Sadomasochistic Castrations Performed in NC Dungeon
By Rachael Bell
http://www.crimelibrary.com/news/original/0406/0302_dungeon_castration.html
April 3, 2006
Haywood Courty, N.C. (Crime Library) — On March 21, 2002, Richard Peter Sciara, 61, moved from Topeka, Kansas into his newly rented mountain retreat on Peace Mountain Road in Waynesville, North Carolina.
He lived there with Michael Mendez, 60, and Danny Carroll Reeves, 49, employed by Harrah's Cherokee Casino located on the Cherokee Indian Reservation, which bordered the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. The secluded house was an ideal hideaway, allowing the men the privacy they needed to carry out their brutish sexual fantasies undeterred.
According to police reports, the three men were lovers who allegedly engaged in a sadomasochistic "master-slave relationship," headed by Sciara, aka "Master Rick." Their sex-play also involved other people from around the country who were reported to have traveled to the house to undergo "slave training" conducted by Sciara. The training was often held in the basement, which was referred to as the "Dungeon.
The dungeon was where some of the most gruesome sexually motivated activities took place. Over the period of several years, the three men recruited up to eight willing participants from a sadomasochistic website to undergo extreme body mutilation. Most of the men came to the house specifically to be either castrated and/or have their penises removed by Sciara. According to police reports, an anonymous witness visited the house in 2004 and described to police that, "testicles were removed and replaced with artificial testes known as 'neuticles.'" The person also suggested that he witnessed over a year at least six surgeries on five different victims, most of which were videotaped and stored on DVD's and on computer hard drives.
On March 23, 2006 Haywood County Police received an anonymous tip that illegal castrations were being conducted at the house, which led to a search warrant and the investigation of the house. During the search, police confiscated DVD's depicting Sciara in the dungeon performing surgery on an operating table, one of which included the removal of a man's penis and the rerouting of his urethra. Other items confiscated included, new and used scalpels, sutures, syringes, local anesthesia, catheters, an electric shock paddle, a book called "The Handbook of Pain Management," sadomasochistic/pornographic DVD's and three computers, among other pieces of evidence. By far the most alarming discovery was that found in Tupperware containers in the kitchen freezer, which contained frozen human testicles.
Not surprisingly, the three men were promptly arrested. Sheriff Alexander III of Haywood County said that the men "think they haven't done anything wrong" although "they basically admit what they've done," FOX Carolina's Jamie Guirola reported. The men believed that since the mutilations were conducted with consenting adults, their behavior was not illegal. However, according to North Carolina law, penis and testes removal is illegal, especially if not performed by a qualified licensed doctor.
The men are currently awaiting trial in Haywood County and are being held on $150,000 bond. Each man faces 10 felony counts and eight misdemeanor counts, mostly for performing operations without a license. Their trial is expected to take place in the summer of 2006.
UPDATE:
Three men accused of operating what police described as a
sadomasochistic "dungeon" that included castrations have been
sentenced to jail time. Richard Peter "Master Rick" Sciara, his
partner of 20 years Michael Mendez, and the man they called their
slave, Danny Carroll Reeves, pleaded guilty to felony castration and
maiming. Superior Court Judge Dennis Winner said it was difficult to
call the dungeon's willing patients "victims," but he said six
castrations performed there were certainly a crime.
"I think this is a type of perversion that cannot be tolerated by
society," Winner said during a sentencing hearing. In plea bargains,
Sciara, 62, was sentenced to a year in prison, though he has served
all but two weeks of that time. Reeves, 50, was sentenced to eight
months in prison, and Mendez, 61, received four months. Reeves and
Mendez have already served their sentences and will enter four and two
months of house arrest, respectively, and three years of supervised
probation.
In exchange for the pleas, the state dropped charges of misdemeanor
practicing medicine without a license and conspiracy. Prosecutors said
the men ran a sadomasochistic "dungeon" fashioned from an enclosed
carport in 2004 and 2005 at a house in a quiet neighborhood near
Waynesville in western North Carolina. Six men, some from as far away
as South America, came to the home for castration, while others went
seeking other types of body-modification surgery, prosecutors said.
Sciara had worked as a physician's assistant at the Colmery-O'Neil VA
Medical Center in Topeka, Kan., from February 1976 to June 1999.