Castro, 52, was arrested shortly after Amanda Berry, her 6-year-old daughter, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were found in his house in a run-down neighborhood of Cleveland on Monday.

Attorney General Mike DeWine DeWine said in a statement that forensic scientists obtained a sample of Castro’s DNA late Thursday afternoon 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. Local authorities have said Castro is not a suspect in other cases.

The Cuyahoga County prosecutor vowed on Thursday to seek murder charges, which could carry the death penalty, against Castro because police say there is evidence Knight suffered forced miscarriages.

Knight had 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.

She remained hospitalized, listed in good condition, while Berry and DeJesus went home with family members on Wednesday.

The hospital released a statement on Friday saying: “Michelle Knight is in good spirits and would like the community to know that she is extremely grateful for the outpouring of flowers and gifts.

“She is especially thankful for the Cleveland Courage Fund,” the statement said. “She asks that everyone please continue to respect her privacy at this time.”

During their captivity, police said, the women endured beatings, rapes and at times confinement in ropes and chains.

Investigators found a lengthy note written by Castro in the house detailing his own sexual abuse and talking about suicide, a city councilman said on Friday.

“He alluded to his own sexual abuse…. Presumably it was when he was young,” said Councilman Brian Cummins, who said he was briefed by someone who read the note. “And if he was to carry out his suicide, he wanted to split the money from his house between the three women.”

Castro also wrote “it was the victims’ fault” that they were abducted, “deflecting the blame away from himself,” Cummins said.

All three told police this week that they were abducted by Castro when they accepted his offers of a ride in the same West Side Cleveland neighborhood where they were found.

Their imprisonment came to an end when neighbors, alerted by cries for help, broke through a locked door of Castro’s house and freed Berry, who had disappeared the day before her 17th birthday in 2003 on her way home from work at a fast-food restaurant.

DeJesus, 23, vanished at age 14 after school, and Knight, 32, was 20 when she went missing in 2002.

Castro’s daughter Angie Gregg told CNN she had been in her father’s house several times and noticed nothing suspicious.

Looking back, however, she said, he always played loud music, would not let her upstairs to see her old bedroom and kept the basement locked.

“It’s like a horror movie,” she said.

About two months ago, he showed her a photograph of a little girl he said was his girlfriend’s daughter. Gregg said she thought at the time that the girl resembled her younger sister Emily but did not give it much more thought.

“But when I first saw the picture of Amanda in the hospital bed with the little girl on TV, I knew that was her because I never forgot that face,” she said.

She also said she will never speak to her father again.

“He’s dead to me,” she said. “He’s nothing but a memory anymore.”

Castro made his first court appearance on Thursday to face three counts of rape and four counts of kidnapping brought by the city attorney’s office, and he was ordered to remain in custody on an $8 million bond.

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.

Castro’s court-appointed lawyer, Kathleen DeMetz, said her client would be placed on suicide watch in jail and was expected to be held in isolation.

In order to win release on bail, he would need $800,000 cash – 10 percent of the bond amount.

Berry told police that her escape on Monday had been her first chance to break free in the 10 years that she was held, seizing the opportunity during Castro’s momentary absence. (Additional reporting by Kim Palmer and Mary Wisniewski; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Grant McCool, Bernard Orr)

The murder charges against Ariel Castro would stem from forced miscarriages that police say were suffered by one of his victims. Castro was arrested on Monday shortly after the women were rescued.

Their imprisonment ended when neighbors, alerted by cries for help, broke through a locked door of Castro’s house and freed Amanda Berry, who disappeared the day before her 17th birthday in 2003 on her way home from work at a fast-food restaurant.

Liberated along with Berry, now 27, were her 6-year-old daughter, conceived and born during her confinement, and two fellow captives – Gina DeJesus, 23, who vanished at age 14 after school, and Michelle Knight, 32, who was 20 when she went missing in 2002.

All three told police they were abducted by Castro when they accepted offers of a ride from him in the same West Side Cleveland neighborhood where they were found years later.

Castro, 52, made his first court appearance on Thursday to face the three counts of rape and four counts of kidnapping he was initially charged with by the city attorney’s office, and was ordered to remain in custody on an $8 million bond.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty, who has jurisdiction over all felony cases for Cleveland, said he intends to expand the charges once the case is formally transferred to his office.

“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.

The prosecutor’s office will launch the official process to determine if the death penalty is appropriate, McGinty said, adding: “Capital punishment must be reserved for those crimes that are truly the worst examples of human conduct.”

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.

Authorities say all three women were at times bound in chains or rope and were subjected to intimidation, sexual assault, starvation and other abuses during their respective nine, 10 or 11 years of captivity.

The victims told investigators they recalled leaving the confines of the house just twice during their ordeal, ushered on both occasions into a separate garage on the property while disguised in wigs and hats.

FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE

During his initial hearing in municipal court, which lasted less than five minutes, Castro neither spoke nor entered a plea, and kept his face turned away from a courtroom gallery crowded with media and spectators.

Castro’s home “was a prison to these three women and the child,” Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Brian Murphy told the judge. “Today the situation is turned on him. … Mr. Castro stands before you a captive, in captivity, a prisoner.”

The prosecutor’s office declined to comment late on Thursday on a CNN report, attributed to an unnamed law enforcement source, that Castro had confessed under questioning to some of the actions of which he has been accused.

Castro’s court-appointed lawyer, Kathleen DeMetz, said her client would be placed on a suicide watch in jail and was expected to be held in isolation.

In order to win release on bail, he would need $800,000 cash – 10 percent of the bond amount.

“The man doesn’t have any money,” Metz said. “He clearly doesn’t have that,” noting that Castro had been unemployed since being fired from his job driving school buses last November.

Berry told police that her escape on Monday had been her first chance to break free in the 10 years that she was held, seizing the opportunity during Castro’s momentary absence.

Her baby was born in a plastic inflatable children’s swimming pool on Christmas Day, 2006, authorities said. A paternity test will be conducted to determine the girl’s father.

McGinty, the county prosecutor, said assembling a multitude of charges against Castro could take time, considering the ordeals the victims experienced.

“They need a chance to heal before we can seek further in-depth evidence from them,” he said, describing them as having “found the internal strength and courage to outlast their tormentor and survive a decade of torture and depravity.”

Berry and DeJesus went home with family members on Wednesday, while Knight remained hospitalized in good condition.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg and Kevin Gray; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Grant McCool, Bernard Orr and Paul Simao)

In Cleveland Municipal Court, the accused man Ariel Castro appeared expressionless, his head bowed and his hands in cuffs before Judge Lauren Moore, who set his bond at $2 million for each of the three women and a child who was born in captivity.

It was the first time the dark-haired, balding Castro, 52, has been seen in public since his arrest on Monday following the women’s escape from his house in a low-income neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.

Castro had been formally charged on Wednesday with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

His court-appointed lawyer, Kathleen DeMetz, said after Thursday’s initial court appearance that Castro would need $800,000 cash to get out of jail.

“The man doesn’t have any money,” she said. “He clearly doesn’t have that.”

In court, she said he was unemployed. Castro was fired from his job driving school buses last November.

Castro was being kept on a suicide watch, and his lawyer said she expected him to be kept in isolation in jail.

Officials said the three women were at times bound in chains or rope and endured starvation, beatings, sexual assaults and in the case of one of them, several miscarriages deliberately induced by their captor.

Their imprisonment came to an end on Monday after neighbors, drawn to the house by cries for help, broke through a door to rescue Amanda Berry, whose disappearance in 2003 the day before her 17th birthday was widely publicized in the local media.

The recording of her frantic emergency-911 call that evening, declaring, “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m here. I’m free now,” has been replayed countless times on television news broadcasts around the world.

Rescued with Berry, now 27, was her 6-year-old daughter, conceived and born during her confinement, and two fellow captives – Gina DeJesus, 23, who vanished at age 14 in 2004, and Michelle Knight, 32, who was 20 when she went missing in 2002.

Initially, Castro’s two brothers, Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50, were also arrested as suspects in the case but police said they were not charged after investigators determined they had no knowledge of the abductions or captivity of the women.

They appeared in court on Thursday morning on unrelated outstanding misdemeanor charges and were released.

Berry told police that her escape on Monday had been her first chance to break free in the 10 years that she was held, seizing the opportunity during Castro’s momentary absence.

STARVATION AND MISCARRIAGES

It also became clear that Berry’s pregnancy with her daughter was not an isolated incident, according to Cleveland City Councilman Brian Cummins, who based his information on a police report from the initial investigation and briefing by police department sources.

Cummins said one of the three women had suffered at least five miscarriages that Castro is accused of having intentionally caused by starving her for weeks and beating her in the abdomen. Cummins said he did not know which of the women it was.

Berry’s baby was born in a plastic inflatable children’s swimming pool on Christmas Day, 2006, authorities said. A paternity test will be conducted to determine the girl’s father.

All three women were held in the home’s basement for long periods, restrained with ropes and chains and occasionally starved, according to Cummins. Authorities have described the condition of the home as squalid.

Cummins said the victims were kept apart in the house until their captor at some point gained sufficient confidence in his control over them to allow them to mingle. While separated in the house, the three women were isolated in different rooms but were aware of the others’ presence, police said.

Authorities said the women recalled leaving the confines of the house just twice during their captivity, ushered on both occasions into a separate garage on the small lot while disguised in wigs and hats.

The women also told police their abductions occurred when Castro offered them rides and they accepted, authorities said.

Cummins said much of their ordeal was recounted by the women as soon as they were freed.

“En route to the hospital there was just a flood of information shared by these victims immediately,” he said. “One can only imagine the mental distress and eruptions of joy and emotions.”

On Wednesday, after spending a day in seclusion following their hospital evaluations, Berry and DeJesus were each glimpsed by television cameras being whisked to celebrations with family members. Berry and her daughter were at her sister’s house and DeJesus was at her mother’s home.

Neither Berry, who was last seen leaving her job at a fast-food restaurant, nor DeJesus, who vanished while walking home from school, spoke publicly.

But DeJesus, clenched in a tight embrace by her sister Mayra and hiding her face in a yellow hooded sweat-shirt, raised her hand in a thumbs-up sign to spectators chanting “Gina, Gina.”

Knight remained in a Cleveland hospital, where she was listed in good condition.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg and Kevin Gray; Writing by Steve Gorman and Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by John Stonestreet and Grant McCool)

In Cleveland Municipal Court, the accused man Ariel Castro appeared expressionless, his head bowed and his hands in cuffs before Judge Lauren Moore, who set his bond at $2 million for each of the three women and a child who was born in captivity.

It was the first time the dark-haired, balding Castro, 52, has been seen in public since his arrest on Monday following the women’s escape from his house in a low-income neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.

Castro had been formally charged on Wednesday with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

His court-appointed lawyer, Kathleen DeMetz, said after Thursday’s initial court appearance that Castro would need $800,000 cash to get out of jail.

“The man doesn’t have any money,” she said. “He clearly doesn’t have that.”

In court, she said he was unemployed. Castro was fired from his job driving school buses last November.

Castro was being kept on a suicide watch, and his lawyer said she expected him to be kept in isolation in jail.

Officials said the three women were at times bound in chains or rope and endured starvation, beatings, sexual assaults and in the case of one of them, several miscarriages deliberately induced by their captor.

Their imprisonment came to an end on Monday after neighbors, drawn to the house by cries for help, broke through a door to rescue Amanda Berry, whose disappearance in 2003 the day before her 17th birthday was widely publicized in the local media.

The recording of her frantic emergency-911 call that evening, declaring, “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m here. I’m free now,” has been replayed countless times on television news broadcasts around the world.

Rescued with Berry, now 27, was her 6-year-old daughter, conceived and born during her confinement, and two fellow captives – Gina DeJesus, 23, who vanished at age 14 in 2004, and Michelle Knight, 32, who was 20 when she went missing in 2002.

Initially, Castro’s two brothers, Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50, were also arrested as suspects in the case but police said they were not charged after investigators determined they had no knowledge of the abductions or captivity of the women.

They appeared in court on Thursday morning on unrelated outstanding misdemeanor charges and were released.

Berry told police that her escape on Monday had been her first chance to break free in the 10 years that she was held, seizing the opportunity during Castro’s momentary absence.

STARVATION AND MISCARRIAGES

It also became clear that Berry’s pregnancy with her daughter was not an isolated incident, according to Cleveland City Councilman Brian Cummins, who based his information on a police report from the initial investigation and briefing by police department sources.

Cummins said one of the three women had suffered at least five miscarriages that Castro is accused of having intentionally caused by starving her for weeks and beating her in the abdomen. Cummins said he did not know which of the women it was.

Berry’s baby was born in a plastic inflatable children’s swimming pool on Christmas Day, 2006, authorities said. A paternity test will be conducted to determine the girl’s father.

All three women were held in the home’s basement for long periods, restrained with ropes and chains and occasionally starved, according to Cummins. Authorities have described the condition of the home as squalid.

Cummins said the victims were kept apart in the house until their captor at some point gained sufficient confidence in his control over them to allow them to mingle. While separated in the house, the three women were isolated in different rooms but were aware of the others’ presence, police said.

Authorities said the women recalled leaving the confines of the house just twice during their captivity, ushered on both occasions into a separate garage on the small lot while disguised in wigs and hats.

The women also told police their abductions occurred when Castro offered them rides and they accepted, authorities said.

Cummins said much of their ordeal was recounted by the women as soon as they were freed.

“En route to the hospital there was just a flood of information shared by these victims immediately,” he said. “One can only imagine the mental distress and eruptions of joy and emotions.”

On Wednesday, after spending a day in seclusion following their hospital evaluations, Berry and DeJesus were each glimpsed by television cameras being whisked to celebrations with family members. Berry and her daughter were at her sister’s house and DeJesus was at her mother’s home.

Neither Berry, who was last seen leaving her job at a fast-food restaurant, nor DeJesus, who vanished while walking home from school, spoke publicly.

But DeJesus, clenched in a tight embrace by her sister Mayra and hiding her face in a yellow hooded sweat-shirt, raised her hand in a thumbs-up sign to spectators chanting “Gina, Gina.”

Knight remained in a Cleveland hospital, where she was listed in good condition.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg and Kevin Gray; Writing by Steve Gorman and Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by John Stonestreet and Grant McCool)

The women, freed when a neighbor was alerted to their presence by screams for help, huddled privately with family under FBI protection on Tuesday as investigators combed through the house, seeking evidence against the accused captors.

Three brothers were arrested as suspects Monday evening just after the women escaped and are expected to be formally charged soon. One of them, Ariel Castro, a former school bus driver and the owner of the house, was thought to have lived there alone.

Mayor Frank Johnson confirmed on Tuesday that child welfare officials had paid a visit to the house in early 2004 because Castro was reported to have left a child on a school bus while he stopped for lunch at a fast-food restaurant. But the ensuing inquiry found no criminal intent, officials said.

Contrary to unconfirmed accounts of several neighbors, the mayor denied that authorities had overlooked or failed to respond to suspicious activity at the modest, two-story home.

The women’s imprisonment came to a dramatic end after a neighbor, drawn by the sound of screams, broke through the door to rescue Amanda Berry, whose 2003 disappearance as a teenager was widely publicized in the local media. He helped her place an emergency call to authorities.

“Help me! I’m Amanda Berry. … I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m here. I’m free now,” a frantic Berry can be heard saying in a recording of the call released by police.

Berry, now 27, was found with her 6-year-old daughter, conceived and born during her captivity, and two other women – Gina DeJesus, 23, who vanished aged 14 in 2004, and Michelle Knight, 32, who was 20 when she went missing in 2002.

Ariel Castro, 52, fired from his bus job last November after school officials cited him for a “lack of judgment,” was arrested almost immediately. Two brothers, Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50, were taken into custody a short time later.

NEIGHBORS REPORT SUSPICIOUS INCIDENTS

Police have not said what role each man is suspected of playing in the case, but Berry named Ariel Castro in her 911 call as the man from whom she was trying to escape.

Questions have mounted about why the women’s captivity escaped notice, despite what neighbors said were a number of suspicious or disturbing incidents at the house in the low-income community on Cleveland’s West Side.

“We didn’t search hard enough. She was right under our nose the whole time,” said Angel Arroyo, a church pastor who had handed out flyers of DeJesus in the neighborhood.

Aside from the school bus incident in 2004, city officials said a database search found no records of calls to the house or reports of anything amiss during the years in question.

“We have no indication that any of the neighbors, bystanders, witnesses or anyone else has ever called regarding any information, regarding activity that occurred at that house on Seymour Avenue,” Mayor Johnson told reporters on Tuesday.

Israel Lugo, a neighbor, said he called police in November 2011 after his sister saw a girl at the house holding a baby and crying for help. He said police came and banged on the door several times but left when no one answered.

More recently, about eight months ago, Lugo said, his sister saw Ariel Castro park his school bus outside and take a large bag of fast food and several drinks inside.

“My sister said something’s wrong … That’s when my mom called the police,” he said. Lugo said police came and warned Castro not to park the bus in front of his house.

Another neighbor, Anthony Westry, said a little girl could often be seen peering from the attic window of the Castro house.

“She was always looking out the window,” he said. Castro would take her to the park to play very early in the morning, “not around the time you would take kids to play,” he said.

Cleveland police, who have said they believe Berry, DeJesus and Knight were confined to the Castro house for their entire time missing, did not immediately respond to repeated requests for comment about reported calls from neighbors.

MEDIA ONSLAUGHT

In the one acknowledged visit to the house by Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services Department officers in January 2004, more than a year after Knight disappeared and eight months after Berry went missing, no one answered the door, the mayor said.

Police said Castro was interviewed extensively during the investigation regarding the child left on the bus, and that no criminal wrongdoing was found. A witness had reported Castro telling the child to “lay down, bitch,” but child welfare officials concluded the complaint was unsubstantiated.

After their rescue, the three women were taken to a local hospital, reunited with family and friends and released. Cleveland FBI special agent Vicki Anderson told Reuters that federal agents were “taking care of the victims” to help shield them from a global media onslaught.

DeJesus’ aunt Sandra Ruiz emerged from the home of DeJesus’ father on Tuesday to appeal to a throng of reporters to respect the family’s privacy, saying: “Give us some breathing room.”

Born in Puerto Rico, Ariel Castro played bass in Latin music bands in the area. Records show he was divorced more than a decade ago and his ex-wife had since died. He is known to have at least one adult daughter and son.

On a Facebook page believed to be his, Castro said last month that he had just become a grandfather for a fifth time. Court records show he was arrested in 1993 on a domestic violence charge that was subsequently dismissed. (Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg, Greg McCune and Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Grant McCool, Bernard Orr, Cynthia Johnston and Pravin Char)

Divorced years ago and never seen in the company of women, Castro suddenly started showing up in the largely Latino, working-class neighborhood with a 6-year-old girl. It was his girlfriend’s child, he told neighbors.

Castro, 52, was believed to have lived alone, yet on his lunch break would bring home enough bags of fast food and beverages for several people.

He was a school bus driver given mostly “excellent” marks on his performance appraisals, but was repeatedly disciplined, including for one incident when he was accused of calling a young student a “bitch” and leaving the child alone on a bus. These incidents eventually caught up with him, and he was fired last November.

Castro was arrested in 1993 after a domestic violence complaint, though a grand jury decided not to indict him.

Family, friends and neighbors were shocked when police rescued three women locked inside Castro’s house on Monday and found a 6-year-old girl who police believe was born in captivity. The three women, today aged 32, 27 and 23, went missing from 2002 to 2004.

Castro and two of his brothers, Onil, 50, and Pedro, 54, were taken into custody on Monday and were expected to be charged within 36 hours of their arrest.

“It could be he was hiding a personality, because if it did happen you would have to have two personalities,” said Julio Cesar Castro, 77, the arrested brothers’ uncle and owner of the Caribe Grocery half a block from Ariel’s home. “He appeared to be something, and be something else.”

LATIN MUSICIAN

For years, Castro’s neighbors on Seymour Avenue saw him as a friendly but private person, an accomplished musician who played bass in Latin bands such as Borin Plena and Grupo Fuego. He liked motor-bikes and showed up at neighborhood barbecues in a vacant lot on Seymour Avenue. He was a self-taught mechanic who loved to talk about cars.

He owned an unremarkable, two-story house in a somewhat dilapidated part of Cleveland. Built in 1890, the home had an assessed value of a mere $13,200 in 2011, according to property records. Its windows were covered to block views from the outside.

One childhood friend said a music session with Castro, who was born in Puerto Rico, suddenly turned bizarre.

“Ariel was in my garage probably five or six years ago. We were recording a song, an idea we had – a little hard rock with some Latin,” said Joe Popow, 45, a father of six who said he has known the Castro brothers since childhood.

“And – you’re going to laugh – he said he was in the CIA. And I don’t know if he was joking or not, but it’s the way he said it, how serious he said it. I didn’t know what he was capable of. That just put me on defense, and I just started stepping away,” Popow said.

Intensely private for years, Ariel Castro recently had been seen taking a young girl to the park and to the playground at the local McDonald’s restaurant, neighbors said.

One of those neighbors, Israel Lugo, 39, said it was the same little girl who was in the arms of one of the abducted women, Amanda Berry, when she and the others were freed from the Castro home. He was there to witness them leave the house, he said.

“I’ve seen him with the little girl once or twice. He said it was his girlfriend’s daughter,” said Lugo, a self-employed roofing contractor.

When family and friends of missing Cleveland woman Gina DeJesus held a vigil last month to mark nine years since her disappearance, one of those attending was Castro, a longtime neighbor said.

“He came to a vigil and acted as if nothing was wrong,” said Anthony Quiros, 24, who lived next door to Castro’s house growing up.

‘LAY DOWN, BITCH’

Lugo said his sister once noticed Castro park his school bus in front of his home and enter with a large bag of food and tray of drinks. His mother called the police, who simply advised Castro not to park his bus there, Lugo said.

Castro was a bus driver for the Cleveland school district for years, driving children as young as preschool to various schools in the city.

He was fired from that job effective November 6, 2012, after a fourth incident that resulted in disciplinary action, documents released by the school district said.

In the most serious incident, a witness told investigators that on January 27, 2004, Castro left Wade Park Elementary School with a child still on the bus and drove to a Wendy’s restaurant, the documents said. The gender and age of the child were not given.

“Lay down, bitch,” Castro is quoted by the witness as saying to the child. He then left the student alone on the bus and went into the Wendy’s for lunch.

The Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, which serves Cleveland, investigated the allegation and concluded the complaint was “unsubstantiated.” Even so, Castro was temporarily suspended by the school district over the complaint.

At the same time, his record includes performance appraisals with dozens of check marks in the “excellent” boxes on the form.

“I do want to say that I have known Mr. Castro to be an effective bus driver,” Joshua Gunvalsen, a school principal, wrote in a letter in one of the disciplinary cases. “I have witnessed him trying to work with students, families and myself to handle student issues.”

Castro was arrested on December 27, 1993, in connection with a domestic violence complaint and released on $10,000 bail, but case was dropped when grand jury declined to indict him, court records show. They did not say who brought the complaint.

According to neighbors who have lived there since before the Castros moved in, that complaint would have come near the end of Castro’s marriage, which people in the neighborhood said produced two or three children.

Authorities had twice responded to the house where the women were held, once in 2000 and a second time in 2004, said Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.

“So now after all this has happened, I think, ‘Oh my God. What did I miss?’” said Popow, the childhood friend of the Castros. “This person came to my house. He was in my garage. I have a daughter the same age.”

(Additional reporting by Kim Palmer, Chris Francescani, Robin Respaut and Greg McCune; Editing by Greg McCune and Philip Barbara)

Three brothers, one of them a school bus driver who owns the house in Cleveland, Ohio where the women and a child were found on Monday, are under arrest, police said.

Police identified them as Ariel Castro, 52, Pedro Castro, 54; and Onil Castro, 50.

Amid jubilation over the discovery, residents quickly questioned whether the women had been held inside the house for years without anyone noticing. All three young women vanished separately – in 2002, 2003 and 2004 – within a few blocks of the house where they were found.

Freed from the house on Monday evening were Amanda Berry, 27, who disappeared in April 2003, along with Gina DeJesus, 23, who vanished in 2004, and Michelle Knight, 32, who went missing in 2002, police said.

They also found a 6-year-old girl who police said was Berry’s daughter. She would have been conceived and born during Berry’s captivity.

Neighbors said they had made more than one call to police about suspicious activity at the house, to no avail.

Cleveland authorities said there was one attempt to visit the home in 2004 on a matter unrelated to the disappearances but no one answered the door. They said they had combed through records and that there were no other calls to the house nor reports of anything amiss in the years the women were missing.

“We have no indication that any of the neighbors, bystanders, witnesses or anyone else has ever called regarding any information, regarding activity that occurred at that house on Seymour Avenue,” mayor Frank Jackson said at news conference.

But Israel Lugo, a neighbor, said he called police in November 2011 after his sister saw a girl at the house holding a baby and crying for help. He said police came and banged on the door several times but left after no one answered.

Lugo said about eight months ago, his sister saw Ariel Castro park his school bus outside the house and take a large bag of fast food and several drinks inside.

“My sister said something’s wrong … That’s when my mom called the police,” he said. Lugo said police came and told Castro not to park the bus in front of his house.

Cleveland police did not immediately respond to repeated requests seeking comment about the reported calls.

Monday evening’s rescue, described as a “miracle” by one family member, unfolded with a frantic emergency call from a woman who told a 911 operator she was Amanda Berry, the subject of years of searches.

She had escaped from the modest, two-story house in the low-income neighborhood on Cleveland’s West Side with the help of a neighbor who told police he heard screaming and helped her kick out a locked screen door.

SEARCHES OVER THE YEARS

The disappearances of Berry and DeJesus were well known in Cleveland, although Knight’s disappearance had attracted less attention, police said. Just last month a vigil was held to mark the ninth anniversary of DeJesus’ disappearance.

Anthony Quiros, 24, who grew up next door to the house where the women were found, said Ariel Castro had been an onlooker as police dug up a Cleveland lot looking for remains in the case on a tip that proved false.

“He also came to a vigil and acted as if nothing was wrong,” said Quiros. He said he saw Castro comforting DeJesus’s mother about a year ago.

Born in Puerto Rico, Ariel Castro played bass in Latin music bands in the area. They said he was divorced more than a decade ago and his ex-wife had since died. He is known to have at least one adult daughter and son.

On a Facebook page believed to belong to Castro, he said last month that he had just become a grandfather for a fifth time. Court records show he was arrested in 1993 on a domestic violence charge that was subsequently dismissed. I

Tito DeJesus, who said he used to play in a band with Castro, said on CNN he had been in the house two years ago and saw nothing suspicious.

He also said Castro asked him a couple years ago if DeJesus had ever been found. Castro mistakenly believed DeJesus was his cousin, he said.

Berry had last been seen leaving her job at a fast-food restaurant the day before her 17th birthday in April 2003, and Gina DeJesus was last seen at a telephone booth as she was walking home from school.

A man who helped to look for DeJesus, Pastor Angel Arroyo, said he and her family members had handed out flyers years ago in the neighborhood where she was found.

“We didn’t search hard enough. She was right under our nose the whole time,” Arroyo said.

Houses in the neighborhood are typically separated only by a driveway. Two houses to one side of the Castro house are boarded up.

Children and Family Services authorities went to the house in January 2004, more than a year after Knight disappeared and eight months after Berry went missing, because Ariel Castro had left a child on a school bus, the mayor said.

They “knocked on the door but were unsuccessful in connection with making any contact with anyone inside that home,” he said.

Police said Castro had been interviewed extensively during that investigation and no criminal intent was found regarding the child left on the bus.

“BELIEVE IN MIRACLES”

After their rescue, the three women were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were reunited with family and friends, and released on Tuesday.

“If you don’t believe in miracles, I suggest you think again,” DeJesus’ aunt Sandra Ruiz said to reporters on Tuesday in Cleveland. Her comments were televised by local station WJW.

“This is a miracle,” Ruiz said. But she added: “Watch who your neighbor is because you never know.”

The case is not the first time Cleveland has witnessed a horrific story close to home that raised questions about the thoroughness of police investigations.

In 2009, police discovered a home in Cleveland where Anthony Sowell had imprisoned and killed 11 women. Family members of some victims filed a lawsuit against the city, complaining about the police’s handling of the case.

Sowell was convicted in 2011 and is on death row.

FBI and other law enforcement officials were searching the Castro house as well as other properties, said police, who did not elaborate.

During her 911 call, Berry can be heard giving the dispatcher Ariel Castro’s name and urging police to come quickly. She indicated that she knew her disappearance had been widely reported in the media.

“Help me! I’m Amanda Berry. … I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m here. I’m free now,” Berry can be heard saying in a recording of the call released by police.

The discovery of the three women was reminiscent of the case of Jaycee Dugard, who was snatched from her northern California home at age 11 by a convicted sex offender, Phillip Garrido, and kept in captivity for 18 years before being rescued in 2009.

During that time she was repeatedly raped by her abductor and gave birth to two girls fathered by him.

Dugard released a statement on Tuesday, saying: “As simple as it sounds, these women need the opportunity to have the privacy to heal and reconnect.”

“I know individuals are strong in spirit and can be resilient in crisis. I wish them the best in their journey,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg, Greg McCune and Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Grant McCool, Bernard Orr)

The American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association offered
initial services and prosthetics not covered by insurance for
patients injured in the blasts, which tore the lower limbs off
some spectators near the finish line of the race on April 15.

Costs for a below-knee device average $8,000 to $12,000 each
and $40,000 to $60,000 for above-knee prosthetics, said Greig
Martino, a prosthetist treating bombing victims.

Three people died and 264 were injured in the blasts, which
police said resulted from two homemade bombs in pressure cookers
that a pair of ethnic Chechen brothers left near the race’s
finish line. One of the suspects died in a shootout with police
and the other has been charged with crimes that could result in
the death penalty if he were convicted.

The association’s offer, announced on a conference call with
reporters under the name Coalition to Walk and Run Again, will
only cover a portion of the expected costs for amputees. Victims
who lost both legs face estimated medical bills of $450,000 over
the next five years, said Tom Fise, executive director of the
association, citing a Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs
study.

The association estimates that at least half the Boston
Marathon amputees lack enough insurance to cover their
prosthetic costs as some policies provide as little as $1,000
per device or only provide one artificial limb. Many prosthetics
need replacing every five to seven years.

“The last thing that someone should have to worry about when
they lose … a leg is to have adequate insurance coverage for a
prosthetic device,” said Kendra Calhoun, president of the
Amputee Coalition, an organization supporting the estimated 2
million amputees in the United States.

Other efforts are under way to help victims of the largest
mass-casualty attack on U.S. soil since the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001. The One Fund, a relief group set up to provide aid to
victims, has brought in some $27.7 million in donations that it
promised to pay out to victims.

Members of the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association,
including prosthetists and manufacturers, will provide the
evaluation needed to design devices and treat the bombing
victims, at least one of whom is a child.

“Many of these patients even today don’t know what their
insurance has in store for them, nor do we, so the program is
about making sure the decisions to restore mobility to these
patients are made as independent as we can from any
considerations of what the insurance limitations may be,” Fise
said.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Scott Malone, Toni
Reinhold)

Decrying a culture of political corruption in New York and describing the two recent cases as “especially brazen and arrogant behavior,” Cuomo promised to introduce the so-called Public Trust Act to the state legislature.

The act would create laws to punish bribery, scheming to corrupt the government, and failure to report corruption, he told a joint news conference with several chief prosecutors from the New York City area. It would also increase penalties for violations of existing laws.

New York state has gained a special reputation for political corruption.

Since 1999, 20 state legislators in New York have been ousted because of criminal or ethical issues, according to the good government group Citizens Union. The New York Public Interest Research Group found that, since 2007, state senators have been more likely to be arrested than to lose their seats in a general election.

“There have been too many incidents for too many years,” Cuomo said. “They paint a truly ugly picture of our political landscape.”

Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, brought the two cases last week. Cuomo thanked him, adding that he wanted to empower the state’s 62 district attorneys to more easily prosecute public corruption.

As attorney general, before becoming governor, Cuomo sometimes passed corruption cases over to federal authorities because the U.S. laws were more stringent, he said.

Under the Public Trust Act, anyone convicted of a felony would be permanently barred from holding elected or civil office, serving as a lobbyist or doing business with the state.

“I want to strike while the iron is hot. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” Cuomo said, referring to the scandals of last week.

On Thursday, New York State Assemblyman Eric Stevenson was charged with corruption on suspicion of taking more than $22,000 in bribes in exchange for official acts, and another state assemblyman was forced to resign after agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors as a secret informant.

On Tuesday, in a separate case, Democratic New York State Senator Malcolm Smith was arrested and charged with trying to buy a slot on the Republican ticket in New York City’s mayoral race, in what prosecutors said was his central role in a series of bribery schemes that reflected pervasive corruption in New York politics.

Five other politicians – three Republicans and two Democrats – were also arrested and charged with collectively accepting more than $100,000 of bribes in meetings that took place in parked cars, hotel rooms and state offices, according to court papers.

Bribery of a public servant is currently illegal, but state prosecutors must prove there was a corrupt agreement between the person paying and the person receiving the bribe, said Mylan Denerstein, counsel to Cuomo. The proposed law would remove that “corrupt understanding” loophole and make it easier to prosecute, she said.

The “corrupting the government” provisions would introduce a new class of crime that would hold public officials and private citizens accountable for defrauding the government, Denerstein said.

The Public Trust Act would for the first time make it a crime for any public official or employee to fail to report bribery, Denerstein said.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

A group representing families of those killed at the Columbine, Virginia Tech and Aurora mass shootings wants to ensure any unspecified funds raised as a result of the Newtown shooting go directly to victims and their families.

Newtown, the Connecticut town where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, has identified more than 60 funds raising money on behalf of victims or projects related to the shooting.

The families of some mass shooting victims want a trusted, centralized authority to manage future donations.

“Going back to Oklahoma City, we’ve seen families who have had to endure not only horrific loss, but also the unimaginable task of wrestling with Byzantine nonprofit bureaucracies to access financial relief intended for them,” the families said in a statement. “It’s time to stop the madness. We cannot watch this happen, yet again, in Sandy Hook.”

The informal group, so far unnamed, has initiated talks with senior White House officials and two members of Congress about establishing an official fundraising operation for such tragedies, said Caryn Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the families. She declined to name the officials out of concern it might jeopardize the project.

The group is examining whether legislation or an executive order would be needed to create a federal or nonprofit entity that would coordinate donations after any future tragedy.

The project has won initial support from Kenneth Feinberg, the influential Washington lawyer who administered funds for victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks and several mass shootings.

Jerri Jackson, whose son Matt McQuinn was killed with 11 others in the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, wants it to be easier for future victims to receive aid.

“It’s not a matter of if something else happens, it’s when something else happens,” Jackson said. “Immediately, a fund would be set up. It would be a trusted fund that people would feel they could give to and the money would go to the victims.”

Jackson said she was forced to “jump through hoops in the midst of tragedy” to receive money raised in her son’s name.

Nearly $5.9 million in Aurora donations were channeled to the Community First Foundation. When victims’ families publicly complained about the pace of disbursement, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper called in Feinberg, who oversaw the disbursement within 45 days. The foundation was later shut down.

After the 2007 Virginia Tech University shooting that killed 32 people, more than $10 million spontaneously flowed to the university’s fundraising foundation, university spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Because that foundation was only authorized to spend money on the university, an executive order from the governor was needed to disburse the funds to victims, Hincker said.

Michael Pohle, a member of the group whose son was killed at Virginia Tech, said: “What was so insulting was we had to fill out documents, have them notarized, and basically beg and apply for dollars.”

Feinberg recognized some grieving survivors were upset but defended the disbursement process following both tragedies, noting the highly unusual circumstances, complex legal requirements and emotional strain on the families.

FAMILIES BAND TOGETHER

The ad hoc group of 64 people lost relatives in tragedies such as the September 11 attacks, the 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University and the Sikh temple shooting last year at Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

The group has not involved the Sandy Hook families, saying it was too soon for those still grieving. Even so, the group was concerned about the confusion caused by having dozens of nonprofit groups collecting money in Newtown, said Kaufman, the group’s spokeswoman.

Some of the Newtown funds were designated for a specific purpose, such as creating a playground or scholarship. In other cases, the funds refer to more general goals of supporting the victims. The group believes that money should go to the victims’ families.

Feinberg has overseen disbursements of funds following September 11, the BP oil spill and several mass shootings. Though he is not affiliated with the group, he supports the concept Of having a protocol in place when a future tragedy occurs.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Feinberg said. “The question is: Is there the political will to do it?”

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Stacey Joyce)