Local and federal law enforcement authorities searched abandoned homes and lots in a suburb of Cleveland in the US yesterday after the bodies of three women wrapped in plastic bags were discovered.
Police officials said they had arrested a 35-year-old man who they said might be involved in the case on Friday after a two-hour standoff at his mother’s home in East Cleveland.
The standoff began when officers went to the house with a search warrant.
As of late on Sunday, the man, identified as Michael Madison, had not been charged.
Police officials identified Madison as a registered sex offender who had spent time in prison for an attempted rape.
One woman’s body was found in East Cleveland on Friday after a resident reported a foul smell, and two other bodies were found during a search on Saturday, the police said.
The bodies were discovered near one another in an abandoned home, a garage and a backyard.
As crews from the local police department and the FBI searched the area on Sunday, officials said they feared other bodies could be in the area.
“We have numerous search teams out searching every abandoned residence and abandoned lot within about a mile of the scene,” said Michael Cardilli, a commander with the East Cleveland Police Department.
When the police interviewed the suspect on Friday, they received information that led them to the two other bodies on Saturday, Mr Cardilli said.
The East Cleveland police chief, Ralph Spotts, told local television reporters that he believed the women had been killed in the last six to 10 days, but that they could have been missing for longer.
He said the suspect is believed to have killed the three women.
“Everything was in about a 250-foot proximity to where he lives,” Mr Spotts said.
“The M.O. (modus operandi) is the same: each body was wrapped in several plastic bags. We definitely believe that he will probably be tied to everything.”
Photographs from the area on Sunday showed residents wearing gloves as they searched through high brush and boarded-up homes.
An employee at the Cuyahoga County medical examiner’s office said the women had not yet been identified.
The medical examiner, Dr Thomas P Gilson, told the Associated Press that the bodies were in the advanced stages of decomposition and that it would take several days to identify them.
East Cleveland is a suburb of predominantly black residents with a population of about 17,500. The median household income is $21,000 a year, much lower than the state’s median income of $48,000.
“It’s tragic. The unthinkable has happened,” Gary Norton, East Cleveland’s mayor, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
“We as a community have to deal with it.”
Mr Norton said the suspect in the killings might have been influenced by the serial killer Anthony Sowell. The bodies of 11 women were found at Sowell’s Cleveland home in 2009. He was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to death.
After a long day of searching yesterday, Mr Norton said the police were following up on a few items that residents in the community had found.
“I hope and pray that we don’t find anything,” he said.
He thanked the resident who called in to report an unusual smell. The call led the authorities to the first body on Friday and an arrest. “Without that,” Norton said, “this person might still be on the street”.
The crimes have been perpetrated in the same state where three women were found alive in May in a house after they had been held captive for a decade.
New York Times