Bed-Stuy Man Indicted for Kidnapping and Torturing Ex-Girlfriend

A Bed-Stuy man who allegedly held his ex-girlfriend captive for a month was indicted Wednesday on charges of kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment and attempted murder.

Anthony Matthews, 31, was arrested on August 1, after he drove the tortured victim to his mother’s apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and left her, bloodied, on her doorstep.

According to the 18-count indictment, Matthews took the victim from her father’s Peekskill home on June 29 and drove her to his cousin’s Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment on Bainbridge Street between Malcolm X Boulevard and Patchen Avenue, where she was held captive for a month.

Over the next 31 days, Matthews—an ex-con served 12-years in prison for shooting a man in the buttocks—tortured and beat the woman while she was bound around her arms and legs with extension cords, electronic charger cords and other restraints, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.

She was beaten with wooden planks, including one with protruding nails. Court records show, he used a screwdriver and a scalding-hot iron to repeatedly burn her legs, arms, torso and private parts, while he threatened to shoot and kill her if she tried to escape.

The indictment also alleges that during that time, the defendant shoved a gun in her mouth, breaking several of her teeth. 

By the time Matthews dumped her off at his mother’s home on Lafayette Avenue on July 30, she had open wounds and ulcers. One of the wounds on her leg was so deep that the bone was exposed. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Matthews told his mother that the woman “was attacked or assaulted by someone else.”

The mother called 911, and the victim was taken to Woodhull Hospital, where she remains hospitalized.

Medical records show the victim sustained severe septic shock, having lost more than half of the blood in her body. In addition, she had spinal damage, a liver laceration, fractured ribs, a fractured nose, numerous burns, bruising, and swelling on her face and body.

“This has been going on for a while,” Kelly said. “She had actually been in some form of involuntary custody for two years.”

Matthews is indicted on charges of attempted murder, three counts of kidnapping, three counts of assault, three counts of unlawful imprisonment and eight counts of criminal possession of a weapon.

He faces life in prison if convicted.