All Blog Posts from Crimesider

JUPITER, Fla. - Paul Merhige, the man police believe shot and killed four members of his extended family on Thanksgiving day and has since been on the run, was seen on surviellance video inside a gun shop a day before the killings.

Police say Merhige murdered his aunt, two twin sisters, one of whom was pregnant, and a 6-year-old girl, at a Jupiter, Fla. Home, after a family meal on Thanksgiving day.

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CLEVELAND - Anthony Sowell, the former Marine now accused of killing at least 11 women and leaving their remains in and around his Ohio home, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges.

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WASHINGTON - They are unusual bedfellows.

Homosexuals and religious groups, who are often at loggerheads over gay marriage, seem to have at least one thing in common. Reports of hate crimes against both groups were up sharply in 2008, according to an annual FBI statistics report released on Monday.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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