After nearly two decades, he wanted his freedom, he told police, as he recounted a hellish tale laid out in an arrest warrant that describes a life of “captivity, abuse and starvation.”

Firefighters responding to a house fire found a man who claimed he intentionally set the blaze to escape his room. He said he had been starved and held captive for more than 20 years by his stepmother.

The 32-year-old paints a picture of two decades of severe abuse, while his stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, denies all wrongdoing, writes