Patricia Warren of Cleveland holds up a missing persons poster of her cousin Janice Webb, missing since June of this year, outside the home of Anthony Sowell on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 in Cleveland. Police say officers who went to the home looking for a rape suspect found two decomposing bodies upstairs and what appeared to be a freshly dug grave in the basement.
A Cuyahoga County coroner van leaves Anthony Sowell's home on the east side of Cleveland, Oct. 30, 2009 carrying a victim discovered in the house. Police in Cleveland say officers who went to a home looking for a rape suspect found two decomposing bodies upstairs and what appeared to be a freshly dug grave in the basement.
This undated photo released by the Cleveland Police Department shows Anthony E. Sowell. Police in Cleveland have arrested Sowell, a convicted rapist after they found as many as six bodies at his house.
Cleveland police search the porch at the home of Anthony Sowell, where bodies have been discovered Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 in Cleveland. Police in Cleveland say officers who went to a home looking for a rape suspect found two decomposing bodies upstairs and what appeared to be a freshly dug grave in the basement.
Six bodies were discovered in or around this house in Cleveland on Thursday.
Police arrested convicted sex offender Anthony Sowell, a suspect in six deaths at his house in Cleveland, Ohio.
Six women found dead at a Cleveland, Ohio, home appeared to have been strangled, and their decomposing bodies could have been lying there for "weeks, if not months or years," a coroner told CNN on Saturday.
Police discovered the bodies at the home of Anthony Sowell, a 50-year-old convicted rapist, after they tried to serve an arrest and search warrant for him related to a sexual assault investigation.
On Thursday, detectives from the department's sex-crimes unit and members of its SWAT team went to Sowell's home to execute the warrant and to arrest the suspect, but he was nowhere to be found, Cleveland Police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said.
Five female victims were found inside the home, and another female body was discovered outside the home, said Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller III.
Miller's office had yet to identify the victims, who all died of "homicidal violence," he said.
"They were mostly strangled, it appears," he said.
Stacho said a tipster told officers of Sowell's whereabouts and police arrested him Saturday afternoon as he walked on a street near the 4th District Police Headquarters.
About a month ago, a woman accused Sowell of rape and felonious assault, Stacho said Friday.
"Once we were able to get the cooperation of the victim, we secured an arrest warrant for Mr. Sowell and subsequently a search warrant for his premises," Stacho said.
Officers serving the warrants Thursday discovered two badly decomposed bodies on the third floor of the house, Stacho said. A subsequent search revealed what appeared to be a freshly dug grave under the stairs in the basement, he said.
On Friday, investigators returned to the house, dug up the grave and found a third body, he said.
A further search of the house and property found two more bodies in a crawl space, and a sixth body was found in a shallow grave outside the home, Stacho said.
Five different burial methods were used on the victims, and the bodies were in varying states of decomposition, Miller said, making it difficult to determine the ages of the victims. He added that the states of the bodies made it hard to tell how long they had lain in the makeshift graves.
"It's really very difficult to tell," Miller said. "It's been some time, I would say probably at least weeks, if not months or years."
Stacho said Sowell makes his living as a "scrapper."
"He walks around and picks up scrap metal and takes it to junkyards to make a few pennies."
Sowell was convicted for a 1989 rape for which he was imprisoned from 1990 to 2005, Stacho said.
A convicted rapist who fled before police arrived to arrest him on new rape charges was arrested Saturday in his inner-city neighborhood after police found as many as six bodies at his home.
Police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said Anthony Sowell was walking down the street on the east side of Cleveland when authorities spotted him and took him into custody.
Sowell initially denied he was the man authorities were looking for but admitted his identity as officers began fingerprinting him, Stacho said. Charges against him on pending.
Officers found three bodies and believe they have discovered three more but are awaiting confirmation from the coroner, Stacho said.
The first two bodies were found Thursday night when police went to Sowell's home to arrest him on charges of felonious assault and rape. Police say he had spent 15 years in prison for a 1989 rape.
Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller identified two bodies as black females and said one had died of a violent death ruled a homicide. No race or gender was determined for the third.
The identities and matter of death for the three had not yet been determined. The decomposition of the bodies meant it would take awhile to determine how they died.
Police established a command post in the neighborhood to take missing-person reports and additional information on outstanding missing persons in the neighborhood.
Teresa Hicks, 48, was among the neighbors who said they were relieved about the arrest but left with a heightened fear of crime. She said she has known Sowell since high school.
"He was crazy," she said from her porch Saturday. "Sometimes he would just go off if he didn't have his way."
Darren Dunlap, 38, frequently visits the neighborhood to see his brother or friends. He said Sowell was known for borrowing money and looking for scrap metal to sell.
Hicks said she didn't think Sowell had a job but understood from conversations with him that he lived on a monthly check. She said she didn't know its source.
Police were checking crime reports to find matches for similarities to the 1989 rape or the most recent allegation against Sowell.
Minutes before the arrest was made, police Chief Michael McGrath tried to reassure parents that it was safe for their children to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood if they followed standard precautions like avoiding strangers and staying in a group.
Hicks said her daughter would not be trick-or-treating.
Detectives with a search warrant found two bodies Thursday on the third floor of a duplex and began checking a fresh grave dug in the basement. The bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting they'd been in the home a long time.
Police were checking missing-person reports back to June 2005, when Sowell was released from prison.
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