The Victims of Anthony Sowell

                                       These are the 11 victims of the Cleveland Strangler

In the first installment, I'll do a biographies of the victims of the Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell.  The victims deserve more than this, given the fact that police and society at large didn't care about the women until Latundra Billups filed rape and abuse charges against Sowell a month before the discovery of the remains of 11 women inside his house in October 2009.


Warning to readers, some of the biographies of the victims may be too graphic and adult for some of my youthful readers of this blog.  Readers discretion is advised.

Also to  our quick to judge readers, the biographies of the women contain circumstances and imperfect lifestyles that are less than savory to some readers.

Telling of the womens' stories shouldn't make us less sympathetic just because the women may led a less than perfect or ideal lifestyle that society wants us to lead.   I knew this to be the work of a serial killer, all of a sudden these women’s disappearances have real value to people, mainly negative.  We can see it in the sea of satellite dishes perched on the roofs of TV news vans suddenly jamming our streets. We can hear it in Cleveland’s local radio-talk shows, which have been having a field day with the story since it broke at the end of October, and in the embedded local racial animus exposed by a white caller to one of those talk shows, who essentially blamed the victims—either for being crack whores, or for simply living in a black neighborhood. But he/she's not the only one.  The store owner share those sentiments as well.  In the Unseen documentary, he wished there were "a million Sowells" to take out what he call the unfortunate, vulnerable women, "garbage."  That's how many in society, including the people in the neighborhood viewed such women.  It's the raw misogyny that lead to real violence against women, including serial murder.  But it's also the disinvestment in Cleveland's inner city neighborhoods such as Mount Pleasant in the last 50 years we need to take into account.

MOUNT PLEASANT is a section of southeast Cleveland bounded by Milverton and Griffing on the north, Martin Luther King Blvd. on the west, E. 155th St. on the east, and Harvard on the south, with Kinsman as the main thoroughfare. Settled by successive immigrant groups, the section eventually became a stable area of African American homeowners. The first residents of the area were MANX farmers who migrated there in 1826. It remained rural until 1921, when Joseph Krizek and his partners bought 20 acres southwest of Kinsman, where they mapped out streets and planted 248 maple trees along Bartlett St. The area received its name from its comely appearance. Among the immigrant groups who succeeded the Manx in Mt. Pleasant were GERMANS, CZECHS, RUSSIANS, JEWS, and ITALIANS.

Unlike other areas of the city where AFRICAN AMERICANS occupied housing first owned by whites, Mt. Pleasant counted blacks among its earliest citizens. Reportedly, in 1893 a contractor who employed a large number of black workers was unable to pay wages in cash, so he gave them title to lots in the section north of Kinsman between E. 126th and E. 130th. The title holders built homes there; by 1907 there were 100 black families, and 100 other lot owners. Advertised in African American newspapers as a suburban paradise, the section was noted for its high percentage of blacks who were homeowners. To prevent neighborhood deterioration, the Mt. Pleasant Community Council and block clubs in the 1950s fought delinquency, crime, and housing violations.

The neighborhood of Mount Pleasant declined in the 1980s with the coming of the drug epidemic invading the inner cities around the nation as well as disinvestment, housing bubble, and unemployment.  These set the stage for the killing grounds of Imperial Avenue home of Anthony Sowell in the late 2000s

These women are more than victims, more than their unfortunate circumstances. More than the labels we given to them when describing the women.  These women have lives lived to their fullest before Sowell.  Each women have a story to tell and their voices and lives matter.  

The names of the victims are:

Kim Yvette Smith
Crystal Dozier
Tonia Carmichael
Leshanda Long
Tishana Culver
Nancy Cobbs
Amelda Hunter
Michelle Mason
Diane Turner
Telacia Fortson
Janice Webb

Remember the women always.