A kidnapper who held an elderly woman hostage in a motel for two years has been given a prison sentence of almost four centuries by a California court in California.
Ian Edard Kroe, 58, subjected his now-74-year-old victim to two years of horror, repeatedly raping her and threatening her with torture if she tried to escape the hotel in which he kept her prisoner, the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office said.
Kroe, originally from Minnesota, struck up a relationship with his victim, a family friend, in 2016 after she reached out to him to offer her condolences following the death of his mother, according to a statement from the DA’s office.
But as his behavior became more controlling, he raped her numerous times, drained her bank accounts and kept her imprisoned in the Hyatt House Belmont Hotel for two years, the DA’s office previously said.
“It just started out as a friendship with the victim, then suddenly this guy turns into a beast,” San Mateo District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said in a statement on Tuesday after Kroe was convicted of 33 felony counts.
Kroe was handed a record-long sentence of 394 years to life in a case Wagstaffe said was unlike anything he or his prosecutors had ever seen before.
In August 2020, Kroe began holding his victim prisoner, raping her repeatedly and forcing her to perform sexual acts.
He threatened to kill her if she tried to escape and also said he would torture her for weeks before doing so, prosecutors said.
In 2021, the woman broke her ankle, and Kroe refused to get her medical treatment, despite her enormous pain, according to the statement from prosecutors.
The victim secretly contacted a friend back home in New Mexico in August 2022, who then called authorities.
She was found naked and covered in bruises with a broken finger and unable to move on her own by Belmont police, according to prosecutors.
Kroe, who faced multiple felonies including torture, forcible sodomy, felony threats and false imprisonment, had no serious criminal record before his arrest, Wagstaffe said, adding that Kroe will die in prison for his heinous crimes.
“It is one of the longest sentences ever handed out in San Mateo County history, and Mr. Kroe is richly deserving of that for what he did to this woman,” he said.
Kroe unsuccessfully tried to claim that all the acts performed were consensual, and even insisted his victim was controlling him via witchcraft.
A restitution hearing to determine how much Kroe owes his victim will be held Oct. 29.
