More bodies found at Sowell home in Cleveland

[POAS]

Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Police have found at least two more bodies at the home of Anthony Sowell.

Crews are again digging at the Imperial Avenue home, where police found six dead bodies Thursday and Friday. A heated tent is being installed in the back yard so crews can dig throughout the night.

Police have scheduled a news conference for 6 p.m. Crews started digging this afternoon, two days after they had stopped searching for bodies.

A search warrant obtained over the weekend gave police permission take apart the home brick by brick if necessary, police sources said.

Read more: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/11/crews_again_digging_at_anthony.html

[xultar]

1. There's another thread about a guy in Saudi Arabia who is being beheaded and

crucified.

I'm against the death penalty but I swear when I hear stories like this something stirs in the back of my mind.

I'm just being honest.

[old mark]

2. I am certain they will find many more over time.

This guy was pretty old for this sort of thing - he has probably been killikg for decades.

mark

[POAS]

3. There was a story here a few days ago that

police were trying to figure out where he lived before his previous rape conviction and then may try to search those places for bodies as well.

[Barack_America]

9. He was in prison for 15 years previously.

He has only lived in the house since 2005. (from the NY Times article posted below)

[Mopar151]

30. Deduct the prison time

(Arthur?) Shawcross was an excellent example. Killed into his late 50's (25-40 are usually the "peak" years for serials), but had done a 20 year stretch.
Another thing - some serials escalate to serial murder from serial rape when they get caught for rape. Sounds like our boy is a classic.........

[elehhhhna]

4. gacy redux

pu stinky neighbor. Someone should have called the cops about the smell.

DUers, lets' say you smelled what you thought to be a large dead body next door, for WEEKS at a time, would you tip the cops?

[XemaSab]

5. In Dahmer's case

a few people in the building complained and were blown off by the cops, and some people were afraid to call the cops.

The neighbors were mostly poor black people. :(

[Number23]

13. You're exactly right.

I'll never forget the story of the teenaged Asian boy that Dahmer was brutalizing who was somehow able to escape. He was wandering the streets naked, bleeding and drugged and one of Dahmer's neighbors, an older black woman, personally took this boy and handed him over to two police officers in the area.

Dahmer came out and "explained" that the boy was a friend of his. The woman said that she begged, literally BEGGED, those cops not to turn that boy over to Dahmer but they did anyway believing that it was just a "gay spat." The fact that the boy was also not white probably didn't help either. Needless to say what was left of his body was found along with everyone else's. I can only just imagine what that child's last hours on this earth were like.

[WriteDown]

15. See post 14. nt

[WriteDown]

14. Not exactly. They were made Officers of the Year among other honors.

In the early morning hours of May 30, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (by chance, the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Two young women from the neighborhood found the dazed boy and called 911. Dahmer chased his victim down and tried to take him away, but the women stopped him.<29> Dahmer told police that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the protests of the two women who had called 911, police turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent while inside Dahmer's apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The two policemen failed to run a background check that would have revealed that Dahmer was a convicted child molester still under probation.<30> The officers laughed about the incident, one joking that his partner was "going to get deloused."<31> Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.

John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, two of the three police officers who returned Sinthasomphone to Dahmer, were fired from the Milwaukee Police Department after their actions were widely publicized, including an audiotape of the officers making homophobic statements to their dispatcher and cracking jokes about having reunited the "lovers". The two officers appealed their termination and were reinstated with back pay. They were named officers of the year by the police union for fighting a "righteous" battle to regain their jobs. Balcerzak was later elected president of the Milwaukee Police Association in May 2005.<27><32>

[B3Nut]

20. ...Officers Of The Year????

My. God. And one of them is president of the Milwaukee police association...oh that's rich. That's a real riot right there. They must be some real winners intellectually...and they have power over people many times smarter than they...this world is a pathetic cosmic joke sometimes, I swear.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[WriteDown]

21. Yep, you captured it in a nutshell....

What's sad is that their fellow officers fought for them instead of drumming them out of the force.

[Berry Cool]

27. That story still haunts me...of the cops returning that poor boy to Dahmer

where of course Dahmer promptly made work of him. God, how awful. :cry:

Those cops never got what they deserved in this life. It's because of them that I have to believe there's another life in which they WILL get what they deserve.

[WriteDown]

31. Unfortunately, it's those that cheat and worm there way through life...

that tend to get ahead.

[Altoid_Cyclist]

7. The police were called. This is pathetic.

Check out this link!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/us/03rape.html

This is unbelievable.

[Amaya]

34. speechless

:wow:

[closeupready]

10. From what I understand, this was Cleveland, large parts of which are empty ghetto.

If I'm wrong, and someone is familiar with the area where the house is, please correct me, but that's what I thought when I saw this story - very similar to Dahmer, in that in these urban areas, it's not uncommon for strange odors to waft throughout inner city neighborhoods- sewage treatment plants, factories, dry cleaning facilities, diesel exhaust.

[RollWithIt]

25. Clarification for you, this is East Cleveland

The worst part of town. Not all of Cleveland is like that. In fact, most of it is fine. That particular area is worst of the worst though. Predominantly black half empty ghetto.

[closeupready]

35. Ah, okay, thanks for the correction.

n/t

[WriteDown]

12. For dead bodies? No. For someone having a smoke in their backyard though....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6906311

[MadMaddie]

23. Actually, the neighbors did call the cops but nothing was

ever investigated.

http://www.michellesigona.com/?tag=anthony-sowell

<snip>
In the meantime, I spoke with Cleveland Councilman Zack Reed, and he says his office contacted the health department in 2007 about the horrible stench rising from Anthony Sowell’s home.
<snip>

[Quantess]

36. Sowell lived next to a sausage factory.

People had been complaining about an unbearable smell since 2007, but everyone assumed it was coming from the sausage company.

[tblue]

6. Any of these victims among the missing blonde ladies that captivate the news 24/7? Or were they

'of color' and therefore NOT news when they disappeared?


Horrible story. The things that go on behind closed doors....... Creeps me out.

[Berry Cool]

11. Of COURSE they were of color. The neighborhood is very poor, black, the very definition

of what people think of (especially white people) when they think of "ghetto." What's more, they appear to have been street women or prostitutes or whatever.

Black-on-black crime...since when has that been an overwhelming concern of any authorities?

It's still horrible, shocking, amazing that a naked man, standing over a woman who was bloodied, beaten and also naked, would not be questioned by police about what the hell he was doing to the woman after an ambulance came and took her away.

But again, we're talking about the ghetto, where people's lives are considered cheap and not worth caring about. Especially the lives of "street people."

The man probably has enough dead bodies to his name to open a graveyard. But who cared?

[Number23]

17. + A billion. I'm surprised this is getting any coverage now, to be honest.

Black perp and black, female victims?? America yawns.

[juajen]

29. This is hideous, and please don't paint with a wide brush.

I am white and certainly horrified and furious. Those policemen need to be fired, or no one will ever take threats to the poor seriously. America is a third world country.

[LisaL]

22. I am not sure what you are talking about. When was he not

questioned? He spend about 15 years in prison for rape, he got out in 2005.
A woman accused him just recently, but apparently police had trouble tracking her down. When they tracked her down they obtained the search warrant which led to the discovery of the bodies.
Neighbors reported seeing another woman jumping or falling out of his window, but when he was questioned he claimed she fell out, and she also claimed she fell out, and it was an accident.
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/11/post_106.html

[Berry Cool]

28. The NYT article said he was not questioned about the naked woman he was beating up

whom he sent to the hospital with her injuries.

[HipChick]

18. you hardly hear a peep from this case..and she's still missing..what other female missing in Malibu

would go un noticed like this..

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/25/crimesider/entry5339581.shtml

[foxfeet]

8. Where's Dexter Morgan when you need him?

[POAS]

16. Update as of 5:15 PM EST

Police find 2 more bodies, total now at ten. Police have set up a heated tent in the backyard to work through the night.

Same link as above!

[RollWithIt]

26. Now 11 total victims...

More to come.

[Algorem]

19. he was a Marine '77-'85

http://www.michellesigona.com/?tag=anthony-sowell

[fujiyama]

24. This is fucked up

It reminds me of the Wire.

[UpInArms]

32. related: Ten corpses found at Cleveland home

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5A306S20091104

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Reuters) - A convicted rapist was charged with multiple murders on Tuesday after police dug up 10 corpses at his home, which produced a stench of death in the depressed Cleveland neighborhood.

Authorities searched the fetid property owned by Anthony Sowell with a backhoe, jackhammers, wall saws, and cadaver dogs. They planned to take the three-story house apart.

Four bodies were found in the back yard, while six others were discovered elsewhere on the property, including in the basement of the house. A skull wrapped in a paper bag in a bucket could be an eleventh victim.

Five of the victims were black women who had been strangled, according to the coroner.

Sowell, 50, was arrested over the weekend for rape. The victim said he had invited her in for a drink then became enraged and choked her with an extension cord.

When police entered Sowell's house they found two decomposing bodies lying on a floor upstairs.

A sausage store next door to Sowell's home was blamed for the rank smell wafting through the neighborhood, but an attempt at repairs failed to stop the odor.

...more...

[HughBeaumont]

33. Oh, they're giong to find a few more before this all ends.

One only has to look at "smell for years" and his statement to one of his victims:

"You're just another crack bitch from the street. No one will know if you're missing."

To deduce that this guy killed with the same regularity and non-feeling as if he were getting a fix.

It was easy for him because, as stated above, not only was this in East Cleveland, but many of the surviving victims didn't want to sic the police on him because they either had prior arrest records for drug use, prostitution and assault or they didn't trust police themselves.

Wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be another Dahmer before this is all said and done.