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| Michael Madison |
(Scroll down for video) Chilling details emerging from the latest missing-woman's cases led to soul-searching in Cleveland, Ohio.
On Monday, a registered sex offender was charged with murder and kidnapping of three women.
Their bodies were found in plastic trash bags in a run-down neighborhood. This is the third major case in four years of multiple killings to haunt the Rust Belt metropolis.
Dennis Eckert, a political and urban-policy consultant and former Cleveland-area congressman, said: "I do think we have to ask ourselves as a community the larger question: ‘Why here, and what can we do to better understand the conditions that fostered this savage behavior?’"
Civic leaders say that the general mistrust of police and the disintegration of neighborhoods make it very easy for predators to kill without raising suspicions. Ohio Gov. John Kasich said he also believes the disintegration of neighborhoods contributed to the perpetrators being able to commit the crimes undetected.
Cleveland, formerly a robust steel town, has been struggling for decades due to the decline of manufacturing since the 1970s. On Sunday, volunteers scoured forty houses, looking for any additional victims of Michael Madison, the man charged in the latest slayings.
The bodies were discovered after a foul odor was reported by a neighbor. The 35-year-old Madison has already served four years in prison for an attempted rape and a drug offense. Madison is being held on $6 million bail and he did not enter a plea.
"Maybe after all this, maybe this will bring a change to East Cleveland," Vanessa Jones said Sunday as she watched investigators search a vacant lot near where the bodies were found. "Hopefully. Pray for that," she added.