Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast · Ben Gibson

The Cleveland Strangler - Anthony Sowell

·1 hr·3 clips

Police found two decomposed bodies upstairs and another body under the basement stairs at 12205 Imperial Avenue.

1. Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast covers the Cleveland Strangler case tied to Anthony Sowell in East Cleveland, Ohio. 2. Ben and Nicole host the episode, and they use a conversational true-crime format to track the Imperial Avenue investigation. 3. The episode asks how 12205 Imperial Avenue stayed hidden while women in Mount Pleasant disappeared between 2007 and 2009. 4. The story begins with an October 20, 2009 911 call about a woman outside the house on Imperial Avenue who had escaped by jumping from a second-story window. 5. Police and paramedics found her badly injured, confused, and trying to explain what happened inside the house. 6. The hosts then step back to Anthony Edward Sowell’s biography, including his August 19, 1959 birth in East Cleveland and his large, troubled family. 7. They note that Sowell enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1978 at age 18 and served as an electrician until January 1985. 8. The episode also covers a 1989 assault on a pregnant woman that led to kidnapping, rape, and attempted rape charges. 9. After Sowell’s 1990 guilty plea to attempted rape, he spent 15 years in prison and returned to Cleveland in 2005 as a Tier 3 registered sex offender. 10. The hosts explain that officers could only do knock-and-talk checks at his doorway because he was not on parole or probation. 11. They describe Mount Pleasant as a neighborhood with aging homes, vacancy, drug activity, and missing-person reports that often did not trigger immediate alarms. 12. Sowell is portrayed as polite on his porch, while his house was cluttered, dirty, and carrying a heavy odor that neighbors complained about for years. 13. Crystal Dozier, a 38-year-old mother of seven, disappeared in May 2007, and her family searched with flyers and phone calls. 14. Tashana Culver, LaShonda Long, Michelle Mason, Tanya Carmichael, Kim Yvette Smith, Nancy Cobbs, Imelda Amy Hunter, Janice Webb, and Talacia Forston are each named as women who vanished over the next two years. 15. The hosts say many of those women struggled with addiction, moved through the same social circles, and were drawn to Sowell’s offer of drinks, drugs, or a place to stay. 16. They also note that some reports did not lead to long investigations, including Vanessa Gay’s account of an attack and Gladys Wade’s report that a man tried to rape and kill her. 17. The episode’s tone is investigative and grim, with the hosts interrupting the narrative to react to details like the police restrictions and the neighborhood’s repeated complaints. 18. The format mixes timeline narration, biographical context, and commentary about how the case unfolded across multiple years. 19. Listeners interested in Cleveland history, missing-person cases, and police procedure. 20. Listeners wanting light, fast, or nonviolent subject matter.

As heard by us

A grim, clear-eyed true-crime account hidden behind an ordinary front door.

Wicked and Grim treats the Cleveland Strangler case as a stark account of women in Mount Pleasant disappearing between 2007 and 2009, of those losses being mostly missed, and of one escape in October 2009 finally pushing police toward Anthony Sowell's house.

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A Cleveland serial-murder case hid behind an ordinary front door, while neighbors kept noticing a rotting smell they could not place.

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