Woman locked up stepson for 20 years until he lit a fire to escape, police say

A Connecticut woman allegedly held her stepson captive for more than 20 years, subjecting him to abuse and starvation until he intentionally started a fire in a bid to escape, police said.

Kimberly Sullivan, 56, was arrested Wednesday and charged with assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint and intentional cruelty to persons, the Waterbury Police Department said in a statement.

“Thirty-three years in law enforcement, this is the worst treatment of humanity that I have ever witnessed,” Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said in a news conference on Thursday.

Firefighters found the stepson inside the Waterbury home on Feb. 17 when responding to the fire. The 32-year-old was “found in a severely emaciated condition” and detectives determined he had endured “prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhuman treatment,” the police said.

The man, who is 5-foot-9, weighed just 68 pounds when authorities found him, according to an affidavit shared by CBS’s local affiliate WFSB and confirmed by the Waterbury state’s attorney for the Waterbury Judicial District. He told officers that he had been held captive by Sullivan since he was 11 years old, and started the fire in his second-floor room by using a lighter, hand sanitizer and paper, because “I wanted my freedom,” the affidavit added.

An attorney for Sullivan, Ioannis Kaloidis, said in an emailed statement to the Washington Post that his client “maintains her innocence and looks forward to the opportunity to clear her name.”

“Kimberly Sullivan is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. While the allegations are serious, they are just that, allegations,” the statement added.

The affidavit from the Waterbury Police Department, which contains several disturbing details, said the stepson was found in an extremely poor condition, with his hair “very dirty” and matted, and all his teeth appearing to be rotten. The police say they are not identifying the stepson because he is an alleged victim of abuse, including child abuse.

The stepson told officers that he began being locked in his room at the age of 3, when his family caught him sneaking out of his room at night for food and water because he was hungry, the affidavit said. He recalled having to drink water from the toilet because he was only getting about two cups of water a day, the affidavit said.

At that point, he was locked in his room only during the evenings, but he was pulled out of school during fourth grade, when the school contacted the Department of Children and Families, after noticing he appeared to be always hungry, asking others for food, stealing food and sometimes eating out of the garbage, he said, according to the affidavit. DCF visited his home twice, the affidavit states, during which Sullivan instructed him to say everything was fine.

After Sullivan pulled him out of school, “his weekday routine and captivity became brutally consistent for the rest of his life,” the affidavit states. He said he was initially locked in a room, and later, in an 8-by-9-foot space where the authorities found him, and was only let out for brief moments to carry out chores, the affidavit said. Police officers examining the house found a lock, and signs of previous locks, on the door that were consistent with the stepson’s descriptions. Investigators described the room where he was held as more of a “back storage space” that had no heat in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer.

“It was worse than the conditions of a jail cell,” Spagnolo, the police chief, said Thursday.

The stepson said he was not allowed out of the room to bathe or use the restroom, and developed a system in which he urinated into empty bottles that he’d funnel out the window, and defecate on newspaper that he would dispose of when he was let out for chores, the affidavit added. To keep him from escaping or seeking help, Sullivan would threaten him with less food and longer lockdowns, the affidavit states.

The stepson said his father and two half sisters were aware of his treatment, although they did not participate in it, the affidavit said, adding that while his father was alive, he would sometimes let his son out of the room to watch television with him when Sullivan took his sisters to events. His father, who died in January 2024, had suffered from a number of health issues and was a wheelchair user, police said, and his biological mother had not been involved in his life since he was 2.

After his father died, the stepson estimated that he spent anywhere from 22 to 24 hours per day locked in the space, and said for meals he was given up to two sandwiches a day, and two small bottles of water, the affidavit said.

When investigators asked him if he had been hungry, he responded: “All day, everyday, my entire life,” the affidavit said. After he was admitted to a hospital, medical staff documented he had a body mass index of 11 – severely malnourished – and diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and cachexia, a wasting syndrome often seen in cancer patients, according to the affidavit.

DCF, when asked to comment on the case and the department’s previous interactions with the family, said early on Thursday that it had received the query and was working on a response. During Thursday’s news conference, Spagnolo said DCF requested that the police conduct a welfare check in April 2005, but the officers didn’t find any cause for concern.

Police were called back to the house later that same month because the family wanted to file harassment complaints against members of the school district for “reportedly reporting them to DCF,” Spagnolo added. The staff at the last school the stepson had attended had also contacted different agencies in 2005, asking them to check on him, the affidavit states.

While the investigation is still ongoing, it appears at this point that Sullivan acted alone, Spagnolo said. Sullivan is being held on $300,000 bail.