Four years ago , the discovery of 11 decomposed bodies inside an East Cleveland home seemed like the kind of devastating , once-in-generations event that would spur change for the better . Then , this spring , came the shocking allegations of three women who told police they 'd been held captive for years , sometimes raped and beaten , by a man named Ariel Castro , in a house just a few miles away . Lightning had struck twice . But , surely , it could n't happen again . Yet it did . Last weekend , authorities found the bodies of three women , wrapped in plastic in a style reminiscent of the victims of serial killer Anthony Sowell , the man sentenced to death in the 2009 case . It does raise questions : What 's up with Cleveland ? Why so many high-profile crimes in such a short span ? Why such violence against the metro area 's women ? Cleveland neighborhood struggles with horrors . It 's the kind of question academics could spend an entire career researching and still not reach a satisfying answer . After all , the murder rate in Cleveland 's metropolitan area is n't out of line with that of other Rust Belt communities . And while more rapes are reported per capita than in many other cities , the director of a Cleveland rape center says there 's nothing particularly unusual about sexual violence there , compared with other cities . Cleveland 's police department declined a CNN request to talk about the recent crimes . But to those who study the city , some patterns do emerge : crushing poverty , dehumanizing unemployment and thousands of tumbledown vacant homes -- ideal places to rape and kill in the shadows . `` I hate to say this , but in a sense , to a large degree , we have an underclass in the city of Cleveland of those that truly are disconnected from the social fabric , from the mainstream economy and society , '' said Ronnie Dunn , an urban studies professor at Cleveland State University . `` They 're left without anything to grasp onto . '' Cleveland and poverty are no strangers . Once a hub of the nation 's industrial might -- shipping out seemingly endless streams of iron , steel , machinery and automobiles from its perch on Lake Erie -- the city that once housed nearly a million people now has barely a third of that population . In East Cleveland , where authorities found the three bodies over the weekend , more than half of families with children under the age of 5 live in poverty , according to the U.S. Census Bureau . The median household income is half that of the nation as a whole . And East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton says 2,500 vacant and abandoned homes crowd his city 's three square miles . Across Cuyahoga County , home to the entire Cleveland metro area , about 76,000 residences are vacant , according to Census figures . It 's a perfect environment for crime and social indifference to thrive , said Dunn . But that does n't explain what makes Cleveland different -- plenty of cities across the nation suffer from urban rot . Maybe it 's a history of extreme racial disparity in Cuyahoga County 's justice system , crime author James Renner says . He says such disparities drive a wedge between police and residents of impoverished areas , making them reluctant to go to authorities to report crime for fear they might be hassled by police themselves . That , he says , allowed criminals time and space to do their work and `` created the perfect killing fields for these men . '' Sowell , for instance , killed for at least two years before he was caught . Castro snatched the first of his victims a decade before he was finally arrested . And authorities have not said how long they believe East Cleveland 's Michael Madison , charged in the three most recent deaths , may have been killing . The bodies of his victims were badly decomposed , authorities said this week . One of them was found in an abandoned house . Again , similar things could be said of many big cities , where pockets of social rot provide an ideal habitat for criminals to set up shop . `` Violence knows no boundaries , '' Norton , the East Cleveland mayor , told CNN 's Martin Savidge . `` Violence occurs in California . It occurs in Iowa . It occurs in Texas . It occurs in Ohio . '' Indeed , Cleveland 's raw violent crime statistics are n't particularly out of line with those of other big Rust Belt cities . The city had 84 murders in 2012 and a violent crime rate of 1,386 for every 100,000 residents , according to Bureau of Justice Statistics figures . That 's lower than Baltimore 's crime rate and a pale shadow of Detroit 's , where 386 people were murdered in 2012 amid a crime rate one and a half times higher than Cleveland 's . But the city 's rape statistics do seem to paint a somewhat different picture . In 2012 , police took reports on 92 rapes for every 100,000 residents -- more than double the rate in Baltimore or Detroit . Only a few cities had a higher rate of reported rapes . That might suggest a particular problem with sexual violence against women in the Cleveland area , Dunn said . `` There are some things in the culture in this area where it appears that the lives of women in particular have been devalued , '' he said . He said some men seem emasculated by their economic plight , and violence sometimes results . `` They manifest their lack of control in a violent manner against women , '' Dunn said . `` It might not always result in murder , but it often does in physical abuse . '' Sondra Miller , who deals with rape victims as interim director of Cleveland 's Rape Crisis Center , does n't think violence against women is any more a problem in Cleveland than in any other community . She believes that the data show that after years of high-profile cases in Cleveland , more people are willing to report rape and sexual assault . Could it be just something in the city 's DNA ? Outrageous crimes are not a new phenomenon : In the 1930s , dismembered bodies kept turning up in the city 's Kingsbury Run area , a string of killings that to this day remains unsolved . And , as crime author Renner points out , the city was once famous for its burning river , once dubbed the `` Mistake on the Lake '' and branded with an outsized inferiority complex after decades of being the butt of national jokes . `` You live here , you grow up here , and there is some kind of weird vibe in the air here that anything 's possible , '' he said . Whatever 's going on , Miller says , residents ca n't help but wonder , `` Why here ? Why us ? '' as Cleveland 's gritty side goes on display once again in the national media . `` I do think we 're all asking how this happens in a city I love and care deeply about , '' Miller said . `` We definitely have more questions than we have answers at this point . ''
Cleveland is the site of three national headline-grabbing crimes in four years . The first was a shooting at an Ohio State University fraternity house that left 10 people dead. But others question whether there 's anything unique about Cleveland . `` Violence knows no boundaries , '' East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton says .