Marcel Petiot

 

Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot (17 January 1897 – 25 May 1946) was a French medical doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders of Jews after the discovery of the remains of 23 people in the basement of his home in Paris during World War II. He is suspected of the murder of about 60 to 200 mostly Jewish victims during his lifetime, although the true number remains unknown. During the Nazi occupation of France in World War II, Petiot set up a fake escape network under the name “Dr. Eugène.” He claimed he could help Jews and others wanted by the Gestapo flee to South America via Portugal, for a large fee. He lured his victims to his home at 21 Rue Le Sueur in Paris, promising them safety. Instead, he murdered them—often by injecting them with poison under the pretense of giving them vaccinations—and then stole their valuables and disposed of their bodies, frequently by burning them.

Despite showing early signs of mental illness and criminal behaviour, Petiot served in the First World War, graduated from an accelerated medical program, and began a dubious medical career that included performing abortions and supplying narcotics. His political career was marked by scandal, theft, and corruption. Captured in 1944, Petiot claimed to be a Resistance hero who killed only the enemies of France. He was convicted of 26 counts of murder and was executed by guillotine in 1946. His life and crimes have been depicted in film and comic books.

Early life

Marcel Petiot was born on 17 January 1897 in Auxerre, Yonne, in north central France. During his teenage years, he robbed a postbox and was charged with damage to public property and theft. Petiot was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, resulting in charges being dismissed when it was judged that he had a mental illness.

Later accounts make various claims of Petiot's delinquency and criminal acts during his youth, but it is unknown whether they were invented afterwards for public consumption. A psychiatrist reaffirmed Petiot's mental illness on 26 March 1914. After being expelled from school many times, he finished his education in a special academy in Paris in July 1915.

Petiot volunteered for the French Army in World War I, entering service in January 1916. He was wounded and gassed in the Second Battle of the Aisne, and exhibited more symptoms of a mental breakdown. Petiot was sent to various rest homes, where he was arrested for stealing army blankets, morphine, and other army supplies, as well as wallets, photographs, and letters; he was jailed in Orléans. In a psychiatric hospital in Fleury-les-Aubrais, Petiot was again diagnosed with various mental illnesses but was returned to the front in June 1918. He was transferred three weeks later after he allegedly injured his foot with a grenade, but was attached to a new regiment in September. A new diagnosis was enough to get him discharged with a disability pension.

Medical and political career

After the war, Petiot entered the accelerated education program intended for war veterans, completed medical school in eight months, and became an intern at the mental hospital in Évreux. He received his medical degree in December 1921 and relocated to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where he received payment for his services both from the patients and from government medical assistance funds. At this time, Petiot was already using addictive narcotics. While working at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, he gained a reputation for dubious medical practices, such as supplying narcotics and performing illegal abortions, as well as for petty theft.

Petiot's first murder victim might have been Louise Delaveau, an elderly patient's daughter with whom Petiot had an affair in 1926. Delaveau disappeared during May of that year, and neighbours later said they had seen Petiot load a trunk into his car. Police investigated but eventually dismissed her case as a runaway. That same year, Petiot campaigned for mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne and hired somebody to disrupt a political debate with his opponent. He won, and while in office, he embezzled town funds. The next year, Petiot married Georgette Lablais, the 23-year-old daughter of a wealthy landowner and butcher in Seignelay. Their son Gerhardt was born in April 1928.

The prefect of Yonne received many complaints about Petiot's thefts and dubious financial dealings. He was eventually suspended as mayor in August 1931 and resigned. However, Petiot still had many supporters, and the village council also resigned in sympathy with him. Five weeks later, on 18 October, he was elected as a councillor of Yonne Département. In 1932, he was accused of stealing electricity from the village and lost his council seat. By this time he had already relocated to Paris.

In Paris, Petiot attracted patients by using fake credentials, and built an impressive reputation for his practice at 66 Rue de Caumartin. However, there were rumours of illegal abortions and excessive prescriptions of addictive remedies. In 1936, Petiot was appointed médecin d'état-civil, with authority to write death certificates. The same year, he was institutionalized briefly for kleptomania, but was released the next year. He persisted in tax evasion.

World War II activities

After the 1940 German defeat of France, French citizens were drafted for forced labour in Germany. Petiot provided false medical disability certificates to people who were drafted. He also treated the illnesses of workers who had returned. In July 1942, he was convicted of overprescribing narcotics, even though two addicts who would have testified against him had disappeared. He was fined 2,400 francs.

Petiot later claimed that during the period of German occupation, he was engaged in Resistance activities. He supposedly developed secret weapons that killed Germans without leaving forensic evidence, planted booby traps all over Paris, had high-level meetings with Allied commanders, and worked with a (nonexistent) group of Spanish anti-fascists.

There is no evidence for any of these statements. However, in 1980, he was cited by former U.S. spymaster Col. John F. Grombach as a World War II source. Grombach had been the founder and commander of a small independent espionage agency, known later as "The Pond," that operated from 1942 to 1955. Grombach asserted that Petiot had reported the Katyn Forest massacre, German missile development at Peenemünde, and the names of Abwehr agents sent to the U.S. While these claims were not corroborated by any records of other intelligence services, in 2001, some "Pond" records were discovered, including a cable that mentioned Petiot.

Fraudulent escape network

Petiot's most lucrative activity during the Occupation was his false escape route. Using the codename "Dr. Eugène," Petiot pretended to have a means of getting people wanted by the Germans or the Vichy government to safety outside France. Petiot claimed that he could arrange a passage to Argentina or elsewhere in South America through Portugal, for a price of 25,000 francs per person. Three accomplices, Raoul Fourrier, Edmond Pintard, and René-Gustave Nézondet directed victims to "Dr. Eugène," including Jews, Resistance fighters, and ordinary criminals. Once victims were in his control, Petiot told them that Argentine officials required all entrants to the country to be inoculated against disease and, with this excuse,e injected them with cyanide. He then took all their valuables and disposed of the bodies.

At first, Petiot dumped the bodies in the Seine, but later he destroyed the bodies by submerging them in quicklime or incinerating them. In 1941, Petiot bought a house at 21 Rue le Sueur, near the Arc de Triomphe. He purchased the house the same week that Henri Lafont returned to Paris with money and permission from the Abwehr to recruit new members for the French Gestapo.

The Gestapo eventually learned about this "route" for the escape of wanted persons, which they assumed was part of the Resistance. Gestapo agent Robert Jodkum forced prisoner Yvan Dreyfus to approach the supposed network, but Dreyfus simply vanished. A later informer successfully infiltrated the operation, and the Gestapo arrested Fourrier, Pintard, and Nézondet. During the torture, they confessed that "Dr. Eugène" was Marcel Petiot.

Nézondet was later released, but three others spent eight months in prison, suspected of helping Jews to escape. Even during torture, they did not identify any other members of the Resistance because they didn't know any. The Gestapo released the three men in January 1944.

Discovery of murders

On 11 March 1944, Petiot's neighbours in Rue Le Sueur complained to police about a foul stench in the area and large volumes of smoke billowing from a chimney of the house. Fearing a chimney fire, the police summoned firemen, who entered the house and found a great fire in a coal stove in the basement. In the fire, and scattered in the basement, were human remains.

In addition to those found in his basement, human remains were also found in a pit filled partly with quicklime in the backyard and in a canvas bag. In his home, enough body parts were found to account for at least ten victims. Also scattered throughout his property were suitcases, clothing, and assorted property of his victims: 72 suitcases and 655 kilos of miscellaneous objects, including 1,760 pieces of clothing, including: 21 woollen coats, 90 dresses, 120 skirts, 26 handbags, 28 men's suits, 33 ties, 57 pairs of socks, 43 pairs of shoes, and a pair of children's pyjamas belonging to the young René Kneller, who disappeared with his parents. The list of his victims has not been finalized. According to the Judicial Police in 1944, the following names were identified: Joachim Guschino, Jean-Marie Van Biver, Marthe Khait, Bertholomus, Annette Petit, Joseph Reocreux, Maurice Wolff, Lucie Braun, Rachel Marx, Joséphine Grippay, Joseph Pieruchi, Adrien Estebeteguy, Gisèle Rossmy, Ivan Dreyfus, Claudia Chamoux, François Albertini, Marie Scheuker, Siegfried Bosch, Ludwika Hollaner, Ludwig Krusberg, Chaim Sckouker, Franzeslaw Ehrenreich.

The media reaction was an intense media circus, with news reaching Switzerland, Belgium, and Scandinavia.

Evasion and capture

During the intervening seven months, Petiot hid with friends, claiming that the Gestapo wanted him because he had killed Germans and informers. He eventually began living with a patient, Georges Redouté, let his beard grow, and adopted various aliases.

During the liberation of Paris in 1944, Petiot adopted the name "Henri Valeri" and joined the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) in the uprising. He became a captain in charge of counter-espionage and prisoner interrogations.

When the newspaper Résistance published an article about Petiot, his defence attorney from the 1942 narcotics case received a letter in which his fugitive client claimed that the published allegations were mere lies. This gave the police a hint that Petiot was still in Paris. The search began anew – with "Henri Valeri" among those who were drafted to find him. Finally, on 31 October, Petiot was recognized at a Paris Métro station, and arrested. Among his possessions were a pistol, 31,700 francs, and 50 sets of identity documents.

The investigation brought to light the complicity of his brother Maurice, a shopkeeper on rue du Pont in Auxerre; of his wife Georgette; of his daughter-in-law and mistress Léonie Arnaux; and Albert Neuhausen, a bicycle dealer in Courson-les-Carrières, in whose home suitcases were found. While Dr. Petiot's wife and Albert Neuhausen were accused of receiving stolen goods and his brother Maurice of manslaughter, the investigating judge Ferdinand Gollety, who had completed his investigation, issued a dismissal order in their favor.

Trial and sentence

Petiot was imprisoned in La Santé Prison. He claimed that he was innocent and that he had killed only enemies of France. He said that he had discovered the pile of bodies in 21 Rue le Sueur in February 1944, but had assumed that they were collaborators killed by members of his Resistance "network".

However, the police found that Petiot had no friends in any of the major Resistance groups. Some of the Resistance groups he spoke of had never existed, and there was no proof of any of his claimed exploits. Prosecutors eventually charged him with at least 27 murders for profit. Their estimate of his gains was as much as 200 million francs.

Petiot was tried on 19 March 1946, accused of 135 criminal charges. Celebrity attorney René Floriot acted for the defence, against a team comprising state prosecutors and twelve civil lawyers hired by relatives of Petiot's victims. Petiot taunted the prosecuting lawyers and claimed that various victims had been collaborators or double agents, or that vanished people were alive and well in South America using new names. He admitted to killing 19 of the 27 victims found in his house, and claimed that they were Germans and collaborators – part of a total of 63 "enemies" killed. Floriot attempted to portray Petiot as a Resistance hero, but the judges and jurors were unimpressed. Petiot was convicted of 26 counts of murder, and sentenced to death.

On 25 May 1946, Petiot was beheaded, after a stay of a few days due to a problem with the release mechanism of the guillotine, and buried at Ivry Cemetery. His son Gerhardt Petiot died on September 22, 2011, at the age of 83.

John Haigh

 

John George Haigh (/heɪɡ/ HEYG; 24 July 1909 – 10 August 1949), commonly known as the Acid Bath Murderer, was an English serial killer convicted of the murders of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. Haigh battered to death or shot his victims and disposed of their bodies using sulphuric acid before forging their signatures so he could sell their possessions and collect large sums of money. His actions were the subject of the television film A Is for Acid.

Early life

John Haigh was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, and raised in the village of Outwood, West Riding of Yorkshire. His parents were engineer John Robert Haigh and his wife Emily (née Hudson), members of the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative Protestant sect. They had married late in life, and Haigh was their only child.

Haigh later claimed that he suffered from recurring religious nightmares in his childhood. He developed great proficiency at the piano, which he learned at home. He was fond of classical music and often attended concerts.

Haigh won a scholarship to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, then to Wakefield Cathedral, where he became a choirboy. After school, he was apprenticed to a firm of motor engineers. After a year, he left that job and took jobs in insurance and advertising. Aged 21, he was dismissed after being suspected of stealing from a cash box. After being fired, he moved on to forging car documents.

Marriage and imprisonment

On 6 July 1934, Haigh married 23-year-old Beatrice 'Betty' Hamer. The marriage soon fell apart. The same year that Haigh was jailed for fraud, Betty gave birth to a baby girl while he was in prison, and she placed the baby for adoption and left Haigh. Haigh's family ostracised him from then onwards.

Haigh moved to London in 1936, and became chauffeur to William McSwan, a wealthy owner of amusement arcades. He also maintained McSwan's amusement machines. Thereafter he pretended to be a solicitor named William Cato Adamson with offices in Chancery Lane, London; Guildford, Surrey; and Hastings, Sussex. He sold fraudulent stock shares, purportedly from the estates of his deceased clients, at below-market rates. His scam was uncovered by someone who noticed he had misspelt Guildford as "Guilford" on his letterhead. Haigh received a four-year prison sentence for fraud. He was released just after the start of the Second World War; he continued as a fraudster and was sentenced to several further terms of imprisonment.

Regretting that he had left victims alive to accuse him, he became intrigued by French murderer Georges-Alexandre Sarret, who had disposed of bodies using sulphuric acid. Haigh experimented with field mice and found that it took only 30 minutes for the body to dissolve.

"Acid bath" murders

Haigh was freed from prison in 1943 and became an accountant with an engineering firm. Soon after, by chance, he encountered his former employer William McSwan in a Kensington pub. McSwan introduced Haigh to his parents, Donald and Amy. McSwan worked for them by collecting rents on their London properties, and Haigh became envious of his lifestyle. On 6 September 1944, McSwan disappeared. Haigh later admitted he had lured McSwan into a basement on Gloucester Road, hit him over the head with a lead pipe, and then put his body in a 40-imperial-gallon (180 L; 48 US gal) drum with concentrated sulphuric acid. Two days later, finding that McSwan's body had mostly dissolved, Haigh emptied the drum into a manhole.

He told McSwan's parents that their son had gone into hiding in Scotland to avoid being called up for military service. Haigh then began living in McSwan's house and collecting rent for McSwan's parents. They became curious as to why their son had not returned, as the war was coming to an end. On 2 July 1945, he lured them to Gloucester Road by telling them their son was back from Scotland for a surprise visit. There he killed them with blows to the head and disposed of them. Haigh then stole McSwan's pension cheques and sold his parents' properties for around £8,000 (approximately £300,000 in 2025). He then moved into the Onslow Court Hotel in Kensington.

Haigh was a gambler. By 1947, he was running short of money. To solve his financial troubles, he found another couple to kill and rob: Archibald Henderson and his wife Rose nee Burlin. Rose had been married to German inventor Rudolph Erren.

After feigning interest in a house that they were selling, he was invited to the Hendersons' flat by Rose to play the piano for their housewarming party. While at the flat, Haigh stole Archibald Henderson's revolver, planning to use it in his next crime. Renting a small workshop at 2 Leopold Road, Crawley, West Sussex, he moved acid and drums there from Gloucester Road. (Haigh was also known to have stayed at Crawley's Hotel, The George, on several occasions.) On 12 February 1948, he drove Archibald Henderson to his workshop on the pretext of showing him an invention. When they arrived, Haigh shot Henderson in the head with the stolen revolver. Haigh then lured Rose Henderson to the workshop, claiming that her husband had fallen ill, and he shot her as well.

After disposing of the Hendersons' bodies in oil drums filled with acid, he forged a letter with their signatures and sold all of their possessions for £8,000, except for their car and dog, which he kept.

Last victim and arrest

Haigh's next and last victim was Olive Durand-Deacon, 69, the wealthy widow of solicitor John Durand-Deacon and a fellow resident at the Onslow Court Hotel. Haigh by then was calling himself an engineer, and he heard Olive talk to her friends about her idea for artificial fingernails. He invited her down to the Leopold Road workshop on 18 February 1949 and, once inside, he shot her in the back of the neck with the .38 calibre Webley revolver that he had stolen from Archibald Henderson, stripped her of her valuables, including a Persian lamb coat, and put her into the acid bath. Two days later, Durand-Deacon's friend Constance Lane reported her missing.

Detectives soon discovered Haigh's record of theft and fraud and searched the workshop. Police found Haigh's attaché case containing a dry cleaner's receipt for Olive Durand-Deacon's coat, and also papers referring to the Hendersons and McSwans. The workshop in Sussex rented by Haigh did not contain a floor drain, unlike the workshop he had rented at Gloucester Road in London. He, therefore, disposed of the remains by pouring out the container on a rubble pile at the back of the property. Investigation of the area by pathologist Keith Simpson revealed 28 pounds (13 kg) of human body fat, part of a human foot, human gallstones, and part of a denture which was later identified by Olive Durand-Deacon's dentist during the trial.

Haigh asked Detective Inspector Albert Webb during questioning, "Tell me, frankly, what are the chances of anybody being released from Broadmoor?" (a high-security psychiatric hospital). The inspector said that he could not discuss that sort of thing, so Haigh replied, "Well,l if I told you the truth, you would not believe me. It sounds too fantastic to believe."

Haigh then confessed that he had killed Durand-Deacon, the McSwans, and the Hendersons—as well as three other people: a young man called Max, a girl from Eastbourne, and a woman from Hammersmith. These claims could not be substantiated.

Trial and execution

Haigh's trial was held at Lewes assizes – evidence from the trial is now in the Crime Museum at New Scotland Yard. Haigh pleaded insanity, claiming that he had drunk the blood of his victims. He said he had dreams dominated by blood as a young boy. When he was involved in a car accident in March 1944, his dream returned to him: "I saw before me a forest of crucifixes which gradually turned into trees. At first, there appeared to be dew or rain, dripping from the branches, but as I approached I realized it was blood. The whole forest began to writhe and the trees, dark and erect, to ooze blood ... A man went from each tree catching the blood ... When the cup was full, he approached me. 'Drink,' he said, but I was unable to move."

The Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross KC (later Lord Shawcross), led for the prosecution and urged the jury to reject Haigh's defence of insanity because he had acted with malice aforethought. Sir David Maxwell Fyfe KC, defending, called many witnesses to attest to Haigh's mental state, including Henry Yellowlees, who claimed Haigh had a paranoid constitution, adding: "The absolute callous, cheerful, bland and almost friendly indifference of the accused to the crimes which he freely admits having committed is unique in my experience."

Haigh had mistakenly believed that if the bodies of his victims could not be found, a murder conviction would not be possible. It took only minutes for the jury to find him guilty. Mr Justice Humphreys sentenced him to death.

Haigh seemed unconcerned about his fate, asking for a rehearsal of his execution so everything would go smoothly, joking about "dropping in unexpectedly" on God, and expressing the belief that he would be reincarnated and return to the world to continue his work.

On 10 August 1949, Haigh was hanged by executioner Albert Pierrepoint.

The case was one of the post-1945 cases which gained considerable coverage in the newspapers even though Haigh's guilt was not questioned. The editor of the Daily Mirror, Silvester Bolam, was sentenced to a three-month prison term for contempt of court for describing Haigh as a "murderer" while the trial was still underway. The Daily Mirror was also fined £10,000.

Haigh's confirmed victims

McSwan family:

William Donald McSwan (9 September 1944)

Donald and Amy McSwan (2 July 1945)

Henderson couple:

Archibald and Rosalie Henderson (12 February 1948)

Henrietta Helen Olivia Robarts Durand-Deacon, née Fargus (18 February 1949)

In popular culture

This article may contain irrelevant references to popular culture. Please help improve it by removing such content and adding citations to reliable, independent sources. (February 2021)

The release of the 1949 British film noir Obsession was delayed by the British Board of Film Censors due to similarities in its plot to the Haigh case.

The mid-1960s unproduced Hitchcock project Kaleidoscope was inspired by both Haigh and murderer Neville Heath.

The role of Haigh was played by Martin Clunes in the ITV drama A Is for Acid.

In the fifth episode of the first series of the British comedy series Psychoville, the character David Sowerbutts experiences a vision where waxworks of various serial killers, including Haigh, appear to come to life. During this sequence, Haigh is played by George Asprey.

Nigel Fairs played Haigh in the Big Finish audio drama In Conversation with an Acid Bath Murderer (2011), which he also wrote. The cast included Richard Franklin as Archie Henderson, Mandi Symonds as Olive Durand-Deacon and Louise Jameson (who also directed) as Rose Henderson. It was released as the fourth instalment in their Drama Showcase anthology series.

Stage play WAX by Michael Punter is based upon a fictional meeting between Haigh and a woman (Anna), an artist from Madame Tussauds, who models his waxwork for exhibition in the 'Chamber of Horrors' while he is in the condemned cell.

Anthony Sowell

 

Anthony Edward Sowell (August 19, 1959 – February 8, 2021) was an American serial killer and rapist known as The Cleveland Strangler. He was convicted in 2011 of murdering 11 women whose bodies were discovered at his Cleveland, Ohio, home in 2009. After being sentenced to death for the murders, Sowell died in prison from a terminal illness.

Early life

Anthony Edward Sowell was born and raised in East Cleveland, Ohio, one of seven children born to single parent Claudia "Gertrude" Garrison. Seven other children belonging to Sowell's sister also lived in the household, having moved in after her death following a chronic illness. Sowell had an extremely abusive and traumatic upbringing due largely to Garrison; according to Sowell's niece, Leona Davis, Garrison subjected them to physical abuse while her own children watched from adjacent rooms. In one incident, Garrison forced Davis to strip naked in front of the other children, then whipped her with electrical cords until she bled. Sowell himself began raping his niece on an almost daily basis for two years, starting when she was 10. It was reported by Davis that the other males in the household also committed the rapes.

Military service

On January 24, 1978, at the age of 18, Sowell entered the United States Marine Corps. He attended recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island in South Carolina, then was further trained as an electrician at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. On July 13, 1978, he was assigned to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, also in North Carolina. In 1980, he spent a year overseas in Japan with the 3rd Force Service Support Group, then returned to Cherry Point.

Sowell was ordered to Marine Corps Base Camp Butler in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, on January 20, 1984. A year later, he transferred to Camp Pendleton in California for three days until his discharge on January 18, 1985. During his seven-year Marine Corps career, he received a Good Conduct Medal with one service star, a Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, a Certificate of Commendation, a Meritorious Mast, and two Letters of Appreciation.

1989 attack, incarceration, and release

In 1989, a woman who was three months pregnant attempted to leave Sowell's home. He bound her hands and feet with a tie and belt, then gagged her with a rag. She told police: "He choked me real hard because my body started tingling. I thought I was going to die." In 199,0 he was charged with kidnapping, ra, pe and attempted rape. He pled guilty to attempted rape, and served 15 years in prison. He was released in 2005.

Sowell worked in a factory until 2007, when he began collecting unemployment benefits. Neighbors said he earned a living selling scrap metal. They complained to the health department of a foul smell in the neighborhood. He was a member of an online dating service, where he said he was a "master" looking for a submissive person to train.

Lori Frazier, a niece of Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson, began a relationship with Sowell shortly after his release from prison and resided in his home. She said she smelled decaying bodies and was told the smell was coming from Sowell's stepmother, who lived downstairs, or from Ray's Sausage Shop, located next door. A friend said Frazier stopped spending time at the home in 2008.

Discovery of bodies and arrest

In September 2009, Sowell invited Latundra Billups to his home to smoke crack cocaine. On September 22, she told police that after a few drinks, he became angry and hit, choked, and raped her as she passed out. On October 29, police arrived at his home with an arrest warrant. He was not there, but he was located and arrested two days later.

During a search of the home, the bodies of two women were found buried in a shallow grave in the basement,t and four other women were found on the third floor of the home and in crawlspaces. After digging in the backyard, investigators found three more bodies and partial remains of a fourth. A human skull in a bucket inside the house brought the body count to 11. Most of the victims were killed by manual strangulation, and others were gagged or had ligatures on their bodies when they were discovered.

Sowell also raped three other women, luring them to his property with an invitation to smoke crack with him.

At the time of his arrest, Sowell was 50 years old. He had been living at that location for four years. He was held on a $5 million bond. His trial was originally supposed to start on June 2, 2010, but was repeatedly delayed: first to September 7 to give his attorneys more time to prepare, then to February 14, 2011, then to May 2 at the request of his attorneys who needed more time to examine thousands of records and hours of surveillance video footage shot from the property next door to Sowell's, and later to June 6 at the request of the prosecution due to scheduling conflicts. The trial began on June 6, 2011.

Conviction, sentencing, appeals, and death

Sowell was charged with 11 counts of aggravated murder and 74 counts of rape, kidnapping, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse. He pled not guilty by reason of insanity but later changed his plea to simply "not guilty." On July 22, 2011, he was convicted on all but two counts, including the murders of the eleven women whose bodies were found in his house in 2009. On August 10, jurors recommended the death penalty. On August 12, Judge Dick Ambrose upheld the jury's recommendation. On September 14, he was placed on death row and imprisoned at Chillicothe Correctional Institution.

That November, Sowell's lawyers, Jeffry F. Kelleher and Thomas Rein, filed a Notice of Appeal with the Supreme Court of Ohio. Sowell's execution was set for October 29, 2012, but that March, a Motion for Stay of Execution was filed; the motion was granted in April, pending final disposition of the appeal. In October, his new lawyers, Jeffrey M. Gamso and Erika Cunliffe of the Cuyahoga County Public Defender's office, appealed to have his conviction and death sentence overturned on 21 points, with the main three being:

that he did not receive a fair trial because of the extensive media coverage. The "media attention was overwhelming, generating thousands of news stories, and…local coverage was 'both frenzied and sustained.'"

that the courtroom had been closed to the public "during an evidentiary hearing and while a jury was picked."

and that he had received "lousy legal representation." "Sowell's trial attorneys should have had their client plead guilty to killing the women and then focus their efforts on preventing Sowell from getting the death penalty."

In September 2014, the court asked both parties to address three issues.

On April 5, 2016, the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments from Sowell's appellant attorneys and the Cuyahoga County assistant Prosecutor representing the State of Ohio regarding the merits of the closed pre-trial Suppression Hearing prior to trial, and the defendant's right to a fair and public trial. His lawyers argued that his Sixth Amendment right was violated by closing the Suppression Hearing to the press, and that the Court should commute his death sentence to life imprisonment as a remedy to the structural error that resulted in the violation. They also argued that counsel had made errors, and "urged the Ohio Supreme Court to send the case back to Cuyahoga County for a retrial. 'Frankly we blew it,' attorney Jeffrey Gamso told the Ohio Supreme Court."

The State argued that if Sowell's Sixth Amendment right was violated via the closed pre-trial suppression hearing, it would not have affected the outcome of the trial, as the evidence was overwhelming, and that "Sowell's attorneys were the ones who asked multiple times in his presence for the jury selection to be done privately, without cameras in the courtroom." The State also asserted that Sowell has never denied his guilt, and that the heinous nature of his crimes—coupled with little mitigating evidence to deny imposing the death penalty—warrants affirming the death sentence.

On December 8, 2016, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Sowell, affirming his aggravated murder convictions and death sentence. In May 2017, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In October, it chose not to hear him. In February 2018, the Ohio Supreme Court denied his request to reopen his appeal. In May 2020, the State of Ohio's 8th District Appellate Court denied his appeal.

On February 8, 2021, Anthony Sowell died at an Ohio prison hospital of an unspecified terminal illness.

Victims

On November 5, 2009, two of the eleven victims were identified. All of Sowell's known victims were African-American women of either a slender or morbidly obese build; 10 of the 11 women were mothers. Of these victims, seven of them were between the ages of 44ando 53, three intheir 30ss, and one victim, the third, was 25. The first two were in their 30s.

Kim Yvette Smith, a 44-year-old, was the first victim tied to Sowell to be reported missing in 2009. She was reported missing by her family. Her body was discovered in Sowell's backyard.

Leshanda Long (25) - went missing in August 2008; she was the youngest of Sowell's victims. Her skull was found wrapped inside a bucket in Sowell's basement.

Tonia Carmichael, 53, had disappeared more than a year earlier. Her body was found buried in his backyard. She appeared to have been strangled and was identified through the use of DNA evidence. Her mother had reported her missing in December 2008.

Telacia Fortson, 31, had disappeared five months earlier. Although she had been missing since June, her mother did not report her missing until she heard the news coverage regarding the dead bodies discovered in Sowell's home.

On November 8, 2009, three more bodies were identified. Crystal Dozier was a 38-year-old who went missing in May 2007. The mother of seven children, she lived in the area where her body was discovered. Her family reported her missing to the Cleveland Police Department. This was not the first time she had gone missing, and the family accused the police of failing to investigate. The family took it upon themselves to post fliers and call hospitals.

Amelda "Amy" Hunter, 47; A beautician and mother of three. Amy did not live in the area where her body was found, but did visit frequently. Her family did not report her missing until after police began removing bodies from Sowell's house.

Michelle Mason, 45, was last seen in October 2008. She lived in the area where her body was found. According to records, the police conducted a full investigation when her family reported her missing.

Records of missing people going back to Sowell's June 2005 release from prison were searched,d and DNA testing was conducted on the bodies found at Sowell's house. Protesters holding posters of missing loved ones gathered outside his home at the time.

East Cleveland police also reopened several cold cases from the late 1980s. The murders by strangulation used a similar modus operandi and had stopped around 1989, the same time that Sowell was arrested. The FBI at the time was gathering information to see if Sowell may have been linked to unsolved cases in cities where he once lived.

List

Victim Name Age Disappearance

1 Crystal Dozier 38 May 17, 2007

2 Tishana Culver 31 June 2008

3 Leshanda Long 25 August 2008

4 Michelle Mason 45 October 8, 2008

5 Tonia Carmichael 53 November 10, 2008

6 Kim Yvette Smith 44 January 17, 2009

7 Amelda Hunter 47 April 2009

8 Nancy Cobbs 45 April 24, 2009

9 Telacia Fortson 33 June 3, 2009

10 Janice Webb 48 June 2009

11 Diane Turner 48 Late September 2009

Aftermath

After Sowell's conviction, in December 2011, his former residence on 12205 Imperial Avenue was demolished by order of the city's leaders. He was incarcerated in the Chillicothe Correctional Institution. On January 21, 2021, Sowell was transferred to The Franklin Medical Center in Columbus, so he could begin to receive end-of-life care for an unspecified terminal illness. Sowell remained in The Franklin Medical Center until his death on February 8, 2021.

The case was profiled on the series premiere of the Investigation Discovery show Killer Instinct.

Unseen, a documentary film about the victims and survivors of Sowell's crimes, was produced and released in 2016 by Laura Paglin.

In November 2012, Sowell released a letter through the website Serial Killers Ink. The letter was to the people of Cleveland. He railed against former trial judge and newly elected Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty and addressed the issue of artwork which he had recently sent to the owner of the website.

On July 16, 2021, ground was broken for the Garden of 11 Angels memorial on the former Sowell property; it was dedicated November 6, 2021.

On July 24, 2021, five women who survived kidnappings by Sowell told their stories on Oxygen's Snapped episode "Notorious The Cleveland Strangler".

John Edward Robinson

 

Edward Robinson (born December 27, 1943) is an American convicted serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, and forger. He was found guilty and received the death penalty in 2003 for three murders committed in Kansas. Two years later, as part of a plea deal, he admitted responsibility in five other murders committed in Missouri, for which he received multiple life sentences without possibility of parole. Robinson, a prolific con man and embezzler, used online chatrooms to make contact with some of his victims while under the alias "Slavemaster" – this makes him the first known serial killer to have used the Internet to lure in victims.

Early life and criminal history

John Edward Robinson was born on December 27, 1943, in Cicero, Illinois, the third of five children to Henry and Alberta Robinson, an abusive alcoholic father and a strict disciplinarian mother.  In 1957, Robinson became an Eagle Scout and travelled to London with a group of Scouts who performed before Queen Elizabeth II; afterwards, backstage he received a kiss from actress and singer Judy Garland.

Robinson enrolled at Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago, a minor seminary, but dropped out after one year due to disciplinary issues. School records showed that he was a poor and failing student and frequently got involved in fights with his classmates and spent much time in school detention. In 1961, Robinson enrolled at Morton Junior College in Cicero to become a medical radiographer, but dropped out after two years. In 1964, he moved to Kansas City and married Nancy Jo Lynch, who gave birth to their first child, John Jr., in 1965, followed by daughter Kimberly in 1967, and twins Christopher and Christine in 1971.

In 1969, Robinson was arrested in Kansas City for embezzling $33,000 from the medical practice of Dr. Wallace Graham, where he worked as a radiographer using forged credentials. He was sentenced to three years of probation. The following year, he violated his probation by moving to Chicago without his probation officer's permission and gained a job as an insurance salesman at the R.B. Jones Company. In 1971, he was arrested for embezzling funds and was ordered back to Kansas City, where his probation was extended. In 1975, Robinson's probation was extended again after an arrest on charges of securities fraud and mail fraud in connection with a phony medical consulting company he had formed.

Robinson in a 1985 mug shot taken by the Johnson County Sheriff's Department

Robinson became a Scoutmaster, a baseball coach, and a Sunday school teacher. In 1977, he was named to the board of directors of a local charitable organization where he forged letters from its executive director to the mayor of Kansas City and from the mayor to civic leaders, naming him as the organization's Man of the Year. Under that guise, he hosted an awards luncheon in his honor. After completing his probation in 1979, Robinson was arrested for embezzlement and check forgery, for which he served sixty days in jail in 1982. After his release, he formed a bogus hydroponics business and stole $25,000 from a friend to whom he promised a fast investment return so the friend could pay for his dying wife's medical care.

Murders

Robinson is known to be responsible for eight homicides, but his total victim tally remains unknown. Kansas and Missouri police note that long stretches of Robinson's time remain unaccounted for, and considering how some of Robinson's confirmed victims have never been found or were not reported missing, authorities fear that there are additional undiscovered victims. "He's maintained the secrets about what he's done with the women. He won't ever tell. It's the last control he's got," said one investigator. "There are probably other barrels waiting to be opened, other bodies waiting to be found."

In 1984, having established two more fraudulent shell companies, Robinson hired Paula Guylene Godfrey, aged 19, ostensibly to work as a sales representative for Robinson's management consulting firm, Equi II. Godfrey was interested in pursuing a business career and told her family that Robinson had arranged for her and a group of women to fly to San Antonio, Texas to enroll in a clerical skills course. Robinson picked Godfrey up at her residence in Overland Park, Kansas, on September 1, 1984, to drive her to the airport for her flight. After hearing nothing further from her, Godfrey's parents filed a missing persons report. Police questioned Robinson, who denied any knowledge of her whereabouts. Several days later, her parents received a typewritten letter, with Godfrey's signature at the bottom, thanking Robinson for his help and asserting that she was "OK" and did not want to see her family. The investigation was terminated as Godfrey was of legal age, and there was no evidence of wrongdoing. No trace of Godfrey has ever been found.

In 1985, using the alias John Osborne, Robinson met 19-year-old Lisa Stasi and her four-month-old daughter, Tiffany Stasi, at Hope House, a shelter for homeless women in Kansas City. Stasi told relatives that she was joining the Kansas City Outreach Program, an organization designed to assist young mothers. Robinson presented the program to Lisa as a way to receive free room and board while studying for her GED. He promised Stasi a job and a stable living situation in Chicago in exchange for signing several sheets of blank stationery. Lisa and Tiffany checked into Room 131 at the Rodeway Inn in Overland Park in early January 1985. Lisa told her relatives that "Mr. Osborne" arranged and paid for their new accommodations. On January 10, Robinson arrived at Lisa's sister-in-law's house where Lisa and Tiffany entered his vehicle and purportedly returned to the motel. A few days later, Robinson contacted his brother and sister-in-law who had been unable to adopt a baby through traditional channels, informing them that he knew of a baby whose mother had killed herself. For $5,500 in "legal fees", the couple received Tiffany, whose identity was confirmed in 2000 by DNA testing and a set of seemingly authentic adoption papers with the forged signatures of two lawyers and a judge.

In January 1987, 27-year-old Catherine Frances Clampitt left her child with her parents in Wichita Falls, Texas, and moved to Kansas City to live with her brother's family and find employment. She saw an advertisement for Equi II, a management consulting firm in Overland Park, Kansas, shortly after her arrival,l which promised extensive travel and a new wardrobe. Robinson hired her, er and Clampitt began staying at several local hotels near the Equi II offices. On June 15, 1987, Clampitt left to have a meeting with Robinson. She has not been seen since. Her missing persons case remains open.

Between 1987 and 1993, Robinson was incarcerated, first in Kansas on multiple fraud convictions and later in Missouri for another fraud conviction and parole violations. At the Western Missouri Correctional Facility, he met 49-year-old Beverly Bonner, the prison librarian. Upon his release in January 1994, Bonner left her husband, a prison doctor, and moved to Kansas to work for him. After Robinson arranged for Bonner's alimony checks to be forwarded to a Kansas post office box, her family never heard from her again. For several years, Bonner's mother had been forwarding her alimony checks, and Robinson continued cashing them.

After his release, Robinson discovered the Internet and roamed online chatrooms using the name Slavemaster, looking for women who enjoyed playing the submissive partner role during sex. An early online correspondent was Sheila Faith, 45, whose 15-year-old daughter Debbie Faith was a wheelchair user due to spina bifida. Robinson, portraying himself as a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, offered to pay Debbie's medical expenses and give Sheila a job. In 1994, the mother and daughter moved from Fullerton, California to Kansas City and immediately disappeared. Robinson cashed Faith's pension checks for the next seven years.

Robinson became well known in increasingly popular BDSM chatrooms. In 1999, he offered a job and a bondage relationship to Izabela Lewicka, a 21-year-old Polish immigrant living in Indiana. When she moved to Kansas City, Robinson gave her an engagement ring, despite still being married, and brought her to the county registrar, where they paid for a marriage license that was never picked up. It is unclear whether Lewicka believed she and Robinson were married; she told her parents that she had married, but never told them her husband's name. She did sign a 115-item slave contract that gave Robinson almost total control over every aspect of her life, including her bank accounts. In 1999, Lewicka disappeared. Robinson told a web designer he employed that she had been caught smoking marijuana and deported.  Her body was found in a drum on Robinson's farm in Kansas in 2000.

In March 2000, a 27-year-old licensed practical nurse named Suzette Trouten moved from Michigan to Kansas to travel with Robinson as his submissive sex slave. Trouten's mother received several typed letters signed by her daughter and purportedly mailed while the couple was abroad, although the envelopes all bore Kansas City postmarks. The letters were, her mother said, uncharacteristically free of typographical errors. Later, Robinson told Trouten's mother that she had run off with an acquaintance after stealing money from him.  Along with Lewicka, her body was found in a drum on Robinson's farm in Kansas in the same year.

Arrest and conviction

Over time, Robinson became increasingly careless, and his ability to avoid detection declined. By 1999, he had attracted the attention of authorities in Kansas and Missouri as his name frequently came up in missing person investigations. He was arrested in June 2000 at his farm near La Cygne, Kansas, after a woman filed a sexual battery complaint against him and another charged him with stealing her sex toys. The theft charge finally gave investigators the probable cause they needed to obtain search warrants.

On the farm, a task force found the decaying bodies of two women, later identified as Lewicka and Trouten, in two 85-pound (39 kg) chemical drums.  Across the state line in Missouri, investigators searched a storage facility where Robinson rented two garages. They found three similar chemical drums containing corpses subsequently identified as Bonner, Faith, and Faith's daughter. All five women were killed in the same way, by one or more blows to the head with a blunt instrument. 

In 2002, Robinson stood trial in Kansas for the murders of Trouten, Lewicka, and Stasi along with multiple lesser charges. After the longest criminal trial in Kansas history, he was convicted on all counts. Robinson received 2 death sentences for the murders of Trouten and Lewicka, and life imprisonment for Stasi's murder because she was killed before Kansas reinstated the death penalty. He received a 5-to-20-year prison sentence for interfering with the parental custody of Stasi's baby, 20 years for kidnapping Trouten, and seven months for theft.

After his Kansas convictions, Robinson faced murder charges in Missouri based on the evidence discovered in that state. Missouri aggressively pursued capital punishment convictions, so Robinson's attorneys wanted to avoid a trial there. Chris Koster, the Missouri prosecutor, insisted as a condition of any plea bargain that Robinson lead authorities to the bodies of Stasi, Godfrey, and Clampitt. Robinson, who has never cooperated with investigators, refused. However, Koster faced pressure to make a deal because his case was not technicallyairtightt⁠. Among other issues, there was no unequivocal evidence that any of the murders had been committed within his jurisdiction. Robinson, on the other hand, faced pressure to plead guilty to avoid an almost certain death sentence in Missouri, and failing that, yet another capital murder trial back in Kansas.

When it became clear that the women's remains would never be found without Robinson's cooperation, a compromise was reached. In a carefully scripted plea in October 2003, Robinson acknowledged that Koster had enough evidence to convict him of capital murder for the deaths of Godfrey, Clampitt, Bonner, and the Faiths. Though his statement was technically a guilty plea and was accepted as such by the Missouri court, observers remarked that it was notably devoid of any remorse or specific acceptance of responsibility.  Robinson received a life sentence without possibility of parole for each of the five murders.

In November 2015, the Kansas Supreme Court vacated the Trouten and Stasi murder convictions on technicalities, but upheld the Lewicka conviction and its accompanying death sentence. The ruling marked the first time Kansas's highest court has upheld a death sentence since the reinstatement of capital punishment there in 1994. Robinson currently remains on death row at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.

Aftermath

In 2005, Nancy Robinson filed for divorce after forty-one years of marriage, citing incompatibility and irreconcilable differences. The following year, Stasi's daughter—known since her faked adoption as Heather Robinson—filed a civil suit against Truman Medical Center in Kansas City and social worker Karen Gaddis. The suit accused Gaddis of putting Robinson in contact with Stasi and her newborn daughter in 1984 after he told Gaddis that he ran a charitable organization assisting "unwed mothers of white babies."

In 2007, Heather and the hospital reached a settlement for an undisclosed sum, which Heather said she would split with her biological grandmother, Patricia Sylvester. Heather won a second judgment in 2007 preventing Robinson from profiting from any future potential book sales or film rights. In 2006, the body of a young woman was found in a barrel in an area of rural Iowa where Robinson reportedly had a business partner. She was initially considered a possible victim but was later identified and ruled out.

In media

A 2001 book by John Glatt, Internet Slave Master (ISBN 0312979274), documented Robinson's life up to the time of his Kansas trial. A second book by Glatt, Depraved (ISBN 0312936842), published in 2005, focused on the lives of Robinson's victims and others affected by his crimes.

Anyone You Want Me to Be: A True Story of Sex and Death on the Internet (ISBN 1439189471) by John Douglas and Stephen Singular was published in 2003.

Sue Wiltz's book Slave Master was published in 2004.

Robinson's criminal activities were also profiled on episodes of the A&E series Cold Case Files, Investigation Discovery's FBI: Criminal Pursuit, Very Scary People, Sins & Secrets, Vanity Fair Confidential, It Takes a Killer, and Deadly Doctors, as well as Forensic Files and The New Detectives on the Discovery Channel.

Adaptation

In 2025, Lifetime aired a television film adaptation about John Edward Robinson and his connection with Tiffany Stasi/Heather Robinson called Kidnapped by a Killer: The Heather Robinson Story. The television film starred Steve Guttenberg as John Edward Robinson, Jana Kramer as an investigator in the case, and Rachel Stubington as Tiffany Stasi/Heather Robinson.