Investigators unearthed four more bodies on Tuesday at the Ohio home of a convicted rapist, bringing the total number of corpses found in the grisly discovery to 10, local media reported.
As police dug into the night, Cleveland police chief Michael McGrath said Anthony Sowell had been charged with five counts of aggravated murder after women’s bodies were dug up at his home last week, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer newspaper said.
Sowell, 50, has also been charged with rape, assault and kidnapping, CNN television said, quoting police.
Police detained Sowell on Saturday, two days after discovering the decomposing bodies of five black American women inside his home and another woman’s body outside the house.
The Plain Dealer said a skull belonging to another person had also been found.
Sowell was set for arraignment yesterday. Calls to Cleveland police were not immediately returned.
McGrath said investigators were trying to determine the identities of the dead.
“We will not know until we identify the victims and how they lived in the community,” the daily quoted McGrath as saying.
“He had an insatiable appetite to fill,” he said, adding it was believed that Sowell often knew the women he attacked.
“I have to believe all these victims voluntarily went to the residence,” McGrath said.
Police have asked members of the community who may have loved ones missing to come forward with photographs of the relatives in a bid to help the identification process.
Released in 2005 after spending years in prison for a 1989 rape, Sowell was arrested in his Cleveland neighborhood after a local resident recognized him and notified police.
He had been walking down a street and did not resist arrest, police said.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the