The number of bodies found in and near a rapist’s home rose to at least 10 when authorities unearthed four corpses from his back yard and found a skull in a bucket in the basement.
Cleveland, Ohio police called off their search for more victims last night and were set to resume efforts later today.
They have extended their work to boarded-up homes in the neighbourhood where residents complained for years of a stench that one even said “smelled like a dead body”.
Some people in the community want an investigation into why it has taken so long to trace the source.
Anthony Sowell (50), a registered sex offender who lives in the home, was charged yesterday with five counts of aggravated murder, as well as rape, felonious assault and kidnapping.
He is set to appear in court today.
Police Chief Michael McGrath said: “It appears that this man had an insatiable appetite that he had to fill.”
Police discovered the bodies of six women on Thursday and Friday after a woman reported being raped at Sowell’s home. All six were black, and five were strangled. Authorities did not provide the genders or races of the bodies found yesterday.
Police do not know whether the skull belongs to an 11th victim, and revealed that fire department crews are to search in the walls and ceiling of Sowell’s home.
Police say an initial search of a quarter-mile swathe of abandoned homes near Sowell’s residence, which sits in a crowded inner-city neighbourhood, revealed nothing, but that investigators plan to scour another quarter-mile area today.
Sowell, a registered sex offender, was required to check in regularly at the sheriff’s office, but officers didn’t have the right to enter his house. Their most recent visit was on September 22nd, just hours before the woman reported being raped.
For the past few years, Sowell’s neighbours thought the foul smell enveloping their street corner had been coming from a brick building where workers made sausage.
AP