The Michelle Knight Story

The Michelle Knight Story

on Could 21, 2014, 9:29 am
TRANS Transcript: The Michelle Knight story
CHRIS BATH: Michelle was one of three younger ladies abducted by Ariel Castro and saved as his sex slaves for over a decade in Cleveland, America. He took away their liberty but could not break their will. Escape was only the start of their revenge. In this joint collaboration with Sunday Evening and Dateline NBC, visitor reporter Savannah Guthrie and Michelle Knight take you inside Castro's Home of Horror.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: I learn your e-book, you recognize, the story is so heartbreaking. I believe it is so exhausting to listen to about all the things that you went by way of. Was it exhausting to jot down?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: It was exhausting to inform it, sure. It was arduous to jot down it. It was...there was instances the place I simply wanted to not do it at all.
RAHNI SADLER: Between 2002 and 2004, faculty bus driver Ariel Castro kidnapped three women and held them prisoner in the Tremont neighbourhood of Cleveland, Ohio. They were to be his intercourse slaves. His first sufferer was Michelle Knight.
Michelle was 21 years old, a single mum who was on her option to court for a child custody case involving her 2-year-old son. But Michelle acquired misplaced on the best way and ended up at this store.
When she requested for instructions, a person offered to provide her a journey. It was Ariel Castro.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: So I got in the automobile and we began to drive. He was like, "Oh, by the way, I have puppies. "If you would like one, you might take one dwelling to your son." I was like, "OK." After which we go into the house. And then that is when he shut the door on me. And I simply began crying.
RAHNI SADLER: Inside 2207 Seymour Avenue, Michelle was now Castro's prisoner. His residence could be her jail for the subsequent eleven years.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Does this appear to be the home you bear in mind?
Yep. Precisely.
This is a scale model of Castro's house of horror.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: That is where he advised you the puppies have been?
Yes.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: That is where he first took you.
And that is where he took a pole and one other pole, straight throughout and then a line to tie me up like a fish right there, on the wall. And when I used to be untied, my arms, my legs, I couldn't walk and he drags me down, takes me back out the door, drags me down these stairs like that. My head is, like, hitting the stairs and drags me this manner. And...
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: How did he drag you, by your toes?
Yeah.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: You spent your first few weeks and months down in the basement. Can you describe what that was like, how he kept you there? What it seemed like?
It was filthy, stank. There was nothing but soiled clothes, rats operating everywhere. Huge, filthy chains that he wrapped me in. Large locks about, like that, hanging from my neck. There was a time that I used to be simply sitting there and I simply passed out because the chains were so tight, you couldn't breathe. The motorbike helmet did not help.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: What was the motorbike helmet?
To place over my head. And it made it even harder to breathe as a result of it made the chain bury into my throat.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: After a period of time, you left the basement. What happened subsequent? Where did you go? Where did he take you?
He took me to a room, and he says, "That is where you're going to spend the rest of your years," and he simply chains me as much as the mattress.
RAHNI SADLER: Castro modified his dwelling, making it virtually unimaginable to flee. Home made alarm programs, doorways that solely HE might unlock from the surface, drapes masking secret stair wells, chains in each bed room. Months passed. Hope disappeared and the only company Michelle had was this monster.
You get to some extent where you're feeling like it's hopeless. You have got so much hope and love in your coronary heart and so much to live for however you do not really feel like it's going wherever, you do not feel prefer it's coming any sooner. And then you definately simply hand over.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Did you ever have a plan or was it only a helplessness that came visiting you?
A hopelessness. I just sat there and stated, "At some point, he is simply going to deal with me simply actually dangerous. "I'm simply going to down the alcohol that he offers me, "I will go to the sting of the mattress," because my chain was quick, "and simply fall and let it break my neck."
RAHNI SADLER: Castro raped Michelle repeatedly. Afterwards, he would go away her chained and in darkness. Michelle's eyes are now permanently broken from dwelling at the hours of darkness for so a few years.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: How did you get through every day simply sitting there?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Thinking of my son and hoping I may see his smile once more.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: How did you survive in the sense of....did he provide you with meals, did you might have water?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: It was very little. And I don't know how I survived it.
RAHNI SADLER: Michelle was allowed one small comfort - a television set - and that's how, virtually a year into her captivity, she heard the news.
REPORTER: Cleveland police do not know where Amanda Berry is.
Castro had gone attempting to find one other sufferer. Amanda Berry was kidnapped at a close-by Burger King. It was the day before her seventeenth birthday.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Did you recognise her?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Sure. I went to highschool together with her.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: You had had the same class with her. Yes. And what does she appear to be in that second. How did she appear to you? She looks disgusted because the best way my room was, the way in which he saved me...
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Do you think she was realising... That is what she was going to end up going by.
RAHNI SADLER: One other year previous, then another sufferer. 14-yr-previous Gina DeJesus was snatched by Castro while on her method residence from school. He chained her to Michelle. In his home, he now had three trapped and terrified younger women. But Castro played the position of a normal guy residing a traditional life, inviting friends and family over for dinner.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: When individuals would come to the house, you girls would be up right here?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Sure. And he will take speakers, chairs, couch, seats, whatever, put it right there and he'll block from anyone getting up the stairs at all.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: And no-one mentioned, "Hey, that is unusual, "why do you will have it like that?"
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Yeah. I do not perceive why.
RAHNI SADLER: Manacled together, Michelle and Gina gave one another energy. They became like sisters.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: We shared, like, all the pieces collectively. We watched TV, we laughed together. We informed one another jokes, did stupid issues, simply to make the time go by.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: You and Gina were within the room collectively so lengthy, you noticed each other go through horrible abuse.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Yes. There were days, like, he'll come in and he'll just do bad things in entrance of me and I'll take her hand and I'll tell her all the pieces goes to be OKAY. In the future we'll get out. Someday we'll be free. Sooner or later we cannot be voiceless.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: One of the hardest issues to listen to that you simply went by means of is getting pregnant.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: That was tremendously painful.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Were you afraid to tell him?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Very. Very afraid as a result of I did not know what he was gonna do, what he was gonna say.
RAHNI SADLER: Castro's response was brutal. He beat Michelle until she miscarried not as soon as, but every time she became pregnant.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: And that happened how many times?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: I wish to say five or four.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Will need to have damaged your coronary heart.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Every time.
RAHNI SADLER: When Amanda Berry became pregnant in 2006, Castro forced Michelle to deliver the baby, telling her if it died, he'd kill her. Michelle felt Castro hated her the most. During her captivity she refused to use his name, merely calling him 'Dude'. It infuriated him.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: He wished to break me and that's something he couldn't do because you can't break somebody that is already been broken. You'll be able to solely make them stronger.
RAHNI SADLER: Day by day in captivity Michelle Knight dreamed of freedom, that someday she'd escape and return to her son, Joey. Lastly her chance got here. Years after Ariel Castro kidnapped her, he began to calm down his grip, sometimes allowed Michelle, Amanda and Gina to go unchained. It was during these times that Michelle tried to escape.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: I am not gonna think about it, I'm just gonna do it so I simply ran. He heard me and that is when he ran down the steps. Obviously I wasn't quick sufficient and I used to be too small so I wasn't able to soar the fence.
RAHNI SADLER: Castro grabbed her and dragged her back into the home. Extra months passed and he became more brazen. Even when Castro was stopped by police at this petrol station in 2008 for riding and not using a correct licence he remained unruffled.
CCTV: Your drivers licence, please. What's improper?
RAHNI SADLER: At the very second this video was taken, Castro had been keeping Michelle hidden for six long years. Besides all the locks and chains in the house there was one other impediment to freedom - the thoughts video games this monster performed.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: He would go away the door open, he would go away us in a single room and he'll be in one other room and he'll simply look in sometimes to guantee that we're not running out the door.
RAHNI SADLER: And that is why early last Could, Michelle thought he'd set another trap. She had been his prisoner and slave for greater than a decade when she heard Amanda's daughter, now six, yell up the stairs that he had left the house.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: You thought it was a trick?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Yeah. She was like, "Daddy instructed me to come back up right here and stay." So I used to be like, "It should just be one other a kind of issues "the place he simply told her to go there and say that "to see if we'd do anything."
RAHNI SADLER: However Castro had left the home. Not only that, he had left Amanda Berry's door unlocked. Amanda crept downstairs, broke via the entrance door and ran throughout the road to name for help.
CELLPHONE: Hello, police. Help me, I'm Amanda Berry. Do you need police, hearth or ambulance? I want police.
RAHNI SADLER: By the point police arrived, it was clear this wasn't a hoax. They noticed Amanda standing on the street.
POLICE OFFICER: It was simply unbelievable. My thoughts was going, "Wow, I can not imagine that she's in entrance of me "and there are possibly two other girls." My partner and I ran up the entrance porch and the door was chained shut so I kicked it a couple of times. I hear this large loud noise, crash, increase. I'm looking in the direction of the bedroom. And then he was like, "Police! Police!"
She started simply charging at me. She jumped on to me. She had her arms round my neck. She then jumped up into my arms.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: And I informed her, "Don't let me go, do not let me go."
POLICE OFFICER: I said, "Honey, I'm not going to allow you to go." We found them. We discovered them.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: I was like, "Gina, Gina, you will not consider this - we're going dwelling." Thank you, God.
POLICE: I've been in this enterprise for over 40 years. I have seen quite a lot of heroes in my life but these girls prime it off.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: The one thing I wanted to do was kiss the bottom that I stroll on. And run up and down the road saying, "I'm free! I'm free!"
RAHNI SADLER: All three women had been taken to hospital. Michelle weighed less than 38 kilos.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: When did you first feel free, "I'm secure?"
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Once I bought into the hospital and then everyone comes as much as me, they're giving me hugs, they're telling me that, "We love you" and I never heard that before. I never heard "I love you" earlier than.
POLICE OFFICER: She had been given nutribar and had eaten it and she requested the nurse, "Do you assume it is potential," she requested very timidly, "I would be capable to have yet another." She stated, "Honey, you possibly can have all you want." She grabbed the nurse's arm and hugged her arm and stated, "Thank you, thank you." It confirmed what she'd been by way of. I said, "My God, this girl has been starved". Just looking at her - tortured - that she's that grateful for such a small merchandise.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: After you got out, clearly he was arrested, pled responsible, there was a day in court. You determined to go to courtroom. Why was that necessary to you?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: 'Cause I wanted to show everybody that he did did not define who I was. That he was my past and will stay my past.
RAHNI SADLER: Dealing with the dying penalty, Castro resorted to determined tactics.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Did you need to face him?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Sure.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: What did that imply to you?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: I wished to let him know that what he has achieved it did not break me. No one should ever should go through what I went by way of. You took eleven years of my life away. I spent eleven years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Do you assume he heard you and understood?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Yeah. There's a level of time the place he put his head down when I used to be talking he knew exactly what he had achieved incorrect.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Do you suppose he felt shame?
MICHELLE: He needed to. His kids had been watching.
RAHNI SADLER: Castro was sentenced to life in jail plus 1,000 years. Six days later, on the order of the court docket, his home of horrors was demolished. Michelle returned to look at.
A month later, Ariel Castro hanged himself in jail. He was fifty three.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Later, if you heard about how he died in jail, what did you assume?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: At first I was like OKAY, let me think about this for a minute. How do I actually really feel? I sat there and stated to myself I felt sad. He did not have to do that to himself. He didn't have to hurt himself. However then I come to the realisation that he did it as a result of he couldn't face what he did. He couldn't face what he did unsuitable. And he did not need to undergo at the hands of others so like a coward, he took the easy approach out.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: He could not take for very long what he put you through.
MICHELLE KNIGHT: No. But you actually felt unhappy to him? You probably did?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Yeah. Just like any other human being. You should not, like... although he did one thing so horrible to you, do not should fill your heart with hate. Because I don't and I forgave him.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: You wrote in your diary a very long time in the past about the butterfly. (GIGGLES) Do you are feeling just like the butterfly?
MICHELLE KNIGHT: Yeah. That was able to express herself the way in which she desires now and capable of be free without control and no worries. I'm that butterfly. Freedom to fly.
CHRIS TUB: When she was abducted, her son was adopted out. His new mother and father are but to let her see him for concern that he could also be scarred by what happened to her. Michelle hopes that one day she and Joey can be reunited.
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