Thinking Sideways: Cleveland Torso Murders

So as we have said before, squeamish or if you have young children or really like children kind of at all, uh, maybe this is not an episode for you. And also before we too far, I guess, um, this is a listeners suggestion from Hunter. Thank you. We're gonna We're gonna talk about the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, also known as the Torso Murders or the Cleveland Cleveland. There's a lot of different names. Yeah, this this was really difficult to do research on because it does go by different

a half dozen names, which is annoying. Yes, I agreed, but it does help with a copy paste issue that we always complain about on the internet. Yeah, it's true, alright, yous ready, Yeah, we're so we're going to Cleveland nineteen thirties. We have to Yeah, in the nineteen thirties, it might be fun. Roaring thirties. Well, by all accounts, it's a city on the rise despite the effects of the Great Depression. Um many many people are doing pretty okay. And we're

going to Kingsbury Run. So prehistoric riverbed running from the flats which is the backs of the to about East nineties Street. I know that that doesn't make sense to most people, but I guess that people in Cleveland it probably won't make sense. And it's not so much a river as it is just like a kind Yeah, I think that people are probably not going to get to get more go out and google it. It's it's just

a depression in the earth that water flows through. But it's not a river bed that are proved very attractive to poor people back in during the Depression. Well, the train and um any kind of rapid transit tracks still run through it. But the trains did run through it, and train tracks especially in the like right around the

Great Depression time. That's that's really popular with vagabonds and sort of yeah, well just you know, people without a home or run down on their luck because you can just hop on a box car and get someplace else. So that's it's a pretty attractive and as as we were just kind of saying, I guess it's the people who are not in that hole like many people doing well again group, Yeah, they lived in really really awful conditions, you know, like filth and trash and kind of shantytowns exactly. Yeah.

And most of the people that lived there were transience and they road box cars mostly to escape Cleveland winters because Cleveland is not super fun in the winter, which is a very cold place in the winter. Yes, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to be homeless or a transient and be there. I I would. I would turn into a snowbird and head south for the winter. You know me too. Uh. And the area just east of the run is known

well was known as the Roaring Third. It was mostly bars, brothels, flop houses, and gambling dens, which more fun back in those days. Yeah. Well, I think that that's kind of the like transient area, right, Like you've got like people who are really really out on their luck, hobo has lost everything, and then you've got the area where people become really really kind of gray area. Yeah, it's that

like filter zone that people go through. So September of nineteen thirty four is kind of when this whole mystery starts. A young man finds the lower half of a woman's torso thighs still attached but amputated at the knee, washed up on the shores of ach Leary. That spoiler day, wouldn't it like erie? Yeah? Sorry? Uh? And as as mentioned, it's just going to get morgrosome from here. So if that freaked you out, just stopped. Now. Yeah October it

is October, so are doing the creepy stuff that County corner. A. J. Pierce noted that there was some kind of chemical preservative on the skin that had made it turn red, tough and leathery, and we'll kind of talk about that a little bit. Yeah, sure, she wasn't just really in the like sun tanning. It's possible, but in the thirties I think it was more like don't han They were back on the non kick. There was a search and they found just a couple other body parts. It was identified

as a female in her mid thirties. The head to this body was never found. The woman was never identified. She is referred to as the Lady of the Lake, and she is labeled as victim number zero. So the one thing that disturbs me through and this this one, there's one thing that disturbs me through all of these and I know we're going to get into it, but it's the head factor. The missing heads are the cree

epeist thing in the world. There's a is it. Joe Pesci was in a movie that he had a head in a bowling ball bag or something, and I kept thinking back to that movie because it's just it's that creepy factor. Anybody who knows that movie, they're gonna understand. Yeah, it's, uh, the whole idea of just dismembering people and chopping them up. It's just kind of just in general, Yeah, something I would care to do, but apparently it's different tastes, you know,

you know, each their own or whatever exactly. You know, it might have been that the murder had a sense of humor though she had great legs. Yeah, all right, yeah that didn't work. Please continue on before I make a bigger So we're going to do that thing that we do sometimes where we basically just list the victims.

There's twelve. We're gonna keep it short as possible, but there are things that differ between each of them, so please bear with us because and if not fast forward like fifteen minutes, then we'll probably still be talking about that. Just skip the next fifteen. Yeah. So John Doe number one was the second body to be discovered be discovered, but he was likely the first murder victim. He was

discovered on September five, and he was never identified. He, like most of the male victims, was emasculated and decapitated. His head was recovered, however, and his skin also had the chemical agent that had caused it to become red and leathery. The next one is probably it was the first body found, but probably the second victim, and he was found also September five. He was found like nine

meters thirty feet away from John Doe one. He had also been decapitated and emasculated, and he was identified, which is rare. Next up is Florence Eneviev. Wait, what was the name of the last Oh gosh, I'm sorry. It was Edward anders and Andersey. Yeah, he had a name there. He was identified, So I wanted to make sure we come. Yes. Uh, Florence Genevieve Plelio. She was found on January and February seven. Her body had been dismembered fully, uh, and her head

was never found. It's not clear how they identified her. That's a good point. I mean, maybe she had tattoos or something. I think that they correlated some missing person reports. I don't think she had tattoos, but I think that it was a missing report, missing person report, if I remember correctly. And that's the hard part. There's so many of these people that I'm trying to, you know, rattle through the card catalog of my brain. But I think

that is how they figured out who she was. So then John Doe three, this is that particularly disturbing one. He was the fifth body to be found. Fourth victim, Yeah, July of dismembered while alive. Yeah, lucky guy. I'm not sure if this killer drug victims or not, if they were out. I don't think anybody knows anything about the victims. Actually I do know that. Um, are you going to talk about the medical examiners that are involved in this case?

By chance? A little? Okay? Because I can't remember the name, and maybe you do of the second examiner that came in near the end of things, but he somehow seemed to have figured out that there was some kind of chemical in their system, or at least in one of the victims, but he couldn't figure out if was because that person was drugged or if they were a junkie for lack of a better term. And the fact that that person's arms were never found to tell if they

had injection points repetitive made it hard. So we don't know if they were being drugged or not. Well, there's and there's a lot of kind of stuff about the corners and how thorough and John Doe three is the only victim that was found on the west side of Cleveland. I guess it's my only worth mentioning. John do number two was the fourth victim to be found, fifth victim to be murdered. I know, it's a little wonky. It's hard with these guys. Well this is well, the discovery

dates are the hard part. Yeah, John Do number two, he was the fourth discovered body five victim. And this is this is because of the discovery dates. Yeah, it's hard. I'm I've ordered them by murder date. But I think It's also important to mention the discovery date because John Doe number two was discovered before John No. Number three. Though John Doe number three was murdered before John Doe number two. That makes sense. They're numbered by discovery date.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will make a real goldburger machine. Yeah, it doesn't really matter too much. But he was decapitated while alive as well, and his head was recovered. He also was had some interesting little bits about him. He was estimated to be in his mid twenties and had six unusual tattoos on his body. One included the names Helen and Paul, and the other had initials W C G. And his undershorts bore a laundry mark that had his initials right like in that time, I'm you would write

your initials or your name in your laundry. So if you were all going in on one bulk laundry order, yeah, absolutely, And the initials were J D. And since they found his head, they did what's called the death mask, which I think we've talked about a little bit, but they cast the face and they recreate what it might have looked like alive, and they publicized photos of that apparently those things that those things are still laying around somewhere

in Cleveland too. Yeah, So despite the fact that they circulated the death mask and on his unusual tattoos, this this John Doe was clearly since he's a John Doe was still never identified. Maybe j d stood for John Doe, maybe it stood for John Dillinger. There could have been a lot of things. But they call him the tattooed man because he's he's one of the few that has identifying marks. So but since he was wearing is he's

wearing a short, it's presumably was not evasculated. Presumably. Yeah, I don't see anything here, but I haven't read anything that's as he was. Okay, So the next victim is Jane Doe, number six, who was the sixth murder victim. She was the eight discovery. But um, they didn't they couldn't. They didn't identify the bodies of the previous women for the most part until later. So there are a couple that were Jane Does. While the investigation was ongoing, there

were likely other Jane Does happening. The Jane Does get a little out of order, actually they get a lot out of order. There are going to be some more Jane Does that are weirdly numbered and it's later. It's again, this is based on not date of it's the confusion is date of murder versus date of discovery. Yeah, and the Jane Does are different than the John Does. And part of that has to do with the fact that a couple of the Jane Does were in fact identified.

Why can't we just use the Dewey desk fol system, right, So this one actually is very interesting. She was the only black victim. She was decapitated, but she was also missing a rib and her head was discovered, and they thought perhaps that they had identified her as a woman named Rose Wallace. Dental work, you know, the like the tooth records, which is what dental work means, was a pretty close match. The police said that her son was very positive that that was his mom. He identified her,

But did they actually show him the head. I'm trying to think of what that would be like. Suspect seed head. Yeah, I suspect they did a death mask. Well hopefully they didn't. But well, but she'd been dead for a long she'd been dead for here when they found her, and the dentist who carried out her dental work. Who could like look at it and be like, yes, that's my handiwork and she was my patient died years before, So the police never officially identified her as Rose Wallace despite so

that's why there's no official stuff. And additionally, her body had been estimated to have been dead for a year, but Rose Wallace had only been reported missing for ten months. That's that's not a big so weird because I mean, you know, a year, come on, that's that's a rounding thing, you know, it's like ten months. So absolutely, yeah, especially in this climate with all this stuff happening, he totally could have been here. So it's likely that that Jane

Doe was in fact Rose Wallace, but we don't know. Yeah. Next is John Doe. Four, John Doe. He was the seventh murder victim, sixth body to be found. Uh and only half of his torso was found nothing below the hips, no head, no head. Yeah, so he did not have great legs. He maybe he had such great legs that the murder had to keep them. Maybe. Yeah, he almost

a trophy. Yeah. I almost wonder if he took some of these parts back to wherever and reassembled him into a sort of fat kind of thing, you know, maybe some sort of weird no no, because that's that's a really disturbing Stein Trophy wall thing. Yeah, we're moving forward. It is Halloween. Jane Doe. Number five still grosses me out in it a little gross. Eighth victim, seventh body to be found, was found in the same spot that

the Lady of the Lake was found. And this is like a year after the Lady of two years two years later, yeah about and her head was never found. John No. Number seven kind of typical body found no head so they can identify him. He was ninth murder victim and also the ninth found and they pulled him out at the river. Now, that's one of the things we haven't really talked about is and I think maybe it is a little important for people to know. Some of these bodies are found in fields, some are found

on the banks of the river. Some because they're found on the banks of the river, they find some of the other body parts because they're dredging them out of the river. But it's really inconsistent as to where they're showing up, and it's kind of willy nilly. Yeah, actually, if you're but if you're the killer. You don't want to be like you don't want to be totally consistent, because that's a way to catch you. Well it works

for Dexter. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, Okay. The next one is John Doe ten, who was found at the same time as Jane Doe nine. He was the tenth victim, twelfth found. Jane do nine was the eleventh victim, eleventh found. Uh. He was a decapitated body. His head was found in a can close by. She was a decapitated female body. Her head was also found. Now let's see, he was were I'm sorry, and they were found in

the Lake Shore dump. I found it and and it's and they it's believed they weren't actually murdered at the same time, though, I think again this goes back. Yeah, that where they're found is that like the murder or the whoever the perpetrator is dumps two bodies in one place, but there's months apart between the killings. Yeah. So John Doe ten was estimated to have died seven to nine months prior to his discovery, and Jane Doe nine was

four to six months. So within the span of a couple of months, this person dumped two decapitated bodies at the same spot, at the same spot. But you know, since since it hadn't hit the news that John Doe X or John Doe ten had been found, then he probably realized that was a safe place to go back to. Well. Yeah, and the thing is, it's not as if the bodies were laid on top of each other. I mean, it's it was a dump walked into a dump. I know

that some of these it was it was his. Uh, I mean they go to extensive roll them into a rug and then roll that into a quilt and then throw them in the dump. I mean, it wasn't like these bodies were just cast out and blatantly naked human being parts and pieces laying around for a lot of times. Some of them are rolled up and hidden in things like the can that you talked about that the head

was in. So these whoever is doing this and I want to say guy, just because the violent nature of it, But the person that's doing this is attempting to disguise what they're doing and hiding the remains, you know, whether it be a poor job of rolling it in the rug or tossing it in the river. They're still trying to to hide them. It's not as if they're just laying on the sidewalk. So, by the way, did did they like go through all the piles of trash out there and see if there were any more bodies? I

have no idea, I would assume I m okay. The searches were very extensive after every single one of the findings. I imagine they poured a lot of resources into this one. Yeah. Um. And the last victim, last canticonical victim is what they they're calling them. She's the twelfth victim, the tenth body to be discovered, Jane do eight. She's found in April of nineteen and on that day only the lower leg one lower leg, so like her thigh or her calf,

was found. And a month later, a human thigh was discovered floating in the river west of a bridge in Cleveland. Police officers, of course decided, oh well, we better search uh, And they found a burlap sack containing a headless torso cut in half, another thigh, and a left foot, all belonging to the same body, and the head and the rest of the body were never found. But this is the victim that Steve was talking about a little bit with the um the second corner who's kind of involved

in this case. He found drugs in her system, and again there's not a whole mess of information, but we don't Yeah, we don't really, we don't totally know. And this guy, uh, we will probably talk about a little bit later, was like, really there was a lot of crime happening in Cleveland at the time, and he was like getting pretty famous on like testifying and these like really people and so how much he just sensationalized it and said, oh yeah, no, yeah, there were drugs in

her system. But how much of it was true? It's it's hard to tell. So they when you find a body that's been dismembered, there's obviously not going to be any blood left. It's all going to over run out. How do you test for drugs? And I think it depends on how when they were dismembered. This is so gross, it doesn't I mean I think that blood kind of

thickens and settles and if it's not a fresh body. Um, well, no, the way I the way I understand it I would think about it is okay, Well, blood is the circulatory system that pushes the drug through your body. But your body, the tissues in locations, has to absorb that drug, so it's absorbed into the tissue of let's say your liver or your brain, or you know, whatever organ it might be.

So if the blood is all gone, the remnants or the traces of that should still be in the organs because they've absorbed whatever chemical that is or whatever drug that is. Regard list of the presence of blood. Do you know what I'm saying. It's like, I mean, it's like ink and water on paper. I've got ink and I mixed water with it, and I drip it on paper.

The ink of or the water evaporates, but I've still got remnants of ink on that piece of paper because the ink has been absorbed by the paper, though the water is no longer press it. But I mean, I think that it really seems likely to me that the killer probably drugged all of those victims because as a way too, because otherwise overpowering somebody and decapitating, especially a man while still alive, well, it's not necessarily an easy thing to do well, and not everything lass in the system.

That's that's one of the things I questioned about this. The drugs in the system. These a lot of things don't let they break down regardless of being alive or hut, the copy just break down. And also, you know, I think it's worth mentioning that these these were unidentified people because how for horrible this sounds. By and large, people

didn't care about them, you know. I mean, like, if you've got alone in the world, Yeah, if you've got a family who really cares about you, they're going to be really litigious and like really search out anybody that might be you, like family, like a prostitute or a

homeless guy. Nobody cares. I mean, or maybe one person does, but they don't they don't know how to really explore that or for whatever reason, I don't think that we can really with any kind of certainty say these people weren't doing drugs like that just on their own, like voluntarily putting those drugs in their body. Well, and you know,

the thirties were a weird time for drugs. Well, and what I was going to say is, I'm not casting any negative on any of the victims, but if you're in what equates to a skid row situation and you're turning to alcohol and hugs, to make the days go by and to make them easier, You're going to do

whatever alleviate your pain. So it's quite likely that all of these people were doing drugs of some sort, whether it was what was administered to them by our killer, or if they just went down and they found this new drug that's called heroin, because heroin had just come out, and I'm going to try this heroin thing, and wow, I really feel better about myself. Yeah, I have fun stuff out hear. I've never tried it myself, so I can. I don't know that it's really actually fun stuff based

on the stories that we've heard. So it's fun to start out with, but after that it kind of goes downhill. There are a number of lis or like maybe other victors connection. Yeah, there it's interesting. Um So. On July one of nineteen thirty six, a headless unidentified mail was found in a box car in Newcastle, Pennsylvania. Then three headless victims were found in box cars near McKees Rock, Pennsylvania,

um in May of nineteen forty. They all kind of had similar injuries as those that were attributed to the Cleveland Killer or the Kingsbury Run killer murderer lots of dismembered bodies were found in the swamps near Newcastle, Pennsylvania, between the years of night one and nineteen thirty four, and then again between nineteen thirty nine and nineteen forty two.

That's interesting. And then in September of nineteen forty an article in the Newcastle News refers to um this killer as the murder swamp killer, which is the worst name I've ever and credits him with I think it was

seventeen murders in Newcastle over the years. The and the victims were like, what was inflicted on them was almost identical to what was going on in Cleveland's Kingsbury Run, which conveniently were connected directly by a Baltimore and Ohio railroad line, which, as you will remember, runs right through Kingsbury Run. But apparently the Cleveland detective Peter Merlo went and ll Marillo Yeah sorry, he was pretty sure that the Newcastle murders were in fact the work of the

mad butcher of Kingsbury Run. But these were just headless corpses, right, you know, it's hard. I couldn't find a whole lot of information some of them. I think we're headless corpses. I think a lot of them were otherwise dismembered as well. The railroad in question here ran twice a day every day between the two cities. Um. And in fact, how did we just say decide that we're saying that name? Marilla rode that train undercover like all the time to

try and identify the killer, and he never never could. Yes, it's it's possible, actually, um all we know. And then in uh July of nineteen fifty, the body of a forty one year old man named Robert Robertson was found in a business in Cleveland, and police said that he had been dead for like six to eight weeks, but he had been intentionally decapitated, and apparently he seemed to

kind of fit the profile of the other victims. He was a stranger from his family, he had an arrest record, he had a drinking problem, he was kind of on the fringes of society, and the police decided to not link it to them. The mad Butcher of Kingsbury run murder time. It was twenty years of essential well, I was twenty years Oh yeah, I guess ten years twelve twe twelve years long enough. They don't want to dredge up that case they couldn't figure out right and get

the egg back on their faces. Yeah not not everybody who gets their head chopped off is necessarily related to this thing. It does happen, But I think that it is odd that and worth note, I guess since I did note it that in Baltimore just you know, a box car hop away a bunch of people. Around that time, we're also showing up decapitated or otherwise dismembered. So suspects.

This is where we get even more frustrated, right, like, not only can we not identify most of these bodies, and like we don't have a whole lot of information, but also there's like two suspects. This is what this is the part of the story the infuriate. Apparently they had like a lot of suspects. They held a lot of people in for questioning. Yeah, well there's only two like viable, but yeah, they probably beat the crap out

of a hell of a lot of people. Confession. Let's just say that police interrogative techniques at the time, we're not at Geneva convention. Yeah, alright, so the first one is X or frank adults all how would you say so?

In um January of nineteen thirty nine, the Cleveland Press got a letter from a man who claimed to be the killer and identified himself as X. He said that he was in California and that he had been killing people for medical experiences, experiments, not experiences, and he actually referred to the body as quote, laboratory guinea pigs unquote. And there were apparently no clues, but somehow the police, I don't totally know how, it's super unclear, but somehow

the police linked this to Frank Dout, Frank whatever. His last name is um and he was a fifty two year old Slavic immigrant. So on August nine, Frank was arrested as a suspect in Florence's murder. You remember she was like victim number like three, Yeah, and sorry, he had been already. He was in jail. Um, and he died under really suspicious circumstances. It's not no, no, this is not suspicious in my mind. But explain this. How

did he die or what are the conditions of his death? Yeah, So, after his death, it was discovered that he had suffered six broken ribs, injuries that his friends say he definitely didn't have when he was arrested by the sheriff six weeks prior. Uh. And also he hung himself. Okay, do you have the details about him and the hanging. I gotta be honest with you. I just skimmed right over that because I didn't want to even think about. Here's

the thing was. Evidently Frank was five ft nine and he was in a cell that had a ceiling that from Florida ceiling was five ft seven inches, and and he hung himself. Now I thought I thought the ceiling was higher than that, but the nail he was five seven in the sea and the room was five nine. You're right, I got it backwards. But it's a two inch span, which is really really hard to hang yourself from. I didn't hang himself from the ceiling, though, I mean

the ceiling. What I understood is that the nail or whatever it is that hung himself, I'm protruded from the wall, and that was five ft seven inches from the floor, and that he was, and that he was five nine. Okay, still possible to hang yourself from that, because I's forgot the five extremely difficult. Someone bends their legs and they are suspended, but this. This is a very suspicious hanging, is what I'm getting at. What people have actually hung

themselves and some of their circumstances. But also remember five ft nine is the distance from the floor to the top of his head, not to his neck, right, not to his neck, So he actually had a few inches of play there to hang himself on that peg or whatever he hung himself on. He could have done it, yeah, but they were determined to kill it. I don't. I mean, I'm suspicious, tokay, thank you. That's what I'm getting at is it's a very serioious hanging. Yeah, and you know,

suicide and suspicious suicide. That's where I'm heading. What plays into this too is the fact that he apparently confessed to killing her in self defense six broken ribs wouldn't be yeah, and then a week before his hanging recanted and said no, actually I didn't, and in fact said that he had been beaten into submission to confessing by the police. Yeah. And then he killed himself apparently after he said, oh no, the police made me that. Um. Yeah,

So that's a little suspicious to me. Suspicious, Yeah, it doesn't seem like the not him not being guilty way right, So we're gonna move on to somebody who has a lot of suspicious stuff in the opposite way. Dr Francis E. Sweeney. Sweeney not related to Sweeney Todd. I don't know. Maybe he might be actually be the inspiration for the play. Yeah, except that he's like way too late. Yeah, well there's that. Yeah. So he worked during World War One in a medical

unit that conducted amputations in the field. He was later personally interviewed by Elliott ness Man, who is a bit of a character in himself. He um oversaw the official investigation of the killings in his capacity as Cleveland's safety director, which safety director at that point was like leader of prohibition, not actually like any real police stuff. Yeah, it's hard to say exactly how involved next really hard to say it is. What is own is that ness got really

obsessed with this investigation at length. He cut it, and he cut some grief for the fact that the one offered so long without. Yeah, so it's it's a bit of a mystery. In terms of his actual involvement. I will say that Elliott nest did go on to become al Capones literal nemesis, because this is real life and this is a real story and that really happened. It actually happened. The thing about Ness and his involvement is

depending on the iteration that you read. Some of them say that Ness was involved at the ground roots level all the time, and some say, oh, no, he didn't have anything to do with it except press releases and yelling and other cops to figure it out. Let's be fair here, Like this is this comes almost straight from Wikipedia, right, So you read through the Torso murders slash mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run and they're like, oh and then Elliott now and you're like, okay, fine, I'll click on the

Elliott Nest link and like see what's going on. They don't mention these murders at all in his Wikipedia. Nowhere in there is his involvement ever made like it's a footnote that he worked in Cleveland for a couple of years. Well, that's not what he's really known for and not And also, you know the thing about Wikipedia is people can go in and edit it and descendants, members of his family might decide that this wasn't his finest hour and they

just go in there. Whenever somebody posts something about this stuff, they go in and they chop it out. Yeah, let's I mean, I think Wikipedia is a little more sophisticated at this point than that. It's not like anybody can just go in and add things that has to be vetted and all that stuff. But in fairness, it's a little bit of a mystery in terms of what he

actually was involved in. And I've gotta I gotta tell you that personally, from what I can gather, I get the impression that Ness was consulted a little bit on this case and basically was you ever watched the cop show and the cops supervisor comes in and yells at a bunch of people to figure it out and get off their butts and blah blah blah blah blah. I get the feeling that was his involvement, Like he was

not involved. He was, Hey, Bill and Joe and Bob and and Danny figured this out and stop messing around because I'm catching grief from my boss to not have this figured out. And that was it. It's the manure flow chart, right, And I think you know again, part of it is he now is kind of seeing as somebody who was involved a lot, because he did write

this book, and he did talk about it. But I think that if you worked in any capacity on an unsolved mystery of this kind of magnitude, you would probably carry some lifelong stuff about it, probably anyway, the exposure

to it, so anyway anyway. But but it is at one point about Ness and Francis Sweeney is that And I know you're going to mention the postcards in Nest's favor, I will say that Francis Sweeney seemed to actually considered Nest very important to it's the investigation, because he was he committed himself and I believe nineteen we're going to talk about in the second and we're gonna talk about that.

But in the seventies, Elliott ness is grant or excuse me, her daughter in law donated his papers to the Western Reserve Historical Society wherever they are, and they found a whole collection of bizarre postcards that were sent to Nest in the nineteen fifties by Dr Sweeney and uh and they were mostly incoherent, but they were They were signed on one card F. E. Sweeney paranoidal Nemesis. So apparently he considered Nest to be an important character in this

whole drama. Yeah, I think he did. So backtrack a little bit from where show just went. Um. Sweeney was brought in for investigation for interrogation and apparently they're like polygraph tests existed at this time, and he failed to pass two early polygraph tests. They were both administered by an expert at the time named Leonard Keeler, who essentially apparently told Ness, this is the dude who did it, like,

this is the guy who killed all these people. However, Francis Sweeney was the first cousin of one of Ness's foremost political opponents and Congressman Martin L. Sweeney, who had actually been hounding Ness publicly for not having caught the killer yet. Really, yeah, you're kidding. Okay, I caught the

relation between the two, but I didn't know he's case. Yeah, So it's this bit of a like honestly, I know I talked about this a lot, but it's a bit of this like true detective situation where like spoiler alert, like the congres Smith is coming in and he's like, why haven't you caught the killer yet? When he's like, no, I'm not done with the season, don't don't screw this up. For me, I'm not done with the season. So yeah, well what about it? What about our listeners out there?

I said, spoilers, But anyway, it's very similar. I'm sorry, okay, fine whatever for you guys, just would hurry up. It's like a year old I no, I apologize anyways. Also of like a suspicious kind of vein. The killings um stopped for all intents and purposes after Francis Sweeney voluntarily committed himself to a mental institution where the postcards, the

aforementioned postcards were sent from. Yeah, and it might be that perhaps he committed himself because he realized that he was on the path to perdition and he might might need to get himself locked up so he couldn't do

this anymore. And that's but the other thing about it is is that Ness obviously felt like he had to have an air tight case against Sweeney, and he never did because I mean, you know, in those days, I mean a lot of people got sent away or sent to the gallows on as much evidence or less than they had against Sweeney. Right, But he has some powerful patronage on his side. He did, Yeah, he had some some heavy hitters in his side. Of the ring, and it's fair to say that the murders, at least the

ones that are like strongly attributed to the butcher. The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury run ended in nineteen thirty eight, which is exactly when he committed himself, and he harassed nests from the institution that he committed himself to. He died in a veterans hospital eventually in nineteen sixty four. I think it was in Daytona. I'm not I'm not defending Sweeney because I think Sweeney was kind of an odd character. The things that I've read about him. He

was not straight in the head. But then again, he spent he was in the war, so that will do things to a guy. But one of the things that we haven't talked about is that these bodies, when they were caught up and dismembered, there's disputing accounts that say that either a it was done by somebody who had surgical knowledge or someone who had been a butcher at one point and understood physiology. And then there's also the counterpoint that people say, oh, no, it was just mad

slashing that happened to cut these bodies a little bit ahead. Yeah, And there's just like one more thing that I know Joe wants to talk about in terms I didn't kind of like evidence towards Sweeney, and then we will absolutely sorry about that situation. Yeah. So, Joe, I know that you had some stuff about Sweeney, that there was an incident that you were talking about where somebody maybe survived the mad Butcher or Sweeney or something possible. It's it's

possible that this. Can you just real quick? Yeah, So this is this guy who was a vagrant guy that came through in the trains, just like a lot of people. His name was Emil Fronic that's E. M I. L H so Fronick. In November ninety four, he was homeless and a vagrant, and he was hungry, and he was walking up Broadway Avenue in Cleveland and apparently he found himself and the details are scarce here found himself in the second floor of the doctor's office, and the doctor

offered to feed him because he was starving. So he started eating the food and then he started, you know, since she was starting to feel woozy. So he started to suspect that he had been drugs. So he beat feet random the steps, got out of there, went down

to the rail yard. Terms. Yeah, and now I got us, wandered to a box car and fell asleep and woke up three days later, and yeah, and so anyway, this guy decided to leave Cleveland, decided that was bad mojo, so he went to Chicago, got a job, was a longshoreman. In August nine, his story got back to Cleveland and the same detective we talked about previously, Peter Murillo, I

want to Chicago to bring him back. So Mrillo and another policeman drove Frownick up Broadway to try to find to say if the good place, the place that he had gone to, and what his doctor's office was. When they got to the area between East fiftieth and East East fifty fifth Street, he said, it's here, somewhere, so he remembered that spot. So they got out of the car and they walked up and down the street. But he couldn't find He couldn't find the spot that he would. Yeah,

he couldn't find. It had been a few years, have been four years actually, and and Nest interviewed him. Also, Elliott Nest interviewed him, but they decided it didn't have anything to do with the butch. But here's an interesting factory. This is this information is actually I got a lot of this from a guy I had not personally from him. But there's a guy named James Padel who has written

three books about the Butcher and and this appears. There was an interview in the July fourteen issue of Cleveland Magazine where he talks about this guy a little bit so um. He said that he gives talks on this stuff every now and again, on the Butcher. And at one of these talks, a guy came up to him after his Torso talk and showed him a photograph of six doctors, one of whom was Dr Sweeney, the other the other six. One of them was this guy's great uncle,

whose name was Edward Perturka. And the six doctors at one point had a medical practice together on Broadway in Cleveland. And I got a map right here, actually, let me show you. So. It was at the corner of Broadway and Pershing Avenue. Is let me show you the map right here, all right, So Broadway it's a it's at Broadway and Persing Avenue now and and you can see two to the right Avenue to the left forty ninth Avenue,

that's where the office was. So the guy that showed him the picture of the six doctors also sent and sent him a picture of the old office. The old office was a two story used to be a house. It was, it had been converted the ground floor had been converted into medical offices, and then adeli had been built onto the front of it, which kind of blocked the kind of blocked off the office a little bit.

And so it's quite possible if this guy was walking down Broadway and then he saw the side of the deli and didn't even see the front of the building

at all, you know what I'm saying. So if he had approached it from one side, sees deli, thinks hey, there's garbage cans in the back, there might be some started food back there, he went back there, back behind the deli is where the stai way to the second floor of the house, which was still a residence was, and where the doctor was probably staying at the time, because he was actually at this time of strange from his wife because of his alcoholism and his erratic behavior.

So that adds a little bit of credibility to the possibility that never one he was drugging, and that's one way to deal with it. It's just to drug people and then you can do whatever you want with them. Another interesting point is that there was a funeral home right next to this office, which apparently he had access to, and in the basement they had you know that the you know, the whole thing, the metal tables with the drains and everything for dealing with the blood and all

that stuffs stuff. So it's interesting, possible adds to the story, but maybe doesn't. It doesn't well nobody And then like this, this guy, James Biddell, who I said, it's written three books about it and and has spent more time combined, like a thousand times more than all of us put together, investigating this. And he says he's not He says he's pretty sure it's a doctor, but he can't stay for

nobody can. And it might it might be sold someday if if somedays somebody stumbles across the doctor's diary or something like that, you know, perhaps it'll be solved, but maybe probably not. So I want to just quickly touch on what Steve was talking about, and it's this theory I guess it was like in the mid nineties that this theory kind of surface, and it was that perhaps it was just like there's no such thing as a single butcher of Kingsbury Run, that it was a lot

of people. There were a lot of crazy people there at the time, and it was time. It was a crazy time, and that you know, it wouldn't be so hard for like stories to start surfacing of like, oh, this person got dismembered and somebody to like, who's crazy, be like, oh that sounds like fun, yeah, or somebody like you know, if if you really, if you want to murder somebody, and that's a great time to do it, because the problem with trying to commit murder is there's

usually a finger pointing right back. Actually, you've usually got a big, solid motive this way. It's like, hey, people are getting murdered left and right, I can go take care of this guy. Yeah, it's not it's not just copycat, but you're using it as as a cover for your own act. Yeah. And the reason that this comes up is because autopsy results were um inconclusive on a lot of these murders. I forget, we're a year old when they found well, yeah, that's a big issue right there. Right,

and the original corner Arthur Pierce. He may have been a little inconsistent in his results as far as Steve was kind of implying earlier, not saying like, well, these were precise cuts and these were hacks on marks. You know, he was just he just said, but their arms were cut off. And again, you know it's hard because like after a year, like, can you really tell, well, animals, animals have been chewing on the corpse, bugs have been chewing on the corps just stay in age. I could say, yes,

we could probably figure that out. But at that time, in the nineteen thirties, I don't think nobody had gone into forensics into that detail to ever be able to say, this is what tissue looks like a year later here after a sharp n this is tissue a year later after a no. I think after a year you say the arm we cut off? The no, I don't know. Um. And the second factor in this is that his successor,

who was Samuel Gerber, we kind of talked about him. Yeah, so he gained a lot of popularity around the like Sam Shepherd murder trial. He kind of had a reputation for sensationalized theories. He was not he was not a super reputable source, which he was kind of the Golden Boy. Yeah, which is weird for to say about a corner, you know. So him saying, oh, there were drugs in her system for the last Jane Doe, like, who knows if he was just like trying to continue to sensationalize this story

or what. Um, But that is all we know? What why why we that face? Steve? Like what I just said? That's all. I mean, that's everything, right? Yeah? No, no, okay. So there's there's one thing that we haven't really talked about, and that is on at least the first three victims, there was and you mentioned it briefly, something about the chemical that they thought had been put onto the bottle, that their skin was red and leathery. I didn't say

there were chemicals. Their skin was red and leathery, and according to some of the autopsy reports, they thought that some kind of chemical had been put onto them. We're going there, and I'm gonna keep this brief because I know that this is just kind of a bit of a footnote on the story. But I was trying to figure out I spent some time trying to figure out what the deal is as to what would do that? Uh, and and trying to find what chemicals were in use

at the time. And that's that. It's just as we say, a rabbit hole, as it was very hard to go down and it it really didn't yield any results. But I came back to I stepped back to more of a simple idea, which is what what what do we know? That's obvious that when you're hiding or getting rid of bodies, would you put on them? And that's kind of an alkali solution. No alkali because I supposedly makes them decompose

a lot faster. Alkali It breaks him down fast. Obviously, I'm not going to be great at getting rid of body. But a book on how to get rid of bodies? Yeah, there is, and believe it or not, of all places, what I'm about to go through, part of it I got from the c d c's website. Okay, that's that's that's a little life that you click on. I says how to get rid of dead bodies. Okay, Okay, there there is there. There's three things that can happen to

skin when it comes into contact with a chemical. There is what is called de fatting, which it literally means just taking the fatty oils off the top of your skin. Okay. There's irritants which irritate the skin, which make a rash, and then there's caustic things that would make you have boils or you know, sores or something like that. Okay, so those are the three levels. Well, alkali, if you

get a small dose, it's an irritant. So if you think of somebody who's ever worked with concrete, their hands are dry and crusty and kind of tough, and then as they do it more they get worse than they get kind of rash like. So that's the only thing that I can think of is that, well, alkali is something, as we said before, somebody would use to help break

down a body fast. So if they throw it on the body and there's a big concentration of it, why immediately just before or just immediately after death, it would be absorbed by the skin, which would create the kind of red, weird, leathery texture situation. Now, it doesn't help us figure anything out, but a lot of the accountings go to that, and there was a chemical board on the body. We don't know how much. We don't know

how big of an area. But it seems you know, when I say dispose of body and chemical, that's kind of the direction that my mind went. And I think it's it's it's kind of you know, I mean, Joe, you and I were talking and Joe said, well, it could be that where the body was dumped. We're talking the thirties, we're not exactly ecologically frontly. Absolutely, that's true, and let's be fair. I think that two of the bodies that were found with that kind of skin thing,

we're found in very similar places. So it may just be that, like the there was just crap sitting and they fell into it and it was absorbed just through osmosis. I mean, osmosis happens on all materials, whether alive or dead, and that just had that reaction. So it could have been as simple as that, or it could be as a nefarious is where I was going, and yeah, well I know when I get rid of the body, I usually some smack, we're done. Yeah, So that's I mean,

that's all we know about this whole thing. You know, We've got those two like fairly solid theories about who might have done this, which bothers me because there's only two of them. Two seems too easy, and I have a favorite, I mean I was your favorite. I mean the doctor obviously, Yeah, I think so. The signs are too easy for me. Yeah, the doctor. Okay, I didn't know what Joe brought up. I will admit the stuff that you brought up, Joe, that you found in your research,

I hadn't seen. So that kind of corroborates a lot of stuff about the doctor. But again, the way that the police went about their investigations, and we've just got these two main subjects. What if who happens to have accident he killed himself in while being held quote included, yes, air quotes, thank you. Um, it just seems a little too easy, and I'm not sold, especially if we go with the swamp murders and there was the what was

the other location? Newcastle? Newcastle? Yeah, I mean that that's true though, I mean that you're having that whole thing going on up there. But yeah, so Sweetie, Sweetie wasn't a traveling doctor Sweeney. A lot of those happened after he was committed before well they were befores and after so okay, well, that to me washes him out as a candidate. I think, I mean, I just like him. Yeah, you just like the name because you like the play maybe, yeah, so,

I guess. Um. If you were interested in more links to this story, um, you can of course check them out as always on our website, Thinking sideways podcast dot com. You may be listening to us there. You are probably listening to us on iTunes. If you are, feel free to leave us a comment and a rating. We love those things. That's how other people find us, that's how we, you know, continue to gain listenership, which we just keep getting fantastic love them. Do we have a Facebook page, Yeah,

we do. We have a Facebook page and a Facebook group which you should like and join, um respectively. If you forget to download the show, or you don't have time to download show, you can always stream it on Stitcher, and you can always send us an email, particularly, you know, like if you are the Med Butcher or you know who he is, or you're a victim of Med Butcher. God, I hope none of those things. Please, I'm so sorry. Email Yeah, I don't know the email addresses as always

Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. And I think with that we're done with this weird creepy thing until next week. That is, it is October. You know, I really regret that we're doing these creepy stories this month, but okay, sorry guys. We'll talk to you next week. Yeah, Tulu, and I remember keep your head. Yeah about you. Yeah,