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The Cleveland Torso Murders

Mar 14, 2024
On September 5, 1934, a 34-year-old man named Frank Lagasse was strolling along the shores of Cleveland's Lake Erie. The beaches offered Cleveland residents an escape from the dark, polluted streets and trails of downtown on this particular morning. However, Frank Lagasse got the surprise of his life among the sand and gravel, he found the dismembered

torso

of a woman, only the thighs were still attached, no arms or legs, no head. The sufficiently surprised legacy called the Cleveland police and the coroner. By the time Aj Pierce examined the body and determined that the woman had been dead for six months, the killer dismembered her with expert precision with clean cuts to her knees and upper waist, indicating that the killer He had at least a working knowledge of human anatomy The body was coated with some type of chemical preservative that allowed it to remain intact in the water for what he estimated was about three months The skin was hard, leathery and red Who was this woman?
the cleveland torso murders
The police called her the Lady of the Lake but they had practically no clues. This seemed to be a tragic but isolated incident. No one could conclude that it was even a homicide. It occurred until almost exactly a year later, in September 1935, when two more bodies were discovered and then two more, in June 1936, police in Cleveland Press knew that these five bodies, all expertly dismembered, decapitated and abandoned in the same general area, were More than just disturbing coincidences, this was the work of a sick killer and was far from over several decades before the term was coined.
the cleveland torso murders

More Interesting Facts About,

the cleveland torso murders...

Cleveland had its own bona fide serial killer. This is the story of the Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Kingsbury Murders. Cleveland, Ohio, like so many other American cities in the 1930s, was devastated by the economic devastation caused by the Great Depression of the early 20th century. Until 1927, Cleveland had flourished with a population of just under 1 million people and was the sixth largest city. In the United States, its location near major waterways and the sophisticated railroad system within its borders made Cleveland a prime location for business and manufacturing before the Great Depression struck in 1929. 41 Cleveland's labor force held manufacturing jobs and unemployment was basically non-existent.
the cleveland torso murders
Cleveland had been a city of prosperity, but in 1931 almost one hundred thousand people were out of work and another 25,000 were laid off or working part-time. Dozens of businesses and factories closed on the day as the city's many charities attempted to alleviate suffering by organizing bread queues. and soup kitchens still because the number of desperate people was increasing day by day they had to rely on local government subsidies to stay afloat and that was money that the city of

cleveland

simply did not have people out of work with no money and on the brink of eviction rioted on the steps of city hall in February 1930 over a thousand protesters attempted to break into the city hall chambers in what became known as the red jobs riot one industry that did not suffer during the depression era was the bootlegging business in the stock market The crisis of 1929 that ultimately led to the economic collapse commonly known as the great depression occurred when prohibition the federal amendment prohibiting the production and sale of intoxicating liquors was still in full effect organized crime flourished and the relationship of the town with

cleveland

authorities deteriorated cleveland police and The city government gained a national reputation for being one of the most corrupt in the country, even after prohibition was repealed in December 1933.
the cleveland torso murders
High federal taxes on alcohol kept the black market in alcohol alive. The police accepted bribes and payments and looked the other way when necessary. plagued with lawlessness and things only got worse as the years went by in 1933, 219,000 people in Cleveland were out of work, homeowners were foreclosed on and tenants evicted, this facilitated the rise of Hoovervilles, better known as slums, dozens of people without a place to go built in an improvised way. vacant lot villages throughout the city using driftwood boxes, discarded metal sheets, and even old sheets to make shelters. There were half a dozen slums in Cleveland alone, mostly in the poor east side neighborhood known as Kingsbury Run, which was home to the red light district, the roaring third. which is the backdrop to our story today, in September 1934, a murderer began preying on vulnerable people at Kingsbury Run, but other than the first week after the Lady of the Lake was discovered, no one paid much attention. attention to the tragic event.
Cleveland had bigger problems. What to worry about in the midst of the Great Depression a year later, however, in September 1935, after the bodies of two men were found at the foot of the unfortunately named Jackass Hill, the situation became more alarming. A 16-year-old boy was walking along Kingsbury Run. He came across the headless and castrated

torso

of a man, the man determined to be in his 20s was completely naked except for a pair of cotton socks. Police appeared and located not only the victim's head but also a second victim, a man in his Coroner Aj Pierce examined the bodies and determined that they had been skillfully disarticulated with sure cuts to the joints and discovered that their skin had been coated with a preservative and looked reddish and leathery like the lady in the What made these

murders

particularly brutal, apart from the complete dismemberment of the body, is that the coroner determined that the cause of death had been decapitation.
They had been killed by cutting off their heads. Fortunately for police, the younger man's body still had his hands tied. Thanks to his fingerprints, they were able to identify him as Edward Andrusi, a 28-year-old former hospital orderly and resident of Kingsbury who had had previous run-ins with authorities for carrying concealed weapons. Andrusy had been living with his parents when he disappeared. His father told police that he had had an altercation with a local mobster a few weeks earlier and was constantly fearing for his life, leading police to question whether these crimes had been hallmark mob boss

murders

committed to make a point. one point and scare other people away.
Edward Andrusi often frequented the Roaring Third, a district rife with mafia activity, sex work and gambling, a few months passed without additional leads and public interest in the cases lay dormant not to mention that police and city officials were concerned about a new development. who were about to get a new sheriff in town in the fall of 1935, around the same time that the body of Edward Andrusy and the second unidentified man were found in Kingsbury, Iran, the newly elected mayor of Cleveland, Harold Burton , was working in cleveland law enforcement cleanup. His first step was to find a law enforcement officer with integrity to take on the momentous job of becoming Cleveland's public safety director.
The position had a lot at stake. The director was essentially the overlord of the police and fire departments, who in 1935 were understaffed, poorly trained, poorly equipped, and totally corrupted by the city's organized crime. After Prohibition was repealed on December 5, 1933, the high federal tax on alcoholic beverages kept bootleggers selling under the table, businesses were booed, police officers regularly accepted bribes to look the other way, and the Mayor Burton was tired of the terrible reputation that Cleveland had sustained and turned his efforts toward courting a very famous and very young law enforcement officer living in Cincinnati named Elliot Ness.
Eliot Ness, 31, made a name for himself in Chicago in late the 1920s for busting illegal alcohol operations, particularly al capone and his chicago crew nessa's crew was nicknamed the untouchables for their seemingly incorruptible integrity and refusal to accept bribes nessa had even been the inspiration behind dick tracy, the comic about a tough and witty detective created in 1931 by chester gold in late 1933 ness was transferred from chicago to cincinnati as assistant investigator in charge of cincinnati's alcohol tax unit, that's where he was when mayor barton hired him called to offer him the job in December 1935. Elliot Ness immediately accepted the job as Cleveland's public safety director, packed up his house with his wife Edna, and the family moved to Cleveland once.
There he hoped to clean up the city by cracking down on illegal clubs, firing corrupt police officers, and improving the department's equipment and training. Ultimately, he was going to revitalize Cleveland law enforcement. Little did he know that the crimes of this mysterious, deranged killer would overshadow his many accomplishments and became a defining part of his career as Elliot Ness set to work to reduce police corruption. Residents of Kingsbury Run were about to find another dismembered body on January 26, 1936. A barking dog behind the heart manufacturing facility caught the attention of a nearby woman. The puppy was struggling.
Against her chain to reach two baskets covered with burlap, the woman lifted the cover, took a quick look, and then headed to a nearby butcher shop to tell the owner that there were a couple of baskets of ham in the alley thinking that after having stolen, the owner ran out to take a look, but when he saw the contents his stomach turned. Those weren't hams in those baskets, they were human body parts. A female torso, arms and legs carefully wrapped in newspaper. Her reproductive organs had been removed again with the same technical precision as the last victims.
Her head was never recovered. The police used fingerprints to determine her identity. This fourth victim was Flo Paleo, a 42-year-old part-time sex worker, waitress and housekeeper. house who spent a lot of time in the roaring third just like Edward Andrusi's police again wondered if this was a mafia hit, since Flo was connected to this sordid underworld. The press noted the similarities between Flo's murder and the Lady of the Lake murder of 1934. All of these macabre murders were too similar to console any doubts about a serial killer. The multiple murderer was eliminated in June 1936 when a fifth dismembered victim was found.
Two little boys were skipping school and wandering around the aforementioned donkey hill when they found a pair of pants rolled up at the base of a tree, they unrolled the pants thinking they might find them. Something interesting that they couldn't mistake when looking at them was the decapitated head of a man in his twenties. Terrified, the children ran home and told their mothers, who then took them to the police to tell their gruesome story. The police found the man's body. A few hundred meters from his head he had been drained of blood, castrated and covered in the same chemical preservative as the other victims, like Edward Andrusy, he was young but the police could not identify him through his fingerprints, however , had several distinctive tattoos on his arms.
So detectives decided to ask the public for help in identifying the man and organized a public viewing of the body at the morgue, where hundreds of Clevelanders lined up to catch a glimpse of this mystery man. Unfortunately, they were out of luck. Elliot Ness made the decision to make. For a wider audience, he displayed the man's plaster death mask and a tattooed map of his body art at the Great Lakes Exposition, a world's fair-style exhibit that attracted over a hundred thousand visitors, sadly again no one could identify him. in this point. Full-time investigators Peter Morello and Martin Zielewski were assigned to the case, but Elliot Ness still kept him at arm's length.
He was destroying corrupt police stations all over Cleveland, but in September 1936 he could no longer stay away on September 10. 1936 a transient man traveling on the rails was running to catch a train when he saw a body floating in a nearby cesspool, according to some sources he actually tripped over some parts of the body, this man alerted the police about the body and was soon arrested. The word spread to the public. Onlookers crowded around the crime scene to watch the police lift the victim's sixth torso out of the dirty water. There they found the upper torso and limbs, but like the others, this body had been castrated and drained of blood, the victim's head was never found.
Tensions continued to rise after the discovery of this sixth victim, the county coroner told the press that the killer isapparently a sadistic type sex maniac, this is indicated by the condition of his victims, he is probably a muscular man, the killer definitely has expert knowledge of human beings. anatomy his knife incisions are clean and were made in each case without guesswork. It is possible that he acquired his knowledge of anatomy as a medical student or it is possible that he is a butcher. This statement turned the situation into a public relations nightmare. Suddenly the public was in an uproar who was this sadistic killer why had the police not found him after six victims mayor burton and his administration went into damage control mode and eliot ness was instructed to make the torso killer his top priority unfortunately ness was out of place his depth with this type of crime he was used to dealing with organized crime, not sporadic, unpredictable, serial killers despite this, he threw the full weight of cleveland police into this investigation, when everything It was said and done, detectives peter morello and martin zielewski interviewed over a thousand people during the course of the investigation and the police department as a whole interviewed over five thousand, it still made no difference now let's do a pause for a moment to hear from today's sponsors today's episode is brought to you by caliper cbd cbd is something I had never thought about before starting this podcast, however, it has become a valuable part of my regimen daily for the past two years, particularly the cbd powder produced by caliper, is incredibly easy to do by simply opening a small package. of calipers cbd powder and add it to a drink of your choice, you know, coffee, water, anything and the almost flavorless powder goes to work quickly, helping me calm down and relieve some of the stress that comes with being a new parent.
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Now let's go back to the program of February 23, 1937, what was described as the upper torso of a young mother washed up on the beach at Beulah Park, almost exactly in the same place as the lake lady (the police were unable to identify her on June 6, 1937 The skeletal remains of a woman in her 40s were found under the Lorraine Carnegie Bridge near downtown Cleveland. The county coroner noticed some unique dental work and was able to identify her as Rose Wallace, a part-time sex worker and another. usual of the roaring third Despite the identification the police had no clues as to who might have killed and dismembered her.
A month later, in July, police recovered pieces of a male body from the Cuishoga River. The victim's torso had all his organs removed. internal, except the lungs. The police were unable to make an identification. Things cooled down for about eight months after the rapid succession of victims seven, eight and nine. Eliot Ness had no new leads and his detectives were exhausting all the oldest ones. the press was relentless why the police couldn't catch this killer how many people had to die before discovering his identity then, in March 1938, a man walking his dog in the nearby town of Sandusky was surprised by his life: his dog came running out of the woods with a human leg in his mouth the local coroner noted the precision of the amputation and immediately called the police the head of the cleveland scientific identification office david cowells went to sandusky to investigate it coincidentally cowells had an informant at nearby Osborne State Prison who couldn't stop talking about a character named Francis Sweeney Sweeney was a doctor from Cleveland with a drinking problem and often checked into rehab at the Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Home that happened to be in Sandusky, so who was this francis sweeney?
A World War I veteran, Francis Sweeney, appeared to suffer from intense post-traumatic stress disorder when it was still called shell shock. He also apparently suffered nerve damage after being gassed in battle due to a lack of understanding about psychological issues such as PTSD at the time. Francis Sweeney's mental health supposedly deteriorated over time despite being a brilliant doctor and surgeon. Twice his wife appeared in probate court to commit Francis to a mental institution before she finally filed for divorce in 1934. She told him to the court that he had neglected his medical practice, drank excessively, and disappeared for days.
At one point, in an ironic and unfortunate twist for investigators, Sweeney's cousin was a Democratic congressman in Ohio named Martin Sweeney. Congressman Sweeney had been relentlessly criticizing Mayor Burton and Elliot Ness for their handling of the Torso Murders. Eliot Ness put to shame. francis sweeney under surveillance as a secret suspect if congressman sweeney found out his cousin was the prime suspect for the torso killers things could get ugly for investigators nothing came of these stories it's almost as if francis sweeney had experience in hiding her whereabouts from others a month later in April 1938. The torso of a female victim washed up on the banks of the Cuyhoga River in two burlap bags.
This was the first victim in whom the coroner found drugs in her system if would have been used to incapacitate her this tenth victim was apparently too much for Elliot Ness had investigators kidnap Francis Sweeney on a corner downtown and take him to a dark suite at the Cleveland Hotel Eliot Ness kept Francis Sweeney in that hotel room for over a week while his investigators interrogated him, notably david cowell was also there, this becomes important later They believed they had their man and weren't planning on leaving that hotel room until they had gotten a confession. There was only one problem: Sweeney wouldn't give up the moment they caught him.
Francis Sweeney was at the end. It supposedly took him several days to sober up before officials could get coherent answers from him and even then he responded in the form of riddles and cryptic messages. After days of this eloquence he became so frustrated that he called an expert. Leonard Keeler Keeler was a pioneer in the then cutting-edge technology of the polygraph test, also known as the lie detector. Keeler administered the test to Sweeney several times and when he was done, he allegedly told Ness, that's your man, he might as well throw my machine out the window if I said anything different, yet Francis Sweeney didn't say anything legally incriminating, even After presumably several beatings by industrious and frustrated detectives, plus there was the matter of Sweeney's powerful congressional cousin Eliot Ness, he had no choice but to let him go, there were only two additional torso victims.
Following the unofficial interrogation of Dr. Francis Sweeney on August 16, 1938, three homeless men were searching for goods in a dump when they discovered the torso of a woman who was wrapped once in a blue men's jacket and another time in a threadbare quilt while Police were processing the scene. They found the dismembered body of a man. Both bodies were coincidentally placed in view of Eliot Ness's office two days later, in what seemed like absolutely irrational fury, Elliot Ness gathered a few dozen police and firefighters and conducted a raid on Kingsbury Run there. They evicted more than 300 people and arrested up to 65 for being homeless before burning the slum to the ground Eliotness believed his logic to be sound Kingsbury Run was the killer's hunting ground and if you want to get rid of a predator you have to get him . get rid of their food source, yet the press and public were rightfully outraged.
He had torn people in need from the only place they needed to go and burned their only belongings. This was the great depression after all times, the newspapers were incredibly harsh calling him a man of misguided zeal and pointing out that this action would in no way help him solve the torso murders, but for some inexplicable reason, ness might have had reason, the murders stopped. It should also be noted that Dr. Francis Sweeney returned to rehab about two weeks later, one year. After the Kingsbury Run fire in July 1939, police finally arrested in connection with the case and detained a 54-year-old bricklayer named Frank Dolezal Dolezal who had lived with Flo Paleo in the early 1930s and had known Rose both Wallace as Edward Andrusy.
During their time in the roaring third, investigators believed his case was a failure and allegedly beat Frank Dolezal until he confessed to Flo's murder. He recanted shortly after, but in August he was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide, although few believed that he actually committed suicide. Frank Dolezal was five feet, eight inches tall and was found hanging from a hook that was an inch shorter. that he and furthermore was not believed to have the skills to dismember bodies like the torso killer very few people with knowledge of the investigation believed that Frank Dolezal had the knowledge or ability to commit such murders.
As far as the Cleveland press was concerned, the torso murders remained unsolved, but Eliot Ness always maintained that he had discovered it and that he simply couldn't prove it. The officials involved in the interrogation of Francis Sweeney at the hotel were sworn to secrecy and remained so until David Cowells gave an interview to the Cleveland Police Historical Society in 1983. He declined to name names, but gave enough details for It was obvious that he was talking about Francis Sweeney, that is, the man was a doctor and had a cousin who was a congressman. Sounds familiar in August 1938.
Cleveland investigators learned of a story that had happened a few years earlier, in November 1934. A man named Emil Froenek had been a homeless man. wandering around downtown Cleveland looking for food when a doctor approached him, he said he ended up in a second-floor doctor's office, but began to feel dizzy and feared he had been drugged after running out of the building, he said he ended up in a train and slept for three days before coming also when he went back to look for the doctor's office, he couldn't find it. Investigators took Emile Phronic down Broadway hoping he would remember something, but unfortunately he didn't, according to Cleveland Torso Killer investigator James.
Bedall the great nephew of a doctor named Edward Paterka approached him after giving a lecture sometime in the early 2000s with a very old photo it was a photo of several doctors from the 1930s Francis Sweeney was in this photo and Edward Paterka's great nephew told Badal that the doctors in that photo practiced together in a building on Broadway and Pershing avenues, if true this legitimizes the Emil Phronix story and presents a strong case for Sweeney to be the perpetrator. Then there were the postcards in the 1950s. Eliot Ness began receiving mocking postcards called sweeney's paranoid nemesis according to james bedall they were mostly incoherent but mocked him for not finding the murderer unfortunately elliot ness's reputation as a fighter against Honest crime with a propensity for justice would never recover from his disastrous career in Cleveland.
His behavior during his search for The Torso Killer burned many professional bridges and a series of high-profile failures in his personal life, including a few divorces and an arrest for drunk driving that he tried to cover up, eventually led him to leave the city. Eliot Ness died of a heart attack at his home. In 1957, having spent his final years in relative misery and obscurity following his death, however, his image was rehabilitated in various creative media, including a 1959 television series called The Untouchables in which Ness was played by the unsolved mysteries host robert stack, as well as a 1987 film of the same name in which he was played by kevin costner his apparent real-life foil dr.
Francis Sweeney did not last much longer than he, who had been found sane after two court-ordered psychiatric evaluations in 1938, was finally diagnosed as schizophrenic in 1956, wasHe had been admitted to a veterans hospital in 1938, emerging the following year, which, according to Ness, helped him avoid prosecution in the years that followed. Sweeney would reportedly send mocking messages to Eliot Ness with the aforementioned postcards, but he himself would die in 1964 having not been charged with any of the torso murders of the numerous victims, only three were identified Edward Andrusi Florence Polio and Rose wallace the other nine souls whose lives were taken by this unknown threat remain forever unknown their stories remain unsolved thank you for listening to this episode of unsolved investigation and the writing of this episode was done by maggie coomer the production was done by me your host michael whelan the music for this episode was composed by me through amper music except for the song you are listening to now the unresolved theme written and composed by ilsa traves for a complete list of sources and references you can consult the website of the podcast at unresolved.me.
There each story has its own page where you can consult our sources or follow a transcript of each episode if you wish. If you'd like to help support this podcast and get access to the archive of exclusive digital content and other benefits, head over to patreon.com pod unsolved or search for pod unsolved in the patreon app on a personal note before ending this episode. I would like to thank. To all of you for your patience and support over the past few months. Things have been pretty stressful and hectic for me personally, but my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in early June, prompting a pretty quick end to the previous season this break.
However, she has allowed me to recharge my batteries, so to speak, although I am still getting used to this new normal that includes lack of sleep and lots of diapers and spit-up. I'm incredibly excited to start a new season of this show with some new filming equipment, new setup, new logo, and brand new storylines, so until next time, I hope you're all staying safe and I'll talk to you later.

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