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answers at last in cleveland torso killer dismemberment murders?
most of the 12 victims were nameless. itinerant residen...
aug 23 2024
2 minute read
tattooed man: death mask of unidentified "tattooed man" slain by the cleveland torso killer decades ago. cleveland police museum
most of the 12 victims were nameless.
itinerant residents of a hobo jungle in cleveland during the depths of the great depression. and they had been dismembered in the cruelest of fashions.
now, nearly a century later, cops are using dna testing to identify the victims of the torso killer or as he was also known, the mad butcher of kingsbury run.
torso killer: detectives sift through remains. dna may finally identify some of the victims. cleveland police museum
the slayings occurred between 1935 and 1938 with many of the victims being decapitated and the heads never found. in the dirty 30s, detectives did not have the hi-tech tools they have today and the lack of a cranium made identifying the victims — and their killer — difficult.
only two of the torso killer’s victims were ever identified.
and neither was the identity of the killer — at least formally.
cleveland plain dealer
detectives believed the monster behind the massacre was a surgeon named dr. francis e. sweeney, who had access to facilities to commit his vile deeds and had the skill to dismember his victims.
for a week in 1938, sweeney was interrogated by cleveland homicide detectives but he never copped to the carnage.
the doc later committed himself to an insane asylum and, miraculously, the murders stopped.
prime suspect: dr. francis sweeney. when he checked into an asylum the murders stopped. cleveland police museum
in conjunction with the cuyahoga county medical examiner’s office, the dna doe project is attempting to identify some of the 10 unidentified victims.
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two of the bodies have been exhumed, including the killer’s most famous victim, known only as the “tattooed man.”
he was discovered decapitated near railway tracks in the summer of 1936 with his head found nearby. he was fingerprinted and images of his six tattoos were widely distributed by newspapers at the time.
prostitute florence (flo) polillo was one of two victims who were identified. cleveland police museum
among the inkings were the names “helen” and “paul,” and the initials “w.c.g.,” according to the dna doe project.
authorities went so far as to create a plaster recreation of the man’s head and images of his tattoos that were shown at the great lakes exposition of 1936. none of the 100,000 visitors could identify the victim.
a second body is also being exhumed. this victim was discovered on the shores of lake erie in the summer of 1938.
cleveland press
according to the dna doe project, a single wealthy donor is funding the testing.
the researchers are hoping to extract dna to develop a family tree that might help identify the dead, although the remains may have been contaminated or degraded over time.
“we’ll figure out who the dna relative matches are, we’ll build their trees, find those common ancestors and then, you know build forward or maybe look a little bit back, to see who the unidentified individual is,” doe’s jennifer randolph told woio-tv.
studio headshot portrait of aspiring american actress and murder victim elizabeth short (1924 – 1947), 1940s. short became known as the black dahlia after her body was discovered in a vacant lot in hollywood, california, her corpse naked and severed in two. the murder still remains unsolved.
getty images
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she added: “so there could still be living people who know, you know that these are individuals who were missing from their family and nobody knew whatever happened to them.
“and regardless of that piece, especially given how you know, they died, they deserve the dignity and justice of being memorialized with their names.”
the torso killer case is one of america’s most infamous cold-case murders. only the 1947 torture murder of elizabeth short — aka the black dahlia — is more notorious.
@huntertosun
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