Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro dead in prison

Ariel Castro, the Cleveland kidnapper who held three women against their will for a decade,
has been found dead in his Ohio prison cell after apparently committing suicide.

States corrections officials said 53-year-old Castro was found about 9.20pm  hanging in his cell by prison staff while they were doing rounds at the facility.

Castro made international headlines when Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were freed from his Cleveland house after ten years of captivity under unimaginable conditions.                                                                       

When prison guards found Castro hanging in his cell Tuesday, they immediately began trying to resuscitate him. 

He was taken to Ohio State University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead about an hour and a half later - shortly before 11pm. 

It costs nearly $25,000 a year to house a prison inmate in Ohio, on average. The cost to house 

Castro, who was kept in high security, would likely have been much higher.

Castro's family - he has a son and three daughters by his ex-wife - was informed of his suicide about 1am.

A spokeswoman for the the Ohio Department of Corrections said the agency will make a full investigation of Castro's suicide to determine whether regulations were followed and if anything could have been done to prevent his death. 

Castro's attorneys tried unsuccessfully to have a psychological examination of Castro done at the Cuyahoga County Jail, where Castro was housed before he was turned over to state authorities following his conviction, his attorney, Jaye Schlachet, said Wednesday morning.

The former school bus driver was sentenced on life in prison, plus 1,000 years after he pleaded guilty to 937 counts of kidnapping, rape and battery. 

Castro claimed that he was 'sick' but 'not a monster' and blamed his barbaric treatment of the three young women to an addiction to pornography and abuse he sustained as a child. 

'I do want to let you know there was harmony in that home. I was a good person,' the delusional Castro told a court before he was sent away. 

He admitted that he kidnapped Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus off the streets of Cleveland and kept them chained and bound in his house of horrors for up to 11 years

      Freed: Amanda Berry, left, Gina DeJesus, center, and Michelle Knight, right, have all spoken out about recovering from their horrific ordeal being kidnapped, raped and tortured by Castro

WOIO-TV, which broke the news of Castro's death, reports that guards checked on him every 10 minutes while he was being held in the Cuyahoga County jail awaiting trial. 

He had written about killing himself in a self-piteous suicide note he wrote in 2004. The FBI found the note when they searched his home after his captives were freed.