Did the police drop the ball in the Cleveland kidnappings?
It certainly seems that way. Neighbors report having called police numerous times with complaints of suspicious goings-on around that house, and the police did nothing. What’s more, the police visited the house once because Castro had left a child on the bus he drove, but it was determined to have been an honest mistake by Castro.
On the other hand, the police say they have no record of those phone calls. Although my guess is that this is just another example of police incompetence, it’s also possible that the neighbors never made the calls in question at all, and now are trying to cover for their own sense of guilt at not having done more or suspected more earlier.
As the wonderful Charles Ramsey, the neighbor who was Berry’s rescuer, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” noting that “he had lived next to the Castro house and had no inkling there was something wrong”:
Isn’t that scary? So either I’m that stupid or his [Castro’s] kind are that good.
Perhaps Castro was just that good at what he did.
Furthermore, if you think about it, what were the police supposed to do in the case of the child left on the bus? Search Castro’s house? Would you like them to be able to search homes for that sort of offense, or for reports by neighbors that someone was screaming at a certain residence? In other words, what constitutes reason enough to do a search of that nature in someone’s private home?
The Cleveland case is eerily similar to the Jaycee Dugard case, although with Dugard’s captivity the police negligence seems to have been much much worse. In fact, the case of Dugard’s kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, features one episode of astounding police and prison system incompetence after another. Read it and you will almost weep with frustration and anger. Why was this man ever paroled in the first place? He had kidnapped and raped before, yet despite receiving a federal sentence of 50 years and a Nevada state sentence of five-to-life, he was released after eleven years and was only very lightly supervised afterward.
The Castros have no such felony background. (And, just to clear up a question I’ve seen asked on other blogs, they are all American citizens, having been born in Puerto Rico.)
Let’s assume that in Cleveland the neighbors’ calls were actually made, but the police found no cause to search the house. And let’s assume that police there, as in other municipalities, get a great many of these sorts of calls from neighbors about strange or suspicious behavior at a certain location, and that it can be hard to sort out the important ones from the unimportant. But shouldn’t there at least be some way to flag calls that involve suspicious behavior in the home of a person living in a neighborhood which has experienced kidnappings (in this case, multiple kidnappings)? And shouldn’t there be a way to note when many complaints come in from unrelated people about a certain house, triggering an alert that this might be a special case?
How many more girls (or children, or men) are being held this way? The parents and relatives and friends of other missing persons probably find the news of the Cleveland women both encouraging and difficult. It revives hope that, even after many years, their own loved ones might still be alive. It revives fear that they are still suffering, in untold and horrific ways, perhaps even nearby, and yet have not been found.
“How many more girls (or children, or men) are being held this way?”
Unknown. The really chilling question is “How many more girls (or children, or men) held in this way have been killed since this story came out?”
vanderleun: I don’t see why this story would cause them to be killed.
My sense is that kidnappers who are into killing their victims do so fairly quickly—sometimes right after abusing them, sometimes a couple of days later. Others, like Garrido and the Castros, are mostly interested in keeping them alive and torturing them. That is their particular pleasure, and they don’t want to kill the providers of that pleasure. They have already factored in the knowledge that they might get caught, and feel they have taken the proper precautions to avoid that happening. If anything, after this story they will just make extra sure they never take any chances—never let the victims out, never untie them, never show them any lenience or trust them. But I strongly believe they would not be any more likely to kill them than before.
A (female) news anchor here in Houston apparently suggested that the police routinely search every house to see if any women are being held hostage. So this concern can be taken too far!
“I don’t see why this story would cause them to be killed.”
Sorry but you are dealing with a mindset that is already diseased and paranoid; the kind of mindset that may, for any reason and at any moment, become very concerned about being caught. This kind of criminal cannot just release the victims. Hence they only resolution is that they kill and dispose of the victims.
I do not say “all” but I ask “How many?” We will never know but I am sure that the number is more than zero.
“they will just make extra sure they never take any chances”…. Yes and some will make themselves very sure in the most certain way possible.
“I strongly believe they would not be any more likely to kill them than before.” A pretty thought for a very decorative world view. I regret that my own world view is darker.
vanderleun: of course it’s a diseased and paranoid mindset. But diseased in a certain way. And the way this particular mindset is diseased, the last thing these people want to do is to kill the geese that lay the golden eggs for them.
Most of these people, to have been successful in pulling this off for a long time, have figured out the angles to cover themselves and elude capture. They have usually gone to very elaborate trouble to transform their homes into prisons. The way they would be likely to react is to make their prisons more secure, not to kill their prisoners.
There is nothing whatsoever “pretty” about my thought or worldview. If you think about it more deeply, it is actually darker than yours. Yours posits a more “normal” and logical reaction by the perpetrators. Not that I’m especially interested in a competition for darkness of worldview. But I believe it is you who are being naive here.
“the last thing these people want to do is to kill the geese that lay the golden eggs for them.”
Why would they when there are so many geese around for the plucking when the heat dies down? And you also fail to see that to the deranged there is a pleasure to be had from killing their victims as well as a pleasure to be had from keeping them.
Many simply may wake up and have a yen for a goose instead of an egg. And, as we can see with some of the interviews with serials that are incarcerated, these types can run for a very long time on memories alone.
As we know from the experience of several cases the killing and/or the keeping can go on for a very long time simply because 1) many who are taken are listed as missing or dead and 2) the police simply cannot search it all, can they?
I suppose it boils down to the difference between one who thinks that some prisoners will be killed as a consequence of this story and one who thinks that outcome to be unlikely, even unthinkable, since it would be such an obvious waste to waste them.
Hard to know which is true, but I’d be on the look out for the discovery of bodies of those thought long missing in the next year or so.
vanderleun: no, I don’t fail to see anything of the sort.
Those who are inclined to kill their victims, and derive pleasure from it, mostly have already done so. They do not keep them for 10 years. And the captors would be incurring more risk in killing their present victims and procuring new ones, than in keeping them alive and imprisoned in exactly the manner in which they have successfully kept them alive well nigh all these years.
If you actually study the history and stories of criminals of this nature, they do in fact tend to fall into two categories—those who keep their prisoners alive for an indefinite time versus those who are inclined to kill them either at the outset or fairly shortly thereafter (usually a matter of days, and certainly not years). You are positing a type that switches from one to the other, and this is not what evidence indicates. Of course, we only know about the ones we know about, but most kidnapper/killers who are caught have killed their victims quite early on, even if the killers are caught many years later.
In fact, offhand, I can’t think of an exception to this rule about two types of kidnapper. Can you?
Vanderleun…
Their mentality is well captured in the semi-fictive “Silence of the Lambs” — ‘semi’ because the writer well studied the profiles of just such players.
“Martin Vanger” (Stellan Skarsgé¥rd) in ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo perfectly profiles the sexual-murderer. V e r y creepy.
As for these latest criminals: they’re into dominance and control even more than torture — sexual enslavers.
They also get a Ted Bundy buzz by way of getting away with it.
This last rush is denied a control freak when the controlee is gone.
They run more towards a tyrannical Walter Mitty fantasy rich emotional life — with them as a sexual Zeus.
If any of the neighbors reported drug sales, or a marijuana growing operation I’m sure the police would have swarmed the house in full SWAT-Ninja regalia.
Most of the news coverage I have seen has implicated all three Castro brothers, complete with photos of all three. However, based on a press conference I heard around 5 today, only Ariel Castro has been charged and there is no evidence that the two brothers were involved. They will not be charged in these crimes according to police. Hard to believe they were completely unaware of what their brother was up to, but it looks like the women must not have identified them.
CV: The brothers are being held on unrelated warrants.
Charming family.
It looks like Ariel Castro’s fellow inmates are giving him a hard time.
An interesting aspect of this case is Castro’s apparent willingness to waive his Miranda rights and give a full detailed statement upon his arrest.
If he’d gotten a thrill out of killing, he’d likely have killed his victims and obtained new ones. His particular thrill seems to have been imprisoning young women, and whatever horrible acts he inflicted upon them.
My heart goes out to his victims. I don’t know how a woman could stay sane after years of such treatment.
This is so poorly researched!
Castro has a record for attempted abduction.
The police actually made a visit but there was no answer and they did not seek a search warrant.
Do you hear the 911 operator: She made mistake after mistake. She even ended the call!