May 4, 2021- 4:02 p.m.
A monster who kidnapped a 14-year-old girl and kept her in an underground bunker for 10 days — where he raped and tortured her — died on Monday in a South Carolina prison.
Vinson Filyaw, 51, who was serving a 421-year sentence after pleading guilty to the horrific 2006 crime, was found unresponsive in McCormick Correctional Institution, the State reported.
There were no signs he was killed, the outlet reported.
Filyaw’s disturbing kidnapping plot was featured in a 2018 lifetime show called “The Girl in the Bunker.”
Filyaw pleaded guilty in 2007.
Barney Giese, who prosecuted the case, described Filyaw as “a bad guy.”
“He got 421 years and deserved every day of it,” Giese told the State.
During his sentencing, Judge G. Thomas Cooper said what Filyaw had done was “unforgivable.”
“You have preyed upon helpless victims with violence and in a savage manner,” he said at the time, the State reported.
Evidence in the case showed that in September 2006, Filyaw stalked the young teen as she got off a school bus in Kershaw County.
He then impersonated a police officer, putting her under arrest because her family was cultivating weed, the paper reported in 2007.
He took the victim into the woods, raped her and put a necklace around her neck that he said would explode if she made an escape attempt, the report said.
Filyaw also had three other bunkers around Kershaw County, according to the State.
He then impersonated a police officer, putting her under arrest because her family was cultivating weed, the paper reported in 2007.
Jack Duncan, Filyaw’s defense lawyer, said ahead of sentencing that his client suffered from paranoia, delusions and alcoholism.
Still, Filyaw received a jaw-dropping 421-year sentence.
“It’s the longest specific sentence, I think, in South Carolina history,” Duncan said, according to the State.
