Woman: I Escaped Cleveland Murder Suspect

Body Count at Sex Offender's Home Hits 11; Community Criticizes Police's Years of Inaction

(CBS/AP)  Updated 2:55 p.m. EST

A Cleveland woman said Thursday that she was choked and threatened this year by the man now charged with murder after the remains of several people were found on his property — and that she is racked with guilt for not speaking up earlier.

Tanja Doss told The Associated Press that if she had quickly gone to authorities, her best friend, Nancy Cobbs, might not be missing. She believes Cobbs might be among the 11 victims whose remains were found at Sowell's home.

Police have recovered 10 bodies and a skull from the home and yard of 50-year-old Anthony Sowell, a registered sex offender who moved back to his family's house in 2005 after serving 15 years in prison for attempted rape. He is being held without bond on five counts of aggravated murder.

Of the bodies found at Sowell's home, only one victim has been identified so far — 52-year-old Tonia Carmichael of Warrensville Heights.

Read more on this case at CBSNews.com:

Finger-pointing at Police in Ohio Murders
Crimesider: Home "Smelled Like a Dead Body" for Years
Crimesider: Identifying the Victims at Sowell's Home
PICTURES: Anthony Sowell's Home of Horror

Area pastors urged the families of missing people Thursday to provide DNA samples that could help the coroner's office identify the remains, claiming that nearly two dozen others are still missing in the community. The coroner's office, meanwhile, tried to calm concerns by promising DNA samples would not be shared with law enforcement.

Doss, 43, said she met Sowell in 2005, right after he was released from prison. He didn't tell her why he had done time.

In April this year, she said, he invited her over for a beer. They went to the third floor of his house and were talking.

"And then he just clicked," Doss said. "I'm sitting on the corner of the bed and he just leaped up and came over and started choking me."

Shocked, she said she lay back and tried not to struggle.

"He said, 'If you want to live, knock three times on the floor.' And I knocked on the floor," she said.

Still holding her throat, she said, he told her using profanities that she could be "dead in the street" and no one would care.

He made her strip off her clothes and lay on the bed but did not try to rape her, Doss said. She said she curled up in a ball and tried to talk him down, saying things like, "Why you gotta act like that?"

Then she prayed.

Sowell wouldn't let her leave, Doss said, so she fell asleep and awoke to him acting as if nothing had happened.

"He said, 'Hi, how you doing? You want something from the store?"' Doss said.

She picked up her cell phone and pretended to call her daughter.

"I said, 'Oh, wow, my granddaughter is sick. She's got the flu,"' she said. "He asked if I wanted to go to the store with him, but I told him I had to go home. He went to the store, and I went in the other direction."

Doss didn't immediately report the confrontation to police because she had done jail time on a drug charge and assumed they wouldn't take her seriously.

"Now, I feel bad about it, because my best friend might be one of the bodies," she said.

Doss last saw Nancy Cobbs on April 20, when they celebrated Cobbs' 44th birthday with a cake. The women grew up together, and Cobbs lived in the same neighborhood as Sowell.

When Cobbs vanished, Doss and Cobbs' daughters searched abandoned buildings. They posted fliers in stores and taverns, hoping someone had seen her, and filed a missing-person report April 24.

At the time, Doss said, she didn't think about what had happened with Sowell. She assumed he had just lost his mind for a few minutes. And Cobbs, she said, didn't know Sowell.

Now, it's all she can think about.

"It goes through my mind all the time," she said. "Every time I think about it, I start shaking. I can't get it out of my mind."

Doss said she finally reported the attack to police on Monday, three days after news surfaced of the discovery of bodies.

Another woman, who said Sowell attacked her on the street and dragged her into the home in December, told a Cleveland television station she would never forget the look in his eyes.

"It was like the devil, eyes glowing," Gladys Wade said in an interview on WKYC-TV. "He was demonic or something. You could see the demons in him."

Wade said she fought back as Sowell "kept twisting my neck, twisting it, twisting it. And I was gouging his face at the same time. I was trying to take his eyeballs out."

Police did not return calls seeking to confirm Doss' and Wades' reports, and a working telephone number could not immediately be found for Wade.

With the body count at Sowell's house now up to 11, relatives of the presumed victims are wondering how such a gruesome scene could have gone unnoticed for perhaps years, and they charge that police ignored their missing person reports.

No one is sure how long Sowell, a registered sex offender who would offer free barbecue to the neighbors, had been living in his three-story house with corpses lying around, many of them black women who had been strangled. Police have recovered bodies in the living room, crawl spaces and backyard graves from the home on Imperial Avenue. There was even a skull in the basement.

"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.

"It's hard to imagine," Carmichael-Jacobs said as she stood shivering on a street corner across from Sowell's home Wednesday, "but that's what they told us to our face: 'She'll turn up."'

Cleveland police don't take missing-persons cases seriously if they involve people clinging to the lower rungs of society, said Judy Martin, a leading local anti-crime advocate.

About two dozen clergy members rallied Thursday at Providence Baptist Church, declaring the justice system broken and saying 22 other missing people, men and women, have yet to be found.

"There have been 11 bodies found on Imperial Avenue, but where are the other victims?" said the Rev. Eugene Ward.

City Councilman Zach Reed also said he wants people to stop stereotyping the victims.

"I want us to stop this conversation that they were crackheads, they were this and that," he said. "They were people."

After the rally, Police Chief Michael McGrath said police searched their missing-persons database a few days ago and found 14 missing black women between ages 25 and 60 in that neighborhood.

Investigators are cross-referencing those missing women with the remains at coroner's office, he said. Some of the cases date back several years.

The police chief said he had no idea whether investigators would find more bodies.

Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Brian Murphy has said Sowell could face the death penalty if convicted of the aggravated murder counts. Sowell also faces charges of rape, felonious assault and kidnapping after a Sept. 22 attack on a woman at his home.

A message left with the county public defender's office was not returned Thursday.

Sowell's street is lined with occupied homes sandwiched between vacant, boarded-up houses and scattered small businesses with a steady stream of customers.

"We're not talking about some desolate area, some abandoned barn," said Reed, whose mother lives a block away. "How did somebody get away with this in a residential neighborhood?"

It smelled like a dead dog, neighbors say. Like sewage. Like rotting meat.

"It was smelling so bad, horrible, putrid," said Kenneth Broader, a postal carrier who delivers mail to Imperial Avenue.

Sewage lines were replaced. Equipment was scrubbed. City utility officials even came to investigate, on more than one occasion.

But the stench lingered.

[Alan7161]

There is something that most people are missing in this and many other cases . When this man was released from prison how many employers do you think were interested in hiring this guy ? It kind of looks like the system is set-up to guarantee things like this to happen . Would we rater have people working or breaking the law ? We sure don't have any problem in this country employing gays and mixed race relationship people .

[Sodamary]

I dont know how much the families did to look for their loved ones, but I'm guessing they did all they could.Despite their choices, they were still people. They were mothers, daughters, sisters, just people. As for the "poor" police officers being over burdened, get over it. They are public servants who get paid off the tax payers dime to DO A JOB. There are adults who are snatched and killed who are minding their own business, but just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That doesn't mean the police should spend any less time looking for them because they are adults. Whatever their background, none of these women deserved this treatment from that low life scum Sowell, and certainly none of them deserved to be ignored by the police because of their lifestyles.

[wadsworth09]

I don't think everyone should be so quick to convict this guy. Right now there's only circumstantial evidence connecting him to these deaths. Right now we don't know for sure any of the 11 were murdered and even if they were we have no way of knowing if they were murdered by him. Maybe they OD'd or drank too much at his house and he hid the bodies because he was afraid he'd get in trouble. Or maybe someone else killed them and put them on his property to frame him. Think about it.

[SamanthaWat]

For real? This is the most idiotic statement I have ever thought about. Tell me this...if someone just died at your house would you bury them in your yard, shove them in a wall?? Or better yet dismember them and leave parts in your house? Sleep among their decomposing bodies?? Would you leave them lying in your living room?? What are the odds that all of them just so happend to overdose at his house? If that were the case wouldn't that bring an intelligent human being to assume that if they all OD'd in his house, in his presence that he more than likely drugged them? Further more, any person of logic can see all of the similarities in the ages, races, and typical locations of all of these women. Not to mention, there is a consistency of strangulation...not only on the bodies but in the reports from the victims who surrived including the one he served 15 years in prison for. If a man killed 11 people and then just popped them in my house I think that I would notice. Especially considering the bodies were in different levels of decompostion which would indicate that a person trying to "frame" him would have to make several deposits. What good would anyone get out of framing this man anyway? Maybe some scrap metal or some free bbq? It isn't like he is being accused of an affair that a typical man might try to fluff off to his wife by coming up with ridiculous scenarios like this one even though he was caught with his member in another woman. "I was framed...another man took my pants off and made me had sex with this woman honey...don't be so quick to convict me." psh...you are probably a politician. Give me a break. AS far as the comment below me, from what I understand there was a shop next door which processed sausage and cheese. Residents assumed the stench came from the plant so much so the the facility replaced plumming and drainage lines. Apparantly a lot of people said they noticed. And as far as people not saying anything to him personally about the stench, I meet people with bad breath all of the time but I don't say anything...doesn't mean it stops stinking, it just means you try and ignore it. We ought to know by now the the American people sure aren't afriad of turning their heads when they ought be looking straight ahead. Bla...soapbox out

[John_Merritt]

This story is so unusual. One woman has an encounter with him in Dec. 08. We have another in April 09, five months apart. The lady in April hangs out in his house overnight and she mentions nothing about the rank smell that everyone else states is there? So in six months April-October he is supposed to have killed these 11 women and that is where the smell comes from? If these 11 women expired from April-October you would think there would be more attention to this case previously. Hmmm...

[wdh3007]

It is obvious this killer like many others in the past could not make it in society. A registered sex offender turned serial killer proves that certain criminals cannot be rehabilitated. Therefore capital punishment or the death penatly become more and more of a useful aspect of the criminal justice system.

[margaret-arthur-]

"I highly doubt this person was a violent offender at first." ...How can you say that???? He committed RAPE, which is a violent crime... it has NOTHING to do with sex!

[kailuagecko]

I said I didn't know the details and that I might have been incorrect.

[berlinfoto-2009]

"The current appearance of solving the crime problem is nothing more than politicians heightening people's fears in order to assuage them. Crime rates have been essentially stable since the 1970's. Politicians use a "bait and switch" scam in which they treat rare and horrifying crimes as if they are typical---switching voter outrage at the horrible crime to punishment of lesser and non-violent offenders." ---NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE COMMISSION, FEBRUARY 1996--- I found the quote in the book DERAILING DEMOCRACY, written by David McGowan.
I might add that the news CBS included is also engaged in this practice as shown with this news article, and the repeated coverage of this mans crimes.
Authoritarianism is on the march again except this time in America, instead of wearing Brown Shirts with red arm bands, these new NAZI's wear Bobby Brooks Suits with nice color coordinated neck ties, and tell lies to the American Public, Judges and Jurors, Members of the House and Senate, and receive a nice big fat salary form Uncle Satan.

[morham]

I don?t think it?s fair to blame the cops. Remember, these are victims who choose to live on the edge of society. They go by nicknames, they engage in illegal activity, they admittedly avoid contact with the Police. Sorry, but it seems like just another example of people not taking responsibility for themselves. The neighbors who complain about the cops should have delved deeper into the rotting flesh smell they came within 60 feet from every day for years! The Cops have their hands full just keeping that town?s head above water. You live there every day, take responsibility!

[Virgil-1]

Cleveland police don't take missing-persons cases seriously if they involve people clinging to the lower rungs of society, said Judy Martin, a leading local anti-crime advocate.
I pasted the above to say this: I bet they are serious about writing
out speeding tickets.

[Empire-George]

by kailuagecko November 5, 2009 11:59 AM EST
I highly doubt this person was a violent offender at first. If I'm correct, I don't think details of that label were released. He probably didn't become volent until after he was paroled.
______________

He went to prison, and THEN turns into a mass murderer ?? kind of a stretch.

[kailuagecko]

Stuff like that happens. You don't just one day become a killer. Typically he would have had smaller stuff leading up to this.