Cleveland Torso Murderer

Cleveland Torso Murderer
Map of Cleveland, Ohio
Background information
Also known as	Cleveland Torso Murderer, Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run
Killings
Number of victims:	12 to 15
Country	USA
State(s)	Cleveland, Ohio

The Cleveland Torso Murderer (also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run) was an unidentified serial killer who killed and dismembered at least 12 victims in the Cleveland, Ohio area in the 1930s.

Murders

The official number of murders credited to the Cleveland Torso Murderer is 12, although recent research has shown there may have been more. The 12 victims were killed between 1935 and 1938, but some, including lead Cleveland Detective Peter Merylo, believe that there may have been as many or more than 40 victims in the Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown, Ohio area between the 1920s and 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 were several exceptions. 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 class of society — easy prey in Depression-era Cleveland. Many were known as "working poor" who had nowhere else to live but the ramshackle shanty towns in the area known as 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 decapitation itself. Most of the male victims were castrated, and some victims showed evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies. Many of the victims were found after a considerable period of time following their deaths, sometimes a year or more. This made identification nearly impossible, especially since the heads were often not found.

During the time of the "official" murders, Eliot Ness held the position of Public Safety Director of Cleveland; a position with authority over the police department and ancillary services, including the fire department.^[1] While Ness had little to do with the investigation, his posthumous reputation as leader of The Untouchables has made him an irresistible character in modern "torso murder" lore.

Victims

Most researchers consider there to be 12 definite victims, although new evidence includes a woman dubbed "The Lady of the Lake". Only two victims were positively identified; the other ten were divided by six John Does and four Jane Does.

Order of discovery	Victim	Date found	Location	Autopsy report	Estimated time of death	Date of murder	Probable order of murder
1	John Doe I	September 23, 1935	Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run (near East 49th and Praha Avenue)	Male body was never identified. Decapitated but head recovered.	Initial estimates were seven to ten days. It was later revised to three to four weeks.	August/September 1935	1
2	Edward W. Andrassy	September 23, 1935	Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run	Andrassy was found lying about 30 feet (9.1 m) from John Doe I. He had been decapitated, his head was recovered.	Two to three days	September 1935	2
3	Florence Genevieve Polillo (alias Martin)	January 26, 1936	Between 2315 and 2325 East 20th Street in downtown Cleveland.	Her body had been chopped up. Her head was never found.	Two to four days	January 1936	3
4	John Doe II	June 5, 1936	Kingsbury Run	The victim was decapitated while alive. His head was recovered. †	Two days	June 1936	5
5	John Doe III	July 22, 1936	Big Creek area of Brooklyn, west of Cleveland	The victim was dismembered while still alive. His head was recovered. This unidentified male body was the only known West Side victim.	Two months	May 1936	4
6	John Doe IV	September 10, 1936	Kingsbury Run	Only half the torso was found, nothing remained below the hips. The head was never found or the body identified.	Two days	September 1936	7
7	Jane Doe V	February 23, 1937	Euclid Beach on the Lake Erie shore	The unidentified female body was found at the same spot as the 1934 non-canonical victim, nicknamed "The Lady of the Lake" (see below). The head was never found.	Three to four days	February 1937	8
8	Jane Doe VI	June 6, 1937	Beneath the Lorain-Carnegie bridge	Only black victim. The body was decapitated and missing a rib. The head was recovered. ‡	One year	June 1936	6
9	John Doe VII	July 6, 1937	Pulled out of Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland Flats	Body of this male was recovered but the head was never found.	Two to three days	July 1937	9
10	Jane Doe VIII	April 8, 1938	Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland Flats	Only the lower leg was recovered. Both the head and the rest of the body were never found. Only victim to have drugs in her system.	Three to five days	April, 1938	12
11	Jane Doe IX	August 16, 1938	East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump	Decapitated female body. Head recovered.	Four to six months	February to April 1938	11
12	John Doe X	August 16, 1938	East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump	Discovered at the same time as Jane Doe IX. Male decapitated body. Head was found in a can. Victim never identified.	Seven to nine months	November 1937 – January 1938	10

^ †: The victim had six unusual tattoos on his body. One included the names "Helen and Paul" and another had 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.
^ ‡: Victim was possibly "Rose Wallace". Dental work was considered a close match by police and her son (who felt certain that the victim was his mother). Exact identification could not be achieved because the dentist who carried out the work had died years before. Doubts remained because the body was estimated to have been dead for a year whereas Wallace had only been missing for 10 months.

Possible victims

Several non-canonical 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 Murderer's 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. Dismembered bodies were also found in the swamps near New Castle, Pennsylvania during the years 1921 to 1934 and 1939 to 1942.

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, Cleveland resident Frank Dolezal, who was arrested as a suspect in Florence Polillo's murder, died under suspicious circumstances in the Cuyahoga County jail. After his death it was discovered that he had suffered six broken ribs - injuries his friends say he did not have when arrested by 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 his confession, and recanted two others as well, saying he had been beaten until he confessed.

Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been in 1938. One very strongly suspected individual was Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. Significantly, Sweeney worked during World War I in a medical unit that conducted amputations in the field. Sweeney was later personally interviewed by Eliot 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. Both tests were administered by polygraph expert Leonard Keeler, who told Ness he had his man. Nevertheless, Ness apparently felt 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 (d.1960) who had hounded Ness publicly about his failure to catch the killer. (in fact Congressman Sweeney was a political ally of and was related by marriage to Sheriff O'Donnell (d.1940), and an opponent of Republican Cleveland mayor Harold Burton who had appointed Ness). After Dr. Sweeney committed himself, there were no more leads or connections that police could assign to him as a possible suspect. The killings apparently stopped after Sweeney voluntarily entered institutionalized care shortly after the last official murders were discovered in 1938. From his hospital confinement, Sweeney would mock and harass Ness and his family with threatening postcards into the 1950s.^{[citation needed]} He died in a veterans' hospital at Dayton in 1964.

In 1997, another theory speculated that there may have been no single "Butcher of Kingsbury Run" because the murders could have been committed by different people. This was based on the assumption that the autopsy results were inconclusive. Firstly Cuyahoga County Coroner Arthur J. Pearce may have been inconsistent in his analysis as to whether the cuts on the bodies were "expert" or slapdash. Secondly his successor, Samuel Gerber, who began to enjoy press attention from his involvement in such cases as the Sam Sheppard murder trial, garnered a reputation for sensational theories. Therefore the only things known for certain was that all the murder victims were dismembered.^[2]

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 inspired by the torso murder legend.

The "Butcher of Kingsbury Run" was featured in the episode "Zoe's Reprise" 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.^[3]

Unsolved Mysteries once featured a segment about the Torso Killer, linking the slayings to that of the Black Dahlia. The show's original host, Robert Stack, had portrayed Eliot Ness on The Untouchables.

The Cleveland Torso Murders were the impetus for John Peyton Cooke's 1993 novel Torsos (aka Torso in the United Kingdom).

The graphic novel, also called Torso, created by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko also focuses on the case.

William Bernhardt's 2009 novel 'Nemesis - The Final Case Of Eliot Ness' is a fictional account of the Torso murders investigation. It features Ness recounting details of the case to his biographer, shortly before his death.

The 2005 video game Shadow Hearts: From the New World features the character Killer, a serial killer evading the police during the 1930s. Interestingly, the game also features Elliot Ness, who headed the case at the time.

In the book "Haunted" by fantasy author Kelley Armstrong, the "Butcher of Kingsbury Run" was alluded to be female, given that more than one of the male victims had been castrated, thereby emasculating them.

References

• Max Allan Collins; Butcher's Dozen; Bantam Books; ISBN 9780553261516 (paperback, 1988)
• Ian Brady; The gates of Janus (Chapter 14); Feral House; ISBN 9780922915736 (Hardback, 2001)
• 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 Torso Murders; Storytellers Media Group; ISBN 0-9749575-3-4 (DVD, 2003–2006)
• 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)
• John Peyton Cooke; Torsos; Mysterious Press; ISBN 0-89296-522-3 (hardback, 1993)
• Lisa Black; Trail of Blood; HarperCollins Publishers; ISBN 9780061989339 (hardback 2010)
• William T. Rasmussen; Corroborating Evidence II: The Cleveland Torso Murders; Sunstone Press, Publisher; ISBN 0-86534-536-8 (paperback,2005)

Footnotes

1. ^ Heimel, Paul (1997) (paperback). Eliot Ness: The Real Story. Coudersport, PA: Knox Books. ISBN 0-9655824-0-X. 
2. ^ Bellamy, John (1997) (paperback). The Maniac In The Bushes. Cleveland, OH: Gray & Co.. ISBN 1886228191. 
3. ^ IMDB: Criminal Minds, Zoe's Reprise, Season 4, Episode 15.

External links

• Cleveland Police Historical Society and Museum
• The Kingsbury Run Murders
• Torso Killer at the Open Directory Project
• Encyclopedia of Cleveland History