Ohio kidnapper Ariel Castro kills himself...
 

Ariel Castro, who held three women captive in his Ohio home for nearly a decade, has committed suicide at a state prison facility.

Castro, 53, was found hanging in his cell at around 9.20pm local time at the Correctional Reception Centre in Orient, Ohio prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said.

Prison medical staff performed CPR before Castro was transported to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The three women 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 neighbours for help. Castro was arrested that evening.

He was sentenced on August 1 to life in prison plus 1,000 years after his guilty plea to 937 counts including kidnapping and rape

I am so angry... what a horrible, horrible cowardly man!!

..yep, the irony of cowards...they had their freedom taken for 10 years and were subjected to terrible abuse as well..and all he could last was days really...

I'm disgusted, those poor women never even got their justice, they didn't even really get answers from him I'm sure, he took away their lives for a decade and then he got to take away his own... there are no words, just sadness on behalf of those three women and what he did to them :(

He didn't much like being locked up and held against his will, eh?

Pity he didn't take his own life ten yrs ago.Hope the 3 women and the little girl have a great support network .

I guess it saves the state the cost of housing him or executing him. Good riddance.

That's not really the point though is it? As said it's the cowards option.

Who cares? He's dead and he won't be hurting anyone else any more. It's a win win situation.

Awful man, but this is good news.

Wouldn't call his suicide cowardly, or any suicide cowardly for that matter. But that's a different debate altogether...

Lots of people care, and the three girls and their family will care, what a silly thing to say

The man kidnapped them and did all sorts to them over a number of years, I doubt they'll be crying over his death. He's not going to bother anyone again and now everyone affected by him can now move on knowing that. If he wants to subject himself to an eternity of nothingness then let him, it saves the state some resources either way.

Also don't get personal now, MM&I.

Ah well. At least theres no chance of him doing it again now.

Could have suffered a few years first like, but I'm quite happy with this.

I disagree, I think if you'd been locked up against your will for a decade you wouldn't be able to just move on, knowing that that same man had taken his own life to avoid facing the consequences of his actions. You'd feel cheated. One of those women spoke at his trial and she was looking forward to seeing him be locked up and now she won't get that satisfaction. I think if anything this will devastate them. He fathered a child with one of the women. He was all they knew for 10 years. This is not as straight forward as "oh well, everyone can move on now, he's not hurting anyone anymore." That simply isn't true. What he did to those women will hurt them for a very long time to come, especially the one who had a child with him because she will look at her child every day and see parts of him there.

How very cold to look at it from the point of view of saving the tax payers some money. I'm sure people would gladly spend their taxes on keeping someone like that locked up for the rest of his life. I know I would. As for calling his suicide cowardly - I don't think the actual act of suicide is cowardice; but the fact he chose to kill himself instead of repenting for what he did is sheer cowardice. What an awful, awful human being. I can't even begin to imagine how those women must feel today, knowing that their tormentor got the easy way out and they've been left with lives in tatters. I'm so devastated for them.

I feel the same, death is a realease..from pain, from anguish and torment.
He released himself, and it should not have been his decision to do that. There was no atonement, no remorse so there can be no closure for his victims now either, they will continue to suffer.

This..
..and this.

If he did years in jail or was executed, it wouldn't make the last 10 years any better for those girls. At least now they know he's dead with no chance of being freed and can try an rebuild their lives in peace!

It may not be the resolution she wanted but it's a resolution none the less. His death marks the end of the ordeal, the one that had a kid will never have to worry about this man trying some borked attempt to get visitation rights or something and dragging up all that pain in a few years time when she's began to heal. They can find some solace in the fact that he's never going to hurt them or anyone else again. I'm not saying they'll get over it overnight but now they can focus on healing.

I value the resources used on either executing him or keeping him alive a lot more then I value his life. He showed no compassion to his victims so why should I show any to him? I'm not against the death penalty for compassion towards criminals but for the fact that sanctioned murder lowers everyone involved and makes us just as bad, that and the fact that it costs more to sentence someone to death then it does to keep them alive. It's not cold to value innocents and resources over the guilty.

You could apply this logic to any prisoner in any prison anywhere....

If some scumbag wants to kill themselves then I'm not going to shed a tear for them, as long as they don't hurt anyone in the process then I don't care. I just think that sentencing people to death is below everyone and is hypocritical in it's nature.

I don't think it's a resolution at all. I think it's a never ending cliffhanger. She got her freedom back but she didn't get any closure, none of them did. He was publicly vilified and he was in the process of being sentenced but he killed himself before his punishment had been given out. You do make a lot of good points and they're equally as valid as the ones I'm trying to make, I think it depends on your perspective really... You're right, he didn't show compassion for his victims so why should we show him any? But by the same token, he didn't show compassion for his victims so we ought to... how tragic for them, that they didn't even get justice. The justice system has failed them. He was allowed to kill himself.

He'd already asked for that so it'd be very likely he would have tried persuing it again in the future

Don't you think his death is the best closure they could get?

Right now they'll feel like they didn't get justice, victims rarely do to begin with but I think in time they'll find more closure in his death then they would ever do with a life sentence, which is an admitted flaw of that system but nothing is perfect.

Maybe in the future... but not right now. I can see Dezzy's point about not having to worry about him being released in the future; but I think they'd have rather see him sentenced, spend a good few years in jail and then if he'd killed himself they might have been mad but at least he suffered for a while and had time to think about what he did... this is just a cop out and they'll be feeling cheated.

Terribly sad story all round.......those girls lives have been effectively ruined by this monster, they will never be able to completely move on from this especially as one of them has a child from him. Imagine the strain on her emotions trying to love her child and know that its father was responsible for ruining her and the other girls lives.

They may be in treatment for decades due to this, and what about the emotional distress this has caused all their families,almost too difficult to imagine.

That fact he took his life is not really the issue at the moment, a cowards way out or a repentent man making the ultimate sacrifice ? personally I wish he was still alive and made to suffer total incarceration for the rest of his life and then let him come out in a box.

I still do not understand how any of his brothers did not know anything about this...it kinda beggars belief. But I guess the whole thing was investigated and the girls would have testified had they interacted with other people during their time held hostage.

Hope they can salvage something positive from this although I do struggle to think what positives there are ...perhaps the child as her love for that child would to some degree have helped through this. Other than that it's just an unbelievably tragic story...

He got over 1000 years in his sentence though so that was never going to happen

That's 850 on good behaviour Niamh though...

I agree with Dezzy and Lee. He's not infesting this planet anymore, and I like to think that's how the victims will see it. It's in cases like this I really hope there's a hell and that he's in it, wishing he was back in prison.

well he would've been 2863's problem then :hmph:

I hope that's how they come to see it in time, and I'm sure they will, but I just think that right now, they're going to be devastated that justice hasn't been served... the justice system has failed them - how was he left alone long enough to have the resources and time to commit suicide? The one who testified in court desperately wanted him to be imprisoned for the rest of his natural life so he could begin to understand how they felt... and he never will now... :(

Yeah as usual when it comes to serious debates that turn to punitive issues Dezzy stands out as the more pragmatic of the bunch.

He's dead. Dead.

What place does pragmatics have in emotive issues?

It's a pointless argument. He got life in prison, people were already screaming that he deserved lethal injection. If he'd gotten death, they would've been screaming that he deserved life in prison so he'd suffer longer. He's dead now, and people are screaming that it's not good enough. No legal punishment on earth would ever have been good enough, so not much point in pretending people would suddenly have been happier if he'd been wasting away in prison for the next however many years until someone shanked him on his way to the showers.

he should of got the death sentence in the first place.
the fact that some on here think its an injustice just because he did it him self boggles the mind!.
many more should kill them self's.

I agree, it's one of those crimes where no punishment would be good enough, 1,000 years in prison or death by a thousand cuts.

His actions were almost beyond belief and to commit these crimes on a daily basis for over 10 years simply takes ones breath away.

Maybe we (society) are upset with ourselves on some level that we couldn't have interrupted his evil game years before, maybe we have a collective guilty conscience ??

Either way I wish this piece of scum could have served some meaningful jail time just so he could get a small taste of the horror he inflicted on these young innocent girls....!!!

I disagree, I think locking him up for life would have been good enough - it's what he did to those women for 10 years. I'm sure that there would have come a time, years down the line, where the news of his sudden suicide would perhaps have been a weight lifted off their shoulders (and perhaps that is how they feel now) - but right now I don't think that'll be how they feel at all... they'll feel cheated, that he got to quit, when they spent so long fighting to see a new day. It was the same for Natascha Kampusch; her kidnapper killed himself after she escaped and she was devastated by the news.

It's like when Harold Shipman committed suicide - yes the man is gone and has ceased to exist but what consolation is that for the hundreds, or thousands, even, of people whose lives he affected? There's not much justice in that.

Yes I remember the anger felt that he was allowed to take death over his punishment, as did Fred West he didn't even stand trial.

He was locked up for life (For killing an unborn baby and another woman on top of all the other things) the 1000 years was for a slew of rape charges and kidnapping