Inside Anthony Sowell's House of Horrors - Inside The Mind of a Serial Killer

Inside Anthony Sowell's House of Horrors - Inside The Mind of a Serial Killer 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
One two two oh five Imperial Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio being
torn down. Officially it's become a risk to the public health.
But as it's wiped away from the world, demolition teams

(00:29):
cannot remove the memories of what has gone on inside.
Those who did manage to escape the horrors of one
two two oh five tell of macabre discoveries.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
She caught a glimpse of one of the decomposing bodies,
which frightened her and just made her, you know, realize,
I have got to get out of here.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Another victim enters one two two oh five with a
man she thinks charming.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
He raped her and made her repeat after him, Yes,
I like it. He was as frightening an attack as
can be imagined by any woman.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Others escape by throwing themselves from the upper floor windows
of a house full of pain, not knowing if they'll survive.
A passer by calls police.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
She fell out of the window, hops there on the
second floor. Okay, right now, I'm here, right now.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
You raped.

Speaker 6 (01:29):
He binds, he murders, he rapes, he binds, he murders.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Each time Soul thenenticees a woman into his home, whether
they live or die, is up to him. How many
times will he rape? How many times will he murder?
Before anyone can get inside the mind of a serial killer?

(02:04):
Man Pleasant Cleveland.

Speaker 7 (02:05):
O Higher.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Its name belies what a dangerous neighborhood it can be.
Between two thousand and seven and two thousand and nine,
it proves all too treacherous for women walking the streets alone.
Anthony Soul claims to be hearing voices telling him to kill.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
I think.

Speaker 7 (02:31):
Man like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, okay no no.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
Where they were like office something maybe or what?

Speaker 7 (02:42):
What?

Speaker 6 (02:42):
What?

Speaker 7 (02:42):
What do you think would cause you to choke? I
mean just off the top of the head.

Speaker 5 (02:47):
Think about hones Kansa, My Girl and now Sun after
Fall two.

Speaker 7 (02:57):
That was punishing them.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
I was for punch. Look, I can't explain.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
When women meet Anthony Soul they think he's a good guy,
someone with whom to party.

Speaker 8 (03:14):
Well, I think if you look at the moo that
Anthony Soul used, a lot of the women actually went
willingly to his home.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
And those women had gone to Anthony Sowell's house maybe
to use drugs or drink or just hang out with him,
and had never left the home.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
A very specific demographic was in danger. Using his bare hands,
Soul becomes a one man lethal weapon.

Speaker 7 (03:43):
He had a body of his ready, We had a body.
He was all here.

Speaker 9 (03:50):
He had a bag that was a bid hold on.

Speaker 7 (03:55):
Look, ain't finished, and you get a body behind the wall.
Through a lot of dot factors, a lot of dirt
all over their violent.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Inside his killing chambers, Anthony Soul displays the two sides
to his personality. When his life is surrounded by order, discipline, routine,
he's a regular guy. When he's out of work, down
on his luck, he turns to drink and drugs, and
then things can get very ugly.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
On October twenty ninth, two thousand and nine, some Cleveland
police officers, some detectives, actually went to Anthony Sowell's home
on Imperial Avenue, and they were looking to arrest him.
A woman had accused him of rape. When they went
to the house, he was not there.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
The streets, Soul cruises as police call at his house,
a home to a lot of women whose lives have
been captured by drugs. Around the time that Soul stalks
the neighborhood for women, decades of economic distress and home
foreclosures placed him in a world of failure, decay, disorder,
drugs too, and drink lots of drink.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
There was a little corner store right there that was
kind of the hub of activity on Imperial Avenue. They
were really familiar with Anthony Sowell. He would come in
and buy you know, tall beers, king Kobra beers, which
he would drink often. People would come over to the
store when they would come to his house, buy beer.

Speaker 10 (05:29):
Party, kind of back and forth.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
A cocktail of factors turned Soul into a monster, one
who escapes justice for two years. That late October day
that Cleveland police finally decided that events surrounding Soul and
one two two h five Imperial need further investigation.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
They entered the home and they found the bodies of
two women who were basically sitting out in the open decomposing.
Once they found that, they called in a lot more
police and some crime scene investigator and over the course
of maybe a week or more, they found many more bodies.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
After digging in the backyard, investigators found three more bodies
and the remains of a fourth.

Speaker 6 (06:13):
It was bodies everywhere and crawl spaces on the floor.
He's surrounded by his handiwork everywhere everywhere he turns.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
One woman, really, all they found of her was a
skull that was in a bucket under some stairs in
the basement. It turns out that there was eleven women
total who had gone missing since about two thousand and seven,
over two years.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Anthony Soul had somehow managed to lure the women into
his home, rape them, torture them, kill them, leave their
rotting bodies to decompose all around him, creating an unspeakable stench.
And nobody knew or who made Anthony Soul into the

(07:03):
so called Cleveland Strangler.

Speaker 6 (07:08):
So many people could have seen this, but they didn't.
The arby thought he was great. Prison wardens thought he
was a great. Neighbors thought he was a lovely guy.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Soel himself says his first taste of violence came and
he was a child sharing a home in East Cleveland.
He was not a happy boy.

Speaker 8 (07:23):
Antony Soul was a timid, somewhat taunted boy.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
You know, he wasn't a person that everybody immediately had
a specific memory of, but he was kind of always
in the background, maybe a little bit socially awkward.

Speaker 6 (07:37):
He grew up with a lack not only of the
father figure, but a lot of very strong maternal figures.
He had his mom, he had his grandmother, He had
cousins of different ages. He had his two sisters.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
The mother and the grandmother often would beat the children.
You know that Soell got beaten a lot.

Speaker 6 (07:52):
She would beat them with an electrical court to the
point that they bled.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Soel never presented recollections of his childhood to investigate us.
He raised them in course much later. By then independent
source had come forward to offer an alternative memory of
life in the sole household when he was a child.
He wasn't always the victim. He was also the perpetrator.

Speaker 8 (08:14):
One of his female cousins has reported that from the
age of eleven she was continually raped by Anthony.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
One relative testified during the trial that so Well and
other men in that house had sexually abused her from
a very young age.

Speaker 8 (08:31):
That may have had an influence on how he sees
women and his sense of entitlement to have sex with
those women, which was very clear from his interaction with
some of his victims that survived.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
When he leaves school, Soul joins up, leaving the chaos
of East Cleveland and his abusive family environment behind. He
settles into a routine military life suits him.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Maybe the stringent rules in the military were good for
him for a while. I know that he was able
to cope in the military, do his job.

Speaker 7 (09:06):
How long were you in the servid some here so
here you realistic? He like he's been in the marine
corps are good.

Speaker 6 (09:16):
It's during this time as well, towards the end of
his time as a marine, that he begins to drink
and drink quite extensively.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
And in fact, at one point in the military he
married a woman who she actually died, but her mother
said that she had married Anthony because she kind of
felt bad for him, and she wanted him to be
able to complete his time in the military, and she
was able to help him keep on track.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
But on leaving the military, it all begins to go wrong.
It is nineteen eighty nine when the seeds are sown
for the shocking tragedy of one two two oh five
Imperial two. Things have changed in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.
By the time Soul returns from the Marines.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
I think he came home to an East Cleveland had
actually declined even more than when he had left. He
was kind of getting poorer. There was the crack epidemic
was really starting to affect the streets. There was a
lot of mothers and fathers starting to use those drugs.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Meanwhile, women who'd previously led respectable lives began roaming the
streets looking for ways of getting high, vulnerable to abuse,
and Antony's sol himself was soon finding it hard to
pass a liquor store.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Two thousand and seven, though, he fell apart. His girlfriend
left him and he failed sharp for work. In the end,
he was fired and he started to scavenge the streets
for metal to sell a scrap. Inevitably, he returned to
his crack cocaine habit.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
He was really really the kind of guy that was
doing a lot of drinking. He'd go to the store
in the morning and get a beer and just kind
of continue that throughout the day.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
A pattern is set. The drunk soul would home in
on vulnerable women and use his charm to entice them
back to his place.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
It wasn't long that he was home before he was
actually accused of harming several women, and actually two in
kind of close proximity. There was two women, both of
whom were pregnant, but also you know, either abusing drugs
or hanging out with people who are drinking.

Speaker 10 (11:12):
That Anthony Sowell was accused of raping.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
This lady was heavily pregnant when she turned up to
Soul's house, and after spending some time together, she told
him she was leaving, but he wouldn't let her go.
He grabbed her and he began to choke her.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
He was never prosecuted for that case because he was
actually arrested for another case, another rape, within the same year,
and he was prosecuted in that case. He ended up
pleading guilty to attempted rape and was given a sentence
of up to fifteen years in prison.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
He was released in two thousand and five to an
East Cleveland still suffering from a drug's epidemic. He moved
into the family property one two two five Imperial Avenue. Today,
where one two two oh five stood is a vacant

(12:10):
lot and locals like it that way. If its walls
could tell a story, it would be one of human misery,
of the last moments, the dying breaths of sisters, mothers daughters.

(12:30):
Crystal Dozier was described by her mother as the responsible
one of her children before she became addicted to cracker caine.
She could be found wandering the streets of Mount Pleasant.
On May seventeenth, two thousand and seven, by now a
mother of seven and aged thirty five, she went out
to score drugs. She comes across Anthony Soeul. He had

(12:51):
his flirting patter off to a tea.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
He would say, hey, do you want to come in
and have a drink. And his house was a place
where he would let people crash if they were using
drugs and didn't want to go home.

Speaker 10 (13:05):
The house, you could tell it was.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
It was definitely used for a place where people could
just crash and could just party.

Speaker 7 (13:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
There's beer bottles and or beer cans all around.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Crystal is in a daze as she hears him dreamily.
She enters one two two oh five. It looks ordinary enough.
Soul has raped before, he has never killed, but the
motive and the method of killing for the first time
is always lurking deep inside the mind of a serial killer.
Will Crystal Dozier realize in time that she might die

(13:39):
at any moment. Crystal Dozier is one of many women
in Mount Pleasant, Cleveland who's been captured by drugs and
spotted by Anthony sewell lured into one two two oh
five Imperial.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
They were all had these vulnerabilities that Anthony Sowell appeared
to hone in on.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
As Crystal walks towards the porch, you one two two
oh five, Soul may have guessed she'd had a troubled life.
Pregnant at thirteen, a mother of two by seventeen, of
seven by her mid twenties, hers was now a transient
world of drugs and drink. To her, Soul means the
chance of another hit, another high, she responds when he

(14:24):
approaches her. Why wouldn't she.

Speaker 5 (14:28):
So just look at her? As she looked at Soul, sad, pitiful,
A she just had a rough rough time.

Speaker 7 (14:35):
So I said a.

Speaker 5 (14:36):
Beer, I said, I you go get a beer, I
says Cloud. I opened up a sound like that, okay,
So I said, I'll tell you what, come on with me?
Can you get all the beers you want?

Speaker 6 (14:47):
She can imagine she meets him. He seems charming enough
and persuasive enough that she decides to know what, I'll
go to this person's house. Only apprehension is clearly not
big enough to stop it.

Speaker 8 (15:02):
They didn't recognize him or see him as a potential risk.

Speaker 6 (15:06):
And then she gets there and that's where things begin
to change. And he foresaw that he's been wearing of
being nice or of being normal and caring, that all
goes by the wayside, and that's when the terror setsin
because his tools are there, the tools to bind, the
tools to hurt, and ultimately the tools to kill.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
The woman had been drinking with Soul when he actually
just lived on her. He began to strangle her. He
shouted loudly what he was going to do to her,
threatening the most appalling sexual attacks.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
From what detectives could learn later from those who'd escaped
the Soul Ordeal, it's likely he carried out his threat
and draped Crystal Soul in command the master of Events.

Speaker 6 (16:00):
Rape is not about sex. Rape is all about control.
Rape is about abuse and overpowering and hurting and controlling.

Speaker 8 (16:10):
Strangulation is a very intimate kind of killing. It allows
the offender to fill the person's life swipt slip away
from them, So it's a very intimate way of killing someone,
but it also is the ultimate expression of power and
control over someone.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
He buried her body by the backyard fence of one, two, two,
five family members searched for her throughout the time she
was missing, still clinging onto the hope that she was alive.
In fact, she had become victim number one of Anthony Soul.
Around that time two thousand and seven. Soul, a registered

(16:51):
sex offender, would regularly receive visits at one two two
oh five from the authorities, but they seldom entered. He
seemed to be okay. The word what the prison that
changed him. One of the bitter ironies about the Soul
story is that he responded well to discipline.

Speaker 8 (17:08):
The indication is that during his prison sentence he was
a model prisoner.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
He listened, he followed orders, directions, never really got in
a lot of trouble.

Speaker 8 (17:16):
And that's not surprising because it gave him back that
sense of structure and routine that he obviously had in
the military and was missing when he came into civilian life.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
He participated in Alcoholic's Anonymous, so he was aware that
he had an alcohol problem.

Speaker 6 (17:32):
He's able to appear very lucid, very normal.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
It was that ability to seem normal like a regular guy,
which would mean that the murder of Crystal Dosia inside
his house was only the start of Soul's killing career
struggling women would go missing from the neighborhood. But throughout
that time, Soul relentlessly attracted women back to one two
two oh five, whilst police did nothing.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
You know, their loved ones that they did love would
go missing, but they would always call after a day
or two, they would always come back. They would never
miss important events like birthdays or Christmas, and so when
they went missing for a longer period of time, it
didn't show up. A lot of them contacted the police
and said, you know, this is different, and we're basically told,
you know, hey, they'll.

Speaker 10 (18:15):
Come back when they're done using drugs.

Speaker 6 (18:17):
As is the case with many serial killers, they go
for the most vulnerable in our society.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
So the police were dismissive of these women for the
same reason that Anthony Soa likely targeted them.

Speaker 6 (18:32):
They're an easy target, they're easy, they're not missed, and
this is precisely what he does.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
I think he probably knew that people weren't going to come,
you know, beating down his door looking for these women.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Deshauna Culva fitted that precise profile when she went missing
in June two thousand and eight. Drifting in and out
of family life. They didn't report a disappearance. There seemed
little point, as the thirty three year old had gone
missing so often. Leishan Delone was just seventeen, the youngest

(19:09):
of Soul's victims, but a mother of three when she
went missing. Her life was in a mess. Deemed unfit
to raise her children. She was seldom in contact with
family members who loved her and who would one day
receive horrific news.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
One family, I think it was Lashonda Long. The only
thing they really recovered of her body was her head,
and it was in a bucket in the basement, which
was very difficult for them.

Speaker 10 (19:33):
They didn't even have a body to bury.

Speaker 5 (19:36):
I know what well, I think were I think always
very bad.

Speaker 9 (19:39):
As they hear kias in it they was out of
the street, just the big thing might hear.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Tania Carmichael was another who'd been in prison for drugs offenses.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Her life kind of intersected with Sowell's early on. They
both grew up on Page Avenue. You know, she him,
you know, probably tangentially the families kind of knew each other.

Speaker 9 (20:04):
Every female that you have brought to the house, have
each and every one.

Speaker 7 (20:09):
Of them used drugs or using drugs?

Speaker 5 (20:12):
Like crack or whatever they from?

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Okay?

Speaker 7 (20:16):
Is that one of the reasons why they come to
your house so they so they can smoke.

Speaker 5 (20:22):
From um from uh okay, from them?

Speaker 7 (20:25):
And you you telling me that you don't do that.

Speaker 5 (20:28):
I used to, you used to, but you don't do
that sometimes but it ain't.

Speaker 7 (20:32):
But now I'm trying to get the type of women
that come to your house. And this is the type
of women that come to your house. Uh are one
drug users? First? I mean I don't write drug use
very sure.

Speaker 11 (20:45):
Okay, does you like 'em though, m Did you like
'em when you're middle Yes? Okay, okay, Well you wanna
mary at 'em when you're mad 'em? You don't kind
of like 'em, all right, I guess Okay.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
On the day Tonya it disappeared. She had told friends
that she was running an errand she never returned. Later,
her car would be found in Soul's neighborhood. Much loved
her family new things were wrong when she failed to
return to pick up two paychecks.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
When she initially went missing. You know, her family went
to police and they were asking for help to find her,
and the police said, you know, when we know she
has a drug problem. She'll come home when she's done
using drugs. And this family really they put up flyers.
They were really searching for her, especially her daughter, Anita
Carmichael really cared for her mom deeply and was searching

(21:33):
for her, and so this was really difficult for her.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Fifteen months after claiming his first victim, Anthony Soul killed
three more times and nobody suspects him of a thing,
which means that the man who had become known as
the Cleveland Strangler is still at large. The police even
received more reports about him.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Two or three other women had made reports that mentioned him.
You know, there was one woman in particular, Gladys Wade,
who in December two thousand and eight, said that so
Well approached her she was walking past his house and
tried to drag her in and attack her, and she
fought him off. And when she reported her crime to
the police, they found that she wasn't credible, and so

(22:13):
after arresting him, they let him.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Go released to prey on people like Michelle Mason. Michelle
was in a rare moment of happiness in her life,
thought to have kicked her heroin and cracked her cane habits.
She was finally living independently, but on one October evening,
she seems to have entered the home of Anthony Seul
without suspecting what was going on inside the mind of

(22:36):
a serial killer. What happened to Michelle Mason at forty five,
she had fallen victim to drugs. Like Soul's other victims,
It's likely that she got the Anthony Soul strangulation treatment

(22:58):
at one two two o five.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
There was a number of women who actually made it
out of Anthony Sowell's house, and and each of them
also described either being choked or strangled by him.

Speaker 10 (23:09):
Quite quite aggressively.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Uh sometimes with like a chord or a strap, other
times with his hands.

Speaker 8 (23:16):
He treated them very roughly. He raped them, and he
abused them verbally and physically.

Speaker 5 (23:23):
I got mad, and I would like customized COVID elephonle
So in your dream you do remember getting mad? I
think something.

Speaker 7 (23:33):
Do you ever remember doing anything with ja hands?

Speaker 5 (23:39):
Actually doing stuff that must because.

Speaker 7 (23:41):
Of I remember that? Can't you tell me exactly what
I got?

Speaker 5 (23:48):
I know I can't. That's why I could tell you
I wasn't I with.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Michelle's buddy would become one of those found at one
two two O five Imperial victim number five, and still
no investigation into Soeul, a known sex attacker. Seul remained
unsuspected by the authorities. Some police would later say that
working the neighborhood itself can prove difficult. They're not all
was welcome and crack addicted women truly do disappear for

(24:21):
weeks on end and then return. But there was also
Soul's calm demeanor when he comes into contact with police,
shown in the case of a woman who, at one
point in Seoul's story, fell from a window at his
home after being attacked, a story the entire neighborhood knew of.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
One two two Zeol five Imperial.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
A passer by called in the incident, indignant at the
time it was taken to get help as the neighbors
of Soeul on Imperial Avenue watched. The passer by describes
what he can see.

Speaker 4 (24:58):
She looked like you were about forty forty all right.
She can't it up though, but she is awake, right,
ain't got to go now? Shirts? Is she awake? She
kind of awake? Going, Yeah, which which window did she
fall out? The first of a second? Oh no, wasn't

(25:24):
all right there we go and it happened just now, correct.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, the case where the woman fell out the window.
Anthony Sowell actually went to the hospital with that woman
and as the police were trying to question her, she
was kind of afraid to say anything because he was there,
you know, he told the police or we were just
using drugs together and she accidentally fell out of the window.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
You know.

Speaker 10 (25:43):
She later said that he was, you know, attacking her.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Hers was not the only story of getting trapped by
a man, raped and he would escape, only to be
ignored by authorities. One side of the house, the women
recounted horrific stories.

Speaker 6 (25:59):
The patterns to be that he's initially very charming and
able to connect with women and lure them back to
his house, but once he gets them back there, he
begins to lose control, he begins to lose his temper,
he begins to want to assert his power over them,
his abuse over them, and that's where we see time
and time again, he rapes, he binds, he murders, he rapes,

(26:21):
he binds, he murders.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Soul again remains free to attack.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Essentially people like Anthony Sowell and other serial rapists that
have since been discovered they were smarter than the police.

Speaker 10 (26:38):
They were smarter than the community.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
They knew that these women, and they, you know, the
women probably knew in some ways too, that nobody would care.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Ironically, he saw women as people who should be perfect.
They were not supposed to have flaws.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
He hated the fact that they used drugs and would
even say things to them about it, and know he
wanted to help them, but then he would also.

Speaker 10 (26:58):
Do it himself. So uh it it was.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
He definitely had this this strange relationship where he would
meet women who had drug problems. He would kind of
entice them into his home, you know, with the idea
of drinking or using drugs. But then he would also
try to be very caring. Well, let me get you
some clothes, let me let me feed you.

Speaker 10 (27:16):
You look like you need to eat.

Speaker 7 (27:18):
Someone was telling me that. I mean, it's this stands
the reason you said that when he has.

Speaker 12 (27:26):
These dreams, uh, and he meets the these girls, some
of the girls remind him of this girl friend. And
I asked, I asked you, was it anything that they
said or was it anything that they did?

Speaker 7 (27:43):
And you said, by the the way they.

Speaker 9 (27:47):
Their past, you said, you asked him about the why
y'all he.

Speaker 13 (27:50):
On the I talked him, Yeah, you talked about there,
Why y'all he on the street.

Speaker 5 (27:54):
And uh, you a nice girl? Why you know, why
to pick you some health? But so he turned it up.

Speaker 9 (28:01):
Rescue and then you said, you get mad if they
were reminding you and your girl, all of you, And.

Speaker 7 (28:07):
That's what happened.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
So it's kind of these two personalities that people would
describe seeing. You know, he had at least one or
two girlfriends at the time that we were able to
hear from afterwards, who talked about, you know, the long
conversations they would have and how you know, kind and
introspective he could be. But then he could also be
very violent if someone disagreed with him or didn't you know,

(28:30):
didn't say the right things.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Meanwhile, the signs that a multiple merger was at large
were there for anyone to see their smell if they
really investigate him.

Speaker 8 (28:41):
There are a number of reports of a bad smell
being reported in the area.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Right next to the house where Anthony Sowell lived on
an Imperial Avenue was a place called Race Sausage and
for years when there had been foul odors that the
neighbors noticed, they would call the city or call the
health department. When people would come out, they would always
attribute the smells to race sausage, and in fact that
people that own this very small family owned sausage company
redid their entire sewer system, thinking that somehow the smell

(29:11):
was being attributed to them, their sausage making their dumpsters.

Speaker 10 (29:14):
You know, we only.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Realized later that it was probably Anthony Sowell, and in fact,
the owner said at one point that they believed that
he may have dumped some bodies in their dumpsters.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
This fast food store became the focus of complaints. Surely
the smell was coming from there. The owners took the
issue seriously, spent tens of thousands of dollars digging up trains.

Speaker 8 (29:34):
What we now know is is that that was the
smell that was emanating from the decaying corpses that were
in his home and buried in his guard.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
But with five women dead and all having been seen
last in Soul's neighborhood, that fact was still far from emerging.
On January seventeenth, two thousand and nine, Soul was to
strike again. As a child, kim Y Smith was close
to her father No trouble to her parents. When a teenager,

(30:07):
Kim had begun sampling drugs, and when a young woman,
she was hooked. After she disappears, her father offers a
reward to help find her, but she was never to
be seen alive again, Murdered by Soul, her body buried
in the garden. It took a DNA test from her
father to confirm it was her. It was next at

(30:27):
the turn of Nancy Cobbs to become the focus of
Antony Soul's gaze. Nancy Cobbs was, on her own admission
of very poor mother, but as she got older, so
she got her life back in some sort of order,
helping raise her grandchildren, but often being seen by the
man drinking beer on a stoop. That man was Soul,
and in April two thousand and nine she disappeared. Friends

(30:50):
and family combed the neighborhood. They did not search the
garden of one two two o five Imperial amelder Hunter
known as Amy. By fourteen, she had become pregnant, her
daughter born deaf and with cerebral palsy, Amy found solace
in drugs, and by two thousand and nine often sought
both them and companionship in one two two oh five Imperial,

(31:14):
she'd struck up a friendship with an assassin. How would
Amy's story end? Inside the home of Anthony Soul, Amy
Hunter would have seen the clothes left abandoned after Saul

(31:35):
had claimed the lives of his victims. She may even
have seen the remains of others left to decompose in
rooms and inside barely concealed spaces. Certainly she would have
been overwhelmed by the stench of putrefying flesh, but likely
as not heavily under the influence of drugs, she was

(31:55):
powerless to either escape or avoid the same fate of
the women whose body were all around her. She became
victim number nine of the Cleveland Strangler. Still no outcry
in the neighborhood as so many women went missing, and
still no suspicion about Soul, who'd actually become a popular
fixture on Imperial.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Haven't you he really had this kind of outward appearance
to the neighborhood where he would hold barbecues and chat
with people. They didn't really suspect him of doing anything
like this.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Janice Webbed liked a party the joker, according to her family,
the same profile as the others addicted to crack cocaine,
often seen wandering the streets looking for a way of
satisfying her lethal habit, falling under the spell of a
man who by now was running out of space to
store the bodies.

Speaker 5 (32:44):
I like says, on's that's all.

Speaker 14 (32:47):
So if you were in my shoes, what would you
want me to tell you? Ten nine eight seven six.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
He was literally leaving them at his feet. Some believe
by the stage he had lost his mind.

Speaker 8 (33:08):
The fact that he murdered two women and just left
their bodies on the floor of his home with no
attempt to conceal them really does suggest that there was
some kind of underlining mental illness, potentially compounded by his
drink and drug problems.

Speaker 6 (33:22):
There's not just a sense that he's killing and immediately,
you know, tying everything up and moving along and trying
not to do this again. There's a sense that this
is who he is, this is his life. He's surrounded
by his handiwork everywhere he turns.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Telicia Foston was just thirty one and the mother of
three by the time she had been captured by Crack
Soul's tenth victim. Her remains later found buried in the garden.
Eight weeks later, in September two thousand and nine, Diane
Turner was to become victim number eleven. Her fragmented family
life meant not only that nobody reported her missing even

(34:02):
after her body was recovered from one two two oh five,
it would remain unclaimed, unrecognized in the city Morgue for
nearly a year.

Speaker 7 (34:11):
You have four bodies out the top, and we got
one body in the basement. There's no more room in.

Speaker 9 (34:19):
The house for bodies, so you gotta go outside. This
would make her most likely last the last one.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Actually, sheriff's deputies visited his house and he had to
check in regularly as a sex offender, and I think
the same week as these bodies were discovered, they had
checked in on him at his home and they had
just never entered his home because that wasn't part of
what they did. If they did, they probably would have
noticed something amiss or smelled the foul odor that neighbors
had been complaining about for years but couldn't really pinpoint,

(34:54):
you know, where it was coming from.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
The series of killings finally ended towards the end of
October two thousand and nine. It was not because of
any great detective work. Rather, it was because Soul did
not complete his usual routine of attack, rape and murder.
A woman called La Tundra Billups joined up with Soul
for them to jointly buy crack before returning to one
two two oh five. An officer finally investigates and discovers

(35:23):
other allegations of rape against Soul and police. On October
twenty ninth, finally entered one two two five Imperial Avenue.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
When police went back to Anthony Sowell's house to arrest
him for the rape, they initially just kind of walked
into the house and when they went upstairs, they found
the two bodies that were decomposing pretty much out in
the open, or maybe just only slightly covered over. So
then they decided they needed to go over the whole
house from top to bottom. They cordoned off the house

(35:58):
the backyard, and when they started digging in the backyard
I think they actually used some some special sensors and
found that there were some bodies buried underneath there. So
they unearthed the number of the bodies from the backyard.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Officers interviewing Soul try to win his confidence engage in
small talk at first about his grandchildren.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
Yeah, four he.

Speaker 13 (36:26):
Got four bron Yeah, they call you papa or grandpa. Yeah,
and you love that now you do.

Speaker 5 (36:37):
It's okay now, but that's everybody part.

Speaker 7 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, that's the love for them.

Speaker 13 (36:42):
So I know you, I know that he'd probably skinny grilled, Yeah,
yes he did.

Speaker 7 (36:48):
He'll be grinny when they'd be coming.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Up to you. Anthony Soul had entered the maccab pantheon
of serial killers known throughout the world. Under police interrogation,
despite protesting that the in his head had something to
do with the murders, he eventually gave into the truth.

Speaker 6 (37:08):
So this boy born on a street in this unassuming
greenhouse with cousins and a mother and a grandmother grows
up to be the notorious Cleveland strangler, known for his
viciousness and attacking women.

Speaker 8 (37:25):
He's killed at least eleven women, and the motive behind
that would appear to be one of sexual gratification, but
potentially also one of power and control, particularly when you
look at the method that he most likely used to
kill those women, which is strangulation.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
And for the city of Cleveland, Soul's crimes meant a
period of reflection.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
There was a sobering moment for Cleveland to realize that
eleven citizens could go missing and nobody could make the
connection that they were all in the same place, had
all been killed by the same man.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
For a while one two two o five was left
standing a reminder of cells crimes, where artifacts of the
women had been abandoned, clothing and jewelry and other things
in the upstairs apartment of his home.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
No just that, No me so just that, No, no,
just that, No, just that, no, no, just that.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
People moved quickly to get control of the house so
that they could knock it down. And you know, within
the year the house was bulldozed and made into an
empty lot. And there's been plans in the works for
almost five years now to put some kind of memorial
at that site.

Speaker 10 (38:58):
I think it left the whole community not you know,
how could we let this happen? How could we let
this happen?

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Sol was given the death penalty in twenty eleven, a
sentence not yet carried out.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
He's on death row in Ohio at a maximum security prison.
He actually has a number of appeals in his case.
You know, he's definitely appealing the sentence that could put
him to death. The arguments basically, are you know that
the mitigating factors weren't really given to the jury enough.

(39:41):
You know, they didn't know enough about the reasons that
he committed the crime.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Anthony Sole would claim he never had a chance. He
says he witnessed women in authority, his mother and grandmother
physically abusing his female cousins watched and then took part
in rape was eleven years old. His perspective on women's ski,
he would argue that he was destined to become a
rapist and a killer. An Ohio jury and judge did
not accept that as mitigation. His steady military record, and ironically,

(40:10):
his time in prison proved that he knew how to
behave His House of Horrors was evidence of a mind twisted,
But Soeul was sane enough to know that he had
denied a future to the most vulnerable women of the neighborhood.
One two two oh five. Imperial is no longer there,
but it has given up its secrets. So the knowledge
of what Soul did will haunt Cleveland forever.