CLEVELAND: DNA tests show Ariel Castro, a former school bus driver charged with kidnapping and raping three women during a decade of captivity in his Cleveland house, is the father of a six-year-old girl born to one of the victims, the Ohio attorney general said yesterday.
The tests did not link Castro to any other state cases, Attorney General Mike DeWine said. Castro, 52, was arrested shortly after Amanda Berry, her 6-year-old daughter, and two other women Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, were found in his house in a run-down neighborhood of Cleveland on Monday.
DeWine’s statement said that forensic scientists obtained a sample of Castro’s DNA on Thursday and “worked throughout the night to confirm that Castro is the father of the six-year-old girl born in captivity to one of the kidnapping victims.” Berry’s baby was born in a plastic inflatable children’s swimming pool on Christmas Day, 2006, authorities have said.
The FBI is checking Castro’s DNA sample against national cases, DeWine said. The Cuyahoga County prosecutor vowed to seek murder charges that could carry the death penalty against Castro because police say there is evidence that Knight suffered forced miscarriages.
During their captivity, police said, the women endured beatings, rapes and at times confinement in ropes and chains.
County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty, who has jurisdiction over all felony cases for Cleveland, said he intends to expand the charges. “I fully intend to seek charges for each and every act of sexual violence, rape, each day of kidnapping, every felonious assault, and each act of aggravated murder for terminating pregnancies that the offender perpetrated,” he said.
Under Ohio law, the crime of aggravated murder includes the unlawful termination of a pregnancy and is a capital offense.
Knight suffered at least five miscarriages that she told police were intentionally caused by Castro starving her and beating her in the abdomen, according to an initial police report.
Meanwhile, Castro’s daughter disowned him and said the allegations were like a horror movie.
Angie Gregg told CNN she was appalled by Castro’s actions and wanted nothing more to do with him. “I have no problem cutting him out of my life. I have no problem doing that,” Gregg said. “I never want to see him again. And another thing I would like to ask him is when did you think this was going to be over?
“Did you think you could carry this charade forever? What did you think was going to happen? Eventually you were going to be caught,” she said. Gregg, whose interview was broadcast a day after Castro appeared in court for the first time and was ordered held on a $8m bond, said she spent time with her father two weeks ago, but she had long held doubts about him.
There are “all these weird things I’ve noticed over the years... like how he kept his house locked down so tight,” Gregg said, explaining that if “we’d be out at my grandma’s having dinner, he’d be out for an hour or so and then he’d come back”. “And there would be no explanation where he went,” Gregg said. “Everything is making sense now, It’s all adding up. I’m disgusted. I’m horrified. It’s like a horror movie. Like watching a bad movie,” said Gregg.
reuters/AFP
