ANTHONY SOWELL IS FINALLY DEAD!

            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

Updated 11:59 PM; Today 10:21 PM

Anthony Sowell

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By Eric Heisig, cleveland.com

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

http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2013/08/hear-victim-impact-statement-of-anthony.html

http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2012/08/in-memory-of-anthony-sowells-11-victims.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Sowell

PRISON KILLER, JOEL DRAIN SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR MURDER OF INMATE (MAY 18, 2020)

            On this date, May 18, 2020, Joel Drain was sentenced to death for the murder of his inmate, Christopher Richardson in 2019. Drain was already serving a life sentence where Court records indicate that he strangled Randy Grose, 56, while stabbing him numerous times in the head and stomach. Another good reason why murderers will kill behind bars.

   

Joel Drain faces the possibility of the death penalty after a brutal assault kills another prisoner

Man who confessed to killing inmate gets death penalty

By Keith BieryGolick Cincinnati Enquirer

Posted May 18, 2020 at 4:13 PM

LEBANON – Joel Drain walked out of his cell and downstairs in the Warren Correctional Institution. He covered the blood on his shirt by putting on a green hoodie. Drain, 38, greeted a friend and told him he had just smoked synthetic marijuana, even though he had not.

Drain later told investigators he said this because he looked crazy – and he had just killed someone. As he walked by other inmates in his unit, an officer noticed blood on the stairs. This officer followed the blood upstairs, where he found a bloody footprint.

He followed the blood to Drain’s cell, No. 215, and called for backup when he got there. Another officer arrived and unlocked the door, where a window had been covered to block the view of what was inside.

Once opened, officers saw a room in disarray. They saw an inmate with a bloody sheet covering his face. They saw part of a broken fan, cable wire from a TV and pencils on the bed. When the sheet was removed, they would discover one pencil had been jammed into the inmate’s eye.

As the officers called for more backup, Drain got on his knees downstairs and put his hands in the air.

When he woke up that morning, in April 2019, Drain said he planned to kill someone else. When he spoke with state investigators hours later, dragging past midnight, he forgot the man’s name whom he’d killed.

There was another inmate who lived in his unit. That inmate was a child molester, Drain said in a recorded interview played in Warren County Common Pleas Court Monday. And that’s who he woke up planning to kill, he said.

Drain had been using nail clippers to fashion a knife out of his cell window, but it was taking too long.

“I was getting antsy,” he told investigators.

He had invited Christopher Richardson into his cell to smoke synthetic marijuana. Richardson, 29, was serving four years for aggravated arson. The two knew each other, but not well. Drain had no problems with him and said he was “weirdly friendly.”

When Richardson got to the cell, Drain’s adrenaline was pumping. He had disassembled a fan and removed the heavy motor from it. He kept it in his hoodie.

“I started thinking he’d be an easy kill,” Drain told investigators about Richardson. “I could still carry out my plan. I could kill him and the other guy.”

So he did. By beating him with the fan, the stabbing him in the eye.

Drain would later confess to the killing in a letter he sent to The Columbus Dispatch.

As these details were revealed Monday, heavy rain could be heard coming down outside the Warren County Court of Common Pleas. The rain was loud, but not as loud as the tears of Richardson’s mother.

Drain was on trial Monday on charges of aggravated murder and two other felonies. A three-judge panel found Drain guilty of all charges and sentenced him to death. It took them about an hour to reach their decision.

Drain, of Findlay, had previously been convicted of murder in 2016 and was serving a possible life sentence. He’d been transferred to the Warren County prison a few weeks before the 2019 homicide because he had cut his wrist.

Drain’s attorneys presented little evidence in his defense. He waived his right to a jury trial and pleaded no contest. He told the court he didn’t want to blame his actions on a dysfunctional childhood or other trauma in his life.

He said his attorneys tried to get his 14-year-old daughter to testify, but he wouldn’t allow it.

“My daughter has nothing to do with my criminal behavior,” he said. “I refuse to let her be used as a human shield.”

Drain said he was locked in a prison cell when he was 13 and told investigators he’d been in and out of prison most of his life.

“My death sentence was handed down long ago,” he said.

INTERNET SOURCE: 

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/2799624206826194 .... ….

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200518/man-who-confessed-to-killing-inmate-gets-death-penalty

   

Joel Drain, who is tattooed across his neck and chin, decided to become a vigilante against Christopher Richardson

Warren County inmate gets death penalty for murder

LEBANON —

A prison inmate is headed for Ohio’s Death Row after a short trial in Warren County.

Joel Drain, 39, pleaded no contest to the murder charges and specifications filed against him for murdering another inmate in April 2019 and was sentenced to death on Monday by a three-judge panel.

Drain was charged with aggravated murder, murder and possession of a deadly weapon while under detention.

Drain, who was already serving 30 years to life in prison for aggravated murder, felonious assault and theft in Hancock County, was convicted of murdering prisoner Christopher M. Richardson at Warren Correctional Institution.

Drain beat Richardson, serving a four-year sentence for aggravated arson, with the motor from a desk fan, stomped on his throat and kicked a pencil into his head, left a cell in the prison outside Lebanon “a blood-bath,” according to Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell.

The judges accepted Drain’s plea of no contest and sentenced him to die after 5 1/2 hour trial in Warren County Common Pleas Court.

Drain has been trying to waive his right to trial by jury and enter the no-context plea since February.

Asked about Drain’s reaction, Fornshell said, “Frankly he seemed somewhat disinterested or at least unaffected.”

In February, Judge Donald Oda II declined to accept a no-contest plea during a hearing Wednesday in Warren County Common Pleas Court.

But the judge said he would take steps toward accepting Drain’s plea, leaving his fate to the mercy of the court.

Drain asked Oda to accept his plea — against the advice of his lawyers — in a letter to the court.

Drain also wanted to waive mitigation of his sentence, during which his lawyers would bring a case against his execution - except for being allowed to make his own statement.

In response to Drain’s plea offer, his lawyers filed motions suggesting Drain was incompetent to stand trial, requesting a hearing on this issue and asking for a copy of Drain’s medical records for use in the hearing.

INTERNET SOURCE: 

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/2804385679683380 …. ….

https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime--law/warren-county-inmate-gets-death-penalty-for-murder/enaj0uufASvBS6Gl9CktMN/

Joel Drain, who is tattooed across his neck and chin, decided to become a vigilante against Christopher Richardson

OTHER LINKS: 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7375345/Ohio-inmate-indicted-aggravated-murder-charges-admitting-killing-prisoner.html

https://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2019/12/prison-killer-miguel-crespo-sentenced.html

https://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2013/07/white-supremacist-prison-killer-troy.html

https://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2020/04/arkansas-prison-killer-latavious.html

Matthew Nicholson gets the death penalty for killing Garfield Heights siblings (November 13, 2019)

On this date, November 13, 2019, Matthew Nicholson was sentenced to death for murdering two siblings in front of their mother. 

Trial underway for Garfield Heights man accused of killing his girlfriend's 2 children

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.cleveland19.com/2019/09/30/trial-underway-garfield-heights-man-accused-killing-his-girlfriends-children/]

Judge sentences man to death for killing Garfield Heights siblings in front of their mother

Convicted killer seen laughing during prosecutor’s closing arguments

By Chris Anderson | November 13, 2019 at 11:45 AM EST - Updated November 13 at 5:57 PM

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - The man convicted of killing his then-girlfriend’s children was sentenced to death on Wednesday afternoon.

Judge Timothy McCormick followed the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Matthew Nicholson to the death penalty at Wednesday’s Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas hearing.

Judge McCormick took into consideration the jury’s death penalty recommendation and statements from the victims’ family before delivering his sentence.

The judge even called Nicholson a coward during sentencing on Wednesday.

According to investigators, Nicholson shot 17-year-old Manuel Lopez eight times and his sister, 19-year-old Giselle Lopez, four times in front of their mother following an argument in September 2018. Manuel attempted to break up the fight between Nicholson and his 44-year-old ex-girlfriend, but he ended up firing his weapon, hitting both murder victims as they attempted to run away.

“There can be no greater form of abuse than killing someone’s children in front of them,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley. “Matthew Nicholson is a monster for his barbaric actions and received the sentence he rightly deserved. He was unremorseful to the very end.”

The jury found Nicholson guilty on of two counts of aggravated murder, two counts of murder, two counts of felonious assault, and one count of attempted felonious assault.

Copyright 2019 WOIO. All rights reserved.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.cleveland19.com/2019/11/13/judge-delivers-sentence-man-convicted-killing-garfield-heights-siblings-after-jury-recommends-death-penalty/

  

Giselle Lopez and Manuel Lopez Jr.

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://praisecleveland.com/2092431/local-news-school-community-remember-brother-and-sister-killed-in-garfield-heights-shooting/]

Security guard gets death penalty in killings of girlfriend’s teenage children in Garfield Heights

Updated 8:59 PM;Today 1:08 PM

By Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A judge sentenced former security guard Matthew Nicholson to death for shooting his girlfriend’s teenage children in the back last year in a fatal attack after he beat their mother in their Garfield Heights home.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Timothy P. McCormick handed down the sentence after a jury last month recommended Nicholson’s execution for the Sept. 5, 2018 slayings of Giselle Lopez, 19, and Manuel Lopez Jr., 17.

McCormick said he had no problem meting out the death sentence to someone he deemed “nothing more than an extreme coward" who remained unrepentant for slaying the children in front of their mother.

Nicholson, who did not speak during the hearing on the advice of his lawyers, nodded during the judge’s rebuke.

Nicholson’s mother and father told him they loved him as sheriff’s deputies led their handcuffed son out of the courtroom. With that, Nicholson became the third person condemned to death row from Cuyahoga County in 2019.

“There can be no greater form of abuse than killing someone’s children in front of them,” Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said in a statement emailed by his spokesman after the hearing. “Matthew Nicholson is a monster for his barbaric actions and received the sentence he rightly deserved.”

The jury that found Nicholson and recommended his death after a weeks-long trial packed the courtroom’s jury box on Wednesday to view the sentencing.

Nicholson attacked his girlfriend America Polanco after he discovered text messages on her cellphone that made him suspect that she was having an affair, prosecutors said at trial.

The private security officer contracted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security grabbed his gun and fired 13 shots that killed the two teens as they tried to flee Nicholson, prosecutors said.

Giselle Lopez had her backpack on when Nicholson shot her, records say. One of the bullets lodged into a book in her backpack.

Nicholson took the stand during his trial and testified that he shot the children in self-defense. He claimed they grabbed his gun from the trunk of his car, and he feared they were going to shoot him.

Nicholson, who cried through much his testimony, portrayed himself as a victim of a plot by Polanco to turn her children against him -- a plot prosecutors said did not line up with key evidence.

Giselle Lopez had graduated from Garfield Heights High School with honors and wanted to become a pediatric nurse. Manuel Lopez Jr., who went by Manny, worked out with his friends, showed off his muscles and thought about joining the military. He settled on pursuing a career as an electrician after high school, so he didn’t have to leave his mother.

Students at the school keep seats in classrooms empty in Manny Lopez’s memory, and a poster with both of their pictures hangs on the wall of the school’s guidance office, Principal Tammy Hagar said in court Wednesday.

A victims’ advocate for the prosecutor’s office read letters written by the children’s parents that illustrated a picture of two outgoing and compassionate children.

Polanco wrote that Nicholson transformed the home that she had bought to raise her three children in into a place of fear, anxiety and mental torture. He threatened to kill her several times if she ever reported his abuse, she said.

“I just don’t want him to ever come out and hurt someone else," the letter read.

The children’s father, Manuel Lopez Sr., wrote that he came to the United States to work hard so that his kids could prosper. Nicholson took that from him.

“I believe in justice,” the father wrote. “I believe justice has been served for my family.”

Polanco’s surviving child, Roberto Lopez, said that he is doing the best he can while in the U.S. Army to be there for his mother after she watched “two-thirds of her heart be gunned down."

“Matthew murdering my brother and sister was the act of not a man, but a coward who thinks he is a man because he can overpower a woman,” he said.

Faraglia, who has been part of the prosecution teams in two of the three death penalty trials this year, said Nicholson was full of jealousy, rage and hate that drove him to cut short two young lives that were filled with promise.

“Our community, will it be safer? Time will only tell,” Faraglia said. “Because killings continue in Cuyahoga County, and they’re because of guns. This man was issued a gun and commissioned to carry a gun, and yet he took two innocent lives."

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2019/11/security-guard-gets-death-penalty-in-killings-of-girlfriends-teenage-children-in-garfield-heights.html

  

Manuel Lopez Jr., 17, and Giselle Lopez, 19

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.gofundme.com/f/our-angels-giselle-amp-manuel-lopez/update/19718364/gallery/2]

OTHER LINKS:

https://fox8.com/2018/09/06/i-was-so-proud-of-both-of-them-father-of-teenagers-killed-in-garfield-heights-shooting-speaks-out/

https://praisecleveland.com/2092431/local-news-school-community-remember-brother-and-sister-killed-in-garfield-heights-shooting/

https://www.gofundme.com/f/our-angels-giselle-amp-manuel-lopez