Marlene Wagman-Geller

May 06, 2025 by Marlene Wagman-Geller

 

          The setting of horror films are as memorable as their characters and plots, and deliver collective shivers. In Psycho the Bates Motel housed a mother-preserved through taxidermy-and a shower that makes audiences seek another method of hygiene. In The Shining the Overlook Hotel elevator oozed blood, a ghost resided in room 237 and a door displayed “REDRUM,” In Carrie, Bates High is the venue for cinemas’ worst ever prom that involved pig’s blood and flames that transformed the school into an inferno. A non-celluloid setting on Seymour Avenue became a nonfictional house of horror. 

     Michelle Knight was born with the opposite of a silver spoon in Cleveland, an industrial center pock-marked by crime-ridden neighborhoods, one of America’s 10 most dangerous zip codes. A male family member started molesting her when she was 5 years old and Michelle recalled of the violation, “It’s like I was buried six feet under and screaming and nobody can hear a thing.” She and her younger twin brothers, Eddie and Freddie, spent a year living in a brown station-wagon, and when the Knights moved into a house it was in a neighborhood populated by prostitutes, pimps and drug-dealers. She had a contentious relationship with mother Barbara and in their household soap and toothpaste were luxuries; Pop-Tarts and SpaghettiOs were as nutritious as things got. At age 15 she ran away and lived under a bridge in a blue garbage can with wheels, where, in Oscar the Grouch fashion, made her home. She recalled, “I had my own little room. If I wanted to sing, I didn’t have to listen to my mother, ‘You’re a horrible singer, shut up.’ Michelle fell in with a marijuana dealer who provided a room in exchange for work as a drug-runner.

       Her teen years were angst-ridden and she was miserable at James Ford Rhodes High School, blighted by over-crowded classrooms and poor facilities. Michelle, nicknamed by the other students as Shorty because of her 4’7 inch height, struggled. At age 17 two boys gang-raped her at school and traumatized, she dropped-out before graduation. As a result of the attack she became pregnant with son Joey. However, the baby became the one shining light in her life and she determined for his sake to complete her education so she could obtain a career. Her mother’s boyfriend shattered that dream; he broke the toddler’s leg. Social workers removed Joey from the home, an act that unleashed an event that was to make her a character in a Hitchcock horror.

    In 2002 Michelle walked into a Family Dollar Store, exhausted, sweaty and desperate. The 21- year-old had spent the past few hours searching for the location of social services for a hearing to reclaim Joey. After asking the cashier for directions, a man overheard her and offered to give her a lift. Michelle recognized Ariel Castro as the father of Emily, a former classmate, and gratefully explained why it was imperative to make it to the court on time. In his orange Chevy she noticed discarded wrappers from McDonalds and Chinese food containers; however, even if she had wanted to leave the door had no handle. When Castro began to head in the wrong direction he explained he was just popping into his house so she could choose from a litter of puppies as a welcome home gift for Joey. Inside the dilapidated home the air smelled of stale beer, urine and rotten beans and the windows were boarded with planks of wood. The 21-year-old Michelle Knight was going to become Rapunzel locked in a tower, except her hair was shaved and her tower a filthy, dilapidated hovel.

      The details of her imprisonment hurt like body blows just to hear about them, let alone endure. Castro led her to an upstairs bedroom to retrieve a phantom puppy and as soon as she entered the door slammed shut. He hog-tied her, unzipped his pants and ejaculated over her body. Castro stuffed a dirty sock in her mouth, blasted the radio and left. “The first thing that came to my head was, “Holy shit, I’m gonna die here. I’m not gonna be able to say to Joey I love him. I’m gonna miss every moment of his life.” Knight had to fight those same fears, day after day, for the next 11 years. During this time she was repeatedly raped, made to sit for hours with a motorcycle helmet on her head, and forced to relieve herself in a plastic bucket. Castro gave her napkins in lieu of tampons and during one stage left her naked in a freezing room on a soiled mattress for months. In a nod to the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away Ariel gave Michelle a puppy she named Lobo; when he went to rape her the dog attacked and in retaliation Castro broke his neck. The dungeon-master discovered Michelle’s allergy to mustard and forced her to eat a hot-dog coated in the condiment. Her face puffed up and she could not breathe. Michelle became pregnant on five occasions and Castro beat her on her belly until she miscarried. He put the placenta in the fridge as a memento. Despite her surname, Michelle harbored no illusion a knight in white armor would come to her rescue. Despite every reason to give up Michelle swore to still rise-she felt in her heart she would be reunited with Joey and this-as well as her staunch Christian faith- gave her resilience to endure the unendurable.

      Eventually Castro permitted the luxury of a radio and a small television that became Michelle’s life-line to the world from which she had been amputated: Michael Jackson suspended his baby over a balcony! Kelly Clarkson became the first winner on American Idol! Elizabeth Smart found alive! A year after her own abduction, Knight was watching the news when she heard about a missing local girl, 16 year-old Amanda Berry. Icy fingers clutched her throat when she had the hunch-that proved prescient- Castro had another victim trapped in Seymour Avenue. A third became the 14 year-old Gina Dejesus who ended up sharing Michelle’s room.  Sometimes Castro would rape one of them while the other lay there, helpless. Michelle, as the older woman and the most inured, would often volunteer for the sexual assault to spare Gina.

      On Christmas day in 2006 Castro took a fourth captive: his daughter Jocelyn, who, like the child in Emma Donoghue’s novel Room was born into captivity. Amanda had given birth in a plastic kiddie pool and Michelle had acted as mid-wife. Ariel had inexplicably wanted this child and had told Knight if the baby died he would kill her in retaliation.  Jocelyn became the darling of the house-and a reason for the three prisoners to survive. When she became a toddler and asked about the ‘bracelets’ Castro removed them.

        In 2013 Gina and Michelle were in their room when they heard pounding and kicking noises at the front door, followed by shouts, “Police!”  Castro had accidentally left the door open and Amanda and Jocelyn had escaped and alerted a neighbor who called 911. After 4,000 days the first thing Michelle did when she stepped outside was to kiss the ground and to thank God. Residents of Seymour Avenue lined the streets and applauded as emergency vehicles whisked the women away.

      However, while Gina and Amanda had homes to return to and families ecstatic at their release, after a hospital stay Michelle lived in a shelter. Her first order of business was to rebuild her life, and boy was there a lot of rebuilding. Her first steps on the road to wellness was physical healing. After over a decade of darkness her eyes were extremely sensitive and the first moment she left her prison she felt they were being fried like eggs. Later, when asked if her sight was improving she shook her head and replied, “I still got hope.” Her stomach is permanently damaged from a combination of untreated infections and the five forced miscarriages that may have rendered her infertile. Knight’s jaw was severely damaged from the number of times Castro had punched her, sometimes with barbells. Emaciated, the scale hovered in the 80s.

      The diminutive Michelle proved herself an emotional giant when she declared she would nevermore be defined by ‘the dude,’ (she explained he doesn’t deserve a name) and changed her own to Lilly Rose Lee-the latter is Joey’s middle name. “It’s about making a brand new start. I didn’t want people to know me as that girl. I want people to know me as this girl.” She is also celebrating her newfound freedom with an array of tattoos, each deeply symbolic, that has made her body a visual diary. One displays a face, part skeleton and part flesh: “My heart is not chained to my situation;” two guns, “Know me as a victor not a victim;” and five large roses, covered in droplets of blood-for each of the babies lost in Seymour Avenue, “Too beautiful for this world.”  The largest of the tattoos are on her back and shoulders: a pair of wings: “Freedom to Fly.” 

        Because of donations that poured in from well-wishers, and with the advance of her memoir of misery-Finding Me: a Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed, Michelle lives in her own home-a source of wonder to the girl who spent a year living in a car, months surviving in a garbage-bin and a decade existing in a dungeon-where the blinds are always open, “It’s to see the beautiful sky that I never saw for years, to watch the clouds go by.” She shares her digs with Sky, her puppy. She said the main reason for writing her book was to tell people they can overcome anything.

      In a bid to make up for lost time, Michelle exemplifies the idiom ‘going concern.’ She recorded a song entitled “Survivor,” attends boxing class, and enrolled in cooking school. She also took up sky-diving to overcome her fear of heights and because “I’m adventurous.” And yet she must avoid triggers: paper napkins-used to clean herself after rape and menstruating, and rammed down her throat; nothing with chains, including decorative ones, and no mirrors, as these were used so Castro “could watch.” But any bitterness is sublimated by Michelle’s indomitable spirit,” Our life is a painted canvass, painted by everything you do. Make it a beautiful one. I look at the world and I see all the beauty I missed.” 

    The 53-yearold Ariel Castro pleaded guilty to hundreds of charges and Michelle finally had her day in court-the two other victims were not present. Mustering every ounce of steel her petite frame could muster she stated, “I look inside my heart and I see my son and I cried every night. Christmas was a most traumatic day because I could not spend it with my son. Writing this statement gave me the strength to be a stronger woman and to know that there is more good than evil.”

     Behind her sat the prisoner, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his legs manacled, now the one to eat the food, wear the clothes, and follow the rules of his jailer. Ms. Knight continued, “I spent 11 years in hell and now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all this that happened, but you will face hell for all eternity.” The dude received life in prison plus 1,000 years with no possibility of parole. He had pled guilty to 937 charges, including aggravated murder, rape and kidnapping.

       In 1937 Dr. Seuss wrote about a boy who imagines a fantastic parade in his hometown, “And that’s a story that cannot be beat/ And to think that it happened on Mulberry Street.” In contrast, Seymour Avenue held nothing but horror and Michelle Knight was one of the many-Gina and Amanda were not present- who stood by and cheered its demolition. She thanked her neighbors for their support, never blaming them for not questioning-after the disappearance of three women not far from Seymour Avenue-why the house had all its windows covered. She understood the code of the mean streets, “Snitches have stitches.” She passed out yellow balloons as symbols of freeing the world’s missing children. She also thanked the Cleveland police and wrote them for saving her, “Life is tough, but I’m tougher.” Castro hung himself in his cell a month later, not able to take the captivity to which he had subjected his victims.

        Rapunzel enjoyed a happily ever after when the prince rescued her from her tower, but Michelle had no happily ever after. Because the Knights made no effort to reclaim Joey from social services a family adopted him and never revealed biological details. Although she could have fought for visitation as she had never relinquished parental rights, she refrained as she did not want to cause her son emotional trauma. However, she takes comfort in the photographs of the teen and though she made the heart-wrenching decision not to see him, “I still got hope.”

        Michelle refers to her tattoos as her “therapeutic art.” She had only one before her abduction, inked by a friend at age 14. It is an image that she feels is a metaphor for her life-a metamorphosis from a larvae that blossoms into a kaleidoscope of color. As Ms. Lillian Rose Lee stated, “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became a butterfly.”

 

 

      

Chapter # 23 A Butterfly  (1981)

          The setting of horror films are as memorable as their characters and plots, and deliver collective shivers. In Psycho the Bates Motel housed a mother-preserved through taxidermy-and a shower that makes audiences seek another method of hygiene. In The Shining the Overlook Hotel elevator oozed blood, a ghost resided in room 237 and a door displayed “REDRUM,” In Carrie, Bates High is the venue for cinemas’ worst ever prom that involved pig’s blood and flames that transformed the school into an inferno. A non-celluloid setting on Seymour Avenue became a nonfictional house of horror. 

     Michelle Knight was born with the opposite of a silver spoon in Cleveland, an industrial center pock-marked by crime-ridden neighborhoods, one of America’s 10 most dangerous zip codes. A male family member started molesting her when she was 5 years old and Michelle recalled of the violation, “It’s like I was buried six feet under and screaming and nobody can hear a thing.” She and her younger twin brothers, Eddie and Freddie, spent a year living in a brown station-wagon, and when the Knights moved into a house it was in a neighborhood populated by prostitutes, pimps and drug-dealers. She had a contentious relationship with mother Barbara and in their household soap and toothpaste were luxuries; Pop-Tarts and SpaghettiOs were as nutritious as things got. At age 15 she ran away and lived under a bridge in a blue garbage can with wheels, where, in Oscar the Grouch fashion, made her home. She recalled, “I had my own little room. If I wanted to sing, I didn’t have to listen to my mother, ‘You’re a horrible singer, shut up.’ Michelle fell in with a marijuana dealer who provided a room in exchange for work as a drug-runner.

       Her teen years were angst-ridden and she was miserable at James Ford Rhodes High School, blighted by over-crowded classrooms and poor facilities. Michelle, nicknamed by the other students as Shorty because of her 4’7 inch height, struggled. At age 17 two boys gang-raped her at school and traumatized, she dropped-out before graduation. As a result of the attack she became pregnant with son Joey. However, the baby became the one shining light in her life and she determined for his sake to complete her education so she could obtain a career. Her mother’s boyfriend shattered that dream; he broke the toddler’s leg. Social workers removed Joey from the home, an act that unleashed an event that was to make her a character in a Hitchcock horror.

    In 2002 Michelle walked into a Family Dollar Store, exhausted, sweaty and desperate. The 21- year-old had spent the past few hours searching for the location of social services for a hearing to reclaim Joey. After asking the cashier for directions, a man overheard her and offered to give her a lift. Michelle recognized Ariel Castro as the father of Emily, a former classmate, and gratefully explained why it was imperative to make it to the court on time. In his orange Chevy she noticed discarded wrappers from McDonalds and Chinese food containers; however, even if she had wanted to leave the door had no handle. When Castro began to head in the wrong direction he explained he was just popping into his house so she could choose from a litter of puppies as a welcome home gift for Joey. Inside the dilapidated home the air smelled of stale beer, urine and rotten beans and the windows were boarded with planks of wood. The 21-year-old Michelle Knight was going to become Rapunzel locked in a tower, except her hair was shaved and her tower a filthy, dilapidated hovel.

      The details of her imprisonment hurt like body blows just to hear about them, let alone endure. Castro led her to an upstairs bedroom to retrieve a phantom puppy and as soon as she entered the door slammed shut. He hog-tied her, unzipped his pants and ejaculated over her body. Castro stuffed a dirty sock in her mouth, blasted the radio and left. “The first thing that came to my head was, “Holy shit, I’m gonna die here. I’m not gonna be able to say to Joey I love him. I’m gonna miss every moment of his life.” Knight had to fight those same fears, day after day, for the next 11 years. During this time she was repeatedly raped, made to sit for hours with a motorcycle helmet on her head, and forced to relieve herself in a plastic bucket. Castro gave her napkins in lieu of tampons and during one stage left her naked in a freezing room on a soiled mattress for months. In a nod to the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away Ariel gave Michelle a puppy she named Lobo; when he went to rape her the dog attacked and in retaliation Castro broke his neck. The dungeon-master discovered Michelle’s allergy to mustard and forced her to eat a hot-dog coated in the condiment. Her face puffed up and she could not breathe. Michelle became pregnant on five occasions and Castro beat her on her belly until she miscarried. He put the placenta in the fridge as a memento. Despite her surname, Michelle harbored no illusion a knight in white armor would come to her rescue. Despite every reason to give up Michelle swore to still rise-she felt in her heart she would be reunited with Joey and this-as well as her staunch Christian faith- gave her resilience to endure the unendurable.

      Eventually Castro permitted the luxury of a radio and a small television that became Michelle’s life-line to the world from which she had been amputated: Michael Jackson suspended his baby over a balcony! Kelly Clarkson became the first winner on American Idol! Elizabeth Smart found alive! A year after her own abduction, Knight was watching the news when she heard about a missing local girl, 16 year-old Amanda Berry. Icy fingers clutched her throat when she had the hunch-that proved prescient- Castro had another victim trapped in Seymour Avenue. A third became the 14 year-old Gina Dejesus who ended up sharing Michelle’s room.  Sometimes Castro would rape one of them while the other lay there, helpless. Michelle, as the older woman and the most inured, would often volunteer for the sexual assault to spare Gina.

      On Christmas day in 2006 Castro took a fourth captive: his daughter Jocelyn, who, like the child in Emma Donoghue’s novel Room was born into captivity. Amanda had given birth in a plastic kiddie pool and Michelle had acted as mid-wife. Ariel had inexplicably wanted this child and had told Knight if the baby died he would kill her in retaliation.  Jocelyn became the darling of the house-and a reason for the three prisoners to survive. When she became a toddler and asked about the ‘bracelets’ Castro removed them.

        In 2013 Gina and Michelle were in their room when they heard pounding and kicking noises at the front door, followed by shouts, “Police!”  Castro had accidentally left the door open and Amanda and Jocelyn had escaped and alerted a neighbor who called 911. After 4,000 days the first thing Michelle did when she stepped outside was to kiss the ground and to thank God. Residents of Seymour Avenue lined the streets and applauded as emergency vehicles whisked the women away.

      However, while Gina and Amanda had homes to return to and families ecstatic at their release, after a hospital stay Michelle lived in a shelter. Her first order of business was to rebuild her life, and boy was there a lot of rebuilding. Her first steps on the road to wellness was physical healing. After over a decade of darkness her eyes were extremely sensitive and the first moment she left her prison she felt they were being fried like eggs. Later, when asked if her sight was improving she shook her head and replied, “I still got hope.” Her stomach is permanently damaged from a combination of untreated infections and the five forced miscarriages that may have rendered her infertile. Knight’s jaw was severely damaged from the number of times Castro had punched her, sometimes with barbells. Emaciated, the scale hovered in the 80s.

      The diminutive Michelle proved herself an emotional giant when she declared she would nevermore be defined by ‘the dude,’ (she explained he doesn’t deserve a name) and changed her own to Lilly Rose Lee-the latter is Joey’s middle name. “It’s about making a brand new start. I didn’t want people to know me as that girl. I want people to know me as this girl.” She is also celebrating her newfound freedom with an array of tattoos, each deeply symbolic, that has made her body a visual diary. One displays a face, part skeleton and part flesh: “My heart is not chained to my situation;” two guns, “Know me as a victor not a victim;” and five large roses, covered in droplets of blood-for each of the babies lost in Seymour Avenue, “Too beautiful for this world.”  The largest of the tattoos are on her back and shoulders: a pair of wings: “Freedom to Fly.” 

        Because of donations that poured in from well-wishers, and with the advance of her memoir of misery-Finding Me: a Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed, Michelle lives in her own home-a source of wonder to the girl who spent a year living in a car, months surviving in a garbage-bin and a decade existing in a dungeon-where the blinds are always open, “It’s to see the beautiful sky that I never saw for years, to watch the clouds go by.” She shares her digs with Sky, her puppy. She said the main reason for writing her book was to tell people they can overcome anything.

      In a bid to make up for lost time, Michelle exemplifies the idiom ‘going concern.’ She recorded a song entitled “Survivor,” attends boxing class, and enrolled in cooking school. She also took up sky-diving to overcome her fear of heights and because “I’m adventurous.” And yet she must avoid triggers: paper napkins-used to clean herself after rape and menstruating, and rammed down her throat; nothing with chains, including decorative ones, and no mirrors, as these were used so Castro “could watch.” But any bitterness is sublimated by Michelle’s indomitable spirit,” Our life is a painted canvass, painted by everything you do. Make it a beautiful one. I look at the world and I see all the beauty I missed.” 

    The 53-yearold Ariel Castro pleaded guilty to hundreds of charges and Michelle finally had her day in court-the two other victims were not present. Mustering every ounce of steel her petite frame could muster she stated, “I look inside my heart and I see my son and I cried every night. Christmas was a most traumatic day because I could not spend it with my son. Writing this statement gave me the strength to be a stronger woman and to know that there is more good than evil.”

     Behind her sat the prisoner, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his legs manacled, now the one to eat the food, wear the clothes, and follow the rules of his jailer. Ms. Knight continued, “I spent 11 years in hell and now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all this that happened, but you will face hell for all eternity.” The dude received life in prison plus 1,000 years with no possibility of parole. He had pled guilty to 937 charges, including aggravated murder, rape and kidnapping.

       In 1937 Dr. Seuss wrote about a boy who imagines a fantastic parade in his hometown, “And that’s a story that cannot be beat/ And to think that it happened on Mulberry Street.” In contrast, Seymour Avenue held nothing but horror and Michelle Knight was one of the many-Gina and Amanda were not present- who stood by and cheered its demolition. She thanked her neighbors for their support, never blaming them for not questioning-after the disappearance of three women not far from Seymour Avenue-why the house had all its windows covered. She understood the code of the mean streets, “Snitches have stitches.” She passed out yellow balloons as symbols of freeing the world’s missing children. She also thanked the Cleveland police and wrote them for saving her, “Life is tough, but I’m tougher.” Castro hung himself in his cell a month later, not able to take the captivity to which he had subjected his victims.

        Rapunzel enjoyed a happily ever after when the prince rescued her from her tower, but Michelle had no happily ever after. Because the Knights made no effort to reclaim Joey from social services a family adopted him and never revealed biological details. Although she could have fought for visitation as she had never relinquished parental rights, she refrained as she did not want to cause her son emotional trauma. However, she takes comfort in the photographs of the teen and though she made the heart-wrenching decision not to see him, “I still got hope.”

        Michelle refers to her tattoos as her “therapeutic art.” She had only one before her abduction, inked by a friend at age 14. It is an image that she feels is a metaphor for her life-a metamorphosis from a larvae that blossoms into a kaleidoscope of color. As Ms. Lillian Rose Lee stated, “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became a butterfly.”

 

 

      

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