Anthony Sowell Victims - They were all just nightmares, Anthony Sowell told detectives during an eight-hour long interrogation on Halloween 2009. The suspected serial killer said he would wake up in his bed, exhausted and wondering what happened to whichever woman he had been with the prior evening.
Then vague impressions would flood his consciousness. He saw their faces, never their names and had the illusory recollection of growing angry – of “hurting” them, his hands wrapped tightly around their throats.
Sowell, 51, is charged with multiple counts of aggravated murder, kidnapping, abusing a corpse and tampering with evidence in the deaths of 11 women whose remains were found in and around his home in the fall of 2009. He also is accused of attacking several others who survived. His trial began June 6, and he faces the death penalty if convicted.
After nearly three weeks of testimony, jurors Thursday began viewing the videotaped police interrogation and heard Sowell speak in his own words about the accusations against him.
Detective Richard Durst, Sgt. Joseph Rini and Lt. Michael Baumiller, formerly head of the Cleveland Police Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit, began by offering Sowell a cup of coffee and a cigarette, both of which he accepted.
They told him he was there to answer questions about accusations that he raped a woman during the previous month. And for about a half hour, Sowell, in a baritone voice, explained that the sex was consensual and that he indulged the woman’s kinky preferences. But the woman turned out to be a hustler and a tease, Sowell said, and when he refused to give her drugs or money, she threatened to “get him.”
DNA supervisor with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiners Office Nasir Butt testifies on DNA results during the trial of accused serial murderer Anthony Sowell in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, Thursday, July 14, 2011. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) Anthony Sowell trial features interrogation tape Thursday gallery (11 photos)
Eventually, Sowell mentioned that he had spent the night before his arrest at an abandoned house on Cleveland’s East side because he saw police and television news crews surrounding his home.
Baumiller’s tone shifted, as he asked Sowell for honesty and warned him that what would follow would be the most important 15 minutes of his life.
“Let’s just get this over with and talk about what’s going on in your home,” Baumiller said. “Upstairs on the third floor where you stay, we saw – we found some folks up there.”
Sowell leaned forward and stared at the ground, bounced his feet nervously and wiped his hand across his forehead.
With soothing voices, the detectives assured Sowell that they knew he was a “good guy” who helped people, and that he must have been filled with rage to have committed those crimes.
For the next hour, Sowell confided in the detectives as if they were therapists. He complained that his good deeds were often taken for granted, and he lamented the end of his relationship with Lori Frazier — a woman he loved whom he said abandoned him after he helped her clean up her life.
That’s when the anger set in, Sowell said – when he began “hearing things,” and his rage provoked what he believed were just violent “dreams.”
“I just don’t remember,” Sowell said when asked how many bodies police could expect to find in his home. “It’s like there’s two of me or something. I just don’t know. That part of me is missing. . . . It’s like it’s not real. Like it never happened. I can’t explain it to you.”
Detectives asked him to describe the voice he said he hears.
“It’s like hate, punish, hot,” Sowell said. “It was like, ‘Punish. You know what you’re supposed to do.’”
Sowell eventually confessed to having experienced his nightmare between 10 and 15 times involving different women.
By the time police had caught Sowell, investigators had recovered the remains of four women from the living room of Sowell’s third floor apartment, one from a crawl space in the basement and another from a shallow grave in the backyard.
Although Sowell insisted he could not remember their names, he said he might be able to recognize faces if detectives brought him photographs.
After about two hours, the sex crimes detectives handed off the interrogation to homicide detectives Melvin Smith and Lem Griffin, who arranged to have McDonald’s cheesburgers and fries delivered.
Sowell munched on the fries and told them that he remembered meeting many of the women around the neighborhood and spending time with them. But some would remind him of Frazier in their lifestyles, drug addictions and neglect of their children.
It enraged him, he said, and whatever happened next was a blur.
1 year ago
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