Update (1:51 pm): looks like the supposed Ariel Castro knife is no longer for sale. The posting disappeared from Ebay some time in the last two hours, but the seller's other six items are still up. The url for the pocket knife (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ariel-Castro-Pocket-Knife-/221267759615?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33849611ff) now directs to an Ebay search for Little Mermaid-related (the mermaid was named Ariel) "Polly Pocket" dolls.
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original story (11:33 am): The Plain Dealer reported this morning that an Ebay user is auctioning off a knife the owner claims came from Ariel Castro's Seymour Ave. house.
The old knife was posted on Ebay yesterday and currently has one $100 bid on it. Bidding ends tomorrow evening. The seller, itsalwaysunique, writes: "You are bidding on a double-sided pocket knife taken from Aerial (sic) Castro's house before it was demolished! One of a kind! NR! GOOD LUCK!"
According to the item's shipping information, it's located in Fredericksburg, Ohio, a tiny town of just more than 400 people 70 miles south of Cleveland. It's not impossible something from the house could have ended up there.
But here's why it probably didn't: the seller currently lists seven items for sale, and the other six were each posted within hours of the Ariel Castro knife. There's a vintage microscope, an antique lamp, a cast iron "fire bowl," an old "canvas burlap gunny sac," a late 19th century medical book, and a "Winchester limited edition knife set." In the description of each of these items posted within hours of the Castro knife, including the non-Castro knife set, the seller says they were found while cleaning out the "estate" of his/her grandparents.
Of the seven old and worn-out items put up for auction yesterday, the only item that supposedly "didn't" come from the grandparents was the Ariel Castro knife. And if the seller really did have some connection to Castro, his first name probably wouldn't be butchered twice in the description ("Aerial"). I'm calling bullshit.
