CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Police found at least four more decomposing bodies and the skull of another person at Anthony Sowell's house Tuesday, making his home on Imperial Avenue among the deadliest crime scenes in Cleveland history.
Crews continued digging for corpses in Sowell's back yard after dark, even erecting a heated tent so they could work into the night. The search stopped around 9 p.m. but will resume in the morning.
At the same time, the city prosecutor filed five counts of aggravated murder against Sowell, for the bodies found at his home last week that investigators determined were strangled. Detectives were stunned by the scope of the killings.
"He had an insatiable appetite to fill," Police Chief Michael McGrath said.
Workers today are expected to begin slowly taking apart the house on Imperial Avenue piece by piece to make sure they aren't missing any bodies, police said.
Police have now found 10 dead bodies at Sowell's home plus a skull wrapped in a paper bag in the basement. It's unclear if the skull belongs to an 11th victim.
Sowell is scheduled to be in court Wednesday morning to be arraigned on the aggravated murder charges. He also faces unrelated charges of rape, kidnapping and felonious assault.
Police found the first two bodies Thursday when they went to arrest the convicted sex offender on the rape charge. He was not home at the time and investigators found four more bodies Friday.
He remained at large for nearly two days until police arrested him walking down the street Saturday about a mile from his home.
Crews started digging at Sowell's home again Tuesday. Trucks from the fire department and county coroner's office parked near the house as crowds of neighbors again gathered. Workers strung a blue tarp around the yard to obstruct the view of onlookers and later set up a heated tent so the digging could continue through the night.
They discovered four more bodies and the skull of another.
Sowell lived at the house since 2005, after serving 15 years in prison for raping a woman in East Cleveland. Investigators have brought in an entomologist from the Cleveland Natural History Museum to help them determine when the victims were killed.
Coroner's staff have identified the first six found as black women, and said at least five of them were strangled. The race, gender and cause of death of the bodies discovered Tuesday were not immediately known.
While the identities of the women found in Sowell's home remain unknown -- the five victims are listed in the charges against Sowell as Jane Doe -- his past arrests offer clues to how he operated.
Sowell's victims in those cases were women on the fringe of society who appear to have been caught up in the problems that have plagued urban cities for decades. All of the women who told police Sowell attacked them had previous arrests for offenses ranging from solicitation to drug charges to assault, among others.
McGrath said investigators are trying to determine the identities of the dead. He noted police will not be surprised if nobody filed missing persons reports on some of the people.
"We will not know until we identify the victims and how they lived in the community," McGrath said.
Sowell often knew the women he attacked, according to interviews and court records.
"I have to believe all these victims voluntarily went to the residence," McGrath said.
A review of police reports and court records shows Sowell struck up conversations with women, usually by offering them alcohol. Two women told police that once they were inside Sowell's home, he choked them, stripped off their clothes and raped them. A third woman told police Sowell offered her a beer and choked her, but she was able to run off before he could sexually assault her.
Sowell was raised in East Cleveland. He joined the Marines at in 1978, at age 18, and served eight years in North Carolina, Okinawa and California.
Police in Coronado, California, are looking into whether Sowell could have committed an unsolved rape from 1979 when he was stationed there, Police Chief Louis Scanlon said.
"We are researching this and looking for information," Scanlon said.
On Monday, a woman came forward and told police she was watching television with Sowell in April when he started choking her.
"You're just another crack (expletive) from the street, no one will know if youre missing," Sowell said to the woman, according to a police report. She was able to get out of the house after 12 hours.
Police on Tuesday searched vacant homes within a quarter-mile radius of Sowell's home in the 12200 block of Imperial Avenue. They are expected to expand by another quarter-mile Wednesday, as their colleagues continue digging in the yard and tearing apart the walls of Sowell's home, looking for more bodies.
