Cleveland residents cheered as the house where Ariel Castro tortured and raped three young women for nearly a decade was demolished on Wednesday.
Crowds of neighbors and onlookers watched as crews reduced Castro's two-story house to rubble in a little more than an hour, reports USA Today. The demolition was also streamed live online.
The Seymour Avenue home is where the 52-year-old former school bus driver held Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight in bondage after kidnapping the women about 10 years ago when they were teens. Castro pleaded guilty to 937 charges last week, including aggravated murder, rape and kidnapping, and was sentenced to life imprisonment, plus 1,000 years with no chance of parole.
Castro kidnapped the women between 2002 and 2004 and fathered a 6-year-old child with Berry. He also beat and starved Knight when she became pregnant, forcing her to miscarry five times. The women were freed on May 6 after a neighbor helped rescue them from Castro's home.
Prosecutors say that Castro, who claimed he was not mean to the women during the captivity, cried when he signed over the house deed and mentioned his "many happy memories" there with the women.
"This house represented evil incarnate, which is Ariel Castro," Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty said to reporters, according to the LA Times. "Now, it is gone." He added that he "wanted the property to come down and to come down quickly."
Joseph Frolik with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office said officials decided to tear down the house because "we didn't want some kind of gruesome, macabre shrine, if you will, that would get gawkers and curiosity seekers."
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