Sex offender had 11 rotting corpses at home

An American sex offender charged with killing 11 women and hiding their remains around his home has been convicted of aggravated murder and could face the death penalty.

Anthony Sowell, 51, was convicted on Friday local time in the killing of Tonia Carmichael, who disappeared in November 2008 and was strangled with an electrical charger for a mobile phone or camera.

The jury deliberated for 15 hours before announcing the verdict on one of the first of the 83 counts against Sowell. The verdicts to dozens of other counts were still being read on Friday afternoon.

As soon as the first guilty count was read, Sowell turned around and was handcuffed by a court deputy. Carmichael's mother and sister hugged each other and cried.

The women began disappearing in 2007. Prosecutors say Sowell lured vulnerable women to his home with the promise of alcohol or drugs.

Police discovered the first two bodies and a freshly dug grave in late 2009 after officers went to investigate a woman's report that she had been raped there.

Many of the women found in Sowell's home had been missing for weeks or months and some had criminal records.

They were disposed of in garbage bags and plastic sheets, then dumped in various parts of the house and yard.

Most were strangled with household objects and had traces of cocaine or depressants in their systems. One woman's skull was found in a bucket in the basement.

All of the victims were Afro-American.

During the trial, several women gave gruelling testimony of alleged attacks by Sowell, telling the court how they had escaped.

One woman, who said she was brutally raped by Sowell, testified that she had seen a headless body in his home.

Prosecutors also showed an eight-hour taped interrogation of Sowell after he was first arrested.

During the interrogation, Sowell let out a cry of anguish and buried his head in his hands as two detectives pressed him to explain how the bodies ended up in his house in a drug-ridden neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland.

"It had to be me," Sowell said in the video, rubbing his head with his hands. "I can't describe nobody. I cannot do it. I don't know. But I'm trying to."

In his closing statement, defence lawyer John Parker questioned the credibility of several witnesses, noting that some had struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues, and criticised police officers for failing to properly investigate when the victims' families tried to report them missing.

He asked jurors whether the prosecution proved who actually killed the women - at one point suggesting more than one person may have dragged the bodies around the house.

The defence declined to call any witnesses. The strategy left unanswered a central question in the case: how could anyone live in a house with rotting bodies?

When the bodies were found, police concluded that a nearby sausage shop wasn't the source of a lingering stench as many neighbours believed. The family-owned business had spent $US20,000 ($18,500) on plumbing fixtures, sewer lines and grease traps to get rid of the odour.

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.