Ariel Castro's personal life has been under a microscope ever since being arrested Monday after he was connected to the kidnapping and long-term detainment of three women in his house. Now disturbing new information is arising about Castro's sordid history and the unstable nature of his family.
To his neighbors, Castro seemed anything but a mentally unstable kidnapper, one who had been locking innocent women away in his basement for a decade. He was described as a "happy-go-lucky" kind of guy and someone who was generally happy and pleasant to be around.
Those descriptions did not match up with the reality of the situation, however, and now questions are being raised as to why Castro's property wasn't investigated sooner.
"In 2005, a woman who had three children with Ariel Castro accused him of severely beating her and repeatedly threatening to kill her and her children, according to court records obtained by WKYC-TV," reported USA Today.
Castro was also arrested for domestic violence in 1993 but was eventually acquitted by a grand jury. It appears that even if his property was searched, it was not the same one that he had kept Amanda Berry in for ten years.
"I thought the home was vacant. I thought he probably had another property and he would just come and check and see if everything is OK," one neighbor said. "I didn't even know anybody lived there."
Castro's family was not much better. Both of his brothers, Pedro and Onil, were arrested along with Ariel in connection to the kidnappings and detainment, and their uncle has reported that they were alcoholics.
It was Castro's daughter Emily that provides perhaps the darkest view of his family life. On April 4, 2007, Emily's mother was found walking down the street holding a bloody baby. That baby belonged to Emily Castro.
Emily was found to have slit the throat of her baby four times before slicing open her own wrists and trying to drown herself in a nearby creek. Both Emily and the baby survived, and now she is serving 25 years for the attempted murder of her child.
Despite all of this tragedy and chaos in his life, Castro did not give the outside world any clue that something might be wrong. In fact, he often seemed to be a beacon of hope and positivity. His last Facebook status, on May 2, read:
"Miracles really do happen, God is good."