Posted on 10/19/2013 10:53:44 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Elias Acevedo Sr., 49, was charged late Thursday for the kidnapping, rape and murder of his 30-year-old neighbor Pamela Pemberton and Christina Adkins, a pregnant 18-year-old who disappeared in 1995. Acevedo confessed to murders, which means authorities will not seek the death penalty.
Increased scrutiny of missing person cases in a Cleveland neighborhood following the arrest of kidnapper Ariel Castro led to charges against a neighbor for the murders of two women in the 1990s, the FBI said on Friday.
Elias Acevedo, Sr., 49, was charged late Thursday with the kidnapping, rape and murder of his 30-year-old neighbor, Pamela Pemberton, found strangled in 1994, and another woman believed to be Christina Adkins, a pregnant 18-year-old who disappeared in 1995. He also is charged with the rape of two young girls.
"Because the public became more aware and investigators were determined and relentless, people were re-interviewed and there was an increased interest in these missing person cases," FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson said.
Acevedo, who lived on the same block as Castro, was arrested in June at his Seymour Avenue residence after police questioned Castro's neighbors and discovered that Acevedo was a convicted sex offender who had failed to report his current address.
Acevedo became a suspect in the Adkins and Pemberton murders after the FBI re-examined the disappearance of other missing women from the Seymour Avenue neighborhood in the aftermath of Castro's arrest, according to a statement from the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office. Cleveland's Seymour Avenue garnered international attention after three women - Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus - were found with Berry's 6-year-old daughter in a dilapidated home owned by 53-year-old Castro. The women had been missing for about a decade - Castro had fathered the child.
While incarcerated, Acevedo's DNA was linked to a 1993 rape that occurred near the location where Pemberton's body was found. The FBI then linked Acevedo to the 1995 disappearance of Adkins, last seen in the vicinity of Seymour Avenue.
Acevedo has confessed to the murders, which means authorities will not seek the death penalty, according to Joe Frolik, spokesman for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office.
Acevedo led authorities to a spot near a highway where he had put Adkins' body in a manhole 18 years ago, according to the FBI and prosecutors.
The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office is in the process of positively identifying what are believed to be Adkins' remains after her identification card was found nearby. Castro pleaded guilty to 937 charges and was found hanged in his prison cell just a month into a life sentence. His death was ruled a suicide by the Franklin County coroner but an investigation into his death by prison officials has called into question whether he died accidentally while performing a sex act.
The indictment against Acevedo includes 115 kidnapping charges and more than 173 charges of rape involving Adkins, Pemberton and the repeated rapes over a period of months of two girls, starting when they were 8 and 11 years old. He was also charged in the 1993 rape of his brother's common-law wife.
"It is definitely bittersweet, you hate to give this news to the family but you hope it give them some closure," Anderson said.
Acevedo is scheduled to be arraigned in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas court Monday. He has not yet been assigned a lawyer, according to court documents.
Hell of a block.
What were the chances there would be two of these monsters living on the same block?
What are the chances these two are not the only ones on the block?
Strange times.
No death penalty? Isn’t this Ohio with a Republican governor, or has the rot been there so long justice is now a cozy cell, three meals and MTV for life?
Keep watching. A Santeria Cult or Shrine is probably going to be found soon. Santeria is a form of Voo Doo common in some areas of South America and Haiti. There’s just too much undiluted Evil for this to be a coincidence. Somebody was hosting a group.
Really, really slim.
There must have been some interesting block parties over the years.
* * *
Ugh. That's beyond disgusting. I was prepared to give Castro a tiny, tiny bit of credit for realizing the immensity of his crimes and attempting to atone for them by suicide ... but instead he was (may have been) still pursuing his twisted gratification? How driven, how hell-bent on gratification would you have to be to be doing that in a cell? I'm not given to thinking this way most of the time, but I'm starting to wonder about the possibility of possession.
Maybe you do or do not remember David Carradine - he was found hanged by the same method. Sickos!
Ladies, if you do not carry at least a .38 Sp revolver then carry a stout fixed blade knife. A hunting knife, not a kitchen knife.
Life is tough, it's harder if you're stupid.
The known Victims.
God rest their sweet, innocent souls.
I thought the latest is that isn’t how he did it.
Hmmm. In Christianity, (and most other religions, if you don't like Christianity) suicide is a sin, and there's no exception if you've committed a terrible crime. How would him have deliberately killing himself atoned?
Well to perhaps oversimplify, there are two schools of Christian thought, the permanent salvation school and the tripwire school.
If the permanent salvation school is right, a salvation could not be lost, although a reward could be reduced, by exiting the world via suicide.
But anyhow, he was a monster, whether ultimately saved or not, at least he WAS a monster. We would like to pride ourselves that we would never be monsters. But we can’t. We are all sinners doomed to an eternity as Satan’s slave in hell without salvation. Just how far our downfall might go before salvation began — is not in our hands.
How interesting.
Mrs.Robinson, the MIL who lives in the White House along with the Obamas, is a voodoo practitioner.
No wonder the White House is closed to the public.
It takes a village.
When Castro's captives escaped last year, I made the statement "when you encounter two rats that came out of the sewer, there are more rats in the sewer". This is the second serial killer captured since then, and last spring someone killed three women in another Cleveland neighborhood. Lots of rats in those sewers.
The first thing I thought of was that maybe they may have loosely worked together.
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