A foul odor emanating from a home in East Cleveland prompted authorities to investigate, as authorities discovered three bodies, prompting the arrest of a registered sex offender in a poor Ohio neighborhood on Sunday, the Associated Press reported. The three female black victims' were found wrapped in plastic.
The suspect has been identified as Michael Madison who is expected to be formally charged on Monday. Madison may have been influenced by Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell, according to East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton. Sowell who was convicted in 2001 for murdering 11 women and was sentenced to death.
"We are deal with a sick individual, and we have reason to believe that there might be more victims," Norton said. "Unfortunately, this is a sick individual who appears to have been influenced by another sick individual," Norton said. "If he had been out for one more hour, there's no telling what would have happened."
Because of how badly decomposed the victims are, it may take days before officials can determine their identities and how they were killed, the country medical examiner's office said.
The first victim was found Friday in the garage leased by Madison. She was naked with signs of trauma, police said. Two other bodies were found Saturday -- one in an abandoned house, the other in a nearby field. One of those women was wearing a green hoodie, and the other was wearing a leopard-print leotard, CNN reported. They appeared to be young blakc women, and their bodies were wrapped in plastic garbage bags and taped up.
"One of the things that makes us believe it's the same suspect is the way that they were all wrapped ... and the same concealment of each of the victims," Mayor Norton said.
Shaeaun Child, a neighbor who tipped police off about the foul smell in the garage, told CNN he knows Madison, CNN reported.
Authorities obtained a search warrant for Madison's apartment Friday and found "additional evidence of decomposition" there, East Cleveland police Detective Sgt. Scott Gardner said.
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