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CLEVELAND — Suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell seemed like a "civilized person" on the April evening that Tanja Doss went up to his third-floor bedroom for a beer — until, she said, he leapt up and began choking her and threatening to kill her.
The 43-year-old woman told The Associated Press on Thursday that she survived a night of terror through a combination of calm and cajoling, prayer and trickery. But when she escaped the next morning, she didn’t tell police. Her past conviction on a drug charge made it unlikely that they’d take her seriously, she said."Now, I feel bad about it, because my best friend might be one of the bodies," she said.On Thursday, police and a cadaver dog re-entered the home where Sowell apparently lived among the reeking, rotting corpses of 10 women and kept the paper-wrapped skull of another in a basement bucket. The ex-Marine, who served 15 years in prison for attempted rape, is being held without bail on five aggravated murder charges.Just days after her escape, Doss helped search for her friend Nancy Cobbs. Now Cobbs is among about two dozen missing women whose friends and family fear was a victim of Sowell’s.Three victims have been identified so far: Tonia Carmichael, 52, of Warrensville Heights; Telacia Fortson, 31, of Cleveland; and Tishana Culver, 31, of Cleveland.Doss believes that she narrowly escaped the fate of those dug up from Sowell’s yard.She met Sowell in 2005, after his prison release, but didn’t know the real reason for his sentence. She found him to be "a civilized person, sitting outside drinking beer, a nice person." So she didn’t hesitate to join him for a drink."And then he just clicked. I’m sitting on the corner of the bed and he just leaped up and came over and started choking me," she said. Shocked, Doss said she lay back and tried not to struggle. "He said, 'If you want to live, knock three times on the floor.’ And I knocked on the floor."Sowell made her strip and lie on the bed, she said, but did not attempt to rape her. Doss said she curled up in a ball and tried to talk him down, saying things like, "Why you got to act like that?"Then she prayed to herself, and eventually, both fell asleep. She awoke in the morning with Sowell acting as if nothing had happened, she said, asking whether she wanted something from the store.She pretended to call her daughter on her cellphone, then claimed that her granddaughter had the flu. When Sowell left for the store, she went in the other direction.She didn’t report the confrontation because "my background ain’t squeaky clean," she said.Now, it’s all she can think about."It goes through my mind all the time," she said. "Every time I think about it, I start shaking."
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