Coroner: 6 bodies found were homicide victims
CLEVELAND (AP) – Six badly decomposed bodies found at the home of a convicted rapist facing a new rape allegation were females and all were homicide victims, the coroner’s office said Sunday.
Powell Caesar, a spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller, said at least five of the victims apparently had been strangled. Decomposition made it difficult to determine how the sixth victim died, he said.
None of the victims has been identified, Caesar said. Two victims were black, but race hadn’t yet been determined in the other four bodies, he said.
Police found the first two bodies Thursday night when they went to the home of 50-year-old Anthony Sowell to arrest him on charges of rape and felonious assault, but he wasn’t there. He was arrested Saturday when officers spotted him walking down the street of his east-side neighborhood.
On Friday, police found a third body and remains that were later confirmed to be three additional bodies. It wasn’t determined how long the bodies were at the house, but “they could have been there anywhere from weeks to months to years,” Caesar said.
People who knew Sowell didn’t think he had a job and said he often walked around his neighborhood looking for scrap metal to sell and asking for money. He spent 15 years in prison for choking and raping a 21-year-old woman who was lured to his bedroom in 1989, police said.
Online court records do not show an attorney for Sowell, and the jail staff said no information was available.
Police were checking unsolved crime reports for similarities to the 1989 rape or the recent allegation against Sowell.
On Sunday, police urged the public for help in identifying missing people who may have been victims.