Oakland man who tortured woman in Belmont hotel sentenced

(KRON) — An Oakland man was sentenced this week for holding a woman captive inside a Belmont hotel room where she was repeatedly tortured and raped for years.

Ian Edard Kroe was sentenced to serve 394 years to life in state prison. He was convicted of 33 felonies for the repeated rape, torture, and imprisonment of an elderly woman who was friends with Kroe’s mother.

At a sentencing hearing on Monday, the victim said she “survived beyond all odds.” The 57-year-old man was sentenced by San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Rachel Holt.

Kroe was arrested in 2022 by police officers who found the 74-year-old woman imprisoned, naked, and injured inside a Hyatt hotel room in Belmont. She was unable to move on her own, prosecutors said.

The woman had been held captive between the summers of 2020 and 2022.

The victim knew Kroe because she was previously close friends with his mother. When Kroe’s mother died in 2016, the victim reached out to express sympathy. Kroe “struck up a friendship” with the victim and eventually convinced her to travel to the Bay Area, prosecutors said.

According to investigators, the victim was not allowed to leave the hotel room for months, and she lived under constant death threats. All of the victim’s finances, including bank accounts, were taken over and drained by Kroe, prosecutors said.

The woman was able to secretly contact a friend in New Mexico in the summer of 2022, and the friend alerted police. Belmont Police Department officers rescued the woman on August 20, 2022.

Following a weeks-long trial in February, jurors convicted Kroe on all counts, including intentional infliction of torture, rape, sodomy, false imprisonment, theft, and elder abuse.