EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio -- For the second time in three months and the third time in four years, evidence of haunting crimes against women sprouted in one of Greater Cleveland’s inner-city neighborhoods. 
 
 Police here Sunday ended a weekend-long search for bodies near East 139th Street and Shaw Avenue, finding no victims besides the three discovered Friday and Saturday. 
 
 It was a scene familiar for its landscape of abandoned homes, overgrown weeds and television cameras. The world was watching, as it did in May, when three young women were rescued from a Cleveland home after being missing for nearly a decade. 
 
 Sunday’s scene, where three dead women were found wrapped in plastic bags, also brought reminders of Anthony Sowell, a serial killer from Cleveland’s recent past. 
 
 Michael Madison was arrested and is expected to be charged today in connection with the deaths. He indicated he was influenced by Sowell, captured in 2009 after killing 11 women and burying them in and around his Imperial Avenue home, said East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton. 
 
 Sowell, who is on death row, was a registered sex offender at the time of his crimes. 
 
 Madison, 35, registered as a sex offender with the Cuyahoga County sheriff after a four-year prison sentence for a 2002 attempted rape conviction. He had pleaded guilty and was given the least serious offender status, which requires yearly registration for 10 years. 
 
 Madison “said some things in questioning that led us to believe he was influenced by Sowell,” Norton told The Plain Dealer. But Police Chief Ralph Spotts disputed Norton’s account and said Madison never talked admiringly of Sowell. 
 
 “He’s not being cooperative,” Spotts said of Madison. “He’s not saying there aren’t any more bodies, but he’s not saying there are. He’s playing both sides of the fence.” 
 
 None of the women, who Norton said were black, has been identified. Spotts said he hopes at least one body is identified today. 
 
 All three were in advanced states of decomposition, said county Medical Examiner Thomas Gilson. 
 
 Authorities believe the women had been killed within the last 10 days. 
 
 The first body was found in a garage Friday morning near the corner of Hayden Avenue and East 139th Street. The other two bodies were found Saturday afternoon, one in heavy weeds about 150 feet from the garage, the other near a broken window inside the basement of a vacant home on East 139th Street. 
 
 Dozens of law enforcement officials from East Cleveland and other agencies — the FBI, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office — returned to the neighborhood Sunday. They spent the afternoon combing an area of vacant homes, overgrown lots, railroad tracks — even bushes and brush behind the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center. 
 
 Crews worked north from Strathmore Avenue to Elm Avenue and east from Hayden to Manhattan Avenue. Cues from cadaver dogs raised the possibility of more bodies. 
 
 At one point in the afternoon it appeared at least one other body had been discovered. Officers had pulled out evidence bags and raised a tarp to block onlookers behind an occupied house at 1374 E. 139th St. 
 
 But Spotts called off the search about 7 p.m. 
 
 “We officially found nothing,” he said. “We will not pick up the search again.” 
 
 Spotts also said officials do not expect to find bodies outside the search area. 
 
 “We don’t think he took anything he couldn’t carry,” Spotts said. 
 
 Madison was arrested Friday night after a two-hour standoff at his mother’s Cleveland home. Residents of the East Cleveland neighborhood police searched told reporters that Madison hung out at an apartment near the garage where the one body was discovered. He often walked the neighborhood and talked to women aggressively, they said. 
 
 Eric Wilson, 40, said he’s known Madison since their days at Euclid High School, where Wilson was four years ahead of Madison. Wilson said he saw Madison frequently in the area where the bodies were found. Several weeks ago Madison appeared in the neighborhood with scratches all over him, Wilson said. He told people he had gotten into a fight with a woman. 
 
 “He was kind of quiet,” Wilson said. “He never created a conversation. But if you talked to him too long he’d say some kind of demented things.” 
 
 When pressed for an example, Wilson said: “He hated women.” 
 
 The weekend discoveries made international news, with organizations such as CNN and the BBC devoting attention to the case. The same organizations poured into Cleveland in May when Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight escaped a Seymour Avenue home where authorities said they had been held captive for roughly a decade. 
 
 Ariel Castro, 52, faces 977 criminal counts in that case, including charges of kidnapping, rape and two counts of aggravated murder related to claims that he beat and tortured one of the women into miscarrying a child. 
 
 Prosecutors have accused Castro of kidnapping the women and raping them repeatedly in his home, where he sometimes kept them chained or tied. The first of the victims was kidnapped in 2002. 
 
 A lawyer for Castro has said some of the charges against his client cannot be refuted and that if the death penalty is not sought, a plea deal could be worked out. 
 
 Sowell was convicted in 2011 of killing Tonia Carmichael, Nancy Cobbs, Tishana Culver, Crystal Dozier, Telacia Fortson, Amy Hunter, Leshanda Long, Michelle Mason, Kim Y. Smith, Diane Turner and Janice Webb. Prosecutors said he lured his victims to his Imperial Avenue home, where he bound, strangled and discarded them. 
 
 Sowell was convicted of multiple counts of aggravated murder and a slate of other offenses for their deaths. He also was found guilty of attempting to kill three other women. A judge sentenced him to death, based on a jury's recommendation. ||||| An investigator and his dog search a wooded area Sunday, July 21, 2013 near where three bodies were recently found in East Cleveland, Ohio. Searchers rummaging through vacant houses in a neighborhood... (Associated Press) 
 
 Authorities who responded to a report of a foul odor and found the bodies of three women in a low-income U.S. neighborhood ended a daylong search without finding others. A registered sex offender was in custody. 
 
 East Cleveland Police Chief Ralph Spotts had warned searchers to be prepared to find one or two more victims Sunday, but he declined to elaborate. 
 
 The discovery was the Cleveland area's latest high-profile case of missing women. Earlier this year, three women in an unrelated case were found and freed after being held captive in a home for years. 
 
 Spotts identified the suspect as 35-year-old Michael Madison and said he was expected to be formally charged Monday. 
 
 Mayor Gary Norton said the suspect indicated he might have been influenced by Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell, who was convicted in 2011 of murdering 11 women and sentenced to death. Sowell was arrested after a woman escaped from his house and said she had been raped. Police found the 11 women's mostly nude bodies in garbage bags and plastic sheets throughout the home. 
 
 In this latest case, one body was found Friday in a garage. Two others were found Saturday _ one in a backyard and the other in the basement of a vacant house. The three female bodies, all wrapped in plastic bags, were found about 200 yards (182 meters) apart, and authorities believed the victims were killed in the last six to 10 days. 
 
 Spotts said the suspect's comments hadn't provided clarity on whether more bodies might be found. 
 
 "He really hasn't stated that there's any more, but he hasn't said anything that would make us think that there's not," Spotts said. 
 
 Sunday's search included 40 abandoned houses. Authorities want to be thorough, the mayor said. 
 
 "Hopefully, we pray to God, this is it," he said. 
 
 The bodies were each in the fetal position, wrapped in several layers of trash bags, Norton said. 
 
 Cuyahoga County medical examiner Dr. Thomas P. Gilson said the bodies were in advanced stages of decomposition and that it would take several days to identify them and how they died. 
 
 It wasn't immediately clear whether Madison had an attorney. No one commented at the address he registered. 
 
 Madison was classified as a sex offender in 2002 when he was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted rape, according to Cuyahoga County court records. He had previous convictions in 2000 and 2001 for drug-related charges. 
 
 One neighbor, Nathenia Crosby, said she was familiar with the suspect and had seen him walking through the neighborhood. She said she had told him to stop chatting with her 19-year-old daughter. 
 
 "When I found out how old he was, I said, `You need to move on, she's too young,'" Crosby said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Peggy Harris in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
– Police tell WKYC that Michael Madison, the registered sex offender suspected in the murders of three women in Cleveland, has confessed to one of the killings. He was charged with three counts of aggravated murder today, CBS News reports, and his bail has been set at $6 million. Meanwhile, one of the victims has been identified as Angela Deskins, 38. Authorities are asking for anyone with information on possible IDs of the other two women to call 1-800-CALL-FBI. Autopsies on the badly decomposed bodies are complete, but cause of death has not yet been determined. Volunteer searchers were told yesterday to expect more remains to be found, but the search was called off—for now, at least—last night. All three victims are believed to have been murdered in the past six to 10 days, the AP reports. The mayor says detectives, who are still questioning Madison, have "lots of reasons" to believe there are more victims. A neighbor who saw Madison frequently says the man threatened, about a month ago, to attack women in a similar fashion as Anthony Sowell, who was convicted of murdering 11 women whose bodies were found in his Cleveland home in 2009. Madison also indicated to police that Sowell may have influenced him.