'Death' Smell Back At Cleveland Mass Murder Site

Enlarge Mark Duncan/AP

Police investigators carry evidence bags from behind the house adjacent to Anthony Sowell's Cleveland home. The search for evidence was expanded Wednesday; 11 bodies had already been found at Sowell's home.

Mark Duncan/AP

Police investigators carry evidence bags from behind the house adjacent to Anthony Sowell's Cleveland home. The search for evidence was expanded Wednesday; 11 bodies had already been found at Sowell's home.

A stench has returned to the neighborhood where a suspected serial killer lived amid the remains of at least 11 women as police searched the house next door for more bodies or evidence.

Neighbor Terrance Johnson says: "It smells bad in the air, like death."

Early Wednesday afternoon, four plainclothes officers carried bags of evidence from the house next to Anthony Sowell's. Police did not indicate what was removed.

The neighborhood had reeked off and on for several years.

Residents had blamed the odor on a broken sewer or a nearby sausage shop. Now most think the smell came from decomposing bodies.

Johnson says the odor Wednesday is the worst yet. He blamed it on the increased activity near Sowell's house.

Homicide detectives investigating the discovery of 11 bodies at a home expanded their search Wednesday to a neighbor's property as a precaution.

Police Lt. Thomas Stacho said the property next to murder suspect Anthony Sowell's house is being searched for more bodies or evidence. City crews are cleaning up debris at the next-door house and preparing for FBI agents to conduct a thermal-imaging search of the property, Stacho said.

The 50-year-old Sowell has been charged with five counts of aggravated murder. He was indicted Monday on one count of attempted murder, two counts of rape, two counts of kidnapping and two counts of felonious assault in an alleged attack Sept. 22 that led to the search of his home.

Makers of thermal-imaging devices say they can help police find buried bodies because dirt that has been turned over radiates heat differently than compacted soil. Thermal imaging can also be used to see through walls and floors.

Police discovered the first two bodies and a freshly dug grave Oct. 29 at the house on Cleveland's east side. Sowell had fled the home and was arrested two days later.

All 11 were black women and most had been strangled, the coroner said. Nine have been identified through DNA and dental records.

Police said Sowell lured women — often those who were homeless or living alone and who abused drugs or alcohol — with liquor and attacked them in his home.

Sowell has asked for a court-appointed attorney, but court records don't reflect that one has been chosen.

Scott Wilson, an FBI spokesman in Cleveland, has said investigators are reviewing its national database of unsolved crimes for any clues to possible connections to Sowell, particularly at locations where he served in the military.

Sowell was in the Marines from 1978 to 1985 and spent time in California, the Carolinas and Japan.