Anthony Sowell: the Imperial Avenue killings, the reports before and the reforms after

• Born1959, Cleveland, Ohio; went to school in East Cleveland
• Known asThe ‘Cleveland Strangler’; the case is also known by the street, Imperial Avenue
• Earlier convictionAttempted rape, for a 1989 attack; 15 years in prison, released June 2005; registered sex offender
• Arrested31 October 2009, Cleveland, two days after police found the first bodies at his house
• Convicted of11 aggravated murders, with rape, kidnapping and attempted murder of women who survived; Cuyahoga County jury, 22 July 2011
• SentenceDeath on each of the 11 murders, 12 August 2011; affirmed by the Ohio Supreme Court, 8 December 2016
• Died8 February 2021, aged 61, of a terminal illness at the state prison system’s Franklin Medical Center, Columbus; never executed

Anthony Sowell was convicted in July 2011 of murdering 11 women at his home on Imperial Avenue, on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. The killings ran from 2007 to 2009, and the women’s remains lay hidden in the house and buried in the yard until October 2009, when police came to arrest him on a rape complaint. He was a registered sex offender who had served 15 years in prison for attempted rape. In August 2011 a Cuyahoga County judge sentenced him to death for each of the 11 murders. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the sentences in 2016, the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in 2017, and on 8 February 2021, with no execution date set, he died of a terminal illness in a prison medical center in Columbus. He was 61.

The case is remembered almost as much for what came before the discovery as for the killings. In December 2008 and again in September 2009, women told Cleveland police that Sowell had attacked them in that house. The first time he was arrested and released without charge; the second time, weeks passed before officers went to the house. Some families said police had not taken the disappearances seriously. The mayor appointed a commission, the police rebuilt their missing-persons and sex-crimes procedures, and the city later paid settlements to the families of six of the women and to two women who survived.

This account rests on court records and on reporting by the AP, CBS News, the BBC, CNN, NBC News, The Plain Dealer, Ideastream and others, listed at the end. Where they disagree, it says so. In line with this site’s rules, the women Sowell killed, the women who survived him, their families and his own family are not named.

Before Imperial Avenue

Sowell was born in Cleveland in 1959 and went to school in East Cleveland, according to the Ohio Supreme Court’s summary of the evidence. He served in the US Marine Corps from 1978 to 1985, rising to sergeant, and was honorably discharged, according to the court and Oxygen.

In 1989 he attacked a woman at his home; a psychiatrist who testified for the state at his murder trial said she had been bound, gagged and choked. He pleaded guilty to attempted rape, Oxygen reports, and served 15 years in prison, a term the AP and the court also give. The Plain Dealer and Oxygen date his release to June 2005. He was required to register as a sex offender, CBS News and Ideastream reported, and a court-ordered evaluation three months after his release judged him unlikely to sexually assault anyone again, according to The Plain Dealer.

He lived in a house on Imperial Avenue owned by his family, on the border of the Mount Pleasant and Buckeye-Shaker neighborhoods. He found factory work, but in 2007 he had a heart attack – The Plain Dealer and the court both record it – and, by the court’s account, lost the job.

The women who disappeared

The women began disappearing in 2007. Prosecutors said Sowell lured them to his house with the promise of alcohol or drugs, the AP reported. All 11 were Black, as Sowell was, according to the AP and Oxygen. Some families complained that police had not taken the disappearances seriously because some of the women had drug histories or criminal records, the AP reported. When he died, the AP described the case as one that had raised concerns about the authorities downplaying the plight of missing Black women.

For a long time the neighborhood noticed a smell. Neighbors blamed it on a family sausage business next door, whose owner spent about $20,000 on plumbing trying to get rid of it, the AP and the BBC reported.

The reports before the discovery

On 8 December 2008 a woman walking on Imperial Avenue was dragged into Sowell’s house, choked and beaten, according to her later testimony as summarized by the Ohio Supreme Court. She escaped and flagged down a police car, and Sowell was arrested – and then released. The court’s opinion says that happened because the arresting officer mislabeled the offense on the incident report. A CBS News investigation in 2010, citing the detective’s report, said the detective found “no visible signs” that the woman had been punched and that police and prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge him. The report did not mention Sowell’s criminal history, CBS found, although police said it had been checked.

In September 2009 another woman reported that Sowell had raped and choked her in the house. Police did not visit the scene for more than a month, CBS News reported. In October, before any search, a third woman was badly hurt escaping from an upper-floor window, according to the court. Five women who survived encounters with Sowell testified at his trial, the court records; three were named as victims in the indictment.

The search, 29 October – 3 November 2009

On 28 October 2009 a detective obtained warrants to arrest Sowell and search the house. When officers went in the next evening he was not there, and in a room on the third floor they found the bodies of two women. Over the following days, with staff from the county coroner’s office, a cadaver dog and then a backhoe, police found more remains inside the house and in the yard: ten bodies in all and the skull of an eleventh woman, according to the court and Ideastream. The coroners concluded that most of the women had been strangled.

On 31 October a member of the public who recognized Sowell from television news saw him on Mount Auburn Avenue and alerted the police, who arrested him; the court and the AP give the same date. In recorded interviews, according to the court’s summary, he did not admit the killings, said he had no memory of them and described blackouts and dreams of choking women.

Charges and trial

A grand jury returned an 85-count indictment covering the 11 murders and the attacks on three surviving women. Before trial Sowell offered to plead guilty in return for life in prison without parole. The Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Bill Mason, refused to take the death penalty off the table, the AP, Cleveland Scene and HuffPost reported, even after relatives of most of the victims petitioned him in June 2011 to accept the plea and spare them a trial. The community needed to see the case tried, Mason said, according to the AP.

Jury selection began in June 2011 before Judge Dick Ambrose of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. The defense called no witnesses in the guilt phase. On 22 July 2011 the jury convicted Sowell of the 11 aggravated murders and of kidnapping, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, rape and attempted murder, the AP and the BBC reported. It acquitted him of one count, aggravated robbery, according to the court.

In the penalty phase, which began on 1 August, the defense presented evidence of an abusive household in his childhood, his Marine Corps service, his good conduct in prison and expert testimony that mental illness had worsened after the 2007 heart attack, the AP and The Plain Dealer reported; experts for the state disputed that diagnosis, the court records. The jury recommended death, and on 12 August 2011 Judge Ambrose imposed a death sentence for each of the 11 murders, according to the AP and The Plain Dealer. Cleveland 19 reported an execution date of 29 October 2012; it was put on hold while his appeals went on, Ideastream and the AP reported.

Appeals

On 8 December 2016 the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and the death sentences by five votes to two, in State v. Sowell, 2016-Ohio-8025. The main question was that the trial judge had closed the courtroom in July 2010 for the hearing on whether Sowell’s police interviews could be used. Writing for the majority, Justice Terrence O’Donnell held that no new hearing was needed, because the state had presented “overwhelming independent evidence of guilt”. Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justice William O’Neill dissented and would have ordered a new hearing. A serial murderer’s trial, O’Neill wrote, “is subject to the same constitutional protections as the trial of a low-level thief”.

The US Supreme Court denied his petition for review on 2 October 2017, its docket shows. On 14 May 2020 the Eighth District Court of Appeals upheld the denial of his petition for post-conviction relief, finding it did not set out enough facts to justify a hearing; the AP and NBC News reported the ruling.

Death

Sowell had been held on death row at Chillicothe Correctional Institution, CBS News reported. On 21 January 2021 he was admitted to the end-of-life care unit of Franklin Medical Center, the prison system’s medical center in Columbus, with a terminal illness, and he died there on the afternoon of Monday 8 February 2021, aged 61, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said. The illness was not related to COVID-19, according to the AP, CBS News and NBC News.

The commission and the reforms

In December 2009 Mayor Frank Jackson appointed a three-member Special Commission on Missing Persons and Sex Crimes Investigations, among them Megan O’Bryan of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center and Mary Bounds, the city’s assistant safety director and a former police chief. Its brief was the city’s policies in general: the mayor said it would not examine the handling of the Imperial Avenue case itself while that case was in court, Ideastream reported. The police chief, Michael McGrath, said he supported the review; asked by CBS News about the criticism, he said the department had not dropped the ball.

The commission reported at the end of March 2010 with 26 recommendations, all accepted by the mayor’s office, CBS News and Ideastream reported. They included a missing-persons unit, a public website listing missing people and no waiting period before police take a missing-person report. In May 2011 a follow-up panel told the mayor that 18 of the 26 were complete, Ideastream reported.

In the 2010 CBS investigation Tim McGinty, then a county judge and later the county prosecutor whose office defended the death sentence on appeal, described a long-standing local practice of releasing suspects without charge.

Settlements, the house and the garden

The families of six of the women sued, claiming that a sex-crimes detective’s handling of the December 2008 complaint had let Sowell go free and kill again. In September 2018 the city agreed to pay $1 million, divided equally among the six families, plus their legal costs, Ideastream and CBS News reported; the city declined to comment. In 2019 it settled a lawsuit brought by two of the women who survived, paying a total of $300,000, according to the AP and CBS News. These were civil claims settled out of court.

The city demolished the house on 6 December 2011. In a letter to the families it promised that “no piece of the property will remain”, CNN and Cleveland 19 reported, and the debris was shredded. On 6 November 2021 the Garden of Eleven Angels, a memorial garden with a monument to the 11 women, opened on the lot where the house stood and seven neighboring parcels, according to WKYC and the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, one of the groups that built it.

Where the sources disagree

• The earlier conviction: the AP and the BBC (2011) call it a 1989 attempted-rape conviction; the Ohio Supreme Court says he was convicted in 1990, and Oxygen that he was sentenced in 1990, for an attack in 1989. CBS News (2010) says he was twice arrested for rape, in 1989 and 1990.
• The number of counts: the AP, the BBC and Ideastream say he was convicted on 82 counts; CBS News (2021) says 81 of 85, which matches the Ohio Supreme Court’s account of three counts dismissed by the judge and one acquittal by the jury.
• Why he was released in December 2008: the Ohio Supreme Court says the arresting officer mislabeled the offense on the incident report; CBS News says the detective and prosecutors judged the evidence insufficient.
• The families’ plea petition: HuffPost says it was signed by relatives of eight of the 11 women; Cleveland Scene says nine.
• The start of the trial: HuffPost reported that jury selection began on Monday 6 June 2011, and the Ohio Supreme Court dates individual juror questioning to 6–21 June; the Eighth District’s 2020 opinion says the case went to trial on 26 June 2011.
• The house: CNN called it a two-story house; Oxygen calls it three-story, and the court places two of the bodies on the third floor.

The portrait

The portrait above is a detail of Sowell’s page in Bloody America, which gives one killer to each state; he is the book’s Ohio page.

If you find an error in this account, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. State v. Sowell, 148 Ohio St.3d 554, 2016-Ohio-8025Supreme Court of Ohio, 8 December 2016
2. State v. Sowell, 2020-Ohio-2938Court of Appeals of Ohio, Eighth District, 14 May 2020
3. Docket No. 16-9242, Anthony Sowell v. OhioSupreme Court of the United States, petition denied 2 October 2017
4. Anthony Sowell was considered unlikely to attack again in 2005 evaluationThe Plain Dealer (Gabriel Baird), 6 November 2009
5. Cleveland empanels missing persons commissionIdeastream Public Media (Rick Jackson), 9 December 2009
6. Missed opportunities in Sowell caseCBS News (Armen Keteyian), 4 March 2010
7. Anthony Sowell case prompts likely changesCBS News / Associated Press, 31 March 2010
8. Sex crimes & missing people panel finds successIdeastream Public Media (Rick Jackson), 5 May 2011
9. Victim’s family members endorse plea deal in Anthony Sowell caseHuffPost (David Lohr), 7 June 2011
10. Victims’ families ask for plea deal in Sowell caseCleveland Scene (Kyle Swenson), 7 June 2011
11. Anthony Sowell found guilty of murder of 11 womenBBC News, 23 July 2011
12. Judge sentences Ohio killer of 11 to deathAssociated Press (Thomas J. Sheeran), Peoria Journal Star, 13 August 2011
13. Ohio man who killed 11 women gets death sentenceAssociated Press (NBC News), 12 August 2011
14. Anthony Sowell to die for murders of 11 women; judge accepts jury’s adviceThe Plain Dealer (Michael Scott), 12 August 2011, archived
15. Cleveland demolishes serial killer’s homeCNN, 6 December 2011
16. Anthony Sowell’s Imperial Avenue home demolishedCleveland 19 (WOIO), 5–6 December 2011
17. Death sentence upheld for Cleveland man who killed 11 women, hid remains in homeFox News / Associated Press, 8 December 2016
18. City of Cleveland to pay $1 million to families of six Sowell victimsIdeastream Public Media (Glenn Forbes), 17 September 2018
19. Cleveland settles lawsuits filed by two survivors of attacks by convicted serial killerAssociated Press (WCBE), 29 July 2019
20. Anthony Sowell, Ohio man who killed 11 women, dies in prisonAssociated Press (Andrew Welsh-Huggins), 9 February 2021
21. Anthony Sowell, serial killer known as the ‘Cleveland Strangler’, has died at 61 from a terminal illnessCBS News (April Siese), 9 February 2021
22. Cleveland serial killer who murdered 11 women dies in prisonNBC News (Tim Stelloh), 8 February 2021
23. Community gathers to honor women killed by Anthony Sowell at opening of Garden of 11 Angels on Imperial AvenueWKYC (Hope Sloop), 6 November 2021
24. Healing and closure come for Imperial Ave. residents as Garden of Eleven Angels memorializes lives lostWestern Reserve Land Conservancy, 6 November 2021
25. Everything to know about Anthony Sowell, the serial killer dubbed the Cleveland StranglerOxygen (Jax Miller), 16 December 2024

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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