CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Convicted Ohio serial killer Anthony Sowell grew up with horrific physical abuse and was a rapist by the age of 12, relatives testified on Tuesday during the sentencing phase of his capital trial.
Accused serial killer Anthony Sowell watches the jury walk into the courtroom at the Justice Center in Cleveland July 19, 2011. REUTERS/Scott Shaw/Pool
The same jury who convicted Sowell, 51, of the murder of 11 women whose decomposing remains were found in or around his home, will decide whether he spends his life in prison or receives the death penalty.
Sowell’s victims were discovered after police came to arrest him for rape and assault in 2009. Many of the victims had histories of drug problems or were transients, and their disappearances were not always immediately reported to police.
Sowell’s niece, Leona Davis, 50, testified that she had lived with him, his mother and grandmother as a child after her own mother died and told a sad story of constant physical abuse by both the adult women in the house.
She testified that her great-aunt and Sowell’s mother, Claudia Garrison, would strip the children naked, tie them to poles or banisters and whip them, sometimes with electrical cords. The beatings would occur almost daily and caused Davis to run away multiple times.
Once, after being returned to her aunt’s house by the police, she said she was beaten until she bled. “She (Garrison) took a high-heel shoe and hit me on the head,” Davis testified under questioning by Sowell’s attorney John Parker.
Davis also testified that when she was 10 years old and Sowell was 12, he would fight her until she gave up and then rape her. Davis also said that other male children in the house raped her almost daily.
Davis told jurors her abuse was so bad that she started fires in order to be sent to a juvenile facility. “There I was locked up and nobody would hurt me,” she explained.
Sowell’s nephew, Jesse “Darnell” Hatcher, 48, testified that he was beaten so severely when he was young that to this day he doesn’t wear shorts due to scarring. When asked by Parker why he was beaten he said, “I have no idea. I didn’t ask.”
Hatcher had limited contact with Sowell after he ran away at 13 and was placed in foster care. He testified to seeing Sowell after he was discharged from the Marines and described him as calm and quiet. Hatcher also recalled of Sowell: “He didn’t like his things touched.”
On cross examination, Sowell’s relatives answered “no” when prosecutors asked each one if they ever saw him sexually abused by someone in the house.
Davis and Hatcher also both denied ever beating their own children, having problems with drugs and alcohol or having a criminal record.
“I didn’t want to continue the cycle,” Davis said.
Writing and reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Cynthia Johnston
