New report claims that Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro may not have committed suicide

Via ABC News

Via ABC News

Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro may not have committed suicide after all.  Castro, 53, was found hanging in his cell last month after being sent to prison for life after holding three women hostage for nearly a decade.

Via ABC News:

Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro may have died from auto-erotic asphyxiation, not suicide, and two prison guards falsified logs documenting their observation of him in the hours before he died, the state said Thursday.

Castro’s pants and underwear were pulled down to his ankles when he was found, leading the state to forward those facts to the state highway patrol to consider the possibility of auto-erotic asphyxiation, according to the report from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

The report suggests — but does not conclude — that Castro may have died as the result of auto-erotic asphyxiation, whereby individuals achieve sexual satisfaction by briefly choking themselves into unconsciousness.

Castro did not leave a suicide note and “multiple levels of assessment” did not find tendency toward suicide, the report said. A comprehensive mental health evaluation found “no evidence of serious mental illness or indications for suicide precautions were present,” according to the report.

While the world is certainly safer without Castro in it, I find it interesting  that he may not have been a coward who took his own life for fear of having to face a lifetime in prison, as many reports suggested after his death. I admit my first reaction was that his alleged suicide was the result of him not being able to deal with all of his power being stripped away. For a man who lived and thrived off of his power, brutality, and control over helpless women he stole from their lives, it seemed like Castro would be the type of criminal who wouldn’t take to life in prison too well. It turns out that Castro was just reckless and may have killed himself by accident.

Join the Conversation