A search of the property where three woman were found after about a decade in captivity has not uncovered any human remains.

The announcement came as US authorities prepared to file charges against three brothers suspected of keeping three young women captive. Police said they found chains and ropes used to bind the victims inside the house in Cleveland, Ohio, where they were held.

Details about the women's ordeal began to emerge as euphoria over their rescue gave way to questions of how their imprisonment inside a house on a residential street went undetected for so long.

Several neighbours said they had called police to report suspicious activity at the house in a dilapidated area on Cleveland's West Side – where Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight and Berry's six-year-old daughter escaped from their captors.

But Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath said: "We have no record of those calls coming in over the last 10 years."

He added he was confident police did not miss opportunities to find the missing women.

Mr McGrath said FBI agents were searching through the house where the women were held since vanishing between 2002 and 2004 from the same neighbourhood.

"We have confirmation they were bound, and there were chains and ropes in the home," he said.

The police chief claimed the women had been allowed outside "very rarely" during their captivity but were in good physical condition, "considering the circumstances".

Ms Berry last night arrived at her sister's home as the family pled for privacy. She and her daughter, who was conceived and born in captivity, could be seen from an aerial television camera returning to her sister's house in a convoy of vehicles and going in the back door.

The women's imprisonment came to a dramatic end after a neighbour, drawn by the sound of screams, broke through a door to rescue Ms Berry, now 27, who disappeared in 2003. He helped her place an emergency call to authorities.

She was found with her daughter along with Ms DeJesus, 23, who vanished in 2004, and Ms Knight, 32, who went missing in 2002.

The three brothers suspected of kidnapping the women were still being quizzed by police last night.

Ariel Castro, 52, who was fired from his school bus driving job in November for "lack of judgment," was arrested almost immediately after the women escaped on Monday. Brothers Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50, were taken into custody a short time later.

Police have not said what role each man is suspected of playing in the case, but Ms Berry has named Ariel Castro as the man from whom she was trying to escape.

Questions have mounted about why the women's captivity escaped notice.

Israel Lugo, a neighbour, said he called police in November 2011 after his sister saw a girl at the house holding a baby and crying for help. He said police came and banged on the door several times but left when no-one answered.

About eight months ago, Mr Lugo said, his sister saw Ariel Castro park his school bus outside and take a large bag of fast food and several drinks inside.

"My sister said something's wrong ... That's when my mom called the police," he said. Mr Lugo claimed police came and warned Castro not to park the bus in front of his house.

In the one acknowledged visit to the house by Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services Department officers in January 2004, more than a year after Ms Knight disappeared and eight months after Berry went missing, no-one answered the door, Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson said.

City officials said a database search found no records of calls to the house or reports of anything amiss during the years in question.