Kin demands justice for Connecticut house-of-horrors victim held captive for 20 years (Pic credit: AP)
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Kin demands justice for Connecticut house-of-horrors victim held captive for 20 years (Pic credit: AP)
A woman searching for her long-lost half-brother for years has demanded harsh punishment for those accused of keeping him locked up and starving him inside a Connecticut home for more than two decades.
Heather Tessman, who shares a biological mother with the 32-year-old victim, was horrified to learn of the unimaginable abuse he allegedly endured before his dramatic rescue from a burning home in Waterbury last month. Authorities, who likened his living conditions to a “horror movie,” discovered he had been kept in a locked room, deprived of food and water to the point where he had to drink from a toilet.
“I want to see them all fried,” Tessman said in an interview with WFSB, referring to the victim’s stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, and her two daughters, who at one point all lived in the house.
Sullivan, 56, has been charged with kidnapping and cruelty after the victim claimed she kept him padlocked in a tiny space, systematically starving him. His father and stepsisters have also been implicated in what authorities are calling a years-long nightmare.
A desperate search for a missing brother
Tessman, who only met her half-brother once as a child, said she had been trying to find him since he turned 18. But during her search, she alleges that those living in the home—his stepmother, stepsisters, and biological father—repeatedly misled her about his whereabouts.
“I think, personally, that she didn’t like that he wasn’t her son, and she took it out on him,” Tessman said, accusing Sullivan of singling him out for abuse.
“Her daughters got to go to school, have friends, jobs, a life. What did he get? A jail cell. For what? Locks on the outside of the door? Are you kidding me? You don’t treat people like that.”
The truth finally came to light when Tessman’s biological mother reached out to her, revealing that the emaciated man found in Waterbury was her missing brother.
“I had seen [the news] in passing and thought, ‘Oh my God! How does this happen?'” Tessman told CT Insider. “Then a few days later, my mom contacted me, and I started connecting the dots. I’ve been looking for him since he turned 18.”
A survivor’s road to recovery
The victim, who weighed just 68 pounds at the time of his rescue—less than a third of the average weight for a man his age—is now recovering in a hospital. It remains unclear whether Tessman or their biological mother have been in direct contact with him yet.
“He needs to know that I was trying to find him and that he matters,” Tessman said. “Life will go on, and we can only hope to grow and heal from here.”
Authorities said the victim had been confined in the home since childhood and finally took matters into his own hands on February 17, deliberately setting the house on fire to escape.
“He was, without exaggeration, akin to a survivor of Auschwitz’s death camp,” an official said of his condition.
Sullivan, who has denied the charges, is scheduled to appear in court on March 26.
