BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — A Brooklyn man who held his ex-girlfriend hostage and tortured her for a month inside his apartment was sentenced Thursday to 25 years to life in prison, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
Anthony Matthews, 34, was found guilty of kidnapping and assault in November for holding a woman captive in 2012, court records show.
Matthews had an on-again, off-again abusive relationship with the 29-year-old victim, prosecutors said.
After taking the woman to his Bainbridge Street apartment in Bed-Stuy on June 29, 2012, he tied her up with extension cords and telephone wires, beat her repeatedly with a piece of wood and threatened to kill her and her family if she tried to leave or call for help, according to detectives.
She tried to escape after two weeks but failed and Matthews burned her legs with a hot iron, heated a screwdriver and placed it along her body, including her genitalia, and broke some of her teeth after shoving a gun in her mouth, court documents show.
Following the month-long captivity, Matthews left the victim at his mother’s Bed-Stuy apartment and fled. He told the woman to say she prostituted herself and was attacked by a man she met on Craigslist, according to prosecutors.
The victim was taken to Woodhull Medical Center in critical condition with septic shock, detectives said.
She suffered injuries that included a fractured nose and ribs, spinal damage, burns, a low blood supply, and wounds that left her bones exposed, according to court records.
“The defendant deserves this harsh punishment for his inhumane and barbaric torture of an innocent woman,” Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said in a statement.
“May this sentence bring some solace to the victim for the unimaginable horror that she endured.”
An attorney for Matthews was not immediately available for comment.
