Cleveland Torso Murderer

Not to be confused with Richard Cottingham, also known as The Torso Killer and Times Square Torso Ripper.

The Cleveland Torso Murderer
An exposition dedicated to the Cleveland Torso Murderer at the Cleveland Police Museum. (from left to right: Death masks of the victims Edward Andrassy, Florence Genevieve Polillo, "The Tattooed Man", and Jane Doe II)
Other names	Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run
Details
Victims	12–20
Span of crimes	September 5, 1934 – August 16, 1938
Country	United States
State(s)	Cleveland, Ohio
Date apprehended	Never Apprehended

The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, was an unidentified serial killer who was active in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, in the 1930s. The killings were characterized by the dismemberment of twelve known victims and the disposal of their remains in the impoverished neighborhood of Kingsbury Run. Most victims came from an area east of Kingsbury Run called "The Roaring Third" or "Hobo Jungle", known for its bars, gambling dens, brothels, and vagrants. Despite an investigation of the murders, which at one time was led by famed lawman Eliot Ness, then Cleveland's Public Safety Director, the murderer was never apprehended.

Murders

Cleveland police searching for human remains, September 1936

The official number of murders attributed to the Cleveland Torso Murderer is twelve, although recent research has shown there could have been as many as twenty. The twelve known victims were killed between 1935 and 1938. Some investigators, including lead detective Peter Merylo, believe that there may have been thirteen or more victims in the Cleveland, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh areas between the 1920s and 1950s. Two strong candidates for addition to the initial list of those killed are the unknown victim nicknamed the "Lady of the Lake," found on August 13, 1997, and Robert Robertson, found on July 22, 1950.

The victims of the Torso Murderer were usually drifters whose identities were never determined, although there were a few exceptions. Victims numbers 2, 3, and 8 were identified as Edward Andrassy, Florence Polillo, and possibly Rose Wallace, respectively. Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo were both identified by their fingerprints, while Rose Wallace was tentatively identified via her dental records. The victims appeared to be lower class individuals – easy prey in Depression-era Cleveland. Many were known as "working poor", who had nowhere else to live but the ramshackle Depression-era shanty towns or "Hoovervilles" in the area known as the Cleveland Flats.

The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered the victims, occasionally severing the victim's torso in half or severing their appendages. In many cases the cause of death was the decapitation or dismemberment itself. Most of the male victims were castrated. Some victims showed evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies, which caused the skin to become red, tough, and leathery. Many of the victims were found after a considerable period of time following their deaths, occasionally in excess of a year. In an era when forensic science was largely in its infancy, these factors further complicated identification, especially since the heads were often undiscovered.

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. 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. Ness did contribute to the arrest and interrogation of one of the prime suspects, Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. In addition, Ness personally conducted raids into hobo shanties and eventually burned down Kingsbury Run, from which the killer took their victims. His reasoning for burning down the shanty towns was to catalog fingerprints to easily identify any new victims, and stated that it was also done to get possible victims out of the area in an attempt to stop the murders. Four days after the shantytown burning, on August 22, 1938, Ness launched an equally draconian operation of questionable legality, where he personally dispatched six two-man search teams on a large area of Cleveland, stretching from the Cuyahoga River to E. 55th Street to Prospect Avenue under the guise of conducting city fire inspections. This area of the city had long been supposed as the location of the Torso Murderer's "laboratory." Among the detectives dispatched and charged to look for signs of the Torso Murderer's activity in the area were Detectives Orley May, Emil Musil, Peter Merylo, and Martin Zalewski – men who had worked the case from the beginning and must have felt the frustrations of the case most strongly. While the search never turned up any new or incriminating information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the Torso Murderer, the systemic search did serve to focus renewed public attention on the inadequate and unsanitary living conditions in the downtown Cleveland area. The teams uncovered hundreds of families living in hazardous fire traps without toilets or running water. The interests of social reform did ultimately come to light even if those of law enforcement did not.

At one point in time, the killer taunted Ness by placing the remains of two victims in full view of his office in city hall. The man who Eliot Ness believed was the killer would also provoke him by sending him postcards.

Victims

Most researchers consider there to be 12 victims, although some have counted as many as 20. Evidence suggests a woman dubbed "The Lady of the Lake" could be included. There was a second victim who was also considered to be a victim of the Torso Killer in 1950 named Robert Robertson due to the fact that his head was also cut off. Only three victims were positively identified; the other ten were six John Does and four Jane Does.

Order of discovery	Victim	Date found	Location	Autopsy report	Estimated time between death and discovery	Date of murder	Probable order of murder
1	Edward Andrasy	September 23, 1935	Gully at the foot of Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run (near East 49th and Praha Avenue)	Edward Andrasy's body was found on the base of Jackass Hill where East 49th Street dead-ends into Kingsbury Run. Andrasy's head was discovered buried near the rest of his body. His body was found to be emasculated and only wearing socks. The autopsy report stated that his head was decapitated in the mid-cervical region with a fracture of the mid-cervical vertebrae. The coroner also noted that Andrasy had rope burn around his wrists. The cause of Andrasy's death was decapitation; hemorrhage and shock. Edward Andrasy's death was ruled a homicide.	Two to three days	September 1935	2
2	John Doe I	September 23, 1935	Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run (The body was found by James Wagner and Peter Kostera)	Male body was never identified. Emasculated and decapitated, head recovered. The skin was treated with a chemical agent that caused it to become reddish and leathery.	Initial estimates were seven to ten days. It was later revised to three to four weeks.	September 1935	1
3	Florence Genevieve Polillo (aliases: Sawdey, Saudey, Ghent, Martin, Gallagher, Davis, Clara Dunn, Clara Martin)	January 26/February 7, 1936	Between 2315 and 2325 East 20th Street in downtown Cleveland and 1419 Orange Avenue	Florence Polillo's body was discovered at 2315 to 2325 East 20th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Florence was found dismembered and had been wrapped with paper and packed into half-bushel baskets, however, her head was never discovered. Florence was approximately 43 years old and weighed about 150 pounds. The autopsy report states that her cause of death was a slit throat, but it was questioned if it was a homicide because the head was never discovered.	Two to four days	January 1936	3
4	John Doe II "The Tattooed Man"	June 5, 1936	Kingsbury Run	John Doe II also known as "The Tattooed Man" body was discovered in front of the Nickel Plate Railroad Police building, while his head was discovered near the East 55th Street Bridge. John Doe II had 6 tattoos hence the name "Tattooed man". The autopsy report stated that the body was drained of blood as well as his head was severed while the victim was alive.	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. However, the advanced state of decay of the body made it impossible to get any finger prints, and the head would have been decomposed and unrecognizable by that point. Searches through missing persons reports were unsuccessful. This unidentified male body was the only known West Side victim.	Two months	May 1936	4
6	John Doe IV	September 10, 1936	Creek in Kingsbury Run	Two halves of a male torso and lower legs were found. The coroner notes the body was severed between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae as well as between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae. The fire rescue squad dragged the water in the creek in Kingsbury Run in attempt to locate more parts of the body. The head was never found nor the body identified. The victim's kidneys and stomach were cut and he was emasculated as well. The Coroner declared the probable cause of death was decapitation.	Two days	September 1936	7
7	Jane Doe I	February 23, 1937	Euclid Beach on the Lake Erie shore	The unidentified female body was found at the same spot as the 1934 noncanonical victim nicknamed "The Lady of the Lake" (see below). The legs, arms, and head were never found, likely because they were less buoyant than the torso and could have gone to the bottom of the lake. (Seen as arguably the first victim) The upper extremities are disarticulated at the level of the glenoid fossa, better known as the socket of the shoulder joint. The neck and head are disarticulated between the seventh cervical and first thoracic vertebrae. Multiple hesitation knife marks at the surface of the skin are present. There was considerable water and gravel found in both pleural cavities. Though previously listed anatomical discoveries and diagnoses are made, the probable cause of death is officially undetermined via the coroner's case file.	Three to four days	February 1937	8
8	Jane Doe II Rose Wallace	June 6, 1937	Beneath the Lorain-Carnegie bridge	Only black victim (Thought to be Rose Wallace, but not proven identified). The body was decapitated and missing a rib. The head was recovered. (From the head, they found distinct dental work was done with her teeth, but were still never able to positively ID her).	One year	Summer 1936	6
9	John Doe V	July 6, 1937	Pulled out of Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland Flats	Body of this male was recovered from the Cuyahoga river in multiple pieces, some found floating in the river, and the upper torso found in a burlap sack for chicken feed. The head as well as the internal organs within the abdominal cavity and the heart were never found. The unidentified man had his abdomen gutted, and his heart ripped out.	Two to three days	July 1937	9
10	Jane Doe III	April 8, 1938	Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland Flats	On April 8 only the victim's lower leg was recovered. On May 2 a human thigh was discovered floating in the river to the east of the West 3rd Street bridge. A police search under the bridge found a burlap sack containing the victim's headless torso cut in two halves, another thigh and a left foot. The head and the rest of the body were never found. Only victim to have drugs (morphine) in her system. The amount of morphine was estimated at 0.002 gm. per 100 gm. sample.	Three to five days	April 1938	12
11	Jane Doe IV	August 16, 1938	East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump (The dead body was found 800 feet east On Shore Drive, of east 9th Street)	Decapitated female body. Head recovered. Head disarticulated at the level of the third intervertebral disc. Autopsy was performed by S.R. Gerber, M.D., Coroner of Cuyahoga County. Lead Detective Peter Merylo would later, in his memoirs, dismiss Jane Doe IV as a victim of the Torso Murderer due to evidence of embalming found on the remains. No other canonical victims' remains had shown traces of embalming.	Four to six months	February – April 1938	11
12	John Doe VI	August 16, 1938	East 9th Street (exact location is 900 feet East of E. 9th Street and 50 feet South of Lake Road) Lakeshore Dump	John Doe VI's body was discovered on the lakefront in plain view of Safety Director Eliot Ness's office with Jane Doe IV. It was previously mentioned that the head of John Doe VI was discovered in a can, however, there has been no evidence or reports on it. Similar to the other victims, the head was severed from the body and the victim today still remains unidentified. The head was disarticulated at the level of the third inter-vertebral disc. and had knife marks on the dorsum of the second and third cervical vertebrae. Extremities at all the major joints were all disarticulated as well. The coroner ruled the cause of death as undetermined though he noted it was probably a homicide.	Seven to nine months	November 1937 – January 1938	10

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. Only parts of her were found and matched with parts found at another shore in Perry. She had an abdominal scar from a likely hysterectomy which was common and made it more difficult to identify her. After she was found people began reporting see body parts in the water, including a group of fisherman who believed to have seen the head. She was found 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, or "Victim Zero". Like the Lady of the Lake, a year later John Doe I had perhaps a substance on his skin (though his skin abnormalities could possibly be due to burning) when his body was found; however, at the time the similarities were not connected. The chemical was believed to have been a substance using lime chloride. It is supposed that the killer meant to use a quickening lime to decompose the bodies quicker but mistakenly used lime that would preserve bodies instead.

The headless body of an 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 between the years 1921 and 1934 and between 1939 and 1942. In September 1940 an article in the New Castle News refers to the killer as "The Murder Swamp Killer". The almost identical similarities between the victims in New Castle to those in Cleveland, Ohio, coupled with the similarities between New Castle's Murder Swamp and Cleveland's Kingsbury Run, both of which were directly connected by a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line, were enough to convince Cleveland Detective Peter Merylo that the New Castle murders were the work of the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run". Merylo was convinced the connection was the railroad that ran twice a day between the two cities; he often rode the rails undercover looking for clues to the killer's identity.

On July 22, 1950, the body of 41-year-old Robert Robertson was found at a business at 2138 Davenport Avenue in Cleveland. Police believed he had been dead six to eight weeks and appeared to have been intentionally decapitated. His death appeared to fit the profile of other victims: He was estranged from his family, had an arrest record and a drinking problem, and was on the fringes of society. Despite widespread newspaper coverage linking the murder to the crimes in the 1930s, detectives investigating Robertson's death treated it as an isolated crime.

In 1939 the "Torso Killer" claimed to have killed a victim in Los Angeles, California. An investigation uncovered animal bones. In addition to the murders in Cleveland it is also suspected that there are connected murders before and after in Sandusky and Youngstown, as well as New Castle, PA, and Selkirk, NY. If they are connected this would raise the body count, and raise more questions about travel ability. It would also create a longer timeline of murders and victims over the span of the years. In a time where most major travel was still by railway, and Cleveland being a major hub between some of these cities, it would be much more difficult to find viable suspects.

Suspects

Authorities interrogated around 9,100 people during the investigation to find the Torso Murderer. The case became the biggest police investigation in Cleveland history: Many were investigated and 1,000 crimes were solved from the dedicated police investigations. There were only two main suspects of the Torso Murders: Frank Dolezal and Francis E. Sweeney.

On August 24, 1939, a Cleveland resident named Frank Dolezal, 52, a white male, who at one point lived with Polillo and also had connections to Andrassy and Wallace, was arrested as a suspect in Florence Polillo's murder; he later died in suspicious circumstances in the Cuyahoga County jail while in the custody of Cuyahoga County Sheriff Martin O'Donnell (1886–1941). Dolezal was posthumously exonerated of involvement in the Torso slayings.

Willie Johnson was an African American male who was once a suspect. He had been identified by a witness while he was disposing of a body. He had links to two of the victims, Rose Wilson and Flo Polillo. Willie Johnson was not officially tried for the Torso Murders; however, he was tried for a different murder and was sent to the electric chair in March 1944.

Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been in 1938. One suspected individual was Dr. Francis E. Sweeney, a white male. Born May 5, 1894, Sweeney was a veteran of World War I who was part of a medical unit that conducted amputations in the field; after the war, Sweeney became an alcoholic due to pathological anxiety and depression derived from his wartime experiences. Additionally, during his military service, Sweeney was gassed in combat, which resulted in nerve damage. Sweeney was later personally interviewed by Eliot Ness, who oversaw the official investigation into the killings in his capacity as Cleveland's Safety Director. Before the interrogation, Sweeney was detained, and he was found to be so intoxicated that he was held in a hotel room for 3 days until he sobered up. During this interrogation, Sweeney is said to have "failed to pass" two very early polygraph machine tests. Both tests were administered by polygraph expert Leonarde Keeler, who told Ness he had his man. Ness apparently felt there was little chance of obtaining a successful prosecution of the doctor, especially as he was the first cousin of one of Ness's political opponents, Congressman Martin L. Sweeney, who had hounded Ness publicly about his failure to catch the killer. After Sweeney committed himself, there were no more leads or connections that police could assign to him as a possible suspect. From his hospital confinement, Sweeney sent threatening postcards and harassed Ness and his family into the 1950s; the postcards only stopped arriving after his death. Sweeney died in a veterans' hospital in Dayton on July 9, 1964. Sweeney was a viable suspect, but the evidence was circumstantial and would have no bearing. He had an office on the street where a man named Emil Fronek said a doctor tried to drug him in 1934. Fronek's story was discounted as he could not relocate the building with police the next day. Upon finding a victim with drugs in her system and looking through buildings it was found that Sweeney did have an office next to a coroner, in the area where Fronek had suggested he had been drugged. He would practice in their morgue, a clean and easy place to kill victims and not leave a mess due to the building being used to hold the dead anyway.

In 1997, another theory postulated that there may have been no single Butcher of Kingsbury Run—that the murders could have been committed by different people. This was based on the assumption that the autopsy results were inconclusive. First, 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. Second, 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 thing known for certain was that all the murder victims were dismembered. Elliot Ness was said to have taken the killer's identity to his grave.

Peter Merylo believed that the Torso Murderer could be a transient who was riding the rails. Most of the murders occurred within the vicinity of railroad tracks. Peter Merylo went undercover as a hobo to investigate this idea. He believed that this was the reason why there were murders in other states that were similar to the Torso Murders in Cleveland.

In popular culture

The 1998–1999 comic book series Torso by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko was based on the killings.

The 2018 film The Kingsbury Run was based on a modern copycat of the murders.

The murders and the hunt for the perpetrators were covered in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America's Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology, by Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz, was published on August 4, 2020.

The Cleveland Torso Killer has been referenced in several episodes of Criminal Minds.

The murders have been covered in an episode of BuzzFeed Unsolved.

The podcast Crimes of the Centuries covered the Cleveland Torso Murders in its second season. [1]

The 2001 true crime In The Wake Of The Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders by James Jessen Badal was based on the killings.

The murders are fictionalized in Amy Harmon's 2022 The Unknown Beloved: A Novel.

The podcast Mysteriocities goes over the murders in Episode 16: The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run [2]

See also

• Black Dahlia, a Los Angeles murder case that some investigators have suggested may have been committed by the same killer.
• Orley May, detective who worked on the case
• Thames Torso Murders, another series of murders in which the torsos of victims were left behind

General:

• List of fugitives from justice who disappeared
• List of serial killers in the United States

References

Notes

^ *: The victim, found at Morgan Run, near E 55th Street, Cleveland, was estimated to be 20-23 years old, light complexion, reddish brown hair, chestnut colored eyes, stood 5 foot 10" or 11" tall, slender build, weighed 165 lb. He had six unusual tattoos on his body: a bird and band and the names "Helen and Paul" on the inner side of his left forearm, a heart and anchor in red and blue on the outer side of his right forearm, a flag and the initials "W.C.G." on the inner side of his right forearm, a butterfly on his left shoulder, the head of the comic character "Jiggs" on his left ankle, and an image of Cupid on his right ankle. 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 victim known as the "tattooed man" was never identified
^ **: The victim was believed to be a 40-year-old man. Clothing was muddied and piled up next to the head, ten feet from the nude body, in an isolated East Side woodland section. There were bloodstains on the coat and blue polo shirt, part of the clothing found with the head. Coroner A.J. Pearse said that the preliminary investigation disclosed that there was some doubt that the man was murdered. Not a single clue was found with the body other than the clothing.
^ ***: Victim was possibly Rose Wallace. Dental work was considered a close match by police and her son (who said he was 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 [June 1936], whereas Wallace had only been reported missing for 10 months [since August 1936].

Bibliography

• Badal, James Jessen (16 April 2014) [2001]. Young, Mary D.; Brooks, Christine; Saunders, Kat (eds.). In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders (2nd ed.). Kent, Ohio, United States of America: Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-1-60635-213-7. Retrieved 7 September 2021 – via Google Books.
• Badal, James Jessen (29 June 2013). Young, Mary D.; Brooks, Christine; Saunders, Kat (eds.). Hell's Wasteland: The Pennsylvania Torso Murders (1st ed.). Kent, Ohio, United States of America: Kent State University Press. ISBN 9781612776736. LCCN 2012043494. OCLC 849943655.
• Bellamy, John (1997). The maniac in the bushes and more tales of Cleveland woe: True crimes and disasters from the streets of Cleveland. Cleveland, Ohio: Gray and Company. ISBN 9781886228191. Paperback.
• Black, Lisa (2010). Trail of blood (1st ed.). New York City, New York, United States of America: William Morrow (HarperCollins Publishers). ISBN 9780061989339. LCCN 2010002953. OCLC 526803685. Retrieved 7 September 2021 – via Internet Archive.
• Brady, Ian (2001). The gates of Janus: serial killing and its analysis. Los Angeles, California: Feral House. ISBN 9780922915736. Hardback.
• Collins, Max Allan (1988). Butcher's dozen: an Eliot Ness novel. Toronto New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553261516. Paperback.
• Tucker, Kenneth (22 December 2011). Franklin, Robert; Herman, Rhonda (eds.). Eliot Ness and the Untouchables: The Historical Reality and the Film and Television Depictions (2nd ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina, United States of America: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 9780786488773. Retrieved 7 September 2021 – via Google Books.
• Jones, Richard Glyn (1990). Still Unsolved: Great True Murder Cases (1st ed.). Secaucus, New Jersey, United States of America: Carol Publishing Group. ISBN 9780818405365.
• Collins, Max Allan and A. Brad Schwartz. Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America's Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology. New York: HarperCollins, 2020. ISBN 978-1094168951
• Cooke, John (1993). Torso. London: Headline Book Publishing. ISBN 9780747241935. Paperback.
• Nickel, Steven (1989). Torso: the story of Eliot Ness and the search for a psychopathic killer. Winston-Salem, North Carolina: John F. Blair Publishers. ISBN 9780895872463. Paperback, second edition 2002.
• Rasmussen, William (2005). Corroborating evidence II: the Cleveland torso murders, the Black Dahlia murder, the zodiac killer, the phantom killer of Texarkana (1st ed.). Santa Fe, New Mexico: Sunstone Press. ISBN 9780865345362. LCCN 2006021927 – via Internet Archive. Paperback
• Ritt, William (1990). The Head Hunter of Kingsbury Run. London: Guild Publishing. ISBN 1854800302.
• Mark Wade Stone (director) (2004). The fourteenth victim – Eliot Ness and Torso Murders (Media notes). David A. Brodowski (director of photography), Marie Studniarz Rudolph (associate producer), Carl Michel (music). Cleveland, Ohio: Storytellers Media Group. ISBN 0974957534.
• Wilson, Colin (1992). Murder in the 1930s. New York: Caroll & Graf. ISBN 978-0-881-84855-7. Paperback..
• Martinelli, Patricia A. (19 January 2011) [2007]. Detweiler, M. David; Schnell, Judith (eds.). True Crime, Ohio: The State's Most Notorious Criminal Cases. True Crime (3rd ed.). Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, United States of America: Stackpole Books. ISBN 9780811744409 – via Google Books.
• Stashower, Daniel (6 September 2022). American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America's Jack the Ripper. Minotaur Books. ISBN 1250041163.

External links

• Cleveland Torso Murders
• Google Map of the Torso Murders
• The Kingsbury Run Murders
• Template:Curlie