Chris's Crime Forum

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- At least five dead bodies have been found at Anthony Sowell's home on Imperial Avenue, police sources said.

Personnel from the coroner's office were seen making several trips in and out of the house Friday night. Police officials would not confirm that the number of bodies found had gone from three to five.

Scores of law enforcement officers searched Friday night for Sowell, a convicted sex offender.

At least three additional bodies were found Friday. Coroner's vans were lined up outside the house Friday after a cadaver dog was brought in to assist with the search.

"(Sowell) is the most wanted man in Cleveland right now," said police Lt. Thomas Stacho, who said investigators will continue searching the house and yard "inch by inch, foot by foot."

U.S Marshals were called in from out of state to assist in the manhunt for Sowell, who moved into the home on Imperial Avenue in 2005 after serving 15 years in prison for rape.

It was the report of a rape last month, just eight hours after sheriff's deputies checked on the convicted sex offender, that sent police Thursday to arrest Sowell at his home in the 12200 block of Imperial Avenue. Sowell was gone, but police found two badly decomposed bodies inside.

Friday afternoon they found a third decomposed body, which had been buried in the basement's dirt floor. Two more were found Friday night.

At least two of the victims are women and police are trying to determine the gender of the third victim, police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said.

Sowell's neighbors are scared.

"Everybody in this neighborhood is on edge," said Sheaillivee Kade. "We want to know what's in the grave. Is this guy a serial killer?"

Neighbor Debbie Madison saw commotion at Sowell's house Thursday. She heard talk of dead bodies inside and feared Sowell might be dead, so she went to Sowell's sister's home on East 130th Street. Sowell was resting on a couch inside, she said.

He asked for a ride home and Sowell started talking as they approached the house, Madison said

"He said it was true," Madison said. "That's when I became scared.

"He told me 'It's all gonna come out.' He said 'that girl made me do it,'" Madison said.

Instead of continuing to his home, Sowell asked Madison to drive him back to his sister's and she did.

Sowell moved into the home on Imperial Avenue in June 2005, after he got out of prison. The house is owned by two of Sowell's relatives, but he's had it to himself since one died and the other moved into a nursing home, neighbors said.

Before that, Sowell lived on Page Avenue in East Cleveland. That's where, in 1989, he lured a 21-year-old woman into his bedroom, choked her and repeatedly raped her, prosecutors said. That lead to him being locked up from 1990 until 2005.

Once released, Sowell had to register as a sex offender. He was required to report to the sheriff's office once a year until 2008, when a change in the law forced him to report every 90 days.

He last checked in on Sept. 2. On Sept. 22, deputies did a spot check on him at the Imperial Avenue home to verify he lived there. Sowell was home and answered the door, deputies said. The deputies did not enter the home because, since he was no longer on probation, they were not allowed to without a search warrant.

That was shortly before 9 a.m. Around 5 p.m. Sowell beat and raped another woman, according to a Cleveland police report.

The victim in that case, who knew Sowell, said he offered to split four bottles of malt liquor with her. She entered Sowell's home and went to the second floor, which was empty except for a chair, a blanket and an extension cord, police said.

After drinking for awhile, Sowell became upset, punched the woman in the face and began choking her with the cord. He raped her as she passed out from being choked with the cord, the woman told police.

"She got away after she bribed him and told him she'd give him money and promised not to tell," the woman's mother said Friday.

Two days earlier, police were called to his house after neighbors reported seeing a partially clothed woman pushed out of a window.

In December 2008, another woman told police Sowell tried to rape her. That woman bought a beer at a store on the corner of East 123rd Street and Imperial Avenue when Sowell asked her to drink beer with him.

When she said no, he punched her in the face, dragged her to the back of the his home and told her "take your clothes off," according to a police report.

The woman broke free, ran away and flagged down a police car. Police went back to the house and arrested Sowell for attempted rape and robbery, but said Friday the woman ultimately did not want to talk to detectives and no charges were filed.

Cuyahoga County coroner's officials were trying to determine the age and race of the people found inside the home and how they were killed. At least one of the victims died from violence, Stacho said.

Neighbors who gathered outside the house Friday were worried about who might have been found inside.

Kyana Hunt lived with her mother Nancy Cobbs one block away, on Griffing Avenue. Cobbs, 43, has been missing since April and her daughter fears the worst.

"I have no way to describe how I feel," Hunt said. "I want closure. I want to be happy to know she's in a better place. If it isn't her, I want the other family to have closure."

Sowell is 6 feet and 155 pounds, wears eyeglasses and frequently wears a mustache and occasionally a beard. He is known to walk the streets looking for scrap metal and frequents area scrap metal yards, police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said.

Anyone with information on Sowell's whereabouts is asked to contact the Cleveland Police at 216-623-5630.

Make that SIX.
On this Halloween night, Saturday Oct 31, (the next day) our news media reports a total of 6 dead bodies found in the home of Anthony Sowell.

This creep had served a 15 year prison sentence for rape, and since his release in 2005, did it (at least) 6 more times (in 4 years) only this time he decided to kill them as well. I suppose he must have been so new at this that he didn't know what to do with the bodies, so he kept them at home. This makes for very poor housekeeping, and the neighbors complained.

Can you imagine living in a house with dead bodies? I don't think any amount of air fresheners could do the job.

So you see, after 15 years in prison, Sowell was allowed to come out and play for 4 years, and now he gets to go back. The message here is that some people should never be released. After they send his nasty ass back to prison, he will have new stories to share with his fellow inmates.

Is it any surprise to anyone that sex offenders often become killers?

It sure doesn't surprise me,it also shouldn't surprise the court systems in the USA & Canada.When are they going to give these perverts the sentences they deserve.

Six women found dead at a Cleveland, Ohio, home appeared to have been strangled, and their decomposing bodies could have been lying there for "weeks, if not months or years," a coroner told CNN on Saturday.

Police discovered the bodies at the home of Anthony Sowell, a 50-year-old convicted rapist, after they tried to serve an arrest and search warrant for him related to a sexual assault investigation.

On Thursday, detectives from the department's sex-crimes unit and members of its SWAT team went to Sowell's home to execute the warrant and to arrest the suspect, but he was nowhere to be found, Cleveland Police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said.

Five female victims were found inside the home, and another female body was discovered outside the home, said Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller III.

Miller's office had yet to identify the victims, who all died of "homicidal violence," he said.

"They were mostly strangled, it appears," he said.

Stacho said a tipster told officers of Sowell's whereabouts and police arrested him Saturday afternoon as he walked on a street near the 4th District Police Headquarters.

About a month ago, a woman accused Sowell of rape and felonious assault, Stacho said Friday.

"Once we were able to get the cooperation of the victim, we secured an arrest warrant for Mr. Sowell and subsequently a search warrant for his premises," Stacho said.

Officers serving the warrants Thursday discovered two badly decomposed bodies on the third floor of the house, Stacho said. A subsequent search revealed what appeared to be a freshly dug grave under the stairs in the basement, he said.

On Friday, investigators returned to the house, dug up the grave and found a third body, he said.

A further search of the house and property found two more bodies in a crawl space, and a sixth body was found in a shallow grave outside the home, Stacho said.

Read local coverage on CNN affiliate WOIO

Read local coverage on CNN affiliate WKYC

Five different burial methods were used on the victims, and the bodies were in varying states of decomposition, Miller said, making it difficult to determine the ages of the victims. He added that the states of the bodies made it hard to tell how long they had lain in the makeshift graves.

"It's really very difficult to tell," Miller said. "It's been some time, I would say probably at least weeks, if not months or years."

Stacho said Sowell makes his living as a "scrapper."

"He walks around and picks up scrap metal and takes it to junkyards to make a few pennies."

Sowell was convicted for a 1989 rape for which he was imprisoned from 1990 to 2005, Stacho said.

http://www.cnn.com/JUSTICE/

Investigators discovered four more bodies Tuesday at the Cleveland, Ohio, home of a convicted rapist -- making a total of 10 since last week, Police Chief Michael McGrath said Tuesday.

Authorities on Tuesday charged Anthony Sowell with five counts of aggravated murder after unearthing the bodies of women at his home last week, police said.

Sowell, 50, also was charged with rape, felonious assault and kidnapping, police said. His arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

Police arrested Sowell on Saturday, two days after discovering the decomposing bodies of five females inside his home and another woman's body outside the house.

Earlier Tuesday, a source close to the investigation had told CNN that a seventh body had been found in the home. The source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, did not reveal the gender of the seventh body found at Sowell's home. The source did not say exactly where the body was found at the residence.

Authorities found the first two bodies last week while trying to serve an arrest and search warrant on Sowell related to a sexual assault investigation, and an intensive search began. Sowell was not home at the time; officers found him after a tipster told them of his whereabouts.

The decomposing bodies of the first six women, all of whom were African-American, could have been lying where they were found for "weeks, if not months or years," Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller III told CNN on Saturday.

All six deaths were ruled homicides, Lt. Thomas Stacho of the Cleveland Police Department said Monday, with five of the deaths due to strangulation.

About a month ago, a woman accused Sowell of rape and felonious assault, Stacho noted last week. Investigators obtained the warrants that set off the search after the "cooperation of the victim," he said.

Officers serving the warrants Thursday discovered the badly decomposed remains of two bodies on the third floor of the house, he added. A subsequent search revealed what appeared to be a freshly dug grave under the stairs in the basement. On Friday, investigators returned to the house, dug up the grave and found a third body, Stacho said.

A further search of the house and property found two more bodies in a crawl space and a sixth body in a shallow grave outside the home.

Five different burial methods were used on the victims, and the bodies were in varying states of decomposition, said Miller, which made it difficult to determine the ages of the victims.

Stacho said Sowell makes his living as a "scrapper."

"He walks around and picks up scrap metal and takes it to junk yards to make a few pennies," he said.

Sowell was convicted of a 1989 rape and was imprisoned from 1990 to 2005, Stacho said.

http://www.cnn.com/JUSTICE/

Good Golly Miss Molly!
Now there are TEN!?!
What a busy fiend Sowell has been in the 4 years since his release!

So how does a scrapper make enough money to afford a house big enough to hide all those bodies? He must have some other source of income. The house even has a third floor?

They say this fiend is still at large? He must be good at hiding his own body as well. That's pretty slippery for a 50-year-old. But by now he must have everyone in Cleveland on the look-out for him, so hopefully they should snag him up soon.

I can see his parole board now saying, "Gosh! Do you think we let him out too early?"

And now there all 11.Now they are going to start tearing down the walls in the house,those poor woemn.Only one has been identified so far.

The smell permeated the neighborhood, turning the stomachs of residents and curtailing their outdoor activities.

"We used to think that it was coming from out of Ray's Sausage," said one resident. "But you smell these smells, and I live right there and ... we used to come out here and oh, these smells would just be horrible."

Ray's Sausage Co. replaced a sewer line and grease traps, trying to rid the area of the stench. But Ray's wasn't to blame after all. Instead, police said, the foul odor had a much more sinister source.

Eleven bodies have been found inside and outside a home adjacent to Ray's -- six inside and five outside. A skull, wrapped in a paper bag and stuffed into a bucket in the basement, apparently is all that remains of the 11th victim, authorities said Wednesday.

The home's inhabitant, Anthony Sowell, 50, is a registered sex offender. Now, Sowell is facing five counts of aggravated murder, rape, felonious assault and kidnapping, police said. A judge on Wednesday denied bond for him, saying the latest allegations against him are "gruesome" and the "most serious" he has heard in his years on the bench.

The first victim was identified Wednesday as Tonia Carmichael, who was 52 when she was last seen on November 10, 2008, police said in a statement. Carmichael was identified using DNA. She disappeared from Warrensville Heights, a Cleveland suburb near Sowell's home.

Seven of the victims died from strangulation by a ligature, said Frank Miller, Cuyahoga County coroner. A ligature can include a string, cord or wire. All of the seven still had something tied around their necks, Miller told reporters.

An eighth victim died from manual strangulation -- strangulation by hands. Two other bodies were too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death, although Miller said he believes they were victims of "homicidal violence." Autopsy results on the 11th victim are pending.

"It's most likely strangulation in all cases," Miller said.

Some of the victims could have been missing for up to five years, Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath told reporters, and he doesn't believe authorities were able to discern any pattern relating to the disappearance of African-American women.

Police will execute a warrant later Wednesday for Sowell's DNA, to enter it into the known national DNA database, said the statement from Cleveland police Lt. Thomas Stacho.

McGrath earlier said authorities had no information about the smell in the area before the bodies were found.

"You could smell it," said another neighborhood woman. "I came around the corner and I smell it. You could smell the dead bodies. How are you going to tell me people in the neighborhood couldn't smell that?"

Sowell showed no emotion during his hearing Wednesday before Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine. Asked whether he could afford a lawyer, Sowell responded quietly, "No sir."

In asking the judge to deny Sowell bond, Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecutor Brian Murphy said, "The state believes he's an incredibly dangerous threat."

Adrine, in turn, told the suspect, "This is without question the most serious set of allegations I have faced. Given the gruesomeness of what's facing you ... you are being remanded without bond."

Kathleen Demetz, the public defender representing Sowell, asked that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation. She also said that Sowell, an ex-Marine, has a heart condition and wears a pacemaker.

Sowell has told authorities he had been collecting unemployment payments since being laid off from his job two years ago. It wasn't immediately known what that job was.

Stacho has said Sowell had been making his living as a "scrapper."

"He walks around and picks up scrap metal and takes it to junk yards to make a few pennies," he said.

Police said authorities in Coronado, California, also were checking to see if Sowell might be tied to a rape case there.

Investigators finished digging for more possible remains and evidence Wednesday outside Sowell's home. Detectives were not returning to the home Wednesday, Stacho said, but "will evaluate intelligence gathered from Dr. Miller's examination of the victims to determine what additional steps will be taken at the home before returning."

"I like to believe there is nothing else more there, but we will not know until we finish the search," said McGrath earlier. "It appears that this man had an insatiable appetite that he had to fill."

Police initially went to Sowell's home last Thursday to follow up on a rape accusation. A week earlier, neighbors reported seeing a naked woman fall from the second floor, but no charges were filed.

Neighbors called 911 after the October 20 incident, and emergency personnel -- but not police, initially -- were sent to the home, McGrath told reporters Tuesday. Firefighters later notified police, who responded to the hospital where the woman was taken, he said.

McGrath said the woman told officers she was at the home and "partying," he said. "They were doing coke, drugs, getting high." The woman said she was on an upper balcony and fell off the roof while trying to pick up her keys. A man described as her boyfriend -- Sowell -- told police the same story.

Sowell was arrested Saturday, two days after police discovered the first bodies inside and outside the home.

Authorities say that despite a police news release that described Sowell as a convicted rapist, he actually pleaded guilty to attempted rape in a 1989 case and was imprisoned from 1990 to 2005.

Since his release from prison he was listed as living at the Cleveland home where the bodies were found, McGrath said.

Authorities from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office checked on Sowell regularly, with the most recent check coming on September 22 to confirm his address, McGrath said. They found no problems, he said.

http://www.cnn.com/JUSTICE/

So he HAS been arrested. Good! This is the news I've been looking for. I was under the impression they were still looking for him.

At least one of the bodies is a year old; Nov 2008. I sorta figured that. Can you imagine what that smelled like? I still have trouble imagining the smell of 11 dead bodies in one house and yard. My sympathies to the neighbors.

Did Sowell really become a serial killer only after he got out of prison? I tend to wonder if the crime that sent him to prison was the only one he got caught for. The man had a chance to start a free life, and look what he's done with it. The evil that possesed him must have always been there.

Ohio woman: I got away from serial killing suspect

In her own words

"And then he just clicked. I'm sitting on the corner of the bed and he just leaped up and came over and started choking me," she said. Shocked, Doss said she lay back and tried not to struggle. "He said, 'If you want to live, knock three times on the floor.' And I knocked on the floor."
omg

read on...

CLEVELAND — Suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell seemed like a "civilized person" on the April evening that Tanja Doss went up to his third-floor bedroom for a beer — until, she said, he leapt up and began choking her and threatening to kill her.

The 43-year-old woman told The Associated Press on Thursday that she survived a night of terror through a combination of calm and cajoling, prayer and trickery. But when she escaped the next morning, she didn't tell police. Her past conviction on a drug charge, she said, made it unlikely they'd take her seriously.

"Now, I feel bad about it," she said, "because my best friend might be one of the bodies."

Police and a cadaver dog re-entered the home Thursday where Sowell apparently lived among the reeking, rotting corpses of 10 women and the paper-wrapped skull of another in a basement bucket. The ex-Marine, who served 15 years in prison for attempted rape, is being held without bail on five aggravated murder charges.

Just days after her own escape, Doss was helping search for her friend Nancy Cobbs. Now Cobbs is among about two dozen missing women whose friends and family fear fell victim to Sowell.

Only two victims have been identified so far — Tonia Carmichael, 52, of Warrensville Heights and Telacia Fortson, 31, of Cleveland.

Doss believes she only narrowly escaped the fate of those dug up from Sowell's yard.

She had met Sowell in 2005, after his prison release, but didn't know the real reason for his sentence. She found him to be "a civilized person, sitting outside drinking beer, a nice person." So she didn't hesitate to join him for a drink.

"And then he just clicked. I'm sitting on the corner of the bed and he just leaped up and came over and started choking me," she said. Shocked, Doss said she lay back and tried not to struggle. "He said, 'If you want to live, knock three times on the floor.' And I knocked on the floor."

Still holding her throat, he told her using several profanities that she could be "dead in the street" and no one would care.

Sowell made her strip and lay on the bed, she said, but did not attempt to rape her. Doss said she curled up in a ball and tried to talk him down, saying things like, "Why you gotta act like that?"

Then she prayed to herself, and eventually, both fell asleep. She awoke in the morning with Sowell acting as if nothing had happened, she said, asking whether she wanted something from the store.

She picked up her cell phone and pretended to call her daughter, then claimed her granddaughter had the flu. When Sowell left for the store, she went in the other direction.

She didn't report the confrontation because "my background ain't squeaky clean," she said.

Now, it's all she can think about.

"It goes through my mind all the time," she said. "Every time I think about it, I start shaking."

When Cobbs disappeared — four days after her 44th birthday on April 20 — Doss didn't think about Sowell as she helped search abandoned buildings and post fliers.

It wasn't until Monday, three days after bodies had begun turning up, that Doss finally went to police.

Sowell also faces charges of rape, felonious assault and kidnapping after a Sept. 22 attack on a woman at his home. A message left with the county public defender's office was not returned Thursday.

Near Sowell's home, a plywood memorial hangs from a chain link fence, the word MISSING stenciled in black. Five stuffed animals and an artificial rose adorn the sign, which holds fliers showing 13 missing women and three men.

The fliers reflects not just fears that their bodies might be on Sowell's property, but also community members' frustrations with how they say police treat missing-persons reports from their downtrodden neighborhood.

Some of the missing are women who lived on society's fringe. Some were active or recovering drug users. Some had gone to jail, producing criminal records their families believe are the reason police didn't take their disappearances seriously.

Cleveland City Councilman Zach Reed, at a rally with two dozen clergy members, said people should stop stereotyping those who might have ended up in Sowell's house of horrors.

"I want us to stop this conversation that they were crackheads, they were this and that," he said. "They were people."

Michelle Mason lived near Sowell's neighborhood and rarely went longer than two days without talking to her family. After a few days of silence in October 2008, the family went to police.

"Because my sister had a prior arrest history, they kind of didn't take it seriously," Mary Mason said.

But Michelle Mason had stopped collecting and cashing her Social Security checks. Before her disappearance, she had just paid her rent and her cell phone bill. Her apartment was left as if she intended to return.

"We tried to convince them with everything in us that this was not normal, and they tried to convince with everything they had that it was," Mary Mason said.

On a second visit to police, Michelle Mason's sons were told there are "thousands of Michelles in the city," and that officers didn't have the time or the manpower to hunt for them all.

"It was taken almost as a joke, that she was just this kind of person. Her drug use was years behind her. But they pull her up on that computer, and they say, 'She's a nobody,'" Mary Mason said. "She's not a nobody."

Only two victims have been identified so far — Tonia Carmichael, 52, of Warrensville Heights and Telacia Fortson, 31, of Cleveland.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... gD9BPL5GO0

Well apparently they are now looking at this guy for the disappearance of 14 other women.The smell,well thats an interesting story.Apparently there was some type of sausage or meat plant right there.The whole neighbourhood had been complaining to the police,health inspectors for years about this horrid smell.The plant was blamed of course,they were suspected so much they had an inspector that spent an hour daily checking things out.They spent many thousands of dollars updating filtration systems etc..to stop this smell.All along it was coming from the house of death.Interesting update in the next post,the mayor of Cleveland's neice was Sowell's girlfriend,she stayed in that house with him amid the smell.Of course he told her it was just bad whiffs from the meat plant.

The niece of the mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, once lived with murder suspect Anthony Sowell, a registered sex offender charged with murder after the remains of 11 victims were found at his home, a spokeswoman for the mayor said Monday.

Lori Frazier, niece of Mayor Frank Jackson, had a relationship with Sowell that ended two years ago, said Andrea Taylor, a spokeswoman for Jackson's office. Taylor said it is unclear whether the relationship was romantic.

"I just want to know why, why he would do this," Frazier told CNN affiliate WOIO on Friday. "He took care of me, good care of me. I never would have thought there were some bodies in the house."

"I lived with him from 2005 to 2007 and he didn't kill me, but he killed all these girls," she said.

Sowell, 50, is facing five counts of aggravated murder, rape, felonious assault and kidnapping in connection with the deaths. All the victims were African-American women. All that remains of one of them is a skull, wrapped in a paper bag and stuffed into a bucket in the basement.

Sowell served 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted rape in 1989. He was released in 2005.

So far, nine of the 11 victims found at Sowell's home have been identified. The latest two were identified Monday by the Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office, police said. They are Janice Webb, 49, and Kim Yvette Smith, who was 43 when last seen. Both women were from Cleveland.

Webb was last seen on June 3 and was reported missing on August 2, police said. Smith was last seen January 1, but was not reported missing until November 2.

A grand jury on Monday returned an indictment against Sowell in connection with an alleged assault and rape of a 36-year-old woman September 22, Cuyahoga County prosecutors said in a news release. The investigation into that incident was what led police, armed with a search warrant, to Sowell's home, where they discovered the bodies late last month.

The alleged victim encountered Sowell while walking in the neighborhood, and he took her back to his home, where he became violent and raped her, prosecutors said. "While raping her, he strangled her with a cord until she lost consciousness," the statement said. "When she regained consciousness, he led her out of the house."

Sowell faces a charge of attempted murder in the incident, along with two counts of rape, two counts of kidnapping and two counts of felonious assault, authorities said.

Sowell will be arraigned on the new charges Friday, authorities said.

The charges are first-degree felonies except for the assault charges, which are second-degree felonies, prosecutors said. If convicted, he would face a sentence of up to life in prison.

The investigation into the homicides continues, prosecutor Bill Mason said in the news release.

"Upon completion of the investigation, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office working with the Cleveland Police Department will present evidence to the grand jury seeking the death penalty for these heinous murders committed by Sowell."

Residents of the area near the home said they had noted a smell in the neighborhood, but assumed it was from nearby Ray's Sausage Company.

Asked whether she had noticed a foul odor, Frazier told WOIO, "Yeah, I smelled stuff, but he always told me that -- at first he said it was his stepmother downstairs. And then I guess after she left, he told me that it was Ray's Sausage."

Frazier said Sowell brought other women to the home when she was not there.

"I love my niece very much and while she has made some decisions that have not been in her best interest, she has my full support," Jackson said in a written statement.

"As a family, we are extremely fortunate that she was not a victim in this case as she did have a prior relationship with the suspect that ended approximately two years ago. My focus continues to be on making sure the loved ones of the victims get the attention, closure and justice they deserve and it is my hope that everyone remains committed to that goal."

Hundreds of Cleveland residents gathered outside the house Sunday night to remember the victims.

"It's hard, because I want to burn it down," said Inez Fortson, whose daughter Telacia, 31 and a mother of three children, is among the dead.

Sowell has been placed on a suicide watch at the request of his attorney, according to Sowell's public defender, Kathleen DeMetz. A psychiatric evaluation has been ordered but it's unlikely to happen until after the case goes before a grand jury, the next expected step.

Police recovered the first bodies after they went to Sowell's home to follow up on a rape accusation.

In a separate incident, neighbors on October 20 reported seeing a naked woman fall from the second floor. Firefighters and paramedics responded, and later notified police. But the woman told officers that she was at the home "partying," when she fell off the roof, and no charges were filed.

Agents from the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit are assisting Cleveland police, Cleveland FBI spokesman Scott Wilson has said. The agents are preparing a profile of Sowell for police, tracing his life and habits, and his DNA will be entered into a national database to see whether it can be linked to any unsolved crimes.

"Our experts tell us it's likely he's done this before," said Frank Figliuzzi, special agent in charge of the FBI's Cleveland office. "He's probably done it elsewhere, and so we need to determine whether or not he's responsible for other unsolved murders and rapes around the country."

In addition, the FBI is investigating whether Sowell might be linked to crimes abroad, Figliuzzi said.

"We know, for example, he was a Marine, he was assigned to California, he served in Okinawa, Japan, and we'll be matching all the facts from these crimes here in Cleveland with the crimes that remain unsolved in our database, and we'll specifically be looking at those locations where he's previously lived."

Allen Sowell, the suspect's half-brother, told CNN he last saw his brother more than 20 years ago. Their stepmother, who lived in the house after Anthony Sowell got out of prison, said she knew of nothing odd going on at the time, Allen Sowell said.

The stepmother tried to get Anthony Sowell evicted from the house in 2007 because he wasn't paying rent, Allen Sowell said. Anthony Sowell said he shouldn't have to pay rent on a house that belonged to his father, who died in 2004. Anthony Sowell remained in the house when his stepmother had to be hospitalized in 2007, his half-brother said.

Allen Sowell said he was aware of his half-brother's prison record, but "just couldn't fathom" the accusations now facing him.

"I didn't think he was in that bad of a mental state," Allen Sowell said. "You never think it would happen to your family. It's a horrible feeling."

At 66, Allen Sowell is 16 years older than his half-brother, and the two didn't meet until Anthony Sowell was 9.

He added, "He deserves whatever he gets from the justice system."

http://www.cnn.com/JUSTICE/