Hi grandpa, it's Mandy - do you still have my car? First words of kidnap victim to her grandfather after being released from Cleveland house of horrors



Amanda Berry had emotional phone call with grandfather after 11 years

She asked if he had kept the classic car he had promised her at 16



Troy Berry, 73, said: ‘I could never bring myself to get rid of the Chevy'

Before the kidnap: Amanda Berry aged 15

It was the emotional phone call grandfather Troy Berry had waited 11 long years for.

Just hours after escaping from the clutches of crazed kidnapper Ariel Castro, Mr Berry’s granddaughter Amanda – whom he had last seen as a 16-year-old – called to say: ‘Hi grandpa, it’s Mandy.’

But then the call from Amanda, who is now 27 years old and the mother of a six-year-old daughter born in captivity, took an unexpected twist.



In an exclusive interview last night, Mr Berry, who is set to be reunited with Amanda soon, told how her first words were about a classic car he had promised her just days before she went missing.

Mr Berry, 73, said: ‘A few days before she went, I told her I had this 1986 Chevrolet, a special Nascar limited edition, which I would teach her to drive in. And I told her if she did good, I’d give it to her.

‘The first thing she asked me was, ‘‘Grandpa, do you still have my car?’’ I joked and said, ‘‘No, I’ve given it away.’’ But then I heard silence and I told her I was kidding and she burst into tears of happiness.

‘I used to look at that car and think of her. I hope she was thinking of it too, and of us, while she was in there and I hope that helped her to get through it. I used to take Mandy to motor shows when she was a little girl.

She used to love it all and ask, ‘‘Grandpa, what’s this one? How old is that one? How fast does it go?’’

‘When she went missing, I could never bring myself to get rid of the Chevy. Every time I looked at it, I imagined her smiling, sitting behind the wheel and I’d pray to God that she’d come back to us. Now I’m going to fix it up. I kept the fancy hubcaps in the house so they wouldn’t get stolen.

Hope: Amanda Berry's grandfather Troy Berry, 73, with the Chevrolet 1986 Monte Carlo, SS Nascar limited edition that he has been saving for Amanda for over a decade

‘I’m as pleased as punch I’ll finally be able to teach her to drive in it. We’ll get a booster seat for the little one and make it a regular palace on wheels.’

Amanda Berry and her fellow captives Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, are enjoying their first weekend of freedom after escaping the clutches of brutal Ariel Castro.

Mr Berry said: ‘Mandy is as happy as a freed bird. She told me it feels good to be sleeping properly.

‘She says every moment feels like a gift. Every piece of chicken, every glass of water, every little thing. The FBI took Mandy to the doctors. She had no daylight and he starved them, only giving them the cheapest things he could find. But she’s feeling great and doing well.’

Mr Berry said Amanda had formed a ‘life bond’ with fellow victims Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. ‘Mandy said she was sometimes in the same room as the other two girls,’ he said.



Schoolgirl: Amanda with two school friends, aged 16, shortly before she was kidnapped

Mugshot: Ariel Castro has been charged with kidnapping and rape offenses

‘She said they kept each other going, tried to help each other, protect each other from him. She said she’ll stay friends with them for ever after what they’ve been through. They’re the only ones who know how bad it all was.’

The women are set to become overnight millionaires by telling their harrowing stories. Oprah Winfrey is said to have offered Berry £200,000 to do her first interview.

A source close to Gina DeJesus claimed she was so traumatised, she was unable to sleep in a bedroom. ‘She was locked in a room for so long that she is now sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the living room,’ the source said.

‘She can’t stand the idea of being in a small room. She walks around the garden. She is beautifying herself, doing her nails and hair and experimenting with make-up. She’s been catching up on everything, reading women’s magazines, trying to figure out what she has missed and who the Kardashians are.’

Michelle Knight, 32, has been dubbed ‘the forgotten victim’ because her disappearance was never taken seriously by police. She vanished in 2002 aged 20 after her young son was taken into care.

The source revealed that she refused to see family members, including her mother, after her release, preferring to stay at the DeJesus family home.

When Amanda had her daughter Jocelyn, which DNA tests have confirmed was fathered by Castro, she was given ‘favoured’ status by her captor, the source added.

‘Castro referred to Amanda as his girlfriend and showered affection on Jocelyn. When they were rescued, Jocelyn was crying for her daddy. She is confused and doesn’t understand what is going on.’

Castro’s daughter Angie said that he showed her a photograph of a child she now believes was Jocelyn in February. Amanda’s mother Louwana died aged 48 while her daughter was imprisoned. She went to her grave believing she had spoken to her daughter’s kidnapper.

After Amanda had been missing for three days, the story was covered on a news bulletin, after which she received a phone call from a man who told her Amanda was with him.

In a TV interview she gave after the call in 2002, she said: ‘So I’m begging him to let me speak with her, just to let me know if she’s there. And he hesitated and said, ‘‘I’ll have her home in a few days.’’ I kept begging for him to let me speak with her. And he hung up.’

Cleveland police refused to say whether Castro had confessed to making the call, saying: ‘We don’t comment on an ongoing investigation.’



Additional reporting by Isla Harvey in Tennessee

‘It gives me chills to think I was playing in my uncle’s kitchen while those poor girls were in the basement’







Shock: Niece of the Cleveland kidnapper Elida-Marie Caraballo

The niece of sadistic Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro has revealed how she innocently played in his ‘house of horrors’ while his three torture victims were chained up in the cellar beneath her.

Elida-Marie Caraballo, 19, said she would visit ‘Uncle Ariel’ with her cousin Arlene – Ariel’s daughter – but he would demand they wait outside the back door until he ‘fixed things’ inside.

‘He would play the radio real loud and told me never to leave the kitchen,’ Elida-Marie told The Mail on Sunday last night.



‘I thought he was weird but I had no idea he was a monster. It gives me chills to think I was playing with my toys on the kitchen floor while those poor girls were locked in the basement.

‘My uncle and aunt were separated so I would go round with Arlene to visit her daddy.’

Elida-Marie’s mother Elida, 44, is the sister of Castro’s common-law-wife Grimilda Figueroa who died last year of a brain tumour the family say was brought on by vicious beatings by Castro.

The couple bought the house where the three women were held captive, built in 1950, in 1992 and raised their four young children there until they split in 1996.



Elida-Marie says her uncle’s behaviour ‘became weirder’ after he split from her aunt and that he may have abducted his victims to replace the family he lost.

‘He was a bully and used to beat my aunt badly but when she finally got the courage to leave and come live with us he cried and begged her to come home.’

In a family snap, Ariel Castro and son Anthony pose in 2001 by the door to what was to become a basement prison

Recalling her visits there, she said: ‘I had no idea those poor girls were chained up in the basement.



‘Now I wonder what would have happened if I’d heard something. Would he have locked me in the basement too? I was only a kid but the house gave me the creeps.’



Last night Castro was on suicide watch after being charged with four counts of kidnapping and three of rape.

