Loud cheers greeted Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus as they arrived at their homes Wednesday afternoon, almost one decade after they were abducted, subjected to prolonged sexual and psychological abuse, and apparently bound with ropes and chains, in the Cleveland house of horrors.

The happy homecoming came on the same day that 52-year-old Ariel Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape, and police officers pulled out more than 200 items of evidence from Ariel Castro’s home on Seymour Avenue.

The message to the parents of the Boston bombing suspects was clear and unmistakable: “pack and go.”

And soon after the phone call from the Chechen authorities Tuesday, a car carrying government officials arrived to accompany the couple out of the republic.

Of Cleveland’s three Castro brothers, it was the middle one, Ariel, 52, who seemed to have his life in order.

Neighbors describe the other siblings—Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50—as kind and polite but nearly always drunk. No one could remember how they earned a living. Ariel, on the other hand, who was charged Wednesday with the rape and kidnapping of three women he allegedly held hostage in his home for nearly a decade, worked a day job for 20 years as a schoolbus driver until he was fired in November. While his brothers got around town on bicycles, Ariel owned a motorcycle and cars, including a Jeep Cherokee and a red Toyota pickup. He had at one time filled in on bass in a local band, Grupo Fuego. He didn’t drink nearly as prolifically as his two siblings did.

We first met Charles Ramsey, the hero who rescued three Cleveland women from close to a decade of captivity, in this amazing interview. His plain white T-shirt counterbalanced his colorful personality, and Ramsey’s intensity and wit shone through as he described his decisive actions. But first, he mentioned his meal at McDonald’s. Delicious.

The interview made him an Internet celebrity. Before long, “Charles Ramsey” was trending on Twitter, YouTubers were paying him Auto-Tuned homage, and Antoine Dodson was welcoming him into the pantheon of hilariously expressive local TV interview subjects.

(Here’s the requisite Gregory Brothers auto-tune:)

If it was possible to make a bad situation worse, that’s what Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh managed to do at a Senate hearing Tuesday morning when he blamed an increase in sexual assault in the military on the “hookup” culture prevalent among young people. Welsh said 20 percent of female recruits report being assaulted before they joined the military. “They come in from a society where this occurs,” he said.

Not only did Welsh’s remark seem to place blame on the victim, it also revealed a tendency to view sexual assault in the most benign way, as a date gone bad or a breakdown in communications rather than a violent act. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the first woman to chair the personnel subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, told The Daily Beast it was “outrageous testimony” that showed a fundamental misunderstanding about the violent nature of sexual assault. The senator is introducing a bill next week to take felony crimes out of the chain of command so that rape victims will feel more able to report violent assault without fearing repercussions from officers up the line.

The news stopped everyone in Cleveland dead in his or her tracks.

Three women who had been missing for close to a decade—Georgina “Gina” DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight—were alive and well. Berry had somehow managed (with the help of a neighbor) to escape through the bottom half of a broken front door of a house on Seymor Avenue on Cleveland’s Westside. She had her 6-year-old daughter, who evidently was born while she was in captivity, with her. All three women were taken to nearby MetroHealth hospital where a huge and jubilant crowd soon gathered and patiently waited for any bit of information on their condition.

Jacob C. was 11 years old and living in Michigan when he was convicted of criminal sexual conduct for touching his younger sister’s genitals. After serving a three-year sentence, he was placed on the state’s sex offender registry and forced to live separately from his mother and sister, in a foster home.

At 18, he began attending a local college, but his "sex offender" status drew the attention of campus police, who tailed him everywhere. He soon dropped out. Jacob tried to make a new life in Florida, but with his name, address, photograph, and details of his past offense available on an online registry for all to see, he had difficulty finding a job or a place to live, and for a time he was homeless. He married and had a daughter, but when he and his wife divorced he was denied custody, again because of his history.

It was supposed to be a night of celebration, but it ended in tragedy.

As of Monday, California authorities still don’t know what caused a 1999 white Lincoln stretch limousine to burst into flames on a San Francisco bridge Saturday night, killing five women inside, including a new bride. Four other women in the car, as well as the driver, were able to escape.

WE SCRIMP. We save. We plan. And we dream that when we retire—at 50 or 70 or 90—we’ll ride off into the sunset on a chariot made of our sequestered gold.

But you can stop the dream right there.