Update 10/22: In a press release dated Monday, the Dr. Phil Show announced the program will air a three-part interview between host Phil McGraw and Michelle Knight, who endured the longest captivity in Ariel Castro's house.
Program spokeswoman Stacey Luchs writes in an email that Knight was not paid for her appearance, and that McGraw traveled to Cleveland to speak with her. The show is set to air Nov. 4-6.
Original story:
Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus will tell their story in a book by a Cleveland native and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Washington Post, an attorney representing the women says.
"Gina, Amanda and their families have decided to take control and are now interested in telling the story of what happened to them," attorney Jim Wooley wrote in an emailed statement.
Wooley wrote that he and a team of lawyers representing the women pro bono reached out to Mary Jordan, a journalist for the Washington Post.
Jordan and her husband, Kevin Sullivan, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for their coverage of Mexico's criminal justice system.
Jordan grew up on the West Side of Cleveland and has known Wooley for 25 years, according to the email. She and Sullivan will work together on the book, the email says.
Wooley wrote that Berry and DeJesus will have control of the project.
"One thing led to another and now Gina, Amanda and their families want to begin the process of telling this remarkable story -- a story, above all else, about human dignity and human survival," Wooley wrote.
Earlier this year, Berry, DeJesus and Michelle Knight escaped from captivity in the West Side home of Ariel Castro, who kidnapped them in the early 2000s.
Castro, who is now deceased, pleaded guilty and received a life sentence. Guards at the central Ohio prison where he was held found him hanging in his jail cell last month.
Story by ideastream's Nick Castele.
