Cleveland House of Horrors: Skull Found in a Bucket, 10 Bodies Found in House

[ash14vwb]

Link to article:

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/convicted-r...ory?id=8994164

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Cleveland House of Horrors: Skull Found in a Bucket, 10 Bodies Found in House

Anthony Sowell Has Been Charged With Five Counts of Aggravated Murder

By EMILY FRIEDMAN

Nov. 4, 2009 —

The convicted rapist whose Cleveland home was found littered with 10 bodies and a decomposed skull appeared in court this morning where a judge ordered him held without bond on five counts of aggravated murder.
Anthony Sowell, 50, stared straight ahead as a prosecutor deemed him an "incredibly dangerous threat to the public."
If convicted, Sowell, who appeared in court with his wrists and ankles shackled and clad in the blue paper jumpsuit worn by suicide-risk inmates, could face the death penalty.
Sowell spoke only when a judge asked him whether it was true he could not afford an attorney, responding, "That's correct."
Kathleen DeMetz, the public defender representing Sowell, told ABCNews.com today that her client had medical problems, including heart problems that require medication. DeMetz also said that Sowell had been receiving unemployment compensation since he'd been laid off from a factory job two years ago.
DeMetz met with Sowell earlier this morning in his jail cell but declined to comment on his demeanor. "He was in a cell alone with no one in the cell across from him, so nobody could see him," she said.
Sowell, who will be assigned new lawyers after he is indicted, typically within 30 days, is a Cleveland native who has family in the area, DeMetz said.
He has been in jail since Saturday, when police apprehended him after finding six decomposed female bodies in his three-story home.
Cleveland police Tuesday found another four bodies in the backyard and a skull in a bucket in his basement.
Cleveland Police Department Lt. Thomas Stacho confirmed that the skull was found "wrapped in paper or plastic" in a bucket in Sowell's basement.
The cause of death in five of the bodies found earlier this week was believed to be strangulation, Stacho said. The cause of death for the sixth is still unknown.
Police have started searching abandoned and vacant homes in a 6-mile radius of Sowell's home, WEWS-TV reported.
Cadaver dogs will continue to search Powell's home.
Sowell was released in 2005 after serving 15 years in prison for choking and raping a 21-year-old woman in 1989.

Bodies Scattered Through Property

Police found the bodies after a woman claiming she had been raped at Powell's home reported the crime to police.
Able to enter the home with a search warrant, authorities found two bodies. Three more were found Friday and Sowell was eventually arrested Saturday.
Detectives also said they were retracing Sowell's steps since his release from prison four years ago.
Recent reports by neighbors of a foul smell wafting from Sowell's home raised the question of how officers assigned to make house calls on the registered sex offender didn't suspect foul play.
But, according to authorities, officers couldn't enter the home because they did not have a search warrant to do so. Instead, they would knock on his door to make sure he was home. Sowell was last visited by authorities Sept. 22.
One of the bodies was found in a shallow grave in the backyard. The rest were inside the house -- one in the basement, two in the third-floor living room and two in an upstairs crawl space, Stacho said.
Stacho would not comment on whether they expected to find any more bodies in the home.
"We hope they don't find anymore," Renee Cash, whose family has operated a nearby sausage company for 57 years, told The Associated Press.
"In the summertime, it was gross," Cash said. "You could always smell it. It smelled like something rotten."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

[ash14vwb]

This is so disturbing, especially because he was a convicted rapist and was in jail for 15 years, only to be released and start committing these terrible killings again.

I read a similar article investigating serial rapists and WHY they aren't kept under close surveillance after being released from jail, like Duggard's captor and this guy. I guess because there are so many? Ugh

[ilovepinkhearts]

that is horrible. that man has to be seriously demented to be
living with decomposing bodies in his home...and he NEVER should
have released from jail to begin with!

[missbanff]

Oh yes, this is all the news in these parts......people interviewed have said they've complained of a foul smell around this guy's house for YEARS......

[canada's]

i read about this earlier in the week.

it's sad these parole officers cannot enter a ex-convict's home without a warrant. they need to be able to see MORE than the person is just home and alive.

[ash14vwb]

Originally Posted by missbanff

Oh yes, this is all the news in these parts......people interviewed have said they've complained of a foul smell around this guy's house for YEARS......

YEARS??!?! Ridiculous. I guess, if nothing else, at least he was FINALLY caught.

[missbanff]

Originally Posted by ash14vwb

YEARS??!?! Ridiculous. I guess, if nothing else, at least he was FINALLY caught.

YEARS. There's a sausage shop right on the corner by his house, and people "just kind of figured" that's where the smell was coming from. You should've seen the headlines in the paper today. Totally freaky.

[amanda]

All stories like this (and there are more of them than I care to mention) make me think is that our society doesn't take rape nearly as seriously as it should. So many people brush it off as something that men do because they want to have sex, but it's not about that - it's about a deep-seated contempt for women and the need to assert power and dominance over them, which doesn't get fixed by sending a guy to prison and then letting him out. People that rape are not the same as people that beat up other dudes or rob banks, and they need to be treated differently. And tragically, when we don't make a distinction between their offense and the offenses of others, it leads to things like this. I read earlier today that they found part of an eleventh body.

And maybe I watch too much Criminal Minds, but I wonder why police didn't put together that so many women were missing in the area over a relatively limited span of time. Most serial killers have a type, but even if he didn't, you would think that someone would put 2 and 2 together. Maybe they were people that society normally doesn't notice - homeless, junkies, prostitutes, etc? Serial killers often target those groups because they're inherently transient, meaning that authorities are often less likely to take their disappearances or deaths seriously. Obviously just speculation, but it baffles me that if people were reporting these women as missing, a rotting stench coming from a known sex offender's house wouldn't make it an obvious place to investigate...

[~Fabulousity~]

I agree Amanda my thoughts exactly!

[JAN!]

I wonder who these women were. Were they prostitutes? The article doesn't say much about them and if anyone suspected they were missing and looking for them.

[chantal1922]

"But, according to authorities, officers couldn't enter the home because they did not have a search warrant to do so. Instead, they would knock on his door to make sure he was home. Sowell was last visited by authorities Sept. 22."
WOW so for years the officers just knocked on the door to make sure he was there!! They didn't smell anything? How is that possible when neighbors complained about then smell? I just can't wrap my head around the fact that this went on for so long!

[missbanff]

Originally Posted by JAN!

I wonder who these women were. Were they prostitutes? The article doesn't say much about them and if anyone suspected they were missing and looking for them.

Don't think they were prostitutes, but many had drug or alcohol problems, according to the paper. The ID of the first victim had a crack problem, allegedly.