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Search For More Murder Victims Ends In Cleveland Suburb

Police tape outside a garage in East Cleveland, Ohio. A woman's body was found inside. Two other victims were also discovered in the neighborhood.
Kim Palmer
/
Reuters /Landov
Police tape outside a garage in East Cleveland, Ohio. A woman's body was found inside. Two other victims were also discovered in the neighborhood.

The search for more more bodies ended late Sunday in a Cleveland suburb where the remains of three women were found wrapped in plastic over the weekend.

Meanwhile, as The Plain Dealer writes, the man who authorities allege killed the women is due in court Monday. Michael Madison, a 35-year-old registered sex offender who served a four-year prison term in the past decade after being convicted for attempted rape, "is expected to be charged today in connection with the deaths," the newspaper says.

As we reported Sunday, East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton says Madison may have been influenced by the crimes of serial killer Anthony Sowell, who received the death penalty death in 2011 for killing 11 women and then hiding their remains around his Cleveland home.

This horrible sort of news is all too familiar to the people of Cleveland, the Plain Dealer notes:

"For the second time in three months and the third time in four years, evidence of haunting crimes against women sprouted in one of Greater Cleveland's inner-city neighborhoods. ...

"It was a scene familiar for its landscape of abandoned homes, overgrown weeds and television cameras. The world was watching, as it did in May, when three young women were rescued from a Cleveland home after being missing for nearly a decade. Sunday's scene, where three dead women were found wrapped in plastic bags, also brought reminders of Anthony Sowell, a serial killer from Cleveland's recent past."

As our colleagues at WCPN put it, "Northeast Ohio is back in the national spotlight again with another possible serial killing."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.