Free The Lost Girls by John Glatt Page B

if it was a hoax.
    Louwana had now recruited a crack team of volunteers who pinned up MISSING posters and yellow ribbons to trees and telephone poles all over Cleveland. They also went farther afield, distributing the posters to truck stops and post offices all over the East Coast.
    The poster, which had two photographs of Amanda, read:
    MISSING
    AMANDA BERRY
    MISSING FROM CLEVELAND, OH
    IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT AMANDA: CALL THE CLEVELAND, OHIO FBI (216) 522-1400
    Date Missing: 4/21/03
    Date of Birth: 4/22/86
    Age at Disappearance: 17 years
    Race: Caucasian
    Sex: Female
    Height: 5’1”
    Weight: 110 lbs.
    Eyes: Brown
    Hair: Sandy Blonde, long
    Other: Surgical scar on lower Abdomen and pierced left eyebrow
    Last Seen Wearing: Burgundy Burger King shirt, black pants And a black hooded jacket Amanda was last seen walking home from work at the Burger King at W. 110th and Lorain in Cleveland, Ohio on April 21, 2003. She has not been seen or heard from since
    AMANDA IS BELIEVED TO BE ENDANGERED
    Even though Ariel Castro now had two girls hidden at 2207 Seymour Avenue, he still had Lillian Roldan over to stay. One night, she heard Michelle Knight’s television in an upstairs bedroom and asked him who was watching it.
    “And my heart stopped beating,” Castro later told detectives, “and I was like, ‘Okay, she’s probably catching on to something.’”
    Castro then made an excuse and changed the subject. From then on he stopped inviting her to his house, saying he had more rehearsals to go to.
    “When we first met he only played on weekends,” said Lillian. “And then all of a sudden he had to rehearse Wednesdays and then play Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. And the relationship was going down. I told him, ‘Why don’t I stay with you more?’”
    Now Castro would stay over at Lillian’s house and even had his own key. But he never gave her any money for anything.
    “When he was living with me,” Lillian said, “I used to pay for everything.”
    Ariel Castro was now a member of the Roberto Ocasio Latin Jazz Project, one of Cleveland’s top Latin bands. But he was erratic and often failed to turn up for rehearsals or shows.
    “He wouldn’t call,” said Daisy Cortes, who was engaged to the band’s director, Roberto Ocasio. “He wouldn’t show up.”
    At that time, Cortes was a news anchor for a Cleveland Spanish TV station, and often covered the Amanda Berry story. During set breaks Castro would seek her out, when she was sitting with her nine-year-old daughter, Bianca, asking for the latest news on the case.
    “I was helping to find that girl,” said Cortes in 2013. “I was sharing the story with him.”
    As Cortes told him what she had heard through the police grapevine about the Amanda Berry case, Castro would just say, “wow, wow,” as he ran his fingers through Bianca’s hair.
    “No emotion at all,” recalled Cortes. “Nothing.”
    Several years earlier, Emily Castro, now fifteen, had been diagnosed with manic depression and put on strong medication. The troubled girl had been expelled from Wilbur Wright Middle School in eighth grade and was now at a special school studying for her high school diploma. At times she would stop taking her prescribed medications and become unstable.
    Nilda Figueroa blamed Ariel Castro for their daughter’s problems, wanting him to have as little to do with her as possible. But in early 2003, Castro started taking more interest in his two youngest daughters, Emily and Arlene, and would arrive without warning to take them out.
    “He was trying to make our lives miserable,” said their stepfather, Fernando Colon. “He would just show up and ask to take the kids.”
    One afternoon, when Castro drove Emily back to her home on West 110th Street, Nilda confronted him in the street about taking her. As they argued, Emily went back inside the house.
    A couple of minutes later, Fernando Colon came out to see what was happening. When Castro saw him coming he walked