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Cleveland, Ohio (CNN) -- A Cleveland City Council member is calling for an independent investigation into whether police and health authorities in recent months and years should have spotted signs of foul play at a house where 11 bodies were found.

This development reflects the concerns of residents who wonder how authorities in the blue-collar Ohio city could have missed a stench that wafted across the neighborhood and how they could have neglected to pursue signs of problems at the house of Anthony Sowell.

The council member, Zach Reed, said on Wednesday he received a call about the stench in 2007.

"We received a phone call from a resident that said a foul odor came across the street and it smells like a dead person, not dead meat, not a dead animal. A dead person," Reed said.

The entire council also issued a statement saying the "top priorities at this time must be to discover the full extent of the tragedies and to bring forth justice."

"We acknowledge the issues being raised by the community and the media and will examine the case at the appropriate time but we will do nothing to impede the ongoing investigation," it said.

Authorities have identified three of the 11 bodies pulled from the house. On Thursday, the Cuyahoga County coroner's office identified remains as those of Telacia Fortson, 31, whose family said they last saw her around June 1, and Tishana Culver, 31, who had not been reported as a missing person.

Authorities on Wednesday identified the remains of Tonia Carmichael. She was identified using DNA.

Arrested Saturday, two days after police discovered the first bodies inside and outside the home, Sowell, a registered sex offender, faces five counts of aggravated murder, rape, felonious assault and kidnapping, police said. He was denied bond at a hearing Wednesday.

Authorities arrived Thursday at Sowell's home to continue their search using a cadaver dog. They were expected to search the home's walls for additional evidence.

Frank Miller, Cuyahoga County coroner, told reporters that seven of the victims died from strangulation by a ligature, which can include a string, cord or wire. He said all seven still had something tied around their necks.

An eighth victim died from manual strangulation, strangulation by hands. Two other bodies were too decomposed to determine the cause of death, although Miller said he believes they were victims of "homicidal violence." Autopsy results on the 11th victim are pending.

"It's most likely strangulation in all cases," Miller said.

Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath said some of the victims could have been missing for up to five years.

"We've heard a lot of feedback on what the character may or may not have been of some of these victims," Phyllis Cleveland, City Council majority leader, told reporters. "And that really doesn't matter. No one deserves what happened to these women. No one deserves that. These were women who were mothers and grandmothers, aunts, nieces ... sisters of someone. They were loved and valued by someone, and their lives should be valued by all of us."

Many in Sowell's neighborhood wonder how authorities could have missed the signs of problems at the house, particularly the smell. Nearby Ray's Sausage Co. replaced a sewer line and grease traps, trying to rid the area of the stench, but it stayed until police found the bodies.

Six of the victims were found inside the home and five outside, including a skull, wrapped in a paper bag and stuffed into a bucket in the basement, police said. Authorities said they had no information about the smell before the bodies were found.

But some in the neighborhood disagreed. "You could smell it," said another neighborhood woman. "I came around the corner and I smell it. You could smell the dead bodies. How are you going to tell me people in the neighborhood couldn't smell that?"

Police initially went to Sowell's home last week to follow up on a rape accusation. A week earlier, neighbors reported seeing a naked woman fall from the second floor, but no charges were filed.

Neighbors called 911 after the October 20 incident. Firefighters and paramedics responded, and later notified police. The woman told officers that she was at the home and "partying," when she fell off the roof. "They were doing coke, drugs, getting high," McGrath said. A man described as her boyfriend, Sowell, told police the same story.

Carmichael was last seen on November 10, 2008. She was 52 when she disappeared from Warrensville Heights, a Cleveland suburb near Sowell's home, and her vehicle was found in Cleveland.

In the missing persons report, Carmichael's mother, Barbara, told police her daughter was addicted to crack and had previously disappeared for several days at a time. But she said she believed something had happened to her because she had not picked up two paychecks.

The news of the death was especially tragic for the victim's mother.

"As you can imagine, it's heartbreaking for the whole family, but this was her child," said Donnita Carmichael, the victim's daughter. "This was her daughter, her angel, her princess, and now we will never see her again. She's gone."

Fortson was born on March 21, 1978, and lived in the city of East Cleveland, authorities said.

Although her family said they'd last seen her several months ago, authorities said she was only reported missing on Saturday.

Sowell had been charged with a 1989 rape and pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted rape under a plea agreement, court records show. Police said he was imprisoned from 1990 to 2005. Since his release from prison he was listed as living at the Cleveland home where the bodies were found, McGrath said.

Authorities from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office checked on Sowell regularly, with the most recent check on September 22 to confirm his address, McGrath said. They found no problems, he said.

Police began to get suspicious of Sowell about a month ago, after a woman accused him of rape and assault, said Cleveland Police Lt. Thomas Stacho. Investigators obtained the warrants that set off the search after getting the victim's cooperation, he said.

During his hearing Wednesday, Sowell showed no emotion. His public defender, Kathleen Demetz, requested that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation and said that Sowell, an ex-Marine, has a heart condition and wears a pacemaker.

Sowell has told authorities he had been collecting unemployment payments since being laid off from his job two years ago. It wasn't immediately known what that job was.

Stacho has said Sowell had been making his living as a "scrapper." "He walks around and picks up scrap metal and takes it to junk yards to make a few pennies," he said.

Police said authorities in Coronado, California, also were checking to see if Sowell might be tied to a rape case there.

[Homeslice]

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[Homeslice]

Case against Ohio bodies suspect expands overseas

By THOMAS J. SHEERAN, Associated Press Writer Thomas J. Sheeran, Associated Press Writer 52 mins ago

CLEVELAND – Authorities are investigating whether a man whose home and yard harbored the remains of at least 11 people is connected to any killings in places he lived while in the military, including Japan, California and the Carolinas.

The FBI told Cleveland police that the agency will investigate any leads in the case against Anthony Sowell, 50, who served in the Marines from 1978 to 1985, said Scott Wilson, an FBI spokesman in Cleveland.

FBI behavioral specialists visited the Sowell property during the weekend and will try to develop a profile of the killings that could help determine whether investigations need to be opened or reopened elsewhere, Wilson said.

Sowell was stationed at various times at Parris Island, S.C.; Cherry Point, N.C.; Okinawa, Japan; and Camp Pendleton, Calif.

The city of East Cleveland is also reviewing three unsolved slayings in 1988 and 1989, after Sowell returned there from service in the Marines and before he went to prison for attempted rape, said Sgt. Ken Bolton, a detective for the police department in the Cleveland suburb.

Sowell has been charged in Cleveland with five counts of aggravated murder in connection with the bodies found at the home.

The FBI will review its national database of unsolved crimes for any clues to possible connections to Sowell, particularly at his military service locations, Wilson said. The first step is to get a detailed timeline of his service, Wilson said.

Police in Coronado, Calif., near Camp Pendleton, said a woman told them that she saw Sowell's mug shot on TV and was sure he had raped her in 1979.

Officers talked with the woman but were unable to confirm her story because rape investigation records from 30 years ago have been thrown out, said Jesus Ochoa, Coronado police commander.

"She seemed credible," he said.

Near Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown and his deputies are sifting through paper records to check for any unsolved killings or disappearances during the time Sowell was at the Marine base from May 20, 1978, to July 12, 1978.

Brown said he has already run Sowell's name through computerized court files and hasn't found that Sowell got so much as a traffic ticket while in the area. But the paper search is slow going.

"The computer technology then is not what it is now," Brown said.

The unsolved East Cleveland slayings of Rosalind Garner on May 27, 1988, Carmella Prater on Feb. 27, 1989, and Mary Thomas on March 28, 1989, will be checked against the autopsies of the bodies found at Sowell's home to check for similarities, Bolton said.

"It's for the family's closure," he said. "They are unsolved and they happened around the time that he was not in jail."

No connections had been made by Monday, he said.

Seven of the victims found at the Sowell home, all black women, have been identified. The Cuyahoga County coroner's office said Monday that it was working to identify the other four.

Police discovered the first two bodies and a freshly dug grave Oct. 29 at the house on the city's east side. The number grew to 11 by Tuesday.

Investigators returned Monday to the house, which has been cordoned off as a crime scene under 24-hour guard, but there was no immediate word on their activities inside.

___

Associated Press writers John Seewer in Cleveland and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

[Homeslice]

I actually did my ROTC field training at Wright Pat. I thought it was rather lame, and definitely hot in the summer.

[z06boy]

I've only been to Cleveland...Detroit and Buffalo once each and that was pretty much enough.

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