Ariel Castro, sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping, rape and beatings of three Cleveland women he held captive for years in his house, was found hanged in his Ohio prison cell late on on Tuesday, a state corrections official said yesterday.
The former school bus driver, who was under protective custody and isolated from other inmates at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, was found dead at about 9:20pm when prison staff were making their rounds, Rehabilitation and Correction Department spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said.
After prison medical personnel tried to resuscitate him, Castro, 53, was transferred to an area hospital and pronounced dead about 90 minutes later, she said.
Castro was sentenced on Aug. 1 to life plus 1,000 years in prison without the possibility of parole for abducting his three victims and keeping them imprisoned in the dungeon-like confines of his house, where they were starved, beaten and sexually assaulted for about a decade.
He was taken into custody just after the three women he held captive — Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32 — were freed from the house with assistance from neighbors who heard Berry’s cries for help and came to her aid.
Rescued along with them was Berry’s six-year-old daughter, fathered by Castro.
Capping one of the most sensational US crime stories in recent memory, Americans were elated by news that the three women had been found alive and freed, but were stunned by the circumstances of their ordeal.
Castro pleaded guilty in July to a total of 937 offenses, including kidnapping, rape, felonious assault and a charge of aggravated murder under a fetal homicide law for the forcible miscarriage of one of his three victims.
His plea deal with prosecutors spared Castro a possible death penalty for murder.
Castro had been incarcerated since Aug. 5 at the Correctional Reception Center, a prison processing facility outside Columbus, the state capital, about 241km southeast of Cleveland.
He was to remain there while undergoing a series of mental and physical evaluations before being transferred to a more permanent lockup, prison officials said.
“A thorough review of this incident is under way and more information can be provided as it becomes available pending the status of the investigation,” Smith added.
Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty acknowledged after Castro’s sentencing that a suicide note and confession written by Castro was found by authorities at his residence when they searched his home following his arrest in May.
However, McGinty dismissed the letter as an attempt of Castro, whom he described as a “narcissist,” to feel sorry for himself and to place blame on his victims.
The house where the three women were held, bound with chains and ropes for periods of time, has since been torn down along with two homes on adjacent lots.
A longtime bus driver for Cleveland public schools until he was fired last year after a series of disciplinary actions against him, Castro had kidnapped each of his victims by luring them into his car with offers of a ride.
The three vanished without a trace between 2002 and 2004 — two of them as teenagers — and were rescued on May 6, 11 years after the first of them disappeared.
At his sentencing, Castro apologized for his actions, but also sought to blame his behavior on a sexual obsession and his own history of being abused as a child, saying: “I am not a monster.”
Confronting Castro in court during that proceeding, Knight told him: “I spent 11 years of hell. Now your hell is just beginning.”
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the