THE IMPERIAL ELEVEN

*** TRIGGER WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS CONTENT ABOUT MURDER, SEXUAL ASSAULT, KIDNAPPING AND RAPE ***

The case at the center of this post takes place in Cleveland, Ohio, more specifically the neighborhood of Mount Pleasant. Mount Pleasant is a place that has some wonderful and interesting history attached to it, the town has five buildings that once served as stations for The Underground Railroad but now it is also a place that holds memories of a horrible tragedy. Anthony Sowell was born on August 19, 1959, in East Cleveland. He was one of seven children born to Claudia Garrison, who was a single mother. Sowell lived with his mother, grandmother and his seven nieces and nephews. Leona Davis was one of Sowell’s nieces that moved into the household at the age of nine after her mother passed away. Leona was subjected to physical and sexual abuse by Garrison, Sowell, who was eleven years old at the time, and other family members almost immediately after moving into the home. Leona tried different tactics to get removed from Garrison’s home including taking pills to school and setting fires in the house. Leona was eventually sent off to a detention center at the age of twelve, she testified that she never wanted to return to that house. Sowell testified that he was also abused in the home but Leona disputes this claim. Sowell joined The Marines at the age of nineteen, he was honorably discharged in 1985. In 1989 Sowell attacked, raped and tortured a woman named Melvette Sockwell. Melvette was held against her will for several days. Sockwell was eventually arrested for this, he took a plea bargain for the charge of attempted rape and spent fifteen years in prison. I don’t know how keeping someone against their will, raping and torturing them is the same as attempted rape but I digress.

Mount Pleasant is a poverty-stricken, predominantly African American area with a raging crack cocaine problem. It was also a place where many sex workers would exchange their services for drugs. Since many of them had addictions it wasn’t uncommon for them to go missing whether that be because something happened to them or by their own volition. So when African American women began to go missing and even made reports about someone raping and beating them police just didn’t seem to be concerned about it. Many have also said that police just always consider addicts not credible. Many people living in and policing the area may have thought that poverty, addiction, and a disregard for other people were the only monsters terrorizing Mount Pleasant. But on October 29, 2009, they all would learn that there was another monster living among them, and this one was human. Along with Melvette Sockwell, Latundra Billips, Gladys Wade, Shawn Morris, and Vanessa Gay are all women that survived brutal attacks by Sowell.

Previous to Latundra Billups being attacked by Sowell, she had actually been to his house several times before. On September 22, 2009, Sowell had a sex offender check-up visit. That same night, Latundra went to Sowell’s house to drink and do drugs with him. She noticed that for some reason they hung out on the second floor instead of the third floor where they would typically be when she came over. They eventually moved into another room on the second floor where Latundra saw a blanket and extension cord on the floor. Sowell went into another room to get a chair, when he came back he told her to turn around when she did he grabbed the back of her neck with some force. Surprised by how hard he grabbed her, Latundra pushed him. Sowell then hit Latundra ripped her shirt open, turned her onto her stomach and put the cord around her neck. Latundra passed out and later woke up with a burning throat and feeling wet. When she came to, Sowell was sitting in front of her looking surprised that she was alive. Sowell apologized and let Latundra go, as soon as she got to the corner of the street he lived on she took off running. Latundra went to the hospital where they did a rape kit. Latundra made a police report against Sowell on October 27, 2009, it took the police three weeks just to follow up with her.

Gladys Wade was attacked by Anthony Sowell in 2009. After the attack, she escaped him and ran into a pizza restaurant nearby and pleaded for them to call the police. The people working in the restaurant wanted nothing to do with her and made her leave because she was bleeding onto their floor. Gladys notified the police of what happened to her and they told her that it would basically be his word against hers. The police ended up dropping the case because of “insufficient evidence” and because they considered Gladys “non-credible”.

Shawn Morris was attacked by Sowell on October 20, 2009, just weeks before his final arrest. Sowell brought Shawn to his house with the promise of smoking crack. Once she walked up the steps to his house he put her in a chokehold and told her that if she tried to scream or get away he would kill her. Shawn screamed and Sowell closed all of the windows. Shawn noticed that she was near a window and decided that she was going to jump. As Shawn plummeted from Sowells two-story window, Donald Laster, owner of a local bar called “The Drink”, saw her and called the police. Shawn was transported to the hospital by ambulance. Sowell, her attacker, rode in the ambulance with her. Shawn was unconscious for three days, when she woke up she told a nurse that she needed to call her husband. The nurse was confused because up until this point they all thought that Sowell was her husband. Also, after Shawn woke up, Sowell called her and told her that if she told anyone he would kill her. Shawn did not press charges.

Vanessa Gay became addicted to crack and would walk the streets of Mount Pleasant and hop into any man’s vehicle as long as he had crack. One day she was picked up by Anthony Sowell where he then took her to his house. Vanessa remembered having an eerie feeling when entering the house and smelling something foul. Once they were inside Vanessa handed him a pipe, he then turned his back, took a hit and punched Vanessa in the face. He then made Vanessa take her clothes off. Sowell raped and beat her for hours. Vanessa eventually asked to go to the bathroom, while walking down the hallway, her eyes wandered into a separate room on the right where she saw a decapitated body wrapped in a trash bag and duct tape. Vanessa somehow manages to go to the bathroom without acknowledging the horrific scene she just saw. Vanessa told Sowell that she wouldn’t tell anyone about what he did to her and he agreed to let her go, they walked out of the house shoulder to shoulder because Vanessa was afraid that if she let him be behind her he would kill her. Vanessa left Sowell’s house limping, bleeding and in pain. Vanessa did call the police who told her to go down to the station to make a report. Embarrassed and traumatized by what she had just endured, she did not make a report.

On October 29, 2009, police went to Sowell’s home on Imperial Avenue with intent to arrest him for the rape of Latundra Billups. The police did not find Sowell but instead something much more macabre. As soon as the officers walked into the house they saw two dead bodies. During the investigation of Sowell’s house officers found more bodies in the basement, crawlspace, and backyard. Including a skull in a red bucket in the basement. And by the end of it remains of eleven different women were found on the premises. It is likely that all of these victims were strangled but many if not all of them were too decomposed to really tell for sure. Anthony Sowell killed all of these victims between the years of 2007 and 2009, meaning that some of the remains were in this house for two and a half years. Between these same years, people around the area had been complaining of a stench. Many thought that it was coming from Ray’s Sausage, a sausage factory next door to Sowell’s house. The city even required Ray’s to do $2,000 worth of renovations to their plumbing to try to take care of the issue. Despite these efforts, the stench stuck around and once Sowell’s home was investigated everyone knew where it was really coming from. All of the remains of the victims were too decomposed to identify. All eleven victims were later identified through familial DNA. Sowell was arrested on eighty-five counts that included murder, attempted murder rape, and kidnapping. Sowell went to trial on June 27, 2011, he originally pleaded “not guilty by reason of insanity” but later changed it to just “not guilty”. After fifteen hours of deliberation, Sowell was convicted of eighty-four counts on July 22, 2011. On August 10, 2011, the jury recommended the death penalty for Sowell. On August 12, 2011, Judge Ambrose upheld the jury’s recommendation. Sowell is still sitting on death row at Chillicothe Correctional Institution. Sowell’s home was knocked down in the winter of 2011, many of the homes surrounding the lot are now abandoned. The lot that Sowell’s house of horrors once stood on was supposed to be turned into a memorial for the victims and their families. And yet, here we are almost ten years later and the closest they’ve gotten to a memorial is a sign that sits on the ground against a fence.

What scares, shocks and fascinates me about this case more than the body count, how long this all went on and Sowell himself is the complete lack of empathy for other people in this neighborhood. Not only by the police but also by the citizens. None of the missing persons reports that were made on any of these women were ever investigated. And many if not all of the women who survived Sowell have mentioned that police would never believe someone like them. Part of the reason why these cases were so ignored is because of the size of the department. At the time, there were only thirteen officers and detectives working in the area. The police department also did not have a missing persons department so all cases like this would go to the sex and child abuse department. 73% of the cases reported to this department would eventually be dropped. Vanessa Gay has said over and over that when she escaped Sowell that no one around her helped her. Gladys Wade was kicked out of a pizza restaurant after her attack because she was bleeding on their floor. And, Assad Tayea, the owner of a local conscience store said: “I wish we had 1 million Anthony Sowell’s, he cleans up the garbage, the ones he killed was garbage”. And I have to wonder if the citizen’s lack of empathy for their neighbors is something that has been learned over time. If you live in a society that does care about you, I would think it would be easy for someone to stop caring about themselves and other people like them. Society shouldn’t decide who is worthy of good treatment but sometimes it really seems like it does. Having a society that showed that it cared about these women may not have stopped this from happening entirely but I have almost no doubt that at the very least it could have helped and maybe some of those women would still be alive. Many people who talk about this case automatically demonize Anthony Sowell for what he did which makes me beg the question, who was really there and what did they do to stop him? Who cared enough to even try? Sowell was not intelligent or specifically careful in the way he attacked and killed people yet eleven women were exterminated by him simply because the people around them could not have cared less about them. Wilbert Cooper tried to get to the bottom of how Sowell was able to commit these crimes in the documentary ‘The Cleveland Strangler’: The Story of a Brutal Serial Killer & His Forgotten Victims. Wilbert said one thing in his documentary that really stuck with me throughout the research process for this post. He said, “when cops only see us as criminals, we are also denied the right to be victims”. Which is exactly what I think happened with these women. Police and other people in the neighborhood only saw these women as prostitutes and drug addicts. And they may have been those things but they were also people who, regardless of what they did, did not deserve to die.

As you can probably imagine not many good things came from this, but there are a few positive things that I wanted to take a minute to talk about.

Latundra Billups got clean, went back to school and got her Masters Degree in Social Work at Cleveland State University in 2016.

Vanessa Gay appears to be doing well from what I can see on her Facebook and it looks like she still speaks out for survivors like herself.

Below is a list of all of the killed or hurt victims in this case. I ask that you please take a moment and read every name, whether it be quietly to yourself or out loud. Thank you for sticking through this post with me I know it’s very sad and heavy. Please come back and visit soon to read about the next Black Sheep Tribune case.

Victims

Crystal Dozier

Tishana Culver

Leshanda Long

Michelle Mason

Tonia Carmichael

Nancy Cobbs

Amelda Hunter

Telacia Fortson

Janice Webb

Kim Yvette Smith

Diane Turner