Ariel Castro found hanging in cell

Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man who was serving a life sentence for holding three women captive in his home for nearly a decade, committed suicide last night at a state prison facility, Ohio corrections officials said.
Spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said the 53-year-old Castro was found hanging in his cell around 9:20 p.m. at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient.
Prison medical staff performed CPR before Castro was transported to the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University, where he was pronounced dead at 10:52 p.m.
Castro had been transferred to the Orient facility in early August from the Lorain Correctional Institution.
He was housed in protective custody at Orient, which means he was in a cell by himself and was checked on every 30 minutes at staggered intervals, Smith said.
“A thorough review of this incident is underway,” Smith said in a statement last night.
The three women Castro kidnapped disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. They escaped on May 6 when one of the women broke part of a door and yelled to neighbors for help. Castro was arrested that evening.

Castro was sentenced on Aug. 1 to life in prison plus 1,000 years on his guilty plea to 937 counts including kidnapping and rape.
The three women kidnapped, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, each said they had accepted a ride from Castro before they were taken. He was accused of repeatedly raping, beating and restraining the women, sometimes chaining them to a pole in a basement, to a bedroom heater or inside a van.
The women’s escape from Castro’s home two months ago at first brought joy to the city where they had become household names after years of searches, publicity and vigils, then despair at revelations of their treatment.
Their rescue brought shocking allegations that Castro fathered a child with one of the women, induced five miscarriages in another by starving and punching her, and assaulted one with a vacuum cord around her neck when she tried to escape.
They regained their freedom when Berry banged on a locked storm door of Castro’s Seymour Avenue home and asked someone to help her escape.
Neighbors spotted the frantic Berry and helped her break out. After Berry called police, officers entered the home, finding Knight and DeJesus upstairs.
At his sentencing, Castro told the judge he was addicted to pornography, had a “sexual problem” and had been a sex-abuse victim himself long ago.
The sentence imposed by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Michael Russo followed a rambling 16-minute statement in which Castro blamed his actions on a sexual and pornography addiction that led to compulsive behavior.
“I do want to let you know there was harmony in that home, “ the former school-bus driver told a courtroom packed with media members as well as Knight. “I was a good person.”
But Knight, as well as family members of the other victims, gave a strikingly different account of their years of captivity.
“I spent 11 years in hell,” Knight said. “ Now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all that happened, but you will face hell for eternity.”
Prosecutors had agreed to take a possible death-penalty charge off the table in exchange for Castro’s plea.
This is the second high-profile suicide in an Ohio prison facility in a month.
On Aug. 4, death row inmate Billy Slagle was found hanged in his cell just days before his scheduled execution. He was condemned to death for fatally stabbing a neighbor.