Connecticut house of horrors neighbors describe chilling chance encounter with emaciated ‘prisoner’: ‘Didn’t think nothing of it’
WATERBURY, Connecticut — The neighbors next door to the Connecticut “house of horrors” described how their daughter had a chance encounter with the emaciated man whom police said was subjected to decades of nightmarish abuse and imprisonment.
Neighbors Zeffrey Guarnera and Suzette Baker told The Post their daughter, now 25, was swinging on a backyard swing set as a kid when she saw what appeared to be a young boy looking out a window of the dilapidated house next door.
“My daughter was on the swing set when she was 10 or 11 and saw the little boy up in that window,” Guarnera said.
“He waved at her and she waved at him and she didn’t think nothing of it but we haven’t seen him since,” he said, estimating the “little boy” she spied in the window that day — who was more likely actually in his late teens or early 20s at the time — was “probably around the same age” as his daughter.
“But I guess if he looked emaciated he might have looked younger because that’s why even the investigators said to me, ‘Did you see a man who may look like a child?’”
Guarnera said it’s possible they also saw the same person outside doing yardwork over the years without realizing it was actually the adult stepson of Kimberly Sullivan, who was arrested this week and accused of monstrously starving and neglecting him for more than 20 years.
The stepson, now 32, weighed just 68 pounds when firefighters pulled him out of the Waterbury home where he allegedly endured unimaginable cruelty for most of his life after he set the residence ablaze in a desperate bid for freedom.
As he received treatment for smoke inhalation and exposure to flames, he told first responders he set the fire intentionally in a cramped storage space where he was forced to sleep.
“I wanted my freedom,” he said, explaining that he was held captive since he was about 11 years old, cops said.
According to a warrant affidavit, the stepson was routinely starved and deprived of water, having to eat out of garbage cans, steal food and even drink from the toilet just to stay alive.
As a teenager and into adulthood, the victim said, he was forced to use bottles and newspapers when he wanted to go to the bathroom, according to the affidavit.
“The facts of this case, quite frankly, the facts are something out of a horror movie,” Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Don Therkildsen said, according to CT Insider. “That’s without exaggeration.”
He added that the victim lit the fire “knowing he very well could have died.”
Sullivan, 56, now faces charges of first-degree assault, second-degree kidnapping, first-degree unlawful restraint, cruelty to persons and first-degree reckless endangerment.
Her lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, said she is innocent and that they are “confident she will be vindicated.”
About The Author
