CLEVELAND — More than a decade after the horrific discovery of the remains of 11 women hidden inside and around the Imperial Avenue home of Anthony Sowell, Donald Laster remembers what happened like it was yesterday.
"[I saw] the lady jump out [of] the window, running away from Anthony Sowell," he said. It was one of Sowell's victims who escaped, and finally brought the attention of police to a serial killer who had gone undetected for years.
There is no little (if any) sympathy for the death of Sowell, who succumbed to a terminal illness at age 61 while on death row.
"I think he's probably in Hell, running from the devil now," said Laster, who last saw Sowell when he testified at the trial of the so-called "Cleveland Strangler."
The house of horrors on Imperial Avenue was demolished years ago, and now the snow-covered lot manages to show bright pops of color from the plastic flowers buried in a small garden to honor the lives of the 11 women. The frozen lot is also a reminder of the cold reality of a failed criminal justice system.
"These young women were Black, African American females, some who had a past that people questioned," Teresa Stafford, program director at the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, said. "Do we have a different response in our society, due to the identities that people carry?"
At the time, Ohio saw a backlog of thousands of untested rape kits. The Plain Dealer reported one untested kit in 2009 was later linked to Sowell, but by then, he had killed at least four more women.
Botched police investigations led the city of Cleveland to pay out more than $1 million to the families of Sowell's victims. Police had arrested Sowell in 2008 after a woman had accused him of rape. Although he had a prior rape conviction, police failed to pursue the allegation, and allowed Sowell to walk out of jail to eventually kill more women.
"In order for systemic change to take place, there still needs to be enhanced training for law enforcement in the county," Stafford said, adding she believes the lesson from a serial killer who went undetected for years should be continued calls for change. In 2014, the state Ohio passed a law requiring all law enforcement agencies to submit rape kits to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation within 30 days.
"We must continue to look inward inside the system and identify the gaps and close the gaps," Stafford said.
Editor's Note: The below video aired in 2019: