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From left, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight. Pictured herein in orange jail jumpsuits are rapist and kidnapper Ariel Castro, with his court appointed attorney, and serial killer Anthony Sowell, who murdered 11 Black women on Imperial Avenue on the largely Black east side of Cleveland from 2008 to 2009. |
ORIENT, Ohio-Cleveland teen rapist and kidnapper Ariel Castro was found dead in his prison cell yesterday evening, just over a month after a common pleas judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole after he pleaded guilty to raping and holding captive Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight for a decade at his since demolished home on the predominantly Black city's largely White west side of town.
A fired Cleveland schools bus driver and highly violent and abusive widower with two grown children, Castro, 53, allegedly hanged himself in the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, Ohio, though he was in protective custody after sentencing on August 1, 2013 by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Michael Russo.
He was not on suicide watch, prison authorities said.
He was reportedly found hanged in his cell at about 9:20 pm when correction officers' staff were making rounds, and was pronounced dead an hour and a half after he was transported to a nearby hospital. Prison officials said the cause of death is a likely suicide, though autopsy reports have not been concluded.
His death has stunned America as the case drew national attention across racial lines and highlighted the sensitive issue of violence against women.
Castro admitted at sentencing as part of a plea deal that he raped DeJesus, Berry and Knight, and he told Judge Russo moments before his sentence was handed down, that he and the three girls, and the child he fathered with Berry, were one "happy family."
Over 100 feet of chain was found in the Castro home when police raided it after his neighbor Charles Ramsey, who is Black, rescued them in May.
Berry was 17 when he kidnapped her not even a mile away from her home, DeJesus, who knew his daughter, was 14 and also grew up close to the Castro home like Berry, and Knight, now 32 and a women's advocate spokesperson, was 21 at the time.
Women's activists groups had no mercy on the child rapist an kidnapper and commented upon reported news of his death.
"While we would not condone any malfeasance around Mr. Castro's death, and to date that does not seem to be the case, and while we certainly believe that life is worth living, we hope he rots in hell," said Cleveland area community activist Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads the Imperial Women, a grassroots group founded in 2009 around the unprecedented murders of 11 Black women on Imperial Avenue on the city's largely Black east side by convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell.
Coleman said also that her group is "pleased that Mr. Castro has moved on to a better place for himself."
Like the home of Castro, that he turned over to the county land bank as part of a plea deal, the home of Sowell on Imperial Avenue, the now infamous street by which the Imperial Avenue Murders drew its name , was demolished too.
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Convicted serial killer of 11 Black women Anthony Sowell |
A former marine, Sowell (pictured), 53, sits on death row while his appeal of his rape, aggravated murder and other convictions is before the seven-member largely Republican Ohio Supreme Court, which is led by popular Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor.
