“Today” host Matt Lauer traveled to Cleveland for a jailhouse interview with convicted kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro yesterday — but was refused by the local sheriff.
Lauer arrived at the jail one day after a judge sentenced Castro to life in prison without parole plus 1,000 years for the kidnapping and rape of three women over the last decade.
But when Lauer and his crew arrived at the downtown Cleveland jail, their request to interview Castro — who delivered a sickening lengthy speech before his sentencing — was turned back by Cuyahoga County Sheriff Frank Bova.
Scott Taylor, an investigative reporter for 19 Action News in Cleveland, tweeted that he spotted Lauer at the jail asking for the Castro interview and “Sheriff Bova said NO.”
He added that Bova ruled “An Ariel Castro interview from jail isn’t going to happen in Cleveland.”
A spokeswoman for Bova said the interview was declined because Castro was being moved yesterday to Lorain Correctional Institution in Grafton, Ohio.
She said, “Matt Lauer arrived at the jail on Friday morning and his interview request was denied. Castro is leaving the building today and the interview was declined for security purposes.
“He is being moved to another facility because it’s such a high-profile case. An interview could be carried out at Lorain Correctional Institution if they OK it, [but] that is not up to us here.”
A spokeswoman for Ohio’s prisons department says Castro will start his term isolated from other inmates because of the case’s high-profile nature and won’t go into the general population for his own protection.
Castro struck a deal with prosecutors that spared him from a possible death sentence and pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, kidnapping and rape.
A rep for “Today” declined to comment. It is not the first time Lauer’s been turned away from an interview: In 2011, Lindsay Lohan denied him at her front door.