Free The Lost Girls by John Glatt Page A

there,” said Michelle, “and she wasn’t alone.”
    Michelle also noticed how clean and fresh Amanda looked and that she was wearing clothes, while she was naked in chains and had not showered in months.
    Then Castro led Amanda out of the room and it would be months before the girls saw each other again.
    On May 3, 2003, the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran its first story of Amanda Berry’s disappearance in its “Law & Order” column. Under the headline CLEVELAND FBI SEARCHING FOR MISSING GIRL, it offered an unspecified reward for any information leading to her whereabouts.
    “Authorities need help finding Amanda Berry,” it began. “The FBI and Cleveland police said Amanda left work at 7:30 P.M. in a car with an unidentified driver. FBI agent Robert Hawk said the agency is treating the case as a kidnapping.”
    In the days following Amanda’s disappearance, her mother embarked on a relentless campaign to keep her story in front of the Cleveland media. Nervous and chain-smoking Newport cigarettes, Louwana Miller aggressively courted local journalists to keep the story alive, praying that heavy media exposure would eventually lead to her daughter being found.
    One morning, Louwana arrived at the 19-Action News studios demanding to speak to investigative reporter Bill Safos. When he came out, she handed him one of her homemade missing person posters, with Amanda’s photograph and description.
    “And just seeing [Louwana’s] face,” recalled Safos. “The tears in her eyes and how desperate she was with that handmade poster. I thought a mother shouldn’t have to go through this, so I paid a lot of attention to her.”
    Safos and a cameraman then drove to Louwana’s house, where he interviewed her in Amanda’s bedroom. It was exactly as she’d left it the day she disappeared. Her rosary was hanging on the doorknob and her Eminem posters on the wall by her CD collection. Her clothes were folded neatly on the bed.
    Then Louwana opened a drawer, showing Safos the hundred dollars of Amanda’s birthday money, lying untouched.
    “That was the red flag to me,” said Safos. “A kid’s not going to run away without money.”
    Louwana also befriended Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett, who would devote many of her columns to Amanda over the next few years, becoming personally involved in the search.
    On May 11, three weeks after Amanda went missing, Brett wrote about Louwana’s desperate battle to find her daughter.
    “Louwana can’t sleep or eat,” read her column. “She lives on cigarettes and blind faith. Sitting on the couch in a cloud of smoke, she uses the coffee table as a desk, with two phones ready, a stack of business cards from detectives and FBI agents.”
    Brett described how Louwana avoided her daughter’s bedroom, which lay untouched in suspended animation, as it was just too painful. And how every time the phone rings, she prays it’s Amanda.
    “I don’t know if she’s out there being held,” said Louwana. “I don’t know if she’s out there lying on the side of the road somewhere. Who gave her that ride?”
    Three days later, FBI Special Agent Robert Hawk told the Plain Dealer that several people were now being interviewed in connection with her disappearance. He said investigators now believed that Amanda Berry had got into a white four-door sedan with three men inside. What he didn’t reveal was that Amanda’s boyfriend, Danizo Diaz, who owned a similar car, was now the prime suspect.
    In the initial police report, Detective Scaggs had expressed some surprise that a sixteen-year-old would be driving such a flashy sports car. So investigators impounded DJ’s four-door white Dodge Intrepid convertible for forensic examination and searched his home. DJ was also given a lie detector test, which he passed.
    Agent Hawk also revealed that Louwana Miller had received a mysterious phone call from her daughter’s cell phone a week after her disappearance. The FBI were still trying to determine