Long time gone

[Gob]

Three US women missing for years found alive in Cleveland

Three young women who disappeared about a decade ago have been found alive in the US state of Ohio, police say.

Amanda Berry disappeared aged 16 in 2003, while Gina DeJesus went missing at the age of 14 a year later.

They and Michele Knight, 32, who vanished in 2002 at the age of 20, were found in a house in the city of Cleveland, police confirmed. All are said to be in good health in hospital.

A 52-year-old suspect has been arrested in connection with the case.

In a frantic call to police, Ms Berry identified her captor as Ariel Castro, and said she had escaped after he had left the house.

Local news stations say Mr Castro is the man in police custody.

At least one of the women is reported to have a baby.

"I am thankful that Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight have been found alive," Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said.

"We have many unanswered questions regarding this case and the investigation will be ongoing."

A witness told local news stations that he had seen a woman holding a baby run out of a house, screaming for help.

"I heard screaming… And I see this girl going nuts trying to get outside," the neighbour, identified only as Charles, told NewsNet5.

"I go on the porch and she said, 'Help me get out. I've been here a long time.' I figure it was domestic violence dispute."

Crowds have reportedly gathered at the house where the women were being held.

Ms Berry was last heard from when she called her sister to say she would get a lift home from work at a Burger King restaurant.

In 2004, Ms DeJesus was said to be on her way home from school when she went missing.

Their cases were re-opened last year when a prison inmate tipped authorities that Ms Berry may have been buried in Cleveland. He received a four-and-a-half years in prison for the false information.

[dales]

But Glob Gob you only print negative stuff about the USA.

Are you feeling OK?

[Crackpot]

This "A boy named Sue" story?

[Grim Reaper]

Here's the interview with the neighbor:



And I feel especially bad for Amanda Berry. She was kidnapped in 2003 and her mom passed away in 2006, after her health declined while searching for her daughter.

[Gob]

FBI Special Agent Stephen Anthony said: "The nightmare is over. These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance. The healing can now begin."

Hyperbole much?

[Sean]

I've said it before and I'll say it again... Sylvia Browne is an evil cunt who needs to be stopped.

Psychic Who Said Amanda Berry Was Dead Silent After Berry Is Found Alive


A year after Amanda Berry disappeared in Cleveland, her mother appeared on "The Montel Williams Show" to speak to a psychic about what happened to her daughter.

Psychic Sylvia Browne, who has made a career of televised psychic readings, told Louwanna Miller on a 2004 episode of the show that her daughter was dead, causing Miller to break down in tears on the show's set.

"She's not alive, honey," Browne told Miller on the show, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. "Your daughter's not the kind who wouldn't call."

Miller told the newspaper that she believed "98 percent" in what Browne told her. Miller died a year later from heart failure.

On Monday, Berry was found alive after she broke free from a home in Cleveland where she says she has been kept for the past decade.

Browne did not return phone calls seeking comment today by ABC News. The Montel Williams show, through syndicator CBS, also did not return calls for comment. The show no longer airs new episodes.

In 2003, Browne incorrectly told the parents of missing teen Shawn Hornbeck that their son was dead, and his body could be found somewhere near "two jagged boulders," according to her premonition.

Nearly four years later, Hornbeck was found alive, and Browne was widely criticized in the media for causing the Hornbecks additional grief.

A website called "Stop Sylvia Browne," dedicated to cataloguing Browne's purported failures at prediction, sprang up in 2006.

Last year, Dwayne Baker told ABC News that after his son went missing in 2007, he was flooded with calls from psychics offering potential leads into the whereabouts of Travis Baker.

"It's very hard,' Dwayne Baker said. "I went through everything. My son was missing for two years, two months and 12 days. "Psychics called me. I even received a DVD in the mail that a guy claimed he could talk to the dead and this was Travis' voice, with no return address. I don't understand why people would want to do that."

"The psychics…" said Baker, 45, before pausing to let out a long sigh. "I hate to say how many of those called me and said they knew where Travis was. My mother and wife went to one and paid them $100."

Travis Baker's remains were located in 2009.

Brad Garret, a former special agent with the FBI and ABC News consultant said that alleged tips from psychics rarely help solve a case.

"As far as finding a victim, finding remains, finding evidence or in any way helping to solve the case, it's never been my experience," he said. "So, it's really a disservice to victims."

"We've never had a psychic lead that turns out to be correct," said Lt. Dave Parker, of the Anchorage, Alaska, police department, after 18-year-old Samantha Koenig went missing in February, 2012.

Today, Brown faced backlash on social media for her incorrect prediction about Amanda Berry. It is unclear whether she has helped to solve a crime with her psychic predictions.

"Psychics make me sick. Here's an example: Sylvia Browne told Amanda Berry's Mum (now dead) her daughter was dead," wrote Twitter user Chris McBriarty.

Story

[Grim Reaper]

Browne did not return phone calls seeking comment today by ABC News.

Doesn't take a psychic to know that she's going to do everything she can to downplay, if not outright ignore, this incident.

[Lord Jim]

This is the kind of horrific story that really tests my commitment to only supporting the Death Penalty for murderers and traitors...I really hope the guy finds himself the object of daily beatings and rough romance in prison for the rest of his miserable existence....

Also, his two brothers have been cleared in the case, and have now been released....

However, given how closely the media associated them with the story for several days, it must really suck to be them....

I imagine they would very much prefer to be somewhere other than Cleveland....

[dales]

As you might recall this guy was killed while in custody. It seems that the CO's "accidently" let him out of protective custody.

I certaily hope the same happens to the POS from Cleveland.

[Jarlaxle]

Whoever was responsible for that should be prosecuted for either negligent homicide or murder one. I'd be fine with HIM ending up in general population, though...but make sure "BAD COP" is tattooed on his face first.

[Lord Jim]

Jarl, you do realize the "guy" in that picture is Jeffrey Dahmer?

[Crackpot]

I'm sure he does

[Lord Jim]

Also that wasn't the way I recalled it and I don't think that was the way it happened; Dahmer had been in the GP for some time; he had a job working with other inmates:

Dahmer was attacked twice in prison, the first time in July 1994. An inmate attempted to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor blade while Dahmer was returning to his cell from a church service in the prison chapel. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds.[52] On November 28, 1994, while doing janitorial work in the prison gym, Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson, were severely beaten by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver with a 20-inch (51 cm) metal bar that Scarver had removed from a piece of exercise equipment in the prison weight room.[53] Dahmer died of severe head trauma while on his way to the hospital in an ambulance. Anderson died two days later from his wounds.[54]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer

[dales]

Jim, you are no fun.

But you have one helluva memory.

[Lord Jim]

This scumbag may be eligible for the needle:

Prosecutor may seek death penalty for Cleveland kidnap, rape suspect Ariel Castro

An Ohio prosecutor says he may seek the death penalty against the man accused of imprisoning three women at his home for about a decade for forcing them to suffer miscarriages.

Cuyahoga County prosecutor Thomas McGinty says Ohio law calls for the death penalty for the "most depraved criminals who commit aggravated murder during the course of a kidnapping." He says aggravated murder charges could be filed related to pregnancies terminated by force.

Ariel Castro is being held on $8 million bail. The 52-year-old former school bus driver was under a suicide watch in jail, where he was being held on kidnapping and rape charges for holding three women - Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight - inside his home for about a decade.

Knight, who still hasn't been since in public, is said to be recovering in a hospital and has turned away visitors, CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports from Cleveland.

"She was severely beaten," said Knight's grandmother, Debora Knight. "He had beat so badly in the face, she has to have facial reconstruction, and she's lost hearing in one ear."

McGinty suggests the charges could number in the hundreds, if not thousands.

In his first court appearance Thursday, Castro looked down at the ground for almost the entire proceeding, biting his collar and signing documents with his handcuffed hands. He didn't speak.

The women found alive after years in captivity endured lonely, dark lives inside a dingy home where they were raped and allowed outside only a handful of times in disguises while walking to a garage steps away, investigators say.

Assistant county prosecutor Brian Murphy said the women were beaten repeatedly and sexually assaulted. He said Castro used the women "in whatever self-gratifying, self-serving way he saw fit."

While many questions remain about how Castro maintained such tight control over the women for so many years before one of them made a daring escape Monday, the horrors they suffered are beginning to come to light.

Castro lured the women into his vehicle, according to court documents filed Thursday.

Police say the women were apparently bound by ropes and chains at times and were kept in different rooms. They suffered prolonged sexual and psychological abuse and had miscarriages, according to a police report obtained Wednesday by CBS News, which corroborated information received earlier from a law enforcement source. Knight told police she suffered five miscarriages.

[Crackpot]

I think that may be a dicey application of law. Personally I see incarceration as enough for this crime and I'll admit to seeing the possibility of prison rape as fitting his particular crime (though I somehow doubt the situation would result in something so just)

[dales]

He forced miscarriages by beating and starving the women after he raped them.

There's your capital murder case right there.

Buh-bye, scumbag.

[Crackpot]

Are you really that comfortable defining murder that early in gestation?

[Crackpot]

Do you want to give the anti abortion crowd that big of a hammer just to punish this loser?

[dales]

California does.