By
Greg Botelho, CNN
updated 10:26 PM EDT, Thu August 1, 2013
Ariel
Castro's sentencing for the kidnapping and rape of three women in Ohio
will be issued Thursday, August 1. During the trial, the prosecution
presented images from inside the house that reveal the disturbing
conditions in which they were held. A model of the house was also
included.
(CNN) -- From the outside, the home at 2207 Seymour Avenue looked like most any other in Cleveland's Westside neighborhood.
From the inside, it looked like hell.
There
were the makeshift alarms rigged to the front and back doors. The porch
swing blocking a stairway. Heavy fabric obstructing the kitchen and the
second floor. A plastic toilet in a bedroom. Doors without handles, but
with padlocks, dead bolts and slide locks. Solid wood covering
second-floor windows, assuring no light would enter even on bright,
sunny days.
And there
were the restraints -- duct tape, plastic zip ties, metal chains
fastened to a basement pole and bedroom walls -- to ensure that Michelle
Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus wouldn't leave.
But, despite Ariel Castro's efforts, they did.
On
May 6, Berry alerted passers-by by banging on the front door then
crawling out with her 6-year-old daughter. Police officers arrived and
went upstairs, where Knight jumped into their arms -- holding them tight
and thanking them for ending her 11 years of terror. A pale, quiet
DeJesus emerged from a room a short time later.
Today,
all three women are free. And Castro is paying a price for what he did:
life in prison without parole and 1,000 years, as finalized in a
Cleveland court Thursday.
The
sentence follows a deal in which Castro agreed to plead guilty to 937
charges to avoid a trial and a possible death penalty. The prosecution
didn't have to present evidence Thursday, but they did -- laying out in
vivid detail the twisted torment that Knight, DeJesus, Berry and Berry's
young daughter, fathered by Castro, went through -- in testimony,
impact statements and a sentencing memorandum.
"The
days never got shorter," said Knight, the lone victim to speak in
court. "The nights turned into days. The days turned into years. The
years turned into eternity."
Lured into home, restrained and assaulted
It
started on August 22, 2002, when Castro saw the then 21-year-old Knight
at a Family Dollar store. She was trying to find the social worker in
charge of her son, then not even 2½ years old, Cleveland police Det.
Andrew Harasimchuk testified.
Knight
asked around for directions, and Castro responded that he knew where to
go. Knight knew his daughter, Emily, so she took up his offer for a
ride.
They ended up
at the Seymour Avenue home Castro had bought a decade earlier. Did
Knight want to go inside to get a puppy for her son, Castro asked? She
did, and went in.
But instead of giving her a puppy, Castro tied her up with an extension cord.
A
few hours later, Knight was taken down to the basement, where she was
restrained with a chain and with plastic ties around her wrists, said
Harasimchuk, his department's lead investigator on the case. Castro put a
motorcycle helmet over her head.
And then he sexually assaulted her -- for the first of what would be scores of times.
The following April, Castro spotted Amanda Berry walking along a Cleveland street in her Burger King. She was 16; he was 42.
Did
Berry know his son, who'd also worked at Burger King? What about his
daughter Angie? Berry said she knew them both, and she accepted his
offer for a ride after he told her Angie was at Castro's home.
Berry
went in, but saw no sign of her friend, ending up in an upstairs
bedroom. Berry asked to go home and when Castro didn't comply, she tried
to run away -- her exit stopped when she slammed into a closet instead.
Then
Castro sexually assaulted her, putting duct tape over her wrists, legs
and mouth and a motorcycle helmet over her head. Berry was carried to
the basement and tied to a chain attached to a center support pole.
A third, eerily similar chapter of this story played out about a year later.
This
time the victim -- Gina DeJesus -- was younger, at age 14. And she was
even closer to Castro's family, as one of his daughter Arlene's best
friends.
That spring
afternoon, DeJesus and Arlene Castro had been together and hoped to
spend the afternoon at DeJesus' house. When that plan didn't pan out,
the two walked separate ways.
Ariel
Castro spotted the two together, then apart. He admitted driving past
his daughter to get to DeJesus. She got in the car after he asked for
help finding his daughter, then got out of it when he asked for help
carrying a speaker from his home into his car, testified Harasimchuk.
