A man says his stepmom locked him in a room for decades. He escaped by setting a fire

Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of alleged domestic abuse.

After firefighters responded to a fire at a Connecticut home last month, one of its occupants revealed that they hadn’t only rescued him from the burning house — but from two decades of captivity.

The 32-year-old man, who has not been publicly named, is accusing his stepmother of keeping him locked inside a room in their Waterbury home — with minimal food and water, and no access to medical care, dental care or a bathroom — from the time he was approximately 11 years old.

Later, while receiving medical treatment, he told authorities that he had used hand sanitizer, printer paper and a lighter to set the fire in his upstairs bedroom to escape.

“I wanted my freedom,” he told first responders, according to the Waterbury Police Department.

Waterbury police announced Wednesday that an investigation by their major crimes unit, in collaboration with the Waterbury State’s Attorney’s Office, determined that the victim “had been held in captivity for over 20 years, enduring prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment.”

“The suffering this victim endured for over 20 years is both heartbreaking and unimaginable,” Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said in a statement, crediting law enforcement with making sure “the perpetrator is held fully accountable for these horrific crimes.”

Police said they arrested the man’s stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, on Wednesday on charges of assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, cruelty to persons and reckless endangerment.

Sullivan, 56, was arraigned in court that same day. Her lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, told NPR over email that she would appear in court on Thursday “for the purposes of posting bond,” which was set at $300,000.

Kaloidis said Sullivan “maintains her innocence and looks forward to the opportunity to clear her name.”

“While the allegations are serious, they are just that, allegations,” he wrote.

Sullivan’s stepson was rescued from the Feb. 17 blaze “in a severely emaciated condition,” according to police.

Medical records show he weighed just 68.7 pounds, which, at his height of 5 feet 9 inches, is considered life-threatening, according to a police affidavit and arrest warrant that was filed in state superior court and obtained by NPR.

First responders who treated the man for smoke inhalation on the scene noticed that he was “extremely emaciated, his hair was matted and unkempt, he was very dirty, and his teeth all appear to be rotten,” it says.

That’s when he admitted to starting the fire and accused Sullivan of locking him inside his bedroom. The affidavit says detectives later found burn patterns on the floor of his room, and locks — as well as plywood — on his bedroom door that corroborate his account.

The man, who was hospitalized in critical condition, spoke with detectives on two separate occasions in February and March while recovering at a medical facility.

“In the three hours that MVI [Male Victim 1] was interviewed he provided details of the evolution of his life over the past twenty years that amounted to a life of captivity, abuse and starvation,” reads the court filing, referring to the man as Male Victim 1 or MVI.

What the stepson alleges

According to the affidavit, the man told detectives that some of his earliest memories are of sneaking out of his room at night to eat food — and drinking water out of the toilet — because he was hungry and thirsty. After his family discovered food wrappers, he said, he started getting locked in his room at night.

He said Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families visited his home twice after his school contacted it out of concern that he always seemed hungry — he would steal others’ food and eat out of the garbage. After the second visit, he said Sullivan pulled him out of school permanently. He was in fourth grade at the time.

The man described the evolution of the locks on his door, from a chain lock to a padlock to a slide bolt lock. Police say the space he had been locked in since age 12 was not a bedroom, but a “back storage space” measuring about 8 feet by 9 feet.

He told them that once he stopped going to school, his routine remained the same for decades: He spent most of the day in his room and was only let out in the morning to complete various chores around the house, which he said could take anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours.

“Essentially, MVI was locked in his room between 22 to 24 hours a day,” the affidavit reads.

He said he received up to two sandwiches and the equivalent of about two small bottles of water per day, telling detectives that he was hungry “all day, every day, my entire life.” He said he had not been to a doctor since childhood and that the only medicine he ever got was aspirin.

He said he was not provided soap and had not bathed in “a year or two.” He described devising a system to dispose of his waste, urinating into bottles — and funneling it through a series of straws out of a hole in the window — and defecating into newspapers on the ground.

He said he educated himself with a dictionary and the several books he was provided with each year, kept track of time with a calendar and learned about the world almost exclusively through a small radio that was kept outside his room.

When asked why he didn’t speak to anyone about his experience, the man cited the threat of longer lockdowns and further withholding of food, and the false hope that Sullivan would let him out more if he earned her trust.

“MVI stated that he thought of breaking the window (later learning that there was a storm window that could not be removed) but MVI stated that ‘under pain of death no one was to see me,’ ” the document reads. “This is what Sullivan would say to MVI.”

The man said in addition to Sullivan and his father, his two half-sisters and late grandmother were aware of his captivity.

He said his late father would occasionally let him out of his room for longer periods to watch television with him or do yard work together. He said the last time he left the property altogether was around age 14 or 15, to dump yard waste with his father — and that his “captivity and restraint got even worse” after his dad’s death.

Sullivan’s lawyer, Kaloidis, told reporters outside of the courthouse on Wednesday that the man’s biological father was “the one that dictated how his son would be raised.”

“We think as the evidence comes out, you will see that [Sullivan]’s not the villain she’s being made out to be,” he added.

How he plotted his escape

The affidavit says the victim came into possession of the fateful lighter “about a year earlier after his father had died.” He was given some of his dad’s clothing afterward — and the lighter happened to be in the pocket of an old jacket.

The man told detectives that the day he set the fire was relatively typical up until that point. He left his room twice to do chores, once in the morning and once around 7 p.m.

“Around 8:00 p.m. MVI hears Sullivan’s bedroom door close and he thought ‘same old, same old,’ ” the affidavit reads. “He added that he doesn’t remember what time but did remember making the choice to set the fire.”

He told detectives he knew the fire would have to be serious enough that Sullivan wouldn’t be able to put it out by herself. When asked how he knew hand sanitizer was flammable, he told detectives: “I read.”

The man said he started the fire on the floor by his door and a stack of games, then stomped and yelled for help.

He said Sullivan opened his door, and “made him get up and go to the downstairs bathroom and wash his face” because “she did not want the fire department to know about his appearance.” At one point, he fell to the ground.

“He stated that he stayed on the ground and he purposefully didn’t get up so the fire department would be forced to get him,” the filing reads. “MVI believed this was the only way out of his situation.”

What others have said 

Kaloidis described the man’s allegations as “completely untrue” and “outlandish” outside the courtroom on Wednesday. He said Sullivan denies locking him in a room or restraining him in any way.

“These allegations seem to be based on the words of one individual, and one individual alone,” he said. “I did not see anything in the warrant to indicate any independent evidence to corroborate these allegations. So we’ll see how they stand up at trial.”

The police noted in the affidavit, however, that they found holes from previous locks on the door jam and plywood attached to each side of the door “not only to reinforce it, but to prevent any tampering of the outer locks.”

“You could also see the locks that were currently on it were functional and clearly meant to keep someone in, not someone out of the room,” they wrote.

The filings reviewed by NPR also include records from medical staff who examined the man after the fire and sworn testimony from an uncle who was concerned about him.

Medical staff described him as cachectic, referring to a condition also called “wasting syndrome” that is characterized by significant involuntary weight loss and muscle mass deterioration. Those records also indicate that the man spoke to medical staff about his experience, prompting “concern of a hostage situation.”

The affidavit also says the man’s uncle, Kurt Sullivan, provided a sworn statement to detectives explaining that he had not seen him since 2004 or 2005. He said that he attempted to reach out but got no response and grew increasingly concerned, so much so that he contacted a private investigator about a decade ago. He said the PI suggested he look for a death certificate.

After visiting his nephew in the hospital, he said, “he looks like a Holocaust survivor.”