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Doug Thorburn’s Nov-Dec 2009 Addiction Report Story of the Month Focuses on the Cleveland Strangler Anthony Sowell
Hollywood, CA
Friday, November 20, 2009
Cleveland Strangler Anthony Sowell, the Top Story of the Month in Doug Thorburn's Nov-Dec Addiction Report
Video Clip: Click to Watch
Doug Thorburn, addiction expert, addiction contrarian and author of the Alcoholism: Myths and Realities: Removing the Stigma of Society's Most Destructive Disease and three other books on addiction, has picked the notorious serial killer Anthony Sowell for his Top Story of the Month in the Thorburn Addiction Report TAR). Thorburn, who disagrees with the current views of the addiction industry, goes through various characters who lived with and ignored the obvious crimes of an extremely notorious criminal, one who should have been nabbed on numerous occasions.
Over the years Thorburn has written on or debated about a host of politicians, criminals, athletes, musicians, business leaders and their behaviors in terms as it relates to addiction. This included a series engaging appearances on WBAL radio in Baltimore in the weeks leading up the execution of Los Angeles gangster Tookie Williams, who had been convicted of murder and sentenced by California to the death penalty. Scroll through Thorburn's archives and read about such people as Bernie Madoff, Phillip Garrido, Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona, Phil Spector, Venezuelan's communist dictator Hugo Chavez and many others. View the archives at
http://www.preventragedy.com/pages/addictionreport.html
Here is the Top Story Month in the Nov-Dec 2009 Thorburn Addiction Report, which can also be seen at http://www.preventragedy.com
Drug-addicted enabler to Anthony Sowell, Lori Frazier—and a slew of drug-addicted victims
The criminal justice system is filled with addicts, who often were arrested by addicts, judged by them and guarded by them. Victims are also frequently addicts. While too often an innocent was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, becoming victim to a stray bullet, a vehicular homicide or a robbery, the number of occasions where the victim is another addict is probably woefully underestimated.
It doesn't make it any less tragic, as so often addicts of all stripes are decent human beings when sober. However, it does explain how someone could put himself or herself into a situation that sober people wouldn't get close to. How else can we explain someone living with a serial murderer?
Lori Frazier, a niece of Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Johnson, lived with Anthony Sowell, the man accused of being the "Cleveland Strangler," since a month after his release in 2005 from a 15-year prison sentence for rape. "I want to know why, why would he do this. He took care of me." Yes, Ms. Frazier, Sowell took care of you in the way you know best—he gave you plenty of drugs until you moved out last year in an attempt to kick your addiction. He also gave you a place to live, foul though it may have been. It stank and you didn't smell it. You believed him—you'd believe anything your supplier told you—when he explained away the pungent smell of decaying bodies in the house by blaming his stepmother downstairs and, when she moved out, the sausage company next door.
When he lured other women into his home—so far authorities have found 11 of them—and killed them, mostly by strangulation, he may have drugged you up so you were comatose, or asked you to leave for the weekend, or whatever. The uninitiated can't even imagine the sorts of believable lies the addict tells, even to another addict, or the suspension of belief by an addict who wants her drugs. The seven women who have been identified by the coroner were all black mothers aged 31 through 52 with criminal records and histories of drug addiction. Your uncle Johnson rightly notes that you "would probably fit the same profile of many victims." You just got lucky.
Other people nearby suspected, but there were always explanations—there always are when it comes to the foibles and misbehaviors of addicts. Sowell's residence is shielded by an empty house on one side and the windowless brick wall of the meat factory on the other. When the stench of death blew over the street, neighbors blamed the factory. Sowell's rented house was one of the nicer ones on a block filled with homes in need of new paint and windows, many vacant, so it looked relatively safe.
Despite being a registered sex offender and convicted felon, Sowell, a former U.S. Marine, slipped under authorities' radar despite repeated suspicious goings-on at the house. No one can explain why an officer who went there as recently as September 22 to make a random check was not entitled to enter, despite the stench of death. A city councilor who filed a complaint about the odor two years ago has called for a federal investigation into the lack of proper police response, many victims too late.
Attention was paid to Sowell only after a woman reported being raped and choked with an electrical extension cord just hours after the authorities' visit in September. She knew Sowell and accepted his offer to share four bottles of cheap malt liquor in his upstairs room. After drinking "for some time," Sowell became angry (it's called "alcoholic rage"), punched her in the face and began choking and raping her. When officers went to the home about five weeks later (!!!) with an arrest warrant for the alleged rape, Sowell wasn't there, but six bodies were—two on the living room floor, two more in a crawl space inside, another in a shallow grave in the basement and a sixth in a freshly-dug grave in the back yard.
There's no explaining why one alcoholic is relatively benign and another turns into a serial murderer. One of the more benign sort, Lori Frazier, is a victim, though infinitely less of one than the unfortunate 11 (and very likely many more, yet undiscovered). Anthony Sowell was known to have a history of alcohol and other-drug addiction. As I point out in "Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse," there were probably dozens or even hundreds of incidents for which close persons or the law—or the military—could have appropriately intervened with coerced abstinence as a condition of freedom, but didn't.
After spending 15 years in prison, he was out for no more than a few weeks before finding a fellow druggie with whom to get and stay high. If coerced abstinence was a condition of freedom for all convicted felons, the odds of recidivism would be dramatically reduced. Instead, there's a multiple body count. It shouldn't have happened
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Doug Thorburn has been writing about addiction for a number of years and continues a pursuit to educate the public as to the mistaken views of what he calls "the addiction industry." To view the archive for previous issues of Doug Thorburn's Addiction Report go t
to http://www.preventragedy.com/pages/addictionreport.html Doug Thorburn's books include Get Out of the Way, Drugs, Drunks and Debits, How To Spot Hidden Alcoholics, Alcoholism Myths and Realities.
TO COMMENT to the author, send your email via the website, http://www.preventragedy.com or write to Doug Thorburn, P.O. Box 7777, Northridge, CA 91327-7777
For media interviews contact Promotion in Motion at 323-461-3921 or brad@promotioninmotion.net
Check out Promotion in Motion at http://www.promotioninmotion.net
Over the years Thorburn has written on or debated about a host of politicians, criminals, athletes, musicians, business leaders and their behaviors in terms as it relates to addiction. This included a series engaging appearances on WBAL radio in Baltimore in the weeks leading up the execution of Los Angeles gangster Tookie Williams, who had been convicted of murder and sentenced by California to the death penalty. Scroll through Thorburn's archives and read about such people as Bernie Madoff, Phillip Garrido, Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona, Phil Spector, Venezuelan's communist dictator Hugo Chavez and many others. View the archives at
http://www.preventragedy.com/pages/addictionreport.html
Here is the Top Story Month in the Nov-Dec 2009 Thorburn Addiction Report, which can also be seen at http://www.preventragedy.com
Drug-addicted enabler to Anthony Sowell, Lori Frazier—and a slew of drug-addicted victims
The criminal justice system is filled with addicts, who often were arrested by addicts, judged by them and guarded by them. Victims are also frequently addicts. While too often an innocent was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, becoming victim to a stray bullet, a vehicular homicide or a robbery, the number of occasions where the victim is another addict is probably woefully underestimated.
It doesn't make it any less tragic, as so often addicts of all stripes are decent human beings when sober. However, it does explain how someone could put himself or herself into a situation that sober people wouldn't get close to. How else can we explain someone living with a serial murderer?
Lori Frazier, a niece of Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Johnson, lived with Anthony Sowell, the man accused of being the "Cleveland Strangler," since a month after his release in 2005 from a 15-year prison sentence for rape. "I want to know why, why would he do this. He took care of me." Yes, Ms. Frazier, Sowell took care of you in the way you know best—he gave you plenty of drugs until you moved out last year in an attempt to kick your addiction. He also gave you a place to live, foul though it may have been. It stank and you didn't smell it. You believed him—you'd believe anything your supplier told you—when he explained away the pungent smell of decaying bodies in the house by blaming his stepmother downstairs and, when she moved out, the sausage company next door.
When he lured other women into his home—so far authorities have found 11 of them—and killed them, mostly by strangulation, he may have drugged you up so you were comatose, or asked you to leave for the weekend, or whatever. The uninitiated can't even imagine the sorts of believable lies the addict tells, even to another addict, or the suspension of belief by an addict who wants her drugs. The seven women who have been identified by the coroner were all black mothers aged 31 through 52 with criminal records and histories of drug addiction. Your uncle Johnson rightly notes that you "would probably fit the same profile of many victims." You just got lucky.
Other people nearby suspected, but there were always explanations—there always are when it comes to the foibles and misbehaviors of addicts. Sowell's residence is shielded by an empty house on one side and the windowless brick wall of the meat factory on the other. When the stench of death blew over the street, neighbors blamed the factory. Sowell's rented house was one of the nicer ones on a block filled with homes in need of new paint and windows, many vacant, so it looked relatively safe.
Despite being a registered sex offender and convicted felon, Sowell, a former U.S. Marine, slipped under authorities' radar despite repeated suspicious goings-on at the house. No one can explain why an officer who went there as recently as September 22 to make a random check was not entitled to enter, despite the stench of death. A city councilor who filed a complaint about the odor two years ago has called for a federal investigation into the lack of proper police response, many victims too late.
Attention was paid to Sowell only after a woman reported being raped and choked with an electrical extension cord just hours after the authorities' visit in September. She knew Sowell and accepted his offer to share four bottles of cheap malt liquor in his upstairs room. After drinking "for some time," Sowell became angry (it's called "alcoholic rage"), punched her in the face and began choking and raping her. When officers went to the home about five weeks later (!!!) with an arrest warrant for the alleged rape, Sowell wasn't there, but six bodies were—two on the living room floor, two more in a crawl space inside, another in a shallow grave in the basement and a sixth in a freshly-dug grave in the back yard.
There's no explaining why one alcoholic is relatively benign and another turns into a serial murderer. One of the more benign sort, Lori Frazier, is a victim, though infinitely less of one than the unfortunate 11 (and very likely many more, yet undiscovered). Anthony Sowell was known to have a history of alcohol and other-drug addiction. As I point out in "Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse," there were probably dozens or even hundreds of incidents for which close persons or the law—or the military—could have appropriately intervened with coerced abstinence as a condition of freedom, but didn't.
After spending 15 years in prison, he was out for no more than a few weeks before finding a fellow druggie with whom to get and stay high. If coerced abstinence was a condition of freedom for all convicted felons, the odds of recidivism would be dramatically reduced. Instead, there's a multiple body count. It shouldn't have happened
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Thorburn has been writing about addiction for a number of years and continues a pursuit to educate the public as to the mistaken views of what he calls "the addiction industry." To view the archive for previous issues of Doug Thorburn's Addiction Report go t
to http://www.preventragedy.com/pages/addictionreport.html Doug Thorburn's books include Get Out of the Way, Drugs, Drunks and Debits, How To Spot Hidden Alcoholics, Alcoholism Myths and Realities.
TO COMMENT to the author, send your email via the website, http://www.preventragedy.com or write to Doug Thorburn, P.O. Box 7777, Northridge, CA 91327-7777
For media interviews contact Promotion in Motion at 323-461-3921 or brad@promotioninmotion.net
Check out Promotion in Motion at http://www.promotioninmotion.net
Brad Butler
Promotion In Motion
Hollywood, CA
323-461-3921
First Url: Archives of Doug Thorburn's Addiction Report
