Anthony Sowell, serial killer who terrorized Cleveland, dies at 61



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Anthony Sowell, who terrorized the city of Cleveland with a grisly spate of murders and hid the decaying bodies of 11 black women in his home, died Monday of an undisclosed terminal illness, an agency spokeswoman said. Ohio Correctional Service. He was 61 years old.

Mr Sowell, who had been in the death row since 2011, was admitted last month to an end-of-life care unit at Franklin Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, a facility operated by the Department of Rehabilitation & Correction spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said in an email Monday night. She did not elaborate on Mr Sowell’s medical diagnosis, except to say it was not Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Mr. Sowell had been named a “sexually violent predator” by the Ohio criminal justice system after being convicted in 2011 of 11 counts of murder, as well as attempted murder, kidnapping, rape , assault and abuse of a corpse.

The decomposing bodies of the victims were found in Mr Sowell’s home and in his yard on the east side of town.

At the time of his arrest in 2009, relatives of his victims expressed anger at Mr Sowell, who had previously spent 15 years in state prison for luring a 21-year-old woman to his home and then suffocating her and raped, had gone unnoticed. He was released from prison in 2005 in this case.

They also complained that their attempts to get the police to open missing persons files were unsuccessful.

When Mr. Sowell was arrested, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. But that couldn’t prevent him from being sent to the death row.

Over the years, lawyers for Mr Sowell, the most notorious serial killer in Cleveland history, have made several unsuccessful attempts to overturn his death sentence.

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