Ariel Castro: what a guy—too bad the police didn’t know it
I was watching CNN last night, and learned some more things about the gothic horror show that was Ariel Castro: his deceased ex-wife Grimilda Figueroa had filed very serious physical abuse charges against him, allegations of violent and multiple beatings at his hands (including being hit in the head with some barbells). But the case was dismissed because Castro failed to show up several times, and at a critical juncture his ex-wife’s lawyer didn’t appear.
That’s a reason to dismiss a case of such severity?
Castro’s son Anthony has backed up his late mother’s accusations, describing his father “as a controlling, abusive and often drunk ogre who once nearly beat his mom, Grimilda Figueroa, to death as she was recovering from brain surgery.” She and her four children, including Anthony, left Castro in 1996, long before the kidnappings occurred.
To make matters worse, Castro’s daughter Emily is in prison for attempting to murder her baby, an act which occurred when she was nineteen years old. It was her own mother Grimilda who saved the baby. The story is hideously pathetic; Emily is alleged to have been mentally ill:
Legal documents state that on April 4, 2007, Castro, 19 at the time, was upset that her boyfriend — the baby’s father — had moved out of the family’s home in Fort Wayne. She took the baby into a garage and cut her neck four times with a knife.
Castro also cut her own neck and wrists.
Police were summoned to the house by a passerby who came upon Castro’s mother carrying the baby and running from the home. Officers found Castro covered in mud, water and blood. Castro told paramedics she had tried to drown herself in a creek, according to an appeals court decision document.
The baby survived.
According to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, the defense argued at trial that Castro had suffered from mental depression and became paranoid, thinking her family was trying to kill her and the baby.
However, in light of what has now come out about Emily Castro’s father, one wonders what was really going on. Were her mental problems at least partly because of the severity of the abuse she witnessed as a young child (she would have been about 8 when she last lived with her father)? Or had she herself suffered abuse at his hands? Was she in fact justified in thinking that some members of her family might be trying to kill her and her baby? What secrets might she know about her father that she has not yet revealed?
Also on the same CNN broadcast was an interview with Fernando Colon, the man to whom Figueroa had been engaged when she died and who had apparently been in a relationship with her for many years. Colon said that Ariel Castro had successfully—and falsely—accused him of abusing the children, and he thought that now he might have a chance to clear his name of the charges.
I have no way of knowing whether Colon was being truthful, but I’d certainly take his word over Castro’s any day. After a little research, I came up with this bombshell article. Hold onto your hats; if Colon’s story as related there is true, the Cleveland police and even the FBI have even more to answer for than previously thought [emphasis mine]:
Fernando Colon said that he was intensively interviewed, followed by officers and made to give samples of his DNA following the disappearance of Georgina DeJesus, who was then 14, in 2004.
Ms DeJesus had last been seen walking home from school by her friend Arlene Castro, the youngest daughter of Ariel Castro and Grimilda Figueroa, who had by then left the school bus driver.
Mr Colon, who as Ms Figueroa’s boyfriend was a stepfather figure to Arlene, was suspected by police of being involved with her friend’s disappearance and became the focus of their inquiries.
“Ariel wasn’t investigated at all,” Frank Caraballo, his former brother-in-law, told The Daily Telegraph. “Why was Arlene’s actual father out of the picture? He’s the bus driver, he knows where all these kids go.”
Mr Colon, now 49, claimed to have told his FBI interviewers that Mr Castro was a more likely culprit, but said that his suggestion was totally ignored by investigators.
Wow.
More details here about Castro’s abuse of his wife, and the sort of violence he had gotten away with for decades.
Blame it all on “pretend it isn’t there” Obama.
Debt? Not there.
Jihad? Not there.
Economy? Not there. (You got that right.)
Sex trade, abortion, hunger, poverty, honor killings, courts underfunded, reverse discrimination, welfare fraud, pensions unsustainable, union thugs, Chicago number 1 in murder, student loan/jobs crisis, healthcare affordability, ambassador killed in Benghazi (say what?)….all not there? Yeah, all not there!(But at least gender chaning operations are available! Yahoo! Say mister, how’d ya like to be a girrrrrrl?
Meanwhile the awful problems of racism and phobias of every type abound, yessir, abound.
Its not unlikely that many people, including the police, are saying “What difference does it make?”
This is quite similar to the disappearance of Amanda Pond and Miranda Gaddis in Oregon City, Oregon in 1997. They disappeared and the likely suspect was Ward Weaver, a neighbor. The police eventually found them buried in his backyard. They were friends of Weaver’s daughter and had stayed overnight at the house in the past.
Evil takes even most innocent things like friendships and poisons them.
The house was eventually bulldozed and the lot stands empty as far as I know.
Neo,
I am really puzzled by the dismissal of his ex wife’s allegations.
Quote:” His deceased ex-wife Grimilda Figueroa had filed very serious physical abuse charges against him, allegations of violent and multiple beatings at his hands (including being hit in the head with some barbells). But the case was dismissed because Castro failed to show up several times, and at a critical juncture his ex-wife’s lawyer didn’t appear.”
Granted, I know nothing about Ohio Law, but I am familiar with NYS law(Family Court in particular). And that seems downright bizarre to me.
When the plaintiff/petitioner/etc. brings action, the respondent/defendant isn’t in the driver’s seat, regarding the dismissal of cases.
No adjournments for personal service?
And failing that, no bench warrants?
Either Ohio has a backwards system or that information is…less than accurate. And most of the time, when a litigant’s attorney doesn’t show, it isn’t held against the litigant. Once again, adjournments would be given or a new attorney would be assigned.
It sounds like the court in some third world country.
But like I said, I am unfamiliar with the Ohio legal system.
Between Castro and Gosnell, it takes real blindness to deny the existence of objective good and evil in the world.
Ziontruth is right, but will these, and other, examples, accomplish anything? Not in my lifetime.
Worse, they are clinical studies, and we are beset by legions of well-paid ‘clinicians’ (social workers, psych MSs + PhDs and the rest of the ‘experts’) to whom the bucks are passed(pun) and the net effect is zero.
And they are a massive media deflection from Benghazi-Hussein-Hillary and their boot-licking minions. Titillate the idiots.
ziontruth: I actually think most people recognize that Castro is evil. I haven’t seen a single defense of him or excuse for him anywhere. There seems to be universal revulsion and rage. He seems to have crossed a line regarding evil that even liberals can acknowledge as such.
There is also a special link betweenthose cases: abortion.
I’ve tended to be neutral with respect to this issue. I hate the idea of abortion, but I am libertarian in outlook and not inclined to involve the state in such things (although I don’t respect the Roe v Wade decision).
But both cases bring forth the issue of abortion. Sure, in the Castro case it is part of abduction and sexual slavery, and does not involve any “right to choose”. But it is still part of the story.
Jim Sullivan: my guess is that the wife had a lousy, court-appointed, rookie lawyer. Apparently Castro presented a fairly smooth exterior and could seem like a good guy in court. That’s all I can imagine to explain it—that, and an overworked, incompetent system. The police in Ohio certainly seem to have been pretty incompetent, too.
Neo,
I think you are right that no one is defending him.
I will point out that under Lenin during the Russian Civil War, bourgeoisie women were forced into sexual servitude in makeshift brothels. It was part of statist terrorism; it is one thing to risk your life with rifle in hand, another to risk you wife and children as well. Hence Lenin allowed it, since it had political utility. The left has a long history of such activities, as well as a history of overlooking them or covering them up.
The MSM isn’t directly defending the American Mengele either; in both cases (as well as Benghazi) their policy is one of omission, covering up or misdirecting the whole uncomfortable shebang.
It’s like I always said: The MSM has far too much power; its monopoly, a concentration of power without checks and balances, is an effective bypass route away from the will of the people. The Fourth Estate has become a full-fledged political entity, but without the accountability to the people demanded of all other such entities.
There’s a deeper reason (which I’m sure is already known by those here, yet it bears repeating for the uplift it might have) than media control to account for the proclivity and longevity of evil.
Scripture notes its adherents are pilgrims and wanderers through this world. This world is not our world in the sense we don’t control it. That does not result in a call for nihilism or give-up-ism. On the contrary. It’s a call to endure and shine, baby, shine because the next life won’t present the contrast, won’t present a choice, won’t present darkness.
You see (said Bill Cosby) when the child takes a drink and it all goes down his face, that child is brain damaged. But you love the child anyway cause that’s what you do. Well, the child is life and living it, well it all goes down our face, but what you do is you do it, you see. You do it and the best way of doing it is by doing it in spite of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FTVn3QyrYo
For dealing with it.
Maybe, Neo.
But I’ve seen some pretty incompetent attorneys and I’ve never seen something like that.
Here, in NYS, you have to gain jurisdiction, by service or bench warrant( if it isn’t a criminal complaint; that’s a horse of a different color).As the responding/defending party, he can’t just not show, no matter how incompetent her representation.
He either shows or is served. If they can’t serve him, they might try again or issue a bench warrant. No matter how well he presents in court, he has to actually show for his appearances.
Either way, somewhere down the line, there will be a trial or an inquest. Something. Some resolution.
I don’t mean to belabor this relatively minor detail, but I am having a heck of a time wrapping my head around it. To people in my line of work, this looks absurd. Kafkaesqe, even.
Mental note: Avoid Ohio and its legal system at all costs.
Jim Sullivan: I don’t think it’s a minor point AT ALL. It’s outrageous, if true. And many people suffered greatly because of it.
I didn’t mean to say that you thought it was a minor detail. Only that in the Grand Scheme (The three survivors, their torture, not mention the way it distracts from the Benghazi debacle) it was minor.
I meant no offense.
The perp was a member of a ‘protected class’ — the one parodied on TV: Seinfeld.
Without a doubt he pitched his ‘Ralph Kramden’ — and — obviously sold the idea that — from time to time — he had to send ‘Alice’ “to the Moon” — but that he had a good heart in him.
This is but another instance of Hollywood dream programing corrupting minds.
My experience in small time courtrooms is that the ‘judges’ are addicted to psychic narratives — as if they’re Henry Fonda in “Twelve Angry Men” — and they’re going to set things straight — and against The Man.
To do so was their motivation for even entering that profession, — do goodererism.
( Out doing all others in doing good. See Maslow and psychic pyramids.)
It has a narcotic appeal to ‘SJ’ personality types.
See: Myers-Briggs typing….
blert,
That has not been my experience at all with “small time” courtrooms, as you call them.
And even if it were that way, your ‘Ralph Kramden’ would actually have to, you know, show up to give his performance.
Castro’s ex-wife supposedly had her petitions dismissed because he didn’t show. At all.
My bad…
I read it to be that the complaint was dismissed because the plaintiff’s attorney didn’t show up.
Foul-ups by the D.A.’s office get complaints/ cases dismissed all of the time.
“Eye For an Eye”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116260/
used just such a screw-up as the launch point for the plot.
For the complaint at hand, the defendant is normally in remand, already.
In the case of a failure to appear in a civil action — the case is adjudicated against that party — as long as the Court is satisfied that notice has been properly served.
AFAIK, there is no legal foundation that would permit a sitting judge to dismiss ANY complaint because the accused is non-respondent. The Judge needs to be impeached.
blert,
My bad as well.
I think that you read it correctly, in that on one occasion, the plaintiff’s attorney did not show (and on the other occassions Castro didn’t show). And that was the source of some of my outrage toward the Ohio system. I am unfamiliar with Ohio law, but here, in NY, if your attorney, especially a court appointed one, doesn’t show, no judge I know of will hold that against the plaintiff. I don’t think they can, legally. They get another appearance and a chance to show, and failing that, they get appointed a new attorney(PD, Conflict Defender or 18B). Now, if the attorney is retained, that is a more complicated and is usually at the judge’s discretion.
So, it seems to me, that the judge(s) involved failed her two different ways.
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