Cleveland Torso Murderer

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.[3] The twelve known victims were killed between 1935 and 1938.[4] Some investigators, including lead Cleveland 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 September 5, 1934; and Robert Robertson, found on July 22, 1950.[5]

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.[6] 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.[7]

The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered his or her victims, occasionally severing the victim's torso in half or severing their appendages.[8] 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. 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 infancy, these factors further complicated identification, especially since the heads were often undiscovered.[9]

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.[10] 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, he personally conducted raids into hobo shanties and eventually burned down the Kingsbury Run, from which the killer took his or her victims.[11] 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.[1][11][12]

Most researchers consider there to be twelve victims. New evidence suggests a woman dubbed "The Lady of the Lake" could be included. Only two 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 Andrassy	September 23, 1935	Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run (near East 49th and Praha Avenue)	Andrassy was found lying about 30 feet (9.1 m) from John Doe I. He had been decapitated and emasculated. His head was recovered.	Two to three days	September 1935	2
2	John Doe I	September 23, 1935	Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run	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 (alias Martin)	January 26/February 7, 1936	Between 2315 and 2325 East 20th Street in downtown Cleveland and 1419 Orange Avenue	Her body had been dismembered, the head was recovered.	Two to four days	January 1936	3
4	John Doe II "The Tattooed Man"	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 nor the body identified.	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 head was never found.	Three to four days	February 1937	8
8	Jane Doe II	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 V	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 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 in her system.[13]	Three to five days	April 1938	12
11	Jane Doe IV	August 16, 1938	East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump	Decapitated female body. Head recovered.	Four to six months	February – April 1938	11
12	John Doe VI	August 16, 1938	East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump	Discovered at the same time as Jane Doe IV. Male decapitated body. Head was found in a can. Victim never identified.	Seven to nine months	November 1937 – January 1938	10

^ *: 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[14]
^ **: 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.

Rose Wallace

^ ***: 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).[15] 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.[15]

Edward Andrassy was buried in St Mary Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio;[16] Florence Polillo is buried in Pennsylvania[17] Five of the John/Jane Does {"Lady of the Lake"; and victims John Doe #1; John Doe #2; John Doe #4; Jane Doe #1} were buried in Potter's Field Section of Highland Park Cemetery, Highland Park, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.[18]

On August 24, 1939, a Cleveland resident named Frank Dolezal, 52, was arrested as a suspect in Florence Polillo's murder; he later died in suspicious circumstances in the Cuyahoga County jail.[23]

Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been in 1938. One suspected individual was Dr. Francis E. Sweeney.[24] 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. 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 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.[24] 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.[24][25] Sweeney died in a veterans' hospital in Dayton on July 9, 1964.[24]

In 1997, another theory postulated 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. 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.[26]

The 1998–1999 comic book series Torso by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko was based on the killings.[27]

The 2018 film The Kingsbury Run was based on the murders.[28]

The murders and the hunt for the perpetrators were covered in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.[29]

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 August 4, 2020.

• Black Dahlia, a Los Angeles murder case that some investigators have suggested may have been committed by the same killer.[24]
• List of fugitives from justice who disappeared
• 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 serial killers in the United States

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cleveland Torso Murderer.

• Cleveland Torso Murders
• Google Map of the Torso Murders
• The Kingsbury Run Murders
• Torso Killer at Curlie