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East Cleveland Police Arrest Michael Madison After Three Missing Women's Bodies Are Found Near His Apartment

Madison, 35, a registered sex offender, was arrested after a brief standoff. The mayor said he appeared to have been influenced by Anthony Sowell.

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Illustration of police cars with flashing lights on a narrow residential street of older wooden houses at dusk. Not an actual scene from the case.

Three women disappeared in the Cleveland area over nine months. On July 19, 2013, after the first body was found in a garage behind his building, police in East Cleveland arrested Michael Madison.

Workers at a cable company on the ground floor of Madison's building on Hayden Avenue had noticed a foul odor coming from the garage and called police, who found a body there. The next day officers found a second body under a brush pile behind the garage and a third in the basement of an abandoned house nearby. Madison, 35, was arrested at his mother's house after a brief standoff, and by July 22 he faced three charges of aggravated murder. He was a registered sex offender who had served four years in prison beginning in 2002 for attempted rape. East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton said Madison had said things suggesting that convicted Cleveland killer Anthony Sowell "might be an influence."

The victims were Shetisha Sheeley, 28, who last contacted her family in September 2012; Angela Deskins, 38, whose father lost contact with her around May 2013; and Shirellda Terry, 18, last seen July 10, 2013. On July 21, 2013, Madison signed a four-page confession admitting one of the killings. A grand jury returned a 14-count indictment, a jury convicted him of three counts of aggravated murder and he was sentenced to death on each, and the Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed the convictions and sentences in 2020.

Early reports said the three women were believed to have been killed within the previous six to 10 days, while the Supreme Court of Ohio later found that the killings spanned nine months.

Sources