Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Cleveland Torso Murders Pt. 1

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

When a torso washed up on the banks of the Cuyahoga River in 1937, the police initially assumed a crime of passion. But when the next torso was found, they knew they had a serial murderer on their hands. Nicknamed the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, a notorious killer stalked the slums of Cleveland, killing vagrants he thought no one would miss. This episode originally aired in April 2019.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Lillian Jones hadn't been a sex worker for very long, but when you live in the most run-down slum of Cleveland, in the midst of the Great Depression, honest work is hard to come by. She sat on her John's couch as he fixed her a drink in the kitchen. He was a hulking man, but seemed nice. She had seen him frequent the seedy bar where they'd met.

Everyone seemed to know and like him. She heard him rustling around in the kitchen and went to see what was taking so long. But the man she saw standing by the sink had changed. His eyes had gone cold. She could sense an anger welling up inside him. He seemed to look right through her. Then he picked up a knife. Lillian screamed as she.

She raced out of the kitchen, hearing his heavy footsteps behind her. She dashed down the hallway and threw herself into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. The John threw his weight against the door as Lillian pried open the bathroom window. She was several stories up, nothing but concrete below. But she had no other option. She jumped. As she hit the ground, she heard her leg crack. The pain shot up her leg like fire.

She took one last look at the window, the eyes of her attacker glaring back at her. Months later, as decapitated torsos began to turn up all over Cleveland, Lillian realized that she hadn't just escaped a murderer. She had been the sole surviving victim of one of the country's first serial killers, the mad butcher of Kingsbury Run. Hi, I'm Vanessa Richardson. This is serial killers, a Spotify podcast. Every Monday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we're going to take a deep dive into the crimes of the Cleveland torso murderer, a still-unsolved string of serial murders that plagued Cleveland during the Great Depression.

I'm here with my co-host, Greg Polson. If you enjoy today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review, wherever you're listening. It really does help us. episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But

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The torso murderer terrorized Cleveland for most of the 1930s, though some believe his horridged his horrific killings went well into the 1940s and 50s. He was notorious for severing his victims' heads and limbs from their bodies and dumping the various parts across multiple locations. Today, the killer is best known for spurring Cleveland's torso clinic, which many criminologists regard as the first recorded instance of criminal profiling. This week will examine the 12 murders attributed to the Cleveland torso murderer, more sensationally known as the mad butcher of Kingsbury Run, and will follow law enforcement's numerous failed attempts to apprehend the killer.

Next week, we'll explore other crimes that many believe the killer may have committed. We'll also explore profiles of a few individuals who police believe could have been the killer. Throughout the 1930s, police were plagued by a single question. Why did the torso murderer dissect his victims and scatter their body parts? they thought it might have been an attempt to make it more difficult to identify the victims. It never occurred to them that the brutal dismemberment might have been a form of release for the killer, a twisted escape from the relentless emotional strain of the Great Depression. This is probably because this case was one of the first recorded instances of serial murder within the United States.

The phrase serial killer wouldn't even be coined for another 30 years. Police had no idea what they were dealing with. At the time of the torso murders, law enforcement officials typically assumed that murders were committed out of vengeance or violence, from brawls, feuds, or personal vendettas, and they were usually disparate. They didn't consider the idea that someone might kill for pleasure, especially not repeatedly. And because the killer was never identified, there remains some debate as to how many slayings can actually be attributed to him, or whether a copycat murderer was also active during this time. Cleveland's torso murderer became an international news story by 1937.

The press delighted in painting a terrifying portrait of a deranged killer who stalked and mutilated unsuspecting victims. It was a hot evening in July 1934, and the city was quiet. But somewhere hidden in a back room or warehouse, a mad butcher was at work. He was taking great care in carving up a body, neatly amputating. limbs one by one. A couple months later, on September 5th, a man was walking along the banks of Lake Erie when he noticed a strange object buried in the sand. At first he thought it was a tree trunk, but as he inched closer, he felt his hands start to shake as he slowly realized what he was

looking at, a woman's torso. When police arrived at the scene, they were horrified. The body was completely headless. The victim's arms and legs had been asked. The work was so precise that police instantly wondered if the killer was a medical professional, or butcher. Police had never seen something so brutal. They couldn't understand why anyone would dismember a body. One officer suggested it might have made it easier to dispose of. They couldn't imagine the psychological motivation to commit such an atrocity. Vanessa's going to take over the psychology here. Just a reminder, she's not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist. but she's done a lot of research on the subject.

Thanks, Greg. According to psychiatrist, Dr. Raj Persaud, there are several reasons someone may be driven to dismember a body, the first of which is defensive dismemberment. That's meant to ease in moving the body or getting rid of evidence, as police suggested might have been the case. But a second category, aggressive dismemberment, could have also been a factor.

In aggressive murders, the killing is motivated by strong emotions of hatred or lust, usually towards the victim. The consequent mutilation is an extension of an aggressive murder, usually done to satisfy some twisted urge the killer cannot contain. Whatever the motivation, without the victim's head or her hands for fingerprints, police struggled to identify her, which made searching for her potential killer difficult. For the most part, the victim was without any identifying marks, although she did have a scar across her abdomen.

detectives searched through 31 files for local women who had disappeared within the last six months, but none of them shared the torso's abdominal scar. No arrests were ever made in the case, and police were never able to identify the dead woman. In the absence of any leads, police began referring to her as the Lady of the Lake. The Lady of the Lake was never officially considered to be one of the 12 Cleveland torso murders, largely because her body was found over a year before police discovered the first two official torso killer victims. Another factor may be that, as we previously mentioned, law enforcement at the time did not usually make connections between individual crimes. But today, most consider the Lady of the Lake to be the first victim in the killer series of gruesome attacks.

The torso murders officially began in another part of Cleveland, in a neighborhood known as Kingsbury Run. This part of the city was a deep gorge that was once home to a historic riverbed. In earlier centuries, the run had been a lovely area with the river, picnic tables, and trees. But the Great Depression hit Kingsbury Run especially hard. By the 1930s, the run had become an industrial wasteland filled with shanty towns. These Hoovervilles were filled with the depressions down and out, sex workers, addicts, and transients. These were people who'd been hit especially hard. by the economic downturn, which made them perfect victims. People whose absence might never be

noticed. On September 23, 1935, two schoolboys were tossing a softball back and forth on a field in Kingsbury Run. One of them accidentally threw the ball too hard, and it sailed down into a large gully at the bottom of the hill. The boys chased after the ball, but stopped short. Waiting for them were the naked bodies of two men, completely decapitated. Police, headed by Detective Inspector Charles O. Neville, later found the men's severed genitals and one man's head in a shallow hole not too far from the bodies. The mutilated genitalia told police

that these men were not dismembered for ease of movement. They realized these murders were crimes of passion, committed by a violent, scorned lover, who presumably had a personal vendetta against the victim. But interestingly, because these torsosos were male, police did not think to tie this crime to the lady of the lake. Instead, Neville ordered that police try to identify the victims, with the hope that an investigation into their personal lives would yield clues about who the killer could be. Police were able to identify one of the two torsos as a 29-year-old man named Edward W. Andresi. Andracy wasn't a major criminal, but the police knew him as a constant source of trouble.

He was known to frequent sleazy establishments in Kingsbury Run and was notorious for drinking, brawling, and gambling. He was a ladies' man, but he may also have had romantic relationships with men, which would have been seen as an anomaly in the 1930s. Police felt this could have led to his grisly murder and might explain the mutilation of his genitals if he and the murderer had been intimate. Meanwhile, autopsy results shed new light on the case. The head and limbs had been cleanly severed from the body, which led the coroner to believe that the killer possessed both great physical strength and extensive medical knowledge. Interestingly, Andracy had worked as an orderly in a psychiatric ward at City Hospital in Cleveland,

so it was possible that he had met someone at the hospital with the medical knowledge it took to commit these crimes. But police were never able to track down anyone who, who fit the bill. Although Neville and his squad did their best to run down every lead connected to this double homicide, they continually came up empty. The case remained cold for nearly a year until January of 1936 when yet another brutal murder would be unearthed, and Detective Neville would begin to understand that he was hunting

his first serial killer. We'll learn more about this third victim in a moment. snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigue, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zetbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 20,000.

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On the chilly morning of January 26, 1936, a woman was awakened by the sound of a dog barking. Annoyed, she bundled up and left her house to see what was the matter. Sitting in the snow were two half-bushel baskets with what looked like packages inside. The packages looked like hams, so she unwrapped them. She screamed. They were, in fact, human body parts. Detective Neville and his team arrived at the scene, and rushed the body parts to the morgue.

Like the two murders in September, the coroner identified the victim's cause of death as decapitation. And once again, the decapitation was clean and precise, the work of a skilled butcher. Fitting, since the bodies had been bundled up like meat. Although the victim's head was never found, law enforcement officials were able to use fingerprints to identify the victim as Florence or Flo Polillo.

Flo was in her mid-40s and worked part-time as a waitress, barmaid, and sex worker. This time, Neville began to make the connection between this murder and the two men found at the bottom of the hill in Kingsbury Run. He told the officers working under him that he felt these murders were likely connected. But others on the force were slow to buy into his theory. There was one key difference between Polillo and the Kingsbury Run torsos, their gender. Many police officers believed this disparity indicated that they were working with two totally separate killers. But Neville felt that Andracy and Flo shared more than might have initially met the eye.

Like Andracy, Flo was someone who operated on the fringes of society. They hung around seedy people and likely wouldn't have been missed. But perhaps the greatest link between them is that they were easy to abduct. Both of these people had been tortured to death by decapitation, It's possible that the torture itself could have been the killer's preference, not what either of them looked like. Neville began to refer to Polillo as the torso murderer's third victim. This count excludes the Lady of the Lake, since she was never an official victim. Under Neville's command, police began searching for one individual who would have had motive to murder both Andracy and Palillo.

But although police did follow up with several unsavory men in Palillo's life, they were unable to tie in any of them to Andracy. To add insult to injury, none of these seedy guys had an ounce of medical training to make the lacerations. As might be expected, the discovery of three dismembered bodies caused widespread panic in Cleveland. This was only heightened in the summer of 1936 when another dismembered body was found. On June 5th, a couple of young boys spotted a pair of brown trousers wrapped in a bundle under a tree. When the boys ran over to investigate, they were met by a terrible stench,

as they realized the bundle was a human head. Police never found the man's body. It stunned investigators who weren't used to finding their victims' heads. Police tried to identify the man, an easier task given that this time around, they had a face. They asked the coroner to clean up the head

and put it on display at the morgue. Between June 5th and June 6th, an estimated 2,000 people came through to examine the head. But nobody was able to identify him. Police finally discovered his body a few days later. Near where Andracy and victim number two had been found, his body bore six different tattoos, so police began to refer to him as the tattooed man.

Police were desperate to ID the victim. If they could just figure out who he was, then they could begin to cross-references associates with anyone also acquainted with Andréiard. But one officer wasn't so certain that the victim's identity would help. As Detective Neville considered the similarities, or lack thereof, between the four victims, he began to wonder if perhaps their differences might be the bigger clue. What if the killer wasn't striking those near and dear to him, but rather purposefully targeting people he had no connection with?

It was a horrifying realization. Anyone could be this madman's next target. Neville presented his theory to his fellow officers, but was largely met with ridicule. The rest of the department continued to assume that there was a link between the murders. Shunned by his peers and colleagues, Neville reached out to the local papers in an effort to warn the citizens of Cleveland that a serial killer could be on the loose. He described the killer as a maniac with a lust to kill. Neville theorized that the tattooed man was a stranger who was new to the city. He said, quote, while he was sleeping, this maniac attacked him.

First, he cut his throat, then he hacked away at the neck, then he undressed the victim. That's a maniac's trick, end quote. On July 22nd, 1936, Clevelanders found another dismembered victim thrown at the bottom of a gully. Once again, Neville was adamant that police were wasting their time searching for non-existent connections between the killer's victims. But this would all change on September 10, 1936, when a sixth victim was discovered. A vagrant man was walking along a creek in Kingsbury Run

when he saw two halves of a male torso bobbing in the water. Horrified the man immediately notified authorities who proceeded to drag the body parts out of the water. In the meantime, hundreds of onlookers had gathered around the creek to witness the great, ruse and scene. The following day, the plain dealer printed a photo of the entire ordeal. Cleveland's torso murderer had officially become a public spectacle. Finally, the rest of the police began to adopt Neville's theory that the killer might not

know his victims. They urged Cleveland citizens to report any and all suspicious behavior, no matter how seemingly insignificant. The police began to apprehend anyone who seemed even remotely suspicious. Clevelanders began to see the search for the killer as a political witch hunt. One Cleveland news reporter wrote, quote, Don't ever veer from the path of strictly normal behavior in this town. One slip and an inquisitive detective might come visiting, end quote.

Race and socioeconomic issues within the city also reared their ugly heads. Police were far more likely to question immigrants and Kingsbury-run vagrants. Investigators also explored the releases of, known perverts and sadists from local mental hospitals. Interestingly, police still did not seem to be focusing on butchers or medical professionals as suspects, despite the way in which the heads had been severed. This perhaps pointed to class biases at the time. It was easier to point to a seemingly crazed transient than a medical professional as a rampant killer.

Meanwhile, the torso murders were becoming a national story and Cleveland's personal embarrassment. The mayor, Harold Hitz Burton, was under immense pressure to find the killer. To try to mitigate the situation, he added a new member to the torso murders task force, public safety director, Elliot Ness. In September of 1936, Ness officially took over the investigation and began to round up transients in Kingsbury Run for questioning, as well as combed through all records associated with the murders. Newspapers had their own theories about the killer as well,

they sensationalized the killings, writing, quote, he kills for the thrill of killing. He kills to satisfy a bestial, sadistic lust for blood. He kills to prove himself strong. He kills to feed his sex-perverted brain, the sight of a beheaded human. He must kill. For decapitation is his drug to be taken in closer spaced doses. Yes, he will kill again.

He is, of course, insane, end quote. Law enforcement, too, had begun to suspect that a deep dive into the killer psychology could be valuable in identifying the mad butcher of Kingsbury Run. In September of 1936, following the discovery of the unidentified victim number six, Elliot Ness and coroner A.J. Pierce called for an emergency crime clinic, or torso clinic. The torso clinic was an unprecedented conference that would allow police authorities and distinguished medical personnel to pool their knowledge about the killer.

The conference also served to counter some of the bad press that the city of Cleveland was receiving, and Pierce hoped that it would assure his constituents that law enforcement was doing everything in its power to catch the killer. But interestingly, it also was one of the earliest recorded instances of criminal profiling. Much of what was discussed at the conference

were details that police had already gone over. Officials at the conference concluded that the killer would have to be a large, powerful man to cleanly sever victims' heads, as well as to drag their bodies into areas of Kingsbury Run that were not accessible by car. Officials also theorized that he likely lived and worked somewhere in Kingsbury Run, or its surrounding neighborhoods,

which would explain why he was able to maneuver around the area without ever being spotted. At the conference, there was much debate over whether or not the torso killer had known his victims, as was the standard assumption at the time. Some wondered if perhaps he had known one or some of his victims, but possibly not all of them. Neville still believed that these were merely crimes of opportunity,

and the killer's victims were people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The decapitation of the victims was also a topic of great debate at the conference. Some believed it marked the behavior of a sexual sadist, but Elliot Ness argued that perhaps severing the head was a tactical, choice to prevent law enforcement from discerning a victim's identity. After all, if the victim was unknown, it was impossible to explore his or her social network. Eventually, members of the conference managed to come up with a profile of the killer. In addition to his physical strength and possible employment in a medical field or as a butcher, most participants branded the killer a sex

pervert and believed he was criminally insane, possibly even keeping the severed heads as trophies. But the consensus was that most of the time, the killer likely led a normal life and outwardly appeared to be sane. Unfortunately, officials were unable to agree upon any one course of action to take moving forward. And in the meantime, police continue to apprehend individuals who they deemed strange or suspicious. They arrested one 36-year-old former slaughterhouse worker who had reportedly been chasing his neighbors around with an axe. But he insisted that he was only trying to chase evil spirits, and police were never able to tie him to any actual murders.

On another occasion, a terrified woman reported that she had seen a man in Kingsbury run hacking at something that looked like human flesh. But when police raced over to investigate, they found the cut-up remains of a watermelon in the location the woman had been describing. Police even canvassed every laundry in the city, hoping to find the murderer's bloodstained clothes, but nothing ever led to a credible lead. What police couldn't know was that, though they were running down every lead imaginable in Kingsbury Run, the killer had left that area forever. He had found a brand new community to torture and terrify. By February 1937, it had been over seven months since the Mad Butchers' last

attack, and some Cleveland citizens were finally beginning to let their guards down, hoping that the terror in their city was finally over. Others remained on edge. It seemed like only a matter of time before the butcher would strike again. And sure enough, on February 23rd of 1937, a man was walking along a path on the banks of Lake Erie when he stumbled upon the lower half of a human torso. When police arrived, they immediately found the upper half of the torso a couple of of feet offshore. Police continued that the torso had washed up on the beach rather than having been carried. At first, local officials hesitated to add this victim to the torso murderer's tally because the official cause of death was blood loss from other wounds rather than decapitation.

Another detective inspector on the case, D.I. Sweeney, told one paper that this was a totally separate killing because, quote, dissection was not marked with the same skill displayed in the other murders, end quote. Another detective, Peter Marillo, reported an abortion farm operating near where the woman had been found and began to theorize that perhaps the unidentified woman had died of an illegal abortion gone awry. However, the victim pretty clearly matched the torso murderer's MO. The head had been severed, as had the arms and legs, and the head was missing. Ultimately, authorities did rule this unidentified woman to be victim number seven in the torso murders. And once again, police found themselves with a concerning lack of leads in the case.

Then detectives Marillo and Zaluski discovered two zigzagging trails of blood that went from a busy street near Lake Erie right up to the river. Shortly after that, a neighbor came forward and reported that on the Saturday before the body had turned up, he had seen two men in a small boat close to where the torso had washed up. The detectives wondered if the two men had pulled up to the lake in an automobile and headed to the beach, each carrying a dripping parcel of half a torso. Police briefly wondered whether the mad butcher of Kingsbury Run was actually a pair of killers working in tandem. But the two-man theory eventually unraveled when a newsboy came forward and told detectives that he had seen a dog get hit by a car several days earlier in the exact

spot that police had found the trail of blood. The dog had apparently weaved back and forth. dripping blood as he limped along the banks of Lake Erie. The press once again began to turn up the heat on local officials. Cleveland News called the murders Cleveland's shame. News of the attacks had now begun to circulate widely on a national and even international scale. And meanwhile, law enforcement interviewed a parade of unlikely suspects. One man had been waving a bloody butcher's knife at a local gas station and bragging about cutting a homeless man.

Another, adorned with beads and amulets, claimed to possess the secret of transplanting human heads. One former medical student bragged about his talent for grafting human limbs. They even came across a man who seemed perfect for the crimes, a hunchbacked former wrestler whose home contained a bloodied butcher's apron, five sharp butcher knives, a stained axe and hatchet, a framed medieval painting of a beheading, and a large collection of erotic paintings.

But while they questioned this man for quite some time, he maintained that his knife collection was strictly for cutting up macaroni, and police never were able to tie him to the crimes. Detective's Marilla and Zaluski also began running down a lead about a religious cult that had been operating in Cleveland. Perhaps the severing of limbs could have been a part of human sacrifice. But while the majority of the police force was busy chasing down dead-end leads, Detective Neville waited for another body to turn up.

The killer had claimed a new victim every few months, but had been quiet since February, which meant that the butcher was overdue for a kill. We'll rejoin Detective Neville as he waits for the next victim in a moment. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories,

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And sure enough, on June 6th. 6th, 1937, a young boy was passing over a bridge when he caught sight of something glittering in a pile of dirt. He ran over to the sparkling object and was horrified to find a human skull. The object had been a gold tooth glittering in the setting sun. Ness and his team arrived at the scene and found a pile of bones in a burlap sack near the skull. The body had long since decomposed. And at first it appeared that the bones had no connection with Cleveland's torso murderer, but an autopsy revealed definite knife marks

and evidence of hacking and cutting on the vertebrae, all pointing to decapitation. There were many in the force who believed this was the body they were waiting for. But Neville wasn't convinced. This body was already decomposed. He suspected they would find more bodies. To further complicate matters,

the decomposed woman was of African-American descent, which set her apart from the torso killer's previous victims, all white. According to the National Crime Museum, like with gender, serial killers typically have racial preferences and generally select victims of the same race, usually their own. However, the torso killer had already killed across gender lines, suggesting that perhaps he was not concerned with gender or race. Still others argued that perhaps this new victim was the work of a copycat. Eventually, police were able to use dental work to tentatively identify this woman as Rose Wallace.

This was the first time that police had been able to discern a victim's identification in over a year, and they immediately began trying to make connections between Wallace and the previous known victims. Like Flo Polillo, Wallace had also worked part-time as a sex worker, and even frequented many of the same bars. As police traced Wallace's social patterns, they discovered that she, Polillo, and Andracy, all had frequented a sleazy bar at the corner of East 20th and Central. But from here, the connections seemed to reach a dead end. By July, some of the press covering the murders had died down. Luckily for Cleveland Police, Amelia Earhart departed from Lye, New Guinea on July 2,

1937, and had not been seen or heard from since. Stories about Earhart began to capture national headlines and kept press coverage about the still unsolved torso murders to a minimum. It seemed all was quiet. But as Neville suspected, the other shoe eventually dropped. On July 6th, that 5.30 that morning, a man saw something bobbing up and down in the Cuyahoga River. It was the lower half of a male torso. As police examined the body, they noticed this time the killer had sliced open the lower half of the torso and removed the contents of the abdominal cavity. He had also split open the chest and removed the heart via a clean incision across the base of the aorta. The savagery of his kills was escalating. He could have been

purposefully escalating his behavior to garner media attention, or perhaps he was refining his killing tactics. Either way, it seemed as though he was taking more pleasure in his kills. This was now the killer's ninth victim, and authorities understood that their lack of leads was unacceptable. Marillo and Zaluski began to divide their suspects up into three categories, strange characters who loitered around Kingsbury Run, doctors or medical personnel whose behavior seemed suspicious, and individuals whose names were brought to their attention via outside tips. This last group was by far the largest, as investigators would receive up to 50 tips a day. But despite the police department's best efforts, the killer continues. The killer

continued to strike. On the afternoon of April 8, 1938, a shanty dweller who lived along the banks of the Cuyahoga River, noticed an object floating in the shallows. At first, he thought it was a dead fish, but then he realized that it was actually the lower half of a human leg. Police searched at length for the rest of the body, and one month later, a female torso and most of the rest of her legs were found. This is also the only victim who tested positive for drugs present in her system. But while they found evidence of drug use, they found no evidence of her identity. Without an identity for the 10th victim, it was difficult for police to use the discovery of the body

to make any additional connections about the killer. But by now, with the number of victims in the double digits, the people of Cleveland were putting massive amounts of pressure on law enforcement. To make matters worse, a couple of months later, on August 16, 1938. Two more dismembered bodies were discovered at a dump site along Lakeshore Drive. They were too decomposed for police to identify the victims, but this time the site where the bodies were discovered was incredibly public,

and police made no effort to cordon off the crime scene. Civilians crowded the scene, horrified by the gruesome spectacle. This highly public display only put more pressure on law enforcement, who were seemingly bungling the case at every turn, police were encouraged to arrest and question anyone who seemed even remotely suspicious. But just as police began cracking down, the killings stopped. Cleveland went nearly a year without a dead body turning up. It seemed as though the killer was lying low.

Police wondered if their aggressive approach had rattled him. Finally, in July of 1939, after about four years on the case, police turned up a promising lead. They had been searching for someone who drank at the same bar that Andracy, Polillo, and Wallace had frequented. Several employees of the bar brought up a regular named Frank Dolazol, who also owned a stockpile of butcher's knives and was reported to have threatened multiple people.

On the evening of Wednesday, July 5, 1939, police arrested Dolazol and carded him in for questioning. For two days, police interrogated Dolazol, who was denied food and sleep. He finally broke and admitted to killing Polillo. He claimed that he had invited her over to his apartment for a drink in January of 1936. They quarreled because she had tried to take some money from him, and she came at him with a butcher's knife.

They fought. Then she hit her head against the bathtub. At this point, Dolazal claimed that he assumed she was dead, so he tossed her body into the tub and sliced off her head, legs and arms. After his arrest, Dolazol's neighbor assured police that he had seen Andracy in Dolazal's company. Then, a 22-year-old sex worker named Lillian Jones stepped forward and informed police that Dolazol had attacked her with a knife while she was in his apartment. Apparently, she had escaped only by leaping out of his second-story window.

It seemed as though the police finally had a lead that was panning out. Cautiously optimistic. They organized a press conference to announce that they had a press conference to announce that they had a suspect in custody. But although Dolazal's confession was certainly compelling, some testimonies to Dolazal's character contradicted the notion that he was the killer. For one thing, police officers who knew him well doubted that he could be the killer. One said, quote, the kids liked him. He brought them ice cream cones and candy. The neighbors liked him too. He'd buy a lot of steaks

and some wine and have in a gang for the evening. He was as gregarious as they come. He liked to have people around, end quote. Slowly but surely, the case around Frank Dolazol began to crumble. First, he had never admitted to any of the other killings. Additionally, police never found any body parts or bone fragments in the locations where Dolazol claimed to have buried parts of flow. Dolazol then retracted his confession, claiming that he was in a daze during questioning, even insisting that the confessions were beaten out of him. And on August 24th, 19th, In 1939, Frank Dolazol's story grew still more complicated. Police stated that they returned to Dolazal's cell to find him hanging from a coat hook in his cell by a makeshift rope composed of cleaning rags.

Dolazol was dead. Although the coroner ruled the death a suicide, the circumstances of his death didn't add up. Dolazol was five feet eight inches tall, yet he apparently hanged himself from a hook that was only five feet, seven inches off the ground. Furthermore, an autopsy showed that Dolazol had six broken ribs, three on each side. The fractures were likely a result of brutal interrogation tactics. Dolazol's testimony about killing Flo Polillo was likely given under duress. After this information came out, Lillian Jones, the sex worker Dolazol had supposedly attacked, came forward with a sworn statement recanting her story. She insisted that law enforcement,

had pressured her into coming forward and making the allegation against Dolazol. Frank Dolazol's suspicious suicide and the investigation into his injuries left law enforcement and the public divided as to whether or not Dolazol could have been the torso murderer. But by 1940, more bodies would turn up that made it clear that the mad butcher of Kingsbury run could still be at large. Next week, we'll explore several murders across the country that could have been the work of the Cleveland torso murderer. We'll also do a deep dive into a secret suspect that Public Safety Director Elliot Ness believed was the man behind the slings. But ultimately, the torso murder case would remain unsolved.

And as the 1930s gave way to the 40s and 50s, many wondered whether the killer had been caught, or if new bodies turning up on the shores of Lake Erie were just the latest iterations of the man-butcher's handiwork. Thanks again for tuning in to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. Join us next Monday as we continue delving into the twisted psyche of Cleveland's torso murderer. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler, is a production of Cutler Media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Michael Langsner, with production assistants by Ron Shapiro and Paul Mahler.

Additional production assistance by Carly Madden and Maggie Admeyer. Serial Killers is written by Zoe Broad and stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Want to hear something spooky. Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to, exhibit demonic possession. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves.

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