After an intense search in a Cleveland suburb, police said they hadn’t found any more bodies following the recovery of three bodies wrapped in plastic bags in and around an abandoned home in East Cleveland on Friday.
Police arrested registered sex offender Michael Madison, 35, who had spent time in prison for an attempted rape, but authorities have yet to charge Madison.
The victims were found about 100 to 200 yards apart, and authorities believed they were killed in the past six to 10 days. The first body was found after a resident reported a foul smell on Friday. The next two bodies were found on Saturday during a search. The bodies were all near each other in an abandoned home, a garage and a backyard.
East Cleveland Police Chief Ralph Spotts said he believed the women had been killed in the last 6 to 10 days, but they could have been missing for longer. He said police believe Madison killed the three women.
“Everything was in about a 250-foot proximity to where he lives,” Mr. Spotts said. “The M.O. is the same: each body was wrapped in several plastic bags. We definitely believe that he will probably be tied to everything.”
As the local police and the F.B.I. searched the area on Sunday, officials said they feared other bodies could be in the area.
“We have numerous search teams out searching every abandoned residence and abandoned lot within about a mile of the scene,” said Michael Cardilli, a commander with the East Cleveland Police Department.
It was information police got from the interview with the suspect on Friday that led them to the two other bodies on Saturday, Cardilli said.
Police arrested Madison after a two-hour standoff Friday at his mother’s home in East Cleveland that began when officers went to the house with a search warrant.
The three bodies, which were in the advanced stages of decomposition, have yet to be identified, according to an employee at the Cuyahoga County medical examiner’s office. Medical examiner Dr. Thomas P. Gilson told The Associated Press that it would take several days to identify the bodies.
“It’s tragic. The unthinkable has happened,” Gary Norton, East Cleveland’s mayor said Sunday in a telephone interview. “We as a community have to deal with it.”
The mayor said the suspect in the killings might have been influenced by the serial killer Anthony Sowell, who was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to death after the bodies of 11 women were found at his Cleveland home in 2009.
