?These kids all knew each other,? private investigator Chris Giannini says. During and after the girls? disappearances, in 2004, he employed a man named Fernando Colon - Ariel Castro?s ex-wife?s husband - as a security site supervisor at a local shopping center and got to know the inner workings of the family fairly well.
Colon had fallen under the suspicions of the FBI during their investigation into DeJesus?s whereabouts. By way of marriage, he was somewhat close to the Castro family, and his step-daughters certainly ran in the same circles at the missing teenager. Colon was soon brought in for questioning regarding the disappearances.
But he was cleared following a polygraph test. The man in turn insisted that FBI agents look into Ariel Castro, a man who seemed to attract tumult and disorder throughout his adult life.
?They did not follow up on that,? Giannini says. The Cleveland Division of the FBI offered no comment on the matter when contacted by Scene.