Ohio monster Ariel Castro was sentenced today to life-plus-1,000 years in prison for the horrors he inflicted upon Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight over the course of the decade-plus he imprisoned them. “I was so alone,” said Knight in a statement to the court. “Emotional” doesn’t begin to describe it. “Days turned into nights, nights turned into days. Years turned into eternity. I knew nobody cared about me. He told me that my family didn’t care,” she said.
To Castro, through tears, she continued, “I spent eleven years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all this that happened, but you will face hell for eternity. From this moment on, I will not let you define me or affect who I am. I will live, you will die a little every day as you think about the eleven years and atrocities you inflicted on us.”
During his turn to speak, Castro apologized and asked for forgiveness, but he could not help but defend himself in a sixteen-minute rant that’s not worth watching. “I’m not a monster. I’m just sick. I have an addiction. Just like an alcoholic has an addiction,” he said, while denying certain charges that he’d already pleaded guilty to. “God as my witness, I never beat these women like they’re trying to say that I did. I never tortured them.”
“There is no place in this city, there is no place in this country, there is no place in this world for those who enslave others,” said Judge Michael Russo. “You don’t deserve to be out in our community.”
