1
ROOTS
Ariel Castro was born on July 10, 1960, in Duey, Puerto Rico, the third child of Pedro "Nona" Castro and Lillian Rodriguez. He had two elder siblings, Marisol Alicea and Pedro Jr., and his younger brother, Onil, was the baby of the family.
Duey is a tiny village on the outskirts of Yauco, the coffee capital of Puerto Rico. Over many generations, the Castro family had become the preeminent family in the isolated mountainous barrio, owning most of the land in a section called La Parra.
Despite the family's preeminence, however, their living conditions were primitive. Ariel was born in his father's little wooden shack at the very top of La Parra. At that time there was no running water or electricity, and all the cooking was done over coal on the dirt floor. Every morning, Pedro would drive his jeep several miles down the steep mud track to a well to fill up large plastic water buckets. He would then haul them back up the hill so that his family could wash and have fresh drinking water.
When Ariel was a young child, his father started an affair with a young girl named Gladys Torres, who lived one house away down the mountain. Over the next few years Pedro lived a double life, dividing his time between his wife, Lillian, and his girlfriend, who bore him four children.
"Lillian never suspected anything was wrong," said Ariel Castro's aunt, Monserrate Baez, who was married to Lillian's brother Milfon Rodriguez. "Nona had another family, unknown to us, just a few yards down the mountain."
In 1962, Lillian finally discovered Pedro's secret family.
"Lillian was pregnant with her last child when she found out he had another woman and children," said Monserrate. "She was furious."
When Lilllian confronted him, Pedro announced he was leaving her and the children forever. He then packed his bags, moving in next door with Gladys and their children. They married soon afterward.
In despair, Lillian then relocated to Reading, Pennsylvania, with her father, Americano Rodriguez. She left her four young children behind to be brought up by their grandmother, Hercilia Carabello, rarely returning to see them.
"I was abandoned by my father and later by my mother," Ariel would write. "My grandma raised me."
The Castro children had little parental supervision as they grew up. Ariel would later claim to have been sexually abused at the age of five, by a nine-year-old male friend of the family.
Years afterward, Ariel would be asked by a psychiatrist why he hadn't reported the abuse, which lasted more than a year.
"People who are abused keep quiet," he said, "so I did."
He also said he had begun masturbating as a child, starting a lifelong obsession with sex.
In 1966, Lillian Rodriguez sent for her children, who joined her in Reading, where they lived at 435 North Second Street and Ariel was enrolled at Lauer's Park Elementary School.
He would later claim that his mother physically abused him every day, using "belts, sticks and an open hand." He also accused her of verbal harassment, "yelling negative things and cursing at us."
"I would ask God for her to die," he told the psychiatrist.
One Christmas, Ariel's uncle Julio Castro, better known as "Cesi," arrived from Cleveland, bearing presents for his nephews and niece.
"He took Ariel a little guitar," said Cesi's daughter, Maria Montes, "and [we] saw music bud in him."
Little Ariel loved the guitar and soon started entertaining at Castro family gatherings. Cesi Castro took a special interest in Ariel, telling him he was his "special nephew" and a natural musician.
"[He had] the smarts," said Cesi. "There are very few people who can teach themselves how to play bass."
* * *
In 1968, Pedro Castro left Puerto Rico with Gladys and their children to settle down in Cleveland, Ohio, where he already had family.
Pedro had a good head for business and opened a used-car lot on Twenty-fifth Street and Sacket Avenue, which was soon thriving. In 1969, his brother Cesi joined him in Cleveland, opening the Caribe grocery store on Twenty-fifth Street and Seymour Avenue. They were followed by their brother Edwin, who opened Cleveland's first Latino record store on Twenty-fifth Street near Clark Avenue.
In 1970, Lillian Rodriguez moved her family to Cleveland, as well, settling down at 2346 Scranton Road. By now her ex-husband and his brothers had established themselves as successful businessmen, becoming one of the leading Puerto Rican families in the city as they had been in La Parra. And they kept Yaucano traditions alive, later financing a social club and an annual coffee festival to commemorate their hometown.
"The Castro clan is a big clan," explained Adrian Maldonaldo, who grew up on the lower West Side, where the Castros flourished. "They are very industrial- and business-minded."
But in 1971, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that FBI agents had raided Cesi Castro's Caribe bodega in a Bolita numbers' racket sting. According to the article, agents seized cash, guns and numbers' records from eleven family members, including Pedro and Cesi.
* * *
In September 1973, thirteen-year-old Ariel Castro started at Scranton Elementary, before joining Lincoln Road West Junior High School a year later. He was a below-average student, with poor test results for cognitive ability, but he did make the wrestling team, played softball and was in the school band.
While in junior high, Ariel was suspended for "touching a girl's breast," and punished for fighting classmates.
In September 1976, Ariel moved to Lincoln West High School, where his elder brother, Pedro, Jr., had just graduated as a straight-A student.
"Ariel was just a regular kid," recalled Daniel Marti, who was a year below him. "He was smart and already into bikes and classic sports cars."
At Lincoln, Ariel joined his first Latin band, Los Steinos, playing bass with them in local churches. He was also drinking beer and smoking marijuana.
"He was popular, outgoing and smart," said Marti. "He played the bass real good and had girlfriends. Everybody knew him."
Daniel's brother Javier Marti was in the same class as Castro at Lincoln West High School.
"The guy was just a regular Joe," Daniel recalled. "He's got a great family and always had nice cars and bikes."
* * *
On June 30, 1979, Ariel Castro graduated from Lincoln West High School, near the bottom of his class, with a C average and a low grade-point average of 2.15. Over the next several years he worked a variety of menial jobs, including bagger and cleaner for the Pick-N-Pay supermarket on West Sixty-fifth Street. He also began establishing himself as one of Cleveland's most promising Latin musicians, playing weddings, bar mitzvahs and anything else he could get.
"It was mostly like every weekend," he would later tell a judge, "but there were times we did perform two or three times a week."
Still living at home with his mother and two brothers, Ariel now had money to indulge his passions for expensive clothes, sports cars, motorbikes and musical instruments.
In early 1980, Lillian Rodriguez moved the family to a new house at 1649 Buhrer Avenue, just a mile down the road from where they had been living. Ariel soon noticed a shy seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican girl named Nilda Figueroa, who lived opposite with her parents and five siblings. Whenever they passed each other on the street, he would compliment Nilda on her looks, and the insecure girl was flattered by his attention.
One day he invited her to hear him play with his band and she eagerly accepted. Within a week they were a couple.
Copyright © 2015 by John Glatt
