Killer Comparisons: Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins and Anthony Sowell

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 only at the motel but in whatever abandoned building was convenient, while Sowell took his victims home and left them there, sometimes burying them in mounds of dirt inside the house. His home was dubbed a house of horrors.

Anthony Sowell's mugshot from
the Ohio Department of Corrections. 

But let's delve beneath the surface. Sowell was said to have a domineering and abusive mother. Since he targeted black females, you could make the case that he was killing his mother over and over again, as has been said of Atkins by several people involved in the case. In the case of Sowell, his mother was allegedly physically violent against him. For Atkins, it was more a matter of neglect -- she was addicted to heroin and turning tricks, and her two young sons were placed in foster care at an early age, though little Ben longed to be reunited with her.

Though the true mystery remains of why they chose to take human life, both of these killers experienced similar things that we have to believe influenced their dark paths.

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For more on the Anthony Sowell case, see the 2024 "Very Scary People" episode, hosted by Donnie Wahlburg. For a deep-dive of the Atkins case, see "The Crack City Strangler: The Homides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins."

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Murders in the Motor City Series

(And yes, that photo on the book's cover is actually a photo of Atkins; see this blog post on the confusion over his photos.)