All Blog Posts from Crimesider

CLEVELAND - Anthony Sowell's Cleveland "House of Horrors" is going back under the microscope this week as police investigating the discovery of 11 victims at the scene renewed digging at the property and an adjacent backyard Wednesday.

Investigators hauled out evidence bags as they pursued clues provided by an FBI high-tech sweep. The horrible stench around the sex offender's home returned as well.

Read full post…

CLEVELAND - "It's like it got worse," said a neighbor of suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell. "It smells bad in the air, like death."

The stench around the sex offender's home returned stronger than ever Wednesday as police searched the house next door for more bodies and carried out bags of evidence.

Read full post…

CLEVELAND - Police in Cleveland have identified a 10th woman whose skull was discovered wrapped in paper in a bucket at the home of accused serial killer Anthony Sowell.

Police Lt. Thomas Stacho says 25-year-old Leshanda Long had not been seen since August 2008 but was not reported as a missing person. She had been reported missing twice when she was in her teens.

Read full post…

CLEVELAND - "The Cleveland Strangler" is what many people are now calling Anthony Sowell, the alleged Ohio serial killer whose home and yard were found to be littered with the body parts of 11 women.

But "roommate" and "boyfriend" is what Lori Frazier, the niece of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, called Sowell until recently. Frazier said she started a romance with Sowell soon after he was released from prison in 2005 and lived with the accused killer while a terrible stench, since learned to be rotting bodies, permeated his home.

Read full post…

CLEVELAND - Investigators trying to learn the horrible fate of 11 bodies found in suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell's Cleveland home are enlisting a rather unusual ally – insects that were crawling on the corpses.

Entomologist Joe Keiper is one of the few scientists who study both insects and crime scenes. The coroner called Keiper to the Cleveland home to help estimate when the victims died, by analyzing the types and number of insects found on the remains.

Read full post…

NEW YORK - As America honors its military heroes on Veterans Day, investigators are working to identify two of the 11 bodies pulled from former Marine and alleged serial killer Anthony Sowell's Cleveland home and hoping they don't find more victims near the military bases where he served.

Read full post…

CLEVELAND - In Ohio, Anthony Sowell's home and yard hid the remains of at least 11 people. Is it possible the accused serial killer, while serving in the military, was involved in cases still unsolved in Japan, California and the Carolinas?

It's a possiblity the FBI is not ruling out.

Read full post…

NEW YORK - As Cleveland police work to identify the remains of at least 11 bodies found in the home of accused killer and registered sex offender Anthony Sowell, a Crimesider investigation has turned up disturbing information that indicates Sowell and other sex offenders around the country may be free to troll the Internet for sex and potential victims, with little to no oversight from law enforcement.

Read full post…

CLEVELAND - Anthony Sowell, the registered sex-offender facing five counts of aggravated murder, would offer free barbecue to his neighbors, even as corpses were lying around his three-story Cleveland home, according to the Associated Press.

Residents said that in retrospect the smell alone should have raised questions. It wafted down the street, sometimes forcing employees at the sausage shop near his home to abandon the store on hot summer days.

Read full post…

CLEVELAND - As police say they have identified Cleveland mom Tonia Carmichael as the first of at least 11 bodies found in the home of Anthony Sowell, the woman's family is outraged that police didn’t take their cries for help seriously a year ago.

"They told us to go home, and as soon as the drugs are gone, she'll show up," said Markiesha Carmichael-Jacobs, whose 53-year-old mother, Tonia, a drug addict, vanished Nov. 10, 2008. Police identified her Wednesday as one of the victims, saying her body was found buried in the backyard with marks indicating strangulation.

Read full post…