How the heck did he keep the girls hidden so well for so many years???

I think he was a good liar and he probably did all the maintenance work on the house himself.
The girls said he would make sure they were bound and gagged whenever he had company over. There was a few times people heard things and Castro would say it was his dog(s) upstairs or he would make some other excuse that sounded plausible. Still, it is incredible that he didn't slip up and leave the door unlocked years before he did or that someone didn't suspect something was going on.
I believe there are many more men out there doing the same thing that haven't been caught. You know the old saying, "Where you see one rat there are 50 more you don't". There could be a few basement/dungeons in our own cities and we wouldn't have a clue.

As for the boarded up windows year round, that's not unusual in a really bad neighborhood. It's almost odd if someone's windows aren't boarded up. If he was able to play his music so loud at such odd hours and not have the cops called on him, I'm thinking he lived in an area where people just minded their own business and tried to keep themselves/their own properties safe.

Roses88,

I have a theory based on experience: I was married to an abusive man when I was a young woman (not on the level of this story). Ive also seen or experienced this in other kinds of situations too

so ... you know how sometimes a little event seems just .... kinda strange, or just doesnt really make sense?
Or a certain behavior in someone kinda seems 'off' ...
But people tend to isolate such things - you just sorta shrug it off at the time...
but in reality, your intuition was trying to operate. Still, we typically dont jump to assuming everyone playin loud music, or keepin' a dog in a separate room, has a human being tied & gagged.


Still, the fact is, when a persons actions raise more questions in your mind than logical answers you tend to wonder, and yet, we will still kinda tilt our head & shrug ...

But then, LATER when the whole truth comes out, you suddenly realize the exact reasons you questioned, wondered ...
every little slightly strange incident suddenly fits together confirming your own previous intuitive 'feeling' ...
It's like Oh, NOW that other thing he said, or that other thing he did, NOW I can what was being accepted as isolated erratic behavior, etc

Thats how every one in proximity of this guy felt.
Particularly family. I can almost 100% assure you, they had doubts, 'feelings' but kinda shrugged it off, but with family, you kinda know 'how far you can go' with questions and doubts. Some people will drop right into extreme drama. Sometimes we dont question strange behaviour of people out of embarrassment ...
for example, that house had to have had a septic reek to it ... but when people came to visit, they probably just blew it off as him being a really bad housekeeper, even though it was extreme ...
When the truth came out, it completley filled in the blanks for them.

That is but one example of an isolated 'thing' that creates illogic in the mind that we as humans, in an attempt to remain rational, will accept answers for regardless of intuition.
Then when the truth comes out, we go back and pick up all those isolated moments ... slap the forehead & solve the puzzles created by the perpetrator ...

Back in 1977, Cameron Hooker abducted Colleen Stan while she was hitch-hiking in near Red Bluff, CA. He held her hostage as a slave for seven years until his wife could no longer stand it. He had so brainwashed his slave, Colleen, that he allowed her to find a job as a maid in a hotel, and even let her visit her family. She never said a word to anyone about her ordeal as a victim. Hooker had her convinced he was part of a group he called "THE COMPANY" that managed slaves and masters all over the world. He said if she tried to escape, THE COMPANY would hunt her and her family down and kill them. It was like she became his "willing" victim. Not that she ever really did become "willing" to submit. She was so convinced he would kill her she became compliant to his fantasy world.

I am sure Castro gained some of this type of control over his victims. People under extreme stress like this begin to think differently than they would under normal situations. They were so afraid of his punishments should there attempts at escape fail, they simply gave in to his demands they remain quiet when people came over, all the time hoping they would be found. Amanda was also conflicted over the fact the she had developed some sort of feelings for Castro (especially after he became the father of her child), and that made her feel even worse.

You might think you would never give in like that, but until you are placed under that type of stress, you cannot be sure how you will react. These women did what they thought they had to under the circumstances, and I would never presume to think that anything they did to survive was "wrong" or in any way implied their consent.



------------------------
No animals were harmed in the posting of this message, but a number of electrons were annoyed.