Kolonick and his team didn’t know it, they were parked only about a thousand feet from the house where Amanda was being held, and could have walked there in a matter of minutes. The FBI had never heard of Michelle Knight, and they didn’t know that she was also being held in the same house. Nine months earlier, Castro had abducted her from the exact same Family Dollar lot where the FBI van was now parked.
The FBI agents continued their stakeout for eight days, changing shifts every twelve hours, but Amanda’s phone never went on. They knew she had left her phone charger at home and reluctantly concluded that by now the battery had died and there was little chance of it being used again.
On May 16 they drove the engineer and his gear back to the airport.
• • •
Samantha Farnsley looked remarkably like Amanda: same age, same height, same build, even the same piercing over her left eye.
Everyone noticed the uncanny likeness. On city buses she would hear people whispering: “Is that Amanda Berry?” An FBI agent spotted her one day in a thrift shop and followed her around the aisles, then tailed her into the parking lot. When she confronted him, he asked her if she was Amanda Berry, and when she said she was not, he still demanded to see her ID. Police stopped her eight or nine times in the months after Amanda went missing, and the situation became so bad that the FBI finally gave her a letter to carry certifying that she was not Amanda.
Samantha ultimately left Cleveland, but not until after a sad encounter with Louwana. When police booked Samantha on a truancy charge one day, they asked Louwana to come to the station and take a look. When she arrived and saw the back of the girl’s head and her long blond ponytail, she gasped. But then Samantha turned around and Louwana’s face fell.
“No,” she said. “That’s not my child.”
June 2003: First Summer
June 3
Amanda
I haven’t eaten in two days. I guess he just forgot about me yesterday. I’m feeling weak.
I’m not sure why he won’t spend much money on food for me, but he will buy me cigarettes and weed. Getting high dulls the pain of being here. If it weren’t for the weed, I would have killed myself by now. Maybe he knows that, and that’s why he gets it for me.
Before I was in here, pretty much everyone I knew smoked weed. It was just what teenagers in my neighborhood did. I liked to sit in my room, listen to music, and smoke a bowl once in a while. Now I’m smoking a lot and it takes me to a different place for a little while. But he doesn’t give me anything for free.
1x
.
When he finally gives me a Mr. Hero sandwich, I keep the napkin. It’s very thin but has lots of white space where I can write. I’m keeping McDonald’s and Wendy’s bags too, because I can tear them open and write on the inside. The only paper I have is my diary, but that’s filling up. So I keep every scrap of paper I can find in case I run out.
Writing things down makes me feel closer to my family.
“Are you still going to take me home at the end of June?” I ask him. “You said you would.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe next year.”
“You told me you were taking me home!” I tell him, crying. “I need to see my family!”
He complains that I’m always talking about my family like I’m the only one who is missing someone. “Soldiers don’t see their families for years at a time,” he says, “and they don’t cry like babies about it.”
I just saw a TV news story about a female soldier from Cleveland who is in Iraq and who won’t be coming home before Christmas. I think about her on the other side of the world from her family and know it must be hard for her. But I also know she will make it.
Life is giving me a test. I have to pass. God wouldn’t give me anything I can’t handle. I can do this.
June 10
This morning Channel 19 has a story about a sixteen-year-old girl from Massachusetts, Molly Bish, who has been
The FBI agents continued their stakeout for eight days, changing shifts every twelve hours, but Amanda’s phone never went on. They knew she had left her phone charger at home and reluctantly concluded that by now the battery had died and there was little chance of it being used again.
On May 16 they drove the engineer and his gear back to the airport.
• • •
Samantha Farnsley looked remarkably like Amanda: same age, same height, same build, even the same piercing over her left eye.
Everyone noticed the uncanny likeness. On city buses she would hear people whispering: “Is that Amanda Berry?” An FBI agent spotted her one day in a thrift shop and followed her around the aisles, then tailed her into the parking lot. When she confronted him, he asked her if she was Amanda Berry, and when she said she was not, he still demanded to see her ID. Police stopped her eight or nine times in the months after Amanda went missing, and the situation became so bad that the FBI finally gave her a letter to carry certifying that she was not Amanda.
Samantha ultimately left Cleveland, but not until after a sad encounter with Louwana. When police booked Samantha on a truancy charge one day, they asked Louwana to come to the station and take a look. When she arrived and saw the back of the girl’s head and her long blond ponytail, she gasped. But then Samantha turned around and Louwana’s face fell.
“No,” she said. “That’s not my child.”
June 2003: First Summer
June 3
Amanda
I haven’t eaten in two days. I guess he just forgot about me yesterday. I’m feeling weak.
I’m not sure why he won’t spend much money on food for me, but he will buy me cigarettes and weed. Getting high dulls the pain of being here. If it weren’t for the weed, I would have killed myself by now. Maybe he knows that, and that’s why he gets it for me.
Before I was in here, pretty much everyone I knew smoked weed. It was just what teenagers in my neighborhood did. I liked to sit in my room, listen to music, and smoke a bowl once in a while. Now I’m smoking a lot and it takes me to a different place for a little while. But he doesn’t give me anything for free.
1x
.
When he finally gives me a Mr. Hero sandwich, I keep the napkin. It’s very thin but has lots of white space where I can write. I’m keeping McDonald’s and Wendy’s bags too, because I can tear them open and write on the inside. The only paper I have is my diary, but that’s filling up. So I keep every scrap of paper I can find in case I run out.
Writing things down makes me feel closer to my family.
“Are you still going to take me home at the end of June?” I ask him. “You said you would.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe next year.”
“You told me you were taking me home!” I tell him, crying. “I need to see my family!”
He complains that I’m always talking about my family like I’m the only one who is missing someone. “Soldiers don’t see their families for years at a time,” he says, “and they don’t cry like babies about it.”
I just saw a TV news story about a female soldier from Cleveland who is in Iraq and who won’t be coming home before Christmas. I think about her on the other side of the world from her family and know it must be hard for her. But I also know she will make it.
Life is giving me a test. I have to pass. God wouldn’t give me anything I can’t handle. I can do this.
June 10
This morning Channel 19 has a story about a sixteen-year-old girl from Massachusetts, Molly Bish, who has been
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