Jury visits home of Ohioan charged in 11 deaths

A women’s shoe rests on a microwave in the home of Anthony Sow­ell Mon­day. Jurors prepar­ing to hear open­ing state­ments Mon­day vis­ited the prop­erty. Sow­ell is charged with killing 11 women and hid­ing their remains in and around his home.

MEGHAN BARR

THOMAS J. SHEERAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

CLEVELAND — Guided by flash­light and wear­ing face masks, jurors were met with rooms buzzing with flies and a high-heeled shoe left on a microwave Mon­day as they vis­ited the home of an Ohio man charged with killing 11 women and hid­ing their bod­ies around his property.

Under a sunny blue sky, a motor­cade of four vans under police escort trav­eled to the three-story home of 51-year-old Anthony Sow­ell, whose trial began with open­ing state­ments on Mon­day after­noon in down­town Cleve­land. Jurors wore pro­tec­tive cov­er­ings over their shoes as they entered the home, which is sur­rounded by a tow­er­ing metal fence. Reporters who accom­pa­nied the jury said the house smelled of mildew — and the smell grew worse as the jurors ascended from the base­ment to the third floor, where flies buzzed around the filthy rooms.

Some rooms were in com­plete dis­re­pair, with men’s and women’s cloth­ing piled on the floor and dresser draw­ers flung open. A can of malt liquor stood next to a bed on the third floor, and the mat­tress was cov­ered with papers. In the base­ment, a wrench hung from a nail on the wall and a dead rat was found on the floor. Some rooms had pieces of foam insu­la­tion and dirt on the floor and large holes in the walls.

There were also signs of the home’s for­mer inhab­i­tant: food crusted over in a Pyrex dish, a Ray Charles album, a pam­phlet about substance-abuse programs.

Pros­e­cu­tors say Sow­ell lured women from his inner-city Cleve­land neigh­bor­hood into his home with the promise of alco­hol or drugs, then killed them. He has pleaded not guilty to killing the women and faces the death penalty if convicted.

The bod­ies were found buried through­out the home and back­yard in Novem­ber 2009. The women dis­ap­peared one by one, start­ing in Octo­ber 2007, with the last one van­ish­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2009. All of the vic­tims were black, and most had traces of drugs in their bodies.

The jurors were accom­pa­nied by the judge, sheriff’s deputies and trial attor­neys. The attor­neys were warned in advance not to dis­cuss the case with jurors or point any­thing out, and jurors were told that the visit was meant to help pro­vide per­spec­tive for the trial. As they toured the home, jurors were instructed to take note of which room they were in.

What jurors see at the house “is not evi­dence, since con­di­tions may have changed since the time of the events in this case,” Cuya­hoga County Com­mon Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose said in a court order.

Posted by AP News on Jun 27 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.