Anthony Sowell: Dysfunctional Beginnings Lead to Serial Homicide

Anthony Sowell, aka "The Cleveland Strangler," received the death sentence for his murders of eleven African-American prostitutes between 2007-2009. Prostitutes were his preferred victim. Truth be told, prostitutes are not uncommon victims for many serial killers. It's not that many aren't street smart, rather it's because many are drug addicts and their desire for drugs keeps them desperate for money. Unfortunately, that means some of them unknowingly get into cars with violent predators.



Sowell was raised in a dysfunctional home where he watched his mother beat & abuse his cousins. In fact, he began raping one of his cousins when he was just eleven years old. When Sowell was 19, he joined the US Marine Corpse and was trained as an electrician at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. After 7 years of military service, he was honorably discharged with a Good Conduct medal with one service star, Certificate of Commendation, a Meritorious Mast, and two letters of appreciation. Sowell was clearly adept at fooling his superiors throughout his military career.

In 1989, Sowell plead guilty to a charge of attempted rape and served 15 years in prison. He left prison in 2005. From 2007-2009, he raped & strangled at least 11 women. In 2009, police entered Sowell's home after one of his victims escaped. Upon entrance to the house, Sowell was nowhere to be found, but police found 2 corpses in his living room. Anthony Sowell was caught 2 days later and he was condemned to death in 2011.



Despite his disturbing beginnings & bizarre early life, Sowell was able to disguise the rage beneath the surface long enough to lure his victims into his home. Once they walked through the door, they were dead.

John Wayne Gacy: Politics, Clowning Around, & Murder

John Wayne Gacy was thought to be a fine, upstanding member of his Illinois community. He was an outspoken Democrat, he dressed as a clown to entertain sick children at the local hospital, & he ran his own local construction business. He was close to his mother, although his father thought of him as a sissy due to his overweight, non-athletic physique. As a result, Gacy developed a love-hate relationship with his homosexual desires. In fact, he would only go so far as to declare himself bisexual, though he clearly wasn't into enjoying female companionship, despite his 2 attempts at marriage.



Gacy may have seemed a nice, friendly guy to the teenage boys around his neighborhood. He would hire them for jobs at his business, he would buy them booze, & make sexual jokes to humor them. He bought gay porn that he would leave around the house to perhaps ease the boys into trying it out. If they weren't interested & called him on it, he would play it off as a joke.

Once he got the boys relaxed & boozed up, he would show them a little "trick" with a pair of handcuffs. The trick involved Gacy telling the youth that he would show him a trick if the youth would put on the handcuffs. Once the young man had the handcuffs on, Gacy would tell him that the "trick" was that Gacy had the keys. The victim was sufficiently unable to defend himself & that was when the horror began. Gacy would bring out his collection of sex toys, & anally rape the young man while reading the bible to him, including this passage: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." (Psalm 23:4) He would then strangle the victim to death.



When Gacy was finally caught in 1978, police found 26 victims buried in the crawl space under his house. Gacy is thought to have run out of room & then thrown 4 more victims into the Des Plaines river. John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to death in 1980 and executed in 1994. He had clearly worn a disguise for many years, making him appear to be someone he was not. He was not human in the way we understand humans to be. He was nothing more than a monster, masquerading as human.



“I should never have been convicted of anything more serious than running a cemetery without a license.” ~John Wayne Gacy

Ted Bundy: The Classic Mask of Sanity

It has been twenty-two years since Ted Bundy was executed in Florida's electric chair. Yet the world remains fascinated by Bundy's crimes &; the psychology behind them. There is no doubt that Bundy was an evil man as proven by the confessions to several of his murders made shortly before his 1989 execution.



There's no doubt that part of Ted Bundy's allure to his victims lay in his looks. He was admittedly easy on the eyes, he seemed confident, well-groomed, & intelligent. His parents were hard-working, religious people who ensured that Bundy attended the methodist church as a youth. To those who knew him, he appeard to be an ambitious, smart young man with politics in his future. This was the mask of sanity that he hid behind his entire life.

The reality of Bundy's personality is that he was a sociopath who craved nothing more than death &; destruction. Nothing made him happier than kidnapping a young woman & committing necrophilic acts on her dead or comatose body. Bundy, in his arrogance, even once declared that he had a "Ph.D in serial killing."



Ted Bundy's profile is worth studying to get a sense of how manipulative he was. He eventually alluded to murdering at least 30 women, if not more, & it's clear he knew how to gain their trust quickly & overpower them before they were out of his control. He could turn on the charm at will & engage in his destructive game over & over again without concern for the lives he snuffed out.

Bundy had this to say about his crimes when the mask finally slipped:

“Murder is not about lust and it's not about violence. It's about possession. When you feel the last breath of life coming out of the woman, you look into her eyes. At the point, it's being God.” ― Ted Bundy