I SURVIVED A SERIAL KILLER: The Cleveland Strangler

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. On August 12th, Anthony Sowell is sentenced to death for the murders of 11 women whose remains were found in and around his Imperial Avenue home. He preyed upon African American women down on their luck, hooked on drugs. He continued it and he continued it and that's how sick he was. He's a sick individual. You choke someone with your hands. That's all I can think. He looked me in my eyes and I've never ever seen eyes like that. They were just black holes. Police officers see bad things every day but this is about as bad as it gets. And as I walk in, I see sitting on the floor, what appears to be a body, with no head. I just kept thinking, is this how I'm gonna die? Is this how I'm gonna die? You remember what happened, right? Yeah, but it's like a dream, like hate, honest, happy. Maybe that's how you think. You tell us about one of the dreams. All I know is that person. Real people who faced death and lived to tell how. This is I Survived a Serial Killer. My name is Vanessa Gay and I survived a serial killer. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. We had a pretty normal, happy life. But I met my husband and that's where I started to use drugs. That's where crack entered into my story. I was in my 30s when I smoked it. I began to let everybody down, including myself. We were used to doing things as a family, so my time with them got shorter and shorter and shorter. Lemmy Griffin is retired Cleveland homicide detective. East Cleveland is a low income section. Drugs are prevalent. When the crack cocaine hit the scene, everything changed. My life became a nightmare. One day I just left home because I didn't know how to turn my life back around. It was September 2008 and it had been a while since I had been home. Maybe a year. It was warm outside. Everybody was out and about. I've got a walk pass. He said, it's my birthday today. I said, happy birthday. He said he had no reason to celebrate his birthday with him. So did I want to celebrate his birthday with him? He said he had some crack. We had some drinks. We walked to his house to get high. While I walked to his house, there was no signs that the worst night of my life was about to take place. On the walk, he talked about his life in the military. He talked about his family. He didn't try and hide anything. He had much respect in the streets. People were greeting him, saying, how you doing? So it didn't throw red flags up. I remember that when we walked to his house. There were posters of a female who had been missing everywhere. You see these posters, but I didn't think about it. And I just kept walking. Rick Bombick is a retired Koyahoga County assistant prosecutor. A year earlier, Crystal Dozer disappeared around Mother's Day of 2007. The Dozer family reported Crystal missing. Being missing is not a crime. So until you have evidence that the person may have been kidnapped or some type of ill will was gotten upon them, there's nothing you can do about it. Walking up to the house, everything was normal. But opening the door and stepping in, I felt something ain't right. You could just feel the thickness of dread in the air. As we walked in, he put all the locks back on the door. It was just like lock after lock after lock. I felt like I should turn around and leave, but I walked all the way over there and I'm thinking to myself, OK, well, we hear now. You know, what's the worst that could happen? There was a smell in the air and it just threw my whole everything up, everything. But as we walked up his stairs, he had boxes of food lined up. You know, it was like a lot of stuff that would spoil. That could be the reason for that smell. We were conversing and about 15 minutes went past. I'm sitting on the bed and he's just talking and talking. And I say, so what's up? We all smoke away. That's when he turned around and punched me in my face. There was no time to think. Having to have time to do anything, totally bitch take your clothes off. He looked me in my eyes and I've never, ever, ever, ever seen eyes like that. They were just black. They were black. Holes. And he kept saying, you know, you don't deserve what's about to happen to you. And I'm thinking, oh, God, nobody knows where I'm at. My family, they won't know. I still remember the first time I admitted out loud that I was stressed about money. It felt embarrassing at first, but also like a relief. Because the truth is about 88% of Americans began 2026 feeling some form of financial stress. You're definitely not alone. That's why I think therapy can be such a powerful tool. It's not about learning to balance a budget. It's about understanding the emotions that come with it. The shame, the pressure, the fear of not measuring up. 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After a while, he didn't come in with me, but he allowed me to go to the bathroom. And when I walked out that room, a room that I had passed was taped off. Like there was some work being done, but the plastic tart had been pipped back. And as I'm walking, I see sitting on the floor, what appears to be a body with no head. She was wrapped in plastic and taped. So you see the perfect form of what it was. But no head. No head. Never could I have imagined that. There was no way he was going to let me go after that. Several months earlier, victim number two, DeShawna Culver, went missing in approximately June of 2008. She had a longstanding drug problem. LaShawna Long disappeared. At this point, three women have gone missing. Miss Long's parents last saw her sometime around August 2008. She too had a drug problem. This guy targeted the women and his victims due to the lifestyle they had. At this point in time, the police have no reason to believe that any of these women have come in harm's way. From the time he punched me in my face until the next day, I got beaten right. There was no sleep throughout that entire ordeal. And then that morning, he said, he don't know what he going to do with me because I'm a tell. I said, I ain't going to tell. I want to come back. And he did calm down. When I would answer his questions, I would say, yes, sir, no, sir. And it would diffuse him. He kept being thrown off guard. And soon after that, he told me to get dressed. We start walking to that front door. I stayed side by side with him every step because I forgot to anxious looking. He could have killed me. I stayed armed and armed with him. And we stepped right to the door and he let me out. God fought for me. God made him walk me out that door. The sunlight hit me, but I couldn't run. I couldn't barely walk. I couldn't look back. I didn't look back. He might have been behind me. And it seemed like if I look back, he's going to kill me. At that moment, I felt like I was just too dumb as I walk up the street fighting to stay alive. I couldn't run because my body was damaged that bad. I was hoping somebody would at least see that something was wrong with me and nobody helped. I got to a pay phone and tried calling the police. But when the police tell me I got to come down to them and they won't come to me, God just really lost it there. I never felt that disposable. I felt like less than human at that point. There is a classic example of the system breaking down. She was not given the benefit of the doubt. I felt like it was my problem now. I survived it. It's my problem and nobody going to do anything anyway. So let me not say anything. He preyed upon African American women down on their luck hooked on drugs. He felt that they wouldn't go to the police and complain. So he continued it and he continued it and that's how sick he was. He's a sick individual. One month later in October of 2008, Michelle Mason went missing. Her family put up flyers in the area of Imperial Avenue and someone would take down the flyers. This is the voice of Anthony Sowell. I remember I'd seen this picture of this girl just on the door of the store. And I thought I'd know her. I didn't have a share. The next woman to go missing was Tanya Carmichael. She was last seen in November of 2008. After that, six more women over the course of 2009, go missing. Personally, I've never seen a timeline of victims so big. All of a sudden, it was a great case. Latonda Billips was attacked on September 22nd. She knew this person. They were friends. They were getting high and all of a sudden he asked Latonda Billips to turn around. He was viewing her body in a sexual manner. And once she refused, he assaulted her. She talked her way out of it because they were friends, but it was just her lucky day. Billips went to the police, the detectives interviewed her. It was Billips that said everything in motion and righted a very wayward ship as far as justice is concerned. She told the guy that we're looking for is Anthony Sowell. Anthony Sowell had just gotten out of prison a few years earlier, having done 15 years for attempted rape. A warrant was issued. They went to his house to execute that warrant. They knocked on the door. No one's home. They breached the door. They go in. They search for Anthony Sowell. He's nowhere to be found. There's another locked door. They breached that door. Behind that door are two very badly decomposed human bodies. Just, I mean, whoa. And they called us the homicide unit. And the smell was so bad. You had to dispose of the clothes that you had on because the scent was embedded in the material in your clothes. We found two more bodies. One was in a black garbage bag and he had placed one victim behind the crawl space behind the wall. We went through the entire home and we found that a body was behind the stairs going into the basement. As well as the skull, that was in a red bucket. And we proceeded to dig up the yard and we found five bodies, all wrapped in plastic that he had buried no more than 18 inches in the ground. Cleveland police are using a backhoe to dig up the yard of a cube serial killer Anthony Sowell as they search for the bodies of his victims. Police officers see bad things every day, but this is about as bad as it gets. Eleven dead victims. You have eleven families that you're responsible for getting some answers to. Okay, a quick share before we get back into the episode. I've been having a lot of fun recently with an app called Tester Up. Tester Up is a platform that helps people make extra money by testing apps and playing games. It cuts through the noise of untrustworthy reward programs online by offering real, verified earning opportunities. 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Up front payment of $45 for three months, five gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, see Mint Mobile for details. They search for Anthony Sowell. He's nowhere to be found. Cleveland police and other law enforcement agencies have cast a dragnet across the city. As they search abandoned homes and buildings and anywhere else Anthony Sowell may be hiding. I started to try and work my way back to some type of normality. And when I saw his picture in the paper, that was the first time over the course of maybe a year. I'd seen him again. When I seen the face, I lost everything. It kind of like fell on the floor. The caption was a level of women murder. And that's when I came to the realization that I am blessed to be alive. Turning every rock over, our reach goes anywhere in the United States of America. That Halloween, the whole city was made aware of what was unraveling at this house on Imperial Avenue. And it just so happened that a guy who was driving down the street saw Anthony Sowell. I was shopping and seeing him out there just walking down the street. And notified a couple officers. They pulled up next to him and he matched the description of the mail we were looking for. They had to take him down back to the police station and get him to open up a little bit. He was kind of tight-lipped at first just because the bodies was found in his house. We know that he'd done it. But we have to prove that he connected with each body. And it's like he had a dream. You tell us about one of the dreams. You got all under the impression. Did the dreams say that you shot him? Did the dreams say that you stabbed him? Did the dreams say that you choked my hands? Did your hands? And the next thing you know, he's telling us more than we ask. He choked someone with your hands. That's all I could say. After Sowell was in the jail, I felt like I had to say something. I just wanted to make sure that I did everything I can so nothing like that could happen again. We wind up talking to Vanessa Gayley. She told us about the hitless body that she saw. I had to testify. I had to. Especially knowing that he killed 11 women. I had to be a voice for the voices. Anthony Sowell was charged with 11 counts of aggravated murder. He was facing the death penalty. He said, no, it's not what I wanted to do to you. When I gave my testimony, I could not look his way. I was so fearful that I was going to see those eyes again. And it was all bad after that. You could probably hear a pin drop during your testimony. She brought to the jury's attention the amount of tear that not only she experienced, but each and every one of the 11 women who did not survive the type of tear that they experienced. On August 12th, Anthony Sowell is sentenced to death for the murders of 11 women whose remains were found in and around his Imperial Avenue home in the fall of 2009. And the end got exacted justice. He let me out of there and allowed me to testify to get this man put away. Tear down! Tear down! Tear down! Residents cheered as Anthony Sowell's House of Horrors was demolished this evening. Every day is a fight. Fight. Fight for your life. So whatever happens, love yourself. Know that you are worth it. Know that you are somebody. When I heard he died, I was at home and it caught me off guard. It just... I wasn't expecting to hear that news. That was the first day since this has happened that I know that he would never get out and hurt nobody again. I survived a serial killer. You know, I could... How could you not come away with a grander appreciation for life? 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