After serving only 33 days of a 1,000 year prison sentence for kidnapping 3 Cleveland women, Ariel Castro hanged himself in his prison cell yesterday, the New York times reports.
Castro, 53, was found hanging in his cell at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, Ohio at 9:20 p.m. Tuesday night. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Castro was placed on suicide watch after his arrest earlier this year for kidnapping 3 girls between 2002 and 2004 and keeping them captive in his Cleveland home.
A guard was supposed to check on the infamous prisoner in his cell every 30 minutes, a prison spokeswomen told The Times in an email. The spokeswomen said an investigation into the suicide is currently under way.
At his sentencing hearing, Castro portrayed himself as a victim of his abnormal sexual urges. “I believe I’m a porn addict. I’m not a violent person, I just kept them there without being able to leave.”
Now adults, one of the women, Michelle Knight, 32, (pictured above) spoke at Castro’s sentencing hearing.
Knight was a 20-year-old single mother when Castro lured her into his car in 2002 with the promise of a puppy for her son. She was starved and beaten each time she was pregnant, forcing her to miscarry five times. Today was the first time Knight saw Castro since she and Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, were rescued from Castro’s Cleveland home on May 6. The women all disappeared between 2002 and 2004 when they were 14, 16 and 20.
Castro said he never forced himself on the women, and that at times the women asked him for sex. He said there was always “harmony in the home.”
The 2-story clapboard house at 2207 Seymour Avenue has since been torn down.
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