Famous prison suicide People around the country expressed outrage when they learned that Ariel Castro, shown here at his 2013 trial, had kidnapped three young women in Cleveland, Ohio, and imprisoned them in his house for more than a decade, repeatedly raping them. Sentenced to 1,000 years without parole for his crimes, Castro killed himself by hanging just a month into his sentence. Around 5.5 percent of all prison deaths are due to suicide (Smith, 2013).