Rotten Mango - #141: The Cleveland Strangler (Serial Killer Anthony Sowell)

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

The Cleveland Health Department had been flooded by calls from residents on Imperial Avenue. The residents complained of an inescapable, pungent, thick stench that was so strong that it made their eyes sting. After years of calls, the inspectors went out to investigate. The source was clear. Ray’s Sausage Shop! That made perfect sense, fresh meat being ground daily into sausages has to produce some stench right? No matter what the residents tried - the smell never went away. At least for years. 11 bodies later. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rambles. Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are, whenever we need it, download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier, or pay to description starting at $12.99 per month. Buta being betta boob.

Welcome to this week's mini-sode of Rotten Mingo. I'm your host Stephanie Sue, and let's get into it. The Cleveland Health Inspectors were getting flooded with calls from residents on Imperial Avenue. Excuse me, please can you guys come investigate? I'm distraught. There's a stench here. I don't know what it is, but it's so strong, so thick, so pungent that anytime I step outside my house, my eyes sting, I can't even open my windows in this sweltering hot summer.

What is, oh god, it's awful. Because of these non-stop calls, inspectors sent out people to investigate. Now, they realize, well, this is easy. There's a raised sausage shop in the middle of this residential neighborhood. Of course, the smell is coming from there. So they go in and they start looking through their stuff.

Right, the owner, he claims it can't be us. Even my employees keep our windows closed during the summer because the smell will come in and infiltrate us. How is it us? We don't even slaughter animals here. We literally get our meat shipped to us fresh or frozen. But it didn't matter. The inspectors knew it was coming from them.

They had Ray spend $20,000 in upgrades. Residents stopped buying, Ray's sausages. But the police found out too late where the smell really was coming from. It wouldn't be until 11 bodies later. As always full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast.com, but there is a really good deep dive book on this case. It's called House of Hors, the shocking true story of Anthony so well. This is written by a Robert Siberna and I just want to say, the author interviews over a hundred people. They were impacted by this case.

Families of the victims were interviewed, survivors, relatives of the killer, neighbors, community activists, police officers. The other even interviewed Anthony and prison, so there's a lot of perspective. He even included Anthony's prison letters that they, their correspondence, which is, which is wild, I tell you. So please go check out that book, but let's get into the story. Anthony, so well. Now he was born in Cleveland to a working class parent, and he just always went by Tony.

That was his name. His mom, Claudia, was a dry cleaner, and his dad, Thomas, he was a construction worker by day, and literally the world's worst father by night. When Tony was just a tiny little baby, Thomas decided, I don't wanna do this anymore. I don't wanna parent, this is disgusting. So he packs his bags, He moves away and he leaves

Claudia a single mom and he leaves Tony completely fatherless. He didn't like being a dad. He didn't like being a husband. He felt trapped by all of this, which is ironic because after abandoning his family, Thomas ends up like really trapped in prison. And during his to-off time when he's in and out of prison, like it was his annual vacation spot, Thomas would re-marry several different times that have multiple kids with many different women. So this guy never got it together. He was never really a good person in any marriage, but this detail is really important.

At one point, he marries a woman by the name of Sigerina Henderson. And with Henderson, he buys this large duplex in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Cleveland, right next to Ray's sausage shop. Oh yeah, this house right there is going to be very, very pertinent. So hold on to your thoughts, hold on to your tits too. So meanwhile, Tony's mom Claudia, she's raising her children, and a lot of them did have different dads and they were all consistently horrible fathers. They were completely absent from not just Claudia's life but also their own kids life. So she's really struggling with these four kids. Tony being the youngest and Patricia Tony's older sister would fall into some very bad relationships. She ended up having

seven children and none of them knew their fathers. So the situation was just really complex, really messy. There was not a single father figure in that house, and if there was, it was very brief, you know. Claudia had boyfriends here and there, but they would vanish rather quickly. I feel like because this is a true crime podcast and you put a disclaimer, Claudia is not a killer. They just left. They ghosted her. They didn't actually vanish. So in Claudia's not home, she's at one of her many manual labor jobs, and she's just really struggling as a single mom. And by the time that Tony's five, he knew his routine. When he'd come back from elementary school, he'd pull the string out from under his shirt

that's wrapped around his neck, and he would place that little silver key into the keyhole. Yeah, he's wearing his key as a necklace because he's that young and his family is scared he's gonna lose it. He unlocks the door, takes the key out, locks the door from the inside and he would be home alone for the rest of the night. At five years old. No siblings?

No siblings. They're all out and about doing their own thing. I mean, despite all of this, despite the fact that he had no stable parental figures, like not a dad, not a mom, like nobody, they were financially on super tough times, Tony actually grew up to be very well adjusted. A neighbor once said, oh, Tony? Oh yeah, he's the kindest kid you'll ever deal with.

He's very respectable. He's respectful. He paid attention in class, his teachers love him. Oh, that's a good one, that one. Meanwhile, they did not have the same things, or any good things really to say about his older sister Patricia. So she had five of her seven children before she was 18 years old. Many of them had health issues, and doctors kept warning her, if you get pregnant again,

it's gonna be life-sortening. Not just to you, but to your unborn child, but she continued to have children and she even had conjoined twins and it was just a really stressful time in her life and everybody else. The neighbors always just shook their heads at her. Since Patricia never really even had stable jobs or child care, she would drive to random jobs in random parts of the city, dangerous parts of the city and she would leave her kids in the sweltering hot car for hours. While she worked just, goodbye, stay here, lock the door, beep beep, and she would leave. One of her kids said, yeah, my life was kind of a blur.

We moved around a lot, we were in and out of schools. I never really even had the chance to make friends. Sometimes we were just sleeping our car until we found an apartment to live in. And when Patricia was only 29 years old, she died of an asthma attack. And the kids were placed in Claudius care. So this is Claudius, their grandma, right? And Claudius was intense.

She refused to even have a funeral service for her daughter, Patricia. She hated that Patricia's own children grieved their mother. It's like she wanted them to shut up and pretend like nothing was wrong, and their mom did not die. No, this was not a grieving mechanism. She really just was a bad person. She would slap and spank the kids and she used their government assistance checks, which you know, it was

quite a bit because she had custody of seven kids now. She bought herself a 4,000 square foot house and at first the kids loved it. They said it was so much fun. Oh, we would slide down that stairway bay in a stair. We'd climb that little cherry tree in the yard. Do you remember that church? The rules were strict. Yeah, I mean, we had a ton of chores. We weren't a lot of friends over.

We weren't even a lot of birthday parties, but we really loved it there for like the first month. And then they saw an even darker side to Claudia. Prior to moving into this 4,000 square foot house, Claudia would spank them, slap them here and there. But then she graduated to a full on abuse. She would brutally beat the kids for the smallest, tiniest mistake.

You would have weltz all down your legs and you'd be so embarrassed to even wear shorts to school because it's embarrassing and nobody would even call CPS and just be like, wow, you get beat a lot. The kids had to walk on pins and needles every day, but still somehow, they were still punished without fail. And the way Claudia did it was really strange, like the way that she punished these kids. The punishment was that, I mean, listen, there was like an extra layer of psychological

abuse on top of this physical abuse. Claudia would punish the girls by forcing them to take off their shirts and all the boys in the house. So these are, you know, their brothers, their uncles, God, Claudia's boyfriend, everyone would gather and watch. So the girls have their arms tied up to the staircase railing and Claudia would grab whatever she could find, accord, a belt, a stick, a switch, whatever.

And she would just start beating the kids. The girls would start crying and Claudia wouldn't stop. The girls would start bleeding and Claudia wouldn't stop. It was only when Claudia was tired that she would stop. Tony wears always there to witness the beatings. I mean, these are his nieces. And sometimes he would stand there with a stone-cold face. And you're like, oh, wow, he feels bad for them. Like, he hates his mom too, but he's so manipulative, so terrified of Claudia. Like, what is he

going to do? This is his mom too. He's powerless to stop her. And maybe that sense of powerlessness makes him hate himself too. And you're thinking, wow, that makes sense, he's just upset. But not really. Because other times Tony would sit there and laugh, full on giggle gaggles while his nieces are being brutally beat. The kids were beat so often and so harshly and for so long that, I mean, most of their body was covered in welts and to make matters worse, this is their grandma that's beating them. But inside that house, live their great-grandma, so Claudia's mom lived with them too, and not only did she not stop her daughter from abusing the kids, she just had no love for her great-grandkids.

She just barked orders at them to finish their stoutors, heartbreakingly the kids said that the holidays were the worst times. Oh, it was bad. They were horrible. Their great-grandmother made them clean all night long that the holidays were the worst times. Oh, it was bad. They were horrible. Their great grandmother made them clean all night long before the holidays. The younger kids would clean, the older kids would stay up in three hours with the night just cooking.

The house had to be in pristine condition for the holidays. And even if it was, even if the kids did nothing wrong, they would still get beat because Claudia would come home from work, exhausted, and take out just all of her frustrations on the kids. I think that Leona and her twin Ramona had it the worst, and that's what everybody else in the family thinks as well.

They probably were beat the most by a long shot, and everybody was under the impression that it was because they had the darkest skin tone of all the kids. So their own grandmother would yell at Leonna and Ramona and she would say, and I quote, tell them black kids to get down here, it's time for a beating. And the lighter quote, the lighter skin-toned kids would be spared from these random beatings. Leonna and Ramona, they developed scar tissue from all of the abuse that they went through. So obviously, Leonna is not safe here. She starts trying to run away from home. And I mean, could you even call this a home, really?

She was just so desperate as a kid that when she would run away, she would do it barefoot and in her PJs. But somehow, the police would spot her on the street. Say, hey, what you doing? It's past Garfield. Like, how old are you? You can't be running away from home.

But I can't go back. Like, they hit me. They beat me, I can't go back. Well, I mean, we're not gonna send you back. Lyona, right? We just wanna make sure that your family knows you're safe. That's all, you don't have to go back there. We can take you into custody, into state care. Just tell us, what's your address?

We are the police, you know? You think we would send you back to your abusers? That's crazy. So Leona reluctantly gives them her address. And they would just book it there. Like literally why? Why even take this job then? Claudia would open the door and say, oh my god, Leona did what? Well, officers, of course she's lying. She's probably upset that I didn't buy her an iPad.

I am working five jobs to put food on the table. Maybe it's that boy she's lying. She's probably upset that I didn't buy her an iPad. I am working five jobs to put food on the table. Maybe it's that boy she's seeing. He's corrupted her mind. Thank you so much. I'm her grandmother. I've missed her dearly. And from the minute that the officers left, Leona would be beat brutally.

She would be on the floor, sobbing, feeling betrayed, hopeless, hurt, and in pain. And blood would be seeping from her forehead literally. Claudia would tell her, you just go take a shower and clean up. And that was it, back to how she goes. She got so desperate at one point. She considered shooting Claudia and Irene, her great-grandmother.

They had a few guns on the second floor closet, and she just practiced shooting first. So when nobody was home, it was bad, yeah. She took the gun and just opened a random window and shot out of it. So I think she was too young to realize that she could really hurt someone. Yeah. But I don't know. She just shot it out the window and she said that when the gun went off and nearly knocked her off her feet, it scared her so much because the recoil, I guess she wasn't expecting that. And she realized that she wasn't a killer. It was so loud, it was so scary. So instead of killing her abusers, she tried killing herself. She took an overdose of pills. She was sent to the hospital and saved.

But not so great because the second she recovered, she was sent back to Claudia and she was badly beat yet again. So her last resort, okay, I'm gonna like Claudia's room on fire. She just wanted to go to prison. At this point, prison would be better than whatever the hell that this is. So the police, they take her in, they get reports of a fire, it's our sin. Come on, Leona, you're coming with us.

She was sent to a residential mental health center and she said, I felt safe for the first time. I was locked up and nobody could hurt me. I was so tired of the abuse that beatings were running away. I left when I was just 12 and I never went back. But it wasn't just Claudia she was escaping from. So later we find out through psychiatrist and her own testimony that Tony, the one that was laughing at her through these beatings, he had started

being his niece since she was only 10. And it said that other males in the house also participated. So these are her own male relatives. I don't know if this is her brothers because I guess I don't know if they're trying to justify it that they have different fathers. I don't know. But it may be it's her brothers, maybe it's her. Tony was her only uncle. I don't know what it was, but she was being assaulted by male relatives. So she was just happy to be anywhere but

there. Now Claudia has a grandmother to these kids. What's interesting is that she would beat her grandkids to the point where they couldn't even walk anymore, but she'd never really beat her own children. Or at least not anymore. Tressa, this is Tony's other older sister. She said, I wasn't abused all the time, but I wasn't loved either. You know, when I was just 11, I was sexually assaulted. And I got pregnant from it. My mom forced me to have an abortion.

And so I ran away from home and I spent a couple years in a juvenile center. It was bad. But do I blame my mom? No, no, I don't blame her. She worked hard. She wanted her house to be No, no, I don't blame her. She worked hard. She wanted her house to be clean, no ifs and or buts. But it wasn't clean. And she got mad. Why would I blame her for that? Isn't it like a lot of these abusers always have

a scapegoat at the house? Yeah. So it's always one or two kids that get the most beating. Yeah, Leon and Ramona, it seemed. And according to Tress, that Tony was beat to. Apparently, one time, Tony skipped his chores to go play baseball in the front yard, and when Claudia pulled up in the car, he was so excited to see her. He was like, oh my god, mom, you're home early. So he runs up to our window, and she rolls it down.

And she's like, he's like, hey, mom. And she just punches him, squirming the face. He screamed me like, I think you broke my nose. And she just, cool, he responds the face. He screamed like I think you broke my nose. And she just cool he responds, I don't give a fuck. So in school, Tony starts kind of showing signs of this abuse, especially when it came to interacting with girls. Girls would approach him in school and he would put his hands up. As if he's like shielding himself like, whoa!

He had a hard time being intimate, he hated. When girls made the first move on him, like he really hated it. A psychiatrist would later say that Tony had a hard time connecting with just any woman because of his abuse. He didn't experience any physical touching or bonding while growing up in a good way, like in a positive way, not in a sexual assault way. His mom never hugged him.

Not once, she never once told him that she loved him. And most of his days, he was obsessed with chess. So he sat in school, he played chess, he got relatively good grades, but his schoolmates remember differently. They said that he was bullied pretty hard. They said that he was pretty easy to pick on. He was an easy mark, he was very quiet, very da-sale, and he'd be teased for having a girlfriend and probably being a virgin. That's what they teased him for. Oh, you're a virgin, aren't you?

Like you had a weaker physical frame, so it just made it easy for toxic masculinity to rage in the hallways of the school and other boys were just bullying the crap out of him. So slowly, Tony's grades, they start to slip. He didn't even graduate with his class, and since he didn't have enough credits, instead of going to college, he got a girlfriend a girlfriend got her pregnant and joined the US Marines You're like why did he have a passion for the Marines? No, he said it was all to prove a point to the kids at school who teased him And that he wanted to get away from his family He wanted to show everyone he could do it and his mom told him his mom taunted him really

You are too dumb and not tough enough for the army. And it just lit this fire under his little butt. He'd approve her wrong, and he thought the Marines was tougher than the army, so that's why he chose the Marines. Not for any other reason. And he really starts thriving. Like really thriving in the Marines, he gets in, and he finishes boot camp as an honor graduate,

which Marines boot camp is no joke. I have so much respect for anyone who dedicates their life to serving this country, but the training seems absolutely unhinged if I'm being honest with you. You're there for 13 weeks. For training, okay. 13 weeks, the smallest infraction gets you in trouble.

Drill instructors demand you to put on your uniforms in like 10 seconds. I mean, the whole goal is to test your limits and everything that you felt is impossible and make it possible somehow. Most people don't make it through boot camp. At the end of all of this training, which by the way, a ton of editors said hazing is super common, there have been some reports of military recruits needing skin grafts because they were forced to crawl around on a bleached floor.

Some said that they were forced to run around naked, and then jam into a shower like sardines, and then sprayed with cold water. Some said that they were water-haired. I think the best way to describe it is, they force feed you water until you gag and throw up. At the very end, you're gifted with something called the Crucible, a 54- hour long test. 54 hour long test.

That includes food deprivation, sleep deprivation, over 45 miles of marching while wearing 50 pounds of gear. During this time you get split up into squads and you have to work together. Self-problems, overcome obstacles, combat assault courses, leadership reaction courses, 2019 building warrior stations. You also have to learn how to safely transport 35 pounds of ammo across like a military course that's filled with just taking time bombs and obstacles. You only get six hours of sleep during the entire 50-something hours.

You get two MREs to eat the whole time, which is technically two meals in like 56 hours, and you have to be the one for rationing out the food yourself. A drill instructor said the recruits are tired and hungry and it does not take long for them to get to that state. But as they keep going, they realize that they can call on these reserves that they never knew they had inside their body. Some of the recruits do things that they never thought that they could do. If they finish the crucible, they have finally accomplished something.

And he did it. He did it. Not only did he do it, but he graduated as an honor graduate. He was the top performer of his group. He was the only one in that group to be promoted from private to private first class. Literally right after boot camp. I mean, this is really impressive. In terms of ranking, this is a huge deal, especially since the Marines is no joke.

They're incredibly prideful. They're very strict. So that means Tony must have been really, really good in in order to impress them So he spends eight years with the Marines He traveled all over the place north Carolina, California, Japan He was working as an electrician and as a cook now He did have some write-ups and all of them are regarding alcohol But otherwise he was doing really well and in Japan he meets the love of his life Kim lost it. She was also in the Marines.

So they get married and they come back to the US. She told her friends, I mean, I only married the guy so that he wouldn't drink himself to death. I felt bad for him. I married him to help him out. But Tony would remember their relationship really fondly. He'd say, she just gets me. She's able to control me and talk to me. I mean, she gets me better than anybody else I've ever known.

I don't know. We just have like this connection. She gave me the love and affection that I never got from my mom. She helped me through my toughest moments. For example, he had gone to a Marine's going away party and on his way home, his car was overheating. So he stops, he parks and he lifts the hood and he realizes that the radiator hose is hissing. Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss to close his eyes. He had second to third degree burns all of his body. He was blind for months.

Jeez. And Kim was there taking care of him. Day in, day out. But eventually she was like, I think I've had enough. Maybe there was just too much emotional baggage. Maybe it was the fact that Tony loved going to Red Light Districts and hiring sex workers. Especially when he was stationed in Japan. There was a part of Okinawa City that had a lot of sex workers and the Marines very, very intelligently, compassionately, good people, they called it Hooker Hill. Yeah, I know, so sweet. Tony would go there, he would have sex with sex workers, but the thing is that in itself wasn't that strange. All the Marines seemed to be doing it, but it was the fact that Tony really wanted lots of bondage and choking.

He was really into it. He loved to tie girls up to chairs, and just put ropes around their neck and choke them, like not even have sex with them. He'd be paying them, but he would just be choking them. As far as we know, none of these women died during this sex play. As far as we know. Now, she ends up breaking up with him, Kim files for divorce and he gets discharged from the Marines. Kim might actually die 13 years later working at a steel mill

and a 500 pound metal block became dislodged and fell on her throat. And Tony was also later discharged from the Marines and I think that he had really taken a lot of special skills with him. So you might think maybe it's order, maybe it's discipline, hard work, work ethic. Well, he also learned some other valuable skills. Blood chokes. Have you heard of them? Let me tell you about them. It's a chokehold where you apply pressure

to the arteries and the neck. So this stops the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the brain. It's said that you can kill someone in three to five minutes with this chokehold. Tony, that'd be useful in life one day. Why not? So he started studying it. Tuck extra note of it compared to air chokes, which is what most people imagine where you just put your hands around someone's neck and you just restrict their airflow. That would prevent the victim from breathing. Blood chokes compared to air chokes are considered the superior killing technique.

compared to air chokes are considered the superior killing technique. An air choke might take several minutes to incapacitate someone. A blood choke, if done right, can take as little as 8 to 13 seconds. And they're unconscious. Anyway, I'm getting a... That's terrifying. Yeah, and the fact that they're just teaching random recruits this. I'm getting ahead of myself with this valuable knowledge Tony was honorably discharged. So he goes back to Cleveland and uh honestly it changed in the past eight years

since he was gone. Not for the better. Violent crime rates were rising more drugs on the street. It was in a great place at the time. So he goes back to his childhood home. So he moves in with his nephews and his nieces and they were all shocked. I mean yeah, Tony was gone for eight years but he had changed so much. He was calm and quiet now and he hated or he hated. If anyone messed with his stuff, everything was rolled up military style. All the time like his shirts rolled up military style. If anyone touched it or messed it up he would go crazy. Tony sister even said it seemed like he got meaner after the marines. He didn't have a

soft spot anymore, he didn't have his playfulness, it was all gone. And he was still bitter, he was upset that Kim divorced him, he would mope around and say, you know Kim loved me, she cared about me, more than any other woman that I've ever known, my sisters, my mom, anybody, and I just, I don't get it. So Tony either couldn't or didn't want to find a job after the Marine, so he just starts drinking full time. He would have at least six drinks every single day. Someday he would start so early in the morning that he wouldn't remember the rest of the day, he would just completely black out, which might be a convenient excuse because vividly remembers that Tony was using and probably selling drugs too. Why would you break into these apartments?

For money, for drugs, whatever was in them? Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this? No, who's gonna catch us? What a police. It was the height of the crack era, and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're going to want some drug dealers and I know how to do it really well.

This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100% I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a big guy man, but I love being a 30-month-of-s**t.

So that might have been his full-time job. And he just slowly starts slipping away from all the progress that he seemingly made. He would be arrested for domestic violence, possession of drugs, disorderly conduct, driving while intoxicated, criminal trespassing, public drunkenness, and the granddaddy of them all aggravated And the granddaddy of them all aggravated burglary said this point. It's July 22nd and 21 year old Melvetsok Well within her motel room. She's waiting for her boyfriend to get back and she's just sitting there when she starts hearing like a commotion in the hallway So she looks through the little people she can't see anything. So she peeks up and she opens up that motel unit door Peaks out the hallway and she still can't see. So she steps out and sees all the commotion is about police.

So this motel is a huge spot for drug dealers. And there were police in the hallway. They were raiding a different room. No, Moved is shaking. Sure, she's three months pregnant, but she had a history of drug use. What if they arrest her? She can't go to jail like this.

Maybe she potentially had drugs on her that she wasn't or was using. I mean, I don't know. But she was so scared to the point that she grabbed all of her stuff, slipped out of the exit of the motel and just started walking. She just wanted to get as far away from the police as possible. That's when she bumps into Anthony so well. He says, oh hey. Are you looking for my boyfriend? Your boyfriend? Oh, he

asked me to take you to my house until the police left the motel. So he sees the police cars outside the motel, right? And in the panic of it all, Melvede agreed to follow him in her car. Now, on the way to his house, her car broke down. Tony sees this and he's like, oh, shucks, well, why don't you hop in my car and I'll drive you to my house where you can use the phone to call for help. So at this point, just to clarify, it seems like Melved and Tony were familiar with each other. They weren't complete strangers. She was just like, not the closest friend, but oh, I remember this face from somewhere. I do think that he hangs out with my boyfriend. So that was kind of the vibe. Now they get back to Anthony's childhood home and he leads her in through the back door.

And Melvette was starting to get anxious. She started feeling concerned, but the minute that she saw the flooring littered with kids toys. She felt relaxed. Okay. There's kids in this house. Shh. I can't wake up my sister to dress up or her kids.

So let's go upstairs. He leads Melvette into his room and she's walking ahead of him. So she's like oh is your phone in your room? Can I use your phone? No response. She turns around and she sees Tony shut the door, lock it and he's got this look on his face. She knew he wasn't getting her a phone. He went around, closed the bedroom window, pulled out a long knife and he pulled out a giant suitcase in the middle of the room, which is alarming. And he said, I don't think I need to tell you what's gonna happen now. So Mel starts taking off her clothes. She thought, okay, as long as I do whatever he wants, he's gonna let me live.

And she tried to mention, you know, I'm three months pregnant. She thought by letting him know he would show her some mercy, he didn't. He threw her on the bed, choked her, and put her over and over again. In between assaults, he would have Mel go to the bathroom to clean up and put her clothes back on, and he kept apologizing, like sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, but then he would repeat the whole process all over again, taking off her clothes, rropping her. When she started crying, he would stuff a towel in her mouth. He tried to sodomize her at one point, and she took the towel out of her mouth and very calmly told him, when I gave birth a year earlier, like I had to have an incision made. So I'm gonna hemorrhage if you know you do that.

So he just said sorry, and for the next 15 hours, he continued to assault her. It went the whole night. At one point, her stomach rumbled. I mean, this is not something you can control. Mel's stomach rumbled and hunger and he said, you might as well say your prayers because I'm not gonna feed you. And then he tied her up, a gag in her mouth, bound both of her wrists with a necktie, tightened to belt around her ankles. And he said, but first, I'm gonna get some rest before I kill you. Now, throughout the past 15 hours, he had been drinking heavily,

so he rolled over in bed and just dozed off. Mel realized, oh, this guy's knocked out. I need to do whatever I can to get out now because he's gonna kill me. I mean, she knows it. She starts inching off the bed. She knew she couldn't get out through the door without waking him up.

She thought her best chance was the window. Now, this is the hard part. Her arms are tied behind her. So even when she gets to the window, she had to try to open it with her forehead without making noise. So she starts moving the window up with her face. And the whole time she's looking at his knife, it was right next to him while he slept. So if he wakes up, she'd be dead. She knew it. She slid head first out the window onto this very steep roof that was like 20 feet off the ground. I mean, she didn't care. It was dangerous. If she fell off, she would have had insane trauma, insane injuries. I mean, but what can you do? She tried to yell at two elderly ladies down the street, but

because of her gag, I mean, they really couldn't hear her. And just then, arms gripped tightly around her and starts pulling her back in through the window. And Mel thought she was going to die. But then she looked back and it wasn't Tony. It was Tressa, his sister. What? So she's like, oh my god, yes, like woman to woman, like please help me, right? So Tressa starts taking off all her restraints.

And she's like, what happened? Mel tells her everything, the 15 hours of fr- And Trissa starts getting angry and mel. Wait, and he's still sleeping? Yeah. Trissa's like, you're lying. Why didn't you just scream for help if that's true? What?

Because if I screamed, your brother, your brother would have killed me. She's like, well, I didn't hear any noise, so you might be lying. She's like, I just get me out of here. Like this is ridiculous. Thankfully, the elderly woman had a scene male and they did call the cops who arrived at Tony's place in quick timing. Now, Tony was still asleep.

When the cops tried to wake him up, he just shoot them away and said, I just wanna go back to sleep. He was arrested for multiple counts of kidnapping and rape, but he would be released on bail. Meanwhile, Mel is rushed to the hospital and she told the police everything in great detail. Even about the part about how he was choking her and she started to feel her entire body tingle. She thought that she was going to die, but I guess it didn't matter to the authorities or to Tony.

Because eight months later he would strike again. Now, technically at this point, Tony was considered a fugitive. He wasn't showing up to his court hearings about Mel's case, but he had invited a 31-year-old pregnant woman over to his house to drink. And out of nowhere, in the middle of like sipping some brandy, he reaches over and starts wringling her. And she's screaming. And he's screaming at her, I'm gonna be you.

And he's describing in great detail how she was gonna be his bitch and she better learn to like it. Then he stops choking her so that he could rip her. He assaulted her in every sense of the word. And while he was doing it, he demanded that she tell him, yes sir, I like it. She would stop and beg him like, I'm pregnant, please just stop like I'm pregnant, but he wouldn't stop and he kept going. The only reason she escaped was because he fell asleep yet again. Now the police finally arrest Tony the fugitive, but they don't press charges.

They set the victim, quote, refuse to cooperate with us. Which I don't know, the whole thing is shady, that's what the police keep saying, but I doubt it, take it with a grain of salt. Anyway, back in prison Tony goes. Now he arranged a plea deal on Mel's case. He said that the charges would be lowered to attempted, and he would only get 15 years in prison if he were to plead guilty. So the prosecutors, they agree, and he was thrown in prison.

Now Mel had some relief knowing he was in prison, but not much. She said after the incident, she had to get drunk for four months, not sober for a single second of her life for four months, because she could not handle the severe anxiety that she felt every single day. She knew for a fact that she was not his first victim. She just knew. She felt guilt, trauma, and she didn't know what to do with herself. Meanwhile in prison, Tony was thriving yet again. Anyone that knew Tony

would say that he did well anywhere there was structure. His cellmate said, oh yeah, as long as there's a set of rules, he's in his comfort zone. That's the key to his personality. Sometimes Tony would talk about his mom in prison, but he never really said a bad word about her. Sometimes he would slip up and call her a prison, but he never really said a bad word about her. Sometimes he would slip up and call her a bitch, but he would take it back immediately. So it seemed like Tony just loved structure and that's what he needed. He loved a routine, he loved not making his own decisions, maybe it helped lessen his anxiety, made him feel more in control. The guards in prison, even the warden, had nothing but praise for this guy.

They trusted him to be alone without feeling like he was going to steal something from their offices or try to escape. He was a well-tested prison and made a model inmate. Even started working. Yard made into assembler, electrician, food, service, prep, cook, he's very busy. He didn't really get on anyone's bad side. He didn't make any friends. He just focused on his job. He never borrowed anything, never joined a gang. He got his GED. He completed a ton of programs,

drug awareness, anger management, A treatment. He even requested to attend the sex offender program. Now, this would have made him eligible for early parole. That's why. But they refused. They denied him unless he admitted that he committed a sex crime. Now he refused to do that because it was a double edged sword. So this is back before the prison's had internet access and you know people talk and people on the outside can look up what you're in jail for. If you don't tell people where you're in prison for, no one will really know. So if he takes this program, he'd be eligible for parole.

But, by admitting himself as a sex offender, he would be a March man in prison. I see. People don't like that. Oh, no. So he would have a target on his back. So sure, he could admit that he was a sex offender and then maybe ask for protective custody, but then that would mean that he loses his educational programs and his prison jobs. Just a lot of politics.

Yeah. So he figured it was better to stick it out all 15 years. So he stayed until 2005. It was time for him to be released. And his main thought was, what the hell am I going to do now? The last place I want to do, or be, is good at my mom's house at the age of 45 years old and just start living with my mom that I hate regardless. So he found out that his dad's new wife, remember his dad's wife, Sagarina they bought a house well Tony's dad had recently died and stepmom Sagarina was alone in this big three story house with an attic in a basement

And she's there all alone so Tony found out that one of his nephews was stealing Sagarina's social security payments and his plan was to expose his nephew Move in for himself into his late dad's house with his stepmom, and that was where he was going to live. So he gets released from prison. And he was such a great inmate apparently that a bunch of guards, they disregarded their whole prison policy and their protocol, and they hugged him goodbye. Which like what? I mean, what?

I'm sure the prison guards have access to his file, so they know what he's in for, maybe the other inmates don't, but at least they have to know, so it makes no sense that they're hugging this guy, but here we are. So after he's released, he's taken to take a standard psych evaluation. It would determine his likelihood of committing another sexual assault. They concluded, ah, this guy, he's unlikely to reoffend. Oh, he's so low-risk trust. The man who kidnapped a woman and brutally tortured her for 15 hours straight and then tried it again with somebody else, listen, he probably won't do it again,

you know? Like once, it's a mistake, oh twice, it's definitely a mistake, third time, come on. So because of his low-risk status, they only required him to report once a year to the sheriff's office. That's it. He didn't even have to notify his neighbors that he was a sex offender.

Nothing. So his plan for housing works out. He kicks out his nephew and he starts living with his stepmom, Sigerina. She lived on the first floor of the house. The second floor of the house was unfinished but also unfernished. There was nothing there. Then Tony moved into the third floor of the house. Now, about a month into his day, Sigerina was hospitalized for kidney disease. She was moved

to a nursing home and now Tony is completely alone in this giant house. Now something to note. This area is called Mount Pleasant. This is where the house is. It's on Imperial Avenue in Mount Pleasant. This area at one point, yeah, it lived up to its name. It was pleasant. It was an area with a lot of successful black owned businesses, black owned real estate, and then in the 1980s, the crack cocaine epidemic took over. And as we know, it hit the black communities really hard

for a lot of reasons that aren't just, you know, what you would think. There was a lot of socioeconomics that were involved, a lot of racism that it was involved, and the system was honestly against them. It just tore through the neighborhood. It tore families apart. It just introduced a level of violence into this once incredibly calm, peaceful area.

A lot of business owners and their families that could afford to move, they moved out of mountain pleasant, and it completely destroyed any sense of community in the area. Banks, pharmacy, dry cleaners, all these normal, normal day-to-day businesses, they shut down. The few retails that did stay open, they had to put metal bars outside their windows, a bulletproof glass separating cashiers and customers,

a local shop owner named Sam. Sam said it was one of the most drug-infested, crime-ridden areas of Cleveland. He said that it is shopbroken into six times. He was held at gunpoint two times. His CCTV cameras were always down because someone would always drive by and shoot them down with guns. He would see small kids outside the store begging for money so that they could buy food.

One time, a mom sent her five-year-old son to buy chore boy. Chore boy at first is just a at first glance is a copper scrubbing pad. So it looks like some sort of cleaning utensil, but that it was used as a makeshift filter in crack pipes. The little boy showed him a picture of chore boy that his mom told him to get to make sure that he was buying the right one and it was charred. So you know that it was used as a crack pipe. And this really bothered Sam. He reported her to CPS and we don't know if they did anything about it. But sometimes it wasn't even the parents that were let down.

Sometimes he saw sons selling crack to their own mothers. What? The sons would be drug dealers and they wouldn't even care that their mothers were participating in sex work to get the money to pay for the drugs. They still charge their moms, they sold their mom crack. In 2005, Anthony moves in right across the street from Sam's store. And Sam said when he first met Tony, he was well dressed and very friendly. And you know, seemed like a nice guy.

In the beginning, they talked a lot, but out of nowhere, Tony stopped talking to him. Just less and less. And Sam would notice how jerky his hand movements were, and he realized that Tony was probably getting hooked on drugs. So one morning, Sam is outside his store, picking up litter in the parking lot, and he notices Tony just standing there, just in silence. Hey, Tony. Which, that's creepy. You know what? Sam? Someday, Tony. Which, that's creepy.

You know what? Sam? Someday, Sam. The whole world will know my name. Okay. That's really strange. Okay. See you later.

It only got weirder from there. In 2006, Tony would constantly go to Sam's and he would buy boxes of garbage bags extra strength and always extra heavy duty. That's a lot of garbage bags what do you need them for? Oh, I'm just cleaning up around the house. Okay. So Sam sees this weird side of Tony but it seems like most of the neighbors didn't.

They really liked him. He helped people mow their lawns. He was the friendly nice guy that you could just count on. Leaky faucet, oh he'd help you out. I mean he's an ex-marina at that. Sometimes he would just sit on his porch during the night and watch the neighborhood in silence, so the guy's kind of quirky. Now since Tony wasn't legally obligated to disclose his status as a sex offender, none of his neighbors even knew that he had a criminal passed. In 2006, that same year another act was passed, the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act. So this was federal law that would create a national sex offender registry and a uniform

system for classifying offenders. Tonya was tier 3, the most serious category of offenders, which required him to check in with the Sheriff's Office every 90 days instead of once a year. And since he had already been on Imperial Avenue, he didn't have to notify anyone. If he moved to a new place, he would have to notify all of his neighbors that he was a sex offender,

but because he was already residing, they said you're fine. So this never happened. He stayed put on Imperial Avenue. Tony did not tell Lori Frazier of his status either. Now, Lori is a woman that he bumped into at a minimart. He was instantly attracted to her. She was beautiful. She was nurturing. She was loving. She talked about her four kids, her two grandchildren. How much she loved she had for them. How she wanted to go back to college

one day. And are you kidding? Lori looked like a blessing to Tony. He had been with a woman in 15 years romantically, physically, but she was so attractive, caring, she had the right connections, and what he didn't know was that she had an uncontrollable addiction to crack. She also had a prison record, a lengthy list of arrests for drug use, drug trafficking, theft, soliciting. She had been to prison several times and even treated for mental illnesses. At one point she told her psychiatrist that she heard voices in her head and they just told her run. So yeah she had her fair share of problems and it probably wouldn't mesh well with Tony's

problems. Lori said that she started doing drugs with her friends at parties but it just slowly started taking over her life, controlling her really. She was out on the streets all day looking for her next fix. Tony fell in love with Lori before realizing how bad this addiction was, and soon she moves in with him. He's working these intense, manual labor job. I'm talking 10 hours a day at a rubber shop.

He paid for all of Lori's drugs. Anything she wanted, he did everything he could for her. Meanwhile, Lori just stayed at home all day and watched TV. Tony would go to the factory. Lori said that he was an amazing boyfriend. He took care of her. He shopped for her. He told her how beautiful she was. He was protective over her. He would feed her breakfast in bed. They were so happy. He bought her cigarettes, beers, drugs, whatever she wanted, he would do it. And he told her nonstop about how much he wanted to marry her and how no other woman could ever compare. He opened up about how harsh his mom was growing up and he would cry.

He would cry and say, my mom called me dumb and useless. She hit me on the head with a hammer once and left this giant scar And it was just bad But I guess at this age like Lori could not see the abuse that Claudia put Anthony through because Lori meant Claudia and she just looked like an helpless old woman One time Claudia was staying over at Tressas place and Tony was Tony was there Claudia's like Tony can you help feed me? I'm hungry. You look better. Fuck you bitch, feed yourself.

She's like, whoa, what was that about? That's your mother. And he just casually says, oh, I hate her. At some point, all of this was just too much and all of Lori's constant drug abuse. I mean, it led Tony to go deeper and deeper into his own addiction. It changed their relationship. Tony was no longer nice to her. He was mean to Lori. It didn't take much from deflying to a rage. Whenever guys were around specifically, he made it a show of treating her extra horrible as some sort of like bragging tactic. Look, look how cool

I am treating my girlfriend like us. And in April, that's when he gets his tax refund. He got about $4,000. He caked Lori out the house. Yeah. And she came back to get her stuff, and there were like 15-year-old girls everywhere hanging out with Tony getting high. Tony wouldn't even break up with Lori himself. He told one of the 15-year-old girls,

hey, go tell that woman over there, that it's over. So Lori left. I mean, she would eventually come back to pick up her stuff and she would come back because they had this weird on-and-off relationship. It was just bad. And despite Tony's addiction, he kept his job and he was quote, a really good employee.

And in 2007, he collapsed at work. He had clogged arteries and they had to implant a pacemaker into his heart. I mean, it was bad. He did not even attend rehab like he should have. He just went back to work and because he couldn't keep up with the manual labor, they fired him. So this guy has a heart condition.

He's a registered sex offender. He's a convicted felon. It was really hard for him to find in any new employment, really. So Tony starts scrapping. He starts scavenging. He would go into abandoned homes, take any aluminum or copper that he could find.

She was illegal, but it kept the money coming. Spring and summer of 2007 was probably his lowest points and for the city too. Because young woman just started going missing. Laurie would also notice fresh wounds on Tony's body whenever she visited him once in a while. I guess they remained on good terms and she would notice gashes on his forehead, leg, and neck, and what is that from? Oh, someone on the street just tried to mug me. But I kicked his ass, you don't have to worry about me, baby.

One day she came to his house. Tony, are you here? No response, she checked his room. No response. Tony! She searched everywhere until she looked out the window and saw that he was in the backyard digging a hole. What are you doing?

Oh, I'm planting a garden for you. Nah, you're not. You would never do that for me. You're right. I'm bearing waste from a clogged toilet. I mean, there's nowhere. It won't go down. So I'm going to bury you here.

Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense. It does smell really bad. Lori said the stink in the house was there since 2005, but it really started getting bad around 2007. Tony kept saying it's that damn sausage shop next door. And then one day Lori noticed blood spots on the floor and even holes in the bedroom wall.

What the hell is this? Oh yeah, someone tried to rob me, but don't worry, I fought them off. And then the sex got weirder. Laurie said that they would have normal sex, but then slowly he asked for three sums. He wanted other very, very, very, very, probably illegally young girls to be involved with their sexual play. He wanted to use curling irons to penetrate Laurie, like he was asking for a lot of weird things. He wanted to use curling iron to penetrate Laurie like he was asking for a lot of weird things

But it was both ways. He begged her to penetrate him with a dildo and she tried it once and she didn't like it So by mid 2008, I mean she was over it. She stopped coming to see him and Tony was shocked He's like what was wrong with the curling iron. Why are you leaving me? I don't I don't get why you're not interested in me anymore He went and cried to his sister. Lori abandoned me. She used me. They kept in touch and he seemed blindly optimistic that they would get back together. He would tell his sister, listen, I love her.

She's a crackhead, yes. But I love her and I helped her and she's, she's the love of my life. She's the only woman I could trust. She's gonna come back to me, I know it. Lori, on the other hand, could not stand to be near this guy anymore. Anytime she went to his house, she was overcome with this very, very bad feeling. She did not feel good about it.

And if he was around her, she would feel chills. It was strange. I mean, the blood spots, the hole in the wall, the digging hole in the backyard, nothing added up to anything believable. Something sinister was going on. Meanwhile stories are circling in the area about women going missing But also a rumor that Anthony so well was some sort of creep Some moments that that he tried to sexually assault them, you know, some women said oh I had to go to his house for one thing and one thing only crack and he tried to do this to me. That's crazy Tony really like to see himself as some sort of provider,

a savior. He said, I just like to give people things. I like to take care of people. I know when a woman is struggling on the streets, I could just tell, and I want to be the nice guy. I offer them some free crack, maybe some beer, and they can crash at my place for a few hours. That's just the kind of guy that I am.

And these unsuspecting women who were really vulnerable, going through a tough time, they believed that he was the safe option. And one of those trusting women was Crystal Dozier. So let's talk about Crystal real quick. She was raised by her mom. She was a widow at 34, the mom, and she had four kids to take care of. Crystal ended up a widow at 34, the mom, and she had four kids to take

care of. Crystal ended up getting pregnant at just 13 years old, and then again at 14 by a much older guy the second time. It was a 21 year old Anthony trope, so they're not the same Anthony. This guy was not good either. He wanted Crystal to drop out of school and get into sex work so that they could pay for their drugs. Not for their children?

No, which they had a lot by the way. I mean, they had six kids by the time that Crystal was 21, but they needed the money to buy drugs. He was also physically abusive. One time Crystal's mom was sleeping over and she woke up to the loudest bang. It was like a sl- it was the weirdest noise. She woke up, rushed outside and she realized that was the sound of Anthony punching her daughter in the face.

She was like, oh, no, absolutely not. Now this was in the kitchen. Anthony starts strangling Crystal and Florence tries to help. This is Crystal's mom, but Anthony turns around and yells at her, get back in your room bitch. Now Florence is not having it.

She picks up a carving knife and says, let my daughter go or I'll show you how much of a bitch I am. The plan somewhere backfired though because the very next day Anthony packed up Crystal and the kids and moved away so that he could keep abusing them in peace. He didn't even care for his kids. He spent all the money that they had on drugs and the kids were left to share a bag of potatoes for the entire week. that they had on drugs and the kids were left to share a bag of potatoes for the entire week. Finally, Crystal's family convinced her to leave Anthony. She packed up her kids, she was alone,

22 years old with seven kids, I mean, the pressure. So, drugs were really her only escape. She started scavenging metal, begging on the streets, doing all these other illegal things just so she could afford her next hit. She was convicted with various offenses and finally in 2006 she moved in with a friend on Imperial Avenue. Now through this friend she meets Anthony so well, Tony. Now she knew that this was the type of guy that would

love to give you drugs in exchange for sex and she didn't mind it. He's a good party but one day June 2007 she put on her jeans on a blue tank top and she told everyone, hey, I'm going to go get some drugs. She made it over to Tony's house, and that was the last time she was seen. And people know that she went to see Tony? Yeah, and they put up posters everywhere up and down in Piro Lavanyo, and they would all be mysteriously taken down. Crystal's body was found two years later, rotting in a shallow grave with a nodded cloth

around her neck and a trash bag covering her upper body. Tony would spin stringle and murder ten more victims and leave their bodies to rot. In his house and his backyard, everywhere, he attempted to murder more women and it seemed like nothing could stop him, mainly because of negligence on behalf of the police department. So let's talk about Lala, otherwise known as Latundra Billups. She was 36 years old and a single mom of five. She too was struggling with a crack addiction. Now Lala was a self-described military brat during her childhood.

She said she grew up moving around a lot for the army, her dad was in the army, her golden life was to get a degree in psychology she wanted to start her own family, live that successful, happy, healthy life. But after high school, I mean, she was just so shy. She could never make friends, she never really had to because they constantly moved around. So afterwards, you know, she's trying to break out of her shell and make friends in these lifelong connections, and the only way that she felt she could do that is if she drank some alcohol and smoked some weed.

It would loosen her up. But all of that slowly started letting her studies go. Then she graduated to harder drugs and went from weed to weed-laced crack. And before she knew it, she was smoking crack. She got deeper and deeper into substance abuse. And she just hated herself. She hated the fact that she was failing her kids. She was high on drugs, and it was so easy

for her to turn into drugs. When she saw other women just taking care of their kids, going to the store, going to work, it hurt her. Meanwhile, she spent all of her government assistance checks to finance her addiction, and it was not uncommon for her to spend $200 a day on crack. So she would supplement that income by selling her body to support her addiction and it was not uncommon for her to spend $200 a day on crack. So she would supplement that income by selling her body to support her habit. This is something that she said that was really heartbreaking and honestly really vulnerable.

She said, I found it necessary to lower my standards and forget my morals and values. I'd always known that addicts would do all kinds of crazy things to get drugs, but I always thought that there were things that I would never do. I came to realize that those were just, quote, not yet things. These are things that I just hadn't done yet. For example, some men didn't want to wear a condom, and even though I was scared of unprotected sex, I wasn't gonna let cash get away. She tried not to think about the impact that her addiction had on her kids. In 2007, she moved to Imperial Avenue, and while she was there, she ran into Laurie.

Now, Laurie, she knew Laurie since they were teenagers, and they reconnected over their common interest. Crack. Laurie introduced Lala to her boyfriend, Tony, and Lala starts kind of partying with the couple, smoking crack with them. And even when Laurie stops showing up, Lala kept partying with Tony. Whenever she felt the urge to get high she would tell her kids she was going to the store but instead she head over to Tony's place. She genuinely thought Tony was one of those nice guys. They never had sex, he was just a neighbor that would invite her over for a few drinks

here or there. And as time went on more and more girls would come up to Lala and say you gotta be careful. I've heard things about that guy. Apparently he held this girl hostage in his house for an entire day once. You've been repeatedly. She never reported it to the police though. So this isn't even Mel. This isn't anybody else. So he's been doing this a lot. Far more than we can even imagine. September of 2009, La Lala was walking home when she ran into Tony. Hey Lala, you want to come over and smoke a little?

She hesitated because of the rumors, but the urge to get high, it made her brain normalize it. She thought, well, he's always been nice to me. I mean, I've been alone with him before. He's safe. He's not going to hurt me. So she goes to his house and he leads her to the second floor. Now this is strange.

This is the unfurnished, unfinished floor. All that was there was literally, you know, those plastic lawn chairs in the middle of the room. So Tony sat on the chair, Lala sat on the ground next to him. They chatted, they smoked, they drank, and eventually as daylight faded, they moved into the unfurnished bedroom. Now all there was was an old blanket on the floor and an extension cord. Lala felt nervous but she sat down on the blanket and she said, Hey Tony, I heard

some rumors recently and I just wanted to talk to you about it. You don't really strike me as the type of guy but did you do something to someone? Oh no, have I ever done that to you? And you leaned closer and you grabbed her breast and he said, you wouldn't give me sex anyway. Would you? Stop joking around. But Tony took off his shirt and she saw the outline of the pacemaker in his chest. All the girls mentioned seeing the outline of a pacemaker in his chest. And a shiver went down her spine. Lala, I need you to stand up. She did what she was told. And then sheiver went down her spine. Lala, I need you to stand up. She did what she was told. And then she felt hands around her neck squeezing tighter and tighter. And she's trying to say,

oh my god, what are you doing? But instead of responding, he just started punching her on the side of the face repeatedly. Take off your pants and lie down. He performed oral sex on her and she started crying. And he screamed, shut up, doesn't it feel good? And then he raped her while he was tightening an extension cord around her neck. She tried to slip her fingers between the rope and the neck to push it out, but all it did was call us him to pull harder and last rate her fingers. She starts seeing flashes of white and slowly losing consciousness and he would wait for her to come to again and then he would repeat the whole process

for an hour on repeat. Lala hoped that this was some sort of sick twisted sex play and that he would eventually let her go when he was done. She kept struggling, there were splinters from the hardwood that were poking into her legs or torso, and then he choked her one last final time. She stopped refusing. Her body refused to fight, Her energy was completely gone.

He pulled it tighter and tighter and he held it, and her body went limp. Tony was satisfied, so he stood up to go get a cigarette, and she was unconscious for three hours. And then her eyes snapped open and she heaved in a sharp breath. Tony was sitting on the chair next to her at this point, smoking a cigarette, and he was literally so startled and surprised to see that she was alive, and silently he's staring at her in the darkness. She's dizzy, disoriented, her neck is sore, and she stands up, puts on her pants, she could smell poop, so she realized that she had lost control of her bowels during the strangulation,

and he just said, where do you think you're going? I'm going home. She remained as calm as possible. It wasn't even something I think that she tried to do. She just was calm at this point. You're not leaving. I'm gonna have to kill you and myself because I know you're gonna tell the police. Tony, I thought you were my friend, but you ripped my sweater. Look what you did to my sweater. Oh, I'm sorry, Lala. I can buy you a new one. No, you can't, Tony. This was $100. If you come back tomorrow, I can give you $50 and we can get high.

Okay, that sounds good. I'll come back tomorrow. And then he walked her out. Her face was swollen from the punch as her neck was bruised and raw, but she was alive. She felt like she couldn't go home. She didn't want her kids to see her like this. So she went to her friends and the next morning her neck was on fire. Her friend drove her to the ER and the staff could tell that something really bad happened. They urged her to report it to the police. They took pictures of her injuries and her fingernails were broken and torn off where she tried to rip the rope from her neck. The nurse said that a lot of the times victims can do this. They can even rip off their entire fingernail in an effort to remove the ligature from their

neck. The fact that Lala had lost control of her bowels indicates that she had been strangled to a point of unconsciousness, which is very dangerous. Keeping cool after waking up is what saved Lala's life. According to an expert by maintaining her composure, she deprived him of the satisfaction of seeing fear on her face, and he lost his predatory instinct. And that's probably what saved her life. Lala talked to the police and she didn't even have to give Tony's full name. They already knew who she was talking about. They even had Tony's address.

Yeah, they knew, because other women complained about Tony in his ways. So why didn't you go do something about it? Like good for you for knowing this, but what'd you do about it? They did nothing. So naturally, the police see their mistake and now they go to arrest Tony. I'm kidding, no they don't. Lala reported her assault on September 23rd. They would not arrest him until October 27th. Lala would follow up with the sex crimes unit non-stop and the police just did not talk to her. So regardless, the investigation was delayed over a month which gave Tony ample time to strike again. So there was 50-year-old Sean Morris, who like Lala was struggling with alcohol abuse and crack.

She was in and out of rehab. Um, in October 19th of 2009, she just couldn't help it. She wanted to distract herself. She just kept thinking about doing drugs. every hub. Um, in October 19th of 2009, she just couldn't help it. She wanted to distract herself. She just kept thinking about doing drugs. So she ends up in like a CD part of town with one of her friends. And at a gas station, she runs into Tony. Now, this guy seems really nice.

He's very talkative. He buys beer and wine for them at the gas station. He's generous. He talks about how he was in the marbzeans. And he says, why don't you come to gas station, he's generous, he talks about how he was in the marbines and he says, why don't you come to my place, it's about a 30 minute walk from here and we can smoke some crack. So together they left, just the two of them. And once they get to his place, he leads her up to the second floor and while climbing the steps, she couldn't help but notice horrible, pungent odor. Like what is that? Like, take your own waste. Oh God! It was disgusting.

So on the second floor, he turns on a TV, lights an incense, and they start smoking crack and chatting till about nine in the morning. Well, thank you for having me. I should be going now. And she left through the front door until she was about four houses down. She realized that her ID was at his place. Oh shoot. So she walked back, rang his doorbell, hey, do you mind I left my ID? I sure. Why don't you head up to the second floor, I'll follow you up. But as he was following her up the stairs, he put his arms around her and she said it was some sort of military chokehold. He got close to her ear and he whispered, you're going to answer all my questions with yes sir. You're not going to leave until I say you can if you scream

I will kill you if you try to run I will kill you He forced her to undress and she thought the only way to survive was to become He pushed her on to the mattress. I guess he upgraded and he violently assaulted her He was screaming while he did it. I hate you Look at you. You've got a husband at home and you're out in the streets While he did it, I hate you bitches. Look at you. You got a husband at home and you're out in the streets. He left after the assault to turn on music and close the windows in the house.

She knew he was prepping to kill her. So she freaked out, still completely naked, kicked out the window screen in that room, stepped out. I mean, there was going to be a 20 foot drop between her house and race sausage shop, but Sean flung her body out the window and Tony grabbed her just in time pulled her back in. She's able to hold her ground. This resulted in her breaking her wrist and a few fingers, and since Tony couldn't pull her in he decided a medisual push her out. So he pushed her with so much force that she landed on the concrete. And immediately she was rendered unconscious. She had a fractured skull and eight broken ribs.

Soon a small crowd formed at the fence, staring at Sean's naked body on the concrete, she was moaning, not moving, laying on her stomach. Tony came out on all four, force, and he reached out for Sean's body, but he was blocking everyone from seeing what he was doing. It looked like he was strangling her. No, frickin' way. So one of his neighbors goes, hey, what did you do, Tony? Oh, it's cool.

She's my wife. We were fucking and she fell at the window. No, it's not cool. She's all bloody. Here, put this t-shirt over her to cover her. She's naked. There's so many people here. Tony starts half-carrying, half-dragging Sean's body on the cement.

To the backyard. Hey, stop that. Don't move her. Thank you, this is my wife, I'll handle it. Oh yeah, we'll help her over this fence and I'll kick your ass, put her down. Sutoni just dropped unconscious Sean back to the ground. And they were waiting for ambulances to come.

Paramedics arrived on time, they escort Sean and drive her to the hospital. She had suffered a brain aneurysm and she had an undergo brain surgery She'd be unconscious for the next three days The morning that she woke up her hospital phone rang is Tony if you tell anyone I'll kill you Sean freaked out Nurse can I call my husband to tell him where I've been for the past four days, please?

Oh, he knows where you are. He wrote a man's ambulance with you. Yes Everyone was training Tony like he was her goddamn husband. It's like one of those horror movies where you pretend to be the husband of a coma patient and you get discharged with your stalker instead but nobody believes you. Yeah, this is what was happening. So the police end up at the hospital and Sean was terrified of Tony. So she tells the police, yeah, I was at Tony's place and I dropped my keys, I lost my balance and I fell out the window, I was at Tony's place and I dropped my keys, I lost my balance and I fell out the window I guess.

Tony's my boyfriend. Tony repeated the same story. All the while this is going on since 2007 and 2009, the Cleveland Health Department had received numerous complaints from Imperial Avenue residents about the god-off-hosts-smell coming from their neighborhood. They said, what is it like? It's like blood rotting meat? I don't know.

During the summer, it's so strong that I can't even open my window. I don't even have AC, but I'd rather sweat to death than have everything in my house smell like whatever this smell is. That's so crazy. It smells so bad that my eyes sting. Inspectors would come and visit the street on multiple occasions and they always thought that it was raise sausage shop Hey, are you guys the ones making that stench?

I Mean I can't imagine that it's us. We don't even slaughter animals on site We have our meat to deliver fresh or frozen and then we just process it into sausages and then we ship it to other stores We've been open for 50 years and we've had zero complaints, so It's got to be somewhere else. Even during the day, our employees keep our windows closed so the smell doesn't come in. If it was coming from inside, why would we keep the windows closed? Well, we don't want to do our jobs and investigate, so we think it's you.

You guys have to replace your grease trap and your internal plumbing. This caused Ray $20,000. He bought bleach, cleaning supplies, incense, deodorizers, none of it worked. The calls kept coming. Another inspector came by and he was so confused. There's got to be a dead animal somewhere. They could have brought some dogs and yeah. Instantly would have found out what happened. Yeah. But a neighbor said, no, it doesn't smell like a dead animal. It smells like a dead person. Like, it's, uh, it's so bad. Another

neighbor said, I don't care about the chemicals, I put gallons of bleach in front of my events just so I can smell something sterile. I was so desperate one time I stuck orange peels at my nose. Some people, if they had the funds, they actually moved out of the neighborhood. So now the place we're finally taking Lala's case seriously. On October 29, two SWAT cars pull up outside of Tony's house, and they SWAT the place. It was a no-knock entry. They used a 35-pound battering ramp so they could swing open the door and pile into the house.

The officers got through the first floor? Nothing. Then the second floor. And they saw everything that Lala described. Empty rooms, the blanket on the ground, CDs, poop in the bedroom. Yeah, he didn't clean it up. The third floor where Tony lived was a super messy kitchen, just random stuff. They swarmed into Tony's room. There were piles of dirty clothes, the Bible, and tons of porn. On the dresser, there were Valentine's Day cards

and condoms, oh, and some for breeze. So how romantic. After cleaning the bedroom, they found another room on the third floor. But it was locked. So they rammed down the door, and found another room on the third floor, but it was locked. So they rammed down the door and immediately everyone covered their nose. The smell was so strong. They turned on their flashlights.

They saw on the floor that was littered with cigarette butts and beer cans. There were two dark shapes. Covered in black plastic is two human bodies. They were so badly decayed that their faces were unrecognizable, and as they moved around the SWAT teams felt some crunching under their shoes, they later found out that they were crunching on dead maggots and flies. It was caking the bottoms of their boots. A SWAT team officer said, we all smelled dead bodies before, at their worst in the heat

of summer, but that smell from that room, it clung to us. Is that the source of the smell? All the smell from the whole neighborhood. In the basement, they found another body. There was a mound of dirt in the basement, and they discovered a partially decomposed body. They also found a bucket with a skull inside. They could not find the rest of that body.

Dogs went sniffing and there was a crazy patch in one of the walls on the third inside. They could not find the rest of that body. Dogs went sniffing and there was a crazy patch in one of the walls on the third floor. They pulled it apart. There was a crawl space and in there was another body. Then in the backyard, the dog started signaling and it was a fresh patch of dirt. And beneath the dirt, there was another body. The body had a phone charger wrapped around its neck.

Now, because the bodies were in varying stages of decomposition, the coroner had a difficult time in identifying the victims and determining when they had died. To aid the investigation, they asked biological relatives of those who were reported missing, hey, come give us your DNA samples. Let's see if they match. To determine the time of death, a bug expert had to be brought in, so he would study the scent and the types of bugs each body found. Generally speaking, the larger the maggot, the older the body is.

So by collecting the largest maggot from the victim, you could kind of judge the post-mortem interval. So that's the period between death and the body's discovery. A neighbor Debbie saw the tape on the house, and the SWAT team cars, the paramedics, and her first thought was, oh my god, my poor neighbor, Tony is dead. So she rushes over to dress this house, to let her know, your brother's dead! But there on the couch was Tony playing video games. And her first instinct was to run back to the police and let them know where the hell

Tony was, but he stopped her. And he convinced her to tell him everything. She said, I think there was some talk about finding some bodies in your house and I thought it was you because why wouldn't you be dead if you were in the house? I mean, that's your house. Do you want me to drive you back home? No, she didn't register that this kind neighbor that she thought so highly of was a freaking killer. So he gets into her car and the whole ride he says it's all gonna come out now What is Tony the girl made me do it? They get to his house and he couldn't get out so he says can you drive me back to Tessa's and

Debbie does She dropped him off and the realization that she was in a car with a killer hit and she was in shock She could barely drive she screamed all the way home She went to tell the cops what happened and the police took Debbie and her son to a Tressa's house. Like what? And Tressa was like, oh my brother, he left like 10 minutes ago. And they just dropped Debbie off at home, no protection, nothing. I mean, Tressa just saw her show up with the cops and Tony knew where she lived, but like, yeah, let's risk it, another woman who cares. Now the police, they were looking for the most wanted man in Cleveland. They were offing $12,000 in rewards for information leading to his arrest.

Now the police knew that Tony liked to target abandoned houses, so they searched about 100 abandoned houses the first night, but instead they found him walking down a street. It was a non-dramatic capture. They handcuffed him through him in the police car, took him to the station and the man said, I know I look like him, but I'm not him. You guys stopped me last night, you checked me, and let me out.

My name is Anthony Williams. He had an empty wallet, a box cutter, and a piece of carpet in his possession. The officers couldn't agree who this guy was. They were like, I guess he does look like an Anthony, but he does look like Tony, no? Anthony Williams was calm, answering all their questions. They said, okay, well, you can go as long

as we can get your fingerprints. And in that last second, he blurted out. I'm Anthony so well, the guy you're looking for. And then he dropped to his knees, sweating profusely, and saying, I don't want help, I just want to die. I'm so glad that this is all over. Hey, Tony, we found five bodies in the house. That's it, right?

I think so. What about outside? Oh, yeah, those two. So he said those two. So the police, they only found one body in the backyard. So does that mean there's more? So we got to excavate the whole backyard. Now, Tony goes on to say, listen, I'm not a bad guy.

I just need some help. Can I get a cup of coffee and a cigarette? He was interviewed for over eight hours, and he kept saying that he just had dreams and nightmares of killing women, but he's trying to remember too. You don't think I'm trying to help you? It's just more complicated than you think.

What about Lala? Oh yeah, Lala. The sex is consensual. We hooked up a few times. She would have sexed in Tysme. Sometimes she would walk around my driveway and her underwear to lure me out. We'd have sex and, you know, that was all, that was all from me to buy her drugs. That's it.

That's what she wanted. She wanted me to whip her with the extension cord and I didn't want that. She's just better and she lied to you guys because I wouldn't buy her drugs. I just hate that all the women that use me. I'm a nice guy. I feed them and they steal. They treat me like shit and they forget about me

and I don't know what's wrong with me. People don't give a fuck about anything or anybody, even when you help them. After Lori broke up with me, I kept hearing a voice in my head and it kept telling me to break these girls. I was with Lori all the time. I did everything for her.

I worked 10 hours a day for her. I helped her. And when she got better, she just didn't give a fuck. Okay, Tony, you loved her. You didn't want to hurt her. But maybe you'd take that anger out on some other people. What was it about the girls in that house that pissed you off? I hate women

when they're into drugs or are responsible, irresponsible mothers. They remind me of Lori, especially if they have kids and they'd be smoking in my house and I would think, why aren't you with your kids? You'd rather be doing this than be with your kids, your own monsters. A voice told me to punish them. So I did. I strangled them all. Tony, please just tell us the names of the victims. He refused. And he said, I can't help them anymore. Can I just go back to my cell? The community was rightfully outraged. The police should not have handled this case like this. I mean, they didn't even handle it at all. They just completely didn't care. How were they living in the same neighborhood with the sex offender and not even knowing it?

He was a top tier offender, and you get more reports that he's reoffending and you do nothing? The fact that he did his 90 day checkup, the very day he didn't attempt it to murder Lala, you didn't think to do anything about that? And all you guys did was harass Ray's sausage shop and never searched anywhere else. For years, while we reported that smell, I mean you could have prevented the loss of life

if you just checked. The community also found out that all the while this was happening, he had been arrested for the attempted murder of another woman named Gladys. He was held and released two days later. You wanna know why? The police said that they had insufficient evidence to sustain charges because Gladys wasn't credible.

There was no proof. It was he said, she said, but here's the thing. Tony is a sex offender. Tony is a sex offender. Sure, they both like to smoke crack. Sure, but they both had a record. But Tony is a sex offender, and you've been getting reports

that he's been doing the same exact thing to other women. And why is his story more credible? I'd like to know. She had witnessed it. She had injuries. The hospital saw to her injuries. But no, they said that she was a nobody. She said, and I quote,

to the prosecutors, to the police, I was just a crackhead. I was nothing. And now that Tony was out of prison after two days, he was probably pissed off. He could try to find her. I mean, she was living in fear her whole life. After Tony's arrests, more bodies were found in his backyard.

And that brought the body count up to 11. The police soon learned that all of Tony's victims were black woman in their 30s and 50s. They were all struggling with drug addiction. They had all been strangled in some way. And it means clear there was a sexual motive to his crimes. He would entice most of his victims by offering them drugs, alcohol, and bringing them back to his house where he would be strangled.

He only targeted the most vulnerable woman he could find. These are his victims. May 2007, Crystal Dozier, we've talked about her. Early 2008, Tishana Culfer. She was a straight-A student, and when she was young, her father had abandoned her. So she's raised by this single mom. And in high school, she ends up getting pregnant.

She was really struggling. Things were getting rough. She turned to drugs. And her boyfriend, the one that she intended to marry, the one that was like to marry, the one that was like really good to her. The only one that really was there for her. He was found shot dead in a park.

The coroner really didn't even care. He just said it was suicide. She was devastated. She checked into rehab. She was diagnosed with depression. She was a good kid with a troubled heart. She was strangled by Tony with a four-foot-long length of fabric and her collarbone was broken. Her wrists were

bound with cloth. 2008 we have Lishanda Long. Her skull was found in Tony's basement. She was 25, the youngest of all the victims, and she too had a rough life, which started with her parents. They were already addicted when Lishanda came into this world. She found herself at Tony's place, in need of a place to stay. The rest of her body was never found. October 2008, Michelle Mason. She was 25, and a mom of two. She lived on Imperial Avenue, and her missing persons posters also kept disappearing. Her body was later found in Tony's backyard. January of 2009, we have Kim Smith. She was 44, the only victim with no children. She was studying art and music at a local community college.

She was trying to get her life back together, but then her dad got into an accident. He was wheelchair bound, and she took, she was exhausted, she took care of him day in, day out. And her only escape from all of this harsh realities with the world was drugs. Her family put up flyers everywhere, but they couldn't find her. April 2009, Nancy Cops. She was 43, a mother of three, and a grandmother of five.

She loved her family. She worked hard. She worked a construction job. And after a really bad breakup, she turned to drugs to kind of alleviate the pain of her depression She found herself at Tony's place and her body would be found in the cross space Spring 2009 a Melda Amy Hunter. She was 47 and Crystal Dozier's cousin At 14 she was moved by a teacher at her school and she got pregnant Her first daughter was born deaf with cerebral palsy.

She tried to work hard to support her child, but she fell into many more abusive relationships, and it was always with these older men who were taking advantage of her. She found herself in Tony's place, and her body would be found in the backyard. In 2009, we have Tlaecia Fortson. She had a rough start to her life. She grew up in foster care, and she was one of the two bodies found on the third floor room. According to our autopsy, she only weighed 46 pounds.

June 2009, Janice Webb. She had a son. She had been abusing drugs since she was in her teens, but her family was really supportive. She was really close to the family. She was 48 when she went missing and she'd be found in the mound of dirt and Tony's basement. Fall 2009, Tonya Carmichael. She was 52, struggling with addiction, but she was always known to be this like smart happy kid, and at 16 she felt pregnant and things just escalated from there. She started using drugs to help cope with the

death of her missing father. September 2009, Diane Turner. She was the last woman to die in Tony's hands. Her body would be found in the third floor room. She was 38 with 5 kids. So far, these are the 11 disease victims, but it's possible that there's more. It's possible that he disposed of them outside of the house, because Lishandha's school was found in the basement, but the rest of her body was not found. It wasn't on the property. So does that mean that he has dumping grounds everywhere else or somewhere else? Also how many women has he raped or attempted to murder? Because I mean how many true victims are out there?

It's definitely a lot more than 11. So Anthony was held on a $6 million bond, placed in solitary confinement, and the relatives of the victims were so hurt when his trial started in June of 2011. Because the media were only interested in serial killers when the victims were white women. Nobody seemed to ever care about inner-city black women. At the same time of his trial, Casey Anthony was all over the news. Very famous case of a mom allegedly murdering her own child. They felt upset, you know, their daughters, their sisters, their mothers.

They were just being treated like crackets. It's like their lives didn't matter. Everyone wanted to talk about this white woman who murdered her child. Nobody cared about their murdered loved ones. And it just seemed like yet again, poverty-stricken black women were an afterthought. An Anthony was found guilty. Psychiatrist said that he had obsessive compulsive disorder, he had PTSD sexual obsessions. His IQ was significantly lower than average in the mid-80s.

And in the end of all of this, all Tony had to say was, I'm sorry, I know that might not sound like much, but I'm truly sorry from the bottom of my heart. I don't know what happened, it's not typical of me, I can't really explain it, I know it's not a lot, but that's all I can give you. He was given the death penalty and placed on death row. In 2011, his house, nicknamed House of Horrors,

was demolished. The city noticed that it was a menace to public health safety and welfare. The author reached out to Anthony in prison, and they continued to write each other letters, which, honestly, the letters are in the book, and it's oddly strange. Tony is in his 50s, but he writes like a kid. He demands little things in order to continue writing to the author. He said, and I quote, you said you were going to put $100 in my bank account, but you didn't! exclamation mark.

How are you gonna say I canceled our meeting when you didn't give me money? exclamation mark. Anyways, Tony died in prison February 8th of 2021 of a terminal illness. It's said that it wasn't COVID, but we don't know what it is. Where Tony's house used to be now is a garden

called the Garden of 11 Angels. And that is it for today's story of the Cleveland Strangler. Let me know what are your thoughts on this case and I'll see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode. Bye!