Ohio jurors yesterday got a glimpse into the mind of a man accused of killing 11 women and storing their decomposing bodies for two years, watching a video of his police interrogation.
Anthony Sowell, 51, has been little heard from during three weeks of gruesome testimony including the jury’s tour of the house of horrors in Cleveland, Ohio, where he allegedly raped, killed and buried his victims.
But he displayed an array of emotions when sex crimes unit and homicide detectives began to ask him about the remains of women found inside of his residence in Cleveland’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood nearly two years ago.
Shot a day after his arrest in 2009, the video is the last piece of evidence that the prosecution intends to bring in the trial.
In the first moments of the grainy video, Mr Sowell moved around and tapped his feet while sitting in a chair inside of a small office the Justice Centre in downtown Cleveland.
He smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of coffee and engaged in small talk with detectives from the department’s sex crimes unit.
“I don’t know what happened,” Mr Sowell says in the tape. “It was like a breakdown or something.”
He said he would often “black out” and not remember what happened. “I thought it was like a ghost, it might sound silly,” Mr Sowell told police. “Nobody else could have did it.”
Detectives questioned him about a woman who accused him of raping her in 2009, and Mr Sowell replied he had twice consensual, but kinky sex with her.
But once they asked Mr Sowell about the decomposed bodies found inside the house, he broke down in the video, weeping.
“Everybody is going to make me out to be evil,” Mr Sowell told detectives. “It just is what it is.”
He also told police he sometimes heard “bad” voices in his head.
As detectives began to ask him to identify the names of the corpses inside of the home, he became animated and yelled that he did not know.
Mr Sowell said the women entered his home voluntarily and he used to help them by buying drugs and alcohol and sometimes having sex with them.
Jurors have viewed hundreds of disturbing photos that showed the decomposed bodies. Throughout the case Mr Sowell has remained silent and calm.
Even though three women told police on separate occasions that Mr Sowell, a registered sex offender, had raped them, it was not until September 2009 that officers went inside his house when he failed to answer their knock and followed the stench to two rotting corpses on a bed on the third floor.
A weeks-long search of the house and yard found eight more bodies and a human skull in a bucket.
Mr Sowell faces the death penalty if convicted of nearly 100 charges, including kidnapping, rape, molesting a human corpse, robbery and attempted murder.
Mr Sowell is charged in the murders of Telacia Fortson, Diane Turner, Tonia Carmichael, Leshanda Long, Amelda Hunter, Crystal Dozier, Kim Smith, Janice Webb, Nancy Cobbs, Tishana Culver and Michelle Mason.
Their bodies, some of which were bound, were found in various places inside and around the home: a bedroom, inside of a wall, the basement and several in the back yard.