The
Cleveland Kidnapper, Ariel Castro committed suicide by hanging himself on
September 3, 2013. I will post information about his crimes from Wikipedia.
Please go to this Unit 1012 Blog Post to see an article on the crime.
 |
|
Ariel Castro Mug shot
|
 |
|
Berry, DeJesus and Knight prior to their
abductions
|
|
Location
|
2207
Seymour Avenue, Tremont, Cleveland, Ohio, 44113-5108, U.S.
|
|
|
|
|
Date
|
August
21, 2002 – May 6, 2013
|
|
Attack type
|
Kidnapping,
rape, aggravated murder, attempted murder, assault
|
|
Victims
|
Michelle
Knight
Amanda
Berry
Gina
DeJesus
|
|
Perpetrator
|
Ariel
Castro
|
Between
2002 and 2004, Ariel Castro (1960–2013) kidnapped three women and held
them prisoner in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. Michelle
Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina "Gina" DeJesus
were held against their will in his house on Seymour Avenue until May 6, 2013,
when Berry escaped with her six-year-old daughter and contacted the police.
Knight and DeJesus were rescued by responding officers and Castro was arrested
within hours.
On
May 8, 2013, Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts
of rape. Castro pled guilty to 937 criminal counts of rape, kidnapping, and
aggravated murder as part of a plea bargain. He was sentenced to life in prison
without the chance of parole plus 1,000 years. One month into his sentence,
Castro committed suicide by hanging himself with bedsheets in his prison cell.
Perpetrator
background
Castro
was 52 years old at the time of his arrest. He was born in Puerto Rico to Pedro
Castro and Lillian Rodriguez. Shortly after his parents divorced when he was a
child, Castro moved to the mainland U.S. with his mother and three siblings.
The family first settled in Reading, Pennsylvania, and later moved to
Cleveland, where Castro's father and several other extended family members were
living. Castro had nine siblings in total. According to Castro's uncle, the
Castro family knew the DeJesus family and had lived in the same west Cleveland
neighborhood. Castro was a 1979 graduate of Cleveland's Lincoln-West High
School.
Castro
met his future common law wife, Grimilda Figueroa, when his family moved into a
house across the street from hers in the 1980s. Castro and Figueroa lived with
both sets of parents, but moved into their own home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in
1992. Their home was a two-story, 1,400-square-foot (130 m2),
four-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a 760-square-foot (71 m2)
unfinished basement built in 1890 and remodeled in 1956. According to
Figueroa's sister, Elida Caraballo, when Figueroa and Castro moved into their
new home, "all hell started breaking loose". Caraballo and her
husband, Frank, claim Castro beat Figueroa, breaking her nose, ribs, and arms.
He also once threw her down a set of stairs, cracking her skull. In 1993,
Castro was arrested for domestic violence but was not indicted by a grand jury.
Figueroa
moved out of the home in 1996 and secured custody of her four children. Police
assisted in the move and detained Castro, but did not pursue charges. Castro
continued to threaten and attack Figueroa after she left him, according to
Caraballo. A 2005 filing by Figueroa in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations
Court accused Castro of inflicting multiple severe injuries on her and of
"frequently abduct[ing]" his daughters. A temporary restraining order
against Castro was granted, but was dismissed a few months later. Figueroa died
in 2012 due to complications from a brain tumor.
Before
his arrest, Castro worked as a bus driver for the Cleveland Metropolitan School
District until he was fired for "bad judgment" after a series of
issues, including making an illegal U-turn with children on his bus, using his
bus to go grocery shopping, leaving a child on the bus while he went for lunch,
and for leaving the bus unattended while he took a nap at home. He was earning
$18.91 per hour when he was discharged. At the time of his arrest, Castro's
home was in foreclosure due to three years (2010–12) of unpaid real estate
taxes.
Kidnappings
Michelle
Knight
Amanda
Berry
Gina
DeJesus
Captivity
Rescue
Arrest
and legal proceedings
Aftermath
Survivors
House
Castro's
death
On
the evening of September 3, 2013, one month into his life sentence, Castro was
later found hanging by a bedsheet in his cell at the Correctional Reception
Center in the Pickaway Correctional Institution. Prison staff performed CPR on
Castro before he was taken to the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
in Columbus, where he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. The following
day, Franklin County coroner Dr. Jan Gorniak announced that a preliminary
autopsy had found the cause of Castro's death to be suicide by hanging.
On
October 10, 2013, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction briefly
released a report that suggested Castro may have died accidentally from
auto-erotic asphyxiation, but not suicide. Gorniak rejected that possibility,
standing by her ruling of suicide. The report also said two prison guards had
falsified logs documenting their observation of Castro hours before he was
found dead. Castro was not on suicide watch at the time of his death, but had
been subject to routine checks every 30 minutes due to his notoriety.
A
consultants' report released on December 3, 2013, and officially concluded that
"all available evidence pointed to suicide, including a shrine-like
arrangement of family pictures and a Bible in Castro's cell, an increasing tone
of frustration in his prison journal and the reality of spending the rest of
his life in prison while subject to constant harassment". The Ohio State
Highway Patrol also reviewed the case and reached the same conclusion.
OTHER LINKS:
No comments:
Post a Comment