Ariel Castro's neighbor pleads guilty to murders, rapes

[News_Editor]

by James Valles

CLEVELAND, OHIO (BNO NEWS) -- A convicted sex offender who lived close to kidnapper Ariel Castro pleaded guilty Monday to killing two young Cleveland women and raping others as part of a plea deal that will spare him the death penalty and sentence him to life imprisonment instead, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Elias Acevedo, Sr., 49, of Cleveland, not only admitted to murdering his 30-year-old neighbor Pamela Pemberton and dumping her body in a field on October 24, 1994, but he also confessed to the 1995 killing of 18-year-old Christina Adkins, another woman who lived nearby and was pregnant. Adkins' remains were only found in October in a utility vault near a highway.

A Cuyahoga County Grand Jury indicted Acevedo on 293 counts, including four counts of aggravated murder, 173 counts of rape, 115 counts of kidnapping and one count of gross sexual imposition. The other crimes he confessed to include the repeated rape of his three young daughters and the rape of his pregnant sister-in-law some 20 years ago.

Acevedo was arrested earlier this year after failing to report his current address as a registered sex offender.

"You robbed me of my childhood. I have lived in fear but I will no longer," one of his daughters said, as quoted by the Plain Dealer newspaper. The woman's aunt, now in her 30s, also spoke out during the hearing and expressed her gratitude to have survived the abuse, though calling herself a "coward" for not coming forward with rape charges when she was younger.

At Monday's sentencing, FBI agent Andrew Burke said investigators retested a rape kit administered to the woman years ago and presented him with new evidence linking him to the rapes. But he initially pleaded not guilty until prosecutors offered a plea deal that eliminated the death penalty.

FBI and detectives from the Cleveland Police Department re-examined the disappearances of missing women from the Seymour Avenue neighborhood in the aftermath of the Ariel Castro arrest. "This should send a message to other sex offenders that you can run, but you cannot hide; and as a promise kept to survivors and their families, we will never forget, nor will we ever give up," Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said previously.

Judge Michael Donnelly sentenced Acevedo to 445 years in prison.

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