The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run: An Interview with Author James Jessen Badal

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[00:02:45] Warning, this episode contains discussion of brutal murders, violence, and dismemberment.

[00:02:51] When most of us think of Eliot Ness, we probably recall his work as the leader of the so-called

[00:02:56] Untouchables, the group of incorruptible government agents who helped bring down the infamous

[00:03:01] gangster Al Capone back in the 1930s.

[00:03:04] But of course, Ness's career continued after Capone was put in prison.

[00:03:09] It did not, though, have quite the same level of success.

[00:03:13] In 1935, Ness became the safety director for the city of Cleveland, Ohio.

[00:03:19] While in that role, he became involved in the investigation of that city's notorious

[00:03:23] Torso Murders, which were committed by a killer that came to be known as the Mad Butcher of

[00:03:29] Kingsbury Run.

[00:03:31] Around 12 people fell victim to that early serial killer.

[00:03:34] Their dismembered remains were generally left in the Kingsbury Run neighborhood of the city.

[00:03:39] The Torso Murder case was never solved, and some believe that the failure to identify

[00:03:44] the killer damaged Ness's reputation.

[00:03:47] But perhaps that is not entirely accurate.

[00:03:50] Writer and journalism professor James Jessen Beddahl spent years researching this case.

[00:03:55] His book on the subject, In the Wake of the Butcher, Cleveland's Torso Murders, stands

[00:04:00] as the definitive account of the killings.

[00:04:03] He even wrote two follow-up books that I hold in high regard, Though Murder Has No Tongue,

[00:04:08] The Lost Victim of Cleveland's Mad Butcher, and Hell's Wasteland, the Pennsylvania Torso

[00:04:13] Murders.

[00:04:14] Beddahl probably knows more about the Torso Killings than anyone else now living.

[00:04:20] And he maintains that contrary to what we think, Elliot Ness did solve the case.

[00:04:26] My name is Anya Kane.

[00:04:27] I'm a journalist.

[00:04:28] And I'm Kevin Greenlee.

[00:04:30] I'm an attorney.

[00:04:31] And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:04:33] We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into

[00:04:38] murder cases.

[00:04:40] We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:04:42] And this is The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, an interview with author James Jessen Beddahl.

[00:05:33] So I guess to start off with, you were first introduced to this case by a teacher.

[00:05:38] Is that right?

[00:05:39] Can you tell us about how you first became aware of the Cleveland Torso Murders or the

[00:05:44] Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run?

[00:05:46] Well, I was in eighth grade taking American history.

[00:05:50] For some reason, our history teacher thought the Kingsbury Run murders were something we

[00:05:55] should know about.

[00:05:56] They had it with Thomas Jefferson in the Civil War.

[00:06:01] I never knew.

[00:06:02] But he wrote us an article that appeared in a 1949 magazine, not that I was in eighth grade

[00:06:09] in 1949.

[00:06:10] And I never forgot it.

[00:06:13] In fact, I say to some of my teacher friends, if you want to get the attention of a bunch

[00:06:17] of 13-year-olds, read them an article about people getting their heads lopped off.

[00:06:23] I remembered the names of some of the people involved.

[00:06:26] And then years later, I went through a Jack the Ripper phase where I was interested in

[00:06:31] that case.

[00:06:32] Then I thought, well, geez, we've got our own Jack the Ripper.

[00:06:38] He was active longer.

[00:06:41] Racked up more victims and was almost as gruesome.

[00:06:46] Absolutely.

[00:06:47] And has certainly inspired a lot of debate and discussion in the years since.

[00:06:52] Oh, yes.

[00:06:53] As I'm sure you know firsthand.

[00:06:57] I guess, you know, can you tell us just a little bit about your career in journalism

[00:07:00] and kind of walk us up to the point where you then dove into this this Cleveland case?

[00:07:08] Well, I really don't have a career in journalism per se.

[00:07:11] I've been an English teacher at the college level most of my career.

[00:07:15] Now, I have written a couple of music articles over the years.

[00:07:21] I review concerts, classical concerts locally.

[00:07:25] I didn't discover my ability, if you want to call it that, to write true crime until

[00:07:31] sometime in the 1990s.

[00:07:34] I'm curious.

[00:07:35] One thing journalists often write about things that are going on like right now.

[00:07:39] How exactly did you as an academic or however you wish to describe yourself, how did you

[00:07:45] go about the process of researching and getting new information on a case that happened so

[00:07:51] many decades ago?

[00:07:52] Well, I'm on the board of trustees of the Cleveland Police Historical Society.

[00:07:57] And that will open a few doors sometimes.

[00:08:01] And that gave me access to some records which are generally unavailable to the public.

[00:08:07] And being on the board, I also get first crack at material which is turned into the museum

[00:08:15] as addicts are cleaned out and that sort of thing.

[00:08:18] Police reports materialize.

[00:08:20] Can you tell us about just the decision where you kind of came to the point of like, I want

[00:08:26] to really dive into this case and really do a definitive book on it and sort of how that

[00:08:33] sort of decision manifested itself?

[00:08:35] Well, interestingly enough, the case has never gotten national or international attention.

[00:08:42] I think it's true.

[00:08:43] And what attention it did get, I sometimes thought was not particularly helpful.

[00:08:49] I mean, we are dealing with history.

[00:08:52] We need to treat this case with the dignity of history.

[00:08:55] And as much as I could find out about it, that's what I tried to do.

[00:09:01] Absolutely.

[00:09:02] I feel like your book is really written with that in mind.

[00:09:04] It struck me as very fair and not trying to just push some salacious theory, but in

[00:09:09] fact, analyzing different theories and different suspects and different aspects of the case

[00:09:16] in sort of a dispassionate way as a historian would.

[00:09:20] Well, every book I've written, I've tried to set the record straight.

[00:09:25] There were many misconceptions about the Kingsbury run murders.

[00:09:29] I wrote a book on Cleveland's most famous missing child, Beverly Potts.

[00:09:35] And there are many misconceptions about her case as well.

[00:09:39] So what I try to do is set the record straight.

[00:09:42] That's that's so important in an older case.

[00:09:44] We found ourselves with some of the ones we've covered, like the Burger Chef murders.

[00:09:47] Rumors become repeated and then they get posted on the Internet and it just kind of

[00:09:53] spirals from there. And it can be, as you said...

[00:09:55] Sometimes those rumors actually start at the very beginning of the case.

[00:10:01] My most recent book was on the Collinwood School Fire here in Cleveland, which took

[00:10:07] place in 1908.

[00:10:09] Probably the most serious school fire in American history.

[00:10:13] And one of the legends about the fire was that the problem was that the doors opened

[00:10:20] inward at the school.

[00:10:22] They did not.

[00:10:24] They did open outward, but that legend literally got started the day the fire took

[00:10:30] place.

[00:10:31] And yeah, and it kind of obscures the, you know, the real facts.

[00:10:35] I was wondering, you know, could you tell us a bit, you know, set the scene for us a

[00:10:39] little bit about the Great Depression era Cleveland?

[00:10:43] Specifically the area where these crimes happened around Kingsbury Run.

[00:10:47] What sort of place was that?

[00:10:49] Was Cleveland back in those days?

[00:10:51] Well, Kingsbury Run is a prehistoric riverbed that's attached to the flaps that

[00:10:58] more or less curves out to the east to where a lot of the factories are, where the

[00:11:03] train tracks are, the rapid transit tracks as well.

[00:11:08] Cleveland in the 1930s was a, well, I think it was hit as hard as most cities were.

[00:11:15] Kingsbury Run became the location of a number of Hope Jungles.

[00:11:21] I think there were about six in Kingsbury Run at one time or another during the

[00:11:26] thirties.

[00:11:27] And these were people who were not exactly destitute.

[00:11:31] This is one of the more interesting things I found out doing my research was that a lot

[00:11:37] of people who lived down there did have jobs, but they just couldn't make enough to

[00:11:42] live elsewhere.

[00:11:43] I actually talked to a man who as a paperboy delivered papers in Kingsbury Run.

[00:11:48] Wow. So it's definitely different from the kind of extremely destitute image a lot of

[00:11:54] people might have of it, even though obviously it was not.

[00:11:58] Well, it was destitute enough.

[00:12:00] Right. But certainly, you know, that makes a lot of sense.

[00:12:04] And it's very interesting that you were able to kind of pull out those nuances through

[00:12:08] your research. I guess, you know, it's kind of complicated to even ask questions about

[00:12:12] this case because there's so many victims or I should say possible victims and we don't

[00:12:19] know most of their names.

[00:12:20] And there's certainly debate, it seems, raging over whether some of them are even

[00:12:25] murder victims, let alone victims of the same killer.

[00:12:29] So I thought your book did a really good job breaking down each possible victim.

[00:12:35] I guess the first one would be the so-called Lady in the Lake.

[00:12:39] The Lady of the Lake.

[00:12:41] I guess, could you tell us a bit about that situation and how it ties into what would

[00:12:47] come later?

[00:12:48] Well, this was in 1934.

[00:12:50] It was fully a year before the case theoretically got started.

[00:12:55] And this was in an area of the shores of Lake Erie.

[00:13:01] And a man was out looking for driftwood that he could burn.

[00:13:05] This was, after all, the Depression.

[00:13:07] And he saw something which he initially identified as a tree trunk with the mark

[00:13:14] stripped off of it.

[00:13:15] When he got closer, he realized that it was the lower half of a woman's torso, thighs

[00:13:22] still attached but amputated at the knees.

[00:13:25] Now, a couple of other parts of the body did turn up in the following days.

[00:13:30] But as far as anyone knew, it was an isolated event.

[00:13:33] It was another year before the case really got started officially.

[00:13:38] And the Lady in the Lake really was not added into the total until somewhat later.

[00:13:44] I guess, could you tell us about Edward Andrasse?

[00:13:47] I don't...am I saying his last name right?

[00:13:49] Edward Andrasse?

[00:13:51] Yeah.

[00:13:52] He is generally known as victim number one, although he was the second victim to be

[00:13:59] killed in that one instance.

[00:14:02] He is one of only two that were positively identified.

[00:14:08] He was what police in those days would have called a snotty punk.

[00:14:13] He...how can I put this?

[00:14:15] The only steady job he is known to have had in his life was that he worked as an

[00:14:21] orderly in the psych ward of one of the Cleveland hospitals.

[00:14:25] It's certainly a very intriguing clue given his fate.

[00:14:29] OK, I would say if my identification of the killer is correct, the killer was spent

[00:14:38] some time in the psych ward for alcoholism.

[00:14:42] And I think that's probably where he met Andrasse.

[00:14:46] So there may have been that personal connection there, at least with some of the

[00:14:50] victims.

[00:14:51] I don't know how deep it was.

[00:14:53] Right.

[00:14:54] One thing about Andrasse was that he had possible ligature marks where the other

[00:15:00] victims may not have had any ligature marks.

[00:15:04] It's really baffling to me as to how the butcher may have killed these people

[00:15:11] without restraining them.

[00:15:13] Do you have any thoughts on that?

[00:15:15] I wish I did.

[00:15:18] I have no idea how he restrained his victims.

[00:15:22] He may have drugged them.

[00:15:23] Only once did the coroner detect drugs in the system and that was victim number 10.

[00:15:29] Do you have a sense of if autopsy measures and coroner techniques back then would

[00:15:34] have been good enough to, you know, definitively rule out drugs consistently?

[00:15:40] Or is that something that they had pretty much mastered by that point?

[00:15:43] I don't know.

[00:15:44] I simply have no feeling for what coroners could or could not find in those days.

[00:15:50] Yeah.

[00:15:50] Yes, it's definitely intriguing though that Andrasse would have been the one with

[00:15:56] possible ligature marks.

[00:15:58] I think you in the book noted very aptly that, you know, it almost seemed a little

[00:16:03] bit more personal.

[00:16:05] Yes, I would say so.

[00:16:07] And there's also that really bizarre, I mean, one of the other things that comes to

[00:16:11] mind when I think of Edward Andrasse is that strange photograph of him that was

[00:16:16] uncovered in a kind of an ornate room.

[00:16:19] There was more than one.

[00:16:21] I think there were about four and I've forgotten who had taken them.

[00:16:26] I'm blanking on names these days.

[00:16:28] But yeah, very interesting photographs.

[00:16:31] I know when we showed some of the photographs to some of our, you know, some

[00:16:37] of our listeners were also reading the book and they all they were shocked because they

[00:16:41] thought based on the description that the police were kind of giving that it was

[00:16:44] going to be really lurid.

[00:16:46] And they thought they were pretty tame, I guess.

[00:16:48] It really is just a guy sitting, you know, fully dressed in a chair in a room.

[00:16:54] Just posing for the camera.

[00:16:55] An interesting side light to those photographs.

[00:16:59] I was able to supply copies of them to Andrasse's descendants.

[00:17:04] They had no photographs of him.

[00:17:06] That's very sad. And that's very nice that you were able to to kind of give them

[00:17:10] that tangible kind of image of their ancestor.

[00:17:14] Well, the only image you have of your ancestor is a description of his dead body.

[00:17:19] Yes. Yeah.

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[00:20:01] One other victim who the only other one who was positively identified was, of course,

[00:20:08] Florence or Flo Polillo.

[00:20:11] Polillo.

[00:20:12] Polillo. Can you tell us a bit about her?

[00:20:16] Well, we don't know really very much about her.

[00:20:19] She was a part time waitress, part time barmaid, part time prostitute.

[00:20:24] If you look at her mugshot in the book, it's hard to believe that she was only 41 years

[00:20:30] old when she was killed.

[00:20:32] She lived in a rooming house on Carnegie Avenue.

[00:20:36] There is now a Cadillac dealership there.

[00:20:40] We really don't know very much about her.

[00:20:43] Yeah, truly. It's interesting.

[00:20:46] The victims that, you know, even those that are named, we don't know so much about or

[00:20:51] what exactly they were doing.

[00:20:53] Maybe with the exception of Edward.

[00:20:55] Well, I'll see.

[00:20:57] Of the cycle in Cleveland, only two were positively identified.

[00:21:03] Andrasi and Polillo.

[00:21:06] Rose Wallace, victim number eight.

[00:21:08] That's a tentative identification, although Gerber accepted it the corner.

[00:21:15] And I tend to accept it as well.

[00:21:18] In terms of, you know what we can, you know, as somebody who investigated this yourself so

[00:21:24] extensively, what does it say about 1930s society that, you know, so many people were

[00:21:30] turning up dead in Cleveland without any sort of clue to their identity?

[00:21:36] Well, this was the period where people out of work hopped on trains and went from one

[00:21:43] city to the other.

[00:21:44] Actually, when you consider that there were only 12, 13, if you consider the Lady of the

[00:21:50] Lake and that was stretched out over a four year period.

[00:21:54] That's not all that many.

[00:21:57] That's a good point.

[00:21:58] This is this is years we're talking about, not months.

[00:22:02] Well, we're not talking about Jack the Ripper, who just five people in about three

[00:22:06] months. Right.

[00:22:08] One thing I was curious about is in terms of I believe it's victim number four.

[00:22:16] This is the tattooed man.

[00:22:18] The tattooed man.

[00:22:20] Well, he had six different tattoos on different parts of his body and the police tried to

[00:22:28] investigate every one of them.

[00:22:30] They contacted, I think, every tattoo parlor in the United States trying to get some sort

[00:22:36] of handle on who may have done the work.

[00:22:38] They always assumed that he was probably a sailor, but that's just a guess.

[00:22:43] One thing that is interesting about the butcher is that he seemingly targeted both men and

[00:22:48] women. He did not discriminate in terms of.

[00:22:52] Yeah, equal opportunity serial killer.

[00:22:54] Very, very, very feminist.

[00:22:56] Black, white.

[00:22:59] He's kind of a progressive guy in that sense.

[00:23:01] But no, I mean, but he did treat the body seemingly a bit differently.

[00:23:06] My interpretation of some of this is that he seemed to really butcher the women quite

[00:23:12] extensively, whereas the men were a little bit.

[00:23:16] That's a good point.

[00:23:18] He tended to cut the women up in more pieces.

[00:23:21] The man.

[00:23:23] Well, and I see victim number two and victim number four.

[00:23:27] He simply cut their heads off, although I had to ask.

[00:23:30] He had been emasculated as well.

[00:23:33] Yeah, it kind of you feel like almost there's something there psychologically where he's

[00:23:37] doing things differently to men and women.

[00:23:39] But I'm not a psychologist.

[00:23:42] Yeah, it's you can't get into his head.

[00:23:44] We'll just never know.

[00:23:45] Yeah, no, certainly.

[00:23:47] But no, it is. It is interesting that he did not have a specific type of a victim.

[00:23:53] Well, he only had a specific type in that most of them seemed to be poor.

[00:24:00] Good point. And just the bizarreness of with with some of the men, the coroner resolving

[00:24:06] that they had the cause of death was decapitation.

[00:24:08] So in his case, yes.

[00:24:12] And some of the others, the bodies were simply not fresh enough to be sure.

[00:24:18] Right now, I'm you know, this this case, you know, you mentioned

[00:24:23] I completely agree with you.

[00:24:24] I don't think this has gotten nearly enough attention nationally or internationally.

[00:24:29] But but certainly locally, it was.

[00:24:32] It was a firestorm from, you know, at the time.

[00:24:37] And I guess for in your mind, how do you think that that impacted the outcome of the

[00:24:44] case? Do you think the media attention and scrutiny harmed the the case or?

[00:24:50] There is some evidence that authorities exercised.

[00:24:56] How could I put this?

[00:24:59] Not exactly censorship.

[00:25:03] God, how can I put this?

[00:25:08] They asked them to lay off some of the horrendous details.

[00:25:12] Oh, that's that's interesting.

[00:25:14] So they were able to control the press maybe a little bit.

[00:25:17] I don't think it's a matter of controlling the press.

[00:25:20] I think it was a matter of doing your civic duty.

[00:25:23] Right. Yeah.

[00:25:25] The details are pretty disturbing.

[00:25:29] I know one element of this that gets a lot of attention now is the connection of

[00:25:37] Elliot Ness is as Ness involvement with this investigation overstated.

[00:25:44] Somewhat, yes.

[00:25:46] Ness did not come to Cleveland until December of nineteen thirty five.

[00:25:52] And by that time, the case had been going on for at least a couple of months.

[00:25:56] He came in as Cleveland's safety director.

[00:26:00] And as far as I can tell, he tried to hold himself above the case for the most part

[00:26:06] because I think he realized that this was something that he wasn't used to.

[00:26:10] He was used to busting criminals who did things for understandable reasons.

[00:26:16] Alcohol manufacture, that sort of thing.

[00:26:19] He did not become I don't want to say he got become directly involved, but he did

[00:26:26] not become very much involved until the end of the summer of thirty six.

[00:26:33] And at the end of the summer of thirty six, the mayor approached him and said, look,

[00:26:40] you've simply got to get more involved in this.

[00:26:43] And from that point on, he was pretty much involved.

[00:26:47] Absolutely.

[00:26:49] And, you know, there is some tantalizing information that you had in your book about

[00:26:54] his his so-called unknowns, you know, and the work they may have done.

[00:26:59] But a lot of that is very remains very unclear.

[00:27:03] Are you mean people who work for him?

[00:27:05] Yeah.

[00:27:06] So does he?

[00:27:07] Yeah.

[00:27:08] I think there's been some guesses as to who some of them may have been, but I've

[00:27:13] never seen anything definite on that.

[00:27:16] Ultimately, Eliot Ness did come up with a suspect for this.

[00:27:22] Can you speak about that and how modern day researchers have uncovered that person's

[00:27:26] name? This is a very long, complicated story.

[00:27:30] Eliot Ness told his biographer that he had a suspect and that he had picked him up,

[00:27:38] taking him to a hotel room.

[00:27:40] And this was really kind of interesting.

[00:27:43] You took him to the old Cleveland Hotel.

[00:27:45] Now, he obviously did not waltz him in the front door and take him up to the desk.

[00:27:51] But he must have had a room down at the end of a corridor set aside for this.

[00:27:58] And of course, people for a long time doubted whether this actually happened or was

[00:28:03] this simply Eliot Ness who couldn't bring himself to admit there was a case he

[00:28:08] couldn't solve. When I wrote the first edition of Butcher, there were three questions

[00:28:13] about that. Number one, did that secret interrogation take place?

[00:28:18] Number two, could we identify who the subject was?

[00:28:22] And number three, was he the killer?

[00:28:24] In the first edition of the book, I was able to establish that yes, the interrogation

[00:28:30] did take place and the man's name was Dr.

[00:28:34] Francis Edward Sweeney.

[00:28:36] I think it took to the new edition of the book for me to more or less prove that,

[00:28:43] yeah, he was the killer.

[00:28:45] So for you, Sweeney is is the man.

[00:28:48] Everything we know about him fits.

[00:28:51] We've never learned anything about it.

[00:28:53] The points away from it.

[00:28:55] What do we know about Sweeney?

[00:28:57] He was a physician.

[00:28:59] He was of Irish descent, obviously.

[00:29:02] He served in World War One as a medic and apparently received some sort of injury

[00:29:11] which got him what we today would call VA benefits.

[00:29:16] He went to pharmacology school at Western Reserve University, then went on to

[00:29:23] medical school, I believe in St.

[00:29:24] Louis, came back to Cleveland, married, did his internship at a hospital on

[00:29:30] Broadway, and he had an office.

[00:29:33] This is one of the things that so definitely points to him.

[00:29:38] There was a house on Broadway pretty much close to East 55th, which had been

[00:29:43] built by the Paterka family.

[00:29:45] And when the parents moved out, their son Edward moved in and turned the house

[00:29:53] into a doctor's office and the bottom floor and examination rooms, also rooms

[00:30:01] for minor surgery.

[00:30:02] He kept the upper floor as not exactly a living space.

[00:30:07] But if one of the doctors wanted to stay there, he could.

[00:30:10] And there were six doctors who worked at this facility and Dr.

[00:30:14] Sweeney was one of them.

[00:30:16] Yes, that near miss that you describe in the book is so it's very compelling.

[00:30:23] Well, we know the interrogation took place for sure because David Cowles, who

[00:30:30] was one of Ness's most trusted associates today, we would say he was head of CSI

[00:30:36] Cleveland, was interviewed by the first director of the Cleveland Police

[00:30:41] Historical Society.

[00:30:44] Sorry, I can't tell you exactly what the interview took place, but there is a

[00:30:49] recording of it and I reproduce as much of the recording as is necessary in the

[00:30:55] book. He said that we did have a suspect.

[00:30:59] I won't mention any names, but he gives so many details about who the suspect

[00:31:04] was. It's very obvious who he's talking about.

[00:31:08] Were you able to I mean, I know I know you were because I read the book, but can

[00:31:13] you talk about why Elliot Ness and his team may have been so reluctant to name

[00:31:18] somebody despite the fact that people were clamoring for answers?

[00:31:22] You mean why? Why did not identify publicly?

[00:31:27] Yeah, that's rather complicated.

[00:31:31] I think there's at least a couple of reasons for that.

[00:31:33] Francis Sweeney's cousin, Martin L.

[00:31:36] Sweeney, was the Democratic congressman from the 20th District.

[00:31:41] I don't think this was a case of protecting a congressman, but they had

[00:31:46] absolutely no evidence against Dr.

[00:31:50] Sweeney except a lie detector test.

[00:31:52] And that's one of the more interesting aspects of the case.

[00:31:56] Ness called in a marker from his Chicago days and Leonard Keeler, the man who

[00:32:02] invented or developed the modern polygraph, actually came to Cleveland in

[00:32:07] secret and administered the test.

[00:32:10] Supposedly when the test was over, he turned to Ness and said, that's your man.

[00:32:15] I might as well throw my machine out the window if I say anything different.

[00:32:20] But they had no evidence.

[00:32:22] Now, if he had gone to trial, he would have not only have been judged incompetent.

[00:32:28] And this may have been a move to protect his immediate family.

[00:32:34] I mean, he was married and had two children.

[00:32:36] And why put them through that horror?

[00:32:39] Now, as far as Martin L.

[00:32:41] Sweeney is concerned, it's very interesting that he became considerably less active

[00:32:48] in Cleveland politics around this time.

[00:32:52] And I wonder if the authorities didn't go to him and say, it's not a matter of

[00:32:59] protecting you, but we'll keep this name private if you promise to behave yourself

[00:33:06] politically on the local scene, which he did.

[00:33:11] One of the newspapers said it's going to be very lonesome in Cleveland without

[00:33:16] Sweeney.

[00:33:17] Yeah.

[00:33:18] Prior to that, he'd been very vocal.

[00:33:20] Well, he all of a sudden became very cooperative with local projects.

[00:33:26] I should also say that relations between those two branches of the family don't

[00:33:32] seem to have been very strong because Martin L.

[00:33:34] Sweeney, being a Democrat, was attacking the Republican administration of the city

[00:33:40] for their inability to catch the bad butcher.

[00:33:43] I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall when he learned that Eliot Ness's

[00:33:49] prime suspect was his own cousin.

[00:33:52] Yeah, that I mean, it's it seems like it's out of a movie or something.

[00:33:56] I mean, it's what a twist.

[00:33:58] One thing I wanted to ask you about is that I feel that in a lot of discussion of

[00:34:04] Eliot Ness, the Cleveland case is sort of touted as like his downfall, like he

[00:34:10] wasn't able to solve it, at least not publicly.

[00:34:13] And therefore, you know, he this is the beginning of the end for him.

[00:34:19] Do you agree with that?

[00:34:21] Well, only to a degree.

[00:34:23] I think he did solve it.

[00:34:25] But for whatever reason, he kept the identity of his main suspect secret.

[00:34:31] The name Sweeney did not come about or materialize for quite a few years.

[00:34:38] The late Marilyn Barnsley was the first person to identify her.

[00:34:42] She and I went to high school together and we hooked up again in college.

[00:34:47] And she began working on the case, I think probably sometime in the late 80s, early

[00:34:52] 90s. And I think her original intention was to either novelize it or to write a play

[00:34:58] about it. And somehow she came across the name of Sweeney.

[00:35:03] She called David Cowles, who was still living at that point and living in Florida.

[00:35:08] And all she said to him was Francis Edward Sweeney.

[00:35:12] And he barked at her.

[00:35:13] Who gave you that name?

[00:35:15] Oh, man.

[00:35:16] This at least identifies him as the major suspect.

[00:35:20] Now, in 1938, he wound up in the Soldiers and Sailors home in San

[00:35:28] Oscar, Ohio. Ultimately, he moved through the VA system and was declared incompetent,

[00:35:35] I think, in the 1950s.

[00:35:37] And he began bombarding Elliot Ness with these cheering letters and postcards, five

[00:35:44] of which do survive.

[00:35:46] And Elliot Ness's papers at the Western Reserve Historical Society.

[00:35:51] He was clearly, I don't know if I'd use the word insane, but I showed the postcards

[00:35:57] to my uncle, who was a psychiatrist.

[00:36:01] And although he was very reluctant to make a decision about somebody he couldn't put on

[00:36:06] the couch, I was his nephew and he liked me so he made a guess.

[00:36:11] He said paranoid schizophrenia.

[00:36:13] And I said, but come on, this man became a doctor and actually practiced.

[00:36:17] For a while, I thought schizophrenia manifested itself in your teenage years.

[00:36:23] And he said, well, usually it does, but occurring later is not unusual.

[00:36:29] And when I mentioned that he became an alcoholic and a drug addict, he said this

[00:36:34] would fit because he experienced the onset of schizophrenia the way you and I would

[00:36:41] have experienced the onset of a cold or the flu.

[00:36:46] He knew something was wrong, but wasn't sure what and tried to control the

[00:36:52] symptoms with ever increasing doses of alcohol.

[00:36:57] His wife took him to court.

[00:36:59] This is how he wound up in the old city hospital for a month under observation for

[00:37:05] alcoholism.

[00:37:07] So it's someone who might be medicating themselves with alcohol.

[00:37:11] I mean, being a doctor, he could write prescriptions for himself.

[00:37:15] Oh, and he finally wound up in the VA facility in Dayton, Ohio.

[00:37:21] And the head of the facility actually wrote to the head of the local medical

[00:37:27] association in Cleveland and said, will you please take this man's license away

[00:37:32] from him?

[00:37:33] Interestingly, he still had his medical license, even though he was an

[00:37:37] institution, because he would write phony prescriptions for himself and then become

[00:37:41] a management problem.

[00:37:43] A lot of the stuff that you were able to uncover about Sweeney definitely is

[00:37:47] interesting and points to his possible.

[00:37:49] Well, other things that point to him.

[00:37:51] Yeah.

[00:37:52] Next door to the facility, which was their office, was the Rouse Funeral Home.

[00:37:58] And the Rouse Funeral Home had an agreement with the city to handle the

[00:38:03] unidentified and the indigent dead.

[00:38:06] And apparently, according to David Cowles, Sweeney had some sort of agreement with

[00:38:12] the Rouse Funeral Home that he could go over there and practice surgical

[00:38:17] techniques on some of the unclaimed bodies.

[00:38:20] Now, the Rouse Funeral Home also had another facility about a block away, which

[00:38:26] apparently was only for the unclaimed bodies.

[00:38:30] And I think that's probably where Sweeney did his work.

[00:38:33] If basically not solving this hurt Eliot Ness' reputation so much.

[00:38:39] I mean, I guess do you think this really did hurt his reputation a lot or do you

[00:38:42] think that that's over-simplified?

[00:38:44] Well, I think in public mind it probably did to a certain degree, yes.

[00:38:47] Right.

[00:38:48] But again, as I say, as far as I'm concerned, he did solve it.

[00:38:53] Yeah.

[00:38:54] Sometimes when people say, oh, this was his downfall, that just strikes me as a

[00:38:58] little bit oversimplified, even if it didn't help things.

[00:39:01] Yeah.

[00:39:02] One thing I wanted to ask you about is just that, you know, we talked a bit

[00:39:08] about Eliot Ness, one of the big law enforcement figures in this case.

[00:39:11] The other one I wanted to ask you about is Peter Merillot.

[00:39:14] Am I saying that right?

[00:39:15] Merillot, yes.

[00:39:17] Yeah.

[00:39:17] Tell us about him and what you're able to uncover about some of his really

[00:39:20] interesting investigations.

[00:39:23] It's not a matter of uncovering.

[00:39:25] It was all known.

[00:39:25] Right, right.

[00:39:27] He was a Cleveland police detective.

[00:39:31] May not have been a detective.

[00:39:32] I'm not sure about that.

[00:39:34] He had the police department's best arrest warrant, or best arrest record.

[00:39:41] And sometime in 1936, the chief of police, George Manowitz, put him on the case

[00:39:49] full time and said, pick whoever you want as your partner, but pretty much

[00:39:54] stick to the case full time.

[00:39:57] He didn't work on other cases, but that was his main focus.

[00:40:01] And one of his sort of adventures regarding the case was that he, he and

[00:40:06] Frank Vorel, another police officer, disguised themselves as hobos and rode

[00:40:12] the rails.

[00:40:13] Oh, well, they were convinced, or I should say Merillot was convinced that

[00:40:17] the Pennsylvania victims were the work of the same perpetrator and that he was

[00:40:23] picking up tramps along the railroad lines.

[00:40:27] And so he and Frank Vorel disguised themselves as hobos and rode the rails,

[00:40:33] simply trying to pick up information.

[00:40:35] That's a, I mean, that's pretty remarkable.

[00:40:37] Was that remarkable for the time?

[00:40:38] Or, I mean, that just sounds wild.

[00:40:40] I don't know if it was or not.

[00:40:43] Right.

[00:40:44] It was certainly a very dangerous thing to do.

[00:40:47] Yeah, that was not an easy life.

[00:40:49] And one thing that really struck me as fascinating in all of this, just a

[00:40:55] bizarre little detail, is that Vorel, the man he was, the police officer he was

[00:41:01] traveling with, had a personal connection to the case.

[00:41:06] Can you speak a bit about that?

[00:41:08] Frank Vorel was related somehow to one of the suspects who was arrested, Frank

[00:41:15] Dolezal.

[00:41:17] Frank Dolezal was arrested by the county sheriff.

[00:41:21] He had lived with one of the, with Flo Palillo at one point, if I remember

[00:41:27] rightly.

[00:41:29] They thought they had their man and he wound up hanging in his cell, a supposed

[00:41:35] suicide, before he could go on trial.

[00:41:38] But it was no suicide.

[00:41:40] He was murdered.

[00:41:41] Yeah, that whole thing is totally shocking.

[00:41:46] And can you tell us how you were able to basically, you know, conclude that he was

[00:41:52] murdered rather than he died by his own hand?

[00:41:55] Well, for one thing, he hung himself, supposedly, from a hook that was close to

[00:42:02] the ground.

[00:42:02] So he would have had to sit down, if you know what I mean.

[00:42:06] Also, there's a photograph of Carter Gerber holding the implement that he

[00:42:11] supposedly hung himself with.

[00:42:14] We've always had some doubts about it.

[00:42:17] And then I was, my friend Mark Stone and I made arrangements with the faculty at

[00:42:24] Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, whether they would look at the material

[00:42:30] that we did have.

[00:42:31] And we had all the autopsy materials, all that.

[00:42:35] So we went down to Pennsylvania and we were given access to two classes.

[00:42:41] One class was a fairly new class.

[00:42:44] They were just getting started.

[00:42:45] So I gave them as much detail about the case as I could.

[00:42:49] Then we said, go to it.

[00:42:51] What do you think?

[00:42:52] And then we went to a class that was much more advanced.

[00:42:57] It just simply gave them the information.

[00:43:00] It said, the official paperwork.

[00:43:03] It said, what do you think?

[00:43:05] And they both came up with, no, he did not.

[00:43:08] He could not have hanged himself.

[00:43:10] The way the autopsy protocols suggest.

[00:43:14] Now, interestingly enough, we also gave Coroner Gerber's autopsy report to the

[00:43:20] then present coroner, Elizabeth Balrush.

[00:43:23] And interestingly enough, she saw no reason to question his findings.

[00:43:28] The faculty and staff at Mercyhurst did.

[00:43:31] Yeah.

[00:43:32] I mean, the implication that someone may have actually been murdered over

[00:43:37] basically, you know, the politicization of this case is really disturbing.

[00:43:42] It's a little scary.

[00:43:44] Yeah.

[00:43:44] But the case, I think the case against him was beginning to fall apart at that point.

[00:43:50] I suppose you could postulate all sorts of reasons for why he was murdered.

[00:43:55] But apparently he was.

[00:43:57] Yeah.

[00:43:57] I mean, the county sheriff's role in this was, I mean, not to editorialize too much,

[00:44:02] but pretty disgraceful.

[00:44:04] How do you view the Cleveland Police Department's role in this?

[00:44:08] Do you think that as a department they did a bad job or were they simply up against a

[00:44:12] very difficult case?

[00:44:14] Well, I think they did a very good job by the standards of the time.

[00:44:18] The term serial killer was not even defined until sometime in the 1970s.

[00:44:25] I think the police operated on the assumption that people were killed by other

[00:44:32] people that they knew for understandable reasons like greed, jealousy, anger,

[00:44:38] whatever.

[00:44:38] So the first step in identifying and tracing the killer was to identify the victim.

[00:44:45] And when they couldn't identify the victim, that created all sorts of problems.

[00:44:49] They could not conceive, I think, of somebody who was killing people that he

[00:44:54] didn't know for his own twisted reasons.

[00:44:57] One could say the same thing about Jack the Ripper.

[00:44:59] The London police simply have no idea what kind of person they were looking for.

[00:45:04] Yeah, I mean, if they're taking that presumption and looking for connections and

[00:45:08] there are none, then it's going to be difficult to pinpoint anybody.

[00:45:13] Well, the two identified victims, Edward and Andrasio Flo Palillo, they looked deeply

[00:45:18] into all of their acquaintances, but they led nowhere.

[00:45:22] Earlier you mentioned the Pennsylvania murders, the murder swamp out there.

[00:45:28] And then there's also the triple homicide with the men decapitated in a boxcar.

[00:45:35] Yeah.

[00:45:36] Can you talk about those?

[00:45:37] And do you think that those are linked?

[00:45:40] No.

[00:45:41] Yeah.

[00:45:43] Peter Merrill thought they were, but he seemed to think that if a body was

[00:45:48] discovered and a finger was missing, that was the work of the serial killer, the

[00:45:53] Kingsbury run butcher.

[00:45:54] The big difference between the Pennsylvania victims and the Cleveland victims is that

[00:46:00] all the Pennsylvania victims were hidden, hidden away someplace.

[00:46:04] In fact, the victims found in the murder swamp, police admitted that the fact that

[00:46:10] they were discovered was purely serendipitous.

[00:46:13] Cleveland butcher did not hide his work.

[00:46:15] He left them out for everybody to find.

[00:46:18] Absolutely.

[00:46:18] Yeah, it definitely seems like a different modus operandi.

[00:46:22] Well, also one of the boxcar victims said the word Nazi carved on his chest.

[00:46:28] The Cleveland butcher never did anything like that.

[00:46:32] There was also some discussion, I think in the early nineties, whether the

[00:46:39] Cleveland butcher was responsible for the black dog out on the West Coast.

[00:46:44] Oh, geez.

[00:46:45] They're trying to connect that thing with everybody, you know?

[00:46:48] Well, yeah.

[00:46:48] Zodiac.

[00:46:50] But actually, the L.A.

[00:46:51] police department did contact the Cleveland Police Department and say, can you

[00:46:57] investigate this?

[00:46:58] See if there's any link.

[00:47:00] And again, I'm blanking on the name of the officer who investigated it, but very, very

[00:47:06] quickly decided, no, there's no link whatsoever.

[00:47:10] She had been tortured over a period of time and she had not been decapitated.

[00:47:15] And of course, that was the signature of the Kingsbury run butcher decapitation.

[00:47:20] Yeah.

[00:47:20] And he really mutilated his female victims to the point where limbs gone, you

[00:47:25] know?

[00:47:27] Well, it wasn't so much a matter if you mean by mutilation, he cut them in pieces.

[00:47:32] Yeah.

[00:47:33] Yeah.

[00:47:34] He did not mutilate the torsos per se.

[00:47:37] No, that's that's right.

[00:47:38] And you know that the black Dahlia feels so specific.

[00:47:42] It doesn't that.

[00:47:44] Yeah. I mean, I I was surprised that they were even trying to link that.

[00:47:47] But I guess, you know, it's good to at least check things out.

[00:47:50] One of the cases that you covered in your book that I thought seemed most interesting

[00:47:54] was the case of Robert Robertson.

[00:47:56] Can you speak about that a little bit?

[00:47:58] Robert Robertson pieces of his body were covered in 1950.

[00:48:03] Was he killed by a butcher of Kingsbury run out of court?

[00:48:09] The similarities between his death and the death of the Kingsbury run victims back in

[00:48:15] the 30s was certainly very chilling.

[00:48:18] I think chilling was the word he used.

[00:48:20] Could he have been killed by Dr.

[00:48:22] Sweeney?

[00:48:22] Yes.

[00:48:25] Dr.

[00:48:25] Sweeney at that point was a resident of the Sandusky Soldiers and Sailors home, but he

[00:48:32] had committed himself, which meant he could leave whenever he wanted to until he was

[00:48:38] finally judged incompetent.

[00:48:41] So he could have very easily been responsible for Robert Robertson's death.

[00:48:47] And then kind of in a in a different angle, but sort of a similar question for any of the

[00:48:54] the killings that have traditionally been grouped together and attributed to the butcher.

[00:49:00] Are there any ones out of those that you look at and say maybe this one's not actually

[00:49:06] related?

[00:49:07] Well, I think you're probably referring to victim number 11.

[00:49:10] Right.

[00:49:11] Victim number 11 female pieces of her body were discovered all around East Heights and

[00:49:18] Lakeshore.

[00:49:20] The pieces of the body were then turned over to the Western Reserve Medical School and

[00:49:25] the head of anatomy, Dr.

[00:49:27] T.

[00:49:28] Wittigate, called David Cowles on the phone and said, get over here.

[00:49:32] I got to show you something.

[00:49:34] And he said, this is not a legitimate torso victim.

[00:49:37] This is a body which has already been involved.

[00:49:40] And the fact that the coroner at Gerber did not perform the autopsy, but one of his

[00:49:46] associates did.

[00:49:48] And the fact that they would miss that, of course, is staggering.

[00:49:52] My personal feeling is that if we are going to accept Dr.

[00:49:57] Sweeney as the perpetrator, that he did this with a dead body simply as a way of thumbing

[00:50:03] his nose at Elliot Ness because her body was literally discovered at a point where Elliot

[00:50:10] Ness could see the site from his office window.

[00:50:13] Certainly feels like a taunt.

[00:50:15] I'm curious when I read about unsolved cases, I always wonder, are there things today?

[00:50:23] Are there resources today that could be put into this case to help find answers?

[00:50:30] Or is it simply too late?

[00:50:32] Well, they did try to lift the stamps off the postcard that Sweeney had sent to Elliot

[00:50:39] Ness to check for DNA.

[00:50:42] And all that proved was that Sweeney licked the stamps.

[00:50:45] I don't think there's many pieces of evidence that are left.

[00:50:49] And what could you do with them after the passage of so many years?

[00:50:53] What about in terms of identifying some of the John and Jane Does with maybe genealogy,

[00:50:59] things like that?

[00:51:01] You mean identifying some of the other victims?

[00:51:03] Yeah, yeah.

[00:51:04] You know, that that happens.

[00:51:06] Usually those usually the ones that are identified, though, are from, you know, like

[00:51:10] the 70s, 60s.

[00:51:12] I think this would be going pretty far back.

[00:51:14] Well, they did their damnedest to identify them, but they just couldn't.

[00:51:18] Yeah. I mean, this was the Depression.

[00:51:20] This is when people disappeared.

[00:51:22] Do they still have any of the physical remains of these victims available to test or

[00:51:29] anything like that?

[00:51:30] Oh, I don't think so.

[00:51:35] Some of the bones may be at the Natural History Museum.

[00:51:40] Both Andrassy and Balillo were buried by their families.

[00:51:46] The others, I think, were just put in author's graves.

[00:51:50] As an author, what was your biggest Eureka moment?

[00:51:53] You know, when you got some new information as you were researching the book?

[00:51:57] I think one of the biggest moments is I was giving a talk on the Kingsbury run

[00:52:04] murders and the man came to the talk and he was related to Dr.

[00:52:10] Paterka, who had the facility on Broadway.

[00:52:14] And he showed me a photograph of the six doctors, which obviously included Frank

[00:52:19] Sweeney, showed me a picture of the house and also the Rouse Funeral Home next

[00:52:24] door. That pretty much was a Eureka moment.

[00:52:28] I imagine. What are some questions that linger over this case for you that you would

[00:52:34] love to have answered?

[00:52:36] Oh, I don't think at this point I would have any.

[00:52:41] And then is there anything that we didn't ask you that you wanted to mention or you

[00:52:46] think it's important that our audience understands about this case?

[00:52:50] Well, I think I've said everything I could say about it in my books.

[00:52:54] Where can people get those if they want to buy them and they're interested in reading

[00:53:00] about all of this in even more detail?

[00:53:03] Well, they're published by the Kent State University Press, which is a very highly

[00:53:07] respected university press.

[00:53:10] They actually have a series called True Crime, True History.

[00:53:15] They could be ordered directly from the press.

[00:53:18] They could be ordered from Amazon.

[00:53:20] I would imagine any bookstore could order them.

[00:53:22] And we would strongly recommend that our listeners do order them.

[00:53:26] They're really, really well done.

[00:53:28] I felt I learned so much about this case.

[00:53:31] It's just it's fascinating.

[00:53:33] We really only scratched the surface of it in this interview, but that's where you can

[00:53:42] get way more detail, way more of the historical context that you did such a great job

[00:53:47] compiling. Well, as I said, I'm on the board of trustees of the Cleveland Police

[00:53:53] Historical Society.

[00:53:55] Dribs and drabs of information will come in to the museum.

[00:54:01] A detail here, a detail there kind of thing.

[00:54:04] Well, we so appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about this and just, you

[00:54:09] know, thank you again and just want to commend the work you did on this case.

[00:54:14] Thank you. Appreciate it.

[00:54:16] We want to sincerely thank Mr.

[00:54:18] Bedal for taking the time to speak with us on our program.

[00:54:21] We highly recommend all of his books on the Cleveland Torso case.

[00:54:25] They are detailed, well-written and even include disturbing but illuminating crime

[00:54:29] scene pictures. We will include links to the books in our show notes.

[00:54:44] Thanks so much for listening to The Murder Sheet.

[00:54:47] If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at

[00:54:52] MurderSheet at gmail dot com.

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[00:55:02] appropriate authorities.

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