[RealJustme]

Three missing Cleveland women freed

Three women who had been held captive for 10 years were found Monday in a Cleveland neighborhood, barely a mile from where they had been abducted. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight bolted to freedom Monday after Berry's screams alerted a neighbor who helped her break free.

Police have arrested three brothers, Ariel Castro, 52, the owner of the house and a former Cleveland school bus driver; Pedro Castro, 54; and Onil Castro, 50, in connection with the alleged abductions.

As questions were raised about how the women could have been held undetected for so long in a dense residential neighborhood, Cleveland Police Sgt. Sammy Morris said Tuesday that local police had contact with Ariel Castro on at least two occasions during the time the women were missing. Both contacts were unrelated to reports about the missing women.

neighbors and police sources were hinting at a life of horror for the women at the hands of captors for almost 10 years.

Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter once saw a naked woman crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard several years ago and called police. "But they didn't take it seriously," she said.

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


Israel Lugo said he, his family and neighbors called police three times between 2011 and 2012 after seeing disturbing things at the home of Ariel Castro. Lugo lives two houses down from Castro and grew suspicious after neighbors reported seeing naked women on leashes crawling on all fours behind Castro's house.

Lugo said about two years ago his sister told him she heard a woman pounding on a window at Castro's home as if she needed help. When his sister looked up, she saw a woman and a baby standing in a window half covered with a wooden plank. His sister told him and Lugo called the police.

A third call came from neighborhood women who lived in an apartment building. Those women told Lugo they called police because they saw three young girls crawling on all fours naked with dog leashes around their necks. Three men were controlling them in the backyard. The women told Lugo they waited two hours but police never responded to the calls.