CLEVELAND -- With more than a month and a half still left in the year, the number of Cleveland homicides in 2009 is already close to the count for all of last year.

The total for this year includes the 11 people whose remains have been found at the home of a suspected serial killer. It's possible some of those found dead at Anthony Sowell's house may have been killed in earlier years, but the coroner's office will count them as 2009 deaths, because this was the year it pronounced them dead.

The 11 are among at least 99 homicides in Cleveland so far in 2009. Police reported 102 homicides for 2008.

This year's killings remain far below the numbers seen in previous decades. Cleveland saw 333 homicides in 1972.