Castro's method was chillingly simple: he offered each woman a ride. Michelle Knight, 21, accepted one on August 23, 2002, after leaving a cousin's house. She was heading to a custody hearing for her son. Amanda Berry, 16, disappeared on April 21, 2003, the day before her 17th birthday, after calling her sister from her job at a Burger King on Lorain Avenue to say she was getting a ride home. Gina DeJesus, 14, vanished on April 2, 2004, while walking home from middle school. She trusted Castro because she was friends with his daughter Arlene. Each woman was driven to 2207 Seymour Avenue, lured inside, taken to the basement, and restrained. The house was a four-bedroom structure built in 1890, its windows eventually replaced with solid wood, sealing the women off from sunlight and the outside world.

The women's diaries, later entered into evidence, described forced sexual assault, being chained to walls, being fed one meal a day, and being allowed to shower twice a week at most. Knight told police Castro had induced multiple miscarriages through beatings. Berry gave birth to a daughter on Christmas Day 2006 - DNA confirmed Castro was the father. Berry taught the child to read and write inside those walls. Castro would periodically test the women by leaving doors partially unlocked; if they tried to escape, he beat them. Meanwhile, Berry and DeJesus appeared on America's Most Wanted. A self-proclaimed psychic told Berry's mother on national television that her daughter was dead. The mother died of heart failure in 2006, never knowing Amanda was alive. Castro attended at least two community vigils for the missing women and reportedly joined a search party.

On May 6, 2013, Berry spotted neighbors through a screen door while Castro was away. She screamed for help. Neighbor Charles Ramsey arrived and suggested kicking out the storm door's bottom panel. Together, Berry and Ramsey broke through, and Berry crawled out with her six-year-old daughter. While Berry called 911, police officers entered the house. Michelle Knight emerged from a bedroom and leapt into an officer's arms, repeating, "You saved me." Gina DeJesus followed from another room. Castro was arrested hours later in a McDonald's parking lot. He pleaded guilty to 937 of 977 criminal counts - including kidnapping, rape, and aggravated murder for inducing miscarriages - and was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years without parole. One month into his sentence, he was found dead in his prison cell.

As part of the plea bargain, the house at 2207 Seymour Avenue was demolished on August 7, 2013. Knight was present and handed out yellow balloons, each one representing a missing child. DeJesus's aunt swung the demolition crane first. Today, a small park and garden occupy the lot. Google Maps has blurred the street-view imagery of the site. The survivors rebuilt their lives in their own ways. Knight legally changed her name, got married in 2016, and became an advocate for abuse survivors. Berry joined the staff of Cleveland's Fox affiliate WJW, where she hosts segments about missing person cases. DeJesus began volunteering with Amber Alert committees, offering support to families of abducted children. The Cleveland Courage Fund collected over one million dollars to help the women transition to independent lives.

The case exposed deep failures in Cleveland's systems. Knight's disappearance was barely investigated - police believed the adult woman had run away, and she was removed from the FBI's missing persons database after just fifteen months. Neighbors reported suspicious activity at Castro's home, but police say they have no record of such calls. Officers visited the house only once during the decade of captivity, for an unrelated matter, and left without entering when Castro appeared not to be home. The case prompted national conversations about how missing persons cases are prioritized - who gets searched for, who gets forgotten, and how someone can vanish for a decade in a residential neighborhood. Berry and DeJesus received honorary diplomas from John Marshall High School in 2015, a small gesture toward the years that were stolen from them.