In the early summer of 2013, the family of Angela H. Deskins, a 38-year-old Female from the Cleveland, Ohio, area, grew increasingly worried. They had last seen her around June, and as the days turned into weeks, their frantic search for the woman they loved met with silence. Their worst fears were realized in July when a horrifying discovery in East Cleveland brought them the news they had been dreading.
Angela, their beloved daughter, sister, and aunt, was gone.
Her family later released a statement describing her as a "beautiful, sweet, kind-hearted woman" who was raised in Novelty, Ohio. "Everyone who knew her loved her," the statement read. "She was a wonderful daughter, sister and aunt who truly cared about her family and friends. She is loved so much and will be missed by everyone who knew her." Her obituary noted she was survived by her loving parents and several siblings, a testament to the large family that cherished her.
The chain of events that revealed Angela's fate began on July 19, 2013. Police in East Cleveland, responding to a report of a foul odor, found a woman's decomposing body wrapped in plastic bags inside a garage leased by a local resident named Michael Madison. The next day, the search of the surrounding area uncovered two more bodies, similarly wrapped and discarded. One was in a weedy backyard, and the other, Angela's, was found in the basement of a vacant house just yards away. The discovery sent a wave of fear through a community still haunted by the memory of another serial killer, Anthony Sowell.
The investigation quickly centered on Michael Madison, a 35-year-old registered sex offender who lived in an apartment nearby. After a brief standoff at his mother's house, Madison was taken into custody. During interrogations, he admitted to killing two of the women but claimed he could not remember killing the third. He would later be identified as "The East Cleveland Strangler," a serial killer who murdered at least three women over a nine-month period. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner determined that Angela Deskins had been killed by strangulation.
Michael Madison was indicted on a 14-count indictment that included aggravated murder, kidnapping, rape, and gross abuse of a corpse for the deaths of Angela Deskins, Shetisha Sheeley, 28, and Shirellda Terry, 18. His trial began in April 2016. Madison's defense team did not dispute that he had killed the women but argued the murders were not premeditated in an attempt to spare him the death penalty. The jury, however, deliberated for less than a day before finding him guilty on all counts on May 5, 2016.
On June 2, 2016, Madison was sentenced to death. During the victim impact statements, as the father of 18-year-old victim Shirellda Terry spoke, Madison smirked, prompting the grieving father to lunge at him in the courtroom before being restrained by deputies. The judge, in her sentencing, noted that the horrific nature of the crimes far outweighed any mitigating factors from Madison's abusive childhood. The Ohio Supreme Court later unanimously upheld the death sentence. Though an execution date was set for May 15, 2024, it has been stayed pending the exhaustion of all his appeals.
