can you hear that noise it's a rebel sound ♪ ♪ we got nowhere else to go and when the sun goes down and we fill the streets ♪ ♪ you're gonna dance 'til the morning to the rebel's beat you can take ♪ ♪ everything from me oh, yeah you can take everything from me ♪ ♪ cause this is all i need yeah, this is all i need ♪ ♪ this is all i need ♪ this is all i need >> jimmy: i want to thank robert downey jr., simon pegg. i want to apologize to matt damon. tomorrow night zoe saldana, bill simmons and music from fitz & the tantrums. nightline is next. thanks for watching! their album "magnetic," comes out june 11th, playing us off

the air with "come to me." see the full performance at jimmy kimmel live dot com. once again goo goo dolls. good night. [ applause ] ♪ i'll be kind if you'll be faithful you be sweet and i'll be grateful ♪ ♪ cover me with kisses dear lighten up the atmosphere keep me warm inside our bed i'll turn to you ♪ ♪ all through my head fortune tells that i'll be free that's the day you came to me ♪ ♪ oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh came to me oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh do-do-do-do-do-do-do ♪ ♪ come to me my sweetest friend can you feel my heart again i'll take you back where you belong and this will be ♪ ♪ our favorite song come to me with secrets bare i'll love you more

tonight on "nightline," breaking free. >> i've been kidnapped and i've been missing for ten years and i'm here, i'm free now. >> three young women and a 6-year-old child held captive for years. three brothers are in custody. and tonight, inside the mind of the suspected be ed abductor an really happened inside that house of horrors. captured, confined and praying for freedom. from jacesy due guard to elizabeth smart -- >> it's possible to move on after something terrible happens. >> victims speak out after surviving the worst. and forces of good, neighbors, police, even the victims themselves. tonight, on the front lines of evil. a look at the heroic men and women. >> i knew something was wrong. >> who defeated captors and

turned tragedy into triumph. >> this special edition of "nightline," breaking free, the escape in cleveland, will be back in 60 seconds.

. from new york city this is a special edition of night line. breaking free, the escape in cleveland, with terry moran. hello, everyone. thanks for joining us this evening. it was a normal house on a normal street in a normal community, until amanda berry's screams for help rang out through a flimsy screen door. behind that door, a mysterious house of horrors where amanda, gina dejesus, and michele knight were held captive, forced to live in rooms the size of closets for more than a decade. victims and the families begin the long road to healing as authorities begin to study the

chilling tale of evil next door. byron pitts has the latest from cleveland. >> reporter: terry, federal and local authorities have been in and out of the house all evening. piecing together the secrets inside. tonight it's a crime scene, but for three girls, faces on posters, amanda, gina and michele, this house was their cage. >> help me, i'm amanda berry. >> reporter: after nearly ten years, this was the sweet, frightening sound of freedom. >> do you need police, fire or ambulance? >> i need police. >> reporter: that's amanda berry yesterday afternoon. we know so little about their experience, but the emotion in her voice is revealing. >> i've been kidnapped and i've been missing for ten years. and i'm here, i'm free now. >> reporter: freedom made possible by a neighbor she never knew. charles ramsey said he just heard a young woman in need and reacted. >> she just going nuts on the door. so i was like what's your problem? you stuck, just open the door. she said i can't, he's got it locked.

i looked how he has it, it is only enough to reach a hand out to grab the mail and close the door. and she reached, naturally going to pry it open, that didn't work. we had to kick open the bottom. lucky on that door, it was aluminum, it was cheap. she climbed out with her daughter. about five minutes after the police got here. the girl amanda told police, i ain't the only one. it's some more girls up in that house. >> reporter: when police arrive, they find the two other women inside, alive, scared, grateful. the last chapter of a horror story that dates back to august 2002. michele knight, 20, vanishes last seen at a cousin's house. april the next year, 2003, amanda berry, 16, disappears the day before her 17th birthday, leaving her job. a year later in april 2004, gina dejesus disappears walking home from middle school. we're sitting at the

intersection of lorain and 105th, a working class neighborhood just west of downtown cleveland. all three girls were abducted within five blocks of this intersection. the three women spent years in this 1,400 square foot house that castro bought in 1992 for $12,000. abc news has learned authorities now suspect they were often tied up until amanda broke free. >> the real hero here is amanda. i mean, she is the real hero. she's the one that got this rolling. you know, we're just following her lead. without her, none of us would be here today. >> reporter: her father in tennessee, perhaps the most relieved of all. >> i didn't think she was dead, no. never. never gave up. >> reporter: this is amanda berry in the hospital last night. her sister on her left and today, we learn that little girl to her right, her daughter jocelyn, 6 years old. born while amanda was in captivity. police won't say who the father is. as for amanda, she lost more than her freedom while in

captivity. both her grandmother and mother died. tonight, we spoke with her aunt. diane. like so many relatives, filled with relief and regrets. >> what hurts me the most is mandy doesn't get to see her mom. her mom's gone. that's what bothers me the most. >> reporter: and frustration police did not do more early on. >> her and her mom were best friends. and they tried to treat the case as a runaway and she was never a runaway. and my sister tried to get that across. and nobody would listen to her. >> it was a sense of joy of tears, happiness, tears of pain, tears of anger, tears of frustration. what is going on? that's what it was like at the hospital. >> reporter: angel grew up with gina dejesus. like many here, he took part in searches over the years. >> we walked down seymour. >> reporter: past the house? >> just around the corner.

we walked up to 25th. we walked in front of that -- we walked in front of that house at least three, four times a month. >> reporter: yesterday's escape is the miracle their families have been praying for. but now they're demanding answers. >> it's really sad. i know she's got to be traumatized. i don't know how somebody could do that to somebody. i just don't understand it. >> reporter: authorities say these are the men responsible, 52-year-old ariel castro owned the home. he was arrested along with his two brothers, pedro and ono. all three are awaiting charges. >> not in my worst nightmare would i have imagined that my brother-in-laws would be involved in something like this. >> reporter: family and neighbors of the prime suspect ariel castro are shocked by the news. they describe him as a relatively normal guy, a local musician with a love of motorcycles. >> i thought he was a nice guy. he was loving to all the kids in the neighborhood.

he was nice to me since i was 5 years old. never had any kind of suspicions. >> reporter: he has a facebook page that was updated just last week with a bizarre posting for a man in his position. miracles really do happen, god is good. today we learn that castro's own daughter was friends with one of the girls he's accused of abducting. gina dejesus. and she told "america's most wanted" she was the last to see gina. >> my mom said no, i can't go over to her house. and so i told her i couldn't. and she said well, okay, i'll talk to you later. >> reporter: investigators are now scrambling to piece together every detail of castro's life. some neighbors say he was intensely private. they say he always kept the shades drawn and used a tarp to cover his backyard. perhaps this was a clue that castro had a darker side. in 2004, police came to his house after castro, who worked as a school bus driver, was accused of leaving a student on the bus and cursing at the student.

no one opened the door and castro was later suspended. the first of several suspensions that ultimately end up with his firing in 2012. raising the question, did authorities miss key opportunities to rescue the women? if he did it, family members speculate what it would have taken. his uncle, julio castro, spoke to our colleague alex perez. >> apparently he was living two personalities. the personality that was dealing with kids, driving the bus, the personality of being a musician, playing the bass, and the personality behind him that was committing this crime. >> the whole idea that your reality, your mind, and your personality would allow you to basically for a decade, tells

you volumes about what little they care about mankind and those around them. where they probably used and abused these victims in untold ways over the years. just to get whatever their needs might be from them. >> reporter: amidst the joy and jubilation, many questions emerge. including, how is it possible three women, their pictures posted all over town, could be hidden virtually in plain sight. tonight, balloons and flowers outside her sister's house welcomed amanda berry home. according to the fbi, the three women bonded during their time together in the house. tonight, all three and the child are safe under police protection. as for the three suspects, they could be arraigned sometime on wednesday. terry? >> byron, incredible saga. thanks for that report summing it all up for us. next, surviving this kind of

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abducted by a maniac who holds your life in his hands. it's the stuff of hollywood thrillers and a startling reality for far too many victims. victims who abc's john donvan discovered must bravely adapt to a surreal and sadistic world if

they have any hope of making it out alive. >> reporter: expect in the continuous joyous aftermath to hear words like healing and recovery thrown around. that's all anyone can wish for now for three women who lost so much of life, yet are still alive. because they somehow had what it takes to survive. unfortunately we have a long list of quite recent cases to study what that survival takes. a long list of children abducted and held from months to years to nearly two decades in the case of jaycee dugard, who has been able since her release so freedom in 2009, after 18 years of captivity in a backyard in antioch, california, where she was beaten and raped, able actually to show the outside world the face of someone who appears to have a life again. a smile again. a confidence when doing television interviews of which she has now done quite a few. >> i choose to see it as a learning opportunity. >> reporter: rebecca bailey was a therapist who worked with dugard.

>> what saved her was an early on relationship with her mother that allowed her to go into something with a strong sense of self. >> reporter: which suggests whatever sustains a person during captivity is what they build on once they're back in freedom. elizabeth smart, for example, whose abduction from her home in 2002 when she was 14 was a national story. >> in the history of world, i don't think a little girl has been prayed for more than elizabeth smart. and we thank you for answering those prayers. >> thank you. >> reporter: freed nine months later, she has managed in many ways to live the life she had envisioned before her ordeal. >> it is possible to move on after something terrible has happened. and that we can speak out and we will be heard. >> it's not based on age. it's based on, you know, their character, and their real goal to not let this predator defeat them. >> reporter: but neither is blind optimism necessarily an

advantage, because it can actually trip up a person who thinks that rescue is always imminent when it does not come. alternatively, take a little girl like jenette who looked for all sorts of ways to escape when she was kidnapped as a 9-year-old, including memorizing her kidnapper's phone number when he ordered pizza. >> 416-5771. >> reporter: yet life in debris come had its challenges for jeanette. the truth was, she said ten years later that it took years to conquer a fear that was still gnawing inside her. >> it was taking over. i wouldn't go outside my house. i was afraid of people, especially men. >> reporter: or mitzy sanchez, also kidnapped as a child, who appeared with jeanette on "20/20." watch how easily her memory is triggered of a photo at the time of her rescue. >> breathe. that's my dad. that's me when i came home. we were outside of my house and my dad was carrying me up our stairs, our front door.

that makes me emotional. >> reporter: but with time and support, both women did find a way to feel normal again. as did jaycee dugard who tonight was honored at the national center for missing and exploited children hope awards. >> i feel like i have come full circle. and we are all finally together celebrating the wonderful hope that you keep alive every day. >> reporter: jaycee dugard showing there is a way to make a comeback to life. >> the future is what you make of it. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm john donvan in washington. >> and that future now begins for the three young women of cleveland. thanks to john for that. next, good triumphs over evil. the heroes who fought to give these tragic tales of kidnapping a hopeful end.

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we heard it 1,000 times in newspaper articles and on tv, alarming reminders from authorities that the first 48 hours of a missing persons investigation are the most important. after that, it becomes all the more likely that the vanished will be gone forever. unless, of course, the stars

align and a hero intervenes. >> reporter: a story confronts us with the mystery of evil. >> it's really sad, i know she's got to be traumatized. >> reporter: we look at suspects ariel castro and his brothers pedro and oneil and wonder what darkness lurks. but there's also stories of goodness. >> i'm eating mcdonald's. i come outside. i see this girl going nuts trying to get out of the house. >> reporter: charles ramsey, the man who would not turn away from a cry for help. >> i was like, what's your problem? you stuck, just open the door. she said i can't, he got it locked. we had to kick open the bottom. lucky on that door, it was aluminum, it was cheap. she climbed out with her daughter. did >> reporter: he washes dishes at hodge's restaurant in cleveland. they also made a t-shirt honoring him. he said he'll donate all proceeds to the families of the kidnapped young women. what he did, his basic decency and his irrepressible spirit, it

made us smile with gratitude. ♪ i knew something was wrong >> reporter: an instant internet sensation overnight. ♪ something's wrong here >> reporter: it's happened before, the everyday compassion. rescuing the lost and missing. >> one of the main things for me is concern for the girls, from a mother's standpoint. they weren't giving me any kind of sign that they were in trouble, yet i thought they were. >> reporter: jaycee dugard spotted by police officer allison jacobs and her partner when philip garrido spoke to them. they ran a background check and found he was a sex offender. >> he was on parole, huge. he's got this record, this violent record. this is not going to be good. >> reporter: her mother's intuition and professionalism rescued jaycee dugard from her nightmare.

and the owner of a deli in mckeesport, pennsylvania, whose call to 911 rescued tanya koch, held for ten years. >> it is so important to be vigilant, because there's people like jaycee dugard, me, elizabeth smart, and now these three girls. don't ever give up hope. >> reporter: we are all each other's keepers, and we know it as john walsh, whose own 6-year-old son was taken from him and murdered, and who turned his pain into the crusade that became "america's most wanted" put it last night on "nightline." >> the public want to help, they don't know how to help. they had the guts to help me catch 1,200 bad guys and recover 60 missing children. >> reporter: there are hundreds of thousands of missing children right now. so many, just one glimpse away from rescue. if you see something, say something. because they're the real heroes. >> help me, i'm amanda berry. >> reporter: fighting for life, for freedom, calling to us. i'm here. >> i've been kidnapped and i've