Ohio police resume search after 3 bodies found

Police fanned out in knee-high weeds today to search a neighborhood where three bodies were found wrapped in plastic bags, and a suspect in the case indicated to authorities that he might have been influenced by a notorious serial killer who strangled 11 women, officials said.
Authorities knocked on doors asking neighbors for any information that could help the case as they combed through yards near where the bodies were found Friday and Saturday in East Cleveland. They were also checking dilapidated houses in the area.
A 35-year-old registered sex offender was arrested after a police standoff Friday and is a suspect in the three deaths, East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton said.

The suspect, from East Cleveland, has indicated he might have been influenced by Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell, who was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to death, Norton said. As of Sunday morning, the man had not been charged.
"He said some things that led us to believe that in some way, shape, or form, Sowell might be an influence," Norton told The Associated Press.
In the most recent case, one body was found Friday in a garage. Two others were found Saturday - one in a backyard and the other in the basement of a vacant house. The bodies, believed to be female, were found about 100 to 200 yards (90 to 180 meters) apart, and authorities believe the victims were killed in the last six to 10 days.

One woman said she was familiar with the suspect and had seen him walking through the neighborhood. She said she had told him to stop talking to her daughter and warned him after seeing him talk to her cousin.

"It's very scary, especially when he used to be talking to my daughter," said Nathenia Crosby, 48. "But I told him he was too old to be talking to my daughter because she was only 19. When I found out how old he was, I said, 'You need to move on, she's too young.' "
Sowell was found guilty in 2011 of killing 11 women and hiding their remains around his Cleveland home from June 2007 to July 2009. Police found their mostly nude bodies throughout the house after a woman escaped and said she had been raped there.

Sowell's victims ranged in age from 24 to 52, all were recovering or current drug addicts and most died of strangulation; some had been decapitated, and others were so badly decomposed that coroners couldn't say with certainty how they died.