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Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty said in a sentencing memorandum filed on Wednesday that Ariel Castro, who chained his captives and fed them only one meal a day, “admits his disgusting and inhuman conduct” but “remains remorseless for his actions”.

The memorandum says many of the specific charges in Ariel Castro’s indictment reflect conduct documented by one of the women in her diary.

“The entries speak of forced s**ual conduct, of being locked in a dark room, of anticipating the next session of abuse, of the dreams of someday escaping and being reunited with family, of being chained to a wall, of being held like a prisoner of war … of being treated like an animal,” it says.

The sentencing could take up to four hours, court officials said, with Ariel Castro, his attorneys, his victims and prosecutors getting a chance to speak.

The legal team representing the women’s interests declined to comment in advance on whether they would testify or send statements to the court.

In the court filing, Tim McGinty offered new details of Ariel Castro’s treatment of the women, who he said were kept “in a state of powerlessness” through physical and psychological violence.

“He made them believe that their physical survival depended on him, and he threatened to end their lives if they did not comply with his every demand,” Tim McGinty said.

Ariel Castro, 53, lured Michelle Knight into his Cleveland home with the promise of a puppy for her son and tricked Gina DeJesus by saying she could see his daughter, Tim McGinty said.

He chained his captives by their ankles, fed them only one meal a day and provided plastic toilets in their bedrooms that were infrequently emptied, the filing said.

Ariel Castro menaced them with a gun, threatened them with tales of other captives, some of whom hadn’t made it home, and at one point locked all of them in a vehicle in his garage for three days while he had a visitor.

The captor claimed he didn’t have an exit strategy from his complicated double life and finally gave the women a chance to escape by leaving a door unlocked, the court filing said.

The women, each kidnapped separately when they accepted a ride from Ariel Castro on Cleveland’s blue-collar west side, quickly escaped after Amanda Berry kicked out the door panel on May 6 and Castro was arrested within hours.

The women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.

There was no comment from Ariel Castro’s defense team on the eve of sentencing.

Other horrific details of the women’s ordeal had already emerged, including tales of being chained to poles in the basement or a bedroom heater or inside a van, with one woman forced to wear a motorcycle helmet while chained in the basement and, after she tried to escape, having a vacuum cord wrapped around her neck.

Ariel Castro is sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years

Ariel Castro is sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years

Ariel Castro repeatedly starved and beat Michelle Knight each time she was pregnant, forcing her to miscarry five times.

He forced Michelle Knight on threat of death to safely deliver the child he fathered with Amanda Berry on Christmas Day 2006. The same day, prosecutors say, Ariel Castro raped Michelle Knight.

Prosecutors will ask the judge to prohibit Ariel Castro from ever seeing his daughter, now six.

Tim McGinty says experts will also discuss how Ariel Castro was able to keep the women captive for so long.

Amanda Berry, 27, made a surprise onstage appearance at a rap concert last weekend, and a second victim, Gina DeJesus, 23, made a few televised comments as a privacy fence was being erected around her house.

The third victim, Michelle Knight, 32, appeared with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus in a video in early July thanking the community for its support.

The sentencing memorandum was compiled from a wealth of evidence including diaries kept by the three young women which paint a horrifying picture of the physical and psychological torture they were forced to endure.

In the sentencing memorandum, prosecutors describe the horrific conditions the women endured. The women’s diaries, they say, “document abuse and life as a captive”.

It also includes an evaluation by a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University who describes the emotional toll that the ten years of captivity had on the women.

“He appeared to be evolving in an ever more dangerous direction, capturing younger and younger women, telling his captives he was hunting for replacements,” wrote Dr. Frank Ochberg.

Ariel Castro told the women he had had other victims, that some of whom had made it home and others who had not.

“These and other threats had the effect of terrifying the victims into subservience,” Dr. Frank Ochberg explained.

He added: “Castro hurt each of the three young women that he captured and confined in ways that create lasting wounds. He terrified them.

“The body responds to terror long afterward with uncontrollable visions, smells, sounds and sensations. These are called trauma memories and they are unlike ordinary memory. They come at night in the form of nightmares.”

In his evaluation, Dr. Frank Ochberg wrote that Michell Knight – who was kidnapped first after Ariel Castro promised to give her a puppy for her son – suffered “the longest and most severely”.

Ariel Castro has admitted that on one occasion Michelle Knight told him she may be pregnant and he forced a termination by putting her on a tea-only diet for several days, made her perform “knee bends” and jumping jacks.

However, when Amanda Berry fell pregnant, Michelle Knight helped save the baby’s life as Ariel Castro threatened to kill her if the child did not survive.

“It was Michelle who served as doctor, nurse, midwife and pediatrician during the birth. She breathed life into that infant when she wasn’t breathing,” wrote Dr. Frank Ochberg.

“At other times, she interceded when Castro sought to abuse Gina, interposing herself and absorbing physical and s**ual trauma. But each survivor had a will to prevail and used that will to live through the ordeal.”

The memorandum also describes how Ariel Castro controlled the movements of the women, keeping them in locked rooms and using physical restraints.

“There is only one bathroom in the house, on the first floor. The Defendant would not allow the victims downstairs to use the bathroom. They only had access to plastic toilets in the bedrooms. They were emptied infrequently.”

The document adds: “He controlled the temperature and the inflow of food and drink. He used the cold of the basement and the heat of the attic as punishment techniques.”

At one point during 2005 the three women were kept physically restrained in a vehicle in a garage for three days while the defendant had a visitor staying.

Amanda Berry’s diary was addressed to her mother, and then after her mom died, she “wrote to her mother in heaven, seeking to soothe her” and praying for deliverance and the health of her daughter who Ariel Castro fathered.

The diaries show how “the victims had to watch the rest of the world turn as they were held in captivity”.

“Holidays, world events, and even the passing of Ms Berry’s mother were observed by them, removed from the outside world.”

The purpose of the memorandum is to help establish a record that will serve as justification for Ariel Castro’s sentence should it come under review in the future.

Ariel Castro pleaded guilty last week to 937 counts, including murder and kidnapping, in a deal that dropped a possible death penalty in exchange for life in prison plus 1,000 years.

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Ariel Castro told police under interrogation that he was an addict who could not control his impulses.

The news came after prosecutors revealed they will likely seek the death penalty for the Cleveland kidnap suspect if extra charges are filed in relation to the termination of his victim’s pregnancies.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said yesterday that based on the facts of the case, his office intends to seek charges not only for the assaults endured by the victims, but also “each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies”.

Timothy J. McGinty said he would seek charges for each act of violence, rape, kidnapping, assault and “each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies that the offender perpetuated against the hostages during this decade-long ordeal”.

Ariel Castro, 52, hung his head in shame as he made his first court appearance

Ariel Castro, 52, hung his head in shame as he made his first court appearance

Ariel Castro, 52, hung his head in shame as he made his first court appearance yesterday morning, the first time he has been seen in public since he was arrested on Monday.

His brothers appeared alongside him but were later released from custody.

Ariel Castro stared at the floor throughout the short hearing at Cleveland Municipal court. He didn’t once glance up to face the packed courtroom from the moment he entered.

Flanked by five guards and wearing a blue prison jump suit, he shuffled into the courtroom alongside his brothers.

Ariel Castro, who is alleged to have kept Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus captive for over a decade, refused to look up at judge Lauren Moore and face the bank of TV cameras inside courtroom three.

He did not speak or acknowledge the judge when she set bond at $8 million.

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Ohio prosecutors plan to seek aggravated murder charges that could carry the death penalty against Ariel Castro, the man suspected of imprisoning three women for about a decade at his Cleveland home.

The charges relate to alleged forced miscarriages suffered by one victim.

Ariel Castro, 52, was arraigned in court earlier for the kidnap and rape of Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23 and Michelle Knight, 32.

Amanda Berry escaped on Monday and was able to raise the alarm.

Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty said the murder charges were based on evidence from one of the women held captive in Ariel Castro’s house that he had impregnated her, then physically abused and starved her in order to induce miscarriages.

“I fully intend to seek charges for each and every act of sexual violence, rape, each day of kidnapping, every felonious assault, all his attempted murders, and each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies that the offender perpetuated against the hostages during this decade-long ordeal,” Tim McGinty told a news conference.

“My office will also engage in a formal process in which we evaluate to seek charges eligible for the death penalty.”

“This child kidnapper operated a torture chamber and private prison in the heart of our city,” he added.

Earlier on Thursday, Ariel Castro appeared in court in Cleveland, handcuffed and dressed in blue overalls. He did not enter a plea.

Ohio prosecutors plan to seek aggravated murder charges that could carry the death penalty against Ariel Castro

Ohio prosecutors plan to seek aggravated murder charges that could carry the death penalty against Ariel Castro

He is charged with four counts of kidnapping, covering the three initial abduction victims and Jocelyn, Amanda Berry’s six-year-old daughter, who was apparently conceived and born in captivity.

The former school bus driver also faces three counts of rape, one against each woman.

Bail was set at $8 million, $2 million for each victim, meaning he will remain in custody.

Ariel Castro has been placed on suicide watch and will be kept in isolation, his court-appointed lawyer Kathleen DeMetz told reporters.

According to CBS News, Ariel Castro confessed to his crimes in a long, hand-written letter, apparently a suicide note that was found in the house.

In the letter Ariel Castro said he had been raped as a child by a relative, a law enforcement source told the US network.

Ariel Castro’s two brothers, Pedro and Onil, also appeared in court on unrelated charges. They had been arrested, but police found no evidence linking them to the crime.

Pedro Castro was fined $100 for public drinking, while two minor counts against Onil Castro were dropped.

On Thursday, ariel Castro’s daughter, Arlene, who was one of the last people to see Gina DeJesus before she disappeared in 2004 aged 14, wept during a TV interview.

Describing herself as “disappointed, embarrassed, mainly devastated”, she apologized to Gina DeJesus.

The three women were all abducted after accepting rides from Ariel Castro, according to a leaked police report.

They told officials they could only remember being outside twice during their time in captivity.

Cleveland City Councilman Brian Cummins said the women had told police they had only gone as far as a garage on the property, disguised in wigs and hats.

Brian Cummins, citing police information, said the victims had been kept apart inside the house until their captor felt he had enough control to allow them to mingle.

Amanda Berry, whose disappearance in 2003 the day before her 17th birthday was widely publicized in the local media, returned to her sister’s home on Wednesday.

A few hours later, Gina DeJesus, who went missing in 2004 at the age of 14, was also brought home.

Michelle Knight, who was 20 when she disappeared in 2002, remains in hospital in a good condition.

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