Page 20 - John Jamelske News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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 j...

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 gra...

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 so...

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 thrif...

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...