This is the first of three "In The Day" articles about the grisly Swamp Murders. Read part two here.



A string of murders in the Ellwood City area beginning nearly a century ago were so gruesome they would make tabloid headlines today. The suspected serial killer, who decapitated and dismembered the victims, was never caught.



The suspect is believed to have killed 15 or more people, and the killings were commonly called the Swamp Murders.



Between July 1923 and January 1925, two children were murdered. The murders remain unsolved and a mystery -- part of an even larger mystery of unsolved area murders.



In mid-July 1923,�the�torso of a little girl, approximately 6 years old, was found near Rock Point on the Beaver River just south of Wampum. The body was discovered by C.C. Whiteside, manager of the stone quarry in the area, and never identified. A brief story about the case is included in "Hell's Wasteland: The Pennsylvania Torso Murders," by James Jessen Badal. It is one of 15 unsolved murders from 1923 to 1940, with 11 unidentified bodies.



The headless, armless, legless body of the little girl had been in the water for a long time. There were no reports of a child missing in the year before the body was discovered, and no way to identify the body.



The case is not unique.



On Jan. 3, 1925, the charred remains of Luigi Noschesi, 14, were found in a boys clubhouse shack in Park Gate near Ellwood City. This, too, is a mystery within a mystery.



On Jan. 2, Generoso "Dominick" Noschesi went to police because his son had not returned after leaving the family's home on Crescent Avenue the morning of Jan. 1. A search followed, but he was not found. It appeared the boy had run away and then L.M. Mason, who lived in the West End, went to police with a story that young Joe Statti had told him. Statti said he and James Joseph, pals of Noschesi, had gone to their clubhouse, the Timber Wolves, and found it on fire. When the blaze died down, Statti said they found the remains of a dog and buried the bones.



The shack was a typical boys clubhouse, made of corrugated�metal and with no doors or windows. It was accessed by a hole in the roof. Inside there was a stove -- and two guns that police found in the debris.



Mason�went to�police because he thought the bones might be those of Noschesi. The police immediately went to the site and began digging in the freshly dug earth. They found the bones of a corpse, but the head, arms and legs were never found.



When Statti was asked why he had not reported his story�to police, he said he was afraid of being arrested. Statti and James Joseph were taken into custody, locked in cells at the Ellwood City jail and questioned. Joseph, 13, said that when he got to the burning building, Statti was already there watching it burn. Joseph testified that late on New Year's Eve, he and Statti had stayed at the shack from about midnight until 9 a.m. the next day. They had roasted and eaten potatoes during the night and then went home and planned to return after dinner. Joseph said that when he left the shack, there was no fire but only a few hot ashes.



Local doctors examined the torso, and decided it had human bones. Noschesi's parents, Dominick and Filomena, refused to believe that it was their son. The remains were sent to Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh for verification, and Dr. DeWayne Richie said the remains were those of a boy younger than 17 years old.



A New Castle news editorial speculated on the death: "Did some fiend in human form come upon the Noschesi boy in the Timber Wolves' shack along the Connoquenessing River and foully murder him and set the shack on fire?"



A employee of the�Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad said he saw three boys running from the burning building and thought, "Poor kids, their clubhouse is burning down."



An inquest was held Jan. 7 on the second floor of the fire station in Ellwood City. A crowd filled the room, and at times, people had to be cautioned to get back toward the wall to save any undue stress on the center of the floor.



Fifteen witnesses testified, including Timber Wolves members Joseph and Statti, who had been held by police and released when police were satisfied they were telling the truth. Other Timber Wolves, including Owen and Ronald Glover and Tony Joseph, also testified.



The coroner's jury decided that Noschesi died in the shack between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Jan. 1. They could fix no responsibility for his death. The theory that Noschesi was trapped in the building when it caught on fire has a major flaw because the skull, legs and arms were never found.



On Jan. 9, a New Castle News story carried the headline "Charred Body Found in the club house of Timber Wolves Buried Today." Clinging to the belief that the boy had run away, Dominick and Filomena Noschesi were unconvinced that the body was that of their son. Ellwood City borough took charge of the body, and the burial expense was paid for by a district poor fund.



These murders weren't the first or the last. A serial killer was suspected to be savagely murdering and dismembering more victims.



To be continued.



Read part two here.



Mark Barnes, author of the "Ellwood City -- Then and Now" books, provided newspaper articles cited in this report.