01x05 - Anthony Sowell: The Cleveland Strangler

[bunniefuu]

- They knew they had a
monster and they let him go.

They had’ve only listened to me.

- Anthony Sowell’s
home is being called

a house of horrors.

This house is the scene
of horrific crimes.

- [Reporter] Some
wrapped in blankets,

some buried in the basement.

- It was the smell of death.

The smell of a dead body.

- Oh my God,

could this be where she
has been for the last year?

People don’t just disappear.

- They’re not runaways.

These are women
that are mothers.

- Do we have a mass m*rder*r?

Someone that likes to
kidnap and t*rture.

- Nobody was saying,
got a serial k*ller.

They had no idea.

- He begins raping
by the time he’s 11.

- They taught him how to k*ll.

He didn’t know how
to turn it off.

Somebody answer me!

- How could this happen?

You’ve heard of stories
of mass murderers.

The John Wayne Gacys and the
David Koreshes and those.

You’ve heard of those things.

But when it hits home,

there’s a different sound.

How could this happen

in our community?

- Crystal Dozier was a
35-year-old mother of seven.

She was a caretaker
and a nurturer.

- Me and Crystal’s
birthday was the same day.

Cryssy used to buy me and her
a outfit together of the same.

And we’d go out and we’d
eat, drink, and be merry like

to celebrate our birthday.

Me and her was

like this.

We was like this.

That was my partner.

I looked for my child

where she would go.

I called her friends.

Nothing.

I called the hospitals.

She was in none of them.

And they said, just
keep calling back.

- At that time,
the procedure was,

you could make a
missing person’s report

for an adult person,

but there may not be a
search for that person.

- A lot of the time, a
person don’t wanna be found.

They on their own.

They’re doing their own thing.

- Those persons are free
to go as they please.

- It’s hard.

As a mother, it hurt me so bad.

’Cause when you first feel
a movement in your body,

you first feel
their first tooth,

you have to understand how
that feels from that point.

It hurt me to my soul.

- Crystal had a history
of domestic violence.

And she also had a drug problem,

perhaps to escape this
domestic violence situation.

But at the time of
her disappearance,

she was actually on
the road to recovery.

Law enforcement may not have
taken Crystal’s case seriously

because she’s a known drug user

and she’s frequenting
the Mount Pleasant area,

which is known as a place for
people to go to get drugs.

- That’s my daughter,
my heart and my soul.

What happened for my child?

Who took my baby?

Somebody answer me!

- Anthony Sowell grew
up in East Cleveland

during a time when
it was predominantly

a middle class
African-American community.

He was raised by his
mother and grandmother.

- Growing up, it was my myself,

my brother, Anthony Sowell,
and my oldest brother,

Anthony did a lotta
school functions.

He loved going to school
because he played baseball.

He boxed.

He also played
chess and painted.

- Anthony was very sensitive.

I remember Anthony’s said,
when we were growing up,

"I just feel like Ma didn’t
tell me I love you enough."

The children were acting
out in different ways.

The twins set the house
on fire three times.

It’s very traumatic,

especially with a lot
of children in the home.

My mother had just had it.

- His mother and grandmother,

they would mete out
corporal punishment,

especially to the girls

in the most, what we
would consider today,

very cruel and unusual way.

- Dirty dishes, stove
ain’t washed off.

We would get a beat.

The boys would get hit,

but they didn’t get a whooping
as much as the girls did.

She started tying us up
to the pole on the stairs.

Just the girls.

Stripping us butt naked.

And she would whoop us.

Anthony, he would watch
when we get beaten.

- He’s going through puberty.

It’s possible that this violence

and his sexuality become
fused at this point.

- I was 10 and he was 11.

Anthony, all of a sudden,

he just tell me, go upstairs.

And I went upstairs.

And he r*ped me.

And then it just started
happening on a daily basis.

- He begins raping
by the time he’s 11.

These fantasies must
have been there prior.

Sexual sadists often
begin fantasizing

about hurting other people
during young childhood.

- He never got punished
for what he did to me.

Anthony was evil.

- After Crystal’s family filed
a missing person’s report,

they put out flyers, they
canvassed neighborhoods,

but got very little
support from the police.

From law enforcement’s
perspective,

she may have OD’d because
she’s a drug user.

- There was a lot of
complaints about a foul stench

in that area of
123rd and Imperial.

- 123 and Imperial.

It’s a four-way intersection.

One corner, you have
a neighborhood store.

Across from that is
Ray’s Sausage Factory.

- The health department
checked out the sausage place,

but never cited
the sausage place

for being the
source of the smell.

- It starts to get
progressively worse.

The residents said it
was the smell of death,

the smell of a dead body.

A year after Crystal
Dozier’s disappearance,

we have another
woman going missing.

And then another.

A pattern is starting to emerge.

Women are starting to go missing

in the Mount Pleasant
neighborhood.

They’re not runaways.

These are women
that are mothers.

That have jobs.

- You would think that
a red flag would go up.

Do we have a mass m*rder*r?

Someone that likes to
kidnap and t*rture?

Someone should have been doing
some special investigation.

- But there’s
nothing in the news

about these missing women.

Police aren’t telling
women in the area

to take extra precautions.

This mysterious smell is
getting stronger and stronger.

- The city inspectors came
up with the conclusion

that Ray’s Sausage had a
issue with the grease trap.

- He invested 200, 300
some thousand dollars

cleaning his traps
and filtration system.

But the smell was still there.

- My mom was...

Oh, her personality
was so mighty.

Strong, determined, fun,

energetic, loving,
multi-talented, spiritual.

Single mother of
two girls and a boy.

Worked two jobs.

Vacations we went on,
water parks, skating.

There was nothing that
our childhood lacked.

Absolutely nothing.

There was not a day that
my mother didn’t reach out

to somebody in the family.

The last day that we saw her
was November the 10th, 2008.

My mother had a cell phone.

No answer the cell phone.

Next day, no answer.

We go over to the apartment.

She’s not there.

Now it is going on 48 hours.

I’m fearful that something
terrible has happened to her.

We went to the Warrensville
Heights Police Department.

We get the speech that adults
have the right to go missing.

But where is she?

People don’t just disappear.

- Anthony went straight
from high school,

straight in the Marines.

- He liked that fact
that it was harder

and it was more manlier
to him in his mind.

It’s manlier.

- It gives him this
regimented lifestyle

and he’s great at it.

And he becomes what’s
called the honor man.

He’s top of his
class at graduation.

He wrote to his mother to
tell her of his accomplishment

and she never responded.

And he begins to develop a
real resentment toward women,

which ultimately
blossoms into an anger

and a rage toward them.

- He had got real,
real aggressive.

They taught him how to k*ll

and he didn’t know
how to turn it off.

- He was struggling with anger.

He was visiting strip clubs
and frequenting brothels.

He would brag that he was
gagging and binding women

and choking them
during this time.

So we see this MO
starting to develop.

- At the third day,

we were trying to file a
missing persons report.

And they see she has a small,
non-violent criminal record.

And they’re like, well, oh,
you know, she uses drugs.

I didn’t ask you that.

I’m trying to file a
missing persons report.

You go into natural instincts,

which is I’ll conduct
my own search.

My mother frequents
this Mount Pleasant area

when she’s out using.

We pass out missing
person flyers

to the convenience store,
to the gas station,

to the mom and pop’s
fast food restaurant.

But we haven’t seen her.

Nobody knows what happened.

We were going up into
these abandoned houses

that were boarded up.

We were ripping the plywood
right off the front door.

That’s a property
where a body could be.

You don’t want to be
looking for remains,

but you can’t put
that outta your mind.

- In Mount Pleasant, they
have an epidemic going on.

Several African-American
women going missing,

one after the other.

We’ve also seen this
increase in odor

that is permeating
this neighborhood.

And there is absolutely
no connection

being made between the two.

- Thanksgiving.

No, Mommy.

And Thanksgiving was
her favorite holiday.

Let alone Christmas.

No Mommy.

New Year’s. No Mommy.

February. No Mommy.

March. April. May. June.

But you have to have hope.

The search never ended.

We never stopped searching.

- After Sowell returned
from the Marines,

people who knew him said
he was just different.

He’s unhappy.

- That day, I was trying
to see my oldest daughter

and I started
having car problems.

I see a guy that was
across the street.

So I’m like, hey, you
got a phone I could use?

He’s like, I just live
right up the street.

And we go in the house.

Then he was like,
let’s go upstairs.

I don’t wanna bother my sister.

When I get up there,

I said, you gonna get the phone?

He was like, oh yeah,
oh yeah, oh yeah.

The last thing I’m thinking,
he gonna pull something stupid.

’Cause it’s still daylight
outside, his sister downstairs.

I could hear him
locking the door.

He came from behind.

He had a knife this long

and then put it up under here.

And I’m like, oh Lord.

He tied my hands and my feet.

And as the night and day
turned into night and day,

I just said the blood of Jesus.

After maybe a total
of two or three days,

if I had to guess,

because it seemed like eternity.

His words to me was,
"Say your prayers.

I’ma feed you.
Then I’m k*ll you."

I’m going out that window
knowing I’d be dead.

So then I started inching,
pushing myself to that window.

And then I rolled
out the window.

I didn’t care if I broke
every bone in my body.

But there was a ledge.

The police pulled
me back in the room.

So once I’m back
through the window,

I see he’s still asleep.

He looked like the devil.

- We can never know how an MO
of any r*pist is developed,

but certainly the
binding and total control

over Melvette
Sockwell hearkens back

to what he saw in childhood

with Leona being beaten.

- They knew they had a
monster and they let him go.

If they only had’ve
listened to me.

- You can see the escalation

in the number of women
disappearing from 2007 to 2009.

Now 11 women are missing.

- Still, even at that point,

nobody was going into it
saying, got a serial k*ller.

They had no idea.

None of these women had
even been on the news

as a missing person.

Nobody knew any of these
women were connected.

- My pictures.

It’s all I got to
remember her by.

Looking at the pictures.

- You have no answers.

It was never a time where
we didn’t want a answer.

- Crystal’s family.
Tonia’s family.

Other families never gave up
because they wanted to know.

And they wanted to
rescue their daughter,

their sister, their
mother, if they could,

do whatever they could
to bring them home.

A woman came forward saying
that a man had tried to k*ll her

and sexually assaulted her
in a house on Imperial Avenue

in Mount Pleasant.

- Turns out it is a woman

that is very much like the
victims that have vanished.

It actually breaks
this case wide open.

From this small
community’s perspective,

in Mount Pleasant,

they have women that are missing
over the span of two years.

There are no
additional resources

to help this community try to
figure out what is happening.

Latundra Billups, she
has a lot of friends

in the Mount Pleasant
neighborhood.

One resident invited her
back to his house for drinks.

This is someone that she has
said hi to on the street.

She didn’t feel like
she was in any danger.

- They had started getting high.

Once he started taking
those drugs, he had snapped.

He flipped on her.

- When he punched her in
the face and he r*ped her.

And he began to put a
ligature on her to choke her.

She passed out.

And when she regained
consciousness,

she really began to realize

that she might not get
outta this situation alive.

And it worked.

He walks her to the door
and she’s like, yeah,

I’ll see you later.

- But instead, she filed
a complaint against him

to the police for
kidnapping and r*pe.

She named this person

as Anthony Sowell.

- And she gave the address
of 12205 Imperial Avenue

in the Mount Pleasant
neighborhood.

- He was doing
really, really well

when he got out of prison.

And he had a good job.

He met this new
girlfriend and I noticed

that he was a
little more upbeat.

- In that evaluation,

he is classified as
a low-risk offender.

And he’s only required to
register as a sex offender

and check in once a year.

- He was doing everything
he was supposed to do,

going to his meetings.

But his girlfriend was
addicted to cocaine, crack.

I noticed that he
started getting high.

- He’s drinking more.

He’s using crack.

He’s becoming unstable.

- Now he’s addicted.

But his girlfriend, she
started getting better.

- Ultimately she decides
she wants to move out.

In his mind, his perception
is I did so much for you

and you abandoned me.

You used me.

And now he’s really angry.

- Repeatedly he talks
about women using him,

women leaving him,

and not appreciating him.

Sowell would later
say all of the women

that he victimized
reminded him of her.

He felt that they needed to pay,

that she needed to pay.

- If you put the pieces
of the puzzle together,

I think, collectively,

this is what brought him
to the point of no return.

- He’s without a girlfriend.

He’s angry.

And he begins to devolve.

To become a serial k*ller.

- No one’s making the connection

between the number
of missing women

from the Mount
Pleasant neighborhood,

until we meet Latundra Billups.

- By her filing this
police report for r*pe

and felonious as*ault
and kidnapping,

it’s kicked things off
into the investigation

to Anthony Sowell.

Upon arriving to that house,

you could smell the
stench right away.

They secured the first floor.

It was vacant.

And then they proceeded
to the second floor.

It was also unoccupied.

Upon arriving on
the third floor,

they recognized that
someone was living there.

Anthony Sowell was not there.

The south bedroom was locked.

Once they broke the
door, it was dark.

The stench was strong.

There were flies,
maggots everywhere.

And they discovered two
decomposed bodies lying

on the floor in that bedroom.

- The SWAT unit went
to 12205 Imperial.

No Anthony Sowell in the home,

but two decomposed bodies.

- Whoever was responsible
had to have no feeling

toward a human being whatsoever

to leave it sitting
on the floor.

- [Detective Griffin] The
bodies were almost skeletal.

You could tell both
were black females.

- So the next question,
of course, are there more?

- I went downstairs
to the basement.

Behind the stairwell,
there was a pile of dirt.

- The more we dig, the
stronger the smell gets.

We knew that had to be a grave.

We are able to uncover
the entire body.

This was a female as well.

This is becoming more
bizarre, more macabre.

- Anthony Sowell’s
home is being called

the house of horrors.

This house is the scene
of horrific crimes.

- Police immediately
put the mugshot out,

hoping that somebody
might see him.

It was nonstop.

Everywhere you looked,
Anthony Sowell’s picture.

- [Reporter] Inside this
home on the city’s East Side,

police found the
bodies of six women,

some wrapped in blankets,
some buried in the basement.

- Police find the bodies
all over the house,

all over the property.

You had a couple
of bodies upstairs,

just out in the
open in a bedroom.

You had a skull in a
bucket in the basement.

You had other
bodies in the house.

And then you had
more in the backyard.

- [Reporter] In Cleveland
today, FBI agents,

again, dug through the backyard

of suspected serial
k*ller, Anthony Sowell.

So far the remains of
11 women have been found

inside and outside his home.

- It was like a gasp
in the community.

11 bodies in one home.

- We see the news.

Now it’s like, oh my God,

could this be where she
has been for the last year?

This is the same neighborhood
where she went missing.

There are so many
people coming out

because they have a
missing loved one.

- How could this
happen in our city,

in our community, on our street?

- Now he’s off the street.

So there’s a sigh of relief,

but still, we didn’t know
if he was gonna talk to us.

- We interviewed Anthony
Sowell 10 to 12 hours.

- You have to keep
your composure.

This guy’s a monster.

He’s a stone k*ller.

- And so we asked him,
what was your dreams about?

Sure enough, he
said, his dreams,

he was hurting people
with his hands.

- At this point,
he’s drinking more.

He’s using crack. He
is angry, angry, angry.

- He met her one evening

and enticed her with
wanting to get high.

She went back to his place.

- After getting high,

she realized, this
is not a nice guy.

This is a monster.

- Anthony Sowell
would lure his victims

in with conversation
and what I call props.

Props, meaning
beer, crack cocaine.

- For Crystal Dozier,

what may have happened
is that, you know,

she had her guard down

because she expected
to chill and relax

and have a good time.

- And then, bam,
he would change.

His demeanor would change.

- In her mind,
she is hanging out

with someone that she knows.

But she’s met with a
punch in the face, a r*pe,

a brutal as*ault from which
she wasn’t able to escape.

- Sowell tied her
ankles with cable

and a knotted cloth
around her neck.

She was choked with this.

- The last few
moments of her life,

beyond the betrayal and the pain

and just the terror of
what’s happening to her,

have to be unreal.

- She died of ligature
strangulation.

- Yeah. I was angry.

I was sad.

You buried these women

and you discarded their bodies
like a piece of garbage.

- Most sexual sadists have a
particular fantasy in mind.

The details of how Crystal was
found are remarkably similar

to what happened in 1989
with Melvette Sockwell.

There’s a binding.
There’s a gagging.

There’s complete
control over the victim.

This becomes the MO
of Anthony Sowell.

- My telephone rings.

It’s my grandmother.

And she’s telling me

that they had come to
her home to notify her

that her daughter,
Tonia Carmichael,

remains have been
positively identified.

That’s where your heart breaks.

But what I do know is
God brought her home.

- It hurt me so bad that
one of mine was down there.

But it was also a relief.

Now I know where you at.

But I couldn’t say
goodbye to her.

That’s one of the things
that broke me so bad

that I’m trying my
best to get over.

That was my child.

- It’s very normal to wonder

what causes somebody to
become a serial k*ller?

Was it the abuse they
suffered in childhood?

Was it being rejected
by girlfriends?

Fact of the matter is,
it’s not about abuse.

There’s no causal
relationship there.

- He specifically
picked middle-aged

women who were mothers.

And, in some way,

maybe these women were a proxy

for the people that
Anthony wanted to punish.

His mother or his ex-loves.

- These were mothers.

These were daughters.

These were sisters.

These were family members.

They’re human beings.

- Nobody has a right
to take nobody’s life.

And the things that
he did to those women,

if I don’t stay mindful,

I’ll be right back there.

You’re looking at a walking,
breathing, living miracle.

’Cause I could be dead.