A US man has appeared in court on charges of rape and kidnapping days after three women missing for about a decade were found alive at his home.
Ariel Castro looked down at the ground while lawyers in Cleveland, Ohio, spoke to the judge. Bond was set at $2m on each case.
Police say they have talked to Castro, and the three women at length. While they are not revealing many details, police do say the women were kept inside Castro’s house for all but a few brief minutes over the last 10 years.
Castro bit his collar and signed documents with his handcuffed hands. He did not speak.
The women endured lonely, dark lives inside a dingy home where they were raped and allowed outside only a handful of times in disguises while walking to a garage steps away, investigators say.
The 52-year-old former school bus driver has emerged as the lone suspect.
While many questions remain about how Castro maintained such tight control over the women for so many years before one of them escaped on Monday, the horrors they suffered are beginning to come to light.
Police say the women were bound by ropes and chains at times and kept in different rooms. They suffered prolonged sexual and psychological abuse and had miscarriages.
Castro has been charged with four counts of kidnapping, covering the captives and the daughter born to one of them, and three counts of rape, against all three women.
None of the women, however, gave them any indication that Castro’s two older brothers were involved. Prosecutors brought no charges against them.
Police chief Ed Tomba said one thing that remained a mystery was how the women were kept in the house so long.
“As far as the circumstances inside the home and the control he may have had over those girls … I think that’s going to take us a long time to figure that out,” he said.
Castro was accused of twice breaking the nose of his children’s mother, knocking out a tooth, dislocating each shoulder and threatening to kill her, according to a 2005 domestic-violence filing.