Diane Turner

Diane Turner and her children

This is a story about the tragedy of an attractive woman named Diane Turner. Her story is the most difficult to write because she had so much tragedy in her life.

Diane Turner poised for a comeback in 2001.

One by one, her five children had been taken away. She had spent years self-medicating her shame and pain away with street drugs.

But she had been sober for 21 months and was pregnant with the daughter of her new boyfriend. She was involved in the church and had finally broken her longtime addiction to crack cocaine. She truly believed she could be a real mom to the little girl she would name Denise.

"When Denise was born was probably the best time of her life," the boyfriend James Martin said. "She was clean. Everything was good."

But like every good thing in Turner's life, it didn't last. Social workers swooped in and removed Denise from her mom's care four days after she was born. Turner fought to get her daughter back, but failed. It shattered her, and she relapsed -- again, Martin said.

After more years of abusing drugs, Turner disappeared in September 2009 -- the last to go missing of the 11 women whose remains were found in a house on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland. Her body was found in a third-floor bedroom of Anthony Sowell's house.

Her remains lingered unidentified in the Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office the longest as well. It took more than a month to confirm her identity, because of her tattered family ties.