Cleveland bodies found: Suspect to be charged

No more bodies were discovered in a Cleveland suburb Sunday after a search prompted when officials discovered the decomposing bodies of three women curled up in plastic bags on Friday and Saturday.

Further searches weren’t planned, and officials expected to charge Michael Madison, 35, who is in custody, on Monday, East Cleveland Police Chief Ralph Spotts told the Associated Press.

All three victims remained nameless. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s said Sunday that the women’s bodies were in a state of “advanced decomposition” and that identifying them and determining the cause of death could take days.

Madison was arrested Friday -- following a short standoff with police -- after they connected him to a car in the East Cleveland garage where the first woman’s body had been found, according to WOIO-TV. The body was so decomposed that police couldn’t tell of it was a man or a woman, a detective told the station.

On Saturday, two more decomposing female bodies were found nearby, and officials began to worry that there might be more victims.

Spotts, addressing searchers Sunday, said each of the previously discovered bodies had been “wrapped up in a lot of garbage bags,” according to the AP, and that “the way he had each person was in a fetal position. ... It didn’t look like a person could actually fit in the bag.”

There were other worries, too. East Cleveland’s mayor, Gary Norton, told the AP that Madison had “said some things that led us to believe that in some way, shape, or form” that Anthony Sowell, one of Cleveland’s most famed killers, had been an influence.

Sowell, sometimes known as the Cleveland Strangler, was convicted in 2011 of killing 11 women, after several bodies were discovered in his home in 2009. Sowell was sentenced to death and is appealing his convictions.

Area residents told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that Madison, who had previously been convicted of attempted rape, spent time at an apartment near the garage where the first body was found and talked to women while walking around the neighborhood.

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