Woman Held Captive For Weeks In Boarding House

A woman was held against her will for three weeks while she was beaten and raped at a South Bethlehem house, and the man allegedly responsible has been arrested, city police said.

Steven Kitchell, 34, was taken into custody by police officers in Newark, N.J. on Wednesday, according to a post in the Bethlehem police blog. He is being held in a New Jersey prison pending extradition to Northampton County, police said.

The alleged kidnapping and assaults took place at 826 Montclair Ave., a boarding house, which is rented out to five tenants at any one time, according to a visitor at the home Friday afternoon.

Kitchell was renting a bedroom at the rear of the house’s third floor, where he kept his victim locked up with the help of two women identified as “Emily” and “Jessica," in an affidavit of probable cause.

The victim told police that for the three weeks she was held, Kitchell provided her with heroin and made several attempts to get her to work for him as a prostitute.

The affidavit says that Kitchell raped the victim once, but beat her on several occasions, once shooting her in the leg with a BB-gun. He also beat her in the head and face with the BB-gun police said.

The affidavit says that on June 13—two days before she could escape—Kitchell showed the victim a black and silver handgun with a loaded magazine, and threatened her.

It was "Emily" who drove the victim to the boarding house and introduced her to Kitchell, who identified him as her boyfriend, police said.

The victim stayed overnight at the house and was told the next morning that she could not leave, police said. Kitchell took her wallet, which contained her birth certificate and Social Security card, according to the affidavit. That was on May 23, police said.

The women helped Kitchell “maintain control over the victim” by watching her and accompanying her on trips to the bathroom, police said.

A search warrant says that the victim told police she saw Kitchell in possession of 150 glassine bags of heroin, which he would put into small black trash bags and hide in the basement of the home.

At times, Kitchell would have "Emily" or "Jessica" hold the heroin, according to the warrant. However, an inventory of what police seized in their search of the house did not show any drugs were found.

The victim was able to escape on June 15 when she noticed that Kitchell left a set of keys in the room.

When she was locked alone in the room, she tested the keys to determine which was the dead-bolt lock that kept her imprisoned, police said.

After she found the right key, she took it off the ring, hid it on herself and used it to leave the room when all the occupants of the building left, police said.

After she unlocked the door, the victim told police, she threw the key back into the room where she saw it fall behind a radiator. Then she fled to St. Luke’s Hospital where police interviewed her.

Kitchell was not at the home when police executed the search warrant. They later learned that he had fled to New Jersey, police said.

Kitchell is charged with kidnapping, rape, sexual assault, indecent assault, simple assault and false imprisonment.