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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Torture-Abduction Gets NYC Man 25-to-Life

BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CN) - A federal judge imposed a sentence of 25-to-life on Thursday for the man who nearly killed his ex-girlfriend during a month-long kidnapping, during which time he beat her and burned her with an iron and heated screwdriver.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Alan Marrus imposed the sentence on Anthony Matthews, 34, nearly one to month to the day that a jury found Matthews guilty on Nov. 18 of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree assault.

Prosecutors showed that Matthews held an ex-girlfriend captive at his Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment for a whole month in 2012.

Matthews brought the woman to his 263A Bainbridge St. apartment after picking her up on June 29 at her father's home in Peekskill, N.Y.

"Once in the apartment, the defendant tied her up with extension cords and telephone wires, repeatedly beat her with a 2x4 piece of wood and continuously threatened to kill her," according to a statement from prosecutors, citing trial testimony.

When the woman tried to escape after two weeks of captivity, Matthews "beat her up, broke her teeth by shoving a gun into her mouth, burned her inner thighs with a hot iron and mutilated her body, including her genitalia, with a screwdriver that he heated with a lighter, the evidence showed."

Family of the woman, described as 29 in the press release, did not know where she was for the duration of her abduction.

Prosecutors say Matthews left her outside his mother's apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant on July 30, 2012, rang the bell and fled.

"He instructed the victim to lie and say she prostituted herself and was attacked by a man she met on Craigslist," according to a statement from prosecutors.

At Woodhull Hospital, doctors found that the woman was in septic shock because of a serious infection.

"She also suffered fractured ribs, spinal damage, lacerated liver, fractured nose, burns all over her body and open wounds that exposed bones," prosecutors say.

The government says the victim had a sometimes-abusive, on-again, off-again relationship with Matthews prior to her abduction.

Announcing the lengthy prison sentence awaiting Matthews, Kings County District Attorney Ken Thompson said "the defendant deserves this harsh punishment for his inhumane and barbaric torture of an innocent woman."

"May this sentence bring some solace to the victim for the unimaginable horror that she endured," Thompson added.

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