CLEVELAND -- While Anthony Sowell was imprisoned on two counts of attempted rape, he may have befriended a man at the Grafton Correctional Institution who was also at the center of a high-profile murder after leaving prison.

According to a former inmate at Grafton, Sowell hung out with convicted rapist Joel Yockey, of Wooster, while the two served time at the same prison.

In 2002, six months after Yockey was paroled from prison, he abducted, raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl who was walking home from the Wayne County Fair.

Kristen Jackson disappeared in September, 2002. Yockey, like Sowell, was a registered sex offender.

"I knew that (Sowell) hung around another violent offender who killed a girl later on after he got out of prison," said the former Grafton inmate who did not want to be identified.

"And it seems those groups of, like the sexual predators, the murderers or the dope addicts, they gravitate to each other and maybe kind of keep to themselves in little cliques (while in prison)."

A spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction told Channel 3 News that Sowell and Yockey were inmates at Grafton Correctional Institution from March, 1996 until March, 2002.

"His demeanor was outgoing," the former inmate said of Sowell. "He was neat, worked in various areas. He wasn't a bully. Did anybody see this was coming? I can honestly say...I never saw it coming."