Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

- I'm not gonna lie, yes I have prostituted.

Prostitution has been since Jesus walked.

I'm not saying it's right and I'm not saying it's wrong.

It's a moral judgment on each individual.

Now when you start taking people against their will

or raping 'em, beating 'em, or robbing 'em,

then I say, the hell with you.

Had I ever had a conversation with the man previously?

No.

Had I ever seen him?

Yes.

But I sensed nothing, I sensed nothing.

(typewriter clicking)

Before he put the gag in my mouth, I could have screamed,

but something said don't do it.

But after he had his way with me the first time,

he never took the gag off anymore.

That day went by and it turned into another day.

He said, "You might as well say your prayers

"'cause I'm gonna feed you and then I'm gonna kill you."

And then he went to sleep.

(sirens wailing) (camera shutter clicking)

The detective told me, "You are very lucky, young lady,"

while he's taking these photographs.

He said, "Just last week,

"we found a lady cut up in a suitcase."

That man had no intentions of me coming out that house.

But God said otherwise.

(ominous music)

- Yeah, I was overachiever, I was a A-student.

I had the best friend and we would always compete in school.

I loved going to school, I love learning.

I was the president of the National Junior Honor Society

as I got older.

I was going to be a cosmetologist.

A cosmetologist or a welder.

(laughing)

- A welder? - A welder.

- Or maybe a 18-wheel driver, a truck driver,

but that was my vision.

My mother and father were married

and I think they got divorced

when I was about three or five.

I can remember the divorce.

I'm this little bitty girl, I had two ponytails,

a brown little flower dress on, sitting in the courtroom,

when my mother was getting a divorce.

When my mom divorced my dad, my dad divorced us.

He would always promise me he was gonna come and get me

or come and see me, so I would sit in the window

and wait for my father who would never show up.

That's how I learned about prostitution.

I would sit in the window on 93rd and Cedar

and watch the women of the night tour, or the day,

'cause they were out in the day with boas

and little hot pants, I didn't know what that was but,

sittin' in that window, waiting for my daddy.

- What I heard about crack in the early '90s

was that it was addictive.

People would do some of everything to get it, rob and steal.

Turned people into bums.

I know I didn't wanna be one of those people.

When I was 13, 14 years old, becoming a teenager,

I wanted to go to all the parties,

I just wanted to party, have fun.

And I started disobeying my mother's rule.

As a mom, you know,

I know exactly what my mother was talking about, you know,

'cause now I'm raising kids of my own.

The day that I tried crack cocaine, I was with a neighbor,

we were doing other drugs, marijuana, alcohol.

She used crack cocaine and I asked to try it.

And I tried it and I was high.

It was a rush

that I can't really describe.

It was a rush that come over your body

and then it goes away very quick.

So you have this high sensation for five minutes

and then it's gone.

It was maybe once a week

and it grew to where it was a couple times a week,

to where I had somebody supply me,

to where I had to buy it on my own,

to where I had no money to buy it on my own,

so I had to use other means to get it on my own.

In about the year 2007,

when I moved on Imperial Avenue,

other people in the neighborhood did drugs.

People were kinda,

they were a little more generous at that time

because I was the new person on the street.

(gentle guitar music)

- Even as a child, Mount Pleasant was uniquely different.

It was like a city, town, country,

all pulled together as one community.

You felt safe in Mount Pleasant and we loved it.

In 1983, I started my ministry here

in Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church.

It was still a vibrant area,

but there was definitely a difference.

Jobs were beginning to thin out.

When jobs are leaving on the right hand and the left,

your community is far more vulnerable

to some of the vices that destroy.

There was a time when a preacher, or a pastor,

or what have you, or a reverend was walking down the street,

things that were out of sorts would stop.

Things that were perhaps not that right,

that behavior would stop until the pastor, the preacher,

the reverend had gone by.

Now, the respect level is somewhat different.

In the beginning of my addiction, I went through a phase

common things escaped my mind on how to do them

I couldn't wash dishes.

I would stand at the sink and literally could not figure out

what to do first.

It was like my mind was blocked, I would just stand there.

Standing on top of piles of clothes.

Like, I didn't know how to sort clothes.

It like drained me of my sense.

It drained me of my sense.

All you could think of was crack, crack, crack, crack,

crack, crack, crack.

(somber music)

It was like Hurricane Katrina came through

and ravaged my whole life.

Everything in my house was just about gone.

My children's TVs are gone,

all the electronics are gone, Xboxes.

If it was worth something, I'd sell it.

My husband sold my son's bike.

It was horrible, horrible.

I remember once coming home with a pocket full of money,

a pocket full of dope, and when I get home,

everybody is on the porch.

And I'm catching it from everybody.

My mom, my cousin, my four children, my neighbor,

my son's friends, everybody was just on the porch.

And I decide that I'm not gonna stand here and take it

and I walk off, and my 10-year-old daughter follows me.

And, you know,

I couldn't choose my child over the dope.

We fought and argued, she laid in the middle of the street

on Broadway just to get her momma to come home.

And I couldn't

choose my child over dope.

- I went up the first part of the steps.

And that's when he came behind me and put me in a choke-hold

and told me that if I screamed,

fought, or tried to get away

that he would kill me.

I screamed and that's when he jumped up

and started closing the windows.

But I was sitting right in front of this window

and I'm telling God that I find myself in a situation

and to please

don't let me die when I come out that window

because I'm about to jump.

(suspenseful music)

(phone ringing)

- [Dispatcher] Cleveland EMS and Fire, what is--

- [Man] Hurry up to 12205--

- [Dispatcher] Slow down so I can get the right address.

- [Man] 12205 Imperial.

She fell out the window upstairs on the second floor.

- [Dispatcher] Is she awake?

- [Man] She kinda awake, going in and out.

- Is she breathing? - Yeah.

- [Dispatcher] Which window did she fall out of,

first or second? - I don't know.

Shit, you ask me all (voice trailing off).

- I woke up.

I asked the nurse for a telephone,

because I needed to call my husband.

She told me, "Your husband rode with you in the ambulance."

And I told her that was not my husband.

(somber music)

- Anthony was a mean child.

The fighting, you know,

let's say you and I were brother and sister.

I would never at you

in a way that I would do a stranger.

Whereas Anthony, he would come at my like I was a stranger.

(melancholy piano music)

For some reason, he felt like Mother didn't love him.

Before everything hit the fan,

he had said a couple of things to me,

saying that he didn't think Mommy loved him.

And I'm looking at him like he crazy,

like are you serious?

I think it was the other way around.

I don't think that he loved my mother

the way he should.

And when he showed the lack of compassion,

she just kind of let him do his own thing.

But he was always a mean child,

very aggressive, all the time.

- When you're in the streets and you're involved

with street people and drugs,

everybody is for theirself, basically.

So you start to harden up yourself

in order to fit in with that lifestyle.

Because if not, you will be crushed.

I can remember times that I have been sitting up somewhere

getting high and I started to think about my children

and you know, wanna talk about my children.

And even cried before, you know.

And people say if you gonna be doing that,

you need to go somewhere else.

My children, I remember them

talking bad about me.

I remember them, their anger was so,

they were so upset.

Because like I said, I was around the neighborhood.

I was around their friends and family.

And people see you and kids could be very cruel.

"Your mother is a drug addict."

"Your mother a crack head."

And today, I know how that felt for my children

to have to be subjected to that because

I wanted to get high.

It was very selfish of me.

Really in my heart, I have always been a caring

and compassionate individual.

But I wasn't myself.

(somber piano music)

- LeShan was

my third oldest child.

And when she was born, well, I was doing drugs.

I was doing drugs when she was born.

They had to operate on her the first day she was born.

I stayed I the hospital with her

for I think it was 86 days.

I stayed there and she finally came home.

She finally came home.

I stopped messing around for a while.

I tried so hard not to go back.

But I did.

I have done lots of crazy things in my life, you know,

to get my drugs, so I'm quite sure when she started

doing drugs, she had to do some of the same things

that I'd done.

It went from my mom to me, from me to her.

And it just, it happened like that.

(somber piano music)

- I don't really have a lot of memories of Crystal.

We didn't have a really good or close relationship.

I knew at a very early age that she had a problem.

You'd just find drug paraphernalia,

crack pipes, crack.

Sounds, I woke up in the middle of the night,

I'd see them doing that.

Just like a kid that grows up and watches their parents

cook breakfast every day.

It becomes the norm.

I'll never forget, me and my sister,

for about a week-and-a-half, ate teaspoons of peanut butter,

for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And that's all, that's the way we survived.

I had a can of peanut butter in my bookbag.

And I would give myself a teaspoon

and her a teaspoon for breakfast.

And when we met up after school, her a teaspoon

and me a teaspoon for lunch.

And for dinner, her a teaspoon and me a teaspoon.

Crystal always tried to get clean.

And you know she was trying to get clean

because she was around.

I remember one day she was upstairs

at my great-grandmother's house,

and she was on the phone crying.

She was talking about how she wanted to get clean.

And she just couldn't,

she kept giving in

and she didn't know what to do.

She wanted to be a mother.

She wanted to be,

she wanted to be normal, you know?

She didn't want to be addicted anymore.

And

I don't know, I knew when she came around,

that's what she wanted.

She wanted to be clean.

She wanted to feel loved.

She wanted to have her family.

(somber piano music)

- There's this place that's not too far from here

we used to keep our clothes, and we got evicted.

And we used to keep our clothes over there.

And I kinda forgot about that place.

And I walked past there this summer

and I could just, I could feel her.

I could feel her just like she was there.

We didn't have a child, we didn't have work.

And we would walk from one side of town to the other

in December.

It'd take us 45 minutes to get to where we were going,

you know, at like 3 o'clock in the morning.

The boots that she had on,

they weren't for being, like out in the cold like that.

I remember giving her like 120 bucks

to go get her some really nice boots.

When I got off of work, she had these moon boots.

They were the ugliest boots I'd ever seen in my life.

But they were warm, and she was happy with them.

But she didn't just get one pair, she got two pair.

'Cause I would wrap my feet with plastic and she said

there was no way that I could be,

she didn't want me, you know, my feet getting wet.

She didn't want me to get sick.

She was a very caring person when she was sober.

(birds chirping)

- I had gotten to the point where I was so small,

that I could wear a 10/12 toddler.

So I would go in the store and buy a dress or get a dress

and put it on.

And when I fixed myself up, I would look like a little girl.

And it would show,

I got a lot of approaches and a lot of dates,

just because I looked like a little girl.

I carhopped, I jumped in and out of cars.

But, there ain't even no buts in that.

I jumped in a lot of cars.

If you really looked high, I wouldn't get in your car.

But if I seen you in the neighborhood,

you know, you got smoke, I'm like in your car.

So I had regular people

who you would never even, you know,

sick people.

There's some sick people out there.

- In 2008,

we were beginning to follow what we call

the vision of this church.

We began to go out and go into the area.

We would just walk various streets,

passing out literature,

letting everyone know who we are as Mt. Olive.

And all we were doing was just walking in the area.

Among the places we walked,

we walked around 123rd.

(solemn piano music)

When we stopped

at this corner

of 123rd and Imperial, and we prayed.

I do not know,

I know now why we stopped.

I didn't know at the time.

We feel strong about being led by the spirit of God.

There was activity in the area.

And all of it was not uplifting activity.

Some of it was just the activity

that represents the social ills of our community.

And as we made ready to stop,

some of the things that were going on,

some things that maybe didn't look as legal

or nice to me stopped.

Some of the young men, and young ladies

that were just around,

came over and joined in our circle of prayer.

People are looking for relief.

People that you would least think

are concerned with their well-being,

are very concerned.

We prayed for them.

We prayed loud, we prayed long.

- I had talked to her the day before Mother's Day.

We talked on the phone and everything.

And I stopped by, just seen her, and what-not.

And I made sure I didn't call on Mother's Day,

because I didn't feel like I should wish her

a happy Mother's Day.

I grew up by myself, you know.

You didn't earn the title to me.

So the next day after Mother's Day, she had disappeared.

I figured, you know, she probably got upset

that I didn't wish her Mother's Day.

And I talked to her the day before.

So I gave it a few more days.

And after that, I went and filed a police report on her.

I filed one, my sister filed one,

and my aunt filed one.

Everybody knew something was wrong.

Officer said, well, you know, she's an adult.

She's over 18, she has the right to go missing.

And there's not much we can do.

That's what the officers told me.

I don't think that's something they should tell me.

It's not their job to take away somebody else's hope.

There are some good cops out there.

There's some beautiful cops out there.

There's some cops out there that really do care

about their job.

But there's some out there

that just don't give a hit, you know?

(solemn music)

I was hysterical, I was just crying.

My head was bleeding and everything.

And I ran across the street to the pizza place.

I asked them can they call the police

because a man was trying to kill me.

They said they don't want nothing to do with it.

I had to leave because I was bleeding on their floor.

I don't know what they believed, I don't know.

I don't know what they felt.

I know they were out there laughing.

The detective that took the report,

she had told me he had just got finished

with 15 years for the same thing.

She ran his jacket, I mean rape, everything on there.

It turned out that it was his word against mine.

I have nightmares every day.

I don't sleep at all.

In fact, my love life, my husband, everything.

I will sleep fully clothed

on the couch.

I don't want him to touch me sometimes.

I've been with that man nine years.

(solemn music)

I begged, I said you would y'all let him go?

She said, "Well, the prosecutor says

"there just wasn't enough evidence to keep him."

They don't listen to women that are on drugs.

They don't listen to them.

They're nothing.

- So attitude towards women, he was of life.

He was polite, courteous.

You know, he was like the boy next door.

If he see a guy acting up on a female staff member

that he likes or get along with,

then he would confront that inmate.

That's how his persona was.

(gently dramatic music)

They had a sex offender program

inside the Grafton Institution.

And he's like, "I'm not gonna join no program like that,

"because I don't want nobody to know my business.

And that was one of his main faults.

He was still in denial.

He'll say, "No matter if they put me in isolation,

"no matter if they put me in the hole,

"no matter they ride me out,

"no matter if I bust somebody's head with a lock,

"or a stock, or whatever, I'm gonna do 15 years my way."

And he did 15 years his way.

(gently dramatic music)

- I was standing out in front of a store

when Anthony Sowell came walking past.

In each one of his hands he had a bag.

And a bag contained two 40 ounces of beer.

I could hear them cling.

So I asked him, you know, "Where you going?

"What you gonna do?

"Can I have some beer with you?"

He said, "Come on."

when I first went to the house, it was a two-family.

But he lived in like the attic apartment.

This day we did not go on the third floor, where we usually,

where I had been every other time.

We went on the second floor.

I asked him why we don't go upstairs to his apartment.

And he told me that it was dirty.

(people chatting) (gently dramatic music)

We continued to do drugs.

And we moved into another room.

In that room, I remember a blanket being on the floor,

an extension cord that was cut,

a piece of an extension cord.

And I remember him bringing a chair.

He asked me to turn around.

And I think I'm turning around,

maybe showing him how I look.

You know, I'm tipsy, high, no right state of mind.

And when I turned around,

he put his hand on the back of my neck.

And really hard, he squeezed.

And I turned around and I pushed him.

And that's when he hit me.

And he hit me in my face really hard,

to where we ain't playing no more.

He ripped my shirt and he made me turn over on my stomach.

And that's when he got the extension cord

and he put it around my neck.

When I woke up, I remember my neck was burning.

I remember being wet.

And then I sat straight up off the blanket.

At that time, I could see a little bit more.

And I seen him sitting in front of me in a chair.

I seen his eyes bulge,

because he was shocked that I was woke.

He said he was going to kill me and hisself,

because he knew he was going to jail.

I told him, "You're not going to jail."

I said, "But I ain't never coming over here no more."

He told me he was sorry.

He'd been going through a lot of things.

I'm like, "Well, I ain't did nothing to you."

As he was talking and everything,

I was still getting dressed.

We left, we walked down the steps.

And he stood in the door and I walked down the driveway.

I looked back a couple of times to see was he still there.

Soon as I hit the corner, I took off running.

(gently dramatic music)

- It's funny 'cause I would ride down the street oftentimes

and I would see people that looked just like Crystal.

And I would stop the car and get a better glimpse at them.

And like, okay, that's not her.

So you always riding down the street

and you're always looking and wonder is that her?

Is that her?

You know, wondering, maybe she's in a mental institution.

Maybe she, you know, maybe she's in prison.

Then you checking the prison records.

They don't see her.

I had been checking down at the coroner's office

for a while now, trying to see if they had any Jane Does.

You know, nothing.

So that's when I started putting up the flyers.

From 130th and Buckeye all the way down to 93rd.

From 93rd and Buckeye all the way over to Miles.

And nobody had seen her.

It's hard, 'cause a lot of days you spend

a lot of time wondering.

I would have never thought that she had been killed.

- [Reporter] To some extent, the investigation here

is just beginning.

Police are going to be going through this house

inch by inch, trying to determine--

- [Reporter] Police discovered six decomposed

and dismembered bodies inside this home.

- [Reporter] Okay, so far no identities

on any of the victims.

But we do know that 10 bodies are those

of African-American women.

- [Reporter] What happened in this house behind me

is simply a nightmare.

And there are a lot of deeply disturbing questions

for authorities here.

(solemn music)

- I actually met him around the corner,

right around like two streets.

- [Interviewer] Do you think he was hiding something?

- No, he was in plain view.

He said meet him, I met him on the street.

We stood there and we talked.

It was two streets away.

I met him two streets away.

He said, "I got something to tell you."

I'm like, "What?

"What, tell me."

He said, "Everything that they say is true."

He said, "I don't know why I did it.

"I spazzed out.

"I'm just all fucked up in the head."

That's exactly what he said.

He said, "I love you, I'm gonna call you later."

He said, "But I gotta go,

"because the police are looking for me."

And he walked off.

That's my brother and I love him as my brother.

But I'm thinking in my head,

like Tressa, how, like how did you not know this?

How did you not see this?

At some point, I should have seen it.

It was crazy, it was really crazy.

(gently dramatic music)

(gently suspenseful music)

- I've stayed in abandoned houses.

No bathroom, no water, no heat,

no lights, no bed, no doors, no windows.

You know, who would want to live like that?

No food.

There's no running water.

So after the toilet's filled, there's the bathtub.

The bathtub was the toilet, you know?

Then there's the sink.

Then there's the rooms that are not occupied.

Then there's the corners.

Then there's the stairs.

I mean,

the smell.

After you get high

and after you been there,

you don't pay it any,

you know, I felt that's what I deserved in the world.

(solemn music)

- My sister called me and told me that they came

and knocked on the door and told her

that Crystal was one of the victims.

You just want to, you just hate them.

Why?

Crystal lost custody of me when I was three years old.

I've learned to appreciate her a lot more

since she's been gone

than I did when she was here.

- [Court Reporter] Do you solemnly swear that the testimony

you're about to give shall be the truth,

the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

so help you God?

- My name is Vanessa Gay.

That's V-A-N-E-S-S-A G-A-Y.

- [Court Reporter] Thank you, all right respond to this.

- [Prosecutor] Good afternoon, Miss Gay, how are you?

- I'm here.

- [Prosecutor] How old you, Miss Gay?

- [Vanessa] I'm thirty seven

- [Prosecutor] Focus in on me, all right?

I'd like to direct your attention to...

- I was standing at the bank,

and this man walked past with a bike on his cell phone.

He stays in range so that he could say,

"It's my birthday and nobody's celebrating my birthday."

I told him, "I don't celebrate birthdays,

"but happy birthday."

I'm thinking, do I stay out here

and wait for something else?

Or do I go with him?

People saying hi to him as we walking.

Nothing to indicate or

that the whole night was going to be terrible.

When we got to his house, we step in

and you can feel a eerie,

just a eerie feeling.

And then the closer you got up the stairs,

you smelled something.

And um,

I asked him, "So what's up?"

I meant, "So is we about to smoke?

"Is we about to drink?

"What we about to do?"

He said, "Yeah, have you got a thing?

"Why don't you make a stem?"

And I stood up and handed it to him.

He turned his back and

put something on it.

And you heard a lighter.

You heard sizzle and then you feel the punch.

He turned around and punched me in the face.

Tell me to take, "Bitch, take your clothes off."

I did exactly what he told me to do.

He looked me in my eyes.

And I've never seen anybody's eyes as evil.

All you're seeing was black holes.

You didn't see a spark, you didn't see a,

you just seen black.

As I got raped, raped, raped,

and beat and beat and beat.

It went on hours and hours and hours.

That morning I asked him could I use the bathroom.

And um,

he told me yeah.

- [Prosecutor] As you walked to the bathroom,

did you notice anything-- - Yes.

- About the room on the left?

(Vanessa sobbing)

- The plastic was pulled up

and I saw something on the floor.

(Vanessa sobbing)

It was like, it was like,

it was a body.

It had no head on it.

(Vanessa sobbing)

- [Prosecutor] Did you use the bathroom?

- Yes.

- [Prosecutor] Was he nearby when you used the bathroom?

- I think he was outside the door, I don't know.

I just know I thought it was over, the end, for real.

I just,

I kept thinking to myself, this,

I can't see why I have to,

this is not possible, this is not real.

I'm thinking not to cry too much or.

It was, I seen what I saw.

I had to go to the bathroom

without um,

without acknowledging anything,

without changing my expression,

without freaking out,

without crying,

without letting him know that I seen,

I seen that, you know.

I mean, I was not supposed to make it out of there.

Really, I was not supposed to make it.

I was not supposed to make it out of there.

He kept saying, "You gonna tell.

"If I let you go, you're gonna tell."

I said, "Tell what?

"Might have been a little rougher

"than maybe I'm used to, but,

"what am I gonna tell?"

When he got his keys.

I walked arm-in-arm, standing right by his side,

because I felt if he got behind me, I'm not gonna make it.

We walked up those stairs and he opened that door,

and I was out.

I went down the street limping and bleeding and everything.

Just done, my whole body was done.

It was a Sunday morning.

I went to all these churches, they turned the other way.

I heard a couple people laugh, you know.

And nobody helped me.

Nobody helped me.

(Vanessa sobbing)

I went to the bando, and I slept, and slept, and slept.

When I was on crack, people already thought I was crazy.

Already didn't want to believe an addict.

They don't want to believe an addict anyway.

So I just stayed high.

- Thank you, Miss Gay, you may step down.

We're going to take a break.

We'll be back in about five minutes...

(solemn music)

We therefore unanimously find that the sentence of death

should be imposed upon the defendant, Anthony Sowell.

All 12 jurors have signed their name to this very form

and have not signed any contrary form.

Are these your verdicts, Juror number 1?

And Juror number 2, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 3, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 4, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 5, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 6, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 7, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 8, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 9, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 10, are these your verdicts?

Juror number 11, are these your verdicts?

(solemn music)

- I don't think people take

serious addicts, you know?

He wasn't very careful, yet 11 women died.

They didn't want to see.

They didn't want to see.

- It was a dream that I had.

I was sitting in the kitchen and I was talking to her.

And she was standing over the stove cooking chicken

and she was talking to me and giving me advice.

You know, like motherly advice my life.

I know what Crystal was, you know.

She was a person that was just sick,

a beautiful person that was sick.

There's a lot of people out there like that.

(gentle music and singing)

- These were real people.

These were women that belonged to mothers and fathers.

These were women that had family, cousins

and uncles and aunts.

And they had children.

These were women that would be greatly missed.

But then it reminded me of something else.

If I'm going to love someone,

be involved with them,

I gotta do it on a daily basis.

And I gotta do it when they're lovable.

I gotta do it when they're not so lovable.

I'll never know when I'm talking to someone I love

for the last time.

- Dealing with this horrific memory every day

is become easier as time go on.

Dealing with myself and what I went through,

I had to stop being a victim.

I'm no longer the victim.

I'm a survivor.

And I heal from this by helping others.

You couldn't never have told me,

or told anybody in,

in 2 1/2 to three years,

Lala gonna have an associate's degree.

She gonna be attending Cleveland State.

She gonna have a daughter that's gonna graduate.

Her kids are gonna be with her.

She's just gonna be sober.

You couldn't have told nobody that.

They'd be like what?

- [Interviewer] How has this whole experience changed you?

- It's like I'm still not fully changed.

I'm still in that cocoon.

Because I'm still

just

trying to sort things out.

I'm still finding my place and my way

and how to keep moving forward.

So, um,

I don't take,

don't take life for granted.

I mean, really, because death is,

it can be right around the corner.

You know, it's not that hard to find.

It's not that hard to find.

(somber music)

(gently dramatic music)