would be."
I would say I heard, like...
..Amanda whispering to Jocelyn.
She went downstairs, came back up and said, "I can't find Daddy."
So I looked at Michelle, I said, "We could go."
(LAUGHS) Like our doors were open and unlocked.
I heard Jocelyn coming up the stairs,
saying Daddy wasn't here, but I thought she was just joking.
Then I noticed that both of 'em went back downstairs together
so I figured maybe he just called her down there
and they're just gonna have a conversation.
I went to watch TV again
and the next thing I heard like booming noises.
I'm at home and I heard this banging, bang, bang, bang, bang.
And I look out my window and I see my neighbours
in the middle of the street but they're not looking at me,
they're looking at the house next door, not my door.
I come outside, "What you looking at?" Bang, bang, bang.
"Oh, there's that... What is going on? What is that?"
They said, "It's some girl, she wanna get outta the house."
"Then, did you help her?"
"We're not gonna get involved with that, we don't know her." Argh!
I go off my porch, "What is the problem?"
"I need to get outta here." "Then get out!"
"I can't, he's got the door locked -" or "chained up", rather.
I said, "Oh, God." All right.
So I got a Big, a Big Mac in my hand, just like McDonald's.
So I've got a debate.
Help the girl I don't know, $4 hamburger I just bought.
I know the hamburger. I don't know you. All right, here we go.
Put the hamburger down. Destroyed the door.
She comes out, she comes out with a little girl.
I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not with the kidnap.
What's the little girl?" Cos in my head that Ariel's grand-daughter.
"Who are you?"
I'm stopping her from pulling her own daughter out of her house.
She's like, "This is my kid!"
I said, "How? Who are you?"
She's said, "I'm Amanda Berry." It's not registering yet, whatever.
"OK, well here. You call the police."
I need them now.
'This is 23.'
Our dispatcher said that she had a female on the line
stating that she was Amanda Berry and that she was free,
that she had been kidnapped for ten years and she needed help.
We immediately turned on the lights and sirens
and we headed towards Seymour.
As we were pulling up I see a young lady
standing there holding a child.
My partner asked her,
"Is there anybody else in the house?", you know,
and she said, "Yes, there's two more girls in the house."
So we started charging towards the house.
My door was unlocked, so I peeped out of it a couple of times,
said, "You know what? I'm just gonna go out it."
She kinda got excited.
I'm like, "That's probably not a good idea.
I'm not even gonna try it, cos it could be a trap.
I don't know what in his mind."
So I didn't do anything.
Then, next thing I know, I hear footsteps coming up the stairs.
Then I hear, "Police! Police!"
And then when the person opened the curtain and I seen the badge
I ran so fast
and jumped into their arms and told 'em, "Never let me go.
Never let me go."
She said, "My name is Michelle Knight. I'm 31 years old.
I've been here for 12 years.
You saved us."
I peeped my head out of the door.
They were saying they were police officers
and they made me repeat my name twice.
And I looked at her and I immediately knew who it was.
I just couldn't believe it.
(SOBS) I told her, "We've been looking for you for a long time."
And I'm like, "I know. I've been watching the news." (LAUGHS)
At a point the radio.
One of my special memories is sitting in the ambulance
looking at Jocelyn, Gina and Amanda and Amanda reaching her hand out,
saying, "We're going home. We're finally going home."
And I said, "Yes, we are."
(INDISTINCT CHATTER) It is a story we've followed for ten years
and tonight we're following breaking news.
Three women that had vanished have been found alive.
Snatched the keys for the car, then I went outside.
Here comes three cop cars.
They asked me, "Where are you going?"
I said, "Well, I'm getting in the vehicle.
The media said that they'd found three girls on Seymour.
I'm going to drive down to there to see if it was Gina."
She goes, "You're not going nowhere.
That's why we came here to take you."
I said, "Take me where? To Seymour?"
She goes, "No, we gonna take you to the hospital.
We've found your daughter."
I say, "What?"
We've seen a lot of hugging, crying.
This is video from outside of this hospital.
But when are these young women going to be released?
They're just telling me, "No comment."
They found Amanda and we get to the hospital
and there she is, standing there.
And then we all start hugging for what seemed like a half an hour.
We didn't even let go.
Then, when we let go, we look over and there's everyone (LAUGHS).
It's real quiet and they're all staring at us.
The police, the nurses, the doctors, the FBI.
They're just all standing there, just in awe.
I'm standing next to my dad and he goes,
"Promise me you don't break down and start crying."
I said, "How am I gonna promise that?
I'm the sissy of all the group. I'm gonna cry."
He's like, "You gotta be strong for your sister."
I'm like, "OK, Dad, I'll try my best, can't guarantee nothing."
Wow.
Nine years.
I lost it.
I couldn't believe that I was hugging my daughter.
I was actually in my garden when I got this phone call.
Like, "Dude, you're not gonna believe it, the girls, the girls!
They were found!" I'm like, "What are you talking about? Slow down!"
And, um... (LAUGHS)
..when he said Gina and Amanda, those two names, I like flipped out.
And I called Bill, I said, "Bill, is it true?"
He goes, "I'm at Amanda's house right now. I gotta go. Bye."
I went, "Oh, my gosh!"
On 19 Action News, all over breaking news,
right now the long awaited homecomings begin for
the three missing Cleveland women found alive.
Yeah, we definitely know that the family
is going to be coming back here this morning.
What I can tell you is I'm not sure how long they will be staying
once they get here...
I was on the air live and Ramona Robinson,
who I worked with at the NBC station she goes,
"Remember that gift that Amanda's mother bought you?"
She goes, "Yeah, remember she got you a shirt and a tie
and she told you to wear it on the day Mandy comes home."
And I can't believe she bought me that and she was right again.
She knew that her daughter would come home
and she knew she wanted me in a clean shirt and clean tie
to tell the world that her daughter was home.
I'm Bill Safos at the home of Amanda Berry.
It was the moment they had waited for.
Amanda's journey home
finally ending safely.
Louwana, if she was here, she would have
run around and kissed everybody and thank you and, you know...
She wouldn't have been able,
Louwana, to thank everybody enough, cos that's how she was.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
She's home.
Let's now go to Lydia Esparra,
who is very close with the DeJesus family.
Good afternoon and they are so excited.
You can see behind me the balloons are still here,
they're bringing chairs in the house.
There's a sense of a party atmosphere.
Everyone's so excited.
Well, I was happy to go to the house,
to walk in the door for my first time.
My mom kept saying on the interviews,
"My daughter's gonna walk through the front door."
Gina! Gina!
Gina! Gina! Gina!
I look at my mom and like tears came down my face
and I was thinking, "Oh, my God I'm finally home."
So there was, like, happy thoughts, but I started crying.
Gina! Gina! Gina!
(CHEERING)
When Gina came home, I did what I did when she was born.
When a baby is born, the first thing you do is check the fingers,
check the toes, the legs, arms, and that's what I did.
I was patting her down and checking her.
Making sure everything was there, I guess, I dunno.
(CHEERING)
My first reaction as I saw my daughter...
..the only thing I did was grab her and hug her. I didn't wanna let go.
We would like to thank everyone,
especially Lydia Esparra and Bill Safos
from Channel 19 Action News.
And thank you, guys, the both of you, because I know,
we started covering this story together ten years ago.
The two of you, unlike a lot of reporters
who move on to the next story,
the two of you kept in touch with those families.
Kept telling their stories and that's why
they were thanking you this afternoon, so well deserved.
Thank you. Oh, our pleasure, Ramona.
It was our pleasure. They deserve all the credit.
Unfortunately that homecoming
wasn't there for Michelle.
And I felt so sorry, sad for her.
And the worst part for Michelle too is she had to watch the TV
knowing that Gina's family and Amanda's family,
they were looking for them.
And nobody was ever looking for Michelle.
I felt like the person that had a nameless face.
I felt like the forgotten one.
When someone says, "Oh, well your mom was looking for you,
but it wasn't that extreme."
They told her to come back.
They told her to recheck and she didn't do that.
So, therefore, they closed the case.
And we dropped the ball, you know, she was reported missing
in the first district but went missing in the second district.
It was...
There was no contact follow-up to the police.
We missed something.
My impressions of the house when I walked through it
were that there was very little outdoor or natural light.
The closet doors had been removed from the closets,
screwed onto the wall to cover the windows.
The things that were shocking to me were the chains.
The chains that were used to keep the girls in confinement.
Those items to me spoke volumes
when the amount of chains that were removed from the house.
They were rusty, they were heavy.
Every day more news came out about what happened
inside that house of horrors
and how she was kidnapped and that it was a friend of theirs.
And that same friend of theirs, Ariel Castro,
even played at my church in Youngstown at a church festival.
I remember cos he would wear this cap and I remember him there
and I'm like, "(BLEEP)! That guy was at my church
while he was holding these girls hostage."
I'm up here in the court room on the third floor
where he will be brought in before the Judge.
Ariel Castro is the man who perpetrated these crimes,
kidnapping and raping Amanda, Gina and Michelle.
He was the bus driver that took kids to and from that middle school
that they both attended
so they knew him and he knew the girls.
All rise.
Ariel Castro had a big personnel file at that middle school.
We didn't get it because, when I did
the Freedom of Information Act request they gave me all these files
to all the people that worked in that middle school.
I didn't get Ariel Castro's file
because I didn't ask for the former employees.
Ariel Castro.
Once you heard the name, you knew who it was.
I mean, if you're from that area, are-are you kidding me?
I'd seen him, I'd known him.
I... He'd ride down the street from where I hung out a lot
and where I've been by a million times.
(POLICE RADIO)
I had an arrest early in the morning,
and while I'm getting the prints and photos, I hear somebody say,
"(SPEAKS SPANISH)"
"How are you doing? What's going on?"
And I turn over like this and there he is.
And he's in a jail cell.
And he goes, "(SPEAKS SPANISH)"
"How are you doing?" And I said, "I'm OK." I said, "How are you?"
And he goes, "Man, I really (BLEEP) up this time, huh?"
And I said, "Yeah. How dare you do this to these girls?
Ten years?!"
And I said, I said, "And Gina.
You've known Felix for how many years?
We've known him for how many years? How can you do this? I mean..."
He said, "I'm a victim too."
I said, "How the hell are you a victim?"
"Well, you know, this happened to me when I was back in Puerto Rico when I was a kid.
I was violated too."
And I'm standing on the other side of the cell and I said,
"God, thank you for these bars."
Because I'm trying to be a policeman,
I'm trying to be somebody who knows and I'm trying to be human.
It's all just...all this stuff in my head just swirling around, like,
you know how many people'd like to be 2' from this guy right now?
Millions.
(POLICE RADIO, INDISTINCT CHATTER)
I towed cars right in front of that house with my partner.
And then when I find out where it's at, I said, "Are you kidding me?"
I was on that street in front of that house
and they're in there and I can't do nothing about it.
Tell me that doesn't hurt.
(SOBS) All right...
Neighbours say they noticed something was off
when the former school bus driver became increasingly reclusive.
In the past 15 years, police response...
It hit home when he got caught.
To know the person...
..that did this to your daughter...
Back in the day before this happened to Gina,
I used to live two houses down from where he lived then.
And we knew his daughter cos that's the one that Gina was hanging with.
I mean...
This sick person.
How could you...?
I mean, I couldn't believe it.
I thought that it was important for him to admit to us
during the interview that one, he took the girls and then, two,
he was involved in some type of sexual abuse of the girls over the years.
Going in, I really wanted to be non-confrontational.
Whether it's the truth or not,
I felt that it was important for him just to keep talking.
So we're all sitting there behind this glass, looking at each other,
like, "He's not hiding any of this."
He's saying everything.
Incredible. I mean, so much climax.
So much anxiety. So much everything building up.
And you expect this volcano to sputter
because someone's gonna not really talk.
And he just let it all out.
So what he admitted to was he took them to his house
and then forcibly restrained them.
The other thing he admitted doing there that, um,
he had, um, sexual encounters which would constitute a sex offence.
Ultimately he was charged with several hundred counts of
sexual assaults, physical abuses, obviously the kidnapping,
abduction, and then he was charged with murder,
for the terminations of pregnancies for Michelle.
He should've, you know, just...
..spent those years in prison like he should've.
Unfortunately, he decided to take the coward's way out.
Within 30/31 days of him being in prison,
he had hung himself in his cell.
How is that justice?
If it was up to me, I' have loved to have seen him do 1,000 years
and pay every single day he woke up
for the nightmare he put upon these three girls.
Despite being held like that,
these young girls became these amazing women.
Despite the fact that this evil was holding them back and basically
in cages, they still defied that and became amazing women,
each with their own inspiring, cool story.
You see her every day.
Please stop for just a second and look at your TV.
You may know something that can bring this missing person home.
Amanda Berry joined our Fox 8 family.
Since then every time Amanda's segment airs,
the tip line lights up.
I look up to her even more now.
She's doing the news,
she's raising her daughter.
Everything that she's gone through that,
the resilience that she has had,
you know, that...it's just amazing.
This is my office for the Cleveland Family Center For Missing Children and Adults.
We help families navigate the media.
We teach them to always do interviews
cos what if they're missing loved one has a TV?
It could give some hope to fight to come back home to their parents.
I get to see what families go through,
it was kinda like what my mom and dad went through,
but it's like right there in front.
I just wanna help them.
I've been actually doing what they call art to heal,
where you paint a picture that expresses how you feel that day.
It can be anything. It can be a pretty picture of the sea.
It can be a pretty picture of the night-time.
My main focus in life is my non-profit
and it travels around the world
helping women of abuse transition their life.
And it's so sad that we had to
go through what we went through,
but it made us stronger.
It made us more powerful
and I'm glad that we're out
and we're alive now and we're doing good.
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