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Castro Gets Life; Examining the Case

Aired August 01, 2013 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We begin with breaking news this afternoon because this has been quite a day. It has been a day of emotion, anger, tears and straight-up survival.

It has been nearly three months since Amanda Berry pushed her way through the front door of that home in Cleveland.

(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)

AMANDA BERRY, KIDNAPPING & RAPE VICTIM (voice-over): I've been kidnapped. And I've been missing for 10 years. And I'm here. I'm free now!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And this was their prison. This was the home on Seymour Avenue. These photos from Castro's sentencing hearing today showing just what it was like for these young women and a little girl inside this home. This is where Amanda Berry, where Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight spent nearly a decade, kidnapped, locked up in the upstairs bedroom using 99 feet of chain. They were tortured, starved, raped. And this gun, this gun you see here, used to intimidate these women and keep them living in fear day in and day out.

Just moments ago at Ariel Castro's sentencing hearing, we all watched as one of these victims, Michelle Knight, who was impregnated by Castro multiple times and beaten and starved until she miscarried, she had the strength to come face to face with her captor for the very first time since her escape. Here is her response in its entirety.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELLE KNIGHT, ARIEL CASTRO'S VICTIM: My name is Michelle Knight. And I would like to tell you what (INAUDIBLE) was like for me.

I missed my son every day. Wondering if I was ever going to see him again. He was only two and a half years old when I was tooken. I look inside my heart and I see my son. I cried every night. I was so alone.

I worried about what would happen to me and the other girls every day. Days never got shorter. Days turned into nights. Nights turned into days. Years turned into eternity. I knew nobody cared about me. He told me that my family didn't care. (INAUDIBLE). Even on holidays. Christmas was the most traumatic day because I never got to spend it with my son.

Nobody should ever have to go through what I went through or anybody else, not even the worstest enemy. Gina was my teammate. She never let me fall. I never let her fall. She nursed me back to health when I was dying from his abuse. My friendship with her is the only thing that was good out of this situation. We said we will some day make it out alive. And we did.

Ariel Castro, I remember all the times that you came home talking about what everybody else did wrong and act like you wasn't doing the same thing. You said, at least I didn't kill you. But you took 11 years of my life away. And I have got it back. I spent 11 years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all this that happened, but you will face hell for eternity.

From this moment on, I will not let you define me or affect who I am. You will live - I will live on. You will die a little every day as you think about the 11 years and atrocities you inflicted on us. What does God think of you hypocritically going to church every Sunday, coming home to torture us? The death penalty would be so much easier. You don't deserve that. You deserve to spend life in prison. I could forgive you, but I will never forget. With the guidance of God, I will prevail and help others that suffered at the hands of others.

Writing this statement gave me the strength to be a stronger woman. And I know that there's good -- there's more good than evil. I know that there's a lot of people going through hard times. But we need to reach out a hand and hold them and let them know that they're being heard. After 11 years, I am finally being heard. And it's liberating. Thank you all. I love you. God bless you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Ms. Knight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Incredible. Michelle Knight, small in stature, tremendous in strength, in that courtroom speaking. And she watched on as Ariel Castro took his turn a little later. Told the courtroom he's not a monster. We will not be playing his entire rambling statement for you. But coming up, we will play just a piece of this outrageous response in which he blames his victims.

But first, I want to go straight to Pamela Brown in Cleveland.

Pamela, I mean, my goodness, we were there when the story first broke in Cleveland. Here we are now for the sentencing hearing. And when I think of Michelle Knight, because she was the first of the three to be plucked off those streets, she suffered the longest, the most severe abuse according to police, and here she was, pretty poignant moment today.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's really no words to sum it up, Brooke. It was incredibly emotionally charged and powerful. You could hear a pin drop in that courtroom when Michelle Knight got up there and faced her captor head on. She exhibited tremendous strength and courage. She said his name. She -- it was very clear that she directed her statement toward him saying that basically she did go through hell and back. That he stole 11 years of her life. But now he's going to hell and bit by bit will lose part of his life and be there in prison for the rest of his life.

So she made a very strong, powerful statement. And ended by saying that she now has a voice and it's liberating. We've heard, we've been reporting that she was going to be the one of the three to make an impact statement. And it's especially worth pointing out, as you mentioned there, Brooke, that she did endure the worst abuse over the past 11 years of her time in captivity. As we've been learning, Ariel Castro killed her unborn baby and starved her and punched her in the stomach. We've also learned, hearing from the doctor earlier, that she was -- played the role of nurse, pediatrician, the protector of Gina DeJesus. So this is a woman with incredible strength and we all saw that for ourselves today.

And, of course, it was incredibly powerful when we heard from Ariel Castro himself. And when he turned around to Michelle Knight to apologize and she stood there and didn't blink an eye. And it was just really amazing to see that.

BALDWIN: I don't know if it was a full apology because he also said, you know, Michelle, haven't seen much of her and no one's really missed you as he's turning around, since she went missing.

We're going to get to Ariel Castro, trust me, here in just a minute. Pamela Brown, thank you so much.

We heard from also family members of Gina DeJesus. Also Amanda Berry. But, you know, at one point, Ariel Castro broke down. At another, he seemed irritated, even denying torturing these young women despite their statements, despite statements from doctors, police. As I mentioned, we'll get to that rambling address here in just a moment.

But I want to talk more about - and let's call her a survivor. Let's talk about survivor Michelle Knight and really her defiant statement today in court. Let me bring in Monica Lindstrom, attorney and former prosecutor with me. Also Midwin Charles, criminal defense attorney. And Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychologist.

And, Carole, if I may, I have a lot of questions for you here. Just the psychology of all of this. so, first, Carole, you see Michelle Knight. And I hate to use the word closure. But how does her sheer physical presence in this courtroom, feet from this -- let's call him what he is, he's a monster -- feet from this man. How does that help in her healing process?

CAROLE LIEBERMAN, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: Her statement was incredibly poignant and it really, you know, what she said at the end, now I am finally heard, is incredibly important. It was so well crafted, what she said.

But you know what I found interesting is that typically impact statements are things that are designed to give -- bring more punishment to the defendant. Now in this -- and so, for example, her saying, you know, how she's -- it was horrible, but she's recovered and look at me now, really didn't do that. But it's interesting because his sentence was already pretty much a fait accompli (ph), so she was able to do that. And instead took back the power from him back to her and that was what was the most important part.

BALDWIN: I'm glad you brought that up, and let me ask our two lawyers on the panel, because, Midwin, let me just begin with you. You know, we knew -- we knew about this plea deal last Friday. We knew that this sentence would be life in prison plus 1,000 years. What's the point of such a lengthy hearing?

MIDWIN CHARLES, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, such a lengthy hearing is great because what it does is it puts all this information on the record. We now have detail upon detail with respect to the level of the crime. I mean we know that this crime was severe in the sense where it lasted 11 years for some of these victims. So the beauty of sentencing is you have all of this information out in the public. The public is now aware of the level of evil and dysfunction. And it serves a function so that when he is sentenced, the sentence meets and warrants the crime. In other words, they match.

BALDWIN: And, Monica, I mean, I kept - I watched the whole thing on this live router in the newsroom. And just watching the judge at the very end, have you ever seen - I mean it took minutes -- I don't know how many minutes -- I wonder if someone was running a clock -- going through the 937 counts this man has pleaded guilty to.

MONICA LINDSTROM, ATTORNEY, FMR. PROSECUTOR: Yes. And, Brooke, what he has to do is it's still a criminal proceeding. So he still needs to go through every single count and the statute and explain what the sentence is for that count. Even though the prosecution and the defense have both agreed to a plea agreement, the judge has to do certain things, like making sure that it's voluntary, making sure that it's appropriate, it's proportionate to other crimes in that jurisdiction, and he has to put each count with the sentence on the record. So at times it seemed very monotonous and boring, but the judge had to do that.

BALDWIN: And let me just go back. This was a moment very early on this morning in the courtroom. This was the first responder, this police officer. Little did she know what she would find in this home on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland. So this was her describing seeing Michelle Knight for the very first time. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFFICER BARBARA JOHNSON, CLEVELAND POLICE: I did remember looking at Gina. And it took me a second to really realize it was her because she was a lot thinner and pale compared to the pictures you've seen for the last 10 years of her where she's a little bit heavier, you know, long hair. She had real short hair and she was real thin and pale. But you could see the resemblance. You knew it was her. But it took it -- just, you know, that extra second to get a look.

Michelle was so tiny, I thought she was a little girl. Until I put her down and got a look at her and realized she was -- she was a grown woman. And it took us a few minutes to figure out that, yes, she was also in the system as a missing person.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Carole, I just wanted to ask you about that because really - and I've had a couple of people send me notes as we're all watching this - I mean this -- this woman is quite small, yet she played this tremendous role, it seems like, over the course of the decade of helping, you know, birth Amanda Berry's child, threatened with her own life if this child didn't live. She was like a doctor. She was like a mother. Just your reaction to that.

LIEBERMAN: Well, yes, it's particularly astounding because she started out with having a lot of problems of her own before she was captured. And, of course, that's what made her a prey. You know, she looked like she would be vulnerable. She looked like someone that he could overpower. But it is amazing that she has come out as the speaker for all three of them.

BALDWIN: It is. Ladies, stand by. I have a lot more for all of you because coming up next, we will listen to Ariel Castro in part of this rambling, tearful statement to the judge. At one point he blames the victims and the FBI. Stay right here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIEL CASTRO: What I'm trying to get at, people are trying to paint me as a monster, and I'm not a monster. I'm sick.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Back to our special coverage of the kidnapping case in Cleveland. You have just heard from the survivors and their families. Moments after they spoke in court, Ariel Castro himself stood up, rambled through a bit about his childhood, music career, life before the abductions. But then, minutes in, this man addressed these women, each by name, and put the blame on them. As we said, we are not playing the whole thing. Here's just a portion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIEL CASTRO, CONVICTED KIDNAPPER: It's how it works (ph). I would take them to church. I would come home and just be normal like a normal family. These accusations that I would come home and beat her, beat them, those are totally wrong, your honor, because I -- like I said, you - I am not a violent person. I know what I did is wrong, but I'm not a violent person. I simply kept them there without them being able to leave.

I know when I picked up the second victim, which was Gina, I don't understand how I passed (ph) up my own daughter (ph) to pick her up because I was driven by sex. And, no, I did not know who she was. I saw her walking (INAUDIBLE) but I did not know because (ph) she was related to him. The DeJesus family. Because I know her dad. We went to school together. We didn't see much of each other in school, but I know him from school.

Amanda, she got into my vehicle without even knowing who it was. I don't blame -- I'm not putting the fault on her, but I'm just saying, trying to make up my point across, I am not a violent predator they're trying to make me look -- a monster, I'm not a monster. I'm a normal person. I am just sick.

I have an addiction. Just like an alcoholic has an addiction. Alcoholics cannot control their addiction. That's why I couldn't control my addiction, your honor. But most of the sex that went on in that house, practically all of it was consensual. These allegations about being forceful on them, that is totally wrong. Because there was times that they would even ask me for sex. Many times. And I learned that these girls were not virgins from their testimony to me. They had multiple partners before me. All three of them.

Finally, I would like to apologize to the victims. Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. I am truly sorry for what happened. To this day, I'm trying to answer questions. I don't know why. A man that had everything going on for himself. I had a child. I had a home. I had vehicles and I had my musical talent. I had everything going (INAUDIBLE), your honor. I had a good history of working, providing. I just hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Hmm. A lot to talk about here. Monica Lindstrom, attorney and former prosecutor. Midwin Charles, criminal defense attorney. And Carole Lieberman, forensic psychiatrist. Welcome back.

Wow. Where to even begin?

Carole, OK, I guess my first question is, and jotting down a bunch of notes as I was watching him. You know, he basically takes, you know, 10 plus minutes sitting there in court, talks about his music career, talks about his daughter. Says he's not a monster, he's just sick. And something like, you know, eight minutes in, he finally says, "I'm sorry" and denies a heck of a lot in between. What was your reaction?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, to the extent that he believes what he said and isn't just saying it to try to make a better impression on the court as far as the leniency, you know, he says he's not violent. But obviously this is a man who does have a sex addiction, sexual problems. But, you know, when you have a sex addiction, you don't have to find three women and tie them up in your house for 10 years. You know, you may go out to bars and find women various ways and have sex, you know, manipulating women into it sometimes. But this -- what he did, even if he didn't beat them, which is not likely, it's hard to believe that, still what he did is violent enough.

BALDWIN: Let me - let me just hit pause. And, by the way, you know, according to these women, according to police and everything they've suffered, yes, he did. But pause. There is a press conference happening right now given by the prosecutor here in this case in Cleveland. Let's just dip in real quickly and take a listen. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Entered properly classified. These women outlasted him. They survived him. We are on all - we are all in admiration of them for what they did and how they withstood from day-to-day and survived day-to-day and outwitted this guy to the point where they could finally break free and be rescued as - or free themselves as they did.

You heard from them and their representatives. We will always be inspired.

The law enforcement was dedicated to find these women. They never gave up. They looked and they searched and no one was -- other than the family, of course, was more relieved or happy than these individual law enforcement officers. So I want to thank the law enforcement officers for their -- for their faith and their willingness to continue.

I want to give my heartfelt thanks to the Cleveland Police, represented today here by Chief Calvin Williams (ph), Chief McGrath (ph) is in another meeting, an emergency matter. The second partner here is FBI. The FBI here has been tremendous in all aspects of this case. They work with the Cleveland Police and the sheriff's office and BCI from start to finish. And I want to thank the agent in charge, the special agent in charge, Steve Anthony (ph), of the FBI, representing a tremendous group, not just here in Cleveland, but the FBI agents who came in from Washington and agents from different parts of the country to handle different aspects from the scientific end, to the working with the victims or the interviews, handling the interviews of this criminal. And the people in the behavioral science unit and, of course, the sheriff. We've got a great sheriff here. Sheriff Frank Bolva (ph) and his representatives are here. And you can see them in uniform and in person. This is a great sheriff's unit. A great detective unit. They -- their help has been instrumental all the way through.

I want to give special thanks to the individual Cleveland Police officers and FBI agents and sheriffs who were working on this case continually for over a decade. Who were emotionally moved that night when this was found and are still moved by this and inspired by these ladies who outwitted this -- this rapist, murder.

BALDWIN: So the prosecutor, again, just hearing him after this, you know, multiple hour long sentencing hearing for Ariel Castro just basically saying thank you. Thank you to police. Thank you to the FBI. Thank you, judge, for this entire process.

This has been -- these kidnappings have really just plagued the city of Cleveland for more than a decade. And finally to have, not closure, but the end, you know, putting this man away for the rest of his life, is obviously huge for these three young women and one little girl.

Coming up next, you will hear one detective describe how Castro lured his victims into that house of horrors, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)