December 15, 2025 • 30 mins
The episode outlines the major film adaptation project by Netflix based on the acclaimed graphic novel Torso, which documents the real-life Cleveland Torso Murders of the 1930s. This adaptation is a significant development because the project has been stalled in Hollywood for over twenty years, previously attracting directors like David Fincher. Zach Cregger, the successful director of Barbarian and Weapons, is producing the film, signaling a high-profile, adult-oriented thriller aligned with Netflix's true-crime catalog. The original graphic novel, created by Brian Michael Bendis, chronicles the unsolved case through the eyes of Eliot Ness, illustrating the famed lawman's greatest professional failure. The text suggests Cregger's involvement and the current streaming climate promise a compelling new perspective on the gruesome historical murders committed by the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run."
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, let's unpack this. We are diving into a story
that is equal parts true crime, horror, Hollywood legend and
just tragic political history.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It really is. For two decades there has been this
one graphic novel adaptation that Hollywood just couldn't touch right.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It was deemed cursed, or too dark, or maybe just
too complicated to get right.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And that is the crux of why this news is
so monumental. We're talking about the recent seven figure deal
by Netflix for the rights to Torso.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
The seminographic novel by Brian Michael Bendison, Mark and Draco.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Exactly, and it chronicles one of the most gruesome, most baffling,
and you know, Franklin, most embarrassing unsolved serial killer cases
in American history.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
The Cleveland Torso murders.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Cleveland Torso murders, and the involvement, i should say, the
total failure of the legendary lawman Elliot mess So.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
That's the mission for you today. We need to go
beyond just the splashy news of this streaming deal. We're
going to use the graphic novel as our guide to
really perform a kind of insic examination of the history.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
There are few key parts here.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, first the terrifying, almost almost surgically precise case of
the mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And second the dramatic political and personal catastrophe that completely
consumed Elliot.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Mess And finally we have to analyze why this project,
which defeated David Fincher of all people, has finally found
its way to the screen and who's driving it now.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
You know what's fascinating here is how the source material
itself frames this moment in history. It's not just a
who do in it?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's a really detailed look at the complete psychological consumption
of a hero, the bidding war and the final deal
which was finalized in late November twenty twenty five. It
just signals this massive faith from Netflix, not just in
the story, but in the producing team.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Absolutely, the talent now driving this adaptation is exactly why
we think the curse is finally broken. I mean, you've
got this rising horror powerhouse Zach.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Kreiger, fresh off Barbarian and Wat Yes, and.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He's partnering with veteran producer Roy Lee. It feels like
they're signaling that this isn't going to be some standard procedural.
This is going to be a visceral, dark, psychological thriller.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And for you the listener, just keep this in mind
as we go through everything. This is a case where
science failed, the.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Law failed, and the hero failed.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
The hero failed. But and this is what's so incredible,
as we'll get into later, that historical failure might just
be on the verge of being overturned by modern technology
right now. It creates this astonishing link between the past
and the present.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Okay, so let's start with the curse itself. The history
of the Torso adaptation is I mean, it's legendary in
Hollywood circles.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Oh absolutely. For twenty years, the script was just passed
around studio to studio, director to director, and I.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Always promised this gritty masterpiece, but just it always collapsed
before they could even start filming. It was perpetually stuck
in what we call development hell right.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And the defining moment, the one that really cemented Torso's
status as a cursed project, that came in the early
two thousands.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Just as that post SA seven psychological thriller wave was peaking.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Exactly, Paramount optioned the novel and they attached the one
director who seemed, I mean perfectly suited to capture that
grim period atmosphere David Fincher.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And Fincher didn't just you know, flirt with it. He
was deeply invested. He had the acclaimed writer Aaron Krueger
scripting it.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
And sources at the time were even suggesting they were
looking at Matt Damon to embody that burden struggling Elliot
nest On.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
The Dream Team ready to deliver a major prestige thriller.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
But Fincher's vision, well, it ran headlong into the financial
reality of studio filmmaking at that time. Fincher was committed
to mirroring the noir roots of the graphic novel. He
wanted to shoot the entire film, or almost all of it,
in this high contrast black and.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
White, which would have looked incredible, to capture that desperation
and the merle ambiguity of nineteen thirties Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
It would have been perfect. But here's where it gets
really interesting. The studio executives, even though Fincher's dark thrillers
were huge successes, they balked.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
In that era the idea of a big budget, high
profile serial killer.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Movie starring an a lister like Matt Damon.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Being filmed in black and white was just seen as
a commercial non starter.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
It was they were worried about how it would translate globaler.
You know, how much money they'd have to spend to
markting what was fundamentally an art house visual approach to
a mass audience.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So that caution from the studio just caused the whole
project to.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Stall out indefinitely, and Fincher, completely frustrated by the lack
of movement and the resistance to his creative vision. He
didn't just walk away from the idea. He repurposed the
core structure.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
He pivoted.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
He pivoted to a different but thematically identical case, the
Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And that pivot, ultimately is what gave us the brilliant
two thousand and seven film Zodiac.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yes, and it shares Torso's defining narrative structure. It's this obsessive,
years long pursuit of an elusive killer that gives you
no clean resolution. It just leaves the investigators psychologically, professionally
and personally devastated.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
So Zodiac became the huge success story.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
While Torso just remained a ghost, a specter of a
great film that almost was. Its failure really seemed to
confirm the curse.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And that fallout from the Fincher attempt meant that any
director who came after had to deal with the shadow
of what could have been, and.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That parade of subsequent near misses only amplified the curse narrative.
I mean, major directors kept circling this material. They were
drawn in by its depth and its historical importance.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
You had David Lowry, a director known for his meditative,
often dark style, attached around twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And then later you saw Paul Grengrass in twenty seventeen,
the master of gritty docu style thrillers. He had a
script by Brian Helglund.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And even more recently, as late as twenty two twenty
twenty two, Corn Hardy, who has experienced in that specific
kind of period horror.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And every single attempt failed. They couldn't secure financing, couldn't
find the right cap, or they just plane fell apart
in pre production. It truly became Hollywood's white whale.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
The project everyone admired but no one could actually land. Precisely,
so why now, why does Netflix break this twenty year
history of failure and why pay a reported seven figures
after an intense bidding war. I think this is where
we need to look at content strategy, not just creativity.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Well, if we connect this to the broader picture, Netflix
has built this unparalleled ecosystem for adult oriented historical true crime.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Right their investment in a series like Dahmer.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Which became one of their most viewed properties.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Ever, it just demonstrates that the global appetite for intense,
character driven studies of real world monsters eat huge and
their past work like the critically acclaimed mind Hunter.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Which ironically was also a Fincher project, right.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
It proves they can handle the psychological depth that a
story like Torso requires.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
They get that the audience for dark, historical serial killer
narratives is massive and loyal, and unlike a traditional studio,
Netflix has the financial confidence and I think the creative
trust to push through projects that are structurally difficult or tonally.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Uncompromising, which is exactly what Torso is.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
And there's also this interesting bit of operational synergy at
play here. Netflix has proven they're good at reviting other
longes stating difficult projects.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Like we said, they eventually worked with Fincher on his
lawn Belt film The Killer. They know how to de
risk these kinds of projects.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Plus and this is a neat piece of logistics that
really streamlines the whole thing. Dark Horse Comics, the current
publisher of Torso, has a first look deal with Netflix.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Okay, so for the listener, what exactly does a first
look deal mean? In this context?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It basically means that Netflix gets the first shot at
buying or developing any intellectual property, any ip published by
Dark Wars. They don't have to enter the chaos of
the open market right away. They get a streamlined path
to negotiation.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So when the material is published by a partner that's
already locked into your network, the path for adeptation becomes
dramatically clearer.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
It bypasses a lot of those initial rights clearing hurdles
that can often sink complicated projects. It just mitigates the
administrative chaos so they can focus entirely on the creative challenge.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And speaking of that creative challenge, the talent attached right
now isn't just about clearing legal hurdles. It's about setting
an incredibly dark, very specific tone.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
This is a major signal about what the final product
will be. The involvement of Zach Kreger through his subconscious
banner is absolutely key.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
He's not just a director anymore. He's a brand, a
brand synonymous with twisted, unpredictable psychological horror.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
His name alone tells us the adaptation is aiming for intensity, and.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
He surrounded himself with veterans who know how to package
prestige true crime. You've got Roy Lee, who's mastered adapting
huge horror hits like.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
It in the Ring, But crucially you also have these
specialized prestige true crime expertise of Alex Hedlund and Nick
on Toska through their company.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Eat the Cat, and these the people responsible for these
deeply researched, character driven limited series like Candy and A
Friend of the Family.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
The combination of Kraiger's visceral edge and Antosca's proven depth
and true crime it suggests a product that's going to
respect the historical record while delivering genuine scares and psychological tension.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And the final piece of insurance really is the involvement
of the original creators Brian Michael Bendis and Mark.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And Draco serving as executive producers, which signals an intent
towards strict fidelity to the groundbreaking source material.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Which brings us perfectly to the source itself. Why is
this graphic novel, out of all the true crime stories
in history, the one everyone desperately wanted to adapt.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
To really appreciate that seven figure investment, you have to
understand the pedigree of the Torso graphic novel. When it
was published as a six issue limited series by Image
Comics between nineteen ninety eight and nineteen ninety nine, it
wasn't just another comic book.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
No, it felt like a cultural milestone.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
It really was. It truly launched the modern true crime
graphic novel genre. It was a seminal work that demonstrated
the maturity of the form.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
It proved that sequential art could be used for more
than just superheroes. It could be used for serious, meticulous,
and atmospheric historical investigation.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
And the creative team's trajectory is so crucial here. While
Mark and Draco is an accomplished writer, Torso came out
just as Ryan Michael Bendis was beginning his assent right.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
He was the writer and artist here, just before he
completely redefined contemporary superhero narratives with his transformative runs on
Marvel titles like ultimates Spider Man and Daredevil.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
And the atmosphere Bendis created is what captivated filmmakers. It's
this gritty, rainslicked, shadow drenched neo noir. But what gives
it that deep authenticity, The thing that makes it stand
out from pure crime fiction is the depth of the research.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And Bennis's personal connection to us.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yes, Bendus is a Cleveland native. He didn't just read
Wikipedia entries. He drew inspiration and actual documentation directly from
real case files.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Files that were provided to him by a former boss
at a local newspaper, a guy named Jim Rumanesco.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
So this wasn't just creative license. This was a foundation
of meticulous, on the ground historical documentation woven directly into
the narrative framework.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
That one detail just elevates the source material instantly. It
meant the architecture of the story, the movements of the police,
the geography of Kingsbury Run, the names of certain people,
they were all historically precise.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And that dedication to accuracy earned the novel huge critical success,
including Eisner Award's recognition. It confirmed its literary and historical weight, and.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Its enduring appeal really lies in that esthetic you described.
It's often been called the Untouchables meet Zodiac Vibe.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
A perfect description. It takes the time period, the celebrity
of a famous law man and wraps it around the brutal, terrifying,
psychological emptiness of a completely unsolvable mystery.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And the novel structural innovation is how seamlessly it blends
that verifiable fact with the noir atmosphere. The visual narrative
isn't just invented drama exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Bendis incorporated genuine historical elements directly onto the pages. You
see reproductions of real photographs from the era, the poor,
the victims, the shanty.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Towns, right alongside facsimiles of newspaper clippings and elements of
real interview transcripts.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
It's an immersion technique. It pulls the reader right into
the desperate, polluted, and poverty stricken landscape of nineteen thirties Cleveland.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
And the narrative hook is that the entire terrifying process,
the investigation, the failure of the political pressure, it's all
chronicled entirely through the perspective of eliot ness.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
But and this is key, this is not the nest
that cinema traditionally celebrates.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
No That is the novel's ultimate strength, and it's a
reason it's so compelling for prestige filmmaking. It completely avoids
that invincible, incorruptible, flawless.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Hero trope the when popularized by the Kevin Costner film
The Untouchables.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Instead, Bendis Sandraco give us this deeply human, profoundly flawed man.
This ness is struggling intensely with the overwhelming pressure of
leading a major city safety department.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
He's haunted, haunted by the knowledge that he is failing
publicly and privately, all while operating in the impossibly long
shadow of his massive triumphs against al Capone in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
In that contrast, the national symbol of law enforcement success
placed directly into a scenario of total, unmitigated failure. That's
the key to the story psychological depth.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
It transforms the manhunt into a personal descent. It's a
story about the fragility of heroism, and it sets the
stage for personal ruin, which is always far more dramatic
than a simple capture.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So to really understand the intensity of that psychological pressure,
we now have to slow down and dissect the horror
he was facing what was the mad butcher actually doing
in Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Right before we even get to the killer, we have
to establish the environment. We're in depression Eric Cleveland, specifically
from nineteen thirty five to nineteen thirty eight. This context
is absolutely for understanding why this case just went cold.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Cleveland was, i mean, structurally collapsing under the weight of
the Great Depression. The city was facing mass unemployment, widespread poverty,
and a deeply entrenched problem with civic and political corruption.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
So when the butcher began his work, the city was
already crippled by these huge economic forces.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
And the location of the murders tells the whole story
of social neglect.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It does. The victims of this killer were almost exclusively
drawn from society's absolute bottom rung, the transience, the homeless,
and the working poor who lived in these sprawling, makeshift
shanty towns.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
It it was hoovervilles, the hoovervilles.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Which clopped up everywhere, and the primary dumping ground was
Kingsbury Run, a natural ravine that cut through the city,
often near the polluted Cuyahoga River and the railroad tracks.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
So this area was not only filthy, but it was
a place where marginalized people would congregate and just disappear, and.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
The killer exploited this extreme societal and visibility with this horrific,
almost surgical consistency. If you were a marginalized person in
Kingsbury Run, your disappearance was easily.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Overlooked, sometimes for weeks or even.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Months, exactly giving the killer the time and space he
needed to operate without any immediate scrutiny, and.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
The scope of the terror was staggering. Between nineteen thirty
five and nineteen thirty eight, there were at least twelve
official victims attributed to the butcher.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
But historical estimates based on recovered parts and timing pushed
that number as high as twenty or even more. The
sheer volume and method of the killings earned the murderer
that chilling press moniker, the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So let's talk about the specific, defining, gruesome modus operandi
that made this killer so unique and suggested he had
some kind of specialized knowledge.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Okay, so the butcher's actions were highly ritualistic. Every single victim,
male and female, was found decapitated.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
They were also often castrated, and there were clear signs
of restraint and torture before the killing.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
But the most technically unsettling detail, the one that really
points toward a medical or forensic background, is the macabre
preservation technique. Right.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
The source material details that the bodies were frequently chemically
treated to delay decomposition.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Which suggests a methodical, scientific approach to preserving the remains,
maybe to allow the killer more time with the body,
or just to ensure the corpse was unrecognizable.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
We're talking about precision here.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Absolute precision. The dismemberments themselves were carried out with such skill,
cutting through joints, removing tissue that the initial investigators were
convinced the killer was a doctor, a surgeon, or maybe
a highly skilled butcher.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
They weren't hacked up. They were precisely taken.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Apart, right, And then the scattering of the remains, which
just added to the psychological terror of the city. The
remains were systematically discarded in pieces.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Sometimes neatly wrapped, sometimes just dumped, and over.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Those three years, torsos would just wash up on the
shores of Lake Erie. Heads would be found separately in
sacks containing human parts, would appear a long the railroad tracks,
or hidden in the debris of Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
The sheer horror of those discoveries a body part here
ahead there. It created this immediate existential fear in the city.
The lack of complete bodies made the case feel simultaneously
widespread and untouchable.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
And critically this created an investigative impossibility for Nests in
his team, especially given the forensic limitations of the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
We need to remember where science was at this moment exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
This was the era before reliable DNA technology, long before
mass computerized fingerprint matching. Ballistics testing was rudimentary at best.
In fact, many of the victims were so mutilated and
chemically treated that identifying them was just impossible.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And the generalized poverty of the victims just complicated things
even more.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Many were transients with no family, no permanent residents, no
dental records. Their disappearances weren't even reported, and their identities
were lost to history before their bodies were even found,
which is.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
The enduring tragedy that the graphic novel captures so vividly.
Of the twelve official victims, only two were ever positively identified.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Edward and Drassi and Flo Palilo. The rest just remained
nameless John and Jane Does, adding this profound, unsolvable layer
to the mystery. The butcher literally erased the identities of
his victims.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Making justice and impossibility through standard legal means.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
It created an investigative void, a perfect predator in a
perfect environment of social neglect and technological limitation. And this
failure of identification, this loss of humanity, is the profound
stage upon which elliot Ness was forced to act.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So when elliot Ness arrived in Cleveland in nineteen thirty
five as the director of Public Safety, he wasn't just
another bureaucrat.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
No, he was a national celebrity. He was basically walking
on air, fresh from his legendary work in Chicago that
saw the downfall of a capone.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It secured his status as the incorruptible hero of American
law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Right His mandate in Cleveland was immense clean up a
notoriously corrupt police force and a city riddled with graft,
and it's important to remember he was initially very successful.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
He dramatically reformed the department, cleaned up the traffic division,
and successfully dismantled significant labor racketeering operations that had plagued
the city.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
He had momentum, the public trusted him implicitly.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And his high status. His fame, and his absolute reputation
for success are precisely what made the Torso case his
eventual and very public undoing.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
When the dismemberment murder started, they became his obsession. This
case was unique because it wasn't about political corruption. It
was about pure sadistic malice, something you couldn't solve by
just busting ledgers.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And despite his fame, his massive resources, and his absolute resolve,
he was just utterly frustrated. Frustrated by the lack of
physical evidence, the victim ananimity, and the sheer elusiveness of
the killer.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
The Torso case completely transformed his legacy. It overshadowed every
single success and ultimately tarnished his reputation in Cleveland. It
haunted him until his death in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
And his inability to crack the case led ness the
supposed symbol of incorruptible law to take these increasingly drastic
and highly controversial measures.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Actions borne out of pure desperation, which targeted the very
population the killer was exploiting. It reflected the moral decay
the city was experiencing.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
The first major destrate act was the rounding up of
hundreds of vagrants and transience.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
He ordered mass fingerprinting. I mean imagine the scale of that.
Hundreds of homeless, marginalized people targeted and process simply because
they fit the profile of the victim population.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
A massive, unprecedented invasion of privacy, targeting the most vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
It was completely fruitless, it yielded no results.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
But the act that truly cemented his complicated legacy happened
in nineteen thirty eight. Ness personally oversaw one of the
most controversial events of his entire tenure.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The burning of the Kingsbury run shantytowns.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
He ordered the police and fire departments to set the
entire area ablaze. It was an attempt to destroy the
killer's hunting ground and I guess flush them out.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
But this act displaced hundreds of homeless individuals who had
nowhere else to go, a deeply tragic irony given that
Ness was the director of public safety.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
It was a massive civic failure wrapped in a desperate
act of policing.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And the historical correlation is striking, But we have to
emphasize the ambiguity, just as the sources do. This controversial
act coincided almost exactly with the end of the official
verified killings.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So was the killer flushed out, did they.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Flee or did the burning destroy the final vital pieces
of evidence that could have led to a capture. Ness's
decision remains this dark, unsolved question that the graphic novel
uses brilliantly to explore the depths of his failure.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And this desperation. It leads us to the heart of
the matter and the most compelling historical theory, doctor Francis E. Sweeney.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yes, many historians and true crime experts today point to
doctor Sweeney, a troubled surgeon and a veteran of World
War One, as the strongest historical theory for the mad
butcher the.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Surgical knowledge required for the precise distmemberments. It aligns perfectly
with Sweeney's professional background.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And he had been hospitalized multiple times for alcohol related
issues and showed signs of profound psychological distress.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
But the investigation of Sweeney was complicated by high stakes.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Politics, extremely complicated. Sweeney was a relative, a cousin of
one of Ness's most prominent political opponents, Martin L. Sweeney,
who was a US congressman.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
That crucial family connection added immense political pressure and complexity
to an already high stakes investigation.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
And this political layer explains why Ness couldn't just move
forward even when he suspected he had his man. The
idea of Ness chasing a rival politicians relative meant he
had zero political capital to spend on a weak case.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Ness and his team had to be absolutely certain or
they'd risk a political catastrophe that would end his career
on the spot.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
And we know that Ness brought doctor Sweeney in for
intense questioning on multiple occasions. What we know from the
records is that Sweeney failed called multiple polygraph tests.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Right, but polygrad tests in the nineteen thirties were an
unproven novel technology, completely inadmissible as evidence in court.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
But Ness was privately convinced he believed Sweeney was the
mad Butcher.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
And this is the moment where the limits of nineteen
thirties forensic science and law just collided violently with the
legend of Eliot Ness.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Despite the polygraph failure, despite the surgical background, and despite
Ness's personal conviction, he could never get sufficient hard evidence
a body, a tool, a confession to press criminal charges.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And what sealed the case's mysterious status is the abrupt
end to the murders. Shortly after that intense interrogation with Ness,
doctor Sweeney committed himself to a veteran's.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Hospital and later to an asylum, and the murders permanently
ceased after that.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
So Ness carried this profound burden of knowing or at
least believing he knew, the identity of the killer, but
being legally and technologically incapable of securing justice.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
He died convinced that the man respons sponsible was institutionalized
but completely free of earthly consequences for his twelve plus victims.
That is the tragedy at the heart of the Torso
graphic novel and the challenge for the film, how do
you portray a hero's deepest, most consequential failure.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
The fact that this deeply layered historical tragedy, this story
of failure and political intrigue, is finally making it to
the screen, is entirely owed to this new creative team,
specifically producer Zach Kreger.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
His involvement, given his career evolution, is maybe the most
intriguing angle of this whole deal.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Kreiger's path is an amazing study and professional reinvention. I mean,
for the early part of his career he was firmly
rooted in comedy.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
He co founded the sketch troop The Whitest Kids You
Know and starred in their popular IFC series from two
thousand and seven to twenty eleven.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
He acted in standard network sitcoms, and he even co
directed that raunchy, lowbrow comedy Miss March way back in
two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
He was a known quantity in comedy, but no one,
absolutely no one would have pegged him as the next
great psychological horror autur.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And then came the seismic shift. In twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
His film Barbarian, which he wrote and directed solo, redefined
him overnight. It was the definition of a sleeper.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It grossed forty five million dollars globally on a minuscule budget.
But more than the money, the film was universally praised
for its relentless unexpected twists, its visceral at tension.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
And its sophisticated social commentary which was woven read into
the narrative fabric. It wasn't just scary, it was.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Smart, and that wasn't a fluke. That success was immediately
followed by Weapons in twenty twenty five, which was this
multi threaded horror epic starring major talent like Josh Brolin
and Julia Garner.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And that script sparked a massive, high profile bidding war,
even bigger than Torsa's, which was eventually won by New Line.
The reviews for Weapons just solidified his status.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Creiger is now a bonafied, bankable horror maestro. He's a
figure whose name sells both prestige and psychological intensity, and.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
He is arguably one of the busiest figures in Hollywood.
He's continuing his product of partnership with Roy Lee on
the Torso project while also juggling massive directorial duties.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Including the upcoming Resident Evil reboot for Sony in twenty
twenty six.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Right, And this is why his influence is so significant,
even if he doesn't personally sit in the director's chair
for Torso.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Kraiger's signature style, which blends high psychological tension, truly unexpected
and often bleak narrative turns, and an almost cynical dark humor,
is perfectly suited to the Torso material.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
The novel is fundamentally about the psychological crumbling of an
American icon. Against this backdrop of gruesome, medicalized violence and
systemic despair. Kreger's reputation suggest the adaptation will avoid the
usual pitfalls of cheap jump scares.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Instead, it'll aim to be a deeply visceral, character driven
thriller that really dissects the despair of the Depression era
and the immense emotional and professional toll on ness.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Think of the challenge, how do you make the discovery
of a chemically preserved torso both terrifying and profoundly sad.
Kreiger's expertise is in making the horrific feel character driven
and unexpected, which is precisely what the source material demands.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So if we analyze what to expect based on the
source material and the creative forces involved, we can make
some pretty firm predictions about the narrative focus.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Well. The film will surely explore the theme of the
fragility of heroism, what happens when the untouchable can't touch
the untouchable killer.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
It will also inevitably dive deep into the visual language
of Depression era despair. I anticipate the film will use
the squalor of Kingsbury Run the Shadows of the Flats
District and the polluted waters of Lake Erie as a
visual reflection of the city's moral and civic decay.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Mirroring the strong noir atmosphere of the graphic novel.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Absolutely and critically, the film will have to address the
birth of modern serial killer mythology. The mad Butcher's macabre
precision and consistent mo effectively predates the great publicized modern
cases like.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
The Zodiac or even the Green River Killer. This film
could position Cleveland in the mid nineteen thirties as the
chilling birthplace of America's fascination with the elusive, brilliant, and
methodical predator.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
The casting of elliot Ness will without question be the
most crucial decision. They need an actor who can embody
the national myth while simultaneously conveying the failure, the frustration,
and that psychological burden. You know.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Names like Jake Gillenhall immediately come to mind, largely because
he successfully navigated that exact psychological obsession and emotional ruin
in Fincher's Zodiac.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Or maybe a Craiger collaborator like Justin Long, who's known
for his ability to blend intensity and vulnerability, could take
on a crucial supporting role that helps ground the terror.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
The right actor will transform Ness's historical failure into a compelling, agonizing,
cinematic tragedy for the modern viewer.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
The stage is finally set for a film that has
waited two decades, a perfect storm of true crime appetite,
studio commitment, and highly specific creative talent.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
So what does this all mean for you, the listener,
and for the legacy of this case. We've taken a
deep dive into the layers of the Torso story.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
We've covered the sheer brutality and medical precision of the
mad butcher, the devastating political and professional failure of America's
most famous law man, and the.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Long, difficult, cursed road this graphic novel took to finally
find a cinematic home at Netflix.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
The adaptation promises to be chilling, unforgettable, and unflinching, leveraging
Netflix has proven appetite for deep, complex, historical true crime
and Zach Kreger's uncanny ability to create tension and structural
surprises that stick with you.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
It is a story about a profoundly dark chapter in
American history that frankly refuses to stay buried.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
It refuses to stay buried. And here is the final
compelling piece of information we teased earlier, the connection between
this nineteen thirties failure and our modern scientific world.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Right, despite this case being nearly a century old, the
historical records show that in twenty twenty four, parallel to
all this cinematic maneuvering, there were actual real world efforts
under Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Efforts to exhume the remains of some of the unidentified
Torso victims for genealogical DNA testing.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Modern forensic technology is finally being applied to elliot Ness's
greatest mystery. It's attempting to bridge that gap that the
rudimentary technology of the nineteen thirties just failed to cross.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
It raises a profound historical and artistic question. What if
this massive cinematic adaptation featuring a new psychological horror maestro
dissecting the details of the failure. What if it coincides
with an actual, real world revelation.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
What if science finally provides the closure that eluded elliot Ness.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Solving the deepest mystery that ruined his legacy. Right as
Hollywood finally brings the tragedy of Kingsbury Run to the
global screen. That linkage between history, failure and the astonishing
possibility of modern justice is the final thought We leave
you to mull Over today
Okay, let's unpack this. We are diving into a story
that is equal parts true crime, horror, Hollywood legend and
just tragic political history.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It really is. For two decades there has been this
one graphic novel adaptation that Hollywood just couldn't touch right.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It was deemed cursed, or too dark, or maybe just
too complicated to get right.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And that is the crux of why this news is
so monumental. We're talking about the recent seven figure deal
by Netflix for the rights to Torso.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
The seminographic novel by Brian Michael Bendison, Mark and Draco.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Exactly, and it chronicles one of the most gruesome, most baffling,
and you know, Franklin, most embarrassing unsolved serial killer cases
in American history.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
The Cleveland Torso murders.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Cleveland Torso murders, and the involvement, i should say, the
total failure of the legendary lawman Elliot mess So.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
That's the mission for you today. We need to go
beyond just the splashy news of this streaming deal. We're
going to use the graphic novel as our guide to
really perform a kind of insic examination of the history.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
There are few key parts here.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, first the terrifying, almost almost surgically precise case of
the mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And second the dramatic political and personal catastrophe that completely
consumed Elliot.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Mess And finally we have to analyze why this project,
which defeated David Fincher of all people, has finally found
its way to the screen and who's driving it now.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
You know what's fascinating here is how the source material
itself frames this moment in history. It's not just a
who do in it?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's a really detailed look at the complete psychological consumption
of a hero, the bidding war and the final deal
which was finalized in late November twenty twenty five. It
just signals this massive faith from Netflix, not just in
the story, but in the producing team.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Absolutely, the talent now driving this adaptation is exactly why
we think the curse is finally broken. I mean, you've
got this rising horror powerhouse Zach.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Kreiger, fresh off Barbarian and Wat Yes, and.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He's partnering with veteran producer Roy Lee. It feels like
they're signaling that this isn't going to be some standard procedural.
This is going to be a visceral, dark, psychological thriller.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And for you the listener, just keep this in mind
as we go through everything. This is a case where
science failed, the.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Law failed, and the hero failed.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
The hero failed. But and this is what's so incredible,
as we'll get into later, that historical failure might just
be on the verge of being overturned by modern technology
right now. It creates this astonishing link between the past
and the present.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Okay, so let's start with the curse itself. The history
of the Torso adaptation is I mean, it's legendary in
Hollywood circles.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Oh absolutely. For twenty years, the script was just passed
around studio to studio, director to director, and I.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Always promised this gritty masterpiece, but just it always collapsed
before they could even start filming. It was perpetually stuck
in what we call development hell right.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And the defining moment, the one that really cemented Torso's
status as a cursed project, that came in the early
two thousands.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Just as that post SA seven psychological thriller wave was peaking.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Exactly, Paramount optioned the novel and they attached the one
director who seemed, I mean perfectly suited to capture that
grim period atmosphere David Fincher.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And Fincher didn't just you know, flirt with it. He
was deeply invested. He had the acclaimed writer Aaron Krueger
scripting it.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
And sources at the time were even suggesting they were
looking at Matt Damon to embody that burden struggling Elliot
nest On.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
The Dream Team ready to deliver a major prestige thriller.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
But Fincher's vision, well, it ran headlong into the financial
reality of studio filmmaking at that time. Fincher was committed
to mirroring the noir roots of the graphic novel. He
wanted to shoot the entire film, or almost all of it,
in this high contrast black and.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
White, which would have looked incredible, to capture that desperation
and the merle ambiguity of nineteen thirties Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
It would have been perfect. But here's where it gets
really interesting. The studio executives, even though Fincher's dark thrillers
were huge successes, they balked.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
In that era the idea of a big budget, high
profile serial killer.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Movie starring an a lister like Matt Damon.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Being filmed in black and white was just seen as
a commercial non starter.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
It was they were worried about how it would translate globaler.
You know, how much money they'd have to spend to
markting what was fundamentally an art house visual approach to
a mass audience.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So that caution from the studio just caused the whole
project to.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Stall out indefinitely, and Fincher, completely frustrated by the lack
of movement and the resistance to his creative vision. He
didn't just walk away from the idea. He repurposed the
core structure.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
He pivoted.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
He pivoted to a different but thematically identical case, the
Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And that pivot, ultimately is what gave us the brilliant
two thousand and seven film Zodiac.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yes, and it shares Torso's defining narrative structure. It's this obsessive,
years long pursuit of an elusive killer that gives you
no clean resolution. It just leaves the investigators psychologically, professionally
and personally devastated.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
So Zodiac became the huge success story.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
While Torso just remained a ghost, a specter of a
great film that almost was. Its failure really seemed to
confirm the curse.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And that fallout from the Fincher attempt meant that any
director who came after had to deal with the shadow
of what could have been, and.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That parade of subsequent near misses only amplified the curse narrative.
I mean, major directors kept circling this material. They were
drawn in by its depth and its historical importance.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
You had David Lowry, a director known for his meditative,
often dark style, attached around twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And then later you saw Paul Grengrass in twenty seventeen,
the master of gritty docu style thrillers. He had a
script by Brian Helglund.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And even more recently, as late as twenty two twenty
twenty two, Corn Hardy, who has experienced in that specific
kind of period horror.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And every single attempt failed. They couldn't secure financing, couldn't
find the right cap, or they just plane fell apart
in pre production. It truly became Hollywood's white whale.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
The project everyone admired but no one could actually land. Precisely,
so why now, why does Netflix break this twenty year
history of failure and why pay a reported seven figures
after an intense bidding war. I think this is where
we need to look at content strategy, not just creativity.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Well, if we connect this to the broader picture, Netflix
has built this unparalleled ecosystem for adult oriented historical true crime.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Right their investment in a series like Dahmer.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Which became one of their most viewed properties.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Ever, it just demonstrates that the global appetite for intense,
character driven studies of real world monsters eat huge and
their past work like the critically acclaimed mind Hunter.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Which ironically was also a Fincher project, right.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
It proves they can handle the psychological depth that a
story like Torso requires.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
They get that the audience for dark, historical serial killer
narratives is massive and loyal, and unlike a traditional studio,
Netflix has the financial confidence and I think the creative
trust to push through projects that are structurally difficult or tonally.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Uncompromising, which is exactly what Torso is.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
And there's also this interesting bit of operational synergy at
play here. Netflix has proven they're good at reviting other
longes stating difficult projects.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Like we said, they eventually worked with Fincher on his
lawn Belt film The Killer. They know how to de
risk these kinds of projects.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Plus and this is a neat piece of logistics that
really streamlines the whole thing. Dark Horse Comics, the current
publisher of Torso, has a first look deal with Netflix.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Okay, so for the listener, what exactly does a first
look deal mean? In this context?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It basically means that Netflix gets the first shot at
buying or developing any intellectual property, any ip published by
Dark Wars. They don't have to enter the chaos of
the open market right away. They get a streamlined path
to negotiation.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So when the material is published by a partner that's
already locked into your network, the path for adeptation becomes
dramatically clearer.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
It bypasses a lot of those initial rights clearing hurdles
that can often sink complicated projects. It just mitigates the
administrative chaos so they can focus entirely on the creative challenge.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And speaking of that creative challenge, the talent attached right
now isn't just about clearing legal hurdles. It's about setting
an incredibly dark, very specific tone.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
This is a major signal about what the final product
will be. The involvement of Zach Kreger through his subconscious
banner is absolutely key.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
He's not just a director anymore. He's a brand, a
brand synonymous with twisted, unpredictable psychological horror.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
His name alone tells us the adaptation is aiming for intensity, and.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
He surrounded himself with veterans who know how to package
prestige true crime. You've got Roy Lee, who's mastered adapting
huge horror hits like.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
It in the Ring, But crucially you also have these
specialized prestige true crime expertise of Alex Hedlund and Nick
on Toska through their company.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Eat the Cat, and these the people responsible for these
deeply researched, character driven limited series like Candy and A
Friend of the Family.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
The combination of Kraiger's visceral edge and Antosca's proven depth
and true crime it suggests a product that's going to
respect the historical record while delivering genuine scares and psychological tension.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And the final piece of insurance really is the involvement
of the original creators Brian Michael Bendis and Mark.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And Draco serving as executive producers, which signals an intent
towards strict fidelity to the groundbreaking source material.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Which brings us perfectly to the source itself. Why is
this graphic novel, out of all the true crime stories
in history, the one everyone desperately wanted to adapt.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
To really appreciate that seven figure investment, you have to
understand the pedigree of the Torso graphic novel. When it
was published as a six issue limited series by Image
Comics between nineteen ninety eight and nineteen ninety nine, it
wasn't just another comic book.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
No, it felt like a cultural milestone.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
It really was. It truly launched the modern true crime
graphic novel genre. It was a seminal work that demonstrated
the maturity of the form.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
It proved that sequential art could be used for more
than just superheroes. It could be used for serious, meticulous,
and atmospheric historical investigation.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
And the creative team's trajectory is so crucial here. While
Mark and Draco is an accomplished writer, Torso came out
just as Ryan Michael Bendis was beginning his assent right.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
He was the writer and artist here, just before he
completely redefined contemporary superhero narratives with his transformative runs on
Marvel titles like ultimates Spider Man and Daredevil.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
And the atmosphere Bendis created is what captivated filmmakers. It's
this gritty, rainslicked, shadow drenched neo noir. But what gives
it that deep authenticity, The thing that makes it stand
out from pure crime fiction is the depth of the research.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And Bennis's personal connection to us.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yes, Bendus is a Cleveland native. He didn't just read
Wikipedia entries. He drew inspiration and actual documentation directly from
real case files.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Files that were provided to him by a former boss
at a local newspaper, a guy named Jim Rumanesco.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
So this wasn't just creative license. This was a foundation
of meticulous, on the ground historical documentation woven directly into
the narrative framework.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
That one detail just elevates the source material instantly. It
meant the architecture of the story, the movements of the police,
the geography of Kingsbury Run, the names of certain people,
they were all historically precise.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And that dedication to accuracy earned the novel huge critical success,
including Eisner Award's recognition. It confirmed its literary and historical weight, and.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Its enduring appeal really lies in that esthetic you described.
It's often been called the Untouchables meet Zodiac Vibe.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
A perfect description. It takes the time period, the celebrity
of a famous law man and wraps it around the brutal, terrifying,
psychological emptiness of a completely unsolvable mystery.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And the novel structural innovation is how seamlessly it blends
that verifiable fact with the noir atmosphere. The visual narrative
isn't just invented drama exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Bendis incorporated genuine historical elements directly onto the pages. You
see reproductions of real photographs from the era, the poor,
the victims, the shanty.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Towns, right alongside facsimiles of newspaper clippings and elements of
real interview transcripts.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
It's an immersion technique. It pulls the reader right into
the desperate, polluted, and poverty stricken landscape of nineteen thirties Cleveland.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
And the narrative hook is that the entire terrifying process,
the investigation, the failure of the political pressure, it's all
chronicled entirely through the perspective of eliot ness.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
But and this is key, this is not the nest
that cinema traditionally celebrates.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
No That is the novel's ultimate strength, and it's a
reason it's so compelling for prestige filmmaking. It completely avoids
that invincible, incorruptible, flawless.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Hero trope the when popularized by the Kevin Costner film
The Untouchables.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Instead, Bendis Sandraco give us this deeply human, profoundly flawed man.
This ness is struggling intensely with the overwhelming pressure of
leading a major city safety department.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
He's haunted, haunted by the knowledge that he is failing
publicly and privately, all while operating in the impossibly long
shadow of his massive triumphs against al Capone in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
In that contrast, the national symbol of law enforcement success
placed directly into a scenario of total, unmitigated failure. That's
the key to the story psychological depth.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
It transforms the manhunt into a personal descent. It's a
story about the fragility of heroism, and it sets the
stage for personal ruin, which is always far more dramatic
than a simple capture.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So to really understand the intensity of that psychological pressure,
we now have to slow down and dissect the horror
he was facing what was the mad butcher actually doing
in Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Right before we even get to the killer, we have
to establish the environment. We're in depression Eric Cleveland, specifically
from nineteen thirty five to nineteen thirty eight. This context
is absolutely for understanding why this case just went cold.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Cleveland was, i mean, structurally collapsing under the weight of
the Great Depression. The city was facing mass unemployment, widespread poverty,
and a deeply entrenched problem with civic and political corruption.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
So when the butcher began his work, the city was
already crippled by these huge economic forces.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
And the location of the murders tells the whole story
of social neglect.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It does. The victims of this killer were almost exclusively
drawn from society's absolute bottom rung, the transience, the homeless,
and the working poor who lived in these sprawling, makeshift
shanty towns.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
It it was hoovervilles, the hoovervilles.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Which clopped up everywhere, and the primary dumping ground was
Kingsbury Run, a natural ravine that cut through the city,
often near the polluted Cuyahoga River and the railroad tracks.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
So this area was not only filthy, but it was
a place where marginalized people would congregate and just disappear, and.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
The killer exploited this extreme societal and visibility with this horrific,
almost surgical consistency. If you were a marginalized person in
Kingsbury Run, your disappearance was easily.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Overlooked, sometimes for weeks or even.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Months, exactly giving the killer the time and space he
needed to operate without any immediate scrutiny, and.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
The scope of the terror was staggering. Between nineteen thirty
five and nineteen thirty eight, there were at least twelve
official victims attributed to the butcher.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
But historical estimates based on recovered parts and timing pushed
that number as high as twenty or even more. The
sheer volume and method of the killings earned the murderer
that chilling press moniker, the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So let's talk about the specific, defining, gruesome modus operandi
that made this killer so unique and suggested he had
some kind of specialized knowledge.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Okay, so the butcher's actions were highly ritualistic. Every single victim,
male and female, was found decapitated.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
They were also often castrated, and there were clear signs
of restraint and torture before the killing.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
But the most technically unsettling detail, the one that really
points toward a medical or forensic background, is the macabre
preservation technique. Right.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
The source material details that the bodies were frequently chemically
treated to delay decomposition.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Which suggests a methodical, scientific approach to preserving the remains,
maybe to allow the killer more time with the body,
or just to ensure the corpse was unrecognizable.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
We're talking about precision here.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Absolute precision. The dismemberments themselves were carried out with such skill,
cutting through joints, removing tissue that the initial investigators were
convinced the killer was a doctor, a surgeon, or maybe
a highly skilled butcher.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
They weren't hacked up. They were precisely taken.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Apart, right, And then the scattering of the remains, which
just added to the psychological terror of the city. The
remains were systematically discarded in pieces.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Sometimes neatly wrapped, sometimes just dumped, and over.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Those three years, torsos would just wash up on the
shores of Lake Erie. Heads would be found separately in
sacks containing human parts, would appear a long the railroad tracks,
or hidden in the debris of Kingsbury Run.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
The sheer horror of those discoveries a body part here
ahead there. It created this immediate existential fear in the city.
The lack of complete bodies made the case feel simultaneously
widespread and untouchable.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
And critically this created an investigative impossibility for Nests in
his team, especially given the forensic limitations of the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
We need to remember where science was at this moment exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
This was the era before reliable DNA technology, long before
mass computerized fingerprint matching. Ballistics testing was rudimentary at best.
In fact, many of the victims were so mutilated and
chemically treated that identifying them was just impossible.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And the generalized poverty of the victims just complicated things
even more.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Many were transients with no family, no permanent residents, no
dental records. Their disappearances weren't even reported, and their identities
were lost to history before their bodies were even found,
which is.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
The enduring tragedy that the graphic novel captures so vividly.
Of the twelve official victims, only two were ever positively identified.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Edward and Drassi and Flo Palilo. The rest just remained
nameless John and Jane Does, adding this profound, unsolvable layer
to the mystery. The butcher literally erased the identities of
his victims.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Making justice and impossibility through standard legal means.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
It created an investigative void, a perfect predator in a
perfect environment of social neglect and technological limitation. And this
failure of identification, this loss of humanity, is the profound
stage upon which elliot Ness was forced to act.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So when elliot Ness arrived in Cleveland in nineteen thirty
five as the director of Public Safety, he wasn't just
another bureaucrat.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
No, he was a national celebrity. He was basically walking
on air, fresh from his legendary work in Chicago that
saw the downfall of a capone.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It secured his status as the incorruptible hero of American
law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Right His mandate in Cleveland was immense clean up a
notoriously corrupt police force and a city riddled with graft,
and it's important to remember he was initially very successful.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
He dramatically reformed the department, cleaned up the traffic division,
and successfully dismantled significant labor racketeering operations that had plagued
the city.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
He had momentum, the public trusted him implicitly.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And his high status. His fame, and his absolute reputation
for success are precisely what made the Torso case his
eventual and very public undoing.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
When the dismemberment murder started, they became his obsession. This
case was unique because it wasn't about political corruption. It
was about pure sadistic malice, something you couldn't solve by
just busting ledgers.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And despite his fame, his massive resources, and his absolute resolve,
he was just utterly frustrated. Frustrated by the lack of
physical evidence, the victim ananimity, and the sheer elusiveness of
the killer.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
The Torso case completely transformed his legacy. It overshadowed every
single success and ultimately tarnished his reputation in Cleveland. It
haunted him until his death in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
And his inability to crack the case led ness the
supposed symbol of incorruptible law to take these increasingly drastic
and highly controversial measures.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Actions borne out of pure desperation, which targeted the very
population the killer was exploiting. It reflected the moral decay
the city was experiencing.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
The first major destrate act was the rounding up of
hundreds of vagrants and transience.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
He ordered mass fingerprinting. I mean imagine the scale of that.
Hundreds of homeless, marginalized people targeted and process simply because
they fit the profile of the victim population.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
A massive, unprecedented invasion of privacy, targeting the most vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
It was completely fruitless, it yielded no results.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
But the act that truly cemented his complicated legacy happened
in nineteen thirty eight. Ness personally oversaw one of the
most controversial events of his entire tenure.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The burning of the Kingsbury run shantytowns.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
He ordered the police and fire departments to set the
entire area ablaze. It was an attempt to destroy the
killer's hunting ground and I guess flush them out.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
But this act displaced hundreds of homeless individuals who had
nowhere else to go, a deeply tragic irony given that
Ness was the director of public safety.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
It was a massive civic failure wrapped in a desperate
act of policing.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And the historical correlation is striking, But we have to
emphasize the ambiguity, just as the sources do. This controversial
act coincided almost exactly with the end of the official
verified killings.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So was the killer flushed out, did they.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Flee or did the burning destroy the final vital pieces
of evidence that could have led to a capture. Ness's
decision remains this dark, unsolved question that the graphic novel
uses brilliantly to explore the depths of his failure.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And this desperation. It leads us to the heart of
the matter and the most compelling historical theory, doctor Francis E. Sweeney.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yes, many historians and true crime experts today point to
doctor Sweeney, a troubled surgeon and a veteran of World
War One, as the strongest historical theory for the mad
butcher the.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Surgical knowledge required for the precise distmemberments. It aligns perfectly
with Sweeney's professional background.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And he had been hospitalized multiple times for alcohol related
issues and showed signs of profound psychological distress.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
But the investigation of Sweeney was complicated by high stakes.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Politics, extremely complicated. Sweeney was a relative, a cousin of
one of Ness's most prominent political opponents, Martin L. Sweeney,
who was a US congressman.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
That crucial family connection added immense political pressure and complexity
to an already high stakes investigation.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
And this political layer explains why Ness couldn't just move
forward even when he suspected he had his man. The
idea of Ness chasing a rival politicians relative meant he
had zero political capital to spend on a weak case.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Ness and his team had to be absolutely certain or
they'd risk a political catastrophe that would end his career
on the spot.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
And we know that Ness brought doctor Sweeney in for
intense questioning on multiple occasions. What we know from the
records is that Sweeney failed called multiple polygraph tests.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Right, but polygrad tests in the nineteen thirties were an
unproven novel technology, completely inadmissible as evidence in court.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
But Ness was privately convinced he believed Sweeney was the
mad Butcher.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
And this is the moment where the limits of nineteen
thirties forensic science and law just collided violently with the
legend of Eliot Ness.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Despite the polygraph failure, despite the surgical background, and despite
Ness's personal conviction, he could never get sufficient hard evidence
a body, a tool, a confession to press criminal charges.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And what sealed the case's mysterious status is the abrupt
end to the murders. Shortly after that intense interrogation with Ness,
doctor Sweeney committed himself to a veteran's.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Hospital and later to an asylum, and the murders permanently
ceased after that.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
So Ness carried this profound burden of knowing or at
least believing he knew, the identity of the killer, but
being legally and technologically incapable of securing justice.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
He died convinced that the man respons sponsible was institutionalized
but completely free of earthly consequences for his twelve plus victims.
That is the tragedy at the heart of the Torso
graphic novel and the challenge for the film, how do
you portray a hero's deepest, most consequential failure.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
The fact that this deeply layered historical tragedy, this story
of failure and political intrigue, is finally making it to
the screen, is entirely owed to this new creative team,
specifically producer Zach Kreger.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
His involvement, given his career evolution, is maybe the most
intriguing angle of this whole deal.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Kreiger's path is an amazing study and professional reinvention. I mean,
for the early part of his career he was firmly
rooted in comedy.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
He co founded the sketch troop The Whitest Kids You
Know and starred in their popular IFC series from two
thousand and seven to twenty eleven.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
He acted in standard network sitcoms, and he even co
directed that raunchy, lowbrow comedy Miss March way back in
two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
He was a known quantity in comedy, but no one,
absolutely no one would have pegged him as the next
great psychological horror autur.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And then came the seismic shift. In twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
His film Barbarian, which he wrote and directed solo, redefined
him overnight. It was the definition of a sleeper.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It grossed forty five million dollars globally on a minuscule budget.
But more than the money, the film was universally praised
for its relentless unexpected twists, its visceral at tension.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
And its sophisticated social commentary which was woven read into
the narrative fabric. It wasn't just scary, it was.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Smart, and that wasn't a fluke. That success was immediately
followed by Weapons in twenty twenty five, which was this
multi threaded horror epic starring major talent like Josh Brolin
and Julia Garner.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And that script sparked a massive, high profile bidding war,
even bigger than Torsa's, which was eventually won by New Line.
The reviews for Weapons just solidified his status.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Creiger is now a bonafied, bankable horror maestro. He's a
figure whose name sells both prestige and psychological intensity, and.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
He is arguably one of the busiest figures in Hollywood.
He's continuing his product of partnership with Roy Lee on
the Torso project while also juggling massive directorial duties.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Including the upcoming Resident Evil reboot for Sony in twenty
twenty six.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Right, And this is why his influence is so significant,
even if he doesn't personally sit in the director's chair
for Torso.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Kraiger's signature style, which blends high psychological tension, truly unexpected
and often bleak narrative turns, and an almost cynical dark humor,
is perfectly suited to the Torso material.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
The novel is fundamentally about the psychological crumbling of an
American icon. Against this backdrop of gruesome, medicalized violence and
systemic despair. Kreger's reputation suggest the adaptation will avoid the
usual pitfalls of cheap jump scares.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Instead, it'll aim to be a deeply visceral, character driven
thriller that really dissects the despair of the Depression era
and the immense emotional and professional toll on ness.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Think of the challenge, how do you make the discovery
of a chemically preserved torso both terrifying and profoundly sad.
Kreiger's expertise is in making the horrific feel character driven
and unexpected, which is precisely what the source material demands.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So if we analyze what to expect based on the
source material and the creative forces involved, we can make
some pretty firm predictions about the narrative focus.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Well. The film will surely explore the theme of the
fragility of heroism, what happens when the untouchable can't touch
the untouchable killer.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
It will also inevitably dive deep into the visual language
of Depression era despair. I anticipate the film will use
the squalor of Kingsbury Run the Shadows of the Flats
District and the polluted waters of Lake Erie as a
visual reflection of the city's moral and civic decay.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Mirroring the strong noir atmosphere of the graphic novel.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Absolutely and critically, the film will have to address the
birth of modern serial killer mythology. The mad Butcher's macabre
precision and consistent mo effectively predates the great publicized modern
cases like.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
The Zodiac or even the Green River Killer. This film
could position Cleveland in the mid nineteen thirties as the
chilling birthplace of America's fascination with the elusive, brilliant, and
methodical predator.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
The casting of elliot Ness will without question be the
most crucial decision. They need an actor who can embody
the national myth while simultaneously conveying the failure, the frustration,
and that psychological burden. You know.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Names like Jake Gillenhall immediately come to mind, largely because
he successfully navigated that exact psychological obsession and emotional ruin
in Fincher's Zodiac.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Or maybe a Craiger collaborator like Justin Long, who's known
for his ability to blend intensity and vulnerability, could take
on a crucial supporting role that helps ground the terror.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
The right actor will transform Ness's historical failure into a compelling, agonizing,
cinematic tragedy for the modern viewer.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
The stage is finally set for a film that has
waited two decades, a perfect storm of true crime appetite,
studio commitment, and highly specific creative talent.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
So what does this all mean for you, the listener,
and for the legacy of this case. We've taken a
deep dive into the layers of the Torso story.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
We've covered the sheer brutality and medical precision of the
mad butcher, the devastating political and professional failure of America's
most famous law man, and the.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Long, difficult, cursed road this graphic novel took to finally
find a cinematic home at Netflix.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
The adaptation promises to be chilling, unforgettable, and unflinching, leveraging
Netflix has proven appetite for deep, complex, historical true crime
and Zach Kreger's uncanny ability to create tension and structural
surprises that stick with you.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
It is a story about a profoundly dark chapter in
American history that frankly refuses to stay buried.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
It refuses to stay buried. And here is the final
compelling piece of information we teased earlier, the connection between
this nineteen thirties failure and our modern scientific world.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Right, despite this case being nearly a century old, the
historical records show that in twenty twenty four, parallel to
all this cinematic maneuvering, there were actual real world efforts
under Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Efforts to exhume the remains of some of the unidentified
Torso victims for genealogical DNA testing.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Modern forensic technology is finally being applied to elliot Ness's
greatest mystery. It's attempting to bridge that gap that the
rudimentary technology of the nineteen thirties just failed to cross.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
It raises a profound historical and artistic question. What if
this massive cinematic adaptation featuring a new psychological horror maestro
dissecting the details of the failure. What if it coincides
with an actual, real world revelation.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
What if science finally provides the closure that eluded elliot Ness.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Solving the deepest mystery that ruined his legacy. Right as
Hollywood finally brings the tragedy of Kingsbury Run to the
global screen. That linkage between history, failure and the astonishing
possibility of modern justice is the final thought We leave
you to mull Over today
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