Anthony Sowell, Condemned for the Murders of 11 Cleveland Women, Dies in Prison Before His Execution
Sowell, 61, died of a terminal illness on February 8, 2021, while receiving end-of-life care at the Ohio prison system's Franklin Medical Center.
Published
Anthony Sowell never reached the execution chamber. The Cleveland man sentenced to death for killing 11 women and hiding their remains in and around his home died on Monday, February 8, 2021, at Franklin Medical Center, where he had been receiving end-of-life care for a terminal illness. He was 61. JoEllen Smith, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said the death was not related to COVID-19. No execution date had ever been set.
The case began in October 2009, when Cleveland police investigating a rape complaint searched his house on Imperial Avenue and found two bodies. The remains of 11 women were eventually recovered. Prosecutors said most of the women had struggled with addiction and had been strangled; some had been decapitated, and others were so badly decomposed that coroners could not be sure how they died. In interviews with police, Sowell said he went after women who reminded him of a former girlfriend, a cocaine user who left him shortly before the killings began. For years, neighbors had blamed the smell on the sausage factory next door, which spent $20,000 on new plumbing fixtures and sewer lines trying to make it go away.
The women were Black, and their families, along with many Black residents of the city, said police had not taken the disappearances seriously because of the victims' race and troubled lives. Some of the women had never been reported missing at all. Afterward, Cleveland police overhauled how they handled missing-person and sex crime investigations. Sowell was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to death. He was also convicted of raping two other women and attempting to rape another.
Joann Moore, whose sister Janice Webb was among the dead, said she was still sorting through her feelings the day after. "The ultimate goal was to see this through and see he got justice," she said. "That was something else we weren't able to see, him take his last breath." And then: "I still miss my sister. I know she's watching down on her son and his kids, and her siblings."
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley called Sowell a monster. "My hope is that law enforcement and the criminal justice system have learned from the mistakes that allowed this diabolical predator to go undetected for so long," he said. Zack Reed, the former City Council member whose East Side ward included the house, was blunter about where the fault lay. Sowell "could have been stopped years before if we had done our job," he said. "We didn't thoroughly investigate those missing women. We didn't take their families and the community seriously."
John Parker, one of Sowell's defense attorneys, described a former Marine who had survived a brutal childhood and struggled with his mental health. "He was not a monster and not evil," Parker said. "He was damaged by childhood abuse and serious mental health problems. May he rest in peace."
Sowell had continued to appeal. As recently as May 2020, a three-judge panel of the 8th District Court of Appeals unanimously held that he had not presented enough evidence that he was denied a fair trial or that his trial lawyers were ineffective during the penalty phase, and upheld the dismissal of his petition for post-conviction relief. Ground was broken in 2014 on a memorial at the site where the women's remains were found, and in 2019 the city settled a lawsuit brought by two of Sowell's survivors, who said a police detective had mishandled the investigation of their accusations and left him free to harm more women.
What was established in February 2021. The corrections department named a terminal illness but did not disclose what it was. Sowell's death came while his appeals were still being pursued; his convictions and death sentences had not been set aside.
Sources
- Anthony Sowell, Ohio man who killed 11 women, dies in prison, Associated Press via KSAT
- Anthony Sowell, Ohio Man Who Killed 11 Women, Dies In Prison, Associated Press via CBS Pittsburgh