Lawyers that defended Cleveland, Ohio, convicted kidnapper Ariel Castro for holding three women captive in his home for over a decade said their client fits the profile of a sociopath and they hope researchers study him for clues that could be used to stop other predators.

A judge sentenced 53-year-old Castro to life in prison without parole plus 1,000 years on Aug. 1 for the kidnappings of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. They were individually taken between 2002 and 2004 when they were 14 to 20 years old. Casto accepted a plea deal and admitted to kidnapping and repeatedly raping the women until they escaped his home in early May.

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During his sentencing, Castro attributed his "sickness" to an addiction to pornography and sexual abuse he suffered as a child. His lawyers, Craig Weintraub and Jaye Schlachet, told the Cleveland Jewish News that while the public may view Castro negatively because of his actions against the women, studies should be conducted to determine whether his issue is genetic, organic or "limited simply to mental health."

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"There are a lot of people walking the streets who were victims of sexual abuse and addicted to pornography who aren't kidnapping women off the streets, holding them hostage for 10 years and terrorizing them," Weintraub said. "A lot of people don't do that. They get help. For whatever reason, he lacked the insight to get help, or desire, which exacerbated his mental health issues."

"We have familiarity with forensic diagnoses and clearly felt that he fit the profile of sociopathic disorder as well as narcissism and likelihood of antisocial personality," he added. "So the public can easily label that as 'monster' and 'evil,' but we also look at it in a forensic sense as a mental health issue, because someone doesn't get to this level of depravity and have the ability to lead a double life unless there are significant mental health issues.

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Weintraub said he and his partner are "hopeful" there will be forensic studies of Castro to try to understand if there is a way to find clues in "personalities like his" so that the public is protected from predators like their client. They think it would be "extremely valuable to society" for forensic psychiatrists to conduct evaluations of Castro, interview him, interview family members to get a better understanding of his behavior.

The attorneys also said they were stunned Castro's family never pushed to find out what was wrong with their relative. They also could not understand how his neighbors were not suspicious of his Cleveland home being boarded up for years, cutting off any chance for outsiders to look in where the three women were being held against their will for years.

"How could people have not known?" Schlachet asked.

"For the family to not necessarily pick up signals that something is inherently wrong over a 10-year period when they would try to visit the house or visited the house or their requests were rebuffed is stunning," Weintraub said. "We talked to family and they just never thought to put the pieces of the puzzle together. They thought his behavior was odd and strange. It's so troubling that nobody picked up any signals. It's probably a reflection of our current societal approach to each other."

"Not to care about anything," Schlachet said.

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