He just couldn’t face a millennium behind bars.
Ariel Castro — the monster who held three women as his personal sex slaves for a decade in a Cleveland house — committed suicide last night by hanging himself in his prison cell, officials said.
The sick fiend was being kept in protective custody in Ohio’s Corrections Reception Center in Harrisburg after being sentenced last month to more than 1,000 years in prison.
The 53-year-old inmate was found hanging at 9:20 p.m., officials said.
He was able to off himself even though guards were supposed to be checking on him every 30 minutes.
“Upon finding inmate Castro, prison medical staff began performing lifesaving measures,” Joellen Smith of the Ohio Department of Corrections said in a statement.
“Shortly after, he was transported to [Ohio State University Medical Center], where he was pronounced dead at 10:52 p.m.
“A thorough review of this incident is under way.”
Castro had been in protective custody — but not on a full suicide watch — be cause of the notoriety of his case, in which the former bus driver pleaded guilty to 937 counts connected to the rape and kidnapping of his three victims.
The women — Michelle Knight, 32, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Berry, 27 — disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.