During the Great Depression, a serial killer set about his own grisly work in Cleveland, Ohio. And, some 80 years later, his identity has never been proven.

Image: Cleveland Press / Cleveland Press

In the 1930s, Cleveland, Ohio, was rocked by a series of brutal and disturbing killings. The murderer’s chosen method of human destruction? Viciously beheading and dismembering his no-doubt terrified victims. Shockingly, some 80 years later, the case remains unsolved – and the killer’s identity is still unknown.

Moreover, there are precious few hard facts around the murders. Officially, 12 people – five women and seven men – lost their lives at the hands of this brutal killer between 1935 and 1938. However, it’s thought that he may have killed as many as 20 people over a greater period of time. Still, the 12 official victims all had a couple of things in common. For starters, they had all been decapitated.

But they shared a commonality in life too. You see, despite the Great Depression, Cleveland’s economy was performing well during the 1930s. In fact, the booming steel and manufacturing industry attracted many casual laborers and drifters, desperate for a wage, to the city.

Unfortunately, it would be these people who the murderer decided to target. Why? Well, the bodies of laborers – who were less likely to have a fixed address – would be harder to trace.

Indeed, only three of his (assuming that the murderer was male) victims were ever identified. These three unfortunate souls had set up what was to be their last home on the Kingsbury Run. This was a stretch of dilapidated shanty towns in The Flats, an area of Cleveland beside the Cuyahoga River.

Back then, the Kingsbury Run was rife with crime and danger. After all, it wasn’t just laborers who lived there – so too did vagrants and other victims of the Great Depression, surrounded by garbage and vermin. And it was in this scene that two hapless teenagers discovered the first victim of the so-called Cleveland Torso Murderer in September 1935.

Naked apart from a pair of socks, the murdered man had been decapitated, castrated and drained of blood. The victim’s fingerprints later identified him as Edward Andrassy – a known drifter who’d had previous run-ins with the law. However, Andrassy’s corpse wasn’t alone.

In fact, near his remains lay those of a second man. This body had also had its head and genitals removed. Something was different, though. Indeed, this corpse showed signs of what looked like a chemical burn.

Curiously, the burns matched those found on a female body one year previously. In September 1934, a woman’s decapitated torso was discovered on the banks of nearby Lake Erie. Dubbed the “Lady of the Lake,” her flesh was described as being reddened and leathery, which suggested that a chemical had been poured onto her skin. Perhaps, then, these murders were linked.

As the police got to work, the killing spree continued. In January 1936, a decapitated woman’s remains – wrapped in newspaper and placed in two baskets – were discovered. Police later identified her as Flo Polillo, a bar worker and sometime prostitute who lived in the Roaring Third, Kingsbury Run’s vice-fueled neighbor.

That year the bodies kept coming, all with their heads removed – many of which were never recovered. With no significant clues or suspects, then, fear in the city was at fever pitch. Just who was the Cleveland Torso Murderer? Eliot Ness – later made famous by his autobiography, The Untouchables, and then the city’s new “safety director” – was the man tasked with finding the answer.

According to James Jessen Badal, author of In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland’s Torso Murders, “Ness was effective at cleaning up the city and reducing accidents. But the police had never dealt with anything like the Torso Murders… Police had been used to dealing with a killer who knew the victim, but here you were dealing with a madman killing complete strangers.”

However, the police needed to start taking action. So, on August 18, 1938, a group led by Ness raided the Kingsbury Run just before 1:00 a.m. Searching for evidence and clues, they took away 63 men, and – on Ness’ orders – burnt the entire shanty town to ash.

Although the press berated Ness and his team for their excessive use of force, the murders finally stopped. However, it wasn’t until a year later in August 1939 that a key suspect would be arrested. Frank Dolezal, 52, had once shared a home with murdered Flo Polillo. Furthermore, connections were made between the bricklayer and both Andrassy and a third victim, Rose Wallace. Did the police finally have their man?

It seemed so. After all, Dolezal confessed to the crimes, and Cleveland’s residents breathed a sigh of relief. However, on closer inspection, his confession was somewhat bizarre. Moreover, he would go on to recant this entire account, claiming that he had been physically assaulted until he had given in. Nevertheless, he never got a chance to testify.

Yes, Dolezal was found dead in his cell before his case came to trial. Following an autopsy, it was discovered that six of his ribs had been broken and that the injuries could only have been inflicted while Dolezal was imprisoned. So was his death really a suicide, or was it something more sinister?

Either way, it is interesting that there were other suspects besides Dolezal. For example, it was speculated that the killer must have been deeply familiar with human anatomy and the cutting of tissue, as the victims’ bodies were often dismembered with surgical accuracy. So Ness once turned his attention to a Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. After all, the doctor was a survivor of World War I and had performed battlefield amputations while in service.

In fact, Sweeney, who had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia for almost a decade, was grilled by Ness for an entire fortnight. However, Ness didn’t have enough evidence to link Sweeney to the murders, despite Sweeney failing two lie detector tests. Ness further thought that any prosecution attempt of Sweeney would be a potential disaster, as the doctor was a cousin to congressman Martin L. Sweeney, one of Ness’ political opponents and harshest of critics.

Still, Sweeney – his mental health apparently worsening – had himself voluntarily committed only a short period following the last known Torso murder. Then, strangely, Ness started to receive taunting postcards from a person claiming to be Sweeney. Incredibly, these provocations continued well into the 1950s.

Was Sweeney taunting Ness with these postcards just as the murderer had done by leaving the bodies of his victims out in the open? Or was someone else sending the cards, meaning that the serial killer was still at large? We’ll never know for sure. What we do know is that Sweeney breathed his last in 1964, while Ness died seven years earlier. And that the case of the Cleveland Torso Murderer remains open today.