Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt.

And the story I have for you today is one that our highest level fan club members actually

voted to hear us tell. It's about a serial killer, a man who stalked the streets of Cleveland

for years, luring unsuspecting women, one by one, into what can only be called a house

of horrors. But it's also about everyone who saw a community in crisis and chose to look

away. This is the story of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Strangler.

It's late afternoon on October 29, 2009, and police in Cleveland, Ohio are pulling together

a team of officers to execute and arrest warrant. The warrant is related to a sexual assault

report police took two days earlier on the 27th from a woman named Lutandra Billips, who

told police that she'd been at this guy's place parrying when out of nowhere he just snapped.

He beat her, sexually assaulted her, even tried to strangle her with an extension cord.

Oh my God. In her report, Lutandra told police she'd been unconscious for hours after

she was strangled, and that both she and her attacker were almost like surprised when

she woke up. There was no doubt in her mind that he was trying to kill her. He meant to

kill her. So did she know her attacker? She did, actually. His name is Anthony Sowell,

though she and everyone else who knew him just called him tone. And tone is no stranger

to the Mount Pleasant neighborhood where he lives and where Lutandra spends a lot of

time. Lutandra had even been to his place before. He dated one of her friends for a long

time, I guess, and she'd always known him as this very friendly, very generous guy,

always out on his front steps, talking to the people who passed, always willing to help

neighbors who needed a hand. But Lutandra had heard some rumors lately that suggested

to her that tone had a dark side, that he'd been violent with other women too. And it

...