Man who held, raped 3 women commits suicide

• Jan. 2004: Police go to Ariel Castro's home at 2207 Seymour Ave., about 3 miles from where Knight and Berry were last seen. No one answers the door. Child welfare officials had alerted police that Castro, a school bus driver, apparently left a child unattended on a bus. Police later spoke to Castro and determined there was no criminal intent.

• April 2, 2004: Georgina "Gina" DeJesus, 14, disappears while walking home from school. She was last seen at a telephone booth at the corner of Lorain Avenue and 105th Street.

• Nov. 2004: Psychic Sylvia Browne tells Berry's mother, Louwana Miller, on "The Montel Williams Show" that her daughter is dead.

• March 2, 2006: Miller, 43, dies after being hospitalized with pancreatitis and other ailments. She had spent the previous three years looking for her daughter.

• Dec. 25, 2006: Berry, her whereabouts still unknown, gives birth to a daughter fathered by Castro.

• Nov. 2011: A neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of Castro's house, which had plastic bags on the windows. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. Officers walked around outside the house and left, Lugo said.

• April 2, 2013: Family and friends of DeJesus gather for a vigil on the corner where she was last seen on the ninth anniversary of her disappearance.

• May 6, 2013: Knight, Berry, DeJesus and Berry's 6-year-old daughter are found at Castro's home after Berry yells to neighbors for help. Castro is arrested.

• July 26, 2013: Castro avoids the death penalty by pleading guilty to 937 counts in a deal that sends him to prison for life without parole, plus 1,000 years.

• Aug. 1, 2013: At a hearing for formal sentencing, Castro apologizes briefly but claims most of the sex was consensual and the women were never tortured. Knight makes a statement, telling him, "I spent 11 years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning."

• Aug. 7, 2013: Workers demolish Castro's house as part of his plea deal.

• Sept. 3, 2013: Castro is found hanging in his prison cell.

Ariel Castro committed suicide by hanging himself with a bed sheet in his prison cell, an Ohio coroner said Wednesday, just one month into his life sentence for the kidnapping, rape and beatings of three women he kept imprisoned for a decade.

The former school bus driver, who pleaded guilty to 937 counts in July, was found hanged in his cell at an Ohio prison late Tuesday night, a state corrections official said. Prison medical staff performed CPR before he was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

An autopsy on Wednesday confirmed the cause of death was suicide by hanging, said Dr. Jan Gorniak, the Franklin County coroner. She said she couldn’t comment on the circumstances in which Castro was found.

“This man couldn’t take, for even a month, a small portion of what he had dished out for more than a decade,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty, who agreed to a deal that spared Castro the death penalty in exchange for life in prison.

Through a spokeswoman, the three women — Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32 — all declined to comment.

Castro, 53, had been taken off suicide watch while still in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County Jail on June 5, a spokesman said, and his was the seventh suicide in Ohio prisons this year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which called for a full investigation.

Castro’s attorneys had tried unsuccessfully to have a psychological examination of him done at the jail before he was turned over to state authorities following his conviction, his attorney, Jaye Schlachet, said early Wednesday.

In an interview last month after Castro’s conviction, his attorneys said their client clearly fit the profile of sociopathic disorder and that they hoped researchers would study him for clues that could be used to stop other predators.

State prison and county jail officials denied Castro permission to receive independent mental health counseling, even though he had contemplated suicide in 2004 and was likely to suffer depression after being sentenced to life in prison, his defense lawyers said.

“We were never provided any explanation” for being denied independent mental health care, defense attorney Craig Weintraub said. “We don’t know what the rationale was to take him off suicide watch.”

Castro was sentenced on August 1 to life in prison plus 1,000 years in prison without the possibility of parole for abducting the women and keeping them in the dungeon-like confines of his house, where they were starved, beaten and sexually assaulted.

At the sentencing, Castro told the judge he was suffering from a pornography addiction.

“I’m not a monster. I’m sick,” he said.

The criminal case, one of the most sensational in U.S. history, captured international attention when it broke in May, as many people were elated by news the three women had been found alive, then stunned by the details of their ordeal. The public was startled by his apparent double life, with his reputation as a good-natured musician who even attended a vigil for one of the missing women.

The house where the three were held, bound with chains and ropes for periods of time, has been torn down along with two neighboring abandoned homes, creating an extended vacant lot in the working-class neighborhood.

Castro was transferred to the Correctional Reception Center outside Columbus, the state capital, on Aug. 5 and was to remain there while undergoing mental and physical evaluation before being transferred to a permanent lockup, prison officials said. He was in protective custody with guards checking on him every half hour and isolated from other inmates.

The Castro family learned of his death from the media, Weintraub said, and word spread quickly through the west Cleveland neighborhood.

“The last page has been turned,” said Julio Cesar Castro, Castro’s uncle and owner of a general store in the neighborhood where the women were held.

Said neighbor Walter Freeman: “I guess he couldn’t handle it. He took the coward’s way out.”