On the evening of October 29, 2009, Cleveland police went to a three-story house at 12205 Imperial Avenue with warrants to arrest the man who lived there and to search his home. A woman had reported that he raped her there in September. He was not home. On the third floor officers found the decomposed bodies of two women. Over the next five days investigators, working with the county coroner, a cadaver dog and then a backhoe, recovered the remains of eleven women from the house and the backyard.
The man was Anthony Sowell, then 50, a former Marine who had served 15 years in prison for attempted rape and who had been registered as a sex offender at that address since his release in 2005. All eleven women were Black, as was he. Most were mothers. Many had struggled with drug addiction, and several had been missing for months without anyone in authority connecting them to the man on Imperial Avenue or to the smell that neighbors had complained about for years.
A Cuyahoga County jury convicted Sowell in July 2011 of the aggravated murder of all eleven women and of rape, kidnapping and attempted murder in attacks on three women who survived. He was sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed the convictions and sentences in 2016. He died in custody in February 2021 while his challenges to the death sentence were still being pursued, and he was never executed. Some news outlets called him "the Cleveland Strangler," a press nickname used in coverage of his trial and of his death.
Most of what is known about Sowell's early life comes from evidence his lawyers presented in 2011 to argue against a death sentence, as summarized by the Supreme Court of Ohio. He was born in Cleveland in 1959. His parents divorced in the 1960s, and his mother raised him with the help of her own mother. After one of his sisters died in 1969, his mother took in that sister's four children and three other children as well.
Witnesses who had grown up in that house testified that several of the children were beaten severely and often. Sowell watched the beatings, the court recorded, and at times laughed. A social worker who examined his history for the defense said he had been emotionally abused, told that he would never amount to anything. His mother admitted beating him once with a cord. He told the social worker he had been sexually molested as a child, but she could find nothing to corroborate it.
He attended Prospect Elementary School and Kirk Junior High School in East Cleveland. Teachers who remembered him from the early 1970s described an average student with good attendance, and they saw no signs that he was being abused.
Sowell entered active duty in the Marine Corps in 1978 and served until 1985, when he was honorably discharged. An expert who reviewed his service record for the defense called him an "above average" Marine. He was promoted to private first class straight out of boot camp, the only member of his 55-man platoon to receive that distinction, and he later rose to lance corporal, corporal and sergeant. He earned two Good Conduct Medals and was chosen for advanced electrician's school. Two minor disciplinary matters were settled by nonjudicial punishment.
According to the Associated Press and Stars and Stripes, his assignments included Parris Island in South Carolina, Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point in North Carolina, Camp Pendleton in California, and Camp Butler on Okinawa, where he was stationed for about a year from January 1984.
In 1989 Sowell attacked a 21-year-old woman who, police said, had been lured to his bedroom. He was living in East Cleveland at the time, according to East Cleveland police. CNN reported that in 1990 he pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted rape; the Supreme Court of Ohio records that he was convicted of attempted rape in 1990 and served 15 years in prison. A CBS News report in 2010 said he had been arrested for rape in both 1989 and 1990.
The precise nature of that conviction mattered to how he was described in 2009. The Associated Press withdrew early reports calling him a "convicted rapist," noting that his conviction was for attempted rape.
Part of the sentence was served at Grafton Correctional Institution. A fellow prisoner who shared a cubicle with him for seven years, himself a convicted rapist, testified in 2011 that Sowell had been "a nice, loving, caring person," and that his prison job as a food handler had been "a very responsible position."
Sowell was released in 2005 and moved into a family house at 12205 Imperial Avenue, in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. The house stood next to Ray's Sausage, a family sausage maker that had been on East 123rd Street since 1952. Its owner, Raymond Cash, testified at the trial that he had known the Sowell family for years and that Anthony Sowell had sometimes helped watch the shop.
He was required to register as a sex offender on his release. Officers made home visits to check that he lived where he said he did, but because he was not on parole or probation they could not go inside without a warrant, the Associated Press reported in 2009.
At first he did well by outward measures. He completed a program that helped former prisoners find work, and a counselor described him as neat, punctual and "job ready." He was hired by a company that made rubber products, and a co-worker said he did good work. In February 2007 he had a heart attack. He went back on light duty and then full duty, but by July 2007 he could no longer do the job. When he was arrested in 2009 he was unemployed and had a pacemaker, Cleveland 19 reported. Neighbors told reporters he walked around the area asking for money and looking for scrap metal to sell.
A defense psychiatrist, Dr. George Woods, told the jury in 2011 that Sowell had functioned in structured settings such as the Marines and prison and had lost that structure when the heart attack cost him his job. A state psychiatrist, Dr. James Knoll IV, disagreed sharply with Woods's diagnoses.
Neighbors began complaining about a smell along Imperial Avenue in 2006, CBS News reported. For years they blamed it on a broken sewer or on the sausage shop next door. A couple who rented the second floor of Sowell's house testified that a foul odor and rats appeared soon after he moved in, and that the smell was so strong that they moved out and left much of their furniture behind. "We speculated that maybe there was some maybe a dead animal," the former tenant told the jury.
The suspicion fell on Ray's Sausage. Raymond Cash testified that he spent nearly 30,000 dollars replacing a grease trap; Associated Press reports put the business's spending on new plumbing fixtures and sewer lines at about 20,000 dollars. In 2026 the family that still runs the business told Signal Cleveland that the city had ordered costly sewer and plumbing repairs that turned out to be unnecessary, that sales fell, and that the episode cost them at least 400,000 dollars and about five years to recover.
Eleven women's remains were recovered from the house and yard. The coroner's office identified all of them by early December 2009, through DNA and dental records. Published ages for several of the women differ by a year, depending on whether they were given at the time a woman disappeared or when she was identified; the ages for each woman are those on the coroner's list as Cleveland 19 published it in December 2009, with other reported figures noted.
Crystal Dozier was the first of the women to disappear. She was last seen in October 2007, according to the coroner's list. She was 38 on that list; WKYC, interviewing her son ten years later, said she was 35 when she vanished. She was the mother of seven children, WKYC reported, and had struggled for a long time with addiction, including to crack cocaine. Her firstborn son, Anthony Dozier, filed a police report when she went missing and searched for her at night while he was attending the police academy. He later gave up his plan to become a police officer, earned two college degrees and went to work developing software; he named his company Crystal Clear Solutions in her memory. "If she had the opportunity to become something, there's no idea who she could have become," he said. Her mother, Florence Bray, lost a niece in the same house. Bray said at the opening of the memorial garden in 2021 that her daughter "was the very first one he killed and she was buried back there by the fence."
Tishana Culver lived a few houses from Sowell. Her family last saw her in June 2008, and she was never reported missing. She was a beautician and a mother, the Associated Press reported in 2010; reports give her age as 29 or 31 and her number of children as four, five or seven. Her mother, Yvonne McNeill Williams, testified at the trial.
Leshanda Long was 25 and the mother of three. She was last seen in 2008 and was never reported missing. Only her skull was ever found. Her father, Jim Allen, said in 2011 that he had never had any closure.
Michelle Mason was 45 (44 in some reports) and the mother of two. Her family reported her missing in October 2008. Her mother, Adlean Atteberry, testified that Michelle was cheerful, that the two of them spoke every day, and that she filed a missing person report after two days without hearing from her. The family put up fliers in the neighborhood, and the fliers kept disappearing; a store owner told Atteberry that Sowell had taken them down. Michelle's sister, Mary Mason, told the jury that Michelle was in recovery and was clean and sober when she disappeared.
Tonia Carmichael was 52, by the coroner's list, and lived in Warrensville Heights. She vanished on November 10, 2008, CBS News reported. Her daughter, Markiesha Carmichael-Jacobs, said the police told the family to go home and that her mother would come back when her drugs ran out. Hers was the first body removed from the backyard, identified by DNA. At the sentencing in 2011 another daughter, Donnita Carmichael, told Sowell, "We have been crying since Nov. 10, 2008."
Kim Yvette Smith was 44 (43 in some reports). She was last seen on January 1, 2009, and was reported missing on November 2, 2009, after the first bodies had been found. She had no children.
Nancy Cobbs was 43 and the mother of three. She lived one street away from Sowell. She was last seen in April 2009; her family reported her missing to the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority police in April, CNN reported, and the coroner's list gives June 11, 2009, as the date of a missing person report. A neighbor, Ida Garrett, 72, described her as "a very nice, quiet girl."
Amelda Hunter, known as Amy, was 47 (46 in some reports) and the mother of four. She was last seen in April 2009 and was not reported missing until November 3, 2009, the day the last remains were dug up. She was Florence Bray's niece.
Telacia Fortson was 31, from East Cleveland, and the mother of three. She was last seen in June 2009. She had been adopted by her family at the age of 9. When she was buried in November 2009, the first of the women to be laid to rest, the service at Grace Missionary Baptist Church lasted three hours, and cars lined the surrounding streets. A family friend said she had been a source of both challenges and joy to her adoptive mother, Inez Fortson. "We're here with dignity to give her dignity," the pastor, Ivory Jones, told the mourners.
Janice Webb was 48 or 49. Reports differ on whether she had one child or two; her sister spoke of her son. She was last seen on June 3, 2009, and her family reported her missing on August 2, 2009. Her sister, Frances Webb, said the family had been searching for her and handing out fliers, and that it "just boggles the mind" that such a thing could happen.
Diane Turner, 38, lived on East 144th Street and had one child. She was last seen in September 2009 and was the last of the eleven to be identified. Her body and Telacia Fortson's were the first two that police found.
Five women who survived attacks in the house testified at Sowell's trial. Their accounts, as summarized by the Supreme Court of Ohio, show a pattern that the court described as luring women to the house with drugs and then kidnapping, sexually assaulting and strangling them.
In September 2008 a woman who had gone to the house to use drugs was attacked and raped there over several hours, and persuaded Sowell to let her go. A separate indictment over this attack was returned in 2010.
On December 8, 2008, a woman walking along Imperial Avenue turned down Sowell's invitation to drink with him. He dragged her toward the house and choked her until she lost consciousness, and attacked her again inside. She broke free, ran outside and flagged down a police car. Sowell was arrested.
In April 2009 a woman who had once dated Sowell went to the house, and he choked and threatened her. She left the next morning.
On September 22, 2009, a woman who went to the house to drink beer was raped and choked with a piece of extension cord until she blacked out. When she woke he said he would kill her and then himself, because he expected to go to jail. She talked him into letting her go. Officers checking his sex offender registration had visited the house that same day, the Associated Press reported, hours before she reported the rape.
In October 2009 a woman was attacked and raped in the house and escaped through a third-floor window. She fell, was badly hurt and lost consciousness; bystanders said Sowell tried to carry her back inside until a crowd stopped him. CNN reported in November 2009 that no charges were filed at the time: she had told officers she had been partying and fell from the roof, and Sowell told them the same.
The December 2008 arrest was the clearest chance to stop him, and it became the center of the anger that followed. Sowell was released without charges. The Supreme Court of Ohio, summarizing the trial evidence, says he was released because the arresting officer mislabeled the offense on the incident report.
CBS News obtained the sex crimes detective's report on the case in 2010. It recorded a visit to the house but said nothing about the smell neighbors had been complaining about, and nothing about Sowell's criminal record, although police said the record had been checked. It stated that there were "no visible signs" the woman had been punched. Detectives and prosecutors found "insufficient evidence" to prosecute, and the allegations, attempted rape among them, were marked "unfounded."
Officials defended the work. Martin Flask, the city official who oversaw the police department, told CBS News, "I don't find any direct fault yet." The police chief, Michael McGrath, said, "I wouldn't say we dropped the ball, we were very vigilant in what we did." Tim McGinty, then a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge, told CBS News that Cleveland followed a practice detectives called "straight release," in which suspects were routinely let go rather than indicted. "They release 'em, it's like trout fishing where you catch and release," he said. CBS reported that Cleveland recorded 633 rapes in 2008, the most per capita of any major American city, and that no one was charged in more than two-thirds of them.
The families of six of the women later sued the city over that release.
The September 2009 rape complaint did not move quickly either. CBS News reported that police did not visit the house for more than a month after the woman reported it. On October 28, 2009, an officer investigating her complaint obtained arrest and search warrants, and the search began the next evening.
When officers forced open a locked third-floor bedroom on October 29, 2009, they found two women's bodies on the floor. They were later identified by DNA as Diane Turner and Telacia Fortson. Police also found a freshly dug grave.
The next day, with a new warrant, investigators searched again with staff from the coroner's office and a cadaver dog. Under the basement stairs they found Janice Webb. On the third floor they found Nancy Cobbs and Tishana Culver. In the backyard the dog alerted near the back porch, and a shallow grave there held Tonia Carmichael.
On November 3, 2009, under a third warrant, a backhoe uncovered four more bodies in the yard: Michelle Mason, Kim Yvette Smith, Amelda Hunter and Crystal Dozier. In the basement police found a skull, which DNA identified as Leshanda Long's. No other part of her body was found.
In all, five bodies were buried in the backyard, and four bodies and the skull were inside the house. The coroner's spokesman said early on that the remains might have been there for anywhere from weeks to years. In the following weeks FBI agents with cadaver dogs searched Sowell's former home in East Cleveland and found no new bodies, and the FBI planned a thermal-imaging search of the property next door; no further remains were reported.
Sowell was gone when police arrived on October 29. Two days later, on October 31, a member of the public who recognized him from television news saw him on Mount Auburn Avenue and alerted police, who arrested him there.
Detectives questioned him for more than 11 hours, on video. He did not admit killing anyone. He said he had no memory of the killings and did not know the bodies were on his property. He described meeting women from the Mount Pleasant area, hearing a "voice" that told him about "bad people," and then going "blank." He described dreams in which he choked women, after which the women were gone when he woke. He called himself "the punisher," said the women were "cons" who tried to "hustle" him for money and drugs, and said all the women found in the house were "bad." He described some of them.
In early November 2009 he was ordered held without bond on five counts of aggravated murder, along with rape, kidnapping and felonious assault charges over the September 22 attack.
Identifications came through November. Tonia Carmichael was the first; then Telacia Fortson, Tishana Culver and Nancy Cobbs; then, by November 10, Janice Webb and Kim Yvette Smith, among others. Diane Turner was the last, by early December. Each identification reached families who had, in many cases, been searching on their own. Frances Webb said her family was "devastated" that Janice "had to die in that manner."
The coroner's autopsy reports, released in April 2010, found that eight of the women had been strangled, many with household objects such as a belt, a rope, an electrical charger, a knotted cloth and the strap of a shoulder bag, and that many still had those ligatures around their necks. The Supreme Court of Ohio, reviewing the trial record, lists ligature strangulation as the cause of death for Tonia Carmichael, Nancy Cobbs, Crystal Dozier, Telacia Fortson, Amelda Hunter, Michelle Mason and Janice Webb. Tishana Culver had a fractured hyoid bone, suggesting she was strangled by hand. For Leshanda Long, Kim Yvette Smith and Diane Turner the cause was "homicidal violence" of an undetermined type, because decomposition or, in Long's case, the absence of everything but the skull, left nothing more to find. Six women had bindings, or the remains of bindings, on their wrists or ankles. Nine had traces of cocaine or depressants in their bodies.
The coroner at the time, Dr. Frank Miller, said decomposition meant there was no scientific evidence of rape. Florence Bray told CBS News that her daughter, Crystal Dozier, had "fought for her life."
By December 1, 2009, a Cuyahoga County grand jury had returned an 85-count indictment. The county prosecutor, Bill Mason, said Sowell "preyed upon vulnerable females by luring them into his house." For each of the eleven women there were two counts of aggravated murder, one charging prior calculation and design and one charging murder in the course of a kidnapping, each carrying death specifications; two counts of kidnapping; and one count each of abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Nineteen more counts concerned the women attacked in December 2008, September 2009 and October 2009, identified in the indictment only as Jane Does.
At his arraignment on December 3, 2009, appearing by video link, Sowell pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was held in the Cuyahoga County jail, where the sheriff described him as a model prisoner who refused all visitors except his lawyer. By 2010 news reports described his plea as not guilty; Ideastream later noted that he had first pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Pretrial fights centered on his statements to police and on publicity. His lawyers argued that he had not validly waived his rights during the interrogation because he suffered from a psychotic disorder. On July 21, 2010, the trial court heard that motion in a hearing closed to the public, over the defense's objection, to keep the details of the interrogation from the jury pool. It denied the motion, finding that he had knowingly and voluntarily waived his rights and had been neither coerced nor psychotic. The court also refused to move the trial out of Cleveland.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason announced he would seek the death penalty. In June 2011 relatives of eight of the women signed a petition asking him to accept a guilty plea in exchange for life without parole, to spare the families years of publicity and appeals. "I haven't had any closure," said Jim Allen, Leshanda Long's father, who supported the petition. Mason refused; he later said the community needed to see the case tried. The Supreme Court of Ohio later held that Sowell's own offer to plead guilty in exchange for life without parole was not a mitigating factor.
The trial was held before Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose. Individual jury questioning ran from June 6 to June 21, 2011, part of it in closed session at the defense's request. Jurors toured the house on Imperial Avenue wearing masks and shoe covers. The judge told them that what they saw there "is not evidence," because conditions might have changed.
Assistant Prosecutor Richard Bombik opened by warning jurors that the case would be "burned into your memory for as long as you live," and showed them photographs of the women and drawings marking where each set of remains was found. Defense lawyer John Parker told jurors there was no fingerprint, DNA or other scientific evidence connecting Sowell to the eleven women. A SWAT officer described kicking open the third-floor door. Raymond Cash described the stench. Pathologists described the autopsies one by one. Relatives described the women they had lost and their own searches. Five surviving women told the jury what had happened to them in the house.
The defense called no witnesses in the guilt phase. On July 22, 2011, after deliberating for just over 15 hours, the jury convicted Sowell. Under the Supreme Court of Ohio's account, the judge had acquitted him of the three counts concerning the felony murder and kidnapping of Leshanda Long, and the jury acquitted him of one count of aggravated robbery of the woman attacked in December 2008. He was found guilty on every other count: 81 in all, including the aggravated murder of all eleven women. Tonia Carmichael's mother and daughter held each other and wept in the front row. Two jurors wiped away tears.
The penalty phase began on August 1, 2011. The defense called 24 witnesses, according to the prosecutor who later handled the appeals. Relatives and others described his childhood. Social worker Lori James-Townes called it "extremely horrible," though under cross-examination she agreed that no documents showed Sowell himself had been abused; that claim came from him. Experts on his military record described his service. Former co-workers and jail officers described a good worker and a well-behaved prisoner.
The mental health experts disagreed. Dr. Dale Watson, a defense neuropsychologist who tested Sowell for 19 hours, found "probably" moderate brain dysfunction and no sign of malingering. Dr. Diana Goldstein, for the state, found normal functioning and could not rule out malingering. Dr. Woods diagnosed severe obsessive-compulsive disorder of a sexual kind, post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, and concluded that Sowell lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the law. Dr. Knoll answered that no such sexual form of the disorder exists in psychiatry, that a 2005 county clinic report had found no significant psychiatric illness, that Sowell had received no antipsychotic medication in nearly two years in jail, and that the crimes suggested sexual sadism.
Sowell gave an unsworn statement of about 30 minutes, so that he could not be cross-examined. He called his childhood "like a war" and said he joined the Marines to escape it. "Well, the only thing I want to say is, I'm sorry," he said. "I know it's not a lot, but that's all I can give you." He did not ask the jury to spare his life. Jurors later said the apology sounded rehearsed.
Assistant Prosecutor Pinkey Carr called him "crazy like a fox." The jury recommended death for each of the eleven murders after less than a day of deliberation, as the Associated Press reported on August 10, 2011. When the verdicts were read, spectators applauded as he was led out.
Judge Ambrose accepted the recommendation and imposed eleven death sentences, in a hearing reported by CBS News and the Associated Press on August 12, 2011. He explained his decision in an analysis of about 45 minutes. Sowell sat with his eyes closed at times, never looked at the relatives who spoke, and did not answer when the judge asked whether he wished to speak. Donnita Carmichael told him, "We will continue to be here when you are long gone." Florence Bray said, "We can find peace and move on with our lives." Bombik had told the jury, "If this guy doesn't get the death penalty, nobody should," and Carr said the case "screamed death penalty."
In September 2011 Judge Ambrose granted a prosecution motion to dismiss two remaining cases against Sowell, one charging rape and kidnapping and the other kidnapping and attempted murder. Both women involved had testified at the murder trial and told prosecutors they did not want to go through another; prosecutors said the cases could be reinstated if the murder convictions were ever overturned.
Because he was sentenced to death, his case went directly to the Supreme Court of Ohio. He raised 18 propositions of law and three supplemental ones. The central issue was the closed suppression hearing: his lawyers argued that shutting the public out violated his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial.
On December 8, 2016, the court affirmed the convictions and all eleven death sentences in State v. Sowell, 148 Ohio St.3d 554, 2016-Ohio-8025. Justice Terrence O'Donnell wrote for the majority, joined by Justices Paul E. Pfeifer, Judith Ann Lanzinger, Sharon L. Kennedy and Judith L. French. The majority held that the trial court had identified an overriding interest, protecting the jury pool from intense publicity, and that although it had not entered all the required findings, a new hearing would be a "vain act": the evidence of guilt was overwhelming without his statements, including the condition of the bodies and the testimony of five surviving women. The closure of part of jury selection had been requested by the defense, so it could not support reversal. The court rejected his other claims, including challenges to venue, jurors and instructions, and found that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt.
Justice William M. O'Neill dissented, writing that Sowell was entitled to a new suppression hearing and that the court "simply cannot choose to ignore" the United States Supreme Court's rulings on closed proceedings. Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor agreed that a new suppression hearing was required but did not join O'Neill's view that the death penalty is unconstitutional.
Later in December 2016 the court declined to reconsider. The Associated Press reported on October 2, 2017, that the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to hear his appeal on the closed hearing and the rejected plea offer. In February 2018 the Supreme Court of Ohio declined, without comment, to reopen his appeal on a claim that his earlier appellate lawyers should have raised a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Florida's death penalty sentencing law.
Sowell had also filed a petition for postconviction relief in the trial court in August 2012, raising 14 grounds, among them claims that his trial lawyers should have obtained a PET scan of his brain and a forensic psychologist. The trial court denied it without a hearing on November 26, 2018. The Eighth District Court of Appeals heard argument on October 29, 2019, the tenth anniversary of the discovery, and affirmed on May 14, 2020, in State v. Sowell, 2020-Ohio-2938. Administrative Judge Eileen T. Gallagher wrote the opinion, joined by Judges Patricia Ann Blackmon and Larry A. Jones Sr. The court held that the decisions about experts were trial strategy, that his own experts had testified a PET scan would only confirm their test results, and that there was no reasonable probability of a different sentence. "Ten years have gone by and we're still only about halfway through the appellate process," the county's assistant prosecutor, Chris Schroeder, had said in 2019.
Sowell was held on death row at Chillicothe Correctional Institution. On January 21, 2021, he was admitted to the end-of-life care unit at Franklin Medical Center, the prison system's medical facility in Columbus. He died there on February 8, 2021, at the age of 61, of a terminal illness, Ohio prison officials said. A spokeswoman for the corrections department, JoEllen Smith, said the death was not related to COVID-19; officials did not name the illness. He was pronounced dead at 3:27 p.m. He was never executed, and he was still challenging his death sentence when he died.
"All these years he's been living, and my child has turned to dust," Florence Bray said. "So I can't say I am sad that he's dead." She hoped her daughter could now rest in peace. Days later more than two dozen people marched on Imperial Avenue and read the eleven women's names aloud.
Families of the women said that police had not taken their missing loved ones seriously because the women used drugs, had arrest records or had gone missing before, and because they lived in a poor neighborhood. Within days of the discovery, Judy Martin, a local anti-crime advocate, said Cleveland police did not take missing-person cases seriously when the people involved were poor, and Councilman Zack Reed demanded an investigation. Chief McGrath said the department received about ten missing-person reports a day and resolved at least 90 percent within 48 hours.
Mayor Frank Jackson appointed a three-member Special Commission on Missing Persons and Sex Crimes Investigations. Its report, released on March 31, 2010, made 26 recommendations, and the mayor's office accepted all of them: a missing persons unit inside the police department, a public website of missing people, no waiting period before a missing person report could be taken, sex crimes policies brought into line with other departments, and a temporary move of the sex crimes unit to a "victim-friendly and neutral" site. "We'll be watching," said commission member Megan O'Bryan, head of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center. In May 2011 the commission reported that 18 of its 26 tasks were complete; it singled out the new missing persons website.
The rape kit backlog came to light later. After Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine asked police departments in late 2011 to send untested kits to the state crime lab, Cleveland sent 1,348, CBS News reported in 2013. Ten years after the bodies were found, Sondra Miller, president of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, said the commission's recommendations had lost momentum and been largely forgotten, and that survivors still met an inadequate response. Councilman Matt Zone, chair of the council's safety committee, agreed: "We haven't done enough."
Families of the six women who disappeared after the December 2008 arrest sued the city, arguing that the detective assigned to that case had failed to investigate it properly and that the failure "led to the murder of these six women." In September 2018 Cleveland agreed to pay 1 million dollars, split evenly among the families of Nancy Cobbs, Telacia Fortson, Amelda Hunter, Leshanda Long, Diane Turner and Janice Webb, plus their legal costs. The other five families were left out because of when their relatives died relative to that release, Ideastream reported. CBS News reported that the family of Crystal Dozier received 2,500 dollars, and that in 2019 the city paid a combined 300,000 dollars to two surviving women.
The city condemned the house in September 2011, listing 22 violations from the roof to the water supply, and sent the notice to its owner, an elderly relative of Sowell's. On December 6, 2011, heavy equipment began tearing it down just before dawn, a day after the women's families received hand-delivered letters. People across the street chanted "Tear it down!" Frances Webb-Speed, Janice Webb's sister, said many of the families still lived in the neighborhood and that it would be good for the house to be gone.
The lot stood empty for years. In 2016 the Western Reserve Land Conservancy helped secure nearly an acre for a memorial, a lot made up of eight city parcels, The Land reported in 2020. The design, first drawn by a local architect the families had hired and managed by David Wilson of LAND Studio, set a path tracing an infinity loop, with a low wall for seating and a poem by Maya Angelou. Residents and relatives planted 22 trees, "eleven times two."
The Garden of 11 Angels opened in November 2021 at Imperial Avenue and East 123rd Street, with a black granite monument inscribed with the eleven names and an angel. "I had two in this house that's gone and it hurts," Florence Bray said at the ribbon-cutting. A granddaughter of Tonia Carmichael, Doniesha Jacobs Carmicheal, called the day "closure."
Ray's Sausage is still next door. In 2026 its president, Renee Marilyn Cash, said the city had promised help finding a larger building after wrongly blaming the business for the smell, and that the move had never happened.
Proven by final judgment: the aggravated murders of all eleven women, and the kidnapping, rape, attempted murder and felonious assault counts concerning the women attacked in December 2008, September 2009 and October 2009, except the aggravated robbery count on which the jury acquitted him. For Leshanda Long, the judge acquitted him of the felony murder and kidnapping counts because only her skull was found; he was convicted of her aggravated murder with prior calculation and design.
Never tried: the attacks of September 2008 and April 2009 described by women who testified at the trial. The September 2008 attack was charged in a separate indictment in 2010; the two separate cases remaining after the murder trial were dismissed in September 2011 at the prosecution's request, and no court decided them.
Other investigations: in late 2009 the FBI reviewed unsolved crimes in places where Sowell had lived, including his Marine postings on Okinawa, and East Cleveland police reviewed unsolved deaths and disappearances of women from the late 1980s. In March 2010 East Cleveland police said Sowell had frequented a bar where a woman who disappeared in 1989 worked; he was interviewed and admitted nothing, and he was never charged. A separate cold-case review led prosecutors in 2011 to charge a different man in one of the East Cleveland deaths from 1989. No other crime was reported as proven against Sowell.
Accounts differ on several details: the year of the attempted rape conviction (the offense was in 1989; the Supreme Court of Ohio and CNN date the conviction and guilty plea to 1990, while some wire reports speak of a "1989 conviction"); the number of counts on which he was convicted in 2011 (81 by the Supreme Court of Ohio, CBS News and Court News Ohio; 82 in some Associated Press reports); when the killings began (the AP said the women began disappearing in 2007, other AP reports said October 2007, and Cleveland 19 later gave June 2007); the ages of several women and the number of children of Crystal Dozier and Tishana Culver; Raymond Cash's spending (nearly 30,000 dollars in his testimony; 20,000 dollars in AP reports); and where Sowell died (Franklin Medical Center in Columbus, according to CBS News, NBC News and Ideastream; a photo caption on one syndicated page said Chillicothe Correctional Institution, where he had been held).
1959: Anthony Sowell is born in Cleveland.
1969: a sister dies; his mother takes her children and others into the household.
1978 to 1985: serves in the Marine Corps; honorably discharged in 1985.
1989: attacks a 21-year-old woman in East Cleveland.
1990: pleads guilty and is convicted of attempted rape; serves 15 years.
2005: released; moves to 12205 Imperial Avenue and registers as a sex offender.
2006: neighbors' complaints about a smell begin.
February 2007: heart attack; by July 2007 he can no longer work.
October 2007: Crystal Dozier is last seen.
June 2008: Tishana Culver is last seen by her family.
2008: Leshanda Long is last seen.
September 2008: a woman is raped in the house and sees what looks like a body.
October 2008: Michelle Mason is reported missing.
November 10, 2008: Tonia Carmichael vanishes.
December 8, 2008: a woman escapes the house and flags down police; Sowell is arrested and released without charges.
January 1, 2009: Kim Yvette Smith is last seen.
April 2009: Nancy Cobbs and Amelda Hunter are last seen.
June 2009: Telacia Fortson is last seen; Janice Webb is last seen on June 3.
September 2009: Diane Turner is last seen.
September 22, 2009: a woman is raped in the house and reports it; officers had checked his registration that day.
October 2009: a woman falls from a third-floor window while escaping; no charges at the time.
October 28, 2009: arrest and search warrants issued.
October 29, 2009: the first two bodies are found.
October 31, 2009: Sowell is arrested on Mount Auburn Avenue.
November 3, 2009: four more bodies and a skull are recovered; eleven women in all.
December 1, 2009: 85-count indictment announced.
December 3, 2009: pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.
Early December 2009: the last of the eleven women is identified.
March 31, 2010: the special commission issues 26 recommendations.
July 21, 2010: closed suppression hearing; his statements are ruled admissible.
June 2011: jury selection and trial begin.
July 22, 2011: convicted on 81 counts, including eleven aggravated murders.
August 2011: jury recommends death; Judge Dick Ambrose imposes eleven death sentences.
September 2011: two remaining cases dismissed; the house is condemned.
December 6, 2011: the house is demolished.
December 8, 2016: Supreme Court of Ohio affirms, 2016-Ohio-8025.
October 2017: U.S. Supreme Court declines review.
February 2018: Supreme Court of Ohio declines to reopen the appeal.
September 2018: city settles with six families for 1 million dollars.
November 26, 2018: trial court denies postconviction relief.
May 14, 2020: Eighth District affirms, 2020-Ohio-2938.
January 21, 2021: admitted to end-of-life care at Franklin Medical Center.
February 8, 2021: dies in custody, aged 61.
November 2021: the Garden of 11 Angels opens on the site of the house.