Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Wicked Wednesday - The Cleveland Strangler

I found today's Wicked Wednesday candidate when doing a search for serial rapists.  Sadly, it's harder to find info about serial rapists than serial murderers - not because there are fewer of them, but because not enough work is being done to track these sick bastards down.  But enough about that...

Today I'm going to talk about Anthony Sowell - a.k.a. The Cleveland Strangler.  Sowell was a serial rapist who turned to murder and other nastiness.  From 2007-2009, he terrorized an untold number of women and murdered at least 11 of them.  (Some of whom were found inside his home during the investigation.) 

In 2009, he was arrested and charged with 85 counts of murder, rape, and kidnapping.  He tried the old 'insanity plea' thing at first, but once he realized no one was buying it, he changed his plea to guilty.  In 2011, he was convicted and received the death penalty as his sentence.  (Whether he's languishing on death row, or his sentence was carried out yet, I don't know.)

Unfortunately, the justice system already had this guy behind bars once - for a rape in 1989 - but they released him after 15 years and he took advantage of his freedom to continuing raping and progress to killing. 

The authorities are still trying to link him to other rapes through DNA evidence - dating back to 2005 when he was released from his previous incarceration.

To borrow a family euphemism, they should've cut his ippy-pippy off.


1 comment:

  1. Yep can't argue with you on that one. I think rape is such a horrendous crime because it's got nothing to do with sex and everything to do with domination, control & power. I know it sounds awful but if you shoot someone, they're dead and it's over. Rape not only violates the body & mind but the poor victim & their loved ones, have to live with it forever, making it worse than murder in my book.

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