Smell permeated Cleveland neighborhood where 11 bodies found, residents say From Susan Candiotti, CNN

 

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Smell permeated Cleveland neighborhood where 11 bodies found, residents say

From Susan Candiotti, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• First ID made of remains found in Cleveland man's home
• Newly discovered skull belongs to an 11th victim, police said
• Judge on Wednesday denied bond for Anthony Sowell, 50
• Sowell's neighbors had become used to terrible odor, but mistook the source

Find out the latest on the investigation into the discovery of 11 bodies at the house of accused killer Anthony Sowell on "Nancy Grace" at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday on HLN.

Cleveland, Ohio (CNN) -- The smell permeated the neighborhood, turning the stomachs of residents and curtailing their outdoor activities.

"We used to think that it was coming from out of Ray's Sausage," said one resident. "But you smell these smells, and I live right there and ... we used to come out here and oh, these smells would just be horrible."

Ray's Sausage Co. replaced a sewer line and grease traps, trying to rid the area of the stench. But Ray's wasn't to blame after all. Instead, police said, the foul odor had a much more sinister source.

Eleven bodies have been found inside and outside a home adjacent to Ray's -- six inside and five outside. A skull, wrapped in a paper bag and stuffed into a bucket in the basement, apparently is all that remains of the 11th victim, authorities said Wednesday.

The home's inhabitant, Anthony Sowell, 50, is a registered sex offender. Now, Sowell is facing five counts of aggravated murder, rape, felonious assault and kidnapping, police said. A judge on Wednesday denied bond for him, saying the latest allegations against him are "gruesome" and the "most serious" he has heard in his years on the bench.

The first victim was identified Wednesday as Tonia Carmichael, who was 52 when she was last seen on November 10, 2008, police said. Carmichael was identified using DNA. She disappeared from Warrensville Heights, a Cleveland suburb near Sowell's home.

Seven of the victims died from strangulation by a ligature, said Frank Miller, Cuyahoga County coroner. A ligature can include a string, cord or wire. All seven still had something tied around their necks, Miller told reporters.

An eighth victim died from manual strangulation -- strangulation by hands. Two other bodies were too decomposed to determine the cause of death, although Miller said he believes they were victims of "homicidal violence." Autopsy results on the 11th victim are pending.

"It's most likely strangulation in all cases," Miller said.

Some of the victims could have been missing for up to five years, Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath told reporters, and he doesn't believe authorities were able to discern any pattern relating to the disappearance of African-American women.

Police will execute a warrant later Wednesday for Sowell's DNA, to enter it into the known national DNA database, said the statement from Cleveland police Lt. Thomas Stacho.

McGrath earlier said authorities had no information about the smell in the area before the bodies were found.

"You could smell it," said another neighborhood woman. "I came around the corner and I smell it. You could smell the dead bodies. How are you going to tell me people in the neighborhood couldn't smell that?"

Sowell showed no emotion during his hearing Wednesday before Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine. Asked whether he could afford a lawyer, Sowell responded quietly, "No sir."

In asking the judge to deny Sowell bond, Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecutor Brian Murphy said, "The state believes he's an incredibly dangerous threat."

Adrine, in turn, told the suspect, "This is without question the most serious set of allegations I have faced. Given the gruesomeness of what's facing you ... you are being remanded without bond."

Kathleen Demetz, the public defender representing Sowell, asked that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation. She also said that Sowell, an ex-Marine, has a heart condition and wears a pacemaker.

Sowell has told authorities he had been collecting unemployment payments since being laid off from his job two years ago. It wasn't immediately known what that job was.

Stacho has said Sowell had been making his living as a "scrapper."

"He walks around and picks up scrap metal and takes it to junkyards to make a few pennies," he said.

Police said authorities in Coronado, California, also were checking to see if Sowell might be tied to a rape case there.

Investigators finished digging for more possible remains and evidence Wednesday outside Sowell's home. Detectives were not returning to the home Wednesday, Stacho said, but "will evaluate intelligence gathered from Dr. Miller's examination of the victims to determine what additional steps will be taken at the home before returning."

"I like to believe there is nothing else more there, but we will not know until we finish the search," said McGrath earlier. "It appears that this man had an insatiable appetite that he had to fill."

Police initially went to Sowell's home on October 29 to follow up on a rape accusation. A week earlier, neighbors reported seeing a naked woman fall from the second floor, but no charges were filed.

Neighbors called 911 after the October 20 incident, and emergency personnel -- but not police, initially -- were sent to the home, McGrath told reporters Tuesday. Firefighters later notified police, who responded to the hospital where the woman was taken, he said.

McGrath said the woman told officers she was at the home and "partying," he said. "They were doing coke, drugs, getting high." The woman said she was on an upper balcony and fell off the roof while trying to pick up her keys. A man described as her boyfriend -- Sowell -- told police the same story.

Sowell was arrested Saturday, two days after police discovered the first bodies inside and outside the home.

Authorities say that despite a police news release that described Sowell as a convicted rapist, he actually pleaded guilty to attempted rape in a 1989 case and was imprisoned from 1990 to 2005.

Since his release from prison he was listed as living at the Cleveland home where the bodies were found, McGrath said.

Authorities from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office checked on Sowell regularly, with the most recent check coming on September 22 to confirm his address, McGrath said. They found no problems, he said.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/04/ohio.cleveland.bodies/index.html

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