Daily Archives: May 12, 2013

Kidnap victim Amanda Berry (right) is reunited with her sister, Beth Serrano. Photo: AP

A DNA test confirmed another dark twist in the story of three women imprisoned in a house for about a decade - kidnapping and rape suspect Ariel Castro is the father of a six-year-old girl who escaped from the house along with the women, a prosecutor says.

As the investigation into the women's ordeal continued, the FBI also said no human remains were among more than 200 pieces of evidence collected from the house.

Two of the women, including the one who gave birth to the girl, returned to relatives' houses earlier this week. The third woman, Michelle Knight, was released from a hospital on Friday with a request that her privacy be respected.

Ariel Castro. Photo: AP

"Michelle Knight is in good spirits and would like the community to know that she is extremely grateful for the outpouring of flowers and gifts," the statement said.

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No information would be provided about Ms Knight's next steps, MetroHealth Medical Center spokeswoman Phyllis Marino said.

Castro remained in jail under a suicide watch on $US8 million bond while prosecutors weighed what charges they might bring against him, including the possibility of charges carrying a death penalty. He is already charged with rape and kidnapping.

Castro was represented at Thursday's hearing by public defender Kathleen Demetz, who said she was acting as Castro's adviser if needed until he is appointed a full-time lawyer once he's charged by a grand jury.

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DNA test confirms kidnap suspect as dad

CLEVELAND (AP) As relatives of the Cleveland kidnapping and rape suspect recounted claims of his unnerving paranoia and violent outbursts, DNA testing confirmed the man accused of holding three women captive for nearly a decade is the father of a 6-year-old girl who also escaped from the house.

Ariel Castro, charged with rape and kidnapping, remained jailed Friday under a suicide watch on $8 million bond while prosecutors weighed more charges, including some that might carry the death penalty. Public defender Kathleen Demetz, who said she is acting as Castro's adviser while he awaits a full-time attorney, said Friday she can't speak to his guilt or innocence and said only that she advised him not to talk to reporters.

But those who know the 52-year-old Castro are speaking up, saying he was often angry, paranoid and prone to violent outbursts against the now-dead mother of his adult children. He frequently beat her, played bizarre psychological games and locked her indoors, they said.

The stories, repeated in separate interviews with The Associated Press by members of Castro's extended family, have surprised people who knew him as a musician who played bass in several bands around Cleveland the last two decades.

Miguel Quinones, manager of a group Castro played with twice as a backup bass player about five years ago, said he had nothing bad to say about Castro based on his own experiences.

But in the interviews, some of Castro's ex-relatives said he frequently flashed his compulsions for secrecy and terrifying rage that often led him to beat his common-law wife, Grimilda Figueroa.

Figueroa left Castro years ago and died in 2012 after a long illness. Their early years together were happy, but something inside Castro snapped after the birth of their first child, they said.

Castro pushed her down the stairs, fractured her ribs, broke her nose several times, cracked a tooth and dislocated both shoulders, they said. In one incident, he shoved Figueroa into a cardboard box and closed the flaps over her head, they said. He kept her and children imprisoned, cut off from friends and family, and Figueroa couldn't even unlock her own front door, they said.

Figueroa filed domestic-violence complaints, accusing Castro of threatening many times to kill her and her daughters. She charged that he frequently abducted the children and kept them from her, even though she had full custody, with no visitation rights for Castro.

"When I go over there to visit her, and I ask her, 'Nilda, I'm here, open the door,' she's like, 'I can't. Ariel has the key,'" Figueroa's sister, Elida Caraballo, recalled.

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DNA test shows Ohio kidnap suspect fathered girl

On April 25, 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published a one-page paper that many believed would revolutionise biological research. Building on the work of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, they had discovered DNAs double-helix structure, providing the first glimpse into how organisms inherit and store biological information. But, 60 years later, has their discovery really had the transformative impact that the world expected?

The media marked the publications 60th anniversary with much fanfare, hailing the breakthrough that ushered in the age of genetics, and calling it one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. The British newspaper The Guardianfeatured the headline, Happy Birthday, DNA! The golden moment that changed us all.

To some extent, they are right. The finding forms the basis of genetics and has opened up promising new research areas, such as synthetic biology, in which biological systems are created or modified to perform specific functions. Likewise, it has facilitated important innovations, such as pharmacogenetic cancer treatment, in which drugs target specific genetic defects within cancer cells.

Moreover, DNA has acquired a certain mystique in popular culture. According to Dorothy Nelkin and Susan Lindee, it has become a sacred entity - the modern equivalent of the Christian soul, an individuals essence. While some forms of biological determinism, such as the belief that race or gender dictates a persons destiny, have been widely rejected, the idea that a person can be genetically predisposed, say, to get into debt, become a ruthless dictator, or vote regularly in elections remains socially acceptable.

But, almost from the beginning -and most intensely since 1971, when Time magazine published a special section entitled, The New Genetics: Man into Superman - science and society alike have tended to overestimate the impact of genetics. When the Human Genome Project published the first draft of the fully sequenced human genome in 2000, Henry Gee, an editor of the journal Nature, predicted that scientists would be able to alter entire organisms out of all recognition to suit our needs and tastes by 2099. We will have extra limbs, if we want them, he asserted , maybe even wings to fly.

Thirteen years later, Gees prediction looks increasingly unlikely, with the Human Genome Project so far having failed to meet expectations. Indeed, in 2010, the science writer Nicholas Wade lamented that , a decade after the project was launched, geneticists were almost back to square one in knowing where to look for the roots of common disease.

For example, a 12-year study of 19,000 white American women found that 101 genetic markers that had been statistically linked to heart disease had no predictive value. Self-reported family histories, by contrast, proved very accurate in predicting the disease.

In fact, most diseases are not caused by single genes. As a result, after a few early successes with atypical single-gene disorders such as Huntingtons disease, progress has stalled. Common variants typically explain a small fraction of genetic risk.

Genetics has been a source of particularly high hopes when it comes to cancer treatment. Between 1962 and 1985, cancer-related deaths in the US rose by 8.7 percent, despite the use of aggressive chemotherapy drugs and radiation therapy, highlighting the dangers of a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment. An understanding of the genetic determinants of patients therapeutic response, it was believed, would enable doctors to develop individualised treatment programmes, sparing more responsive patients from harmful overtreatment.

But patients are not the only variable. Cancer, too, is heterogeneous, even in patients with the same diagnosis. After sequencing the entire genomes of 50 patients breast cancer tumors, researchers found that only 10 percent of the tumours had more than three mutations in common. According to a recent study mapping genetic mutations in 2,000 tumours, breast cancer can actually be divided into ten subgroups.

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DNA at 60