>> yes. >> every single day? >> every single day. >> terrified women kept chained like animals locked away for months, even years. and he was their captor. a bizarre millionaire. now hear him tell his story in a dramatic jailhouse interview. >> i am not this horrible monster. i never hurt anyone. >> women alone and forgotten. how did they survive? in the darkest corners of the human mind -- >> i did not want to die. >> on msnbc reports. hi, everyone. when young girls disappear, it often becomes a huge national story. elizabeth smart, polly klaas, the sixth grader killed while on her way home from a friend's house. in that investigation, the amber alert system combined with media attention to help find a suspect within days of carly's

disappearance. but sometimes young women disappear and no one notices. that's exactly what happened in this story. a string of women missing and no one suspected a thing. it wasn't until years later that police were stunned to learn what had really been happening in their community and who had been to blame. here's rob stafford. >> heard the doors clinging open. i heard i'm back. >> i didn't know who it was going to be or what. >> the manicured suburbs are an unsetting place for the story we're about to tell. the victims' screams who sno one could hear. there is a dungeon in this story conceived in the darkest corners of the human mind.

and a millionaire predator who managed to imprison girls for years using chains and deceit. >> i'm not the monster that they're painting this horrid picture of. okay? >> on the surface, nothing here suggests the rolling hills in central county, new york, may have been a bizarre sort of bermuda triangle. a place where women and teenage girls mysteriously vanished for months or years at a time. only to reappear with wild stories of dungeon captivity and sexual slavery. stories that still might not be believed today if they hadn't turned out to be true. in mid-september 1998 the syracuse football team was gearing up for another winning season.

nobody around here was talking about a local native american girl who'd simply vanished without a trace. that item never made the news. that girl kirsten howard was 14 that fall and growing up fast. out late on a saturday night drinking with friends. >> my friends were talking to somebody else up the street and i was talking to somebody in a car which i don't really remember. and they turned around and i wasn't there. >> just like that? >> just like that. >> you were gone? >> yep. >> what is the next thing you remember? >> i had a chain around my ankle and i didn't know where i was. >> kirsten says she was lying naked on a cement floor in a tiny windowless enclosure. she says there was barely enough room for her to sit much less stand. though she doesn't remember how she got there, kirsten says she'll never forget the next person she saw.

an old man who came crawling in with crackers and kool-aid. >> did the explain to you why you were there? >> he just said that i was there because i had to have sex with him every day and that the bosses he referred to them as were keeping me there. >> how many times did he rape you? >> every single day. >> raped she says every day for the next three years. he says he gave her a basin do bathe in and a plastic container for a toilet. with flash light in hand, he insisted on watching her use them. after a year of being kept like an animal in which she learned was a shed housing pumping equipment, the man moved her into a more spacious quarters. a dungeon, an improvement but

not by much. two windowless concrete rooms. one with a bathtub. the other empty except for foam padding as a mattress. the room was four feet underground. though the ceilings were high enough for her to stand now, she says the daily rapes continued with numbing repetition. kirsten says the old man allowed her to write letters home and mailed them along with these pictures he took of her to show that she was all right. but even that small kindness carried a terrifying threat n. that he knew where he family lived and someone would kill them if they knew who he was. >> he said i'll kill your mother. >> in the fall of 1991, kirsten howard turned 17.

she says she spent three of the most important years of her life as a sex slave to an old man that kept her locked in an underground dungeon. while most girls have fond memories of those teenage years, she's blocked almost everything out. she says she doesn't remember much about leaving the dungeon, only that shortly before he set her free the old man somehow managed to get her on to an airplane and fly her to lake tahoe in california. >> i don't really remember getting there. we stayed in this cabin in the woods. and i believe we were there for, like, maybe a week or so. >> whether the old man drugged her to get her to tahoe and back to syracuse may never be known. but kirsten says the next thing she remembers is standing alone in front of the airport terminal in sir kus.

finally free after three years of captivity. >> i'm just standing there and i was free. i just ran into the airport. i found the first pay phone and called my mother. she came to pick me up. >> afraid the man might make good on her threats, the family decided not to go to the police. that decision would turn out to have dire consequences for other young women in the syracuse area. ten years after kirsten left the old man's dungeon, this woman went in. coming up, another prisoner, another victim. what would her fate be? >> reality just hit me like a ton of bricks. like oh my god. even if i knock this guy out, i can't open this door. >> there's no way out? >> no. there was no way out.

>> when msnbc reports continues.

returning to our story, 14-year-old kirsten howard has just stepped out of a harrowing nightmare. abused and shaken, but alive. for three years, she says she was held prisoner, kept chained like an animal in an underground dungeon and raped, she says, every single day. now she is free, back at last with her family. she has not gone to the police because she says the man who kidnapped her has also threatened her, promising to kill her family if she ever spoke out. his secret was safe, and he was about to strike again. here again is rob stafford. >> the night it actually happened, i was on acid. >> jennifer spalding, a single mom with a history of abusing drugs and alcohol, says she was walking through a rough section of syracuse late one night in may 2001 when an old man driving

a rusted mercury comet pulled over and offered a ride. but she says instead of driving to her home, the old man took her to his. she says the next thing she remembers is waking up naked on a rough concrete floor with a chain around her ankle. >> i was like, what the hell is this? it was scary. i thought i was going to die. >> as you looked around at the walls, did you see anything? >> just writing. i mean, it looked like girls' writing, you know, because there was pictures and a peace sign. >> so right away you know you're not the first young lady to be in this room? >> yeah. i knew somebody else had been down there. >> jennifer says the next time she saw the old man, he was standing in front of her and telling her that his job was to have sex with her every day. she says he told her he worked for very powerful people and even showed her a police badge to prove it.

>> he's like, well, every time that you don't have sex with me it adds on to the time that you're here. and i said, oh, so i will be going home? and he said, "yeah, whenever my bosses say you can leave." >> though jennifer says she fought with the old man at first, she quickly realized escape from the windowless room was impossible. the walls were thick concrete, and the old man always locked the dungeon steel doors behind him. >> reality just hit me like a ton of bricks. like, oh, my god. you know, even if i knock this guy out, i can't open this door. >> there's no way out? >> no, there was no way out. >> just as kirsten had ten years before, jennifer says she only saw the old man once a day, when he gave her one meal and demanded sex. >> so i just gave up, basically, and just laid there and let him do his business.

just let him get it over with. >> jennifer says the old man also told her she had to record on a calendar every time she bathed and every time they had sex. when jennifer asked for permission to write her family and let them know she wasn't dead, jennifer says the old man agreed to bring her pen and paper on one condition. >> you had to tell them that you're in a drug rehab and that you're all right. >> to jennifer that seemed a small price to pay, and for her family who'd reported her missing and feared she was dead, the letter read like an answered prayer. only later would she realize the problems that letter would cause for the investigators who were looking for her. >> "mom, i'm all right. i've been to drug rehab. i promise when you see me again, you'll meet a brand new person." >> he dictated that? >> yeah. i think he thought he was doing me good. >> according to jennifer, the old man's dungeon drug treatment program also included daily

bible readings before each rape. >> when he heard enough, i would close the bible and then the next thing you know, he's telling me it's time to have our daily sex. >> then two months after being kidnapped the sex stopped. jennifer says she was certain this was the end, that he tired of her and was going to kill her. a few days later she says the old man handcuffed and blindfolded her, put her in a car and began to drive. jennifer says she prepared to die. but instead, he gave her $270 compensation for her two months in the dungeon and dropped her off in front of her mother's apartment complex. >> he snips off the handcuffs, takes the sweatshirt off me, and tells me to get out of the car. >> just like that? >> yeah. i'm just like, thank god i'm outside and actually breathing air, i'm alive, and this guy is gone. >> later that night when her

mother took her to a hospital emergency room, jennifer says the doctors insisted she tell police what happened. like kirsten ten years earlier, jennifer says the old man had threatened to have her family killed if she ever went to authorities. but unlike the teenage kirsten, jennifer did go to the police with a sharp description of the man who had been holding her. >> he had white hair. he was bald up on top. i mean, he had deep-set green eyes. they were like deep in his head, he had thin eyebrows, pointy nose, high cheekbones, and like thin lips. very thin lips. and the voice was kind of high pitched. >> jennifer says she also told detectives assigned to her case that the old man drove an orange or tannish two-door mercury comet, a 1974 she thought. but jennifer says within days of taking her statement, the investigator closed the case,

telling her no orange or tan 1974 mercury comets were registered in the area. a police artist would never get the chance to sketch her description of the old man. >> they didn't believe your story? >> no. >> no one believed you? >> no. i called every single news station, the newspapers and everything. they didn't want to hear it. >> bluntly put, jennifer spalding just wasn't believable. she had a drug history. she'd written a letter saying she was in drug rehab. and now she was claiming she'd actually been an old man's sex slave locked in an underground dungeon. who'd believe a story like that? as far as the police knew, this had never happened before. >> i think they could have handled it better than they did. they could have took a composite, you know? they could have -- i mean, that's the least they could have done. >> nearly two years would pass before the press and police would be begging for every detail jennifer could recall.

but by then it was too late. the dungeon had a new tenant. and the story of the syracuse dungeon master was about to make headlines around the world. coming up, an escape and a capture. police find their way to the dungeon. >> you notice the bow of the ceiling which is nerve-racking. when you think you have three, three and a half feet of soil above us. >> when "msnbc reports" continues. tends to stay at rest. while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. staying active can actually ease arthritis symptoms. but if you have arthritis, staying active can be difficult. prescription celebrex can help relieve arthritis pain so your body can stay in motion. because just one 200mg celebrex a day can provide 24 hour relief

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learn more about the different insulins available in flexpen at myflexpen.com. flexpen, insulin delivery that goes with you. returning to our story now, two young women, two frightened victims locked away in a strange place, tormented by a strange man.

both say they were chained, raped, and eventually freed. one of them, single mother jennifer spalding, has just given police a very detailed description of her captor. she's even told them what kind of car he drives. but officers didn't believe her story. it just seemed too bizarre to be true. kept as a sex slave in an underground dungeon? now they're about to learn how horribly real her story really was. here again, rob stafford. >> thursday night is cheap beer and karaoke night at freddy's bar and grill on the north side of syracuse. on april 3rd, 2003, the usual crowd who come to see the aretha, elvis wannabes, saw something unusual. on three separate occasions, when a young african-american girl stood up to sing, an elderly white man got up and stood right next to her on the stage. cindy orman was the emcee.

>> at the time i thought he was just trying to perhaps encourage her. >> later, when the girl went to the ladies' room, some noticed the older white man waited outside the door. odd, but not alarming, the kind of thing that only seemed significant later on. >> he was with her wherever she went. he never left her side. >> puts up the shot. it's too long and syracuse is your national champion. >> a few days after the karaoke night, the syracuse area celebrated the end of college basketball's march madness with a national championship. it had been a long time coming, and syracuse wanted its moment in the national spotlight. little did anyone know that the moment was about to be eclipsed by a different kind of madness. on april 8th, the day after the basketball victory, the odd couple from freddy's karaoke

night was out running errands. while stopped at this bottle recycling center, the young girl slipped away and called her sister. "an old man is holding me against my will," she said. the sister in turn called police, who found the couple a few minutes later at this car dealership. as soon as the police pulled up, the 16-year-old leapt out of a rusty mercury comet, almost identical to the one jennifer spalding reported to detectives two years earlier. the girl told police the old man had kidnapped her, raped her and held her prisoner in a basement dungeon. the old guy looked harmless, but the police decided to arrest him anyway and sort it out later on. quicker than you could say karaoke, it was over. >> he immediately exercised his fifth amendment rights, asked for a lawyer. >> what police didn't know is that they had one of the most prolific sexual predators in the region's history in custody. onondaga county sheriff kevin

walsh said law enforcement and the local media hadn't even known there had been a single kidnapping and sexual assault, much less a series of them. >> as they were driving into the police station, he started telling them about the fact that he was with this girl who was a friend of his, and they'd had a relationship. >> and he's 67 and she's how old? >> 18. >> according to him? >> according to him. she's, in fact, 16. >> so he is talking without the lawyer? >> he's talking. >> a misunderstood may/december romance is all there was to it, the old man said. >> that he didn't plan on making it a permanent thing, it was just kind of a fling for the present time. >> mid-life crisis, or what? >> he was a little bit old for a mid-life crisis. >> but no matter what they thought about the old man's motives, police now had a name and an address. his name was john jamelske, and their search of his house, a

blue rancher by the highway, was about to tell them everything they needed to know. inside, this is what police found. the nest of a pack rat. cleaning supplies bought in bulk and stored on shelves. case after case of canned goods, ketchup, fruit juices, enough to last for months if not years. over here, the prized collection. thousands upon thousands of empty beer bottles, shelf after shelf meticulously organized by brand, some of them stacked alphabetically. but it was at the back of this room that police discovered what they were looking for, the entrance to the dungeon. it was secured by four heavy steel doors. this ten-foot tunnel separates the dungeon from the rest of the house. you have to get on your hands and knees to get there. it's cold, dark and damp down here. police say this was the path to john jamelske's other

collection. the underground prison was clearly a homemade job. the uneven, roughly finished walls were covered with graffiti, both religious and profane. a thin foam rubber pad made what appeared to be a bed in one room, a filthy tub, microwave and slop bucket furnishing the second. it was enough to give even hardened cops the creeps. >> you also notice the bulge of the ceiling, which is kind of nerve-racking when you think you have about 3, 3 1/2 feet of soil above us. >> investigators were dumbfounded. not only was the 16-year-old apparently telling the truth, but police say she might never have been victimized at all if jennifer had given them more to go on two years earlier. >> had we believed everything she had to say, we still couldn't have found him. >> the one fact she did have is she remembered that car. >> thoroughly investigated the car, but unfortunately we had the wrong year on the car.

we didn't look at '75s and '73s and '76s. you know, we just exhausted the possibility based on what she had told us. >> remember, jennifer had told them it was a 1974 comet. jamelske, it turns out, owned a '75. but now the detective who'd been skeptical of jennifer's story before was desperate to talk to her about the dungeon she described. >> he said, what did it say on the wall? i said it said wall of thugs. he says, we got him. we got him, jen. >> three words, "wall of thugs"? >> yeah. >> words you never forgot. >> never forgot, ever. >> and when the detective asked jennifer to pick her captor from a photo lineup -- >> i didn't even look at the other guys. i seen him automatically, seen him right off the bat and pointed right to his picture. that's him. coming up, uncovering a secret stash of evidence all captured on tape.

>> peace out. >> peace out. >> how many years had this been going on, and how many victims were there? >> you had no idea what was going on inside that house? >> nobody had any idea what was going on, including the neighbors that lived across the street. >> when "msnbc reports" continues. state farm. this is jessica. hey, jessica, jerry neumann with a policy question. jerry, how are you doing? fine, i just got a little fender bender. oh, jerry, i'm so sorry. i would love to help but remember, you dropped us last month. yeah, you know it's funny. it only took 15 minutes to sign up for that new auto insurance company but it's taken a lot longer to hear back. is your car up a pole again? [ crying ] i miss you, jessica! jerry, are you crying? no, i just, i bit my tongue. [ male announcer ] get to a better state. state farm. listen to this. three out of four americans don't get enough vegetables. so here's five bucks to help you buy v8 juice. five bucks. that's a lot of green.

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here's what's happening. 12 high school football players in pennsylvania face disciplinary action for their part in a brawl on the turf. police eventually broke up the fight but not before coaches and principals tried to break up the melee. those who say davis was wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in 1989 are hoping a parole board will vote in his favor. now let's take you back to "sex bunker."

returning to our story, at last police believe they've captured the man who has been tormenting a string of young woman. a 67-year-old grandfather named john jamelske. and in what lies beneath his house, they found the dungeon, a secret basement hideaway that's giving even veteran police officers chills. now they're about to discover that john jamelske was keeping a few other secrets. here again is rob stafford. >> at john jamelske's house investigators found evidence that jennifer spalding and the 16-year-old african-american girl had not been jamelske's only captives. in an upstairs bedroom they discovered a stockpile of pictures and videotapes that jamelske had taken of other young women in the dungeon. in this video a younger-looking jamelske seems to be in the throes of a second childhood, rapping along with one of his young captives. >> peace out. >> peace out.

>> role playing with her. >> word up. >> word up on a string. >> on a string. >> and working out. >> talk about school, because man, i got to go to school. >> in this scene the girl tells him she wants to go to school and that she misses her family. >> i can't wait to see my mom. >> i'll bet. >> i miss her. >> at first glance, the dancing, singing and role playing seem to be consensual, but remember, this girl, like jennifer and the 16-year-old african-american girl, was a prisoner locked underground and totally relied on jamelske for food and water. as far as she knew, her very life depended upon playing along. >> what do you guys wanna see? there ain't nothing to do down here. it's too boring. >> several times the girl looks right into the camera and appeals directly to jamelske's bosses, the men she believes have the power to set her free. >> you realize if i was home i

could be doing 10 million things right now and then i'm here? but i'm here and i can't do nothing. so please, please be fast. please. >> be fast. >> within days of the police discovering this tape, the victorious syracuse orangemen were bumped from the front page and replaced by lurid tales of sexual slavery at the hands of central new york's own dungeon master. it was a shock to those who thought things like that always happened somewhere else. >> i've lived in this county for pushing 60 years now. so i've been down that road many times. >> and you had no idea what was going on inside that house? >> nobody had any idea what was going on, including the neighbors that lived across the street. >> and plenty of people knew who this guy was? >> he's well known, you know, in his local community. he's been there for his entire life.

>> but did anyone really know john jamelske, the 67-year-old grandfather now accused of kidnapping and rape? >> i'm not the monster they're painting this horrid picture of. i'm a pretty nice guy. coming up, the dungeon master tells his side of the story in a stunning jailhouse interview. >> i never hurt anyone physically. >> chaining them up and keeping them in that room isn't hurting somebody? >> people wear ankle bracelets all day long. >> it's not jewelry, john, come on. you chain them to the floor. >> when "msnbc reports" continues. . show me the best way to design a vacation on a budget with expedia. make it work. booking a flight by itself is an uh-oh. see if we can "stitch" together a better deal. that's a hint, antoine. ooh! see what anandra did? booking your flight and hotel at the same time gets you prices hotels and airlines won't let expedia show separately.

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returning to our story, no one in this quiet community near syracuse, new york, could quite believe it. 67-year-old john jamelske arrested and accused of kidnapping and rape, of holding a string of women against their will in his secret underground dungeon. now the man known as the dungeon master is about to tell his side of the story in a dramatic jailhouse interview. is he really the monster he seems to be? here again is rob stafford. >> i'm in dewitt, where investigators are searching for clues into those young women held in an underground bunker. >> within days of john jamelske's arrest, the nation knew that a gaunt, gray dungeon master had been living in central new york, kidnapping

local girls and keeping them as sex slaves. >> i'm a pretty nice guy. >> in a network television exclusive, jamelske agreed to speak with nbc news from his temporary home in a syracuse jail along with his lawyer, robert earl. >> i was taking viagra. >> in a rambling 3 1/2-hour interview, we saw many different sides to the man who's been dubbed the dungeon master. animated. >> she is there like this with the music and she has her joint and -- >> angry. emotional. >> very, very much. >> even before his house became snared in a tangle of yellow police tape, jamelske was well known in his suburban syracuse hometown of dewitt but not exactly beloved. his upscale neighbors put up a fence to prevent his junk-strewn yard from spoiling their view. though many knew that jamelske, a retired grocer, collected

returnable bottles for the deposits, few could have guessed the eccentric old man was actually a self-made millionaire, thanks to some shrewd real estate investments out west and his own obsessive penny-pinching. >> i'm very thrifty, extremely thrifty. >> jamelske does not deny he kept women and girls locked up in his homemade dungeon for months at a time. he doesn't deny using them for sex or using lies and threats to ensure their silence. but in jamelske's world none of that makes him a criminal. so how do you think you'd feel if you were 15 years old and you were locked at your house in that room for a year? >> i would not mind living down there in that dungeon. >> come on. >> it was absolutely beautiful. there was a bed. there was water. >> you're saying everything a girl could want in that dungeon? >> anything that they wanted except leaving at certain times

was there. >> well, in any state i've been that's called kidnapping. >> that's what i understand the law says. >> and you're a smart guy, and you didn't think that you were kidnapping these women? >> nope. >> you seem very coherent, but what you're saying sounds absolutely insane. >> if you want to phrase it that way, you can. >> though mental examination showed him competent to stand trial, jamelske's twisted perspective on the people, places and events that landed him in jail seemed to come from a parallel universe. according to jamelske, every female who stayed in his dungeon went there willingly and happily exchanged sex for cash, room and board. so he's guilty of nothing more than cheating on his wife. >> that's basically -- what do you call it? adultery. so anyway -- >> but when you go to someone who's under age, it's not called adultery. it's called sexual assault. >> now i find that out.

i had no idea. >> oh, come on. >> i never hurt anyone physically. >> chaining them up and keeping them in that room isn't hurting somebody? >> people wear ankle bracelets all day long. >> it's not jewelry, john. come on. you chained them to the floor. >> it didn't hurt them. a half an hour or an hour after i took them off they were fine. >> how does a mild-mannered churchgoing family man become a sexual slave master? according to jamelske, the sexual obsessions that eventually landed him in prison began in 1985 when his wife, dorothy, a respected preschool teacher, became seriously ill. >> we rushed her to the hospital hemorrhaging. they couldn't get the blood in to her faster than it was coming out. we almost lost her a couple of times. >> and what happened to your relationship at that time? >> well, i always loved her very much every single second, but, you know, sex was pretty much out of the question.

and, you know, i needed my -- >> you needed to have sex with someone? >> yeah. >> and you're saying your wife was too sick to have sex? >> exactly, yeah. >> so you started to look elsewhere? >> yeah. >> john jamelske says in 1988, more than ten years before his wife died, he picked up a 14-year-old native-american girl while out cruising for sex. kirsten, who we met earlier. whether or not his wife ever knew may never be known. in the matter-of-fact tone of someone explaining the inner workings of a clock, jamelske says he simply wanted her for sex and decided to keep her chained close by in this shed on his mother's property. >> and you think that's okay? >> that's why i built the dungeon. she said, "this is kind of small." >> so you build the dungeon so you have more space? >> she said, "this is small, i want more room." >> can you blame her? >> hell, no.

that's why i turned earth upside down to get this place bigger. >> if it all sounds like the twisted logic of a madman, listen to this. jamelske says it was not until after he spent weeks in jail that his lawyers were finally able to convince him that kidnapping and keeping women and teenage girls locked in a dungeon for sex was a serious crime. >> i'm thinking, you know, maybe i'm going to get some community service or something of that nature for, you know, a little bit of unlawful imprisonment or whatever. >> jamelske admits he showed his victims an old police badge he'd found and lied about working for powerful bosses just to keep the girls in line and persuade them that he was as much a victim of circumstance as they were. >> yeah, i told them that i can't make the decision as to, you know, when you go home. so, you know, you can't cry on my shoulder and -- >> because you, john jamelske, are taking orders from someone else? >> exactly.

>> even though he admits locking women and girls in a dungeon with no toilet and forcing them to have sex with him every day, john jamelske seems to believe he is the real victim, a nice guy saddled with an insatiable sex drive, a devoted husband denied sex by his ailing wife, a sensitive dungeon master whose hospitality was abused by captives like jennifer spalding. >> every time she requested something, just like that. she went through bottles of a-1. i bought the biggest bottles i could find of a-1 steak sauce, and she could -- she could use like a half a cup on a steak. >> so you're saying you're waiting on jennifer hand and foot? >> yeah. i mean, that's the least i can do. i wanted to make it as nice as i possibly could for her. >> nice? it's hard to believe, but in jamelske's mind each of the women he imprisoned found him charming and practically

volunteered to be pampered in his subterranean love nest. in the end, that was the delusion that led to his arrest. confident the 16-year-old african-american girl actually wanted to be with him, jamelske began taking her out in public. >> she loved billiards. we played a lot of billiards. she liked bowling. >> so you're not worried about getting caught? she could grab someone and say, "this guy's holding me." >> why would she do that? >> why didn't she run or scream for help earlier? no one knows for sure. but on april 8th, 2003, she brought john jamelske's career as a dungeon master to an end when she slipped away and called her sister. >> after three hours what you don't hear from you is any sympathy for jennifer or any of the others. >> i would never do it over if i had it to do over, and i'm extremely sorry for what happened to each -- every one of them. >> but it sounds like you're sorry because of the fact you're

sitting here. >> no. >> and if you weren't sitting here, you'd probably still be doing it. >> no, i don't think i would, because i was taking viagra towards the end. and it would have ended because i don't have -- i don't have the physical urges that i had before. and i told her, i said, we got to have less sex. >> so you couldn't keep up at the end? >> no, no, no. >> but there were still plenty of questions ahead. while jamelske cooled his heels in jail, authorities desperately tried to get a final number on how many victims there were and if there were any who did not make it out of the dungeon alive. >> coming up, sensational charges and an emotional outcome. >> i've had a lot of time to think about it. i'm very sorry for what i did. >> when "msnbc reports" continues. wonder why other life insurance companies

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and now the conclusion to our story. to the community he had seemed so mild-mannered. a grocer retired from his job. a grandfather. a widower who had spent years nursing his sick wife. but for 15 years police say john jamelske had another identity as a sexual slave master in a makeshift underground dungeon he had built himself to abuse and imprison a string of young women. now he's heading to trial, accused of kidnapping and rape, and there would be a drama in the courtroom. once more, here's rob stafford. >> in early summer 2003 john

jamelske entered a syracuse courtroom for the first time. after two months of saturation coverage, the place was packed with people who wanted to see the notorious dungeon master up close. investigators determined that over 15 years there had been five victims ranging in age from 14 to 52, and all had survived to tell someone. they were ethnically diverse -- one native american, one african-american, one hispanic, one vietnamese and one caucasian. three told investigators they had known their captor by a biblical name, joshua, peter or paul. one said he told her to call him fish. four positively picked jamelske's mug shot from a photo array. but each described the dungeon in detail. >> your honor, for purposes of the arraignment -- >> it was certain to be a sensational trial, and everyone

wondered, would an elderly man looking at life behind bars mount an insanity defense or gamble on an outright acquittal in the face of such damning evidence? but when the time came to speak for himself, john jamelske did neither. >> that you are going to plead guilty to each and every count in this indictment? >> in a prearranged deal with prosecutors, jamelske agreed to plead guilty to five counts of kidnapping and let his victims divvy up his estimated million-dollar estate in return for a sentence of 18 to life. >> how do you plead? >> guilty. >> after 15 years of subjecting others to mental torture and sexual slavery, the syracuse dungeon master had quickly tired of the public spotlight. >> you are a sick coward. you're an evil man. you're a kidnapper and a rapist. your reign of terror is over. >> for once jamelske seemed

uncharacteristically contrite. when his time came to speak, he was brief and emotional. >> i'm just truly sorry for what i did. i've had a lot of time to think about it. and i'm just very sorry for what i did and for how it's affected everyone. god bless all of them. >> but less than 24 hours later jamelske told us his lawyers stopped him from giving the full statement he prepared, for fear he'd hurt his already slim chances of parole. if allowed, jamelske told us, he would have said some pointed things to the victims he felt had lied about the way he treated them. >> to number three, god bless you and have mercy on you, and have him help you increase your vocabulary. >> how can you say god have mercy on her? after what she has been through. >> because she lied. she lied about something very important. she's claiming that she was hit

in the ear, and she's claiming that she was hit in an ankle. and -- >> you raped her, and you robbed her of her freedom. >> i didn't rape her. >> oh, come on. what's she doing down in the dungeon? >> i did not rape her. >> you stood up in court and you said, i'm sorry for what i've done. >> yes. >> what are you sorry for? >> i'm sorry for having sex with a young girl. and i'm sorry for -- there were times when they did want to leave. and most of the time they were fine with it. >> but you sat here for hours minimizing everything you've done. >> i'm not saying that i didn't do anything wrong. i'm just saying i am not this horrible monster. i never hurt anyone. >> and that's the way things are likely to remain in john jamelske's world, a place where dungeon accommodations are posh, a place where there's little difference between chains of bondage and chains of gold. and jail is a virtual walk in the park.

you like it here? >> we play partner spades. the guys have taught me how to play checkers. we talk. i have gotten sort of like a walking club together, and we walk the perimeter together and we talk and we talk. >> what age will you be when you get out of prison? if -- what age will you be when you're eligible to get out? >> i probably won't get out. i probably won't get out. >> you'll probably die behind bars? >> probably. >> as for the women who once lived in john jamelske's world, life above ground has had its ups and downs. kirsten and jennifer now have families of their own. some are still living lives at risk on the street, but each says they'll never be entirely free of the cold chains and clammy dungeon air that colors the darkest corners of their minds. >> sometimes i'll just start crying for no reason at all, and i won't even know what's wrong with me.

>> john jamelske has now been moved to a maximum security prison, the clinton correctional facility in northern new york state. his home was put up for sale, with the proceeds to be divided among all five of his victims. the dungeon has been destroyed. that's our report. i'm john seigenthaler. >> for information on upcoming programs go to prime.msnbc.com. it was like seeing red. pure red. when i took the two lives, every