Friday, November 6, 2009

Eleven Bodies and Counting

by Pat Brown

The people living in Anthony Sowell's Cleveland neighborhood are appalled and stunned to find a serial killer in their midst. Sowell, a convicted rapist, is now an alleged serial killer (alleged, since we have yet to prove he killed the 11 women found dead in his house and any others who turn up as police tear apart his house; he could have just been maintaining a graveyard for a buddy). They ask how so many citizens could disappear without law enforcement warning that a serial killer was at large in their area.

Even worse: How could so many women go missing right around a violent sex-offender's home -- especially a house that reeked of death so badly that neighbors complained to the city? No parole officer went in to see if there was something amiss. No police detective brought a cadaver dog by to check out the stench.

Is this an anomaly? Is this a particularly bad police department? Is the city totally uncaring about these women because they were black, in a rundown area? No. This scenario occurs over and over across the country, which is why the handling of serial-homicide investigation needs to change.

First, let's look at the police department. Can you say "not enough manpower and funding to handle all their cases"? You bet. Any big city police department is drowning under its caseload. Shrinking tax dollars mean slashed city budgets, including public safety funding. Cities are furloughing officers and hiring no new ones. Detectives don't have the time or manpower to clear backlogs of rape and murder cases, let alone reports of missing people.

Complicate this with the victims themselves. It's unlikely that all of Sowell's victims were drug addicts, alcoholics, or prostitutes (he could have grabbed a church lady coming by with tracts on how to bring Jesus into his life). But the more times the possible victim has disappeared before (off on a drunk, out of town with a boyfriend, off to score drugs), and the longer her rap sheet before she went missing, the more likely it is that an overworked detective won't take time away from rape and murder investigations to spend hours tracking down some woman who is off bingeing in Atlantic City.

Anthony Sowell knows all this very well. He knows which victims to grab: those who are easy to con, and those police are unlikely to look for. Some victims won't go to the police because they have criminal records, or they don't believe the authorities will believe them. Tanja Doss was attacked by Sowell four years ago, but never reported the assault for just that reason. Sowell also knows police don't like to admit there are serial rapists and serial killers in their jurisdictions, because that means community pressure. Serial murder cases are extremely difficult to solve and terribly time consuming. The police are just too tired to deal with more demands.

There are, however, methods which could improve this situation. One is to establish a Suspected Serial-Homicide unit. All missing persons, unsolved rapes and sexual murders go into the unit's database and are monitored. This way someone is paying attention to a map that would, for example, eventually have shown a lot of dots around Anthony Sowell's house. There would also be a dedicated detective or two to link crimes together and pay extra attention to violent sex offenders who have been released back into the community.

We could also use more training in psychopathy for detectives, parole officers, and parole boards. Many are unable to recognize psychopathic manipulation and ploys. Some will think Sowell is rehabilitated (which can never happen with sex offenders) and no longer dangerous if he periodically
offers barbeque to neighbors (which Sowell apparently did). Essentially, for many dealing with sexual psychopaths, if they see no evil and hear no evil, the sex offender is behaving himself.

Some people ask if Sowell is one of those brilliant serial killers who are always portrayed like Hannibal Lecter in movies. The answer is no. Most serial sex offenders are of average intelligence, but they get lucky because they grab their victims when no one sees them do it, often pick victims who aren't missed, and their crimes get lost in the excess of criminal activity in the jurisdiction. Investigative methods and training often fail to identify these predators.




Anthony Sowell was one of those who got lucky. His house smelled like dead bodies for years, but many thought the smell came from the sausage factory next door. The owner of the factory went nuts trying to eliminate the smell, spending thousands of dollars replacing equipment, because even he thought the horrific odor might be the factory's doing. What a break for Sowell!

Sowell, a 50-year-old ex-Marine, was previously convicted when he was 30. He received just 15 years for kidnapping, choking, and raping a woman, because a plea agreement reduced the charge to attempted rape. So, actually, Sowell isn't even a convicted rapist, though he is a registered sex offender. Considering the violence the woman faced before she escaped, I bet she would have ended up dead if she hadn't jumped out of a window. I also bet Sowell committed many more crimes before he got caught for this one. Unfortunately, he did his time, and in June 2005 he was released and given another chance at life; another chance to rape and kill.

Sadly, 11 or more women will never get their second chances.

9 comments:

Delilah said...

Another thing that law enforcement agencies can do is pay attention to family members when they are trying to report a missing loved one.

The New York Times article this morning relates the problem quite well in this case, showing the extremes that family members must go to while investigating their own cases.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/us/06cleveland.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

There is a bill before Congress that hopes to make changes to this outrage and at least take a step forward. I hope everyone will contact their Representatives for support. By passing this into national law it would help these types of cases from falling through the cracks and possibly avoid this kind of tragedy.

HR 3695 The Help Find The Missing Act (Billy's Law)

http://criminaljustice.change.org/actions/view/support_for_hr_3695_the_help_find_the_missing_act_billys_law

Pat Brown said...

I think this is a good idea, Delilah, if there is some kind of funding or logic to go with it. The question is, what do you do when you get twenty families clamoring for you to find their missing loved one and seventeen of them are really not missing? Even one family of Sowell's victims didn't report the woman missing because they thought she just went out of state to be with a boyfriend. Clearly, the woman had drug problems or some other issue that made them think she was just irresponsible.

Police have to deal constantly with family members claiming their loved one would NEVER go off. They will say the teen has never run away or the person has never done this before or there is no family discord. A week or month later or even years later, the person shows back up and it turns out the teen HAD run away three times before, the woman was on drugs and often left town for weeks at a time or that the parents did have a blow out argument with their child before they went missing. There is not enough resources or manpower to put massive investigative effort into all these claims that foul play must have caused the person's disappearance.

This is one reason I believe in the Suspected Serial Homicide unit so that at leaast one can look for patterns and links to missing people with sex offender's location. This way at least the missing person who has met foul play (and they are usually dead within minutes or hours) will not be lost to the system.

Leah said...

Geez, don't any of these people have a single family member that isn't wanted by the police??

Anonymous said...

where is toney sowells parents? did they nnow that they raised a crazy man? or what really was wrong with him? what ever it was did he ever try to get help for anthing? doi the service try to help him?theres got to be a reaso for this kind of maddness.

Anonymous said...

I THINK THAT TONEY SOWELL WAS LET DOWN BY THE SERVICE AND MAYBE EVEN HIS OWN FAMILY

Kim said...

Pat,
You state above, "Anthony Sowell knows this all very well. He knows which victims to grab: those who are easy to con, those police are unlikely to look for."

In your opinion of psychopaths, is this always direct, deliberate and conscious thought on the part of the perpetrator(s), or is it a kind of 'predatory instinct' they don't actually consciously or precisely consider in advance? I realize some have average or above average intelligence, but not all do.

I struggle with, and ponder the role of organic brain disorder in the case of psychopathy and/or sociopaths. I think their common denominators are so compelling, and the ability to recognize so called 'cluster b' mental disorders in advance could spare so many victims if there were a clear cut way to do so.

I'm not sure the answer to my question above makes a difference either way, but I'm compelled to wonder if they actually deliberate over those thoughts or it just comes to them naturally .....like instinct. (and there goes a chill up my spine.)

I follow your commentaries often and think the work you do raising awareness is such a service to humanity. I appreciate your input if you have time to respond.

Anonymous said...

THEY NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT HIS FAMILY.AND THEY NEVER SAID NAY MORE ABOUT THE PERSON THAT HE SAID HE PUT IN ANURSING HOME WAS SHE REALLY PUT THERE OR IS SHE DEAD AT TTHE HANDS OF TONEY ALSO?

Anonymous said...

DID TONEY HAVE ANY SISTE OR BROTHERS? IF SO WHY ARE THEY NOT COMING TO SEE ABOUT HIM OR MAYBE THEY DONT CARE ONE WAY OR THR OTHER IT SHOULD NOT MATTER HES STILL FAMILY

Anonymous said...

Meredith Hope Emerson:Blood Mountain(AT)GA Hiker, singlehandedly brought Gary Michael Hilton: Prolific Serial Killer's Trail of Terror to an abrupt end, on 01/04/08. GMH, had been active for over four decades oblivious to Law Enforcement due to antiquated strategies and ignoring a very valuable resource: 'The American Public'....

Here's their story:

http://gpstc.georgia.gov/vgn/images/portal/cit_1210/51/49/106904179Board_Minutes-January08.pdf


Here's actually what happened: http://glennindawson.blogspot.com
Wolfscratch