Charles Ramsey

On May 7th, 2013, Clevelander Charles Ramsey sat down in his living room, and was about to eat a Big Mac when he heard screaming coming from outside…

He opened his front door, and realized that it must have been coming from his next door neighbor’s house, so he walked over. But instead of his neighbor, Ariel, he saw a woman in the doorway clutching a child. She said that they needed to get out of the house, but that the door was secured and they were trapped. Although hesitant to break his neighbor’s front door, Ramsey agreed, and together they kicked out the bottom panel. The woman and her daughter crawled through…

But that was just the beginning! The lady said that she had been trapped in the house for years and that there were other women still inside! She ran to a nearby house and called 911 while Ramsey did the same on his cell phone. Within minutes, police and press had swarmed the street. What was going on?

The woman’s name was Amanda Berry. She had been kidnapped by the owner of the house and kept inside for 10 years, where she and two other women, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus, were kept in dismal conditions and sexually abused. They were all rescued and reunited with their families after a decade. The kidnapper, Ariel Castro, was arrested minutes later at a nearby McDonald’s. The whole city of Cleveland, Ohio, was overjoyed to learn that the missing women had been found alive after so long, and the rescue made headlines across the world!!

Ramsey gave an iconic interview with a local news station, just minutes after the news broke, and it quickly went viral.

“I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Dead Giveaway. Something is wrong here.” - Charles Ramsey

His candid demeanor during such a stressful episode caught people’s attention. The Gregory Brothers recorded a song by remixing his statement. Mike Epps parodied his reaction. Drew Carrey, a fellow Clevelander, personally met with him. He was skyrocketing to fame but his big break came on Snoop Dogg’s show talk show.

Snoop Dogg received an audio recording of Ramsey’s 911 call. In it, the dispatcher asked for Ramsey’s phone number and Ramsey gave it, but whoever provided the audio did not mute or obscure it to protect Ramsey’s identity. Snoop and his guest decided to call the number themselves to congratulate him, and Ramsey picked up. But they also broadcast the number to the entire world!

Ramsey received an unbelievable amount of support and praise. From across the world many sent their thanks and Ramsey was absolutely overwhelmed by the attention. As more evidence came to light, Ramsey also had some choice words for Castro and described in graphic detail how he would exact revenge on him. Talks of a reward for Ramsey abounded. He even received several marriage proposals. When a news reporter asked how Ramsey felt about all the congratulatory phone calls and texts he was getting, he replied that he now wished he had paid for an unlimited phone plan, as he had exceeded his allotted data. He eventually solved this by throwing his phone into the Cuyahoga river.

McDonald’s — whom Ramsey had referenced in his viral interview and where Castro had been arrested — gave Ramsey tons of $50 Mcdonald’s gift cards. Ramsey gave them out to children and the homeless, and when McDonald’s heard about this, they stopped giving him gift cards.

Ramsey appeared on Anderson Cooper, wrote a memoir, and since then has sought to avoid the spotlight. He met with Amanda Berry in 2019 on the sixth anniversary of the rescue, and claims that he and Michelle Knight, now known as Lily Rose Lee, sometimes see each other when out walking because they live nearby.

Ramsey and Berry in 2019.