Ohio suspect faces arraignment on 11 murder counts

[December 03, 2009]  CLEVELAND (AP) -- A search at the former home of a serial murder suspect whose more recent home held the remains of 11 women turned up no new bodies, the FBI said.

Agents using cadaver dogs spent hours Wednesday looking inside and outside the East Cleveland house where Anthony Sowell lived before going to prison for 15 years for a 1989 attempted rape. They took some items, but FBI spokesman Scott Wilson declined to identify what they were and said there were no plans to resume the search.

Sowell has been charged with 11 counts of aggravated murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. He was scheduled for arraignment Thursday.

The renewed search, Wilson said, was part of a wider FBI investigation into the Sowell case, including previously reported plans to search outside the Cleveland area in states he lived while in the military.

Sowell, 50, served in the Marines from 1978-85 with assignments at Parris Island, S.C., Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point, N.C., Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Okinawa, Japan.

East Cleveland police Cmdr. James Naylor said his department hadn't found any unsolved slayings from the 1980s beyond three previously identified. However, police were looking into the disappearance in the late 1980s of a local bar employee, Mary Cox.

Rosalind Garner was found strangled in her home May 27, 1988; Carmella Prater was found dead in an abandoned building Feb. 27, 1989, beaten but with the cause of death undetermined; and Mary Thomas was found strangled near an abandoned building March 28, 1989.

Authorities have said Sowell lured vulnerable women, typically homeless or living alone and with drug or alcohol addictions, to his home and attacked them.

Sowell appeared in court Nov. 13 and entered not guilty pleas to rape, kidnapping, attempted murder and felonious assault in a separate report of a September attack.

Police investigating that report searched his home beginning Oct. 29 and said they found the remains of 11 women, 10 of whom have been identified, in the home and buried in the yard.

[Associated Press; By THOMAS J. SHEERAN]

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