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CLEVELAND Suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell seemed "civilized" on the April evening that Tanja Doss went up to his third-floor bedroom for a beer - until, she said, he began choking her.
The 43-year-old told The Associated Press on Thursday that she survived that night of terror with calm, cajoling, prayer and trickery. But when she escaped the next morning, she didn't tell police. Her past drug conviction, she said, made it unlikely they'd listen.
"Now, I feel bad," she said, "because my best friend might be one of the bodies."
Police and a cadaver dog re-entered the home Thursday where Sowell apparently lived among 10 rotting corpses and the paper-wrapped skull of another in a basement bucket. The ex-Marine, imprisoned 15 for attempted rape, is being held without bail on five aggravated murder charges.
Just days after her own escape, Doss said, she was helping to search for her friend Nancy Cobbs, now among about two dozen missing women feared to have fallen victim to Sowell.
Two slain women have been identified - Tonia Carmichael, 52, of Warrensville Heights and Telacia Fortson, 31, of Cleveland.
Doss met Sowell in 2005, after his prison release, but didn't know the real reason for his sentence. She found him "a civilized person, sitting outside drinking beer, a nice person," and joined 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. 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 try to rape her. Doss said she curled up in a ball and tried to talk him down., saying things like, "Why you gotta act like that?" Then she prayed to herself, and eventually both fell asleep. She awoke in the morning to Sowell acting as if nothing had happened, she said. When he left for the store, she went in the other direction.
Monday, three days after bodies began turning up, Doss finally went to police.
