Nobody's Women: The Crimes and Victims of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Serial Killer (21 page)

Closer to home, several cold murder cases were revived. The cases were strung together in a timeline with a geographic base that would place Sowell in the area.

In May 1988, Rosalind Garner had been found strangled in her home on Hayden Avenue in East Cleveland. She was a financial analyst who lived alone and had no criminal record. She was found by her sister after she didn’t respond to phone calls. In keeping with Sowell’s MO, she would have been an unlikely victim.

The other two that were reconsidered, though, had some similarities with the victims who were being discovered on Imperial.

Carmella Prater, a nursing assistant who had once lived on Page Avenue, was discovered dead in an abandoned building on First Avenue in East Cleveland in February 1989. An anonymous caller tipped East Cleveland police to her body. She had been beaten, but the coroner was unable to pinpoint how she was killed.

A month later, the body of Mary Thomas was found by a utility worker in a different abandoned building on First Avenue. She had a red ribbon tightly drawn around her neck. She had been strangled and beaten. Thomas,
who was pregnant at the time of her slaying, had been arrested twice for grand theft and spent time in jail.

Both Prater and Thomas had had drug connections, police said. But no ties to Sowell were found.

Anthony Sowell’s first court appearance came on Wednesday, November 4, 2009. Accompanied by seven officers and bailiffs, he wore leg and wrist irons and the same blue zippered jumpsuit. He was joined by Public Defender Kathleen DeMetz.

Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine asked Sowell if he wanted to waive his right to an examination hearing.

“That’s correct, sir,” Sowell said, barely audible, his body leaning forward.

Charged with multiple counts of aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping, and felonious assault, Sowell’s bond was set at $5 million.

The next week, on Friday, November 13, Sowell pled not guilty by reason of insanity. It was a plea of convenience and a placeholder until a more solid defense team could be appointed.

Although most cops who came into contact with Sowell after his arrest found him to be curious and sometimes engaging, he turned mercurial when it came to the nuts and bolts of the murder.

By the time he was meeting with lawyers, he had to be aware of what he had told Griffin and Smith, the Cleveland Police Department homicide detectives, during the interrogation immediately following his arrest.

He had
almost
admitted culpability, but a solid defense team would point out that he was a confused addict who was being fed words to acknowledge.

Still, during that session, he said he would wake up some mornings and wonder where the girls went.

“And I’d say, ‘oh I let them out last night,’ and I’d go back to sleep. If I wasn’t drunk or high I’d have no problem remembering and let them out. Or other times I’d wake up and say, ‘wow, did I leave them out, did I say good-bye?’ and look around to see if they took something.”

Insanity is a tough jump from those statements; committing murder while intoxicated is no defense. And although Sowell told both the detectives and then, later, psychologists that he heard voices, such a claim still doesn’t meet the criteria for an insanity defense.

It’s easy for someone to believe Sowell was insane; that he kept rotting bodies in his apartment while he ate McDonald’s would pretty much fit the insanity bill for most of us.

But in the legal world, insanity has been worked over pretty well.

When John Hinckley was found not guilty by reasons of insanity for his 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, the legal definition of insanity was turned on its ear. Laws were passed, and dictates now vary by state. The general assumption is that a criminal might be considered insane if he is “incapable of appreciating his surroundings” because of a commanding mental delusion. And four states—Kansas, Montana, Idaho, and Utah—don’t allow the insanity defense, period.

*   *   *

Anthony’s stepmother, Segerna Sowell, died December 19, 2009, at St. Vincent Charity Hospital, a month shy of her seventieth birthday. She never knew what had been found back at her house. She had been living with her mother, Virginia Oliver, but more recently had been moving between hospitals and nursing homes. A small obituary that ran in the
Plain Dealer
noted that she was cremated at H. M. Martin Funeral Home in Cleveland.

They are treating me well here, I have my own cell and my own TV so it’s ok for now.

—ANTHONY SOWELL

Between Anthony Sowell’s arrest, the painful confirmation and identification of the bodies at 12205 Imperial, and the trial, there came a lot of finger-pointing.

Although Cleveland police continued to field ten missing-persons cases a day, there was a public outcry over perceptions of police ineptitude and indifference toward the minority community. Police, though, were not as much indifferent as they were calloused in handling a culture of crime that defied all solutions.

Meetings, demonstrations, and public floggings wouldn’t fix that. Crime kept on happening around the city.

But crime on Imperial came to a screeching halt. No doubt it had something to do with the police cars that were now a part of the landscape.

*   *   *

Embittered families discovered that police had let Anthony Sowell go on several occasions only to find that he had killed after being set free.

The first lawsuit came in May 2010 from Florence Bray, Crystal Dozier’s mother, against Anthony and Segerna Sowell. It was wisely filed preemptively to ensure that Sowell could not benefit from any media exploitation of his story. It was a pure motive for Florence, who asked for minimal damages from a defendant who had nothing.

Shawn Morris and her husband, Douglas, filed a lawsuit in November 2010 against WOIO Channel 19 in Cleveland. It claimed that the TV station publicized her attack at 12205 Imperial, noting her criminal record, “including charges of solicitation and drug possession.” It also alleged that the station portrayed her as an associate of Sowell’s, someone who “had knowledge of his other criminal activities, including the murders of multiple victims.”

It also erroneously claimed that Morris was not a public figure and alleged invasion of privacy. The action sought damages of more than $25,000, but the case was eventually dismissed with prejudice, with WOIO being awarded attorney’s fees.

In December 2010, Gladys Wade sued everyone, from Cuyahoga County to Loretta Coyne, a Cleveland city prosecutor who’d cited a lack of evidence in Gladys’s case and had declined to bring charges. Gladys also sued several detectives and the city of Cleveland.

She also attacked the practice of straight release, under which offenders are let go because of a lack of prosecutorial evidence in hopes of securing such evidence later but in practice let potentially dangerous characters go free. Which is what she claimed in her suit had happened with Sowell after he assaulted her.

Gladys Wade asked for yet-undetermined damages.

Also in December 2010, relatives of Janice Webb, Nancy Cobbs, Amelda Hunter, Diane Turner, and Telacia Fortson filed a suit against the same Cleveland police detectives, Coyne, and the City of Cleveland. Their allegations were about the same as Gladys Wade’s.

Donnita Carmichael, Tonia Carmichael’s daughter, also filed a suit, in January 2011, naming everyone possible as a defendant, but chiefly the City of Cleveland. The suit accused general ineptitude regarding the policing of Anthony Sowell’s conduct and the continued failure of police to home in on Sowell as the culprit in the string of missing persons. The suit specifically noted the smell that it claimed permeated the neighborhood, the Gladys Wade episode, and the city prosecutor’s failure to file charges against Sowell in relation to that kidnapping and assault.

“The actions of defendants in releasing Anthony Sowell on December 10, 2008, were reckless, wanton and willful and, as approximate cause, the plaintiff’s deceased relative suffered terrible torture and death that could have been avoided and upon knowledge it is believed that Anthony Sowell kept Tonia [Carmichael] alive and first raped, tortured her, as well as all of his victims before
murdering them, and Tonia [Carmichael] was alive at the time of Sowell’s arrest and was not murdered until on or about December 10, 2008.”

Donnita sought $42 million in damages.

Also in January 2011, U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge, whose district included the Imperial neighborhood, announced support for a memorial for the victims and pledged she would look into whether local officials had complied with the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.

The act allocated public money to ensure the perpetrators of violent crimes against women were properly prosecuted and also provided money to victims of crime against women. Passed in 1994, it was reauthorized in 2000 and again in 2005.

In February 2011, she met the families of some of the Sowell victims during a town-hall gathering in her district, and in May 2011, Fudge issued a resolution of condolence for the victims as part of a rally outside the Cleveland Heights City Hall. And on Labor Day weekend, Fudge attended the Ohio Eleventh Congressional District Labor Day parade, where eleven doves and one thousand balloons were released in honor of the eleven murder victims.

“We are releasing their spirits to a higher place, but we are also releasing our hurt and our anger to a higher place,” Fudge proclaimed.

But Fudge, outspoken as she was for the families, neglected to mention one thing: she was distantly related
to Anthony Sowell. In fact, she most likely had been to 12205 Imperial at some point in her life, since Anthony’s aunt Mildred was Marcia Fudge’s sister-in-law. Up until 1995, ten years before Anthony Sowell would arrive, Mildred Fudge had even been on the deed to the house.

“Timothy Fudge, my uncle, married Mildred, who was my father’s younger sister,” says the younger Thomas Sowell. “And Timothy was the brother of the congresswoman.”

It was one of those things that slipped through the media transom.

Anthony Sowell spent some time writing letters to a website devoted to selling serial-killer memorabilia called Serial Killers Ink. One of his letters went up for sale for $200. He addressed the letter to employees at the California-based outfit. In one letter he wrote, “I can only get money orders at this time and yes, I can receive pictures.”

On a Christmas card, he wrote to one admirer, “So if you need someone to talk to I am here for you. So tell me what do you want to know about me? I know what I want to know about you, what type of woman are you? Do you have a man in your life?”

Beneath his signature was the Bible verse Matthew 1:23: “Behold the Virgin shall be with child and bear a son and they shall call him Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”

Still another, to a California woman, read, “Thank you
for sending me your support. I hope that you are doing well and in good health. I am in need of just about everything and anything you can do to help out is a blessing…never send cash in the mail, you can send me money orders. Just put my name and number on it and put it in with your next letter. OK, I’ve got to close now, I only get 20 min out.”

He signed it “Tony Sowell” and underneath, “Anthony Sowell.”

To a person named Barry, he wrote about his life in jail.

“They are treating me well here, I have my own cell and my own TV so it’s ok for now…I was married before, my ex-wife died in an industrial accident back in 1998 in California, her home state. We were married for about three years and had no kids.”

He signed off, “Your pal, Anthony Sowell.”

The letters sold for between $80 and $200.

You have to call me master.

—ANTHONY SOWELL

As investigators pieced together Sowell’s trail of terror, they uncovered a tale that was as frightening as it was infuriating.

The prosecution was pulling together any other incidents that Sowell might have been involved in and was casting a wide net to include reports of unsolved cases from police departments in the area.

It was already discovered that Sowell’s name was known to some of the sex crimes investigators before his arrest, although no one had pinned any unsolved sexual assaults on him. The eleven bodies were likely enough. But as with any good prosecution team, enough was never enough.

When Sowell was arrested and his face plastered across every TV in the city, in October 2009, Keshana Murray
³
called the Cleveland Heights police and left a message. It was him—that’s her attacker from that previous April, she said. When police tried to get back to her, she was unreachable.

³
Denotes pseudonym

Word of the call trickled up to the prosecutor’s investigation team. They found that the attack would have been three days before Amelda Hunter disappeared, and five days before the attack on Tanja Doss. It portrayed a man in a violent frenzy.

And it was textbook Sowell.

On the afternoon of Friday, April 17, 2009, Murray walked into Hillcrest Hospital on Mayfield Road and told the receptionist at the desk that she had been raped and needed help. Murray couldn’t have come to a more proficient place in Hillcrest, at least on paper.

The hospital, like most others in the area, was part of the Cleveland Clinic. In 2003, Diane Daiber put together the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program for the clinic at Hillcrest. Daiber was a devoted advocate, nurse, and caregiver for sexual-assault victims, and she had spent the last twenty-four years at Hillcrest. Comfort and justice were her games, and she played them well. Murray was in good hands.

She told a story that, on its own, was simply a victim’s tale of falling into the hands of one more depraved predator on the bad streets of Cleveland. There was nothing to make Daiber, or later on, the police, believe that Murray’s assault was committed by a serial predator.

It was simply disturbing on its own merits.

Murray said that less than forty-eight hours earlier, on
April 15, around 9
P.M.
, she was waiting for the Number 40 bus at a stop in the Superior Avenue and Glenmont Road area of Cleveland Heights, about four miles north of Imperial Avenue. Her place, on Kensington Road, was about two miles away, but
the bus would drop her within sight distance.