November 16, 2024 • 49 mins
During the depths of the Great Depression, Cleveland’s most vulnerable and destitute residents were prey for one of history’s most horrific serial killers. The killer’s identity remains a mystery to this day. Josh and Chuck take you through what's known in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's being Josh and for this week's select,
I've chosen our Cleveland Torso Murders episode from May twenty one.
Once in a while we do some true crime episodes,
and in my opinion, this might be our best one ever.
It's a semi little known series of gruesome killings that
became an engrossing story with a lot to keep up with.
(00:21):
I should probably mention there's a lot of frank talk
about some really grizzly stuff in here, so be four warned.
Hope you enjoy it as much as one can enjoy
this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck
Jerry's out there.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Somewhere with a magnifying glass and toothpick. We don't know
what the toothpick's for, but this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Yes, content warning episode, everybody. This is one of our
it's about to say rare, they're fairly rare, but one
of our true crime episodes that is very grizzly, gruesome, gruesome,
but took place in the nineteen thirties, so there's something
about old and gruesome. That makes it a little more
palatable for me totally.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I don't know why, but you're absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Right time, I guess you know.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, he heals all wounds, wounds the Torso murders.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yes, it does well.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Heals all wounds except for some of the things that
happened in the Torso murders, because you can't come back
from that.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
It's pretty crazy. You were familiar with the Torso murders already, right, I.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Had heard of these, and the more I read about them,
the more I was shocked that there wasn't a good
period movie about this.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
But if you haven't heard of the Torso Killer, that's fine,
You're You're definitely not alone. A lot of people haven't,
which is kind of surprising because these are they are
unsolved murders. There were a lot of them, and you know,
they took place in the background of a city that
was like driven into a frenzy by this ghastly serial
(02:08):
murderer who was who continued their murders despite this extraordinarily large,
you know, manhunt to try to find them, an unsuccessful
man hunt still to this day.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I mean, it has all the makings of a
good movie.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
It's got a and we'll reveal who this person is.
We'll hang on to it for a second. But maybe
got a famous investigator.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Oh oh sorry, yes, and he definitely was the famous investigator.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah. Oh you thought I met who the murderer was.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
You've got some false starts.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
You've got some Cohen Brothers esque whimsy with the dog discovery.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I thought you'd like that.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, I did like that.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
And yeah, it has all the makings of a great
movie in a cool period setting, which was depression era
nineteen thirties Cleveland, Ohio.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Which is almost indistinguishable from current day twenty twenty one Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh come on, we love Hey.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Man, I'm from Toledo. I can totally back in Cleveland.
That's tame Detroit.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I was. That's my birthright.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
That is your birthright.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
So let's go back to September of nineteen thirty four,
when a woman's torso is washed up on the shore
of Lake Erie. Her legs are amputated below the knee.
There is no head, which is why I said torso.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
And it's a suspicious way to find a body.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
The very suspicious way. She was never identified. They called
her the Lady of the Lake, and this was just
sort of the beginnings. Nothing was put together at this
point because it would be two years before any other
murders took place, and that they finally sort of put
together that the Lady of the Lake was perhaps Victim zero,
really victim one, but they called her Victim zero of
(03:52):
who had become known as the Torso murderer or the
Mad Butcher of Kingsbury.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yes, Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
And like you said, it'd be about two years before
they started to connect the dots. But in that time
between the time the Lady of the Lake was found
about a year past and then all of a sudden,
two more bodies were found. And now all of a sudden,
because two bodies were found together, this really started to
capture people's attention to the Lady of the Lake. It
(04:22):
was a weird thing. It was a terrible thing to find,
but it was singular. This was, you know, like by definition,
not singular, finding two bodies at once that were both dismembered,
and they were found in the area of Kingsbury Run,
which is where the Mad Butcher takes his name.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
That's right, they were both men. In this case, they
were they were castrated. They were also decapitated, which would
become sort of a signature. The decapitation and any kind
of dismembering really would become the signature.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Hallmark of this murderer.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
And it's interesting in that victim, one of these two men,
was actually one of the only ones that they got
a fairly positive id for, actually got some fingerprints and
it matched a man named Edward Andrassy. And he was
sort of a petty thief that had you know, the
police had brought in before.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So he was believed to be gay.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
And this if he was, you know, which all accounts
should say that he was. This was at a time
when in the nineteen thirties, certainly it was still illegal,
and it was also listed as a mental disorder in
the what's it called, not the DMVM, DSM.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The DMV. The DMV didn't look too highly on it either.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
No, that's right.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
So he, i think was one of only two that
was ever even positively identified of what would end up
being probably thirteen, maybe twelve murders.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yes, and again these guys were found together, not together,
like they were within you know, a very short distance
of one another, so that they were found virtually at
the same time. And whenever you find, you know, a
body missing its head, that that is a tension grabbing
And when you find two bodies both missing their heads,
that really starts to get the presses juices running. And
(06:20):
like we said, these were found around Kingsbury Run, and
Kingsbury Run is basically like an old river bed that
cuts through I believe the west side of Cleveland. No,
I'm sorry that, I think the east side of Cleveland
down to the Coyohoga River, and it was basically like
the place where all of the oil companies and all
(06:40):
of the heavy industry along the river and along the
lake would dump all of their waste. The city put
a sewer in there. It was just meant to be
kind of like a wasteland, like a literal wasteland, and
it kind of stayed that way until the depression hit.
And by the time the depression hit, things were so
bad that people were looking to basically live wherever they
(07:04):
could for free, and they started taking up residents in
Kingsbury Run. So by the time the Kingsbury Run murders,
the Torso murders started, this was like a full fledged,
full swing chanty town. Basically a Great Depression era Hoover
Town is what they call.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Them, Yeah, exactly, So it was a gram scene down
there anyway, certainly the fringes of society. During the course
of the investigation, there were accusations of the press that
they weren't working as hard as they needed to because
these were people on the fringes of society and sort
of forgotten about. And I think one of the other
(07:41):
people identified was a few months later, in January nineteen
thirty six, when they found the body of Flow Pilillo.
Florence Pililo was a waitress and bartender and a sex
worker who was discovered once again dismembered, wrapped a newspaper
and a couple of bushel baskets, and then about a
week and a half later found other parts of her body.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
So she was sort of.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Found in it's very grizzly, but found in pieces over
the course of a week and a half in different places.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Right, So, so far as far as anybody can tell,
we're up to three and possibly four victims if you
include the Lady of the Lake. But it wasn't until
the following June, about six months after Flow Palillo was
discovered because again, remember these people were they actually lived
on the fringe of society. So just like today, just
(08:32):
like Robert Picton, the pig farmer from Vancouver, so many
other serial killers find their victims in like the just
I guess, the lowest stations of society because they're the
most vulnerable, they have the least protection. And that's kind
of what was going on. That's why it took so
many victims for the press to finally be like, Okay,
(08:52):
there's something really going on here. And finally in June,
I believe of nineteen thirty six, victim number four as
far as canonical victims go, but possibly the fifth victim
was discovered. His head was found first by two boys
who were playing hooky and fishing along the Cya Hoga.
Can imagine that man, No, I can't, because they found
(09:14):
like a bald up pair of trousers and I guess
grabbed them and found that there's something in it. When
they opened it up, it was the head of a
man in his twenties. But I've never been identified like
so many of these victims.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Yeah, and not to trivialize any of this, but again,
that stuff is very ripe for movie making.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
This whole thing is and it really is surprising that
no one's done this.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
Yet, Like you wouldn't you know, you would write something
like that in a screenplay, and this actually happened.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So I didn't see I haven't read it. But there's
a graphic novel and maybe it's a series called Torso
that is about all this, and I'm guessing that would
probably be a pretty good basis for the movie.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Yeah, so Victim four, they were making great to find
out who this man was. So they actually the police
circulated a photo of his face and made a death mask.
If you don't know what a death mask is, I
encourage you to go listen to our episode on death masks.
It's basically what you would think. It's a recreation of
(10:17):
this man's head. And they put this thing along with
a tattoo map. He had tattoos all over himself, an
illustrated map of his tattoos in this death mask on
display at the Great Lakes Exposition of nineteen thirty six,
where you know, one hundred thousand people could walk. I
mean it was a smart idea in one way, because
they had a you know, could blast it out in
(10:40):
the best way possible to try and identify who this
person was. But it was also again like something from
a movie. These people going to an exposition all of
a sudden are walking behy these this tattoo map and
the death mask of this man. And I'm sure the
question came up, like, well, why is it? Where's the
rest of his place? Why didn't they just show pictures
(11:01):
of the tattoos.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
They're like, stop asking questions, do you know the guy
or not? No, go get some ice cream, exactly, move along.
Nothing to see here. But yeah, despite that, you know,
very public search for an identification, he was never still
has never been identified, and his tattoos were really he
had people's names tattooed on him. He had a cartoon
character named Jigs tattooed on him. So this guy, you know,
(11:26):
you could see his face, they had all those tattoos.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
And he still has never been identified.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
But his discovery and I think the very public, like
the cops circulated a photo of his head on a
gurney in the morgue at first before they made the
death mass, among other police agencies around the area, and
I'm sure to the press as well, so it was
kind of public even though It was kind of quiet,
(11:50):
but it got the press's attention, and the press started
to connect the dots, and all of a sudden, we
now were connecting the Lady of the Lake to this
latest guy and all the other ones as well, and
it became very clear that there was what they call
the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury run on the loose in Cleveland,
and no one had any idea who it was or
(12:13):
when or if they were ever going to stop.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
I think there were seven more victims over the next
two years. Victim eight were skeletal remains, but they did
think they identified this person as Rose Wallace, woman in
her forties. She had gone missing about a year earlier,
and there was quicklime used to decompose this body, and
(12:36):
this one, interestingly had evidence of more of a clumsy dismemberment.
To me, this one stands out a little bit is
one that possibly might not be a victim and could
have been misattributed to the Mad Butcher. That's just my
personal feeling. I don't know if anyone else is saying this,
but it's the one that stands out to me as
(12:58):
being slightly different.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Same as same to me.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, the killer clearly lacked a dismemberment plan in that case, is.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That a ban Yeah? Are they good?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah? They were really good. They were maybe mathrock.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Okay, I think they were at the very least they
were alternative.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Victim nine was had his heart removed, Victim ten had
morphine in her system. And I think they're not quite
sure how they all died. I think at one point
they thought most of them died by the decapitation, but
some were found with their blood completely drained from their body.
(13:43):
Like I said, this, one woman had morphine in her system,
which could make sense. We'll get to something else later
on of a potential victim that never happened, where drugs
might have been a factor.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
But you know, it's it's sort of all.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
You know, there were men, there were women, there were
black people, there were white people. There wasn't any real
rhyme or reason, it seemed like, aside from the fact
that they were probably culled from this area of Ohio.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yes, and the fact that you know, the first two
men were emasculated, that there were women involved too, that
somebody's heart had been ripped out like there was there
was clearly a sexual element of the whole thing, which
made the idea that they were men and woman victims
very confounding. You just don't normally see that in a
(14:27):
sex killer. You see one or the other, and it's
usually the sex that the person is oriented to are
the victims. And then you know, just to kind of
to cap that point off, the killer left victims eleven
and twelve within a few yards of one another on
a dump like a trash dump, and one was a woman,
(14:48):
Victim eleven was a woman, and victim twelve was a man.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Should we take a break?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
We should because Cleveland doesn't know it at the time,
but those of us looking through the looking backward through
history can tell you that this was the last canonical
victims in August of nineteen thirty eight. So the killer,
as far as anybody knows, is done.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
That's right, and most of the grizzly stuff is out
of the way, and we'll be back to reveal the
famous investigator right after this. How's that for a tease?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
It was I can't take it anymore, Chuck, please please?
Who is it?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
It's my favorite thing when you play koy.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
It was mister Elliott Ness that's very famous for being
the head of the untouchables for putting al Capone behind bars.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Good friend of Sean Connery's.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Very good friend.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Oh that was great.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That wasn't very good, because bring your.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Knife to a gunfight? You bring a gun, you dummy.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, I think that was the line. If you go
on to do Connery, well you got to have an
esh in there, right, But there.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Was no didn't I I thought that was I thought
I nailed it.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
There aren't no ssays in that sentence.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Right, they're implied. And I would have done that had
there been.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Don't bring a knife to a gun dunch. How's that right?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
You bring a gun? You're John Mary?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
All right? Back to the serious stuff. Elliottness was the
after that work in what was that? Chicago? I think, oh, yeah,
that was.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
He became the alcohol investigator in charge of the alcohol
tax unit for Northern Ohio in August of thirty four,
and then the Republican mayoral canon that Harold Burton, who
had gone to win, said you know what, Ness, you're
a famous guy.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I like the cut of your jib. Let me make you.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
In December nineteen thirty five, the safety director for Cleveland,
and let me nudge you towards this outstanding case that
we have.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So, yeah, when he was hired, the case wasn't quite
clear that it was a big old case. He came
in just after, like a couple of months after victims
one and two were found, and just a couple of
weeks before flow Polillo was found, so it wasn't evident
that there was a serial murderer on the loose. But
(17:41):
that also means that Elliott Ness came in right at
the beginning of this thing. So he was the public
safety director for it. He became the face of the
frustrated police effort to capture the Torso killer.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Right although the lead investigator, what was that guy's name,
Peter Marillo.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Yeah, he was. He was.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
I don't know about obsess, but it became sort of
his main focus of work was to tirelessly find out
who this murderer was. And I assume that it's weird
because I really don't know what a safety director was.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I don't think is that even still a thing.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, I think there is a public safety director position still.
They basically are in charge of the police department, the
fire department.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Okay, all that stuff. They're the head of that.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
They're like they probably the liaison between the mayor and
those services.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
But not the Guardian angels because they do what they
want to do.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Hey man, they're staying on their road too.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
The coroner, Aj Peerce of the case, I think he
was the first corner on the first case, said you
know what we need to do. We need to get together.
We need to have a little summit and start sharing information.
I'm going to call it the Torso Clinic, which was interesting.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I don't know if he did or the press did.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Yeah, either way, because the press was very much involved
in this whole obviously. But at this conference is where
he first put forward a profile, which was this is
someone who would not stand out in Kingsbury one, someone
who knew the area could blend in somebody.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
You know.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
We think it's a man who is a powerful man
because they need to be able to you know, it
takes a lot of work to dismember a body and
to haul these bodies around and drop them off in
different places. And we think he also might have some
anatomical knowledge, not saying that he's necessarily a doctor or
a surgeon, kind of like the Jack the Ripper thing,
(19:35):
but this person clearly clearly knows their way around a
knife and a scalpel.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, because I mean, if you really closely examine a
body and like look at the places where you know
the body was separated with the knife, you can find
hesitancy marks, you can find the hacking. There's all sorts
of clues and telltale signs. And apparently this guy had
a lot of confidence and had a lot of skill
or knowledge about anatomy. So, like you said, maybe not
(20:03):
a doctor, but at the very least a very skilled
butcher who had studied human anatomy before. But eventually they
finally were like, this is probably some sort of doctor.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Yeah, And I think they eventually learned that most of
the victims died within a few day a few days
of being discovered, and most were moved, except for victim five,
where they found a blood bath. You know that was
this didn't happen at the other crime scenes. It was
virtually no blood to be found. In fact, I think
one was completely drained of blood anywhere.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Oh really, so that yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
I mean that takes I don't know if that happened
naturally just because of the nature of dismemberment, or if
it was a purposeful thing. But only one body was
found kind of clearly murdered there.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Right, So yeah, I think the fact that the blood
wasn't on the scene and it wasn't in the body
any longer means they had go somewhere. So that the
fact that they were dismembered and the and packaged, I mean,
like a lot of them are found, you know, the
one I unidentified tattooed man, his head was wrapped in trousers,
(21:13):
but other peoples were wrapped in newspaper or brown paper
like they were meat. Someone was put in a makeshift box.
There was there was a lot of time dedicated to
the dismemberment of these bodies, and that that leaves a
lot of evidence, and you need a place where you're
(21:33):
not going to be interrupted, and yeah, that's not easy
to come by. So that became a really like big
point is you know, we were pretty sure that this
person is snatching victims from the from the Kingsbury Run area,
but where are they committing these acts? And they tried
to find that place as much as they tried to
(21:55):
find the killer.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, I mean that would be a big clue if
they had some murder room dexter style.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Sure, which is a giveaway every time.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
That's coming back. By the way, I don't know if
you ever watched Dexter.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
What do you mean it's coming back.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
They're bringing Dexter back man.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
With the original like Michael C. Hall.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
No, yes, they are, indeed, and I mixed feelings because
we love that show for a long time.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
But it is the end.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
It is one of the shark jump of your shows
of all time.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
It's crazy. It's like the shark itself jumped up.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, I think so, It's insane.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I mean, I love Michael C.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Hall though we're just now finishing Six feet Under again,
so yeah, I'm always happy to see him again.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
But I'll give it again. You see Cold in July,
m No, what is that.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
It's a little bit like a straw Dogs type story,
but he's like having to battle Don Johnson. It's just
really like, if you want I know, it's weird casting,
but if you want to just experience like a constant,
you know, mid to low level dread for two hours, like,
let's go ahead and watch that's well done in that respect, or.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Watch The Lighthouse. It's probably better.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
God, it's so good.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Let's just stop talking about this and talking about the
lighthouse for the rest of the time.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
All Right.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
So Peter Morillo, who, like we said, was a lead detective,
he's sort of obsessed with this thing. He starts not
only focusing on this land down by the river, but
I didn't mean that, but that's what it was. But
he started focusing on the rail roads and these these hobos.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
The railroads. Oh, okay, you know where trains run on sure.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, I just never heard it pronounce the way you do,
the first railroad, the rail roads.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It was hilarious.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I got to lighten this up somehow. We're talking about
this membered tourist.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
I know exactly.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
So he started looking in these box cars and I
don't I mean his hobo an offensive word.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Can you still say that?
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Don't think so. I think it's a point of pride,
a term of pride.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Of for people who still ride the rails. Okay, So
he's still out there doing his thing. At this press conference,
Elliottness ends up holding a meeting with the head of
Scientific Investigation Bureau. His name was David Cowells and an
editor of the Cleveland Press. So this is a big deal.
(24:20):
They're actually getting the press involved at this point.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Right, But secretly. This wasn't a press conference. This is
like a secret meeting.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Oh no, no, not a press conference at all. This was
very much in secret. But he's involving the press, and
they said, here's what we're going to do. Ness says,
let's you go and pick out eight tough guys that
can go undercover, that know a lot of bad guys
in Cleveland and have all those connections. We'll give them
the police support they need, and we'll fund them. How
did they fund them with the press is money? What
(24:47):
does that even mean?
Speaker 3 (24:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I think that like maybe the owners of the newspapers
chipped in, like the wealthy owners chipped in quietly interest
stuff off of the books.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
That's my of what this is.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And you ever chipped in the mostcut to break the story,
I wonder.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
But well no, I think at the same time, it
was a technique for bringing the press into the fold
so that there weren't outsiders drumming up trouble for.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
The cops anymore.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Because, gotcha, the Cleveland press really made the They didn't
make the police look bad. They pointed out just how
badly the police were handling this or ineffectively, which is
not to say that the police were not trying really
really hard. Supposedly. I saw a figure of ten thousand
suspects were interviewed over four years during the course of
(25:33):
this investigation. They just couldn't find the guy. They could
not find this killer, and the press kind of almost
gleefully kept pointing that out.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Right, So this is in a way attempt to assuage
them and bring them into the inner circle.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
A bit, right, That was my impression.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
Yeah, all right, So the police are, They've got these
undercover guys working. They're scene, They're checking cars randomly at
all hours. They're canvassing lawe andromats and places where you
wash your clothes, so you know, if there are people
like trying to get bloodstains out of something, they're kind
of doing everything they can at this point. And this
is where the Coen Brothers sort of moment comes in,
(26:12):
which is in San Dusky a dog and Sandusky is
about now, it's about an hour or ten minutes away
by car. I don't know what it would have been
back then, but probably less than two hours, I would say,
even in an old timey car. A dog shows up
in Sandusky with a human leg in its mouth. I
want to say that literally happened in a Cohen Brothers movie.
(26:33):
It might have just been a bone of a body,
but I can't think of which one it might be.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Will someone will write in and tell us, But.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
It sounds like a Barton Fink kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
It is, but it's not.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Or I might be thinking of the kids who riped
the two pay off the guy in Miller's Crossing in
that away.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I don't remember that part, although I remember one of
the neighbors lost his two pay in the verbs and
they thought it was evidently murder.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
There's definitely a movie, it might not have been Coen
Brothers where dog shows up with the body part in
its mouth.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Probably more than one movie.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
But the dog shows up in its mouth and Morello
goes to Sandusky and it turns out that the leg
was actually surgically removed during during a real surgery, not
a not a serial killer surgery, and just didn't get
disposed of right, ended up in the lake, ended up
in the dog's mouth, right.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
But the police were so hyped up, Oh, I'm sure
England at the time that they traveled Sandusky. Tod chase
down this lead, which, like all the other ones went
absolutely nowhere, and so there was there was again, like
just a tremendous amount of public pressure, including something you
mentioned earlier too, a lot of allegations and accusations that
(27:46):
the police weren't doing enough because these people were not wealthy,
were not well thought of, they were, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Very poor.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
The poorest of the poor during the Great Depression were
the ones who were having who were suffering this the
serial killer. And so there was a tremendous amount of pressure.
And I think my impression is is that that pressure
is one of the I guess the thing that drove
Elliott Ness to do something really terrible. Because the killer
(28:20):
was picking from the shanty towns of Kingsbury Run. Elliot
Nes got it in his head that if you did
away with Kingsbury Run, you'd do away with the killings. Yeah,
and so we raided the homeless camps at Kingsbury Run
and roused it everybody and then ordered the place burn
to the ground.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
And I'm sure he thought this was a great idea
at the time, but he really didn't think it through
because the people of Cleveland did not take kindly to that.
They hated him for what he did and this was
during the depression and everyone was struggling basically, or not everyone,
but most people were struggling at this point unemployment rate
of twenty percent in Cleveland, and so the idea of
(28:59):
this big shot Chicago g man comeing in and basically
running these homeless people out of their only option and
burning it to the ground was not a good look
at all. However, there were no more murders after.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
That, I know it.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Strangely, it seemed to have worked, and it depends. We'll
talk more about. You know, a lot of different views
of whether the murder stopped or not, but as far
as canonical victims go, yeah, this he burned the place
to the ground two days after victims eleven and twelve
were found, and after that there were no more victims.
So it didn't solve the murders by any stretch of
(29:39):
the imagination, but it seemed to have put an end
to him.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Weirdly, Yeah, I think before we take a break, we
should mention there was one and get into the who
we think is probably the real suspect. There was one
suspect in Cuyahoga County that the sheriff brought in name.
He's a brick layer named Frank dole Ziel, who did confess.
He was brought in for the murder of Flow Palillo,
(30:03):
originally because he'd lived with her for a little while,
but supposedly he knew Rose Wallace and Edward Andressy as well.
But then they looked into it, and by all accounts
that confession was not just induced, but in the days
where you would literally beat a victim into confessing.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, and the murder him in his cell after he
recanted his confession.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
So was he murdered.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, Well, he hung himself, but he hung himself from
a hook that was shorter than he was, which I mean,
I guess if you really really want to die, you might,
you could do that, you could overcome the urge to
stand up this inclination towards self harm. I guess you'd
put it. But his friends at the time seemed to
(30:51):
be like, no, he was murdered. So it's at the
very least his confession was beaten out of him, and
no serious scholar of the crime believes that Frank Doziel
was the killer.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
He didn't have.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Any there was no evidence whatsoever any kind of surgical knowledge.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
There was like a lot of boxes. He just didn't check.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
It was basically, he knew Flow, and he may have
known Edward and Rossi, and he may have known Rose Wallace,
and the sheriff basically ran him in very publicly.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Right, all right, So let's take that break and then
we'll come back and talk a little bit more about
the investigation and who people now believe committed.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
These horrible murders.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
Right after this, all right, So Elliott Ness has run
(32:05):
everyone out of the Kingsbury run camps. Did not go
over well. He then says, here's what we'll do. Let's
skirt the warrant rules so we don't have to require warrants,
and let's get together. Since I'm the safety director and
I control the fire department too, let's go around and
start searching for quote, fire code violations end quote. Basically,
(32:28):
so they don't have to get any kind of warrants
and they can just basically go into people's.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Houses and.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Just at will and search and do whatever they want
to under the guise of searching for fire code violations.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
He was desperate, He was very desperate.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
And again they were looking not just for the killer,
but really, more than anything, they were looking for that
grizzly workshop, as the Cleveland plain Dealer had put it
a place where he was draining the victims of their
blood and dismembering their bodies. They didn't turn anything up,
but it really kind of goes to show like just
what lengths elliot Ness, who was considered like this squeaky
(33:05):
clean law man was willing to go to this is
extraordinarily unconstitutional and underhanded, and he went. He went to
that degree and well beyond it turned out actually too
very much.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
And I think we're at the point now where we
can talk about this mystery person, right.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah, this is this is why I said.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
He went way beyond you know, unlawful search of homes.
He actually engaged in what amounts to kidnapping of a
private citizen who he thought was the killer.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
Yeah, and he kept it very secret. He even used
a pseudonym for this person. He called this person this
gentleman gay lord Sundheim, pretty good name, the good hotel
check in name.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
And privately he you know, word gets around a little
bit what's going on. But privately he would describe this
person as an alcoholic, maybe bisexual, a doctor who came
from a wealthy family and who had a relative in
Congress who was protecting this person and took this man
under the dark of night to a hotel room in Cleveland,
(34:13):
held there without charging him for two weeks, where they
interrogated this person.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yes, and apparently the guy who this gay lord Sundheim
was in the middle of a bender when he was
picked up, and he had he was so profoundly drunk
that it took him three days to become sober again.
I don't buy that, I know, but when he did,
I know. But you got to add those two. Sure,
(34:39):
thank you for keeping it, keeping it even keel though.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
I mean I've had nights they were a little rough,
and you're always okay the next day.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I don't know what you're talking about. It's so weird,
Like alcohol effects us so differently. Man, I can have
like a drink and a half these days, and I'm
like hating life the next time.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
No, no, I'm not talking about a hangover. But you're not
still drunk the next day. Oh gotch or in two
days or three days.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
I think that's what they were saying, is that this
guy was he had like a hangover stupor by That
was my impression, not that he was still just flying high.
But that hating it all.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Right, that should.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
But regardless, they kept him whether he was sober as
a judge or you know, drunk as a skunk when
they picked him up. They held him in this hotel
room without charge and outside of the legal system for
two weeks and interrogated him from up to eight hours
a day.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, but I think he did it, so who cares.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
That's exactly how Elliott Ness was approaching this. And again
everybody thought he was this squeaky clean lawman and he's
engaged in kidnapping. But the thing is, he brought in
the guy who was one of the early inventors of
the polygraph. He invented the Keeler polygraph, and it was
called that because his name was Leonard Keeler, and he
I think he brought him from Chicago and Leonard key
(36:00):
Tailor administered a couple of different polygraph tests to this
Gaylord Sondheim and said, if this isn't your man, I
might as well throw my machine out the window if
I say anything else, because that guy, that's the guy.
It's definitely the guy. You gotta take that with a
grain of salt, because especially today polygraphs are just total
junk science, but it certainly confirmed Nessa's suspicions that much more.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
At the time, I think that polygraph Back then there
wasn't even machine Keeler would just sit there and look
for a beat of sweat to break out on the
forehead and then punch the.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Guy if it did.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
That's right exactly.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
So the case was never solved. Nessa's reputation obviously took
a big hit. He eventually got out of Cleveland after
a drunk driving hit and run accident that he was
involved with and tried to cover up.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
So he left in great shame. But back to this
gaylord Sunheim.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Later on, many years later, there were crime investigators and
writers who put two and two together and basically identified
and in fact, in one case, crime writer Marilyn Bardsley
came out and said, yeah, this is who this person was.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It was a former World War.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
One Army medic who was discharged for mental instability following
head trauma, which was big warning lights going off. And
he was an alcoholic, another big warning light. And his
name was Francis Edward Sweeney, who also happens to have
a relative in Congress.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Right A guy named Representative Martin Sweeney, who was a
huge critic of the Burton administration of which elliot and
Ness was a major part, And he was just the
kind of guy who was a political opponent to the
degree that I'm sure Elliotts thought if he tried to
arrest Clarence or Francis Sweeney, he would he would he
(37:54):
would be obstructed, you know, from up on high by
this congress person. Whether he would have or not, I
don't know. I saw some references to the idea that
Martin Sweeney was well aware that elliot Ness was looking
at his cousin for this and was already getting in
the way, But I only saw that on one place,
so I'm not sure if that's the case or not.
(38:15):
Either way, his presence in his connection to Francis Sweeney
was enough that Elliott Ness never charged Francis Sweeney, despite
apparently going to his grave believing that doctor Francis Edward
Sweeney was the Cleveland Torso murderer.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Have you seen a picture of the guy, dude, he
looks like the definition of a Torsow murderer.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
If you, if you like, seriously, you have to be
careful with that stuff. Can you ever end up a juror,
you can't be like you look like a killer, but
this guy looks like.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
A Torso murderer. You're exactly right.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
The quick sidebar. Not sure if I ever mentioned it
on this show.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
I know I've talked about on a movie Crush, But
I want to recommend this great, great documentary And forgive
me if I'm repeating myself here, but it's called Crazy
not Insane. It's an HB documentary about this doctor, doctor
Dorothy Ott no Lewis, who basically spent her life trying
to understand serial killers and one of the main she
(39:10):
was kind of one of the first people to really
try and understand what's actually going on, and she put
together I think like three very common common commonalities among
serial killers. But one of them is is head trauma.
And that's why this really stands out of me about
Francis Edward Sweeney, was that he was discharged from the
army because of head trauma leading to mental instability. It's
(39:32):
a commonality in most serial killers, is some sort of
head trauma, especially when you're younger.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Wow, that's interesting. I did not know that.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Yeah, and the I may have thought I talked about
on this, but it was the uh who was the
guy in la that that also just had a great
docuseries on the night Stalker Richard Ramirez. He suffered multiple
head traumas when he was younger as well. So I
think it's it's I can't remember the three when it's
head trauma, some sort of physical and even sexual abuse
(40:04):
as a child, and then there was like one more
thing and those are like that's just a recipe for
ending up some sort of sociopath or serial killer.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I think the third one is disappointing birthday presence.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Maybe so it's a warned it's a great you'd really
love It's a really good documentary.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, I'll check that out for sure. It sounds like
it's totally at my alley. I'm actually a dog that
I've not heard of it.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Don't be a dog.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
I'm a little dog.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
All right, come back.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
So, like you said, Marilyn Bardsley confirmed from one of
the investigators that Francis Sweeney was gay Lord Sondheim. But
that does not mean that Francis Sweeney was the Torso murderer. True,
although again, like you were saying, if you look at
a picture of Francis Sweeney.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
That's totally the Torso murderer.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Well, and other stuff, you know, the head trauma, the
medical training. He was a surgeon in residence at Saint
Alexis Hospital. His career deteriorated because of his drink.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Right around the time the first murderer victims started showing
up too.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Yeah, he also had a deal apparently with a local
mortuary where they would give him bodies to practice surgery on,
which would explain maybe the kill room or the dismemberment room.
He would have a place to go and dispose of
these bodies without you know, there being a big blood trail,
you know.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Right, I mean, this is a place where it wouldn't
seem weird that somebody was decapitating a body or draining
the body of all of its blood. Like that's exactly
the kind of place. And that didn't turn up until
years later, And it was thanks to a guy named
James Badall who's written some books on it, on the
Torso murderers, and he interviewed one of the early investigators
(41:47):
and found out that he had privileges at that funeral home.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
And sorry to put two and two together.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Yeah, there was one a couple of other things. He
did send taunting letters to Elliott nests for years. Some
one of them was signed F. E. Sweeney paranoidal Nemesis.
But was this after he had been kidnapped by Ness?
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yes, so he knew Ness by this time. And he
also didn't say like I did it, you didn't catch
me anything like that. I get the impression it was
more like, you didn't catch the guy. You're terrible at this,
everybody hates you. But still taunting stuff. But yes, this
would have been after he was kidnapped, because this was
up into like the forties.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
And then I think to me, one of the biggest
red flags pointing in the direction of Sweeney is I
mentioned a near victim earlier in the episode. This was
a transient. His name was Emil Fronick, and he was
living in Cleveland in thirty four and one day he
was lured into a doctor's office on the second floor
(42:50):
along Broadway Avenue and the doctor said, here, I'll give
you some shoes and a meal if you come up here.
Fronic goes up, eats a little bit of the meal,
starts to feel lightheaded, and bolts and makes it to
a train car and basically passes out for three days.
And then later on I think in nineteen thirty eight,
was being interviewed after the cops here about this.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Old Morello goes to pick him up.
Speaker 4 (43:14):
And they narrow down the area to fifty to fifty
fifth Streets along Broadway, where Sweeney had a doctor's office.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, he couldn't specifically say that was the place where
it happened, right, And that author James Biddall says that
he thinks he came in the back way rather than
the front way where they were showing him. But he
did say that's he had an office right there, right
around that area. So and he was there at the time.
So I mean, that's some pretty serious, circumstantial stuff.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I think.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
So.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
But the thing is, there's no smoking gun, there's no
anything that says definitively, and we probably will never have
anything definitively it says it's Francis Sweeney. So we've kind
of reached this point, this plateau where it's like you
just basically choose society either you know it's Francis Sweeney
or it wasn't. And some people who say no, I
don't think it was Francis Sweeney make some pretty good cases.
(44:09):
There were other similar murders in the area starting in
the twenties and going into the fifties, that that really
bore a lot of resemblance to the Torso murders. And
then other people say, Okay, I feel the opposite of that,
where there's like, I don't think Rose Wallace was one
(44:30):
of the victims. I think there were multiple killers doing
similarish stuff, maybe copycats even, and that it wasn't all
just one person. There's there's, there is, and there's probably
always going to be a lot of competing theories about what,
you know, who is responsible.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
The one theory that it wasn't him that I don't buy.
Did you say where he was living in Sandusky?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
No?
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Huh?
Speaker 4 (44:56):
All right, so here's the deal. He Francis Sweeney was
a apparently enrolled or checked into the Soldiers and Sailors
Home in Sandusky, which I guess is an old like
a veteran's home.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I think yes, So.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
That's what it seems like.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
So he was checked in there, and one of the
reasons that people say he didn't do it was because
he was checked in in this place in Sandusky, like
a couple hours away, and I just don't buy that.
They later came out and said, you know, they could
come and go as they please. He could easily have
if he didn't want to get caught be committing these
murders in Cleveland and then going back to Sandusky as.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Well, right, Yeah, because he was there voluntarily, so he
would not have been watched or monitored, or they wouldn't
have kept tabs on him. And when they figured this out,
it was years later, so no one would have been
able to recall where he was or wasn't on a
certain day.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
You know. Yeah, I think it's Sweeney, I think, and
not because of his picture.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Too, But there's so there were other murders in the
area that you know, it could have still been Sweeney too.
Some people can the Black Dollia murder to it because
there was a taunting note that the cops got in
nineteen thirty eight that said the cops can rest easy
because the killers moved to sunny California. But if you
look at the Black Dollia murder, there's really not a
(46:13):
lot of resemblance between the two. The mos are really
rather different, so that's probably not the case agreed. Well,
if you want to know more about the Cleveland Torso murders,
there's a whole rabbit hole on the internet and in books,
including one by James Biddall and another by Marilyn Bardsley,
that you can follow. And if you do, good luck
(46:36):
with that. Since I said good luck with that, it's
time for listener mail.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
I'm going to call this. We did not help out this, gentleman. Okay, hey, guys,
love the podcast. I've been listening for the past several years.
I've almost gotten through. The whole library has some left
from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Apparently.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
I work as a musical instrument repair technician a local
university and independently in Greensboro.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
So I usually listened while I work on repatting clarinet's
and cleaning Tubaits nice cool job. Anyway, I was listening
to your show this evening on Korean fan death.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Remember that we talked about it. I don't think it
was all about that, but it was.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
A short stuff about it.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Was it?
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Mm hmm?
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Okay, I remember that being like a top ten or something.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
Anyway, I immediately thought, finally a way that I can
find some legit reason for getting rid of the fan
in our room. My fiance Abby loves having a fan
and that noise when you go to sleep. It's something
I can deal with, but honestly I do.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Not care for it.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
So when I finally got home, I told Abbi, hey,
we got a serious episode.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Stuff you should know we should listen to.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
I started the episode without pre screening and trusted you
guys would pull through for me. Needless to say, an
interesting episode, but I did not get the confirmation bias
I was looking for. Instead, we had a good laugh
and a great evening, looking forward to getting the book,
which you guys are best, and looking forward to many more.
And that is from John Goodman.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Holy cow, John Goodman, we love you and the Coen
Brothers stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
His name is John Goodman. I'm gonna plug his business.
Goodman custom would wins.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
If you're in the Greensboro, North Carolina area and you
need that clarinet repadded, go to John Goodman.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
For sure, And even if you're not, it's probably worth
the drive, right.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
I mean, where else are you gonna do it? Charlotte?
Speaker 1 (48:21):
I don't Yeah, come on, Connick note, Well thanks a lot,
John Goodman. We appreciate that. Sorry we couldn't help you.
Output at least you enjoyed the episode and ultimately in
that what counts.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
If you want to get in touch with this, like
John Goodman did, you can send us an email too.
Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's being Josh and for this week's select,
I've chosen our Cleveland Torso Murders episode from May twenty one.
Once in a while we do some true crime episodes,
and in my opinion, this might be our best one ever.
It's a semi little known series of gruesome killings that
became an engrossing story with a lot to keep up with.
(00:21):
I should probably mention there's a lot of frank talk
about some really grizzly stuff in here, so be four warned.
Hope you enjoy it as much as one can enjoy
this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck
Jerry's out there.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Somewhere with a magnifying glass and toothpick. We don't know
what the toothpick's for, but this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Yes, content warning episode, everybody. This is one of our
it's about to say rare, they're fairly rare, but one
of our true crime episodes that is very grizzly, gruesome, gruesome,
but took place in the nineteen thirties, so there's something
about old and gruesome. That makes it a little more
palatable for me totally.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I don't know why, but you're absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Right time, I guess you know.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, he heals all wounds, wounds the Torso murders.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yes, it does well.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Heals all wounds except for some of the things that
happened in the Torso murders, because you can't come back
from that.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
It's pretty crazy. You were familiar with the Torso murders already, right, I.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Had heard of these, and the more I read about them,
the more I was shocked that there wasn't a good
period movie about this.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
But if you haven't heard of the Torso Killer, that's fine,
You're You're definitely not alone. A lot of people haven't,
which is kind of surprising because these are they are
unsolved murders. There were a lot of them, and you know,
they took place in the background of a city that
was like driven into a frenzy by this ghastly serial
(02:08):
murderer who was who continued their murders despite this extraordinarily large,
you know, manhunt to try to find them, an unsuccessful
man hunt still to this day.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I mean, it has all the makings of a
good movie.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
It's got a and we'll reveal who this person is.
We'll hang on to it for a second. But maybe
got a famous investigator.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Oh oh sorry, yes, and he definitely was the famous investigator.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah. Oh you thought I met who the murderer was.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
You've got some false starts.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
You've got some Cohen Brothers esque whimsy with the dog discovery.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I thought you'd like that.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, I did like that.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
And yeah, it has all the makings of a great
movie in a cool period setting, which was depression era
nineteen thirties Cleveland, Ohio.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Which is almost indistinguishable from current day twenty twenty one Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh come on, we love Hey.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Man, I'm from Toledo. I can totally back in Cleveland.
That's tame Detroit.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I was. That's my birthright.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
That is your birthright.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
So let's go back to September of nineteen thirty four,
when a woman's torso is washed up on the shore
of Lake Erie. Her legs are amputated below the knee.
There is no head, which is why I said torso.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
And it's a suspicious way to find a body.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
The very suspicious way. She was never identified. They called
her the Lady of the Lake, and this was just
sort of the beginnings. Nothing was put together at this
point because it would be two years before any other
murders took place, and that they finally sort of put
together that the Lady of the Lake was perhaps Victim zero,
really victim one, but they called her Victim zero of
(03:52):
who had become known as the Torso murderer or the
Mad Butcher of Kingsbury.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yes, Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
And like you said, it'd be about two years before
they started to connect the dots. But in that time
between the time the Lady of the Lake was found
about a year past and then all of a sudden,
two more bodies were found. And now all of a sudden,
because two bodies were found together, this really started to
capture people's attention to the Lady of the Lake. It
(04:22):
was a weird thing. It was a terrible thing to find,
but it was singular. This was, you know, like by definition,
not singular, finding two bodies at once that were both dismembered,
and they were found in the area of Kingsbury Run,
which is where the Mad Butcher takes his name.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
That's right, they were both men. In this case, they
were they were castrated. They were also decapitated, which would
become sort of a signature. The decapitation and any kind
of dismembering really would become the signature.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Hallmark of this murderer.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
And it's interesting in that victim, one of these two men,
was actually one of the only ones that they got
a fairly positive id for, actually got some fingerprints and
it matched a man named Edward Andrassy. And he was
sort of a petty thief that had you know, the
police had brought in before.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So he was believed to be gay.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
And this if he was, you know, which all accounts
should say that he was. This was at a time
when in the nineteen thirties, certainly it was still illegal,
and it was also listed as a mental disorder in
the what's it called, not the DMVM, DSM.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The DMV. The DMV didn't look too highly on it either.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
No, that's right.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
So he, i think was one of only two that
was ever even positively identified of what would end up
being probably thirteen, maybe twelve murders.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yes, and again these guys were found together, not together,
like they were within you know, a very short distance
of one another, so that they were found virtually at
the same time. And whenever you find, you know, a
body missing its head, that that is a tension grabbing
And when you find two bodies both missing their heads,
that really starts to get the presses juices running. And
(06:20):
like we said, these were found around Kingsbury Run, and
Kingsbury Run is basically like an old river bed that
cuts through I believe the west side of Cleveland. No,
I'm sorry that, I think the east side of Cleveland
down to the Coyohoga River, and it was basically like
the place where all of the oil companies and all
(06:40):
of the heavy industry along the river and along the
lake would dump all of their waste. The city put
a sewer in there. It was just meant to be
kind of like a wasteland, like a literal wasteland, and
it kind of stayed that way until the depression hit.
And by the time the depression hit, things were so
bad that people were looking to basically live wherever they
(07:04):
could for free, and they started taking up residents in
Kingsbury Run. So by the time the Kingsbury Run murders,
the Torso murders started, this was like a full fledged,
full swing chanty town. Basically a Great Depression era Hoover
Town is what they call.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Them, Yeah, exactly, So it was a gram scene down
there anyway, certainly the fringes of society. During the course
of the investigation, there were accusations of the press that
they weren't working as hard as they needed to because
these were people on the fringes of society and sort
of forgotten about. And I think one of the other
(07:41):
people identified was a few months later, in January nineteen
thirty six, when they found the body of Flow Pilillo.
Florence Pililo was a waitress and bartender and a sex
worker who was discovered once again dismembered, wrapped a newspaper
and a couple of bushel baskets, and then about a
week and a half later found other parts of her body.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
So she was sort of.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Found in it's very grizzly, but found in pieces over
the course of a week and a half in different places.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Right, So, so far as far as anybody can tell,
we're up to three and possibly four victims if you
include the Lady of the Lake. But it wasn't until
the following June, about six months after Flow Palillo was
discovered because again, remember these people were they actually lived
on the fringe of society. So just like today, just
(08:32):
like Robert Picton, the pig farmer from Vancouver, so many
other serial killers find their victims in like the just
I guess, the lowest stations of society because they're the
most vulnerable, they have the least protection. And that's kind
of what was going on. That's why it took so
many victims for the press to finally be like, Okay,
(08:52):
there's something really going on here. And finally in June,
I believe of nineteen thirty six, victim number four as
far as canonical victims go, but possibly the fifth victim
was discovered. His head was found first by two boys
who were playing hooky and fishing along the Cya Hoga.
Can imagine that man, No, I can't, because they found
(09:14):
like a bald up pair of trousers and I guess
grabbed them and found that there's something in it. When
they opened it up, it was the head of a
man in his twenties. But I've never been identified like
so many of these victims.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Yeah, and not to trivialize any of this, but again,
that stuff is very ripe for movie making.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
This whole thing is and it really is surprising that
no one's done this.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
Yet, Like you wouldn't you know, you would write something
like that in a screenplay, and this actually happened.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So I didn't see I haven't read it. But there's
a graphic novel and maybe it's a series called Torso
that is about all this, and I'm guessing that would
probably be a pretty good basis for the movie.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Yeah, so Victim four, they were making great to find
out who this man was. So they actually the police
circulated a photo of his face and made a death mask.
If you don't know what a death mask is, I
encourage you to go listen to our episode on death masks.
It's basically what you would think. It's a recreation of
(10:17):
this man's head. And they put this thing along with
a tattoo map. He had tattoos all over himself, an
illustrated map of his tattoos in this death mask on
display at the Great Lakes Exposition of nineteen thirty six,
where you know, one hundred thousand people could walk. I
mean it was a smart idea in one way, because
they had a you know, could blast it out in
(10:40):
the best way possible to try and identify who this
person was. But it was also again like something from
a movie. These people going to an exposition all of
a sudden are walking behy these this tattoo map and
the death mask of this man. And I'm sure the
question came up, like, well, why is it? Where's the
rest of his place? Why didn't they just show pictures
(11:01):
of the tattoos.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
They're like, stop asking questions, do you know the guy
or not? No, go get some ice cream, exactly, move along.
Nothing to see here. But yeah, despite that, you know,
very public search for an identification, he was never still
has never been identified, and his tattoos were really he
had people's names tattooed on him. He had a cartoon
character named Jigs tattooed on him. So this guy, you know,
(11:26):
you could see his face, they had all those tattoos.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
And he still has never been identified.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
But his discovery and I think the very public, like
the cops circulated a photo of his head on a
gurney in the morgue at first before they made the
death mass, among other police agencies around the area, and
I'm sure to the press as well, so it was
kind of public even though It was kind of quiet,
(11:50):
but it got the press's attention, and the press started
to connect the dots, and all of a sudden, we
now were connecting the Lady of the Lake to this
latest guy and all the other ones as well, and
it became very clear that there was what they call
the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury run on the loose in Cleveland,
and no one had any idea who it was or
(12:13):
when or if they were ever going to stop.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
I think there were seven more victims over the next
two years. Victim eight were skeletal remains, but they did
think they identified this person as Rose Wallace, woman in
her forties. She had gone missing about a year earlier,
and there was quicklime used to decompose this body, and
(12:36):
this one, interestingly had evidence of more of a clumsy dismemberment.
To me, this one stands out a little bit is
one that possibly might not be a victim and could
have been misattributed to the Mad Butcher. That's just my
personal feeling. I don't know if anyone else is saying this,
but it's the one that stands out to me as
(12:58):
being slightly different.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Same as same to me.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, the killer clearly lacked a dismemberment plan in that case, is.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That a ban Yeah? Are they good?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah? They were really good. They were maybe mathrock.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Okay, I think they were at the very least they
were alternative.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Victim nine was had his heart removed, Victim ten had
morphine in her system. And I think they're not quite
sure how they all died. I think at one point
they thought most of them died by the decapitation, but
some were found with their blood completely drained from their body.
(13:43):
Like I said, this, one woman had morphine in her system,
which could make sense. We'll get to something else later
on of a potential victim that never happened, where drugs
might have been a factor.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
But you know, it's it's sort of all.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
You know, there were men, there were women, there were
black people, there were white people. There wasn't any real
rhyme or reason, it seemed like, aside from the fact
that they were probably culled from this area of Ohio.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yes, and the fact that you know, the first two
men were emasculated, that there were women involved too, that
somebody's heart had been ripped out like there was there
was clearly a sexual element of the whole thing, which
made the idea that they were men and woman victims
very confounding. You just don't normally see that in a
(14:27):
sex killer. You see one or the other, and it's
usually the sex that the person is oriented to are
the victims. And then you know, just to kind of
to cap that point off, the killer left victims eleven
and twelve within a few yards of one another on
a dump like a trash dump, and one was a woman,
(14:48):
Victim eleven was a woman, and victim twelve was a man.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Should we take a break?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
We should because Cleveland doesn't know it at the time,
but those of us looking through the looking backward through
history can tell you that this was the last canonical
victims in August of nineteen thirty eight. So the killer,
as far as anybody knows, is done.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
That's right, and most of the grizzly stuff is out
of the way, and we'll be back to reveal the
famous investigator right after this. How's that for a tease?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
It was I can't take it anymore, Chuck, please please?
Who is it?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
It's my favorite thing when you play koy.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
It was mister Elliott Ness that's very famous for being
the head of the untouchables for putting al Capone behind bars.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Good friend of Sean Connery's.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Very good friend.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Oh that was great.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That wasn't very good, because bring your.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Knife to a gunfight? You bring a gun, you dummy.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, I think that was the line. If you go
on to do Connery, well you got to have an
esh in there, right, But there.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Was no didn't I I thought that was I thought
I nailed it.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
There aren't no ssays in that sentence.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Right, they're implied. And I would have done that had
there been.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Don't bring a knife to a gun dunch. How's that right?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
You bring a gun? You're John Mary?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
All right? Back to the serious stuff. Elliottness was the
after that work in what was that? Chicago? I think, oh, yeah,
that was.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
He became the alcohol investigator in charge of the alcohol
tax unit for Northern Ohio in August of thirty four,
and then the Republican mayoral canon that Harold Burton, who
had gone to win, said you know what, Ness, you're
a famous guy.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I like the cut of your jib. Let me make you.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
In December nineteen thirty five, the safety director for Cleveland,
and let me nudge you towards this outstanding case that
we have.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So, yeah, when he was hired, the case wasn't quite
clear that it was a big old case. He came
in just after, like a couple of months after victims
one and two were found, and just a couple of
weeks before flow Polillo was found, so it wasn't evident
that there was a serial murderer on the loose. But
(17:41):
that also means that Elliott Ness came in right at
the beginning of this thing. So he was the public
safety director for it. He became the face of the
frustrated police effort to capture the Torso killer.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Right although the lead investigator, what was that guy's name,
Peter Marillo.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Yeah, he was. He was.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
I don't know about obsess, but it became sort of
his main focus of work was to tirelessly find out
who this murderer was. And I assume that it's weird
because I really don't know what a safety director was.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I don't think is that even still a thing.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, I think there is a public safety director position still.
They basically are in charge of the police department, the
fire department.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Okay, all that stuff. They're the head of that.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
They're like they probably the liaison between the mayor and
those services.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
But not the Guardian angels because they do what they
want to do.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Hey man, they're staying on their road too.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
The coroner, Aj Peerce of the case, I think he
was the first corner on the first case, said you
know what we need to do. We need to get together.
We need to have a little summit and start sharing information.
I'm going to call it the Torso Clinic, which was interesting.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I don't know if he did or the press did.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Yeah, either way, because the press was very much involved
in this whole obviously. But at this conference is where
he first put forward a profile, which was this is
someone who would not stand out in Kingsbury one, someone
who knew the area could blend in somebody.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
You know.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
We think it's a man who is a powerful man
because they need to be able to you know, it
takes a lot of work to dismember a body and
to haul these bodies around and drop them off in
different places. And we think he also might have some
anatomical knowledge, not saying that he's necessarily a doctor or
a surgeon, kind of like the Jack the Ripper thing,
(19:35):
but this person clearly clearly knows their way around a
knife and a scalpel.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, because I mean, if you really closely examine a
body and like look at the places where you know
the body was separated with the knife, you can find
hesitancy marks, you can find the hacking. There's all sorts
of clues and telltale signs. And apparently this guy had
a lot of confidence and had a lot of skill
or knowledge about anatomy. So, like you said, maybe not
(20:03):
a doctor, but at the very least a very skilled
butcher who had studied human anatomy before. But eventually they
finally were like, this is probably some sort of doctor.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Yeah, And I think they eventually learned that most of
the victims died within a few day a few days
of being discovered, and most were moved, except for victim five,
where they found a blood bath. You know that was
this didn't happen at the other crime scenes. It was
virtually no blood to be found. In fact, I think
one was completely drained of blood anywhere.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Oh really, so that yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
I mean that takes I don't know if that happened
naturally just because of the nature of dismemberment, or if
it was a purposeful thing. But only one body was
found kind of clearly murdered there.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Right, So yeah, I think the fact that the blood
wasn't on the scene and it wasn't in the body
any longer means they had go somewhere. So that the
fact that they were dismembered and the and packaged, I mean,
like a lot of them are found, you know, the
one I unidentified tattooed man, his head was wrapped in trousers,
(21:13):
but other peoples were wrapped in newspaper or brown paper
like they were meat. Someone was put in a makeshift box.
There was there was a lot of time dedicated to
the dismemberment of these bodies, and that that leaves a
lot of evidence, and you need a place where you're
(21:33):
not going to be interrupted, and yeah, that's not easy
to come by. So that became a really like big
point is you know, we were pretty sure that this
person is snatching victims from the from the Kingsbury Run area,
but where are they committing these acts? And they tried
to find that place as much as they tried to
(21:55):
find the killer.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, I mean that would be a big clue if
they had some murder room dexter style.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Sure, which is a giveaway every time.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
That's coming back. By the way, I don't know if
you ever watched Dexter.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
What do you mean it's coming back.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
They're bringing Dexter back man.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
With the original like Michael C. Hall.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
No, yes, they are, indeed, and I mixed feelings because
we love that show for a long time.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
But it is the end.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
It is one of the shark jump of your shows
of all time.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
It's crazy. It's like the shark itself jumped up.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, I think so, It's insane.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I mean, I love Michael C.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Hall though we're just now finishing Six feet Under again,
so yeah, I'm always happy to see him again.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
But I'll give it again. You see Cold in July,
m No, what is that.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
It's a little bit like a straw Dogs type story,
but he's like having to battle Don Johnson. It's just
really like, if you want I know, it's weird casting,
but if you want to just experience like a constant,
you know, mid to low level dread for two hours, like,
let's go ahead and watch that's well done in that respect, or.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Watch The Lighthouse. It's probably better.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
God, it's so good.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Let's just stop talking about this and talking about the
lighthouse for the rest of the time.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
All Right.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
So Peter Morillo, who, like we said, was a lead detective,
he's sort of obsessed with this thing. He starts not
only focusing on this land down by the river, but
I didn't mean that, but that's what it was. But
he started focusing on the rail roads and these these hobos.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
The railroads. Oh, okay, you know where trains run on sure.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, I just never heard it pronounce the way you do,
the first railroad, the rail roads.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It was hilarious.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I got to lighten this up somehow. We're talking about
this membered tourist.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
I know exactly.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
So he started looking in these box cars and I
don't I mean his hobo an offensive word.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Can you still say that?
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Don't think so. I think it's a point of pride,
a term of pride.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Of for people who still ride the rails. Okay, So
he's still out there doing his thing. At this press conference,
Elliottness ends up holding a meeting with the head of
Scientific Investigation Bureau. His name was David Cowells and an
editor of the Cleveland Press. So this is a big deal.
(24:20):
They're actually getting the press involved at this point.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Right, But secretly. This wasn't a press conference. This is
like a secret meeting.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Oh no, no, not a press conference at all. This was
very much in secret. But he's involving the press, and
they said, here's what we're going to do. Ness says,
let's you go and pick out eight tough guys that
can go undercover, that know a lot of bad guys
in Cleveland and have all those connections. We'll give them
the police support they need, and we'll fund them. How
did they fund them with the press is money? What
(24:47):
does that even mean?
Speaker 3 (24:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I think that like maybe the owners of the newspapers
chipped in, like the wealthy owners chipped in quietly interest
stuff off of the books.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
That's my of what this is.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And you ever chipped in the mostcut to break the story,
I wonder.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
But well no, I think at the same time, it
was a technique for bringing the press into the fold
so that there weren't outsiders drumming up trouble for.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
The cops anymore.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Because, gotcha, the Cleveland press really made the They didn't
make the police look bad. They pointed out just how
badly the police were handling this or ineffectively, which is
not to say that the police were not trying really
really hard. Supposedly. I saw a figure of ten thousand
suspects were interviewed over four years during the course of
(25:33):
this investigation. They just couldn't find the guy. They could
not find this killer, and the press kind of almost
gleefully kept pointing that out.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Right, So this is in a way attempt to assuage
them and bring them into the inner circle.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
A bit, right, That was my impression.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
Yeah, all right, So the police are, They've got these
undercover guys working. They're scene, They're checking cars randomly at
all hours. They're canvassing lawe andromats and places where you
wash your clothes, so you know, if there are people
like trying to get bloodstains out of something, they're kind
of doing everything they can at this point. And this
is where the Coen Brothers sort of moment comes in,
(26:12):
which is in San Dusky a dog and Sandusky is
about now, it's about an hour or ten minutes away
by car. I don't know what it would have been
back then, but probably less than two hours, I would say,
even in an old timey car. A dog shows up
in Sandusky with a human leg in its mouth. I
want to say that literally happened in a Cohen Brothers movie.
(26:33):
It might have just been a bone of a body,
but I can't think of which one it might be.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Will someone will write in and tell us, But.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
It sounds like a Barton Fink kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
It is, but it's not.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Or I might be thinking of the kids who riped
the two pay off the guy in Miller's Crossing in
that away.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I don't remember that part, although I remember one of
the neighbors lost his two pay in the verbs and
they thought it was evidently murder.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
There's definitely a movie, it might not have been Coen
Brothers where dog shows up with the body part in
its mouth.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Probably more than one movie.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
But the dog shows up in its mouth and Morello
goes to Sandusky and it turns out that the leg
was actually surgically removed during during a real surgery, not
a not a serial killer surgery, and just didn't get
disposed of right, ended up in the lake, ended up
in the dog's mouth, right.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
But the police were so hyped up, Oh, I'm sure
England at the time that they traveled Sandusky. Tod chase
down this lead, which, like all the other ones went
absolutely nowhere, and so there was there was again, like
just a tremendous amount of public pressure, including something you
mentioned earlier too, a lot of allegations and accusations that
(27:46):
the police weren't doing enough because these people were not wealthy,
were not well thought of, they were, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Very poor.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
The poorest of the poor during the Great Depression were
the ones who were having who were suffering this the
serial killer. And so there was a tremendous amount of pressure.
And I think my impression is is that that pressure
is one of the I guess the thing that drove
Elliott Ness to do something really terrible. Because the killer
(28:20):
was picking from the shanty towns of Kingsbury Run. Elliot
Nes got it in his head that if you did
away with Kingsbury Run, you'd do away with the killings. Yeah,
and so we raided the homeless camps at Kingsbury Run
and roused it everybody and then ordered the place burn
to the ground.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
And I'm sure he thought this was a great idea
at the time, but he really didn't think it through
because the people of Cleveland did not take kindly to that.
They hated him for what he did and this was
during the depression and everyone was struggling basically, or not everyone,
but most people were struggling at this point unemployment rate
of twenty percent in Cleveland, and so the idea of
(28:59):
this big shot Chicago g man comeing in and basically
running these homeless people out of their only option and
burning it to the ground was not a good look
at all. However, there were no more murders after.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
That, I know it.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Strangely, it seemed to have worked, and it depends. We'll
talk more about. You know, a lot of different views
of whether the murder stopped or not, but as far
as canonical victims go, yeah, this he burned the place
to the ground two days after victims eleven and twelve
were found, and after that there were no more victims.
So it didn't solve the murders by any stretch of
(29:39):
the imagination, but it seemed to have put an end
to him.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Weirdly, Yeah, I think before we take a break, we
should mention there was one and get into the who
we think is probably the real suspect. There was one
suspect in Cuyahoga County that the sheriff brought in name.
He's a brick layer named Frank dole Ziel, who did confess.
He was brought in for the murder of Flow Palillo,
(30:03):
originally because he'd lived with her for a little while,
but supposedly he knew Rose Wallace and Edward Andressy as well.
But then they looked into it, and by all accounts
that confession was not just induced, but in the days
where you would literally beat a victim into confessing.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, and the murder him in his cell after he
recanted his confession.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
So was he murdered.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, Well, he hung himself, but he hung himself from
a hook that was shorter than he was, which I mean,
I guess if you really really want to die, you might,
you could do that, you could overcome the urge to
stand up this inclination towards self harm. I guess you'd
put it. But his friends at the time seemed to
(30:51):
be like, no, he was murdered. So it's at the
very least his confession was beaten out of him, and
no serious scholar of the crime believes that Frank Doziel
was the killer.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
He didn't have.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Any there was no evidence whatsoever any kind of surgical knowledge.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
There was like a lot of boxes. He just didn't check.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
It was basically, he knew Flow, and he may have
known Edward and Rossi, and he may have known Rose Wallace,
and the sheriff basically ran him in very publicly.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Right, all right, So let's take that break and then
we'll come back and talk a little bit more about
the investigation and who people now believe committed.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
These horrible murders.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
Right after this, all right, So Elliott Ness has run
(32:05):
everyone out of the Kingsbury run camps. Did not go
over well. He then says, here's what we'll do. Let's
skirt the warrant rules so we don't have to require warrants,
and let's get together. Since I'm the safety director and
I control the fire department too, let's go around and
start searching for quote, fire code violations end quote. Basically,
(32:28):
so they don't have to get any kind of warrants
and they can just basically go into people's.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Houses and.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Just at will and search and do whatever they want
to under the guise of searching for fire code violations.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
He was desperate, He was very desperate.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
And again they were looking not just for the killer,
but really, more than anything, they were looking for that
grizzly workshop, as the Cleveland plain Dealer had put it
a place where he was draining the victims of their
blood and dismembering their bodies. They didn't turn anything up,
but it really kind of goes to show like just
what lengths elliot Ness, who was considered like this squeaky
(33:05):
clean law man was willing to go to this is
extraordinarily unconstitutional and underhanded, and he went. He went to
that degree and well beyond it turned out actually too
very much.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
And I think we're at the point now where we
can talk about this mystery person, right.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah, this is this is why I said.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
He went way beyond you know, unlawful search of homes.
He actually engaged in what amounts to kidnapping of a
private citizen who he thought was the killer.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
Yeah, and he kept it very secret. He even used
a pseudonym for this person. He called this person this
gentleman gay lord Sundheim, pretty good name, the good hotel
check in name.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
And privately he you know, word gets around a little
bit what's going on. But privately he would describe this
person as an alcoholic, maybe bisexual, a doctor who came
from a wealthy family and who had a relative in
Congress who was protecting this person and took this man
under the dark of night to a hotel room in Cleveland,
(34:13):
held there without charging him for two weeks, where they
interrogated this person.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yes, and apparently the guy who this gay lord Sundheim
was in the middle of a bender when he was
picked up, and he had he was so profoundly drunk
that it took him three days to become sober again.
I don't buy that, I know, but when he did,
I know. But you got to add those two. Sure,
(34:39):
thank you for keeping it, keeping it even keel though.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
I mean I've had nights they were a little rough,
and you're always okay the next day.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I don't know what you're talking about. It's so weird,
Like alcohol effects us so differently. Man, I can have
like a drink and a half these days, and I'm
like hating life the next time.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
No, no, I'm not talking about a hangover. But you're not
still drunk the next day. Oh gotch or in two
days or three days.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
I think that's what they were saying, is that this
guy was he had like a hangover stupor by That
was my impression, not that he was still just flying high.
But that hating it all.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Right, that should.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
But regardless, they kept him whether he was sober as
a judge or you know, drunk as a skunk when
they picked him up. They held him in this hotel
room without charge and outside of the legal system for
two weeks and interrogated him from up to eight hours
a day.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, but I think he did it, so who cares.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
That's exactly how Elliott Ness was approaching this. And again
everybody thought he was this squeaky clean lawman and he's
engaged in kidnapping. But the thing is, he brought in
the guy who was one of the early inventors of
the polygraph. He invented the Keeler polygraph, and it was
called that because his name was Leonard Keeler, and he
I think he brought him from Chicago and Leonard key
(36:00):
Tailor administered a couple of different polygraph tests to this
Gaylord Sondheim and said, if this isn't your man, I
might as well throw my machine out the window if
I say anything else, because that guy, that's the guy.
It's definitely the guy. You gotta take that with a
grain of salt, because especially today polygraphs are just total
junk science, but it certainly confirmed Nessa's suspicions that much more.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
At the time, I think that polygraph Back then there
wasn't even machine Keeler would just sit there and look
for a beat of sweat to break out on the
forehead and then punch the.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Guy if it did.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
That's right exactly.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
So the case was never solved. Nessa's reputation obviously took
a big hit. He eventually got out of Cleveland after
a drunk driving hit and run accident that he was
involved with and tried to cover up.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
So he left in great shame. But back to this
gaylord Sunheim.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Later on, many years later, there were crime investigators and
writers who put two and two together and basically identified
and in fact, in one case, crime writer Marilyn Bardsley
came out and said, yeah, this is who this person was.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It was a former World War.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
One Army medic who was discharged for mental instability following
head trauma, which was big warning lights going off. And
he was an alcoholic, another big warning light. And his
name was Francis Edward Sweeney, who also happens to have
a relative in Congress.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Right A guy named Representative Martin Sweeney, who was a
huge critic of the Burton administration of which elliot and
Ness was a major part, And he was just the
kind of guy who was a political opponent to the
degree that I'm sure Elliotts thought if he tried to
arrest Clarence or Francis Sweeney, he would he would he
(37:54):
would be obstructed, you know, from up on high by
this congress person. Whether he would have or not, I
don't know. I saw some references to the idea that
Martin Sweeney was well aware that elliot Ness was looking
at his cousin for this and was already getting in
the way, But I only saw that on one place,
so I'm not sure if that's the case or not.
(38:15):
Either way, his presence in his connection to Francis Sweeney
was enough that Elliott Ness never charged Francis Sweeney, despite
apparently going to his grave believing that doctor Francis Edward
Sweeney was the Cleveland Torso murderer.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Have you seen a picture of the guy, dude, he
looks like the definition of a Torsow murderer.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
If you, if you like, seriously, you have to be
careful with that stuff. Can you ever end up a juror,
you can't be like you look like a killer, but
this guy looks like.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
A Torso murderer. You're exactly right.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
The quick sidebar. Not sure if I ever mentioned it
on this show.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
I know I've talked about on a movie Crush, But
I want to recommend this great, great documentary And forgive
me if I'm repeating myself here, but it's called Crazy
not Insane. It's an HB documentary about this doctor, doctor
Dorothy Ott no Lewis, who basically spent her life trying
to understand serial killers and one of the main she
(39:10):
was kind of one of the first people to really
try and understand what's actually going on, and she put
together I think like three very common common commonalities among
serial killers. But one of them is is head trauma.
And that's why this really stands out of me about
Francis Edward Sweeney, was that he was discharged from the
army because of head trauma leading to mental instability. It's
(39:32):
a commonality in most serial killers, is some sort of
head trauma, especially when you're younger.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Wow, that's interesting. I did not know that.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Yeah, and the I may have thought I talked about
on this, but it was the uh who was the
guy in la that that also just had a great
docuseries on the night Stalker Richard Ramirez. He suffered multiple
head traumas when he was younger as well. So I
think it's it's I can't remember the three when it's
head trauma, some sort of physical and even sexual abuse
(40:04):
as a child, and then there was like one more
thing and those are like that's just a recipe for
ending up some sort of sociopath or serial killer.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I think the third one is disappointing birthday presence.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Maybe so it's a warned it's a great you'd really
love It's a really good documentary.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, I'll check that out for sure. It sounds like
it's totally at my alley. I'm actually a dog that
I've not heard of it.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Don't be a dog.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
I'm a little dog.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
All right, come back.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
So, like you said, Marilyn Bardsley confirmed from one of
the investigators that Francis Sweeney was gay Lord Sondheim. But
that does not mean that Francis Sweeney was the Torso murderer. True,
although again, like you were saying, if you look at
a picture of Francis Sweeney.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
That's totally the Torso murderer.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Well, and other stuff, you know, the head trauma, the
medical training. He was a surgeon in residence at Saint
Alexis Hospital. His career deteriorated because of his drink.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Right around the time the first murderer victims started showing
up too.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Yeah, he also had a deal apparently with a local
mortuary where they would give him bodies to practice surgery on,
which would explain maybe the kill room or the dismemberment room.
He would have a place to go and dispose of
these bodies without you know, there being a big blood trail,
you know.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Right, I mean, this is a place where it wouldn't
seem weird that somebody was decapitating a body or draining
the body of all of its blood. Like that's exactly
the kind of place. And that didn't turn up until
years later, And it was thanks to a guy named
James Badall who's written some books on it, on the
Torso murderers, and he interviewed one of the early investigators
(41:47):
and found out that he had privileges at that funeral home.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
And sorry to put two and two together.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Yeah, there was one a couple of other things. He
did send taunting letters to Elliott nests for years. Some
one of them was signed F. E. Sweeney paranoidal Nemesis.
But was this after he had been kidnapped by Ness?
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yes, so he knew Ness by this time. And he
also didn't say like I did it, you didn't catch
me anything like that. I get the impression it was
more like, you didn't catch the guy. You're terrible at this,
everybody hates you. But still taunting stuff. But yes, this
would have been after he was kidnapped, because this was
up into like the forties.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
And then I think to me, one of the biggest
red flags pointing in the direction of Sweeney is I
mentioned a near victim earlier in the episode. This was
a transient. His name was Emil Fronick, and he was
living in Cleveland in thirty four and one day he
was lured into a doctor's office on the second floor
(42:50):
along Broadway Avenue and the doctor said, here, I'll give
you some shoes and a meal if you come up here.
Fronic goes up, eats a little bit of the meal,
starts to feel lightheaded, and bolts and makes it to
a train car and basically passes out for three days.
And then later on I think in nineteen thirty eight,
was being interviewed after the cops here about this.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Old Morello goes to pick him up.
Speaker 4 (43:14):
And they narrow down the area to fifty to fifty
fifth Streets along Broadway, where Sweeney had a doctor's office.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, he couldn't specifically say that was the place where
it happened, right, And that author James Biddall says that
he thinks he came in the back way rather than
the front way where they were showing him. But he
did say that's he had an office right there, right
around that area. So and he was there at the time.
So I mean, that's some pretty serious, circumstantial stuff.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I think.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
So.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
But the thing is, there's no smoking gun, there's no
anything that says definitively, and we probably will never have
anything definitively it says it's Francis Sweeney. So we've kind
of reached this point, this plateau where it's like you
just basically choose society either you know it's Francis Sweeney
or it wasn't. And some people who say no, I
don't think it was Francis Sweeney make some pretty good cases.
(44:09):
There were other similar murders in the area starting in
the twenties and going into the fifties, that that really
bore a lot of resemblance to the Torso murders. And
then other people say, Okay, I feel the opposite of that,
where there's like, I don't think Rose Wallace was one
(44:30):
of the victims. I think there were multiple killers doing
similarish stuff, maybe copycats even, and that it wasn't all
just one person. There's there's, there is, and there's probably
always going to be a lot of competing theories about what,
you know, who is responsible.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
The one theory that it wasn't him that I don't buy.
Did you say where he was living in Sandusky?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
No?
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Huh?
Speaker 4 (44:56):
All right, so here's the deal. He Francis Sweeney was
a apparently enrolled or checked into the Soldiers and Sailors
Home in Sandusky, which I guess is an old like
a veteran's home.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I think yes, So.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
That's what it seems like.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
So he was checked in there, and one of the
reasons that people say he didn't do it was because
he was checked in in this place in Sandusky, like
a couple hours away, and I just don't buy that.
They later came out and said, you know, they could
come and go as they please. He could easily have
if he didn't want to get caught be committing these
murders in Cleveland and then going back to Sandusky as.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Well, right, Yeah, because he was there voluntarily, so he
would not have been watched or monitored, or they wouldn't
have kept tabs on him. And when they figured this out,
it was years later, so no one would have been
able to recall where he was or wasn't on a
certain day.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
You know. Yeah, I think it's Sweeney, I think, and
not because of his picture.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Too, But there's so there were other murders in the
area that you know, it could have still been Sweeney too.
Some people can the Black Dollia murder to it because
there was a taunting note that the cops got in
nineteen thirty eight that said the cops can rest easy
because the killers moved to sunny California. But if you
look at the Black Dollia murder, there's really not a
(46:13):
lot of resemblance between the two. The mos are really
rather different, so that's probably not the case agreed. Well,
if you want to know more about the Cleveland Torso murders,
there's a whole rabbit hole on the internet and in books,
including one by James Biddall and another by Marilyn Bardsley,
that you can follow. And if you do, good luck
(46:36):
with that. Since I said good luck with that, it's
time for listener mail.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
I'm going to call this. We did not help out this, gentleman. Okay, hey, guys,
love the podcast. I've been listening for the past several years.
I've almost gotten through. The whole library has some left
from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Apparently.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
I work as a musical instrument repair technician a local
university and independently in Greensboro.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
So I usually listened while I work on repatting clarinet's
and cleaning Tubaits nice cool job. Anyway, I was listening
to your show this evening on Korean fan death.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Remember that we talked about it. I don't think it
was all about that, but it was.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
A short stuff about it.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Was it?
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Mm hmm?
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Okay, I remember that being like a top ten or something.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
Anyway, I immediately thought, finally a way that I can
find some legit reason for getting rid of the fan
in our room. My fiance Abby loves having a fan
and that noise when you go to sleep. It's something
I can deal with, but honestly I do.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Not care for it.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
So when I finally got home, I told Abbi, hey,
we got a serious episode.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Stuff you should know we should listen to.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
I started the episode without pre screening and trusted you
guys would pull through for me. Needless to say, an
interesting episode, but I did not get the confirmation bias
I was looking for. Instead, we had a good laugh
and a great evening, looking forward to getting the book,
which you guys are best, and looking forward to many more.
And that is from John Goodman.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Holy cow, John Goodman, we love you and the Coen
Brothers stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
His name is John Goodman. I'm gonna plug his business.
Goodman custom would wins.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
If you're in the Greensboro, North Carolina area and you
need that clarinet repadded, go to John Goodman.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
For sure, And even if you're not, it's probably worth
the drive, right.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
I mean, where else are you gonna do it? Charlotte?
Speaker 1 (48:21):
I don't Yeah, come on, Connick note, Well thanks a lot,
John Goodman. We appreciate that. Sorry we couldn't help you.
Output at least you enjoyed the episode and ultimately in
that what counts.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
If you want to get in touch with this, like
John Goodman did, you can send us an email too.
Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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