Ohio coroner: 6 bodies found were homicide victims

CLEVELAND – Six women whose badly decomposed bodies were found at the home of a convicted rapist were all victims of homicide, the coroner's office said Sunday.

At least five of the women apparently had been strangled, said Powell Caesar, a spokesman for the Cuyahoga County coroner. Decomposition made it difficult to determine how the sixth died, he said.

The bodies "could have been there anywhere from weeks to months to years," Caesar said.

None of the victims has been identified, Caesar said. Two were black, but the race of the others hadn't been determined, he said.

Anthony Sowell, a 50-year-old registered sex offender, was arrested Saturday when officers spotted him walking down the street of his east-side neighborhood. Court records and jail officials had no information about whether he had an attorney. No charges have been filed regarding the bodies.

The gruesome discovery left some in the community concerned about women who they had not seen in a long time. Ida Garrett, 72, remembered a friend who was reported missing in April. "I think one of them is her," Garrett said.

The first bodies were found Thursday night when police went to Sowell's home to arrest him on new charges of rape and felonious assault, but he wasn't there. The woman in that alleged attack survived. She said she knew Sowell and was raped at the house.

Sowell previously spent 15 years in prison for choking and raping a 21-year-old woman who was lured to his bedroom in 1989, police said.

As a registered sex offender, Sowell was required to check in regularly at the sheriff's office, which said he complied. Officers also visited his home, most recently on Sept. 22, just hours before the woman reported being raped there.

But since Sowell wasn't on parole or probation, they didn't have the right to enter his house — until Thursday when they had search and arrest warrants.

The three-story house with neat white siding sits in a crowded inner-city neighborhood of mostly older homes, some boarded up, and small corner stores.

The windows of the third floor, where the first two bodies were found, were wide open Sunday as a slight breeze blew. Some neighbors said a bad smell came from the house several months ago, but they thought then that it might be natural gas.

Garrett, the neighbor, walked to church services Sunday just one block from Sowell's home. She said the neighborhood was relieved by the arrest but worried about those missing, including one of her friends who disappeared six months ago, just after Garrett wished her a happy 43rd birthday.

The friend, Nancy Cobbs, lived one street away from the Sowell home. She was reported missing in April, and her family told police they fear she is among the victims.

"She seemed to be a very nice, quiet girl. I've known her since she was a teenager," Garrett said.

Clovice Ramsey, minister at All Nations Deliverance Ministries in nearby Maple Heights, held a "PEACE" sign on a corner within sight of the Sowell home and said the discovery of the bodies had damaged people's trust in law enforcement.

"They don't see the system working for them," Ramsey said. Sowell "is not being rehabilitated. They are not keeping a watch on him. I just feel that when the systems fails, the people give up. They give up on the system, and they give up on the God they can't see."

Sowell often walked around his neighborhood asking for money and looking for scrap metal to sell, neighbors said.

He returned to the family home in 2005 after his release from prison. The house was owned by two of Sowell's relatives, including a woman — described by neighbors as either Sowell's stepmother or aunt — who kept it up.

Neighbors said the woman moved into a nursing home after Sowell was released from prison. Teresa Hicks, a neighbor, said people feared that she might be dead. Police were looking into her status.

thats shocking, i heard some of it on the news last night

well here is some more....

CLEVELAND -- Cleveland Police say convicted rapist, Anthony Sowell has been charged with 5 counts of aggravated murder.

The announcement comes after three additional sets of remains were found at his Imperial Avenue home.

Two sets of remains were removed from the house this afternoon. A third set was removed a few hours later. It brings to nine the number of decomposed bodies found at the site.

The removal of the bodies came after a backhoe was sent to excavate the home's yard. The bodies are being taken to the office the Cuyahoga County Coroner.

According to a WKYC crew, lights and additional heavy equipment have also been brought to the home and a tent is being erected around the yard suggesting detectives will be on the scene well into the night. Police have also dispatched a mobile command center to the site.

Last week, the first six bodies were discovered inside the home where Sowell, 50, lived. The Cuyahoga County Coroner is using dental records to identify the victims.

Authorities say at least five of the original six victims were strangled. All of the victims were African-American women.

Detectives were also searching the house again Tuesday.

Sowell remains in police custody. Besides the five counts of aggravated murder, Sowell was charged Tuesday with rape, felonious assault and kidnapping. He's scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning.

hell thats awful........i hope they throw away the key and let him rot in prison

On the news tonight they said that at least 10 bodies had been found and they are still searching. Also they are going to search a couple of vacant properties near to Sewells house. Reminds me of Fred and Rosemary West.

Why people like him are allowed to live in prison, with their health needs paid for, eating three meals a day, all paid for by us I'll never know. :curse: I sometime wish we could enforce a more swift kind of punishment for creeps like this that get caught with damning evidence. We shouldn't be the ones paying for him to live quietly behind bars with the terror that he's caused. My prayers go to the victims families. Bastard!! :furious: May he rot in hell.

i agree with you tg.......


here is an update......
Ohio woman: I got away from serial killing suspect


CLEVELAND – Suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell seemed like a "civilized person" on the April evening that Tanja Doss went up to his third-floor bedroom for a beer — until, she said, he leapt up and began choking her and threatening to kill her.

The 43-year-old woman told The Associated Press on Thursday that she survived a night of terror through a combination of calm and cajoling, prayer and trickery. But when she escaped the next morning, she didn't tell police. Her past conviction on a drug charge, she said, made it unlikely they'd take her seriously.

"Now, I feel bad about it," she said, "because my best friend might be one of the bodies."

Police and a cadaver dog re-entered the home Thursday where Sowell apparently lived among the reeking, rotting corpses of 10 women and the paper-wrapped skull of another in a basement bucket. The ex-Marine, who served 15 years in prison for attempted rape, is being held without bail on five aggravated murder charges.

Just days after her own escape, Doss was helping search for her friend Nancy Cobbs. Now Cobbs is among about two dozen missing women whose friends and family fear fell victim to Sowell.

Only two victims have been identified so far — Tonia Carmichael, 52, of Warrensville Heights and Telacia Fortson, 31, of Cleveland.

Doss believes she only narrowly escaped the fate of those dug up from Sowell's yard.

She had met Sowell in 2005, after his prison release, but didn't know the real reason for his sentence. She found him to be "a civilized person, sitting outside drinking beer, a nice person." So she didn't hesitate to join him for a drink.

"And then he just clicked. I'm sitting on the corner of the bed and he just leaped up and came over and started choking me," she said. Shocked, Doss said she lay back and tried not to struggle. "He said, 'If you want to live, knock three times on the floor.' And I knocked on the floor."

Still holding her throat, he told her using several profanities that she could be "dead in the street" and no one would care.

Sowell made her strip and lay on the bed, she said, but did not attempt to rape her. Doss said she curled up in a ball and tried to talk him down, saying things like, "Why you gotta act like that?"

Then she prayed to herself, and eventually, both fell asleep. She awoke in the morning with Sowell acting as if nothing had happened, she said, asking whether she wanted something from the store.

She picked up her cell phone and pretended to call her daughter, then claimed her granddaughter had the flu. When Sowell left for the store, she went in the other direction.

She didn't report the confrontation because "my background ain't squeaky clean," she said.

Now, it's all she can think about.

"It goes through my mind all the time," she said. "Every time I think about it, I start shaking."

When Cobbs disappeared — four days after her 44th birthday on April 20 — Doss didn't think about Sowell as she helped search abandoned buildings and post fliers.

It wasn't until Monday, three days after bodies had begun turning up, that Doss finally went to police.

Sowell also faces charges of rape, felonious assault and kidnapping after a Sept. 22 attack on a woman at his home. A message left with the county public defender's office was not returned Thursday.

Near Sowell's home, a plywood memorial hangs from a chain link fence, the word MISSING stenciled in black. Five stuffed animals and an artificial rose adorn the sign, which holds fliers showing 13 missing women and three men.

The fliers reflects not just fears that their bodies might be on Sowell's property, but also community members' frustrations with how they say police treat missing-persons reports from their downtrodden neighborhood.

Some of the missing are women who lived on society's fringe. Some were active or recovering drug users. Some had gone to jail, producing criminal records their families believe are the reason police didn't take their disappearances seriously.

Cleveland City Councilman Zach Reed, at a rally with two dozen clergy members, said people should stop stereotyping those who might have ended up in Sowell's house of horrors.

"I want us to stop this conversation that they were crackheads, they were this and that," he said. "They were people."

Michelle Mason lived near Sowell's neighborhood and rarely went longer than two days without talking to her family. After a few days of silence in October 2008, the family went to police.

"Because my sister had a prior arrest history, they kind of didn't take it seriously," Mary Mason said.

But Michelle Mason had stopped collecting and cashing her Social Security checks. Before her disappearance, she had just paid her rent and her cell phone bill. Her apartment was left as if she intended to return.

"We tried to convince them with everything in us that this was not normal, and they tried to convince with everything they had that it was," Mary Mason said.

On a second visit to police, Michelle Mason's sons were told there are "thousands of Michelles in the city," and that officers didn't have the time or the manpower to hunt for them all.

"It was taken almost as a joke, that she was just this kind of person. Her drug use was years behind her. But they pull her up on that computer, and they say, 'She's a nobody,'" Mary Mason said. "She's not a nobody."

___