CBS 최악의 연쇄 살인범
CBS 최악의 연쇄 살인범
If you live in the Cleveland area, you know the name Anthony Sowell. He’s an alleged serial killer charged with 11 murders. And now the police are investigating 61 more unsolved homicides to see if he’s linked to any of them. Tonight in this exclusive report, chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian tells us why the police are taking heavy criticism for failing to catch him sooner.
By any standard, it was a shocking discovery. “Two bodies were found. At least, one in the basement. Three confirmed bodies and the possible remains of three others…….” In all, the bodies of eleven women found at this house on Cleveland's Imperial Avenue. “More disturbing find……. The smell, the stench악취 of death….. One of the bodies upstairs badly decomposed부패하다.” The stench so intense, people had complained as far back as 2006.
Police believe all eleven women were raped and murdered by one Anthony Sowell, a neighborhood nice guy with a dark violent past. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case. Sowell was arrested last October on Halloween. Four months later, the question still hangs over this city. What took Cleveland police so long to finally catch Anthony Sowell?
A CBS News investigation has uncovered exclusive new details revealing critical mistakes by police and prosecutors working the case. How they could have stopped a serial killer if they hadn't ignored charges of rape. County judge Tim McGinty has been on the bench for 18 years and says he can no longer keep silent. "There is something wrong with this picture. This would not have happened anywhere else."
In fact, Cleveland has more reported rapes per capita일인당 than any major city in the nation. 633 in 2008. But no one was charged in more than two thirds of those cases. "Do you feel the police should have known?” "Do I think they should have known? They did know." Just look at his record. Twice arrested for rape in 1989 and 1990, and then served 15 years in prison, forced to register as a sex offender upon his release in 2005. All of which evidently meant nothing on the night of December 8, 2008.
It was right here that night that a woman named Gladys Wade said Sowell punched her, choked her, and tried to rape her. Sowell was quickly arrested and the case turned over to the sex crimes unit. The beginning of a missed opportunity that, some say, ended up costing six other women their lives. The detective's report from that case, obtained exclusively by CBS News, shows the police believed a convicted rapist and not the alleged victim.
The detective wrote "there were no visible signs" that the woman was punched. Detectives and prosecutors stating there was "insufficient evidence" to prosecute. But while the detective notes visiting the crime scene, there is no mention of the smell neighbors had complained about for years. No note of Sowell's criminal history in the report despite police claims his record was checked. The conclusion, the woman's claims including attempted rape were unfounded, unfounded, unfounded. Sowell was set free.
Nine months later, another woman accused Sowell of rape. And yet police didn't even visit the crime scene for more than a month. It was only then that the death house on Imperial Avenue was discovered. Still, Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath had nothing but praised for his department. "I wouldn't say we dropped the ball. We were very vigilant what we did."
McGinty and even some police officers say Cleveland follows a long-held practice known as straight release where detectives and prosecutors routinely release hardened criminals like Sowell instead of indicting them. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson recently appointed a commission to review his city's sex crimes investigations. But to date, no one in the Cleveland criminal justice system has been held accountable for the failure to catch and hold a serial rapist turned killer for the unimaginable loss of eleven lives in a single house of horror. Armen Keteyian, CBS News, Cleveland.