The
Cleveland Torso Murderer (also known as the
Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run) was an
unidentified serial killer active in
the Cleveland,
Ohio
area in the 1930s.
Murders
The
official toll of the murderer was 12 (latest researchers include
the "Lady of the Lake," listed below, for a total of 13 victims),
killed between 1935 and 1938, but some (including lead Cleveland
Detective Peter Merylo) believe that there may have been as many as
40+ victims in the Cleveland, Pittsburgh
, and Youngstown, Ohio
, area between the 1920s and the 1950s. Two
strong candidates for addition to the list of those killed are the
unknown victim nicknamed the
Lady of the Lake, found on
September 5, 1934, and Robert Robertson, found on July 22,
1950.
The victims were usually drifters whose identities were never
determined, although there are several exceptions to this (victims
number 2, 3, and 8 were identified as Edward Andrassy, Flo Polillo,
and possibly Rose Wallace, respectively). Invariably, all the
victims, male and female, appeared to be from the lower classes of
society — easy prey in
Depression-era Cleveland. Many were known
as "working poor" that had nowhere else to live but the ramshackle
shanty towns in the Cleveland
Flats.
The Torso Murderer always
beheaded and
often
dismembered his victims,
sometimes also cutting the torso in half; in many cases the cause
of death was the act of decapitation itself. Most of the male
victims were
castrated, and some victims
showed evidence of
chemical treatment of
their bodies. Many of the victims were found a considerable period
after their deaths, sometimes a year or more, which made
identification nearly impossible, especially since the heads were
often not found.
Eliot Ness was the Public Safety Director
of Cleveland during the period of the "official"
murders. Ness was unsuccessful in the investigation,
and despite his famous history of the capture of
Al Capone, Ness's future as a detective ended
shortly and it has been said that Eliot Ness was the Mad Butcher's
"13th" victim. Although Ness failed to apprehend the killer, new
evidence suggests that he was actually successful in chasing the
killer from Cleveland.
Victims
Most researchers consider there to be 12 definite victims; new
evidence includes "The Lady of the Lake." Only two were ever
identified, the other 10 were divided by six
John Does and four
Jane
Does.
John Doe, was an unidentified male found in the
Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run (near East 49th and Praha
Avenue) on September 23, 1935. Early estimates were that the first
victims had been dead seven to ten days when found. Later estimates
were that the man had been dead from three to four weeks when
found.
Edward W. Andrassy, was found in
the Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run on September 23, 1935, about
30 feet from victim number one. It was estimated that Andrassy had
been dead two to three days when found.
Florence Genevieve Polillo, also known by numerous
aliases, was found behind a business at 2315 E. 20th Street in
downtown Cleveland on January 26, 1936. It was estimated that she
had been dead two to four days when found.
John Doe II, was an unidentified male, also
famously known as the "
tattooed man", found
in Kingsbury Run on June 5, 1936. It was estimated that he had been
dead two days when found. The victim possessed six unusual
tattoos, one including the names "Helen and Paul" and
another displaying the initials "W.C.G."; his undershorts bore a
laundry mark indicating the owner's initials were J.D. Despite
morgue and
death
mask inspections by thousands of Cleveland citizens in the
summer of 1936 at the
Great Lakes
Exposition, the "tattooed man" was never identified.
Image:121UMOH.jpg|Sketch of victim 4 created by
Wesley Neville.
Case file can be viewed
hereImage:121UMOH-2.jpg|Image of victim's death
mask.Image:121UMOH-3.JPG|Image of the victim's head taken by the
Cuyahoga County Coroners Office.
John Doe III, was an unidentified male, found in
the sparsely populated Big Creek area of Brooklyn, west of
Cleveland on July 22, 1936. It was estimated that he had been dead
two months when found. This was the only known West Side
victim.
John Doe IV, was an unidentified male, found in
Kingsbury Run on September 10, 1936. It was estimated that he had
been dead two days when found.
Jane Doe I, was an
unidentified female, found near Euclid
Beach on the Lake
Erie
shore on February 23, 1937. It was estimated
that she had been dead three to four days when found. Her body was
found at the same spot as the 1934 noncanonical victim, nicknamed
"The Lady of the Lake" (see below).
Jane Doe II, possibly
Rose
Wallace, was found beneath the Lorain-Carnegie bridge on
June 6, 1937. It was estimated that she had been dead one year when
found, which casts some doubt that the victim was Wallace, who was
known to have disappeared only 10 months earlier. Dental work was
considered a close match both by police experts and by her son, who
felt certain that the victim was his mother. A definitive
identification was not possible, since the dentist who performed
the work had died years before.
John Doe V, was an unidentified male, found in
Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland Flats on July 6, 1937. It was
estimated that he had been dead two to three days when found.
Jane Doe III, was an unidentified female, found in
Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland Flats on April 8, 1938. It was
estimated that she had been dead three to five days when
found.
Jane Doe IV, was an unidentified female, found at
the East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump on August 16, 1938. It was
estimated that she had been dead four to six months when
found.
John Doe VI, was an unidentified male, found at
the East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump on August 16, 1938. It was
estimated that he had been dead seven to nine months when
found.
Possible victims
Several noncanonical victims are commonly discussed in connection
with the Torso Murderer. The first was nicknamed the
Lady
of the Lake and was found near Euclid Beach on the Lake
Erie shore on September 5, 1934, at virtually the same spot as
canonical victim number 7. Some researchers of the Torso Murderers'
victims count the "Lady of the Lake" as victim number 1, as well as
"Victim Zero".
A
headless, unidentified male was found in a boxcar in New Castle, Pennsylvania
, on July 1, 1936. Three headless victims
were found in boxcars near McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania
, on May 3, 1940. All bore similar injuries
to those inflicted by the Cleveland killer. Others note that
headless bodies were occasionally found in the swamps in this area
of Pennsylvania as early as the 1920s.
Robert Robertson was found at a business at 2138
Davenport Avenue in Cleveland on July 22, 1950. He had been dead
six to eight weeks when found and appeared to have been
intentionally
decapitated.
Suspects
Two suspects are most commonly associated with the Torso murders,
although there are numerous others occasionally mentioned.
On August
24, 1939, Frank Dolezal, arrested as a suspect in
Florence Polillo's murder, died under suspicious circumstances in
the Cuyahoga
County
Jail. He was discovered to have six broken
ribs, injuries his friends say he did not have when arrested by
County Sheriff Martin L. O'Donnell some six weeks prior. Most
researchers believe that there exists no evidence that Dolezal was
involved in the murders, although at one time he did admit killing
Flo Polillo in
self-defense. Before his
death, he recanted that
confession, and
recanted two others as well, saying he had been beaten until he
confessed. Recently unearthed evidence points away from
suicide and toward complicity by the sheriff and his
deputies in Dolezal's death; a book and documentary about the case,
titled
Murder Hath No Tongue and
Broken Rosary,
are slated for 2010 releases.
Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been
in 1938. One very strongly suspected individual was
Dr.
Francis E. Sweeney, who voluntarily
entered institutionalized care shortly after the last official
murders were discovered in 1938 and remained in such in various
hospitals until his death in 1965. Significantly, Sweeney worked
during
World War I in a medical unit
that conducted amputations on the field of battle. Sweeney was
later personally interviewed by Ness, who oversaw the official
investigation into the killings in his capacity as Cleveland's
Safety Director. During this
interrogation, Sweeney, whom Ness code-named
"Gaylord Sundheim," is said to have "failed to pass" two very early
polygraph machine tests
administered by polygraph expert Leonard Keeler, who told Ness he
had his man. Nevertheless, Ness apparently felt that there was very
little chance of obtaining a successful prosecution of the doctor,
especially as he was the first cousin of one of Ness' political
opponents,
Congressman Martin L. Sweeney. Sweeney (d.1960), a political
ally of and related by marriage to Sheriff O'Donnell {d.1941}, and
an opponent of Republican Cleveland mayor
Harold Burton, had hounded Ness publicly about
his failure to catch the Butcher. After Sweeney committed himself,
there were no more leads or connections that police could make to
him as a possible suspect. The killings apparently stopped after
Sweeney committed himself.
He died in a Dayton
veteran's hospital in 1964,
though he did continue to mock and harass Ness and his family with
threatening postcards well into the 1950s.
In popular culture
Butcher's Dozen, the second of
Max Allan Collins's series of novels
fictionalizing Ness's activities as Cleveland's Safety Director, is
a carefully researched fictionalization of the Torso
investigation.
The "Butcher of Kingsbury Run" was featured in an episode of the
CBS TV series
Criminal Minds, featuring a copy-cat serial
killer in the Cleveland area. The episode originally aired
Wednesday, February 18, 2009.
The Cleveland Torso Murders were the impetus for John Peyton
Cooke's 1993 novel
Torso.
The graphic novel, also called
Torso, created by writer
Brian Michael Bendis and artist
Marc Andreyko also focuses on the
case.
References
- Max Allan Collins; Butcher's Dozen; Bantam Books; ISBN
9780553261516 (paperback, 1988)
- James Jessen Badal; In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's
Torso Murders; The Kent State University Press; ISBN
0-87338-689-2 (paperback, 2001)
- Mark Wade Stone; The Fourteenth Victim — Eliot Ness
and the Torso Murders; Storytellers Media Group, LTD; ISBN
0-9749575-3-4 (DVD video, 2006)
- John Stark Bellamy II; The Maniac in the Bushes and More
Tales of Cleveland Woe; Gray and Company, Publishers; ISBN
1-886228-19-1 (paperback, 1997)
- Steven Nickel; Torso: Eliot Ness and the Search for a
Psychopathic Killer; John F Blair Publishers; ISBN
0-89587-246-3 (paperback, 2001)
- Rasmussen, William T.; CORROBORATING EVIDENCE II, published by
Sunstone Press (2006, softcover) Connects the Cleveland Torso
Murders to the murder of the Black Dahlia,ISBN 0-86534-536-8
- Bendis, Brian Michael &
Andreyko, Marc; Torso: a true crime
graphic novel; Image Comics, publishers; ISBN
1-58240-174-8 (Graphic novel format, 2003)
- John Peyton Cook; Torsos; Mysterious Press; IBSN
0-89296-522-3 (hardback, 1993)
External links
Footnotes
- Storytellers Media Group, Ltd ~ The Fourteenth
Victim
- IMDB: Criminal Minds, Zoe's Reprise, Season 4, Episode
15.
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
