Mike Boudet

The detectives were running out of patience and now they didn't just want to know why he killed.

They wanted to know how many more dead women would be found and where they were located.

When they found the first body in East Cleveland in 2013, it was a trash bag in a garage.

The neighbors had smelled something.

By the time the police arrived, the case was already strange.

The suspect, Michael Madison, was calm.

He denied everything and admitted only enough to seem helpful.

One woman, he said, was dead, but he hadn't killed her.

He found her in a bag.

He just moved her.

That's all he claimed.

But the evidence was there.

They still didn't have a clear motive, though, only a suspect who talked in metaphors and acted like a victim all the time.

This victim was also a father of two and a stepfather to one quiet teenager named Jalen, who years later would erupt into his own kind of violence in the same house on Chickasaw Avenue.

The violence from both men was directed only at women.

The women who raised Michael and her grandson Jalen.

And three other innocent women who just happened to cross the wrong path.

In this tiny blue interrogation room that resembled a prison cell, detectives and Michael sat for hours on end, eating cheeseburgers from McDonald's as the questions came one after another.

While the barred window raised, Michael smoked blackened mild cigars.

The smoke mixing with the scent of sweat and making its way out the window to the sweltering streets of Cleveland.