Kidnapper sentenced to nearly 400 years after holding woman inside hotel room and raping her for two years
Ian Kroe developed a friendship with the 74-year-old woman in the wake of his mother’s death before kidnapping and raping her
A man who held a woman captive in a hotel room for two years will spend the rest of his life behind bars after a judge sentenced him to 394 years in prison.
Ian Kroe, 58, was sentenced on Tuesday in San Mateo County, California after a jury convicted him in February of kidnapping and raping a 74-year-old woman. District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told SFGate he’s thankful for the judge’s “insight in recognizing the evilness of this [man] and the need to lock him up forever.”
Prosecutors say the 74-year-old, who has not been publicly identified, knew Kroe’s mother. She reached out to him after his mother died in 2016, and the two became friends afterward. The woman was in New Mexico, while Kroe was living in Minnesota.
That same year, Kroe flew to New Mexico and the pair went on what would become a four-year trip up and down the West Coast, Belmont Police Corporal Brian Vogel told the Palo Alto Daily Post. The two were never romantically involved, Vogel added.
Kroe then convinced the woman that there were people in New Mexico who wanted to hurt her and that she needed to turn her finances over to him, Vogel added.
“It just started out as a friendship with the victim, then suddenly this guy turns into a beast,” Wagstaffe told the Los Angeles Times.
In August 2020, the pair landed in a Hyatt House hotel in Belmont, where Kroe would go on to hold the woman captive for two years. There, he repeatedly raped her and threatened to kill her if she tried to escape, prosecutors say. Kroe also rained her bank account during this period.
The woman told police she repeatedly asked to leave. In 2021, the woman broke her ankle and Kroe refused to get her treatment despite intense pain, according to prosecutors.
In 2022, the woman managed to secretly contact a friend back in New Mexico who then called the police, according to the Times.
Police discovered the woman naked with multiple bruises and a broken finger.
Wagstaffe said the case was unlike any he had ever encountered. Kroe didn’t have any major run-ins with police before his 2022 arrest, he added.
“Nothing that would give a sign, or tell you to watch out,” Wagstaffe told the Times.
Wagstaffe described the man as a “master manipulator.”
“He truly does believe he’s the victim,” Wagstaffe said of Kroe.