On this date, February 8, 2021, Anthony Sowell AKA The Cleveland Strangler Sleeper, died at 3:27 pm at the Franklin Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. Whenever a Killer die by any means, it is good news.
Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell dies of terminal illness in prison hospital
shares
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Anthony Sowell, the
infamous Cleveland serial killer who committed one of the most shocking series
of crimes in the city’s history, died Monday afternoon at an Ohio prison
hospital of an unspecified illness, a state corrections department official
confirmed.
Sowell, 61, was awaiting the death
penalty for the gruesome and depraved slayings that have haunted the Mount
Pleasant neighborhood since police found the decomposed bodies of 11 women on
his property more than a decade ago.
State prison officials on Jan. 21 moved Sowell from death row at the
Chillicothe Correctional Institution to the end-of-life care unit at the
Franklin Medical Center in Columbus. He died at 3:27 p.m., according to a
prisons spokeswoman.
Sowell suffered from a terminal illness, but Ohio Department of Rehabilitation
and Correction spokeswoman JoEllen Smith could not say what illness. She said
his death is not the result of the coronavirus.
His case became an international news
story. It highlighted deep deficiencies within the Cleveland-area criminal
justice system that saw several of Sowell’s victims ignored by law enforcement,
allowing him to remain free to rape and kill others. It also called into
question how seriously police took the families of missing persons known to
live on society’s fringes.
Cleveland paid out more
than $1.3 million to victims and their families to settle lawsuits over how
detectives handled accusations against Sowell before his arrest.
Sowell had been free from prison for several years by October 2009, having
served a 15-year sentence for rape when officers went to his Imperial Avenue
home as part of a new rape investigation. Investigators found two decomposing
bodies on the third floor and a freshly dug grave in the basement.
Police
took Sowell into custody two days later. Meanwhile, investigators combed
through every inch of the house and the property on which it sat.
In the end, they
found the decomposed bodies of 10 women, as well as a skull in a bucket in
the basement.
Investigators later determined that
Sowell lured the victims – all vulnerable women who struggled with drug
addiction – into his home. He raped and strangled them, discarding their bodies
in shallow graves, crawl spaces and even out to decompose in the open air.
The victims who escaped later recounted how Sowell lured them into his life and
transformed into a monster. Some spoke of police officers who didn’t believe
what they reported.
A jury found Sowell guilty in 2011 of
dozens of charges, including multiple counts of aggravated murder and other
crimes for the women he killed. He was also convicted of trying to kill three
women who survived.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Dick
Ambrose sentenced
Sowell to death, rejecting arguments that the hard life lived by the killer
– a Marine who had an abusive childhood and may have suffered from mental and
cognitive disorders – should be a reason to spare his life.
Sowell, like most death-row inmates, continued to fight his case in court to the end.
The discovery of the bodies in Sowell’s home solved a mystery that had real consequences for the neighborhood and a well-established East Side business. Residents at the time complained of a smell that permeated the neighborhood.
Former City Councilman Zack Reed, whose
ward included Mount Pleasant, said there was a woman who lived across the
street from Sowell who told him the neighborhood smelled like dead bodies.
Drain
pipes were flushed and sewers were replaced because of the smell. The
owners of Ray’s Sausage next to Sowell’s house spent
nearly $20,000 for new plumbing fixtures, sewer lines and grease traps amid
complaints that their operation was the source of the odor.
“Those women never got justice,” Reed
said in an interview late Monday after news of Sowell’s death spread. “Those
families never got justice. The community never got justice. Ray’s Sausage
never got justice. There’s nothing good that came out of that situation.”
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.cleveland.com/crime/2021/02/cleveland-serial-killer-anthony-sowell-dies-of-terminal-illness-in-prison-hospital.html
OTHER LINKS:
http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-first-anniversary-of-anthony.html
No comments:
Post a Comment