Even after 11 decomposing bodies have been removed, a stomach-churning stench
wafts from Anthony Sowell’s house of horrors.
For years the accused serial killer escaped detection only because he lived
next door to a sausage factory. Neighbours and even city officials in the
crime-ridden Cleveland ghetto blamed the smell of rotting meat on the
family-owned factory.
“They thought it was us,” said Renee Cash, the co-owner of Ray’s Sausage.
“They told us what to do to fix it. We had new grease traps put in and new
plumbing. And the smell was still there and we were wondering where it was
coming from. We knew it was not us.
“In the summertime it was just terrible. By the time you got to the corner it
was horrendous. That is where he had two bodies under the front porch,” she
said.
Three years ago the Cash family spent $10,000 (£6,000) on the grease traps and
almost as much again replacing the sewer lines at Ray’s Sausage. Still the
smell persisted.
One city inspector, following his nose, even peered over the fence into Mr
Sowell’s back garden, where five bodies have been dug up in recent days from
shallow graves. “He looked over that fence. He said it was a dead animal
over there,” Ray Cash, Ms Cash’s brother and co-owner, said.
Mr Sowell, 50, a former US Marine who served 15 years in prison for attempted
rape, has been dubbed the “Cleveland Strangler”. He could face the death
penalty if convicted of multiple counts of aggravated murder.
The coroner said that seven of the 11 dead black women found in his house or
buried in his back garden had cords around their necks. An eighth woman had
apparently been strangled with the killer’s hands. Two other corpses are too
decomposed to determine the precise cause of death. All that remains of the
eleventh victim is a skull found wrapped in a paper bag in a bucket in the
basement. The coroner said that it appeared to have fallen off a decaying
corpse — which has not yet been found.
The bodies had been dead as long as four-and-a-half years — but one may have
died as recently as three weeks ago. The first victim identified was Tonia
Carmichael, 52, a drug addict who vanished on November 10, 2008, after
saying that she was going to the shop. Her car was found four blocks from Mr
Sowell’s house.
Police plan to start ripping apart walls, floors and ceilings at Mr Sowell’s
rented three-storey house to search for more bodies. Investigators have also
sought permission to submit his DNA to national databases to see if he
matches any other crimes.
A woman in California who saw Mr Sowell on TV, told police that she believed
he raped her in Coronado in 1979 while he was serving in the military there.
There is a growing chorus of questions about how Mr Sowell was apparently
allowed to get away with it for so long. Zach Reed, a councilman, said at a
meeting of local clergy yesterday: “This is not about finger-pointing. This
is not about blame. In my opinion the system is broken.”
Mr Sowell, who was required to register as a sex offender, rented his
stepmother’s house at 12205 Imperial Avenue after being released from jail
in 2005. He had been living on the dole since losing a factory job two years
ago, and sometimes begged for money or collected scrap metal to sell.
He often spent the day sitting on his porch and gave free barbecues on the
pavement outside his house. Neighbours complained that he reeked of dead
bodies.
Eli Tayeh, a Palestinian refugee who owns the corner shop across the street,
said that he had to ventilate the store every time Mr Sowell went in to buy
malt liquor.
“Every time he used to come over he smelled so bad,” Mr Tayeh said. “We had to
open both doors — front and back — after he left. I used to hold my breath
and light up incense. He smelt like he was carrying a dead body.”
The last time he visited the shop about ten days ago, however, Mr Sowell
seemed unusually anxious. He bought up the shop’s entire supply of heavy
black rubbish bags — four boxes of 15 each. It was, perhaps, an ominous
sign.
“He was smelling very, very bad the last time he came over. The last time he
was acting very nervous,” Mr Tayeh said.
Mr Reed, the councilman, filed a complaint about a noxious smell in June 2007
after a neighbour contacted him to complain that it smelled like a dead
body. Nobody discovered the carnage inside the house — not even police
officers who stopped by on September 22 to check that the sex offender was
living where he said he was.
Neighbours say that Mr Sowell preyed on women hooked on alcohol and crack,
luring them into his house to drink and take drugs. His rented three-storey
wooden house sits near a junction notorious for drug-dealing.
“This area right here is the biggest drug area on this street — any drugs,
prostitution,” said Sheryl Stanton, a local woman. “I think he plotted it.
He had 15 years in jail to plot how to do this. He knew what he was doing
and he preyed on the women he could prey on.”
Rodney Benson, who works in the corner shop, said that Mr Sowell would
sometimes across the street to buy beers three or four times a day. “I guess
it was for the girls,” he said. “Most of the girls that are missing were on
drugs. I know some of the girls who are missing. Mostly, they were on crack
cocaine.”
Mr Benson went to one of Mr Sowell’s barbecues about two months ago to
celebrate his birthday. “It’s crazy. The bodies are lying around and he is
outside barbecuing and laughing and drinking,” he said.
Police ignored not just the smell but also at least two dramatic incidents at
the house. Gladys Wade said that he punched her in the face and dragged her
into his house on December 8.
She told WKYC-TV that Mr Sowell “kept twisting my neck, twisting it, twisting
it. And I was gouging his face at the same time. I was trying to take his
eyeballs out”.
“It was like the devil, eyes glowing,” she said. “He was demonic or something.
You could see the demons in him. I actually just saw it. That’s what made me
fight more. Because I knew this man was trying to take my life.
“I got away for a second and then he dived behind me and jumped on me and
started strangling me. So I fell backwards down these stairs and fell
straight through a window.” Police said that Ms Wade decided not to press
charges, a claim she now denies.
On September 22, only hours after police had made a routine check on Mr
Sowell, another woman complained that he had choked her with an electrical
cord and raped her as she passed out.
On October 20, neighbours saw a naked woman fall from a window at Mr Sowell’s
house and found him, also naked, beside his house choking her. Action19 News
television has even broadcast a cell phone photo of the incident.
Police were called but dismissed the tussle as an accident after the woman
told them she had been drinking and fell as she tried to reach for her
dropped keys.
“She stated she was in the house. She was partying. They were doing coke,
getting high. She fell off the roof,” Michael McGrath, the Cleveland police
chief, told reporters.
After a 37-day interval, police officers finally turned up to arrest Mr Sowell
last week for the reported rape of September 22. He was not at home but the
officers found the first two bodies lying in the living room. Mr Sowell was
arrested walking down the street two days later.
Robert Chaunce, a building worker who lives in the overwhelmingly black
neighbourhood, blamed police for missing chances to arrest Mr Sowell. “I’ve
lived in Cleveland my whole life. I’ve seen people robbed, shot and
everything. The police still take a long time to come,” he said.
“Not to be racial, but if it was not our race they would be there — if they
were Caucasians, they would rush here,” he added.
Mass killers
Fred and Rosemary West
Tortured and killed at least 13 girls including Fred’s first wife and two of
his daughters before they were caught in 1995. The Wests had buried most of
their victims under the patio of their house in Gloucester
HH Holmes
Who killed more than 200 people in the late nineteenth century, lured women to
his castle in Chicago with promises of marriage so that he could collect on
their insurance policies. He also rented rooms to tourists visiting the
city’s 1893 World Fair, putting them up in his purpose-built torture
mansion, which was kitted out with lime pits, trapdoors, acid vats and gas
chambers
Peter Tobin
In 2007, the serial killer Peter Tobin was convicted of murdering a Polish
student and burying her under the floorboards of a church in Glasgow. He was
later found to have killed and buried two teenage girls in his garden,
underneath the sandpit he had built for his son
Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales
Sisters Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales were given Mexico’s maximum
sentence for killing clients at their brothel in Léon, central Mexico, as
well as prostitutes they recruited. Police raiding the premises in 1964
found the bodies of 91 people
Dennis Nilsen
Civil servant Dennis Nilsen was arrested in 1983 after his London neighbours
complained to the landlord about the foul smell coming from the drains.
Nilsen had strangled his 11 victims with a tie and disposed of the bodies by
hiding them under the floorboards. In one case he cut up the body and
flushed parts of it down the lavatory
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