Hello, Friends, and welcome to the debut trifecta for Cabernet & True Crime. I hope you enjoy this content as much as I did researching it.
On the chilly morning of October 29th, 2009 in the Mt. Pleasant area of Cleveland, Ohio, East Cleveland PD arrived to serve an assault warrant for a man named Anthony Sowell. Upon arrival, coming out of the misty fall air and into the home, they didn’t find the man. Instead, they found the decomposing bodies of Diane Turner and Telacia Fortson, rotting in the open air of Anthony Sowell’s third floor duplex apartment. Over the next week, nine more bodies were found on the property.
On September 22nd, about a month earlier, Latundra Billups filed a police report stating that, although she had willingly gone to Sowell’s apartment for a drink, things became violent and he had ‘choked and raped her as she passed out.’ When police arrived at the home, 12205 Imperial Avenue, the first two bodies were found. After this gruesome discovery, Cleveland PD arranged another search warrant, this one including the county coroner and cadaver dogs. On Halloween, 2009, Sowell was seen on Mt. Auburn Avenue, recognized by someone who had seen the news broadcasts. Police were notified of the sighting and he was arrested after a two-day man hunt. Sowell was only three blocks away from the crime scene. On November 3rd, police obtained another search warrant, and this time arranged for a backhoe to be brought to the property. Five more corpses were uncovered, and eventually identified as Michelle Mason, Kim Smith, Amelda Hunter, Tonia Carmichael, and Crystal Dozier. With the previously discovered bodies found in the house on the second search, the body count on Sowell’s property climbed to eleven, with two more bodies in the living room of the apartment—Tishana Culver and Nancy Cobb—and also a body located under the stairs and a skull wrapped in plastic in a bucket in the basement. These woman were later identified as Janice Webb and Leshanda Long, respectively.
About a month before this horrific discovery, a naked woman had fallen out of Sowell’s third story window, caught on a neighbor’s surveillance tapes. Sowell appeared, also naked, coming out from the home and continuing to fight her outside. This altercation was stopped by passersby and police were notified, but the woman’s identity remains a secret, as the woman never pressed charges.
Also in the timeline leading up to the discovery, a local store owner mentioned that Sowell’s purchases were becoming increasingly weird, including a great number of trash bags as well as white extension cords.
In his neighborhood, Anthony Sowell was regarded as a likeable man, always chatty with the neighbors and often had cookouts. He had been noted as a “neighborly fixture’, and had regulars who would come over to play chess and drink ‘forties of King Cobra’- a cheap malt liquor known for its high alcohol content. His parties often took place in his third floor apartment, which his landlady/stepmother couldn’t reach due to immobility and old age. Although Sowell seemed nice enough within his community, the man had a dark past.
Sowell grew up in East Cleveland, and was one of seven children raised by a single mother, Claudia ‘Gertrude’ Garrison. After a death of one of Sowell’s siblings, several children moved into the house with Sowell’s mother, grandmother, Anthony himself, and two of his siblings. According to one of Sowell’s nieces, her time in the Page Avenue home was nothing short of Hell. She said that Garrison began abusing the children while Sowell and his siblings watched. Garrison had forced her to strip naked and subsequently beat her with electrical cords. According to family, Sowell began raping his niece almost daily for two years straight, forcing her to have sex with him over the threat of violence. She was ten, Sowell eleven. Five years after this abuse, Sowell appeared to have turned over a new leaf. At the age of 18, he served in the US Marines, and was highly successful and well regarded. He earned several awards and promotions during his years there, and was ultimately discharged as a Corporal. His success in the Marines is the only highlight of Sowell’s life.
After Sowell’s service, which spanned from 1978 to 1985, he found himself in a lot of trouble. In 1989, a woman had willingly gone to Sowell’s house, and when she tried to leave he bound her hands and feet and gagged her with a rag. Anthony Sowell was charged with kidnapping, attempted rape, and torture of a woman. He pled guilty to the attempted rape charge, and in 1990, was sentenced to fifteen years in jail. From his release on, Sowell was registered as a sex offender and police often stopped by his home. However, with no just cause or reason to enter his home, they never knew of the horrors that were occurring inside.
When Sowell was released from prison in 2005, he started a dating profile on alt.com, a site for fetish seekers. He said he was ‘a dominator looking for a slave to train’. He was active on this website until his ultimate arrest in 2009. He also dated Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson’s niece, Lori Frazier. She was his live in girlfriend for a part of Sowell’s active killing career, and said she had noticed the smell emanating from his home, but believed Sowell’s lie that the smell was from his mother. She moved out sometime in 2008.
The smell of the rotting bodies began plaguing the neighborhood around June 2007. At this time, Sowell’s mother was living with him in the Imperial Avenue house. Neighbors often complained about this smell, and presumed it to be coming from Ray’s Sausage, a meat supplier next door to Sowell’s home. The owner of Ray’s spent over 30k in renovations to his plant to relieve the community of the smell, but to no avail, the smell always persisted.
Victims in order of Disappearance:
Crystal Dozier was last seen on May 17th, 2007. The thirty-five-year old mother of seven was the first to go missing. She was a known addict in the neighborhood, and was known to party with Anthony Sowell, although he was never considered her boyfriend. Dozier’s family said they had put posters up after her disappearance, but more often than not, they disappeared. Family had heard tips about a home on Imperial Avenue, but when they went to check they found nothing. They were only a few houses down from Sowell’s. Her body was ultimately discovered on November 3rd, in a shallow grave by the back porch in Sowell’s yard. Her body was identified on November 8th, 2009.
Tishana Culver was last seen in June of 2008. The thirty-one year old often drifted in and out of her family’s life and was not reported missing. She had been homeless for two months before moving into her home on E. 64th and Bundy Drive, which was about three and a half miles from Sowell’s home. She was a known addict and sex worker, and had a prison record. Her body was found in the second of the three searches, in a crawlspace on the third floor. She was identified on November 5th, 2009.
Leshanda Long was last seen in August 2008, and at the age of seventeen had three children but was deemed unfit to raise them due to her drug use. At the age of 25, she was the youngest of all of Sowell’s victims. Her skull was found wrapped in plastic and shoved into a bucket in Sowell’s basement. She was one of the last to be identified, although the remainder of her body was never found.
Tonia Carmichael was last seen on November 10th, 2008. She was 53 years old when she went missing. Her remains were the first to be identified. Carmichael’s life had been spent in a struggle of trying to be a successful single mother and the life of the party, but the party ultimately got to her. She became consumed by her drug addiction and spent time in prison for drug charges. Her body was found in one of the shallow graves in Sowell’s back yard. Her body had been found by a cadaver dog, and she was identified on November 5th.
Michelle Mason went missing on October 8th, 2008. She was a known heroin addict, but when she became infected with HIV from intravenous drug use, she quit. Ultimately, however, she replaced her addiction to heroin with crack cocaine. She was 45 years old when she went missing. Her body was also found in the back yard of Sowell’s home. Her apartment was located very close to Sowell’s home, and family suspects she met him while walking around the neighborhood.
Kim Smith was a known crack cocaine addict. Her body was one of five located in Sowell’s back yard. She was the only one of his victims that wasn’t a mother, although she was the primary care taker for her wheel chair bound father. She was last seen three days before her 44th birthday, January 17th 2009.
Nancy Cobb was 43 years old when she went missing. She was found in Sowell’s living room. She had befriended Sowell, although she was constantly fighting her battle with drugs and in and out of prison. She had gone missing April 24th, 2009. Her body was identified November 6th, 2009. Her body was wrapped in black plastic on the third floor.
Amelda Hunter had a hard life growing up and turned to drugs for solace. She was a frequent guest to 12205 Imperial Avenue and was friendly with Sowell. She disappeared in the spring of 2009. She had disappeared numerous times before and her family was not surprised when she disappeared again. Her sister had vaguely remembered visiting the Imperial Avenue home once before, but did not remember Sowell. She was found buried in a shallow grave along with her cousin, Crystal Dozier. She was 47 years old, and identified on November 8th, 2009.
Janice Webb was a 48 year old crack cocaine addict. She disappeared on June 3rd, 2009, and her family filed a missing person’s report a month later. She was found in a shallow grave under the staircase in Sowell’s basement, underneath a large pile of dirt.
Telacia Fortson was also last seen in June of 2009. She was reported missing to the East Cleveland PD when bodies were discovered in the home. Her body was found in the living room, and she was identified on November 5th, 2009.
Diane Turner, the final of Sowell’s victims, disappeared in September 2009. Her body was found in Sowell’s living room. It took more than a month to identify her, as finding family DNA to compare was difficult.
After the discovery of the bodies and Sowell’s arrest—and several delays—Sowell’s day in court finally came; his trial started June 6th, 2011.
During the trial, Sowell’s attorney argued that the ME wouldn’t know how the girls died, due to the decomposition and the toxicology evidence that showed drugs in at least one woman’s report. The medical examiner shot this theory down quickly, stating that the majority of the women were found naked from the waist down, bound at the neck and hands, and hidden or buried in shallow graves, very clearly showing ‘homicidal intent’. Seven of the bodies had ligatures around their necks, and were determined to have died by ligature strangulation- evidence being a fractured hyoid bone in their necks—Carmichael, Cobbs, Dozier, Fortson, Hunter, Mason, and Webb. Long, Smith, and Turner were killed by ‘homicidal violence’ of an undetermined type. Carmichael, Cobbs, Culver, Dozier, Smith and Webb all had bindings, or the remains of bindings, around their wrists or ankles.
From the court trials, and from his interrogation tapes, Sowell tried to say that he would hear a ‘voice’ talking about ‘bad people’ and that he would ‘black out’. He would have dreams of strangling these women, and he stated that he would wake up in the morning and his partner for that evening had left without saying goodbye. After these dreams, he claimed to be ‘tired’ as if he had been working. He dreamed that he was supposed to be a ‘punisher’ and the woman needed to be punished because they were ‘cons’ who tried to ‘hustle’ him out of money and drugs. He claimed that the voice in his head told him it’s “what he was supposed to do. It’s like I was supposed to rape these girls” He admitted that all the women found in his house were bad and he was able to give descriptions of some of the victims, although he never confessed to being the man who murdered them.
Sowell was ultimately convicted on July 22, 2011 of 82 charges, including aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence. He was also found guilty in three cases of attempted murder. Sowell’s attorney was expected to call twenty-eight witnesses to the stand in an attempt to humanize him, and convince the jury to avoid a death penalty. In Sowell’s defense, his attorney stated that Sowell’s ‘childhood trauma’ and abuse from living with his mother was in part the cause of his crimes. Sowell’s niece combated the theory, saying that Sowell himself was among the abusers, not one of the abused.
Sowell was ultimately given the death penalty, and currently waits on death row. He is actively filing appeals to serve life in prison, with little success.
In the aftermath of the conviction, East Cleveland Police say that they are looking into several cold cases, most of which were death by strangulation—which was Sowell’s MO—which stopped once he was originally arrested in 1989. This case also made a large difference in how the Cleveland PD handles missing person’s cases, as a backlash from residents and local media.
To see a graphic of the layout of the homes, and where the bodies were found, click here.
To read the official court document of Sowell’s trial, click here.
To see photos of the crime scenes and victims, click here.
- Most of the information included was located and gathered from articles on cleveland.com, The Plain Dealer, and ‘Killer Instincts’– a true crime show in ID. Sowell’s episode is the first of the series.