Cleveland Police: Five of 6 homicide victims found at Cleveland home were strangled

CLEVELAND --  The six bodies removed from a home and backyard on Cleveland's east side are all women. Cuyahoga County Coroner, Frank Miller III, M.D., told Channel 3 News that it appears that five of those women were strangled.

"In four of the cases, what was tied around their neck was still there," Miller said. "(Another victim) had a broken hyoid bone below the tongue in the throat. When it's fractured, it indicates there's a very good chance that manual pressure was applied to the neck. So it could be manual strangulation in one case."

The cause of death for the sixth victim is undetermined.  No identifications of victims have been made. 

The coroner's office and police are asking family members of missing women to provide them with the name of a dentist who would have dental x-ray records to compare with the dental records of the victims.

The suspect in the homicides, convicted sex offender, Anthony Sowell was arrested Saturday after a massive manhunt. Sowell, 50, lived at the home where the women's bodies were found.

Saturday afternoon, Sowell was spotted around the 4th District police station by a person in the area.  Shortly after the tip was called in, police picked up Sowell right behind the police station.

The bodies and remains were found in differing states of decomposition. 

"We had a doctor from the natural history museum out here doing some tests to try and help the coroner's office determine when these people died," said Cleveland police spokesman, Lt. Thomas Stacho.

It will be hard to pinpoint the date of death for each of the victims.

"That's something we're going to try to estimate," Miller said. "It's been very difficult in this case because there's actually four different burial preparations. Two (bodies) were left out. One was concealed in an (attic crawl space). One is buried in the ground and the other is in a cool basement, covered by dirt.

"So it's going to be very confusing to how old they are and whether we can tell if there's any range of how long they've been deceased," said Miller. 

The timeline of the case began on Thursday night, when Cleveland sex crimes detectives and SWAT team members discovered two decomposed bodies and a freshly dug grave at the house while attempting to serve a warrant on Sowell for felonious assault and rape.

Late Friday afternoon, police confirmed a third body was found  in the basement. 

Friday evening, the remains of two more people were discovered inside the home at 12205 Imperial Avenue. And sex crime investigators also dug up a shallow grave in the backyard, revealing the remains of a sixth body.

Sowell reportedly lived at the house with an aunt and uncle, but no one has seen the relatives in awhile.

Sowell was wanted for the rape and felonious assault of a neighbor last month. He is a registered sex offender who served 15 years in an Ohio penitentiary for attempted rape.  He was released from prison in 2005.

People in the neighborhood wondered about the identity of the bodies in Sowell's house. Family and friends of Nancy Cobbs feared one of them might be Cobbs, who has been missing since April.  

"I just need to know if it's her," sobbed Kyana Hunt, Cobbs' daughter, who held up a flyer which has been circulating in the neighborhood, seeking information about the missing woman who was last seen walking to a store on April 23.  

Denise Patton, a relative of Cobbs said, "When we heard about something like this so close to him, we kind of figure that's it. That's my worst fear."  

"She (Cobbs) only lived one street away and no one has heard from her, and that's not like her."