Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man accused of imprisoning and torturing three women for a decade, agreed Friday to plead guilty and serve a life sentence without parole, plus 1,000 years, NBC News reported.
The plea deal allows Castro, who abducted three young women from the Cleveland streets between 2002 and 2004 and held them in his home for a decade, in which time investigators said he raped and impregnated them while sometimes chaining them in the basement. He fathered a daughter with Amanda Berry, one of his captives.
"I knew I was going to get pretty much the book thrown at me," Castro told Judge Michael J. Russo of Cuyahoga County court in Ohio this week.
The three women, Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, escaped in May after the former broke part of the door and screamed for help while he was out of the house. The plea deal works well since the women will not have to stand trial, which was scheduled to begin in two weeks.
Castro faced 977 criminal counts, included attempted murder after one of the women told investigators he forced her to miscarry by punching her in the stomach, news reports said.
The three women put together a YouTube video on July 9 in which they thanked their supporters, and that they will persevere despite having "been through hell and back," Knight said.
