Tanja Doss, 43, went up to suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell's third-floor bedroom for a beer and said that he seemed like a "civilized person", until, she says, he leapt up and began choking her and threatening to killer. Doss says she survived the night with him through a combination of calm, prayer, trickery and cajoling.

Doss says that she met Sowell in 2005 after his prison release, but did not know the real reason for his sentence. She said that she found him to be "a civilized person, siting outside drinking beer, a nice person." So she didn't hesitate to join him for a drink. However, things quickly turned ugly.

"And then he just clicked. I'm sitting on the corner of the bed and he just leaped up and came over and started choking me," she said.

In a state of shock, Doss said that she laid back and tried not to struggle. She said:

"He said, 'If you want to live, knock three times on the floor.' And I knocked on the floor."

With his hands still around her throat, Doss says that he then told her using a string of profanities that she could be "dead in the street" and no one would care. He then made her strip and lay on the bed. But she says that he did not attempt to rape her.

Doss said she curled up in a ball and tried to talk him down, saying things like "Why you gotta act like that?" She said that she then prayed to herself and that eventually they both fell asleep. In the morning she woke up with Sowell and pretended like nothing happened. He asked her if she wanted anything from the store. Then she picked up her phone and pretended to call her daughter, claiming her granddaughter had the flu. When Sowell went to the store, she went the opposite direction.

Doss says she didn't report the incident because "my background ain't squeaky clean." She believed that her past conviction on a drug charge made it unlikely that police would believe her story. Now, she regrets that and believes that one of her friends may be amongst the unidentified bodies found in Sowell's Imperial Avenue home.

Doss said:

"Now, I feel bad about it," she said, "because my best friend might be one of the bodies."

Days after her escape from Sowell's clutches, Doss was helping to search for her friend, Nancy Cobbs. She is now amongst the two dozen missing women whose friends and family fear became a victim of Sowell.

Only three of the eleven bodies found at Sowell's home have been identified. They are Tonia Carmichael, 52 of Warrensville Heights, Telacia Fortson, 3`, of Cleveland, and Tishana Culver, 3` of Cleveland.

It wasn't until three days after bodies began turning up at Sowell's home on Monday that Doss finally went to police with her story. Her friend Cobbs disappeared four days after her 44th birthday on April 20, but Doss says she didn't think of Sowell as she helped to search abandoned buildings and post fliers. It was only when police found bodies recently that she began to make the connection.