Morbid - Episode 392: The Butcher of Kingsbury Run Part 2

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Our second part of The Cleveland Torso Murders is here and though it is the conclusion, we aren't left with comfort. The Butcher takes several more lives but try as the investigators might, they simply were never able to find out his true identity. Have no fear though, DT Alaina gives us THE SUSPECT OF THE CENTURY!Thank you to the mystical and beautiful David White for research assistance!Associated Press. 1938. "Find Cleveland Torso Murders Clew a Dud." Chicago Tribune, August 29: 20.Badal, James J. 2014. In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.—. 2022. The Kingsbury Run Murders. Accessed October 10, 2022.Collins, Max Allen, and A. Brad Schwartz. 2020. Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher. Boston, MA: Mariner Books.Culley, Jim. n.d. Ness, Eliot. Accessed October 18, 2022.Lytle, Alea. n.d. Kingsbury Run. Accessed October 12, 2022. https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/376.Plainesville Telegraph. 1934. "Police Seek to Trace Operation as Key to Torso Murder Mystery." Plainesville Telegraph, September 6.The Boston Globe. 1938. "Fail to Find House of Torso Suspect." The Boston Globe, August 29: 3.The Cincinatti Post. 1938. "City's New Safety Unit to Find How Cleveland Cut Its Auto Toll." The Cincinatti Post, December 28: 18.The El Reno Daily Tribune. 1935. "Decapitated Body is Discovered in Ravine." The El Reno Daily Tribune, September 24: 1.The Orleans Chronicle. 1938. "Crime." The Orleans Chronicle, August 25.The Toledo News-Bee. 1936. "Head of Torso Believed in Run." The Toledo News-Bee, September 11: 32.Toledo News-Bee. 1936. "Cleveland Maniac Hnuted in Murders." The Cleveland News-Bee, June 6.United Press. 1938. "Nine Held as Junkman Gives First Real Clue to Torso Killer." New York Daily News, August 25: 6.—. 1936. "Mad Butcher's Seventh Victim Found By Boys." The Oklahome News, September 15: 14.—. 1938. "Ten Mile Area Fails to Reveal Single Clue." The Palm Beach Post, August 27: 3.—. 1937. "Ninth Torso Found Under Cleveland Bridge." The Toledo News-Bee, June 7.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, Prime members, you can listen to morbid, early, and ad-free on Amazon music. Download the app today. You're listening to Immorbid Network Podcast. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wondries Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the Kids for Cash Scandal, a story about two judges who stood accused of making millions of dollars in a brazen scheme that shattered the lives of countless children. Listen to American scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Weirdo Zama.

And I'm Alina. And this is morbid. I'm not sure if I can do it. Yes. So we actually started and got very far into this episode. Sad face. Sad face crying emoji. Before we realized that we had some effect on our roadcaster there, which is what we used to record this. And it's an effect called monster. I must say like, like, this. It sounded like a monster was telling you the story. It was hilarious.

It's good. And in fact, you know what, what I should have done is put like, I should have saved it and I should have put a little clip of it in here. I almost feel like I should, I could probably, can you get it back? Let me see.

Okay, I was able to get it back. Are you guys ready to hear this? I'm excited. I'm only putting a little clip in, so don't worry, it'll stop, but you have to hear it. Did anyone just hear my, uh, swissle? Did you hear that?

Is that what that was? It was a slight little S whistle. It was real slight. That was embarrassing. Don't be embarrassed. Okay, we all make sounds without noises. Without noises. Yeah, okay, numbers, I fix that for you

So there you go. It sounds like my teeth. I love that. You whistle. Yeah I am alive To anyone just Don't be embarrassed. I love Everyone's got me just started. It's so good. But yeah, we're gonna start. We're gonna start. We'll start this over again, but there's your little, little boop of levity. Yay! Before we, whoosh, take it right back down. Your eyebrows look really good right now though, before we go all the way down.

Wow, thank you. I just filled them in. We love to hear it. Just for a second, because that's all I need in my life is just filled in eyebrows. And I feel like, woo, I'm getting them for you from the beginning. I'm going to start all the way down. Wow, thank you. I just filled them in. We love to hear it. Just for a second, because that's all I need in my life is just filled in eyebrows. And I feel like, woo, I'm getting them for you from Sleely Taylor.

You are your very kind human for doing that for me. I, you know, because I usually just do it myself every morning and it's very annoying. Not no mo. Not anymore. I'm, I'm, I'm doing the damn thing. So self-care. Yeah.

What's the job never do? What is happening? Yeah, John was like, what? He? Yeah, John was like, what? He was like, I've been telling you, did you like anything you want, like just to make yourself feel good? Exactly. He was like, you're not doing anything like weird

or like crazy. What happened? I was like, John, do you not like my eyebrows? Like, you think I would take her somewhere for weird crazy eyebrows? And John said, I love her eyebrows. I know it was the sweetest way. He was like, oh.

So pure. I was trying to throw hands with this man. And he was like, I love her eyebrows. I know it was the sweetest thing. I was like, oh. So pure. I was trying to throw hands with this man and he was like, I'm just in love. And I was like, I'm a croit. And I was like, I'm not changing my eyebrows. I'm just making them filled in permanently. That's all.

Permanently for three months. He was like, hey, that's permanently to me. Yeah, I mean, it's the best when you wake up with your eyebrows on. You know, speaking of eyebrows. Torsos. Torsos as well. We are part of the human body. So there we are. We segue in transition We got there

so when we last talked to you in part one about the butcher of Kingsbury run the Torsomers this rough rough case we had Elliot Ness coming on to the case Elliot Ness coming on to the case. Elliott Ness, I said it last time, I just, something about your eyes tells me not to trust this man. You know, he, he makes some mistakes. Okay, he makes some mistakes and we'll see it. He makes some big ones. He makes some big mistakes. Some medium-sized ones, some small ones. Huge. But yeah, I think he had every intention of really doing this, but he went at it completely wrong.

Because Elliott Ness is now lead on the case. He was working with the prohibition shit without Capone. He was in Chicago. Now he's got moved to Cleveland. He's the safety director there. He's been watching this case unfold for like two years now. And he hasn't been working on it, but he's been seeing it happen.

He knows what's going on. And now they've put him on lead because the mayor is like, well, he's a big crime fighter. He's famous. Let's throw him on it. It's what happens. Oy, bay. So he jumped in with two feet,

but he did it in the worst way possible, in my opinion. He just came out at wrong. He just went full force. He was rounding people up in Kingsbury Run, just interrogating everybody. And this to me immediately makes these people not in the whole community, just not trust you. You are threatening now. You're looking at the guy who's just coming in here, banging down doors, cracking skulls,

like, that's not the way to do it. Yeah, if you want this to work, you have to be deliberate. You have to meticulously talk to these people without being a threat to them. Cause this is a very close knit community. Yeah, and they're already distrusting of investigators at this point

because, you know, they're living on the fringes basically. So it's like, they're already not ready for you guys just to come in here. So coming guns blazing is really not the way to do it. No. Now, one thing he did do right was he decided to try to understand who the butcher possibly was. So the team of investigators worked on a profile.

They theorized that the butcher was definitely a man, and he was definitely strong enough to carry a dead body or two up and down a hill at the very least. Yeah. They also believed he had to have been very familiar with Kingsbury Run, possibly lived there now or lived there previously. They also, like Ash pointed out in part one,

believed he likely had to have somewhere safe in private and isolated where he was able to bring these people, these victims, and he was able to mutilate, torture, and murder and dismember them. Because there was even one where he froze somebody. Exactly. And like you said, if he's freezing someone, he's got a freezer.

He's got to have somewhere to freeze them. This can't be. Because initially I was like, well, this could just be the woods. And maybe he did do a couple in the woods, but I started coming over to your way of thinking the more I read about this, being like, this has to be a building. It has to be somewhere isolated.

Because even when you said the thing about the newspapers, like how one of the bodies was found with all the different DNA newspapers, I just picture whoever this is, just having stacks and stacks of papers in there. Exactly. And he's not like he's walking around with these. Right, right.

And that becomes one of his calling cards. That's when you know it's a butcher victim, when he has the papers, when he does the burlap sacks, the shirts, the wrapping kind of thing. They also theorized, which I don't know why they theorize this particular one, and I'd be interested to find out, but I couldn't find anything of why. They said that this man might befriend his victims for weeks or even months before using a large heavy knife on them. I wonder if that's maybe because this community is so distrusting of like outsiders here and you know interlopers that like they're not just gonna trust somebody

and walk off with them. Right. So there would have to be some kind of buildup of trust. Makes sense, yeah. This is an exactly like white chapel, like 1888 where you know it's a little easier to draw some on a way because everyone, while everyone now in this time in Cleveland, it's depression Eric Cleveland, they are in a very desperate place. So there are people in there are communities that are going to be a little more desperate and a little more willing to walk away with the promise of possible money or work or food or something. But I think it's like a little less than it was in White Chappell.

So maybe that's what they were thinking. But again, I don't know if I fully agree with that one, because I really do think like this is a desperate place. These are vulnerable people. Yeah. I do think like with the right promises and the right kind of Xiuzheng, they could get someone to walk away with them.

I agree. But who knows why they said that. They also said that this person did show considerable knowledge of anatomy. But like the pathologist had said before, he doesn't believe this is a surgeon or at least a practicing surgeon at the time. He said he believed it was likely more like somebody like a hunter, possibly a butcher, again very jack the rip revives. Now unfortunately, having a guy who was used to working on things like the alcapone case and prohibition shit

was really not going to be the perfect fit here. He looked at this very logically which i'm always in support of you know this but there's a really deep psychological component here that you just can't ignore. Yeah it's not the same kind of crimes as like mafia stuff, you know? Well, it's like murder is not logical. No, and especially like random serial killing, when you got to take it out of this like organized crime world, because this is a very different beast here. Like this man is wrapping people in newspapers,

leaving them in baskets. Yeah. Like this is not logical at all. Exactly. And like you said, no them in baskets. Yeah. Like this is not logical at all. Exactly. And like you said, no rational people would do this. No. No logical people would do this. There's an unhinged vibe to this whole thing.

And you need to place a certain amount of logic onto the search situation. But you also just need to pull it back a bit and look at it from a place, like you said, that this man is ruthlessly butchering and torturing people at random, right? And leaving them theatrically posed for everyone to find. There's no logic here. It's weird. There may be logic to like places where they are being left or things that are being left with them or on them, but the act itself, no logic can be placed there. So he started looking at it like it must be a product

of, you know, the shadier parts of Kingsbury run, the gambling, the sex work, the drugs found there, in the surrounding roaring third. And he said, you know what, we just need to crack down on the shady shit and then we'll stop the murders. First of all, I think he's a kill droid. And that's not good of all. I feel like he went into this, like, with the A-game being cleaning up the streets, and the B-game being fine the murder. Because

I think his whole stick is cleaning things up. Yeah, I mean, this is a guy who was enforcing prohibition. So it's like he's got a certain set of rules and a moral code going on here that might be a little different than what's going on. Yeah, not a good time kind of guy. Not a good time kind of guy. And this is, he's going in here with tunnel vision. Right. That's never good.

Because this guy, this butcher, could be a sober as a judge and a father of six. Yeah, I mean, look at some of the people we've covered with the last families. He could be anyone or he could be someone in Kingsbury Run who is a gambler who, you know, enjoys promiscuity and is dabbling in drugs. He could be any of these people. He could be in the middle of that side of him. He could be anywhere around there. And to narrow the focus without any evidence to make you narrow the focus is pretty wild. Totally. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental

disasters, corporate fraud. In our newest series, we look at the Kids for Cash Scandal, a story about corruption inside America's system of juvenile justice. In our newest series, we look at the Kids for Cash Scandal, a story about corruption inside America's system of juvenile justice. In Northeastern Pennsylvania, residents had begun noticing an alarming trend. Children were being sent away to jail in high numbers, and often for committing only minor offenses. The FBI began looking at two local judges, and when the full picture emerged, it made national

headlines. The judges were earning a fortune, carrying out a brazen criminal scheme, one that would shatter the lives of countless children and force a heated debate about punishment, an America's criminal justice system. Follow American scandal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wonder App. Amazon music or Wonder App. So the investigators who had already been working the case for two years were also not very impressed by his approach, because even though they weren't really killed in the game here,

they were aware that this is a unique situation that needed a little bit of out of the box thinking applied to it. Yeah. You know, like you can't just look at this how it is. No. Because some men are bad men. Some people are bad people. Of course.

They hurt people because it feels good to them. Not because they're getting some kind of reward. They're just bad. And it's like, that's not logical. That's not something you can wrap your brain around. That's some people just like to hurt people just for the hell of it. Hopefully you can't wrap your brain around you. And around. I know Elliott and S could not wrap it, but we do need an investigator that can wrap their brain around the first.

A cool person. That people are like that at least. He needs to be teamed up with someone else. Exactly. And what people like Al Capone and the like do bad things always because they can profit from them. Like that's how organized crime works. They're not just doing it to do it. They're doing it for power. They're doing it for money. They're doing it for something else that they are getting.

Right. It's not just for the hell of it. And that is a very different beast. Exactly. So that's bad. Now, the papers were still being ruthless as they do about how ineffectual the police were in this case. And the people of Kingsbury run were really not breast.

One with how it had been handled before, but also they're not impressed with this new narrow-minded lead investigator and how he is openly clashing with the rest of the investigators. I'm sure it didn't inspire a lot of confidence that this is going to be fixed. Yeah, it's just not really working for anyone involved. It's not really great. So they had to pull something out of their ass to make waves here. And they were willing to go the distance, the police department. At this point, we've had issues with them not wanting to believe that this is a serial

killer, not taking it to that place, which is really becoming a detriment to solving it. At this point, they are starting to understand that there are connections here, and we really do have officers and investigators working like 24-7 on this. But at this point, it's almost like too little too late. Yeah, because it's been a long now. And it's like, yeah, go for it now. Glad you're taking this very seriously and like that some of you are really like,

we'll see Peter, Detective Peter Marillo who we're gonna talk about in a second, kind of a funny way. But he really does spend his entire life on this case. And like he seems to wanna get to the bottom of that. And not everything else. He makes some missteps along the way, but he genuinely, to me,

at least from just reading about it, seems like he wanted to make differences in this case. But after they pulled that last body from the muddy pool in the middle of Kingsbury around the torso, it turned up nothing. No lead, no identification, nothing. So, Detective Peter Marillo, who I just mentioned, decided it was time to go big or go home. He's like, I'm sick of this just like floating around.

He was the longest running detective on the case. And his idea was, you know what, let's go undercover in Kingsbury Run, see if we can get any intel from basically the depths of the beast, so to speak. So what he did was he, quote unquote, grew out his beard and dressed in old clothing. You showed me a picture of this guy. You guys have to pull out your Google machines at this moment. It's outrageous.

And he just strolled into Kingsbury Run. And he was hoping just to mingle about with everybody, nobody was gonna notice. And he was holding a stick with some shit tied around the back of it. Yeah, he's wearing a baggy suit. He's got a five o'clock shadow, not a beard. Yeah, no.

A bowler hat and a stick with a handkerchief tent. It'll attach to the end. Like, sir, you're being offensive. It's like an old-timey Halloween costume. Sir, you've pressed an incorrect key. That is an incorrect key, for sure. I was like, my goodness. It's just the fact that this is such,

I mean, again, we're in the 30s. Yeah. So this is a very different time, very different stuff going on. But this is just so on the nose for like the stereotype that is what like, you know, I mean, like, the stick with the handkerchief, like you're gonna stick out like a glowing beacon

when you walk in there. Like nobody's gonna be like, wow, yeah, you're one of us. Like they're gonna be like, what is this guy? They also all know each other. So you're just like, like, some random fucking dude. You're an interloper, basically. Like if you want to dress chill,

because like you don't want to walk in there like suit and tie, like a deterred. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's an easy way to achieve that. You walk in plain clothes, brother. Yeah, don't go in there like that. It didn't work. I know which I know is shocking

that it didn't crack the case in doing that. I didn't feel that coming. But he did interview hundreds of people in Kingsbury run. All right. He was able to mingle about with them a little bit. Doing the damn thing. He was able to get some information about who these people are, what they do, how they know each other.

Like there was some, I guess, good that came out of it. Just nothing that really helped this case. But I guess something good came out of it. Now, February 23rd, 1937, a man named Robert Smith was walking along the shore of Lake Erie near Bula Park on his way to check on his sailboat. He had stored his sailboat there over the winter and now was time to see how she was doing after her winter hibernation. So like Frank and Joseph at the beginning of this tale, he spotted something floating just off the shore. Immediately he thinks it's a big piece of driftwood, so he walks closer and closer to it.

As he gets up to it, he saw this was not driftwood. It was actually the headless upper torso of a woman. Oh, I can't imagine coming across these things. No, I don't want to. He called the police in this torso, which was missing its head and arms, was brought to the coroner for examination. Right away, this site is further than normal for the dumping sites that have been going on here. It's about 10 miles away from the previous site. So this is at least something to consider here that it's outside of the normal zone, which can be different.

When the Emmy looked at the torso, he estimated this woman to be about 25 to 30 years old. The cuts to the extremities were made in his opinion by a very large, heavy knife, which matches up with the butcher. It sure does. But every single cut had hesitation marks associated with it. He has had before. Yeah. So there's that. This one just had more than usual, which is strange. It's like he's like having a little breakdown. Yeah, but this marked the first victim who was not killed by decapitation. She was decapitated, but her heart had stopped beating before her head was removed. Now, this is a different method, but it might not be.

Maybe she had a heart attack before it happened. This could have been, I'm sure cardiac arrest in this situation is not completely off the table. I would not say so. That the decapitation wasn't the thing that killed her and it was in fact her heart just completely stopping. Or something else. Maybe he did do something else and didn't realize he killed her.

Maybe this doesn't check it out as not the butcher because of this different method. But that coupled with the location being further than normal and all the hesitation cutting, people were starting to question whether this was really the butcher. Either way, this is labeled victim number seven of the butcher.

I believe it is. Yeah. I don't think we really, I mean, victim number seven of the butcher. I believe it is. Yeah. I don't think we really, I mean, yeah, it's further away. But 10 miles is not that far. And then also, he sees that like detectives are kind of coming in the Kingsbury run, pretty accurately. So he's probably just like,

let me keep this a little bit out of here. Yeah, and I think this maybe just, let's, let's make this zone bigger. Right. Let's terrify more people. I mean, that's what these kind of monsters do. They want to spread terror. Right.

So why not open up this zone into a bigger perimeter that we can start scaring some more people, you know? And I think the hesitation cutting was looked at a lot back then, but if you look at it now and you look at it now and you look at a suspect, which I will talk about towards the end of this episode, I think it winds up with the suspect and it makes more sense that hesitation cutting was there, but it wasn't necessarily a confidence issue. As in, I don't want to kill this person, what am I doing?

You know, like, am I doing something wrong? I think it's more associated with a physical thing that was going on with this person. Okay. So, um, oh, oh, that's what I said. I hate when I do that. I don't know if I forget the question. That was the worst. I was like keeping it in there as we're explaining something. Um, when he, no, fuck, I lost it again, Jesus. Oh, no. No, I got it. I got it. So when not this particular person, but in general, when there are hesitation marks, could that also just be the sign of somebody getting tired because their body is exerting a lot of energy by doing this? Absolutely.

Absolutely. There's definitely a lot of reasons why there would be quote unquote hesitation marks. Like you just said, your time, disarticulating an entire body. I have not done that like, rib-leg limb from limb. That's got to be pretty tiring. I know personally that a clinical autopsy is fucking exhausting. You are pouring sweat at the end of that thing, like pouring. But just for like energy, Sam. Oh, yeah, I would soak through scrubs, like soak through them. I remember that. And it was like, and even using a bone saw is crazy exhausting.

Which obviously this person did not pass in using. So this person, and if they were using a bone saw or some kind of saw, that's tiring. And it's like, and if they're doing the entire thing themselves, of course they're gonna get tired. Yeah. And they've just killed this person. Right. So that's going to chop their head off. So that's a lot.

Right. And you're right. It could be just, I'm tired. Here's my first go at it and I didn't get all the way through. So I'm going to do another one. Right. Or it can be that there was some kind of physical thing where maybe they had, you know, tremors, like physical tremors that they were dealing with, that they didn't get the cut where they wanted it to go.

It could be that they were anatomically knowledgeable, but not a surgeon. And so they had to find the spot. So it wasn't a hesitation. I'm trying to cut it at the joint where the joint is. And I've hit the wrong place. So I have to go over a little bit so that I can get that clean cut. Right. To me, that seems more like it, that it was like he was trying to get those clean cuts. And so he bucked up sometimes, which is really fucked up all of it. But the press went into overdrive and the pressure continued to mount on the police to catch

this killer. There were several different wild theories, witness sightings that were pretty bogus. Because, you know, this happens. They're going to get a flood of tips that really mean nothing. They even had federal postal authorities provide investigators with, quote, a list of Cleveland residents whom they suspected of unbalanced sexual tendencies. What's that? So things were getting invasive. That was like crazy enough

that method did not provide them their guy. I don't know. Now it wasn't until May 5th that victim 7's lower torso was discovered. Oh it was. By a man testing a swan boat near East 30th on Lake Erie. He found it floating in the water, like most. And unfortunately, no leads came from this discovery, and they were still missing a ton of body parts from this particular woman. But then June 6th, 1937, 14-year-old Russell Lauer was on his way home from the movies.

He was taking a quicker route home by cutting through Stone's Levy, which is an open field along the banks of the Chiahooga River. And as he crossed the Lorraine Carnegie Bridge, he saw something shiny under it. And he was like, ooh, because, you know, treasure. He's 14, that's treasure. So he decided to check it out, what if it's money?

And when he got closer, he realized that the shiny thing was, in fact fact valuable. It was a gold tooth, and it was still attached to a human skull. But he hadn't seen the human skull because I think the way the sun was hitting it, it was just gleaming on this golden tooth. So once again, cops are called. They dig this skull out of the soil, and they find that it is indeed detached from the rest of the body. More digging revealed the rest of the skeletons remains in a quote, dirty, greasy burlap bag saturated with a grayish white powder and held closed with a piece of rotted twine.

What is rotted about twine? Just like nasty, probably just like fraying, like just rotted twine. You know how rope can look rotted? Yeah, now that you say it, actually, that's a arena or something. Something seems like old rotting. Like moldy and shit. Yeah, it just looks like it's nasty.

At first I was like huck and twine, even me brought it. And now I'm like, yeah, it's so nice. No, it makes sense because it's like, it's not an organic material. Yeah, that was weird. But now that you say that, that does make sense. So it said, the skeleton in the bag was actually a torso. And which, wow, and it was missing arms and legs. And there was, quote, a fairly large piece of blackish-grave tissue-like material and an undated advertisement and partial review of

a show called the Niles T. Grant Land and his girls review at the Palace Theater. That. Very specific. It had been cut from the Plains dealer newspaper. Okay. So newspapers are very butchered like at this point. Right. He is leaving very specific newspapers and he's cutting out things and putting them there. None of them are really making sense. They're not really pointing to anything, but it is a specific thing he's doing. It's clearly intentional.

And there's a burlap bag here. That's a shrimp bag. What do you think of the white powdery substance? That I don't know, and they couldn't figure it out either. So I don't know what that was. And the burlap bag, too too is it harkens back to Florence Palillo. They also found near the body a white wood cap with a white wool cap, excuse me, it was like a wood cap. What with a tassel part of a dress and a quote unquote,

to pay of black hair. Now these remains were taken to the corner who at this point is probably like Huh. Now, these remains were taken to the corner, who at this point is probably like, really? Like, that corner is probably like about this. Can I, like, I used to work on whole humans, like this, what is happening here? Like, can we put a stop to this? Yeah, this must be so hard,

you're only getting body parts and you're being like, everybody's like, figure it out, dude. It's like, I don't even know how to identify this. Especially way back that. Yeah, they don't have the same stuff. It would be hard now, never mind then. But his examination showed that this was a black female between the ages of 30 to 40 years old.

She was tiny around a hundred pounds five feet tall. A further look showed that there was a lot of hacking and cutting marks to the vertebrae, which seemed to confirm the idea that this was indeed a butcher victim and she was decapitated, which likely caused her death. They couldn't be sure. Horrifically, that two pay they found, that wasn't a two pay. That was the woman's scalp with her hair still attached to it. Oh my god. Yeah, I did not even think of that possibility. Oh my god. I was horrified reading that. The gray blackish matter found in the bag was indeed human tissue. And they believed she was killed a year earlier than she was found because the state of her body and also the significance of putting that review in there, which was way, which was from a year earlier.

Um, what happens to, does your hair like disintegrate over time? It will like slough, which I know is a gross word because of the slippage. Yeah, like the slippage, it'll like kind of just slough. Because hair is found a lot way long after death. It's pretty hair. You know, that's kind of things last way longer. Yeah, so this was over a year, and it was a full scalp of hair.

Right. Now, still completely over their heads, anilacking any leads, the police began really combing through now the missing persons reports in the area to see if anything would jump out of them. Detective Marillo, our undercover man, actually was the only one to come across

a particular missing person who matched the latest victim. It was Rose Wallace, and she had gone missing in August of 1936, so the year before. The gold tooth was really a help here because they were able to look into Rose's dental records and see that she had some gold bridge work done. Then her son actually confirmed that the remains were indeed his mothers, although she was skeletal.

So tough. Yeah. This one has been debated. Okay. They've never been able to fully confirm this. It was her, a lot of it matches up. I think it might be her, but they don't have a full confirmation on it.

Defendatively say. But this was huge. Yeah. Now that they finally got what they felt was an identified victim, they could look into her life and see if they could maybe make a connection to someone who possibly could have done this to her or the other people. So they started digging and asking around. And witnesses stated that Rose was last seen doing laundry the day she disappeared.

And that she was told by someone that an unidentified man wanted to meet with her at a bar on East 19th Street. Somebody had seen that happen. That's weird. Other witnesses, they spoke to, said, they saw her that day with, quote, a dark-skinned white man named Bob. And she was on her way to her party on Cleveland's West Side. They saw her.

Oh great, a white man named Bob. How is it to identify? Yeah, let's track that guy down. Right. So this was all interesting, but the most interesting part was yet to come because Morello dug really deep. And he's given it his best shot. Like he really is. Like he seems like he's really in a triner.

He was really trying to form connections between Rose and Florence because they were in the same area. He was like, what's going on here? So he found that Rose was also working as a sex worker at times, which Florence also was. And Rose was also seen at the bar where Florence worked as a bar maid in waitress.

Oh, interesting. So it's likely they knew each other. It would be strange if they didn't. At least in passing. Exactly. Also, Rose was known to have hung around with a man known as one armed Willie. Obsessed. Yep.

And he should be easy to find. And it was known that Florence also hung out with this guy. Okay. So there's a connection. So there's a connection. Which makes me think that this is Rose. Like it makes me think there is some kind of connection here. Unfortunately, this all kind of sounds great. Fisil, no.

In pieces, but it adds up to nothing. Like it really doesn't give them any physical evidence, it doesn't give them any, really leads to track down. Like they couldn't find one armed wily. Like it's all kind of just, he's trying so hard. But other than establishing a connection between these two women,

they honestly weren't even sure this was definitely Rose Wallace. So it didn't really pan out, unfortunately. But there was some like this optimism spraying up and then it was like, July 6, only one month later. private John Smith was patrolling the shore of the Kayahooga River. He was actually there with the National Guard who had been called in to calm the chaos that had erupted when steelworkers went on strike.

So his beat was along the shores of the river. And as he walked along, he saw something floating in the river after a tugboat went by. Like it was in the wake of the tugboat. At the same time, private Edgar Steinbrecker, who was patrolling the West Third Street bridge, saw the same thing. He immediately thought it looked like a man's torso. Like he was like, oof. No one called anyone yet.

Good. They both spotted this and just like went on their way. Knowing full well that there is a torso letter on the loose. Not sure about that, but then hours later, private Charles Damesne saw a burlap sack floating in the river. And after hearing the other sightings from someone else, because they must have talked to people, someone called to report all of this finally.

This was truly a chaotic scene. So they ended up pulling so many body parts from so many parts of the river that night, like wilds. They pulled out the upper and lower halves of a man's torso. The upper half was in a burlap sack with a purina chicken feed logo on it and wrapped in three-week-old newspapers. Next to this torso in the bag was a woman's stalking, just one. Upon closer inspection of this stalking, they were able to pull one black and white dog's hair and several short-belonned human hairs. Also, they pulled out of the river,

the left upper arm of a man, the right leg, the left lower leg, and the left thigh, all different parts. And they all had hack and cut marks like the butcher victims. They searched out a bit further and found a piece of lung. Jesus. But the search had to be suspended until the next day. When they commenced the following day, they found two hands and two forearms. Say, God, four days later, they found the upper right arm, and then one week later, they found the

lower right leg. Oh my God. It was like a cont, this one thing was just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. So the coroner had his work cut out for him because initially they brought in the upper lower torso, the pieces of the left arm, the right leg, the left leg. Then as they found other pieces, they would just bring them in and add them to this like the most macabre puzzle known to mankind.

Luckily, Unshaken, the corner said, I got this, and he said that he believed this victim to be about 40 years old, was a man had likely been killed about 48 hours prior. Wow. That's not the last time. That's not the first time that's happened. Yeah, there's been a couple of times where it was within 48 hours. And he had a pretty distinguishing scar on his thumb and his left leg. Again, he was sure this person knew anatomy very well, but was a very brutal killer. Actually, in this particular case, he felt like there was much more force and aggression in his cuts and dismemberments.

He noted that the killer had, quote, had sliced open the lower half of the torso and wrenched everything from the abdominal cavity. He had similarly split the chest and removed the heart by a clean incision across the base of the aorta. Damn. Like, what? Yeah. Come on. Like, this is the Catherine Edo's. Yeah. Of this case. Where he just goes for it. He said there were lots of cuts and wounds on the hands and forearms indicating a struggle and some defense wounds.

And that he had used quote, considerably more hacking than had been seen in previous torso cases. There were more hesitation marks, quote unquote, at various places on the body, which makes me think when I was reading this in the moment while I was reading this, I was like, this feels like some kind of like tick for him and not a hesitation so much,

which was what we were talking about. Chillingly, the Emmy noted that he also believed there was evidence that at one point during his torture and dismemberment of this particular victim, the knife had got dull. Oh! He had dulled the knife during this. Because he was going to sharp and dull. Oh! That is so intense.

Like, that is, I can't even think of another word for it. Do you think that he was like using the knife to also cut through bone? I wonder yeah, they had to they there had to be some of that right and just like they this fury here. Yeah, very Intense anger and fury again the police dove into the vest investigation headfirst came up empty handed Now they were willing to try anything at this point. They were really pushing, they were putting down a lot of effort chasing any leads they could, but they were literally running into walls every time. It's like this guy was a ghost. Yeah, I was just thinking like, is this a fucking phantom?

Is it just a phantom? Like, is this just a race out there killing people? Because I'm also like, this is like a pretty small community. Like, can we station some officers outside and just see what the fuck is up Kyle? What is up Kyle? Now, after the constant bodies turning up in pieces at every turn seemingly every other month, every other week, suddenly, a year went by with nothing.

No heads, no torsas, nothing weird. There was a strange report from a tugboat captain in the Kayahoge River at the end of March 1938. He reported that he had seen tuber lap sacs floating in the river, and he had tried to get them, but he failed, and they floated into a place where he couldn't get to them. I'm unsure why after he reported this that the river wasn't searched. Yeah.

It looks like everyone just ignored this guy. They would regret that. So because at first on April 8, 1938, just as everyone was trying to return to their lives without the constant threat of stumbling upon one of these gruesome tabloes, everything changed again. That morning, Steve Muroski was strolling along the shore of the Chiaho River to go visit his friend Joe. And this was very close to where the last victim had been discovered.

And as he looked into the water, you notice something in the water near a storm drain. He thought it was a large fish at first, but looking closer, he saw it was actually the bottom part of a human leg. The police are called again. They're like, not over yet. They're like, oh, good. And they searched, but found no other body parts in the river. So the bottom half of the leg was taken to the corner.

Who at this point must have been like, that's a leg. Really? I can tell you that's a human leg. That's what I got. But he did, I just had my microphone. I'm sorry, everybody. I'm getting really into this. But he did say that he saw it and he said it was white

and delicate and distinctly feminine. Okay. So he was able to tell you that. He's like, that's what I've got for you today. That's all I've got. Doing whatever he could to make this some kind of valuable piece of evidence, he did end up finding six long blonde hairs stuck to the leg. So this time, he said the knife bark marks did appear to be more crude and

Indicated that this was a rushed job. Yeah to him. It was not clean not as precise as the others But he said without anything else. I can't really give you a lot of yeah, like a whole picture here What do I have because he's like maybe he just was really quick on this one part right now as this is happening The police are still fighting within themselves because no one can put their ego away for the sake of one of the most gruesome serial killer cases ever. I thought always the case. It always is. So, Elliot Ness is assistant Robert Chamberlain because Elliot Ness is starting to do his own like private shit because he's like butting head so much with the other investigators.

So, Robert Chamberlain came forward and he told the press that he was not convinced the leg was female. And he said that the last victim pulled from the leg was missing a leg and he was a man. So he said he was basically saying the corner is not doing a good job. It's also like dude, he's been able to identify how many bodies that's far and also what knowledge do you have to say that about a leg, but about a bottom half of a leg like sir, it's not even a whole lot like me down are you kidding me? This also is not going to make you any friends you're no openly clashing with these like the Everybody's like you're now you're going after the Emmy

So things got made worse for Elliott Ness and his cronies there good when may second more human remains Repulled from the West 3rd Street Bridge. Not good. A human thigh and a burlap sack with wheel-brand potatoes stamped on it were discovered. When the bag was opened, there were two halves of a torso. Here he is again, folks. Two halves? Oh, yeah, he cuts the torso in half.

He buys sex. Okay. A left foot and a left thigh. The coroner determined these were also female remains and the foot matched the bottom half of the leg that they were arguing over. Ha, says the coroner. Seriously.

He was now able to get a better, bigger picture of this victim because he was like, this is awful, but now I have a better picture because I have more parts. He was able to see more about their death and he estimated she was killed within the week before she was found in the water.

So he is ramping up on court. Again, there were more of those hesitation marks on the various parts of the body. He reported they were, quote, more numerous and irregular than seen in the previous torso murder. So that's interesting. There was also a noted escalation in the brutality and viciousness of this one. He even stated that it looked like, quote, the kid, and this is wild, so get ready.

He said it looked like, quote, the killer had snapped the back ribs with his bare hands. What? Yeah. What? The force that it would take to do that. The force and the anger. Yeah.

Like just the rage. How did you even do that? Wild. He believed the likely cause of death was decapitation in this one. And when he examined the liver, he noticed that it had levels of morphine in it that would cause unconsciousness

and maybe even kill someone. And remember that tugboat captain reported seeing burlap bags and everyone ignored him. Yeah. He was telling the truth. These are the burlap bags and everyone ignored him. He was telling the truth. These are the burlap bags he saw. Yeah. Of course, things went cold again with no leads, no identification or head found for this latest woman.

August 16th, 1938, four months later, three men were searching the dump for scrap metal. One of the men saw what he thought was a coat in a gully, but when he jumped in, he was struck with a horrific odor. And he saw cloud of flies. So he was like, what is going on there? It became clear that this was a pile of human remains. This was a dramatic scene.

This was the theatrics that we used to with the butcher. When Detective Marillo showed up, he found a torso wrapped in butcher paper, then a man's coat wrapped around that, and then a third layer, which was a torso wrapped in butcher paper, then a man's coat wrapped around that, and then a third layer, which was a homemade patchwork quilt. When they moved this package underneath it, was another package wrapped in a similar way and held together with rubber bands, which contained in this package had thighs in it. A few feet away, they found another package wrapped the same way that, but this one had a human head in it.

Further search of the scene revealed a homemade box that was made from two boxes put together. Inside the box were the arms and lower legs. This scene was definitely the butcher. Yeah. They found burlap bags in a page specifically torn from March 5, 1938 issue of Collier's magazine. So again, more of those like specific cutouts. Yeah, like calling cards. These remains were brought to the corner and he believed this was a female victim 30 to

40 years old. She was in a bad state of decomposition, which made this one very tough. He couldn't even find organs and and he reported that he, quote, could not be sure whether the internal organs had been removed or simply decomposed. Okay. So unfortunately, there was no identifying marks for this victim either.

But interesting about the boxes, some of the remains were found in, was that they found out that they were made from two bulk food boxes put together. And these particular boxes had only arrived in the area a couple of months before she was discovered here. So she was killed much longer than two months earlier. So that means she could have been killed and held somewhere else before being brought to dump in those boxes. Where was she held in his house? She obviously wasn't preserved. So it's. Where was she held? In his house.

She obviously wasn't preserved. So it's like, was she in a freezer? Like where was she? Like where was she? Somebody previously, so I wouldn't be shocked. So this really ramped up the idea that like, he's got somewhere. Yeah.

He kept her for a little while. And I wonder, I mean, obviously he could have been prescribed more feed, but I'm like, hmm. Well, that's the fact that he has more feed. You're like, yeah. I don't know about that that he has morphine. You're like, yeah. I don't know about that. And he's got access to a freezer. Yeah.

I immediately was like, he's a doctor. Yeah. Of some kind. I kind of think maybe. So these scenes were now becoming kind of like a macabre tourist attraction. Everyone would gather and see what the mad butcher had done that day. Newspapers continued their assault on the investigators who were now years into this with not even a hint of a lead.

Well, I mean, that's the thing. Years in years. Nothing. You have nothing to give this community ease or comfort. And at first it was for lack of trying. Of course. And now it's not for lack of trying. It's just like, but the Orleans Chronicle wrote, quote, the mad butcher of of Kingsbury run a surgically skilled maniac who apparently has no other motive except a

Venus desire to dissect human bodies. They were very salacious in their headlines. So at this scene at the dump, people would just drop in as they went by just to see what was going on. And one of these curious onlookers was Todd Bartholomew and his wife. They were looking in at what was happening and they happened to be standing next to a drainage pipe. And he couldn't notice, but like he couldn't help but notice a really bad smell coming from that pipe and not from the scene in front of him. And when he looked into it briefly, he noticed there were human bones in there. We have a second body at the same scene, classic butcher.

So when investigators gathered what they found, it was a pelvis, vertebrae, and ribs just out there. And then in a can next to it was a skull. So the coroner could get very little from this one. He said it was pretty skeletal, and he said it was a male 30 to 40 years old, he believed, and probably dead at least seven to nine months. He did find that he had a broken nose, which was interesting,

and they found pieces of newspaper with him. So although there was no real clues to come from that second victim's body, another interesting thing came from the first victim at the dump. After refiguring out that those boxes told them she was held somewhere after being killed for a while, they were also able to determine some interesting things about the quilt that her torso was wrapped in. They put photos of it out to the

public, which is smart. And a barber Charles Damon said it was his, but he said he had sold it to a junk man earlier in the summer. So already we're getting more of a timeline here. And they were able to track this junk man down. His name was Elmer Cummings. And he said he sold the quilt to the Skowville Ragn and Paper Company, which was in the same neighborhood where Florence Pileo was found. Oh, it keeps going back to Florence. Florence is a big part of this.

Weirdly, now that the press was beginning to see some movement and at least some aspects of the case, they started reporting it a little less harshly, more optimism that the butcher was going to be found was coming through. This is when more people started coming forward and saying, oh, yeah, I found something weird or I saw something weird. Like suddenly tips started flowing in. And it's like, why now? Why weren't you guys saying this before? But I don't know. Now one man literally came forward and was like, oh yeah, I found hair in a fucking tin box in a field.

Sir, you're just coming to like what? Don't be tardy to them. Yeah, to that part. Not a party, but don't do that, Jesus. And another found a stained dress, a stained slip and stockings that were stained and only reported them after the latest bodies were found. Is like these could be long to evict? Guys, do you think that it was just a distrust in the police?

I think it could have absolutely been. Yeah, I think it because they were being told by the media that the police simply just weren't investigating this. So they're like, why am I going to give them my information? Yeah, still fucked. And I think it's a lot of like we saw in the Jack the Ripper case too, that people don't want to come forward because they don't want the police in their business. Yeah, still fucked. And I think it's a lot of like we saw in the Jack the Ripper case too, that people don't want to come forward because they don't want the police in their business. They don't want them looking into what they're doing.

So they're like, forget it. And today I don't think that is. I don't think that is. But unfortunately, these things still didn't move the case in either way. The hopeful tone of the press and the renewed vigor of the community to bring forth tips and witness statements was quick and it turned back the other way even quicker because nothing concrete came out of any of this. Yeah.

So a story from the United Press actually ended up writing, detectives admitted that the search was wholly fruitless and that they were as far away from discovering the killer as at any time during the torso series. So right away the press is like, well, fuck them. They're still not going to get it done. Now at the urging of Elliott Ness, this is where it's very interesting. Robert Chamberlain, the guy who unsuccessfully questioned the coroner's ability to determine a female leg from a male side. Yeah, you got to go, sir. He was working behind the scenes on kind of a private investigation of his own into these murders.

And in the summer of 1938, he made a shocking statement to the media. And I'm sorry, this is the assistant Robert Chamberlain. He said, quote, they had a suspect under surveillance, who they labeled Dr. X. Yeah. Who's Dr. X? Why do we know who this guy is? But Dr. that's the thing. Ready to hear a primo suspect?

Uh-huh. Who I think is the mad butcher of King's very run? Oh shit, because, and just before I forget it, obviously doctors have like autonomy, no not autonomy, and not a ton of me. And they do have autonomy, and not a me. And not a me. But like not the knowledge that a surgeon would have.

Exactly. It's like a different kind of knowledge. Right. So it kind of makes sense. It does. Hit me. So according to Elliott Ness and the Mad Butcher by Max Allen Collins and Brad Schwartz, I'm linking all these in the show notes.

It was soon revealed that Dr. X was not a Marvel character like you might be thinking like I was thinking. But it was actually Francis Edward Swiniini who was a 44 year old doctor. Swini the butcher said that you had a one. Swini Todd. He had grown up near Kingsbury run and he had served as a medic in World War I. He ended up receiving a pretty gnarly head injury there and was involved in a gas attack, which saw him discharged with a lot of issues following. In fact, it was soon after coming home from battle that he was suffering pretty severely with signs of psychosis. I looked around and found a paper that stated, according to the World Health Organization's

Internationally Peer Reviewed Chemical Safety Information Division, soldiers that were exposed organizations, internationally peer-reviewed chemical safety information division. Soldiers that were exposed to gas attacks during World War I could deal with a myriad of physical symptoms, but could also come back with apathy issues, mental disturbances, and anxiety attacks. It is well documented that there can be very severe and detrimental effects after this kind of experience. As a result of this, it was reported that Spine began drinking very heavily. So heavily. I saw you googling that a couple of weeks ago. You did.

It all comes for startle. It's all coming back to you. So heavily, in fact, to the point where he had alcoholic neuropathy, where the nerve endings in the hands and feet get messed up and he was in constant burning pain. This made it difficult for him to perform his duties as a doctor to the best of his ability, and it frustrated him, and he took it out on his wife, but also others. So he was using office space on Broadway Avenue, which was only about a mile from Kingsbury run. Office space with a freezer. Oh, not even the best part. And it was right next to a funeral parlor.

This parlor was catering to the people in the area who could not get, you know, cannot have proper burials or bombing. Yeah. And the funeral director had given Sweeney permission to work on corpses to practice his surgical skills and also to quote, indulge a frustrated desire to operate by practicing on unclaimed bodies. Yeah. So I'm going to get into the bit by bit,

why this makes sense. Ness and Chamberlain were on, so this is where they got it right. Where did they lose them? They interviewed him multiple times and in some of those interviews it is clear something sinister is boiling beneath his very carefully crafted exterior. My God, I am on the edge of my actual site. Right. In 1933, in early 1934, his wife had petitioned twice to have him committed by the court. And he was committed both times, but was released both times as well.

But these times he was committed, he was at the Cleveland City Hospital, and guests who worked there as an orderly. Forrest. Edward and Drassy, one of our victims from the Jackass Hill. Yes. Yes, that's where they could have met. Y'all. The year after these hospital stays in the fall of 1934,

his wife actually left him because he had been extremely abusive to her and horrific to her. And she wasn't willing to subject herself to that bullshit anymore. No. Interestingly, this was right at the time the original lady of the lake was discovered in fall of 1934.

Dude. There are many reasons he fits the bill here and I'm going to lay them out. One, he's a doctor. And it was a combat medic. He has seen some shit and he is likely helped with amputations a lot. A lot of limbs, he has either amputated

or at least assisted in it. He was a doctor, butations a lot. A lot of limbs, he is either amputated or at least assisted in it. He was a doctor, but not a surgeon. This is important. He wanted to be a surgeon and was frustrated that he wasn't. This explains how he knew anatomy, but was still kind of clunky with the amputation, but he had hesitation cuts because he wasn't experienced, not because he wasn't confident as a killer.

Three, he would have had access to morphine and other chemicals like the ones found on some of the bodies. Yup. Or those hesitation cuts were likely a mix of him not being a surgeon and also him dealing with neuropathy from alcoholism. Yes. He likely didn't have a steady hand. Five, he had an office, he had a home where his wife had left him, he had free run of a fucking funeral parlor, with a freezer in it.

He had places to do this. Six, he grew up near Kingsbury Run and he lived near there as an adult as well. Seven, there were many instances where he was committed or people attempted to commit him because of psychosis signs and unpredictable mood swings and rage, rage. He is the butcher of Kingsbury Run in my opinion. I'm just gonna have a little call you out moment. Yeah. So earlier, we were talking about this and I was like, so do you think, you know who did it?

And you were like, yeah, I think I know who did it. I have a pretty good suspect of it, but I'm not totally completely sure. And then we sit down here today. And you're like, I am completely fucking sure that it's this dude. I couldn't let you guys know. I had to keep you on the edge of the sky. You guys, I mean you guys, you're you guys,

you're part of the community. Gwerley Goural. Yeah, I couldn't let it go. I had to, I had to, I know. So I had to get a few more things that really so little about it for me. And now I feel, I feel, I couldn't let it go. I had to. She pumped me. And also I had to get a few more things that really so little bit for me and now I feel. I feel. I feel like Sweeney is the guy.

Ashton. And is he here? Hello. Chamberlain was convinced and so was Ness. Meet the guy is the guy. Ashton as well. That's why I said like methods not great made a lot of mistakes and Ness is going to make another monumental mistake that's going

to take him out of the running for me, giving shit about him with this. But this was the guy, but there were issues here. What? There was no physical evidence they could gather to tie him to this. No, it was 1930s. Which made it completely impossible to even form an investigation into this guy. Apparently there was a report that they discovered in 1938, and this was found by Marillo. And it was originally documented in 1934, which was when the lady of

the lake was found, this whole thing started. A man named Emil Fronik said he had been invited to a home near Kingsbury Run by a man who was a doctor, and he said he was poisoned there. He was able to escape and when Ness' team caught up with him, he had moved out of the area. He caught up with him in 1938. They tried to get him to find the house, but he couldn't locate it. But he said he also knew of another man who had told him he almost got cut up in that home, too. What? And he could never find the home.

You forget that home? Yeah. It's like that's trauma. That's trauma, it's trauma. Yeah, I was gonna say. There was also another issue getting sweetie. His cousin was Martin Sweeney, who was a congressman. And was a political nemesis slash very large critic

of Elliott Ness. So they were worried that if they went after Sweeney, Martin Sweeney would just accuse Ness of quote unquote political persecution and that would go bad. Like dude, it's just because your cousin's the murderer? Like no, he's just trying to get a murderer off the streets. And also it's like I guess it doesn't torture it and dismembered murder victims. They just don't matter. They get the shit out of the stick because no one wants to forego their political career, right?

I fucking hate it. We don't want that. When politics get involved in things like this. Yeah. And Elliott Ness didn't want to deal with the blowback because he wanted a career. So he didn't want to deal with Martin Sweeney trying to like smear him in the press.

Fucking male egos. I'm sorry, but like, come on. So things were really at a boiling point. So many victims, so many victims now, and no evidence, even with a suspect that looks pretty damn great, they can't scrounge up any physical evidence to get a warrant.

So Elliott Ness decided to go big, and he probably should have just gone home. Two days after the latest two victims were discovered in the dump on August 18th, just after midnight, Ness and 25 officers arrived at the perimeter of Kingsbury Run. This is after midnight. This was a raid. They had fire trucks flick on floodlights around the edges of the settlement. They came with hammers, flashlights, and other crude weapons. And on the go ahead, they invaded the run. For hours, they banged down doors, tore apart people's shacks, taking in

anyone they thought could be the butcher or know who he was. He had a really wild thought process with this too. Like, what? This is because you're like, why? Right. What is the thought process with this too. Like, what? This is, because you're like, why? Right. What is the thought process behind this? Like, you know, you are pretty sure you know who this is, and you're just gonna destroy people's homes for no fucking reason. Because remember, this guy came from Prohibition Al Capone

bottoming style justice. He raided, and he went big, because he was working with the Mafia. What are you even rating for? And that's, well, I mean, like he was rating with like, Al Capone and stuff because that's really your only choice in that arena. Like you go big.

But then it seems like he's like going through rating these people's homes. That's what I mean. Right. But here, I always said before, there needed to be some kind of finesse and some patience. Right.

Some real nose to the grindstone kind of investigatory work and he just wasn't willing to do it. And it's a shame because he had a great logical mind. He had a suspect that it'd be just fucking Doug Harder and put away his own goddamn ego. Yup. And own political shit. He probably could have got that guy behind bars.

Right. I know he could have. Why wouldn't you just stake him out for a little while instead of ravaging through these people so these innocent people's homes? guy behind bars. I know he could. Why wouldn't you just stay him out for a little while instead of ravaging through these people, so these innocent people's homes? He was thinking that this must have been someone who is only going after people in the run. That was his whole thought process. He is targeting people in the run. So now I'm taking away his supply. By detaining these people, all of these innocent people in the middle of the night, I'm taken away the supply.

No, you're just so he's gonna have to go somewhere else and I'm gonna be able to catch him. What? He then ordered and this gets worse. How? He ordered the fire department to burn those people shacks to the ground. Oh my God.

So those people were now homeless. Literally burned about a third of the homes in the King's Berry run. Oh my God. In the name of catching the mad butcher of King's Berry run. I just like, that's your logical man and that's what your fucking brain comes up with. As soon as I read this, I was like, my guy,

there's no coming back from this one. I also had it. I don't understand the thought process. You could have had it. Let's, like, you what? He zigged when he should have zagged so hard the other way. Well, you didn't get rid of like a place for, you got rid of a place for him to hunt people,

but you didn't, now these people are all displaced in way easier to hunt. Exactly, you've just made them even more vulnerable. What the fuck? Yeah. It is burned down people's homes. And this raid went on for days. That's disgusting.

And nothing came from it. Of course not. Nothing. What was going to come from it? Not a shred of evidence came out of them ripping apart people's homes in the middle of the night and then burning a third of them to the ground. Nothing came from it. That's just a whole last other crime. Yeah. Truly, Elliot Nass looked like a stupid asshole in this instance.

I don't even, like, words don't even describe what he looked at. And honestly, the critique is warranted. This was the stupidest move for a very smart guy. And that's what's really like, really frustrating in this is, wow. Dude, like, you had him. Francis Sweeney is the guy. Yeah. He is the guy. And it's like, yeah, Adam, you just had to put some shit aside.

Yeah, to work a little harder. Yeah, it just, ah. But as if the police were not already looking like incompetent rookies, this just steal the deal for them. It really sealed Ness's reputation. It ruined any positive thing he had done before this. It was a major mistake. And what makes it worse is it seemed like he and Chamberlain

were really on the right track with Sweeney. But again, they just let that political shit sit in the way. And instead, they just do this. They had so many contacts with Sweeney. And so we're so close to nabbing him. They interviewed him a ton. Right. At one point they were able to keep him in a hotel room for like days. And it's like, if you're getting closer and closer and closer, just keep fucking going. And what's frustrating is, uh, Francis Sweeney was the type who liked that Elliot Ness was paying

attention to him. Right. Like he was like. He was very much that kind of guy. He would have fucked up at some point. He would have fucked up. You could have used that hubris and you would have been able to turn it against him. But instead you just destroyed people's hearts. But again, you just went like, crush smash.

Like I'll just take away his supply. What? What does that even mean? These are people. These are people. These are people. They're not a supply. Like, what the fuck?

Who's ideal is it to bring this fucker in? Oh, so December 1938, Detective Mariello got word that the, a Cleveland Postal Inspector had found a letter. And it was in the dead letter office that like, where they go when they can't go anywhere else. That was addressed to Cleveland Police Chief George Madowitz. It was dated December 23rd, 1938, and this is what it said, dear boss. This is a very weird letter. It says, Chief of Police Madowitz, you can rest easy now as I have come out to sunny California for the winter. I felt bad operating on those people,

but science must advance. I shall astound the medical profession, a man with only a DC. What did their lives mean in comparison to hundreds of sick and disease-twisted bodies? Just laboratory guinea pigs found on any public street. No one missed them when I failed. My last case was successful. I now know the feeling of thorough and other pioneers. Right now I have a volunteer who will absolutely prove my theory. They call me mad and a butchurer, but the truth will be out.

I failed, but once here, the body has not been found and never will be. But the head minus the features is buried on century Boulevard between Western and Crenshaw. I feel it my duty to dispose of the bodies as I do. It is God's will not to let them suffer. X. That sounds like Sweeney. So he went straight to the press with this. It was vocally convinced it was real. He even contacted authorities in Los Angeles, but there was no head where he said there was. There was no leads. Nothing came out of this. It was pretty widely determined to just be a hoax. Allah, jack the ripper. Unfortunately, after nothing came out of it, even Detective Marillo had to admit it was probably

bullshit. Paulia hoax. For years, the officers that have been on the case since the beginning continue to work and try to catch the butcher like day and night. And they literally never came close and less it was phoenix. Or a sweetie, excuse me. That was the only time that they came close. But detective Mariello never stopped trying. It actually began to really take a toll on him physically and emotionally. And in 1942, his family even said he was just not there.

He was always thinking about the case, how to solve it. And that year, the department started taking him off the case bit by bit. Just contentious. Yeah, until he was taken off of it completely in October of that year. That's sad. So he actually turned in his last official report

on the case in March 1943. But he said he would never give up his work on the torso murders and said, as long as the killer is alive and out there, he will be caught. In 1942, Elliot nest resigned from his position in Cleveland after a hit and run where no one was actually hurt, but he was inebriated and he tried to cover it up. So he had to resign. Elliott was inebriated. Yeah. Pot meat cattle.

Are you shitting me? Yeah. I fucking hate this guy. He was inebriated. I fucking hate him. And he got a job in Washington DC after that. I'm shocking. He's in someone with your car while inebriated

and gone over to DC. Yeah. Even then, Sweeney continued to contact Elliott Ness, sending him weird and cryptic postcards. Yeah, he was the fact. The department's last interview with Sweeney was in 1938. And interestingly, this was the last year they found victims associated with the butcher. Even more interesting was the fact that this was also the year that Sweeney checked himself into an institution in Dayton.

It was Sweeney, guys. Where he ended up being diagnosed as a schizophrenic. He died in 1964 and was sending postcards to Elliott Ness until the very end. Yeah, it was Sweeney. He, the times, like they add up perfectly. The killing stopped when he checked himself into a plate. Like come on. Like come on, they started when his wife left him. And like one of the victims works where he was,

he had a halt. It all just makes perfect sense. It does, it all adds up. All of the pieces of the puzzle are right there. Fuck Elliott Ness. Yeah, he doesn't come out great here. Fuck that guy. He does not come out great here.

And he had such a, there was a moment where you were like, oh, he's out. And then it was like, oh, shit, I'm down. Yeah, that shit art. Yeah, it art a lot. But that is the story of the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury run. How maddening though. Very mad.

He was never caught technically. I know. Cause I, I truly think that it was Sweeney. Oh, I believe it. Everything you said. Yeah. This isn't like a Jack the Ripper thing where you're like, this sounds good. It's pretty tough and dry. No, this is, I believe this is Francis Sweeney after everything you said. Yeah. This isn't like a Jack the Ripper thing where you like this sounds good.

It's pretty tough and dry. No, I believe this is Francis Sweeney. Wow. I was really portraits of words, I'm sorry. What are you like, wow. But yeah, I'm just like pissed. I'm talking mess there. Not great.

Wow, wow. I'm just like shook right now, but. Truly. We hope that you keep listening. And we hope you keep it. Oh, fuck. Sorry I'm shocked like I'm shocked right now goodbye Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to Morvid, Early, and Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen Add Free with Wondery Plus and

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