A Cleveland serial killer charged with killing 11 women in Cleveland died of a fatal disease in jail on Monday, authorities said.
Cleveland serial killer died of terminal disease
Anthony Sowell, 61, was transferred to the end-of-life care center at a psychiatric treatment prison in Columbus on January 21, a spokesperson for the corrections department said.
At 3:27 p.m., the Cleveland serial killer was pronounced dead after a disease unrelated to Covid-19, spokesman JoEllen Smith said on Monday. After a jury convicted him of attempted murder, kidnapping, rape, corpse violence, and tampering with evidence, Sowell, who worked as a Marine, was sentenced to death in 2011.
In 2007, the Cleveland serial killer started luring women to his house, investigators said. Two years later, after a woman told police that she had been assaulted at his home, two bodies and a freshly created grave were discovered by the authorities, the NBCNews via MSN reported.
They later found the bodies of other women dumped or buried around his house and property in trash bags and plastic sheets. Tonia Carmichael, Nancy Cobbs, Tishana Culver, Crystal Dozier, Telacia Fortson, Amelda Hunter, Leshanda Long, Michelle Mason, Kim Yvette Smith, Diane Turner, and Janice Webb were among Sowell's victims.
Cleveland.com confirmed that Sowell tried to reverse his conviction and death sentence, with a public defender arguing in an appeal that capital punishment is illegal and that Sowell did not have ample investigators and qualified experts to represent himself properly in the court.
According to the web, a three-judge jury dismissed the appeal last year. The city of Cleveland has paid more than $1.3 million in lawsuit settlements to the victims' families for how detectives treated allegations before the arrest of Sowell, the site reported.
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Former marine serial killer did not die of COVID-19
Former Marine Anthony Sowell, 61, had been detained at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution in Ohio. Sowell was undergoing end-of-life treatment at the Franklin Medical Center for a chronic condition that was not linked to COVID, the Ohio Department of Corrections said.
Police found two bodies in a room adjacent to his bedroom when his home was raided in October 2009 before finally finding three more bodies and a skull in a building with five bodies buried in shallow graves in the backyard.
On 81 counts, including attempted murder and abduction, Sowell was found guilty. He was later charged with assaulting two other women and planning to rape another one.
According to Daily Mail, the serial killer continued to appeal against his conviction after being sentenced to death. As early as May 2020, he had his final appeal.
'I'm happy that he's dead. God allowed it to happen. I will never ever forgive him,' said Donnita Carmichael, Tonia Carmichael's daughter.
'Because he's gone, we should move ahead. "We don't have to hear about him anymore," Joann Moore, Janice Webb's niece, told Fox 8.
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For weeks or months, several slain women had been gone, and others had criminal records that indicated their disappearances were not always reported to the authorities immediately.
Apparently, random objects, including shoe-strings, socks, a belt, a bag tie, a coaxial cable, and a cell-phone charging cord, were strangled and tied by the victims.
In trash bags and plastic sheets, their remains were disposed of, then discarded in various house and yard areas. There was nothing left of one victim in a plastic bucket with non-human bite marks on the edge: a skeleton.
An overpowering smell was produced by the decaying bodies that residents blamed on an adjacent sausage factory. To no avail, the landlord spent $20,000 on new plumbing fixtures and drainage pipes.
Many of the victims were strangled with household items and had traces of cocaine or depressants in their systems, naked from the waist down. Prior to convicting Sowell, jurors sat through weeks of upsetting and emotional testimony. They saw photos of the blackened, skeletal remains of the victims sitting on autopsy tables and listened to police explain how Sowell's Cleveland home and backyard had been left to rot with their bodies. Sowell took to the stand at his trial to apologize.
'The only thing I want to say is that I'm sorry,' Sowell told jurors. 'I know that may not sound like much, but from the bottom of my heart, I am sincerely sorry.'
They never figured out why he murdered the women and stayed in the house for two years with their bodies bagged in corners or hidden in the backyard. Investigators called him a 'vile and hideous' serial murderer.
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