A man suspected of holding three women captive inside his US home for a decade padlocked the doors leading to his garage, basement and attic and forbade his family from entering them, his son claims.
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The home was owned by Ariel Castro, 52, a former school bus driver and musician who was arrested with his brothers, Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50.
The women - Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight - vanished separately a decade ago while in their teens and early 20s only blocks from the 130-square-metre suburban house where they were found on Monday night.
A six-year-old girl was also rescued from the house, authorities said. The Daily Mail reported that Amanda Berry told her grandmother after the escape that the child is her daughter Jocelyn. Authorities believe the father is one of the three suspects they arrested.
Jocelyn was born at Christmas and is "happy and healthy", despite being brought up in captivity. She was later pictured smiling in hospital alongside her mother and Aunt Beth.
Police said she ate popsicles while being examined by doctors, the Daily Mail reported.
"She looks great, happy, healthy and ate a popsicle last night," said Cleveland Police Deputy Chief Ed Tomba. "Seeing her mother smile made her smile."
It has emerged that Berry home-schooled her daughter - probably without the knowledge of the suspects. "It's a good possibility one of them is [the father]," Mr Tomba said.
He said investigators were working to determine if the girl had ever left the house, but said she likely would have gone unnoticed by police who were not looking for a child.
Authorities do not have a record of her birth and detectives are trying to establish if she was born in the fortified home.
Police sources said Jocelyn was occasionally taken out of the house and would visit Ariel Castro's mother, Lillian Rodriguez, who she called "grandmother".
She was also seen out recently at a playground with Castro.
At least five children may have born at the house, police sources told NewsChannel5.
One of the victims suffered as many as three miscarriages because she was so malnourished, it has been claimed.
Other sources told WKYC that the captors would beat the women when they were pregnant, meaning that the babies would not survive.
The rescue of the women and child came almost by accident, when Berry, now 27, hailed a neighbour while her alleged captor was out, escaped with Jocelyn through a blocked front door with the neighbour's help and called 911. The brothers had not been charged as of late Tuesday local time.
The nightmare of not knowing continues for one family, that of Ashley Summers, who was 14 when she disappeared in 2007 from the same Cleveland neighbourhood.
She was presumed to have run away from home after a dispute but was never seen or heard from again. In 2009, the FBI said they suspected a link between Ashley's disappearance and those of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus.
Ariel Castro had also spoken to his son Anthony just last month about the mysterious disappearance 10 years ago of Berry.
Police sources in Ohio told TV station WKYC that the three women were repeatedly raped and beaten by their captors. The sources also said the young women, who were abducted in their teens, had had up to five pregnancies between them.
Anthony Castro told the Daily Mail that he had visited his father's home on Seymour Avenue two weeks ago, not suspecting that three women could be locked in the basement.
He said his father was a very secretive man and barred him from entering certain rooms.
Photographs taken inside the home show a padlock on the door leading to the basement.
''The house was always locked,'' Anthony said. ''There were places we could never go. There were locks on the basement. Locks on the attic. Locks on the garage.''
Anthony said his father last month asked him whether he thought police would ever find Amanda Berry, who disappeared in 2003. When Anthony responded that he thought Berry was probably dead, Ariel responded: ''Really? You think so?''
On news that Berry had had a daughter in captivity, Anthony said:
''If it's true that he took her [Berry] captive and forced her into having sex with him and having his child and keeping her hidden and keeping them from sunlight, he really took those girls' lives. He doesn't deserve to have his own life any more. He deserves to be behind bars for the rest of his life. I'm just thankful they're alive.''
Anthony, a banker who lives in Columbus, Ohio, told the Daily Mail that his father was a violent man who separated from his mother in the 1990s.
He said his father nearly beat his mother to death in 1993 while she was recovering from brain surgery.
Anthony said he only spoke to his father a few times a year, and seldom visited his house. ''I haven't been at that house for longer than 20 minutes for longer than I can remember,'' Anthony said.
''It's astonishing to even think about that I was so close to that. That I was physically at the house two weeks ago while that was going on, it's a lot to grasp.'' Anthony said he had no idea what role his uncles could have played in the ordeal. However, he said he did not believe the three women were kept at Ariel's house for the entire 10 years.
He said his uncle Onil, who also owns a house and lives alone, might have been involved in keeping the women in captivity.
''My dad's brothers were the two closest people to him. My dad's a really private person. If anybody knew what he was doing it would be those two,'' Anthony said.
The women and girls underwent assessments at Cleveland's at Metro HealthCentre and have been reunited with their families, officials said.
Amanda Berry's mother, Louwana, died in 2006, three years after her daughter disappeared.
Agencies