From the Keyboard of B.R. Bates ...

Benjamin Atkins, from Detroit Police files. Both were men of color, hunting women of color who were living at risk on the street. For both, the M.O. was strangulation. In both cases, drugs (crack) were prominent. Both killers left behind survivors who later publicly told their stories. Both seemed to have been desensitized to violence at an early age from a troubled home life. But do the similarities end there?  Whereas Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins hunted women on Detroit's historic Woodward Ave from 1990 to 1992, Anthony Sowell picked up women from the streets of Cleveland in later years, the early 2000s, though he had started his rap sheet back in 1989 with a charge of rape, for which he did a full 15-year sentence. Sowell served in the military; Atkins did not. Whereas Atkins was homeless, sleeping in abandoned buildings like the once-respected Monterey Motel where he left three of his victims, Sowell had a house, and it was his family home. Atkins left his victims not on...