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SYRACUSE, N.Y. - A retired handyman pleaded guilty Tuesday to holding five women captive as sex slaves in an underground dungeon, two months after one of the victims escaped and made a frantic phone call that led to his arrest.
John T. Jamelske, 68, pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree kidnapping. Under a plea deal, Jamelske could serve 18 years to life. Each count carried a maximum penalty of 25 years to life in prison.
"He's been very agitated and remorse-stricken. He's been very troubled at times over the past several weeks," said J. Michael Forsyth, Jamelske's lawyer.
When asked if Jamelske knew what he was did was wrong, Forsyth said, "It took a while for him to come around to that realization."
Jamelske has been held without bail since he was arrested April 7 on charges of holding a 16-year-old girl hostage for nearly seven months in a two-room concrete bunker he built 3 feet under the back yard of his suburban Syracuse home. The bunker was linked to his home by a steel door, hidden behind tens of thousands of empty bottles and cans, that led to a series of crawl spaces and doors.
A 4-foot ladder leads down to the first chamber, which was furnished with refrigerator, a small tub, a portable hospital toilet chair and a bucket.
The second chamber had a microwave oven and a piece of dirty foam placed on top of plastic bread crates to serve as a bed. There was one chair. The bare concrete walls in the second chamber were covered with graffiti - some from the victims, Assistant District Attorney Rick Trunfio said.
Even now, weeks after being opened, the dungeon retains a stale, moldy smell.
"You can understand why the victims thought they would die down here," Trunfio said during a media tour of the underground rooms..
The 16-year-old girl was able to sneak a phone call to her sister when Jamelske took her out in April to run an errand after six months of captivity, police said.
In a whispered call, she told her sister she was being held captive and raped. The call led police to a weathered, blue, ranch-style house, hidden behind a wall of 20-foot evergreens and fenced off from neighbors.
After Jamelske's arrest, police identified four other women who said they were abducted and raped by him dating back to 1988.
During a search of the house, deputies said they found photographs of women chained to a wall. They also say they found diaries Jamelske forced his victims to keep, recording details such as when they had been raped, when they showered and when they brushed their teeth.
Authorities say the victims were a 14-year-old girl taken in 1988, a 13-year-old girl in 1995, a 53-year-old woman in 1997, a 26-year-old in 2001 and the 16-year-old.
The 26-year-old went to police after she was released after two months of captivity, but was unable to lead investigators to the house. The older woman, who was held nine months, also was unable to tell police where she was held.