Updated 4:55 pm ET
CLEVELAND, Ohio?Police visited the home of Ariel Castro, the man who police say held three young women captive for the past decade, at least once while they were being held inside. But it wasn?t until Monday when one of the women, 27-year old Amanda Berry, managed to escape and phone 911 that officers came and got them to freedom.
With Ariel Castro, 52, and brothers Pedro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50, in custody and awaiting charges, authorities have come under scrutiny for how they missed clues that Berry and two other young women were being kept as prisoners in the rundown home in the city's west side neighborhood.
Berry, whom police called a hero for breaking out of the house Monday and summoning help, had disappeared in 2003 when she was 16. Michelle Knight went missing in 2002, when she was 20. Gina DeJesus, then 14, was reported missing in 2004.
Police, along with officials of the Children and Family Services department, visited the house in January 2004 to follow up on a report that Castro, then a bus driver for the Cleveland public schools, had left a child on a bus while he ate lunch.
Police say they investigated that incident, but felt there was no criminal wrong-doing and the matter was dropped.
?He was interviewed extensively due to that investigation,? Deputy Cleveland Police Chief Ed Tomba told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.
Other reports said neighbors had called police after seeing suspicious activity at the house over the years.
This undated combination photo released by the Cleveland Police Department shows from left, Onil Castro, Ariel??One neighbor, Elsie Cintron, told a reporter from the BBC that her granddaughter saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard of Ariel Castro. Cintron said she told her grandchildren to stay away from the home. She also said she told police, but got discouraged a lack of action by police.
Officials said Ariel Castro had called police to his home in March 2000, when he reported a fight in the street outside his home on Seymour Avenue on the city?s west side. But that was before any of the women were missing.
Shortly before 6 p.m. ET Monday, Tomba said, Berry, with the help of neighbors, was able to break out of the house and summon police. She was reported missing on April 21, 2003, after vanishing on the way home from her job at a local Burger King.
After Berry called 911, police responded to the home at 5:52 p.m. DeJesus and Knight were found inside.
Berry escaped the house along with a 6-year-old girl. Police confirmed the child was Berry's daughter but would not say who the father was. According to reports,
While police would not comment publicly on whether the women had been abused or raped while held captive, several publications quote police sources as saying the women had been forced to have sex with their captors, resulting in multiple pregnancies.
The stories of Berry and DeJesus have captivated the city of Cleveland for a decade. They have been the subject of numerous vigils and city searches. Police have followed leads over the years, including digging up two backyards seeking their remains. On Monday, crowds gathered in the neighborhood where they were found and at the hospital where they were taken later.
?Our prayers have finally been answered?this nightmare is over,? said Stephen Anthony, special agent in charge of the Cleveland office of the FBI.
While much has been written about Berry and DeJesus, and the efforts to find them, not much has been written about Michelle Knight. "She has been the focus of very few tips," Tomba said.
Police said all three women appeared healthy, other than needing a good meal. They were taken to a Cleveland hospital, where they were reunited with their families?a scene police described as "chaotic."
According to public records, Ariel Castro has owned the home where the kidnapped women were found since 1992. Records also show Castro has at least one adult son and a grown daughter living two to three hours from Cleveland.
Several media outlets also report that a younger daughter, Emily Castro, is in an Indiana prison for slashing the throat of her then-10-month-old daughter in 2007. Indiana prison records confirm Emily Castro is currently serving 25 years for attempted murder.
At Emily Castro?s trial, defense attorney Zachary Witte argued that she suffered from paranoid delusional thoughts. At the time of the attack, she feared that her family was trying to kill her and take her baby away. The child survived the attack.
Witte told Yahoo News on Tuesday that he didn?t recall his client saying much about her father.
?I think she was estranged from her dad,? Witte said.
Photos on a Facebook page show the man believed to be Castro?s son visiting Emily Castro in prison earlier this year.
?A Father's Love for his Children is like none other,? reads a comment on the photo from a man who identifies himself as Ariel Castro on Facebook.
Mayor Frank Jackson said housing and building records also have been reviewed and no reports of violations were found.
Outside the Castro home Tuesday, which police are still treating as an active crime scene, an American flag and a Puerto Rican flag hung above the front door. The Puerto Rican flag bothered Lucy Delgado, a nearby resident with family living in the largely Puerto Rican neighborhood.
"It doesn't deserve to be there," Delgado said of the flag. "This is like, oh my God crazy stuff like this should never happen here."
Delgado described the community as tight knit. "Everybody knows each others business," she said.
Police declined to provide specific details about the home where the women were kept or its condition upon their arrival on Monday. They said the home is an active crime scene and detectives were processing it through the night.
Asked if they believe the kidnappings were part of a larger operation, police officials said they were looking into every possible angle. It appears that Berry, DeJesus and Knight were the only victims.
Click image to see more photos. (AP/Cleveland Police Dept.)
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