Cleveland serial murders: did the murderer pull down missing persons posters to cover his tracks?

Cleveland, Ohio – Michelle Mason’s family spared no effort in their search for her. They scoured the city and the suburbs, leaving more than 2,000 posters in businesses and on utility poles. But they concentrated on the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, where Mason lived.
“We put posters… in the surrounding area and the next day, when we’d ride by, they were all gone,”  Adlean Atterberry, Mason’s mother, told a crowd who’d gathered a  neighborhood church to offer financial and emotional support to the families of the serial killer’s victims.

She’d barely made her point when Florence Bray interrupted her.

“My family did the same thing,” said Bray, whose daughter Crystal Dozier went missing in 2007. “We put posters on the east side and west side. He was going around taking them down.”

“He” is Anthony Sowell, who is suspected of killing 11 women and stashing their bodies at his house on 12205 Imperial Ave. in Cleveland.

On Friday, Sowell pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, felonious assault and rape of a woman in September. Police had gone to arrest him for that assault when they discovered the remains of the women. Sowell had already been charged with five counts of attempted murder.  On Friday his bail was raised to $6 million from $5 million. He was taken back to jail, and ordered to undergo an HIV test.

So far, 10 of the victims have been identified.

Bray and Atterberry suspect Sowell because the posters only disappeared in  the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, where he and their daughters lived. The women said posters in other parts of the city and in suburbs were untouched.

The coroner told Mason’s family that she died shortly after disappearing in October, 2008.

“I feel so hurt… that I was putting up posters and she was already dead,” Atterberry told trueslant.com.

Mason’s charge adds more fire to the controversy over what victims’ families did or didn’t do to find their loved ones. Four of the families filed missing person reports within weeks of the victims’ disappearance. Two others said they talked to police and assumed paperwork had been filed.

Crystal Dozier’s family said they went to the police repeatedly, and were shrugged off.

“They said they couldn’t do nothing about it because (Crystal) was grown, and she’ll come home when she gets ready,” Bray said.”

The families believe their searches weren’t taken seriously because the victims were substance abusers who had criminal records. In fact, the women’s backgrounds made them  prey for predators, experts told trueslant.com.

“They prey easily on down and out people who aren’t going to be missed. Unfortunately, women are easy victims.” said James Chriss,  a professor in the department of  sociology and criminology at Cleveland State University.

Nevertheless, Atterberry  urged families to aggressively search for their missing loved ones.  She recounted the rallies and marches they had when looking for her daughter.

“When you got a child missing, the police can do so much, but you can do so much more,” Atterberry said at the church meeting.

(read “Cleveland Serial Murders:  The Mystery of Anthony Sowell, pt. 1)

(read “Cleveland Serial Murders: The Mystery of Anthony Sowell, pt. 2″)