Four more bodies found at Ohio rapist’s house
Rapist charged with 5 murders
CLEVELAND - More remains were discovered yesterday at the Cleveland home of a convicted rapist, raising to 10 the number of bodies that have been found there, authorities said.
Four more bodies and a skull were found at the home, where the remains of six women were removed last week, police Chief Michael McGrath said.
Anthony Sowell, 50, who lives in the home, is in jail and was charged yesterday with five counts of aggravated murder.
“It appears that this man had an insatiable appetite that he had to fill,’’ McGrath said.
He said the additional bodies were found buried in the backyard of the home. The skull was found in a bucket in the basement.
Authorities do not know whether the skull belongs to an 11th victim, police spokesman Lieutenant Thomas Stacho said.
The search was to continue today, with Fire Department crews planning to search in the walls of the home, McGrath said.
Last week, investigators said they had found one body in a shallow grave in the backyard. The rest were inside the house - one in the basement, two in the third-floor living room, and two in an upstairs crawl space.
Police discovered the first six bodies Thursday and Friday after a woman reported being raped at Sowell’s home.
Sowell also was charged yesterday with rape, felonious assault, and kidnapping related to her complaint. Sowell is to be arraigned today, Stacho said.
The Cuyahoga County coroner is attempting to identify the first group of bodies through DNA and dental records. All six victims were black. Five were strangled.
The bodies could have been there anywhere from weeks to months to years, said Powell Caesar, a spokesman for the coroner.
Yesterday, detectives brought in dogs and digging equipment to scour the home and backyard, looking for evidence to connect Sowell to the bodies, Stacho said.
Police turned up nothing in a search of a quarter-mile swath of abandoned, boarded-up homes near Sowell’s residence, which sits in a crowded inner-city neighborhood of mostly older houses.
They planned to scour another quarter-mile area yesterday, McGrath said. He said Sowell did not have a car would have had to take a city bus to travel.
A crowd of about a hundred people milled about and chatted near the home last evening.
