CLEVELAND — Suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell seemed like a “civilized person” on the April evening that Tanja Doss went up to his third-floor bedroom for a beer — until, she said, he leaped up and began choking her and threatening to kill her.
The 43-year-old woman told The Associated Press on Thursday that she survived a night of terror through a combination of calm and cajoling, prayer and trickery. But when she escaped the next morning, she didn’t tell police. Her past conviction on a drug charge, she said, made it unlikely they’d take her seriously.
“Now, I feel bad about it,” she said, “because my best friend might be one of the bodies.”
Police and a cadaver dog re-entered the home Thursday where Sowell apparently lived among the reeking, rotting corpses of 10 women and the skull of another in a basement bucket.
The ex-Marine, who served 15 years in prison for attempted rape, is being held without bail on five aggravated-murder charges.
Just days after her own escape, Doss was helping search for her friend Nancy Cobbs. Now Cobbs is among about two dozen missing women who friends and family fear fell victim to Sowell.
Only three of the victims have been identified so far — Tonia Carmichael, 52, of Warrensville Heights; Telacia Fortson, 31, of Cleveland; and Tishana Culver, 31, also of Cleveland.
When Cobbs disappeared — four days after her 44th birthday on April 20 — Doss didn’t think about Sowell as she helped search abandoned buildings and post fliers.
It wasn’t until Monday, three days after bodies had begun turning up, that Doss finally went to police.
Sowell also faces charges of rape, felonious assault and kidnapping after a Sept. 22 attack on a woman at his home.
A message left with the county public defender’s office was not returned Thursday.
Cleveland City Councilman Zach Reed, at a rally with two dozen clergy members, said people should stop stereotyping those who might have ended up in Sowell’s house of horrors.
“I want us to stop this conversation that they were crackheads, they were this and that,” he said. “They were people.”
