The Cleveland Plain Dealers reports that Ariel Castro's jailhouse suicide on Sept. 3 was “perhaps inevitable,” according to a report by two prison experts released Tuesday. Castro was despondent and fearful of perceived threat from guards and other inmates, reported law professor Fred Cohen and Lindsay Hayes, project director of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives. They said infractions by Castro's prison guards, who missed required rounds and falsified logbooks for the day of his death, did not lead to the suicide.
Castro was sentenced to life in prison on Aug. 1 for kidnapping, raping and imprisoning three females in his Cleveland home for more than a decade. In the report, Castro was described as a narcissistic and demanding inmate who blamed his criminal behavior on “his long-standing addiction to pornography and the mutual culpability of his victims.” He appeared “oblivious to the realities of his future situation,” the report found, and he was “incredulous that the media and other inmates should treat him so poorly.”