Nobody's Women: The Crimes and Victims of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Serial Killer Read Online Free Page B
Author: Steve Miller
violated again, spent time in the county lockup, violated again, and again. Her life was a jagged dance of mental illness, drug addiction, and jail time. There were misdemeanor charges in the city of Cleveland for prostitution and disorderly conduct. She was evicted from various apartments and houses numerous times. She had eight children along the way. The judicial system was a circus of the absurd. At one point in 2002 she was declared indigent, but part of her sentence was to donate $100 to Cops and Kids, a local program that rewards kids for keeping straight.
She never worked a regular job, and over the years she was repeatedly arrested for prostitution and numerous other small-time crimes.
Although state reports claim she advocated against Sowell’s release during his parole hearings, she never heard a word of it. She didn’t even hear of his guilty plea.
“I knew that if he ever got out, he would do it again. And they just didn’t seem to care what I thought. They took my statement, they had me ID him, and that was it. I knew he went to prison. I just went back to the streets. That was the end for me. I am not over it.”
C HAPTER 2
[Growing up was] like a war.
—ANTHONY SOWELL
Anthony Sowell was not a terrifying man to look at, of course. That’s what makes real monsters, unlike those in movies or folklore, so scary.
Instead, Anthony Sowell was considered by his neighbors to be an all-around okay guy. He presented well, spoke with an educated air, and smiled when he did it.
“Everyone who knows Anthony knows that he is a good cook, a good plumber, and good at everything else,” said Virginia Oliver, his stepgrandmother.
His mother, Claudia Garrison, was a tough lady, born in Illinois, who had four children—Anthony, Tressa, Patricia, and Owen. No man would step forward to serve as a father to any of them, and Claudia filled the roles of both parents. From the start, she did the best she could, living with little resources, moving around the city, dodging bill collectors, and pulling what little financial helpshe could get from a system that had made way for the urban poor. Food stamps and other social services were a booming industry in America’s cities, almost tailor-made for the misfortune of the Sowell clan.
Claudia and her mother, Irene Justice, dragged Sowell and his half sister Tressa Garrison from house to house, hopping about the lower-income streets of Cleveland, from East 88th Street to East Boulevard and from Central Avenue to Parkgate Avenue. The radius never spread more than four or five miles, a confining circle of wavering hope for something to get better.
Sowell’s childhood was a murky and confusing time. He went to a number of schools, with poor results. It was inner-city bedlam during a tumultuous era for urban America, and Sowell was living the life of a bedraggled child. With a working mother, he would come home from kindergarten with a key on a chain around his neck and be alone for hours.
At the same time, Claudia’s daughter Patricia was having a difficult time with her life. Patricia had been born to a fifteen-year-old Claudia and an eighteen-year-old packinghouse worker who disappeared quickly after her birth.
Patricia was sickly, with almost debilitating asthma. Yet by the time she was eighteen years old, she had five children (she ultimately had seven, three boys and four girls). But, as with her mother, Claudia, no man stuck around to do more than father any of them.
“My mom was sick all the time,” says Leona Davis,one of Patricia’s daughters. “She was told not to have children, but she did anyway. She loved children.”
The families merged into a caravan of illegitimate children in a household run by three generations of women: Irene, Claudia, and Patricia.
“When I first met Anthony, he was a nice kid; he was sweet,” Leona recalls. “He was my age; we talked, like kids do.”
In this maelstrom of nieces, nephews, grandmothers, sisters, and
She never worked a regular job, and over the years she was repeatedly arrested for prostitution and numerous other small-time crimes.
Although state reports claim she advocated against Sowell’s release during his parole hearings, she never heard a word of it. She didn’t even hear of his guilty plea.
“I knew that if he ever got out, he would do it again. And they just didn’t seem to care what I thought. They took my statement, they had me ID him, and that was it. I knew he went to prison. I just went back to the streets. That was the end for me. I am not over it.”
C HAPTER 2
[Growing up was] like a war.
—ANTHONY SOWELL
Anthony Sowell was not a terrifying man to look at, of course. That’s what makes real monsters, unlike those in movies or folklore, so scary.
Instead, Anthony Sowell was considered by his neighbors to be an all-around okay guy. He presented well, spoke with an educated air, and smiled when he did it.
“Everyone who knows Anthony knows that he is a good cook, a good plumber, and good at everything else,” said Virginia Oliver, his stepgrandmother.
His mother, Claudia Garrison, was a tough lady, born in Illinois, who had four children—Anthony, Tressa, Patricia, and Owen. No man would step forward to serve as a father to any of them, and Claudia filled the roles of both parents. From the start, she did the best she could, living with little resources, moving around the city, dodging bill collectors, and pulling what little financial helpshe could get from a system that had made way for the urban poor. Food stamps and other social services were a booming industry in America’s cities, almost tailor-made for the misfortune of the Sowell clan.
Claudia and her mother, Irene Justice, dragged Sowell and his half sister Tressa Garrison from house to house, hopping about the lower-income streets of Cleveland, from East 88th Street to East Boulevard and from Central Avenue to Parkgate Avenue. The radius never spread more than four or five miles, a confining circle of wavering hope for something to get better.
Sowell’s childhood was a murky and confusing time. He went to a number of schools, with poor results. It was inner-city bedlam during a tumultuous era for urban America, and Sowell was living the life of a bedraggled child. With a working mother, he would come home from kindergarten with a key on a chain around his neck and be alone for hours.
At the same time, Claudia’s daughter Patricia was having a difficult time with her life. Patricia had been born to a fifteen-year-old Claudia and an eighteen-year-old packinghouse worker who disappeared quickly after her birth.
Patricia was sickly, with almost debilitating asthma. Yet by the time she was eighteen years old, she had five children (she ultimately had seven, three boys and four girls). But, as with her mother, Claudia, no man stuck around to do more than father any of them.
“My mom was sick all the time,” says Leona Davis,one of Patricia’s daughters. “She was told not to have children, but she did anyway. She loved children.”
The families merged into a caravan of illegitimate children in a household run by three generations of women: Irene, Claudia, and Patricia.
“When I first met Anthony, he was a nice kid; he was sweet,” Leona recalls. “He was my age; we talked, like kids do.”
In this maelstrom of nieces, nephews, grandmothers, sisters, and
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