Cleveland kidnapper neighbour gets 445 years
Elias Acevedo, neighbour to kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro, pleads guilty to 297 charges including murders and rape.
The neighbour of kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro has been jailed for the kidnap, rape and murder of two women.
Elias Acevedo, 49, had pleaded guilty to 297 charges, including murders and rapes committed nearly two decades ago, including the sexual assault of his own daughters.
He was sentenced on Tuesday to more than 400 years in prison with no chance of parole, prosecutors said.
I'm not a monster, I feel a lot of remorse.
“I’m not a monster,” Acevedo said in the hushed courtroom as some of his child-rape victims, now adults, and relatives of the women watched, some wiping away tears.
“I feel a lot of remorse.”
He became a suspect in two murders committed in the 1990s after the FBI re-examined the disappearance of other missing women from the Seymour Avenue neighbourhood in the aftermath of Castro’s arrest in May.
He was the neighbour of kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro, who was sentenced to 445 years in prison for the kidnap, rape and murder of two women in the 1990s.
Acevedo initially faced charges for the kidnap, rape and murder of 30-year-old Pamela Pemberton who was found strangled in 1994, and Christina Adkins, who was 18 and five months pregnant at the time of her disappearance in 1995.
Acevedo lived on the same block as Castro during the 1990s.
Castro died while serving a life sentence, plus 1000 years, for the 10-year imprisonment of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.
He had pleaded guilty on Monday to murders and rapes committed nearly two decades ago and was sentenced to more than 400 years in prison with no chance of parole, prosecutors said.
Castro aftermath
Elias Acevedo became a suspect in two murders committed in the 1990s after the FBI re-examined the disappearance of other missing women from the Seymour Avenue neighbourhood in the aftermath of Castro’s arrest in May.
Castro was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping, raping and torturing three women for about a decade, after they and the child he fathered with one of them were rescued from his home nearby.
One month into his sentence, Castro was found hanged in his cell and his death has been ruled a suicide.
Acevedo pleaded guilty on Monday to all 297 counts against him, including the murder, kidnapping and rape of Pamela Pemberton, his 30-year-old neighbor, found strangled in 1994 and to the murder of Christina Adkins, a pregnant 18-year-old who disappeared in 1995.
Adkins body was discovered in a manhole of a busy highway in October, 18 years after her disappearance.
Acevedo also pleaded guilty to three rapes of children and the rape of his brother’s common-law wife in 1993. He was sentenced to 445 years in prison.
He confessed to the Pemberton and Adkins murders in October in an attempt to avoid the death penalty, according to prosecutors.
A registered sex offender, Acevedo was arrested in June for failing to register his address with authorities.