Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

Cleveland's infamous Torso Murders: 80 years later, the fascination endures (vintage photos)

CLEVELAND, Ohio – More than 80 years after the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run cut a swath of terror through town, Clevelanders remained fascinated with the gruesome killer.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

From 1935 to 1938, 12 bodies – some people say 13 - were dumped in the area known as Kingsbury Run, pictured, a creek bed that runs from East 90th Street and Kinsman Road to the Cuyahoga River. The victims included seven men and five women. Most were hobos and prostitutes, people living on the edge at a time when Cleveland was hard hit by the Great Depression. Many weren't missed for months.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

The bodies were found without heads. Most were also without limbs. Sometimes those parts were found in other places, sometimes not. It was the most gruesome crime spree in Cleveland history.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

The killings were named the Torso Murders by the press. The killer called The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. The inability to find the killer was the greatest failure of famed Public Safety Director Eliot Ness’, pictured, career.

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Cleveland Memory Project

The story has been the subject of movies and TV shows and graphic novels and tours and numerous books. (Unfortunately “Ness,” the high-profile project based on the Brian Michael Bendis graphic novel and slated to be directed by Paul Greengrass has been put on hold.)

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

Not one, but two new books on the unsolved killing spree were released last year. Both are fictional looks at the crimes, and bring the story up to modern day Cleveland.

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Thomas Mercer

Last November, Cleveland author D.M. Pulley released "The Unclaimed Victim" (Thomas Mercer). It's a fascinating, alternate-reality look at the killings that shocked the city. It was her second book to shine a light on Cleveland's notorious past; the first, 2015's "The Dead Key," was a thriller set in the old Cleveland Trust Tower.

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Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

With chapters set in 1999 and 1938, Pulley wove together the Union Gospel Press Bible factory in Tremont, 1930s Cleveland Nazis known as the Silver Shirt Legion, the city's Depression-era shantytowns and Tremont in the 1990s. Unlike other books, which usually finger Dr. Francis Sweeney or multiple killers, Pulley has come up with a vast conspiracy story which continues until the '90s.

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Greenleaf

This page-tuner was followed in January by Michael Jordan’s “The Company of Demons” (Greenleaf Book Group Press), a chilling, gory story of the Torso Killer set in contemporary Cleveland. Jordan, a retired lawyer, spent seven years crafting his dark story that takes readers from West Park to the ‘burbs, east side to west and throughout the court system in a quest to end a new body-filled spree.

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Rob Kaufman

Jordan, pictured, and Pulley are doing a joint event at the Lakewood Library at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18. The Torso Murders Double Feature will include both authors reading from their books, showing photos and talking about the real- life killing spree.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

“I’m not from Cleveland originally, I moved here in my 30s. I’m a lawyer by training and my first week on the job I was asked to cover another deposition downtown. I went to the other firm and there were a bunch of old photos of Cleveland on the walls,” says Jordan of his introduction to the killer.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. Cuyahoga County Coroner Samuel Gerber examines a woman's foot.

“The lawyer said ‘those are Kingsbury Run, where the Torso Murderer used to dump his victims. He told me a little and I was hooked.”

Since he retired seven years ago, Jordan’s interest took on a new fervor,

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. A death mask was made for a headless victim of the Torso Murders in the mid-1930s

“I spent time researching the killings in the library and at the Police Museum and I started thinking maybe doing something fictional would be fun, since so much had been written already.”

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. In the foreground Sheriff Martin L. O'Donnell (left) is talking to Chief County Detectives Harry S. Brown.

What did Jordan find so intriguing about the killer he has dedicated his retirement to researching him?

“A couple of elements really intrigued me,” he say . “We had a high-profile serial killer who terrorized Cleveland for years. The town was gripped with fear.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. Police detective August Nicolaus in a shack on Kingsbury Run.

“Then you add in Eliot Ness in charge of this investigation, tis man was a national hero for what he did in Chicago, and this ruined his career.”

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. Pictured: Victim Edward Andrassy, whose body was found September 23, 1935.

Pulley says interest in the killer touches on a darker aspect of human nature.

“Most of us, myself included, when you look at these heinous crimes and darkest sides of humanity, you want to look at them to try to understand the nature of evil.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. Victim Florence (Flo) Polillo .

“Because crime is so forbidden, it’s revolting and fascinating at the same time,” says the author, who has just completed her fourth book, a ghost story set in a Shaker Heights house.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. Knives carried by torso murder suspect Mike Pesanka.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. A letter sent to Cleveland's police chief in December 1938, a few months after the last victim is found.

The unsolved nature of killings, added to the fact that the man trying to solve them was the most famous crime solver in America, also adds to the fascination. As does the fact that it’s one of the earliest known serial killer cases in America.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

“People like the puzzle of it, looking for connections, you want to solve it,” says Pulley. “If the killer had been found, like Charles Manson, it would be different.”

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. Press Photo Head of victim six.

For more information on the Lakewood event: https://www.lakewoodpubliclibrary.org/event/author-event-the-torso-murders-double-feature-11671/

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection. Cuyahohoga County Coroner Samuel Gerber, M.D.

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Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection

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