CLEVELAND, Ohio — Anthony Sowell, the infamous Cleveland serial killer who committed one of the most shocking series of crimes in the city’s history, died Monday afternoon at an Ohio prison hospital of an unspecified illness, a state corrections department official confirmed.
Sowell, 61, was awaiting the death penalty for the gruesome and depraved slayings that have haunted the Mount Pleasant neighborhood since police found the decomposed bodies of 11 women on his property more than a decade ago.
State prison officials on Jan. 21 moved Sowell from death row at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution to the end-of-life care unit at the Franklin Medical Center in Columbus. He died at 3:27 p.m., according to a prisons spokeswoman.
Sowell suffered from a terminal illness, but Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman JoEllen Smith could not say what illness. She said his death is not the result of the coronavirus.
His case became an international news story. It highlighted deep deficiencies within the Cleveland-area criminal justice system that saw several of Sowell’s victims ignored by law enforcement, allowing him to remain free to rape and kill others. It also called into question how seriously police took the families of missing persons known to live on society’s fringes.
Cleveland paid out more than $1.3 million to victims and their families to settle lawsuits over how detectives handled accusations against Sowell before his arrest.
Sowell had been free from prison for several years by October 2009, having served a 15-year sentence for rape when officers went to his Imperial Avenue home as part of a new rape investigation. Investigators found two decomposing bodies on the third floor and a freshly dug grave in the basement.
Police took Sowell into custody two days later. Meanwhile, investigators combed through every inch of the house and the property on which it sat.
In the end, they found the decomposed bodies of 10 women, as well as a skull in a bucket in the basement.
Investigators later determined that Sowell lured the victims – all vulnerable women who struggled with drug addiction – into his home. He raped and strangled them, discarding their bodies in shallow graves, crawl spaces and even out to decompose in the open air.
The victims who escaped later recounted how Sowell lured them into his life and transformed into a monster. Some spoke of police officers who didn’t believe what they reported.
A jury found Sowell guilty in 2011 of dozens of charges, including multiple counts of aggravated murder and other crimes for the women he killed. He was also convicted of trying to kill three women who survived.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose sentenced Sowell to death, rejecting arguments that the hard life lived by the killer – a Marine who had an abusive childhood and may have suffered from mental and cognitive disorders – should be a reason to spare his life.
John Parker, one of two lawyers who represented Sowell at trial, said Tuesday that he spent many hours with his client at the time. Parker, who has not spoken to Sowell in many years, maintained that his former client’s troubled upbringing rippled throughout the rest of his life.
“He was not a monster and he was not evil,” Parker said. “He was damaged by childhood abuse and serious mental health problems. May he rest in peace.”
Sowell, like most death-row inmates, continued to fight his case in court to the end.
The discovery of the bodies in Sowell’s home solved a mystery that had real consequences for the neighborhood and a well-established East Side business. Residents at the time complained of a smell that permeated the neighborhood.
Former City Councilman Zack Reed, whose ward included Mount Pleasant, said there was a woman who lived across the street from Sowell who told him the neighborhood smelled like dead bodies.
Drain pipes were flushed and sewers were replaced because of the smell. The owners of Ray’s Sausage next to Sowell’s house spent nearly $20,000 for new plumbing fixtures, sewer lines and grease traps amid complaints that their operation was the source of the odor.
“Those women never got justice,” Reed said in an interview late Monday after news of Sowell’s death spread. “Those families never got justice. The community never got justice. Ray’s Sausage never got justice. There’s nothing good that came out of that situation.”