CLEVELAND:Police are preparing to dismantle the home of the alleged murderer Anthony Sowell, where the bodies of 11 women have been found in various stages of decomposition. Detectives have finished digging in the back yard of his house after uncovering the graves of five victims. A further six were found inside the house, including the skull of one woman that was found wrapped in paper in a bucket in the basement. Police believe there may be more bodies hidden behind walls. They are also set to extend the search to other houses within half a mile of Sowell’s Imperial Avenue home, in a poor area of the city. The house was yesterday cordoned off with tape and a pair of police cars stood guard on either side of the block. In the back yard a blue tarpaulin had been erected by police over the area of digging. All the victims were African-American women. At least seven were strangled and had some form of cord tied around their necks. An eighth was strangled by hand. The widening investigation into Sowell, 50, a registered sex offender, came as details of the first victim to be identified were released. DNA testing confirmed her as Tonia Carmichael, 53, from another Cleveland suburb, Warrensville Heights. She was strangled and buried in the garden. Carmichael disappeared on 10 November last year and her car was found a mile from Sowell’s house. The last person who reported seeing her was a mechanic who said she had told him she was running a few errands and then planned on having “some fun”. She had a crack cocaine addiction and would go missing for days at a time, but her family became worried after she failed to return for several weeks and pay cheques from her work at a job centre went uncashed. Relatives said they were angered by the way her disappearance had been handled. Carmichael’s daughter, Markiesha Carmichael-Jacobs, said that after the family reported her missing police dismissed their anxieties. “They told us to go home and as soon as the drugs are gone, she’ll show up,” she said. The stench that hangs over Sowell’s house had long been a source of complaint for neighbours, though it had been blamed on a sausage factory next door. A cousin of Carmichael’s, Debbie, today went to the scene of the police search. Standing opposite Sowell’s house, she said police failed to give her the attention she deserved. “Whatever my cousin was into, she was still a human being and she took care of her children. The police did not do their job.” Cleveland authorities are facing questions about how the activities of a registered sex offender, who was imprisoned for 15 years for attempted rape until his release in 2005, could have gone uninvestigated for so long. Sowell has been charged with five sample counts of aggravated murder for the 11 victims, as well as with kidnapping, assault and rape in another case. A picture of how he may have lured women into his house is beginning to emerge from the accounts of women who managed to escape, and from local residents. In at least two incidents, police records show, he used drugs or beer to entice individuals into his home.