The Five (book)

When did serial killers become sexy? Why did serial killers become sexy? Or more to the point, when did they become interesting? Fascinating? A subject of intellectual discourse of heated debate? Because to a man, they are all complete losers.

There was great interest in these losers in the 1990s, due in some part, I guess, to the 1992 Academy Award Winner for Best Picture, The Silence of the Lambs. It is not, however, the subject of the manhunt, Buffalo Bill, who became iconic, but the already incarcerated murderer, Hannibal Lecter, as performed by Anthony Hopkins. He’s cool, eerie, stylish, witty, brilliant, and, some would say, sexy.

He wasn’t the first murderer to hold my interest, however. That would be David Warner as Dr. John Leslie Stevenson in the 1979 time traveling romp, Time After Time. Malcolm McDowell, playing against type, is the bespectacled, naive and charming H.G. Wells, who (in this fictional tale) invents an actual, functional time machine. The device proves advantageous when the police arrive to arrest Dr. Stevenson, who uses it to escape Wells’ home, the city of London and the 19th Century. For Dr. Stevenson also happens to be the man known as “Jack the Ripper.”

Warner’s character travels through time – and space! – to disco-era San Francisco, where he continues his compulsion for slaughtering sex workers.

Because that’s what we know about him, isn’t it? I queried my brother recently, what do you know about Jack the Ripper? Nothing, he told me. I asked who his victims were. He said sex workers.

Seriously, my sixty-four year old brother said sex workers, not prostitutes. We have Gen Z children, after all.

Warner’s “Jack” was cool, eerie, stylish, witty, brilliant, and, some would say, sexy.

We seem to ascribe an extraordinary intelligence to serial murderers, and I imagine we do so due to the fact that they get away with it. They are "always one step ahead of the police” or that some even manage to stay anonymous, forever.

In the mid-to-late 1990s I read both Torso: The Story of Eliot Ness and the Search for a Psychopathic Killer by Steven Nickel and Paul W. Heimel’s Eliot Ness: The Real Story. The Ness-Cleveland connection greatly interested me (duh) and exposed me to the so-called Torso Murders, a series of grisly killings which occurred in the 1930s, and primarily during Ness’s tenure as Safety Director.

Attempts to connect these crimes are specious, but that hasn’t prevented folks from crafting their own theories about a single perpetrator. I personally cleave to the belief that these murders are unrelated. I was particularly grateful when this theory was put into print by Cleveland true crime author John Stark Bellamy in his book The Maniac in the Bushes (and More Tales of Cleveland Woe) that in the absence of corroborating evidence these tragedies should be assumed to be the work of different individuals.

Much has been made of this one guy, a member of a well-placed political family, who wrote taunting letters to Ness, claiming to be the culprit. But what of that? I send taunting letters to the Vice President every week.

Regardless, this desire to tell stories about these violent criminals … before Dexter, a contemporary cable program in which the serial killer is the hero because he kills other killers (oy) there was the X-Files spin-off Millennium. An FBI agent played by Lance Henriksen has the ability to access the sight of criminals, to see what they see. The first season was all about the crimes of serial killers, and I checked out from that show pretty fast. A network program thick with images of pain and horror.

Because that’s what we’re talking about – pain and horror. And as with fictions (Silence of the Lambs, Millennium, Dexter) or reality (Kingsbury Run or Whitechapel) the focus is on the killer. Ostensibly, to discover who he is, but also, because – as they say – he fascinates us.

Except he doesn’t. If reality has shown us anything, it’s that actual serial murderers are not interesting. They aren’t surgical villains with a penchant for chianti. They are outcasts and losers. Like Jeffrey Dahmer, Wayne Williams and John Wayne Gacy, unremarkable sociopaths.

The Whitechapel murders of 1888 inspired the legend of Jack the Ripper. That’s not even a real name, it originates from an anonymous letter to the editor of a newspaper, and almost certainly fake. Popular subjects have included barristers, doctors, and – of course – those within the sphere of the Royal Family.

The single, unidentified person of “Jack” killed five women over a period of several months, and then never again. These five are referred to as “canonical” which, while accurate because it means – generally – to be accepted as part of a group, is offensive to me as it lends legitimacy to something that cannot be known and is likely to be false.

All five were women, and all five have always been said to be sex workers. My introduction to “Jack the Ripper” was the film Time After Time, and it begins with Warner’s doctor encountering and then murdering a woman who has made it clear that the encounter is meant to be transactional.

In her book, The Five, author Hallie Rubenhold does what no one thought to do before, which is to question the common wisdom and to investigate the lives of the victims. Contemporary police accounts state clearly that all five were “prostitutes.” Rubenhold thoroughly documents the prevailing assumption at that time that all destitute women were, or that they may as well be so.

In describing the lives of each woman, we understand each; their unique descent into penury – which brought each to this locale, a district of London which was just one center for the destitute and unhoused – and their commonality, namely that each had an addiction to alcohol.

Rather than slaughtered in the act of solicitation, the first four were much more likely to have been preyed upon while sleeping out-of-doors, while the fifth – also sleeping – was surprised in her bed, the door to her one-room, ground floor apartment easily opened. To ascribe a (still) socially unacceptable occupation has always diminished their personhood, adding “they asked for it” to their epitaphs. But they were human people, undeserving of their economic status as well as their horrifying demise.

This is an actual, mass-marketed
"Jack the Ripper" costume.

This throws some salt into the works for many “Ripperologists” (a hateful term) whose theories about who the murderer may have been, especially those bespoke theories about an assassin for the Man-mans; eliminating a cabal of sex workers who could bring down the Monarchy, or someone on a Messianic quest to purge the city of lechery.

When we understand who the victims were, their deaths seem random. Each was just a very unlucky woman, sleeping rough (as they say) in the wrong place at the wrong time. And conspiracy theorists hate randomness. In fact, Rubenhold has had to endure a great deal of criticism and abuse for this book, as it does not offer any new insight into who “The Ripper” may be, Worse, it tears down a few theories carefully crafted by men (always men) who fancy themselves experts in a rarefied field.

The point is, we don’t know. We’ll never know. Accepting what we do not know is a very difficult thing. Conspiracy theories are born when men strain to apply meaning to what they do not understand, and in doing so they lose sight of the victims.

See also: Torso Murders (Cleveland Centennial)

Play a Day: Run Kingsbury Run

Tyler JC Whidden

For Tuesday I read Run Kingsbury Run by Tyler JC Whidden, and available at New Play Exchange.

First disclaimer: I know Tyler, he directed my play The Way I Danced With You at Ensemble Theatre, which you should see because his direction is fucking amazing and it is playing through this Sunday, April 7.

Second disclaimer: I know far too much about the history of the so-called "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" and I am fucking tired of people trying to turn this hideous, sordid moment in Cleveland history into some kind of epic sequel to The Untouchables just because Eliot Ness is involved.

Okay. We got that out of the way.

Kingsbury is not about Ness, it's about the officers who do the work of trying to solve a grisly set of murders, and the psychological toll that can take. The unseen Eliot Ness is where he should be, off in the distance. An administrator, not a cop, and one whose own ambition rises above his need to protect the public.

But the main thrust of the narrative involves the pressure, the damage, and the wide-raging effect a public panic can have on the greater community. The "mad butcher" is the catalyst as three officers at a crime scene engage in intense psychological gamesmanship about reputation, responsibility, and the ghosts of our fathers.

Forensic science recently determined the most-likely suspect in the Whitechapel Murders of 1888, and the identity of "Jack the Ripper," and it only took one hundred and thirty years. Perhaps there is hope we may settle this saga once and for all.

Who should I read tomorrow?

"Providence has smiled upon us."

The following play script is by David Hansen © 2012.

THE BLACK LEGION
Time: 1936

A dark scene, with no introduction from the VOICE. Lights slowly fade on a man tied to a post. There is a sack over his face. He is weeping copiously. His wrists are bound, wrenched up behind him, behind the post. He is stripped to the waist, revealing several distinctive tattoos. A butterfly on his shoulder, crossed flags and "W.C.G." under his right forearm, an arrow pierced heart on outer right upper arm, left forearm there is a dove and the names "Helen and Paul."

Two figures enter from both sides of the scene, walking towards each other, then turning to walk towards the audience, then turning to walk towards each other again. They are both dressed in black robes, with black hoods topped with pirate hats, complete with skull and crossbones. They are members of the Black Legion.

They are downstage, in front of the TATTOOED MAN/WILLIAM GUSTER, facing each other. The way they have entered suggests a ritual. One man reveals a gun, and places the barrel against the other man’s chest.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Do you swear to maintain and uphold the holy secrets of the Black Legion?

LEGIONNAIRE 2
I do.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Do you swear to uphold the laws of God as set down in the Holy Bible?

LEGIONNAIRE 2
I do.

LEGIONNAIRE 1 Do you swear to defend and protect the Constitution of the United State of America?

LEGIONNAIRE 2
I do.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Do you swear to protect the sanctity and decency of American Womanhood?

LEGIONNAIRE 2
I do.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Draw your weapon.

A stylized movement, one draws, they step back raising their guns at each other’s heads, then step in and embrace in a fierce “man hug.”

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Every Legionnaire called into Dark Service must prove their dedication through an act of purification. In order to purify your soul, you must purge from this world a soul most foul.

TATTOOED MAN
Please!!!

LEGIONNAIRE 1 suddenly presses his pistol against the TATTOOED MAN’s head.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
You will be silent!

TATTOOED MAN withholds a pathetic whimper.

LEGIONNAIRE 1 (CON’T.) (to LEGIONNAIRE 2)
You can begin.

LEGIONNAIRE 2 (addressing the TATTOOED MAN)
William C. Guster, the charges against you are severe. You have been accused of beating your wife, sleeping with colored whores, profaning before your children, and most egregious of all offensives, of conspiring to impose the Communist form of gum’mint on the people of Hamilton County.

TATTOOED MAN
This is insane! I never hurt my wife, I never cheated on my wife --

LEGIONNAIRE 1
If you continue to deny the charges set forth by this sacred council we will have no recourse but to enact the ultimate penalty.

LEGIONNAIRE 2 walks around the rear of the TATTOOED MAN.

TATTOOED MAN
I know who you are! I know your voice!

LEGIONNAIRE 1 clubs the TATTOOED MAN over the head with the butt end of his pistol.

LEGIONNAIRE 2 pulls out a garrotte and wraps it around the TATTOOED MAN’s neck, pinning him to the pole, strangling him, and cutting the cord into his neck in a gout of blood.

The TATTOOED MAN struggles briefly, but between the blood loss and inability to breathe it is short work.

The LEGIONNAIRES drop to their knees and pray.

LEGIONNAIRE 2
Oh Holy God, sweet Jesus, bless this sacrificial offering, which we render unto you. Keep the Fatherland pure. Bathe us in your holy light. Make us anew this and every day.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Amen.

They rise and look upon their work.

LEGIONNAIRE 2
Good Lord. Almost took his head clean off.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Welcome to the fold, brother.

LEGIONNAIRE 2
What do we do with him?

Enter THIRD LEGIONNAIRE with a large sack.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Now begins the final stage of your initiation.

LEGIONNAIRE 3
Strip your robes, and dress in these vile garments. Strike the head from this corpse, wrap it in his pants and jump the next train to Cleveland. Dump them in the middle of the city in the gully by the tracks.

LEGIONNAIRE 2
Why there?

LEGIONNAIRE 3
Providence has smiled upon us. Someone has been disposing of corpses in the hobo jungles of the Cuyahoga. Our contribution will only lend to the mystery.

LEGIONNAIRE 1
Hiding in plain sight, no one will know him.

LEGIONNAIRE 2 puts his pistol to his own chin.

LEGIONNAIRE 2
Strength in obedience.

LEGIONNAIRES 1 & 3
Strength in obedience.

They begin to untie the dead body, as lights fade.

The Death of Eliot Ness

Ness married sculptor Elisabeth Andersen Seaver in 1946. She was his third wife. They both drank. Since his failed run for Mayor of Cleveland in 1947, Ness' fortunes had dwindled until by the early 1950s he was accepting jobs as an electronics wholesalers, working as a clerk in a downtown bookstore (remember those?) and selling frozen hamburger patties to restaurants.

In 1949 they adopted a three year-old boy, Robert Warren Ness (July 10, 1946 - August 31, 1976) ... though his gravesite in Lakeview Cemetery reads Robert Eliot Ness. Not much is known about Bobby Ness, except what can be inferred from what we know about Ness. After failing to win the election, his drinking became a serious problem. The family lived in a rented house in Cleveland, Eliot spent too much money on a new car, too much time in hotel bars, and here he began inflating his responsibility in bringing down Al Capone to anyone who would listen.

In the early 1950s Eliot became a shareholder in Guaranty Paper Corporation - without going too much into the details, he was chosen through connections with persons who were trying to make a business out of a new watermarking process to make checks and other legal documents harder to counterfeit. They tagged Ness because of his connections in law enforcement. It was a good, regular job and supported his family.

In 1956 the operations of Guaranty were moved from Cleveland to Coudersport, PA, as a money-saving decision. The Ness' settled into a stable, middle-class existence. Bobby made friends with a boy across the street who had Down Syndrome. Coming home from work Eliot could be relied upon to play ball with the kids in the yard, and be a real sport.

Betty was less than happy to be a sculptor in rural Pennsylvania. They drank, they fought, the boy had to listen to it all.

There is a small cottage industry in Cleveland surrounding the so-called Torso Murderer. The Wikipedia entry for this unsolved murder case posits from time to time (depending on how recently it has been edited) that failure to solve this case destroyed Eliot Ness. He is referred to as "The 14th Victim" or some such nonsense.

The hit-and-run drunk driving accident Ness was involved in 1942 lost him his job as Safety Director. His ill-thought out run for Mayor in 1947 sealed his loss of reputation. He was a good cop, and a lousy businessman. He drank too much. These things happen. It's not as sexy as the myth. But myths are pat and dry and often teach us nothing. Easy, neat solutions make the world seem easy and neat. Learning how to deal with the messiness of real life is hard and unrewarding. Except for that is how we learn to deal with the messiness of real life.

Ness had a heart attack in his kitchen on May 16, 1957. He died at home, which is a fine place to die. He was 54 years old.

Sources:
Eliot Ness:The Real Story (Paul Heimel)
Squidoo

My Trip To Lubberland

Took advantage of MOCA Cleveland's "Free Fridays" admission to take in Duke Riley's exhibit, An Invitation to Lubberland. I was hoping for good art. I was looking for an education. I got a small amount of both.

The video part of the art event was a bit of a disappointment, a man in a bowler and frock coat (is he the man from the government who counts hobos, is he a hobo himself ... is he one who becomes the other ..?) was difficult to watch and included inter-titles which led to a conclusion which one unfamiliar to the history of Kingsbury Run might find interesting. They did not rise to the level set by the artist's very interesting and well-crafted drawings and mosaics (see above.)

I do not know why I have been put on this earth to be the guardian or avenger of Eliot Ness' tarnished reputation, or rather a "Speaker for the Dead" hell-bent on providing an depiction of his humanity, his goodness and his failings, free of all of the mythic bullshit. This exhibit goes so far as to state that it is because of Ness' failure to catch the so-called torso murder, and his torching of the shanty town that he lost the 1947 election. I have nowhere else seen this to be the case.

However, the claim (as etched into a Buffalo nickel) that the citizens of Cleveland were so appalled by the destruction of the hobo city of Kingsbury Run that during the election they threw mannequin parts up into the trees ... it is an evocative image, though I question whether many had their own mannequins lying around to expend on such public art.

By the way, I do not think it was actually part of the exhibit that the MOCA docent follow me around like a fucking stalker. That was really irritating. He kept bobbing in and out of my line of sight, or standing right behind me like I was going to swipe something. Get lost pal, you are creepy.

I did learn a very helpful hobo sign:

officer of the law lives here

UPDATE: The Plain Dealer really loved this installation:

"A triumph for him and for MOCA. It also sets a benchmark for any local art institution that commissions an artist -- local or otherwise -- to create something new. It's a mark that will not be easily surpassed any time soon." - Steven Litt, 12/14/2010

Homosexuality

J. Edgar Hoover, keeping it real.
The 1920s were a period of great excess and celebration. The internet tells me (from numerous sources) that what was becoming what we know to day as the "gay" lifestyle was, while not explicitly acceptable, on the rise and becoming more visible. Drag shows and cabarets were fixtures among jazz clubs and speakeasies, and while society turned a blind-eye to illegal alcohol production and consumption, they were turning their eyes away from everything else.

With the Depression came a stripping away of everything considered excessive or indulgent, a return to so-called "traditional family values." The term homosexual came into being, and was defined as the antithesis of a normal relationship. It was diagnosed as a mental illness, and (see: Hays Code) was increasingly unacceptable anywhere in any form, subject to all manner of legal and social punishments.

One example of Hollywood's censorship of gay issues and themes involves Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour which was adapted into the 1936 film These Three ... only now one of the figures in this boarding school lesbian love triangle is now a man and the story has a happy ending.

The term "sex crime" emerged in the media during this period, which described rape, child molestation - and homosexuality. By the late 1930s gays were the targets of widespread campaigns to "clean up" the ills of society.

Homosexuality was illegal in Cleveland at this time. It was the presumption of several involved in the so-called "Torso Murder" case that the man they were looking for was a sexual deviant. Detective Peter Merylo, who drove himself to the brink of sanity on this case, made it his crusade to put "perverts" behind bars.

On numerous occasions Merylo would solicit known gay bars, follow a departing pair of men to a residence or hotel, wait an appropriate amount of time, then force entry catching them in a compromising situation. He pulled this stunt so many time judges became reluctant to try his cases.

Merylo also liked to wander Kingsbury Run in his underpants to lure the killer, but that's another story.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Novelguide.com
TruTV.com

"My Eleventh Grade Forensics Project"

Okay, Happy Halloween season. There was an article in the Plain Dealer this weekend, to wit:

Cleveland's Torso Murders continue to fascinate 75 years after first killing

Mostly it is a promotional piece for Chuck Gove's Haunted Cleveland Ghost Tours, and there is nothing wrong with that. The assumption, as always, is that there was a Torso Murderer - because without one, there is no story, and nothing to sell.

There is nothing in this article I haven't read before, with a passing phrase three-quarters of the way down suggesting in FOX News fashion, "Some theorize that there were multiple killers -- and that the lack of DNA testing or experience with serial killers led police to attribute the crimes to one person." But "some people" are not quoted directly in this story, only those who believe it was a single maniac (I'm looking at you, creepy Dr. Badal.)

However, in the interest of providing a gruesome seasonal chill, I offer this YouTube video I found, which the creator states was designed for an 11th grade forensics project. Ew?


WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGES
(and irritating piano music)
UPDATE: Music provided by Midnight Syndicate, a Chardon-based goth music outfit that provides creepy soundtracks to haunted attractions and video games. So let's hear it for irritating local music! Thanks for the tip, Kusak.

An Invitation to Lubberland

kind woman lives here
Duke Riley: An Invitation to Lubberland

An exhibition at MOCA Cleveland through January 9, 2011. Brooklyn-based artist Duke Riley was introduced to Kingsbury Run, and became fascinated with chronicling his history of an unmapped landscape traveled through and inhabited by countless, unknown "hobos" during the early 20th century.

I did not know Clevelander had a reputation for being kind among itinerant workers, but it was. Kingsbury Run was home to numerous shantytowns and "hobo jungles". This came to an end in 1938, at the height of "Mad Butcher" paranoia, Eliot Ness ordered that every homeless person in Kingsbury Run be rounded up and fingerprinted, so any new victims might be identified. He then gave order for all of their makeshift shelters be burned to the ground.

There are those who believe that Ness's plan had less to do with the media's interest in these unrelated killings and more to do with having a good excuse for cleaning up what he saw as urban blight. Regardless, the people of Cleveland were appalled at this extreme action and forever tarnished the Safety Director's "boy scout" reputation.

Riley's exhibit includes "video, mosaic, drawing, found objects, and sculpture." I plan to check that out in the next few days.

Sources:
MOCA website
WCPN "Around Noon" 9/28/2010

The Black Legion

The Black Legion was a KKK splinter group operating in the 1930s. Centered in Michigan the Legion was also active in Ohio.

AP described the organization on May 31, 1936, "as a group of loosely federated night-riding bands operating in several States without central discipline or common purpose beyond the enforcement by lash and pistol of individual leaders' notions of 'Americanism.'"

They were allegedly responsible for numerous murders of alleged communists and socialists.

Date unknown, paper unknown
Police Reopen Probe of Two Weird Killings
Anonymous phone call: “Look into the muders of those two men in the gully at E. 49th Street and you’ll find the Black Legion was responsible.”

Sources: Wikipedia
Eliot Ness personal scrapbook, property of Western Reserve Historical Society

The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run

The facts:

On September 23, 1935 the bodies of two men were discovered at the foot of Jackass Hill in Kingbury Run, near East 49th Street and Praha Ave.

Edward Andrassy and a never-identified man were each murdered by decapitation, with their genitals severed from their torsos. The genitals were discovered together nearby. The heads were discovered buried nearby, in different places.

Andrassy was heavily involved in vice, his parents even receiving a phone call recently threatening to kill him if he didn’t stay away from the caller’s wife.

On January 26, 1936 a basket was found near East 20th and Central. This basket contained body parts wrapped in newspaper: an arm, two thighs and the lower half of a female torso. They belonged to Florence Polillo, a middle-aged woman, alcoholic, occasionally engaging in prostitution. The newspapers dated back between as recently as the day before and the previous August.

On February 7, in an abandoned lot on Orange near 15th Street, was discovered more of Polillo: upper torso, lower legs, left arm and hand. But no head. On February 8 a former associate of hers named Captain Swing jumped out a third story window, broke his heels, and “mumbling things that tended to implicate him in the killings.” (Cleveland Press)

On June 5, near the Kingsman Road bridge, some boys found a head rolled up into a pair of pants. The torso was found nearby, genitals intact. Like the first two men, the corpse was absent of blood indicating death (by decapitation) elsewhere and that the body was left where it was to be found. Never identified, this victim is known by its numerous tattoos.

July 22 turned up a badly decomposed male corpse near the tracks south of Clinton Road. Killed where it lay, it had been decapitated, and its clothes were found nearby. Its condition suggests it was murdered prior to the tattooed victim.

On September 10 a vagrant trying to catch a train tripped over the armless, headless torso of a man near the East 37th Street bridge. Soon police discovered the lower half of the torso, separated at the abdomen and the legs cut off at the hips. A stagnant pool nearby was fished, revealing his clothes. The man was emasculated, his genitals, arms and head never found. He was murdered by decapitation.

September 14: “I want to see this psycho caught. I’m going to do all I can to aid in the investigation.” - Eliot Ness

Or to put it another way, due to public hysteria created by a media-driven drive to sell papers, the Safety Director was called upon to comment on and meddle in affairs better left to detectives of the Police department.

Ness did bring it upon himself, raising his profile high above that of your average Safety Director (can you name your current Safety Director?) But the quote from Eliot Ness reflects to prevailing belief that these disconnected events were perpetrated by a single man. “This psycho.”

Really? The first two guys, sure. Polillo, not at all. The fourth, fifth and sixth victims had as little to do with each other, their similarities should easily have been written off as coincidence or intentional copy-cat crimes.

UPDATE: In 1937, the body of a second woman - eventually suggested to be Rose Wallace, an African-American prostitute who had disappeared the previous August - was found at the foot of the Lorain-Central (now the Lorain-Carnegie) Bridge. This body was dismembered, like Polillo's corpse, and bound in newspaper dated June, 1936. Wallace and Polillo went in the same circles, and even had One-Armed Willie, he of the jumping out the three-story window - in common. These two murders may have been committed by the same person. Parts bound in paper, female victim. But nothing like the other murders. Do you see how a craze comes about?

Source: The Maniac in the Bushes: More True Tales of Cleveland Crime and Disaster

Centennial!

The Plain Dealer - Thursday, July 23, 1936
32,720 Visit Expo As City Has Birthday
75,000 watch parade
Mayor Starts Cleveland on Second Century

Cleveland at midnight last night formally ended its first 100 years as a corporate city and turned to face its second century.

From her sister Great Lakes cities of Lorain and Erie came delegations to help Cleveland celebrate. At the formal anniversary ceremony in the Mall plaza the leaders of those delegations, Mayor E.A. Braun of Lorsain and J,.D. Parent, “Ambassador of good will from Erie,” told Clevelanders that their cities were vitally interested in the growth and progress of Cleveland: that the bond that shipping had created among the three would, they hoped, bring them even closer together in the next 100 years.

Speaking at the ceremony in the plaza, (Mayor Harold H. Burton) urged Clevelanders to look ahead with confidence, pointing to the progress and accomplishments of the city since 1836.

“Let us look into the future after our first 100 years. Our ancestors fought with courage and determination to gain control of this land. Now we must fight with the same courage to rid ourselves of the osbatcles in our path to future progress.”

The parade was a conglomerate of almost every parade that has ever been devised. It was led by the conventional mounted police and by infantrymen. There followed bathing beauties in jinrichishas, a lion in a cage, a midget band and midget performers, elephants, monkeys in tiny automobiles, actors from the Globe Theater dressed in Elizabethan costume.

Pygmies from the Belgian Congo there were and several hundred men and women in the costumes of the various communities respresented in the Streets of the World, and palmists and a Chinese dragon, Indians, dinosaurs, Yeomanettes, Conestoga wagons, streamlined trucks and busses, the original steam engine Tom Thumb and a replica of the Wright brothers’ first airplane from the Parade of Years.

Actors parading in Shakespearean costumes? How gay is that?

Also on tap for Cleveland's Centennial celebration:

Ness Orders Full Report In Bet Probe
Told 3 Sons of Deputy Inspector Worked At Track
Officer Defends Self, Family
(Deputy Police Inspector Timothy J.) Costello told a reporter last night that he thought it “highly unfair and unjust” to question his conduct as a police officer because three of his children worked at a dog track.

Seek Name of 5th Headless Corpse
Police Hunt Maniac Killer; Coroner Not Sure Man Was Murdered
“There is nothing to indicate that there was any violence on skull or body,” (Cornoner A.J.) Pearce said. “ The whole thing was so decomposed that it is possible for the head to have dropped off and have been carried a few yards by a dog or other animal.”

Hunt Fiend In 4 Decapitations

Once upon a time I was the artistic director of a late-night theater project at Dobama Theatre. Trying to decide what slate of original projects to create for the second season, I shared with my boss, Joyce, the artistic director of the theater proper, the idea of making a musical out of the Kingsbury Run murders.

We could call it TORSO! THE MUSICAL!

It was a joke. I made her actually gasp. But seriously ... it was a joke. Five years later, the Play House actually produced a musical about the Kingsbury Run murders. There is no satire any more, just cheese.

The first historical record of a decapitated body dumped into that ancient stream bed called Kingsbury Run was in November ... 1905. By 1935 we can deduce that the person who would eventually be called the Cleveland Torso Murderer (tm) would be no less than fifty years old.

We know this. An unidentified woman washed ashore in Beulah Park in September, 1934. Coroner Arthur J. Pearce said the expert level of butchery suggested that it was done by a medical expert. He later admitted the cutting was no, in fact, that professionally done.

In early 1936 the dismemberment of Florence Pollilo was described as "expertly" done by Coroner Pearce, except for the gashes to the pelvic area. Otherwise, only a professional could have severed a human like that. Her head was never found, unlike Edward Andrassy's head, they found that. They also found his penis, but that was in a can some yards away.

Unlike the "Tatooted Man" found on June 5, 1936, three days before the Republican National Convention began. His genitals were un-mutilated. For your interest, a "death mask" of his head was put on display at the Great Lakes Exposition but never identified - in spite having been viewed by thousands. They still have this plaster mask at the Cleveland Police Museum.

By this time the media was lumping all of these disparate murders together, and calling for action. Eliot Ness remained silent, leaving his detectives to do their work. By September, and the discovery of a "7th victim" he began to be more public in his assessment of what was happening. Thankfully, they could blame marihuana for the madness.

"There is a plentiful supply of this deadly weed in Cleveland" - Michael J. Collegeman, head of the local Federal Narcotics Bureau.

... to be continued.

Source: John Stark Bellamy II, The Maniac in the Bushes: More True Tales of Cleveland Crime and Disaster

Eliot Ness

Eliot Ness (April 19, 1903 – May 16, 1957) was an American Prohibition agent, famous for his efforts to enforce Prohibition in Chicago, Illinois, as the leader of a legendary team of law enforcement agents nicknamed The Untouchables. - Wikipedia

"Famous for his efforts." It would be churlish to say he failed. Capone did, after all, go to prison - for tax evasion. The two individuals met once, Ness was head of the police detail which escorted Capone to the train that would take him away. There is no record of their exchanging any words.

Ness: "Did you ever think you wanted something more than anything else in the world and then, after you got it, it wasn't half as good as you expected? Has that ever happened to you?" - Eliot Ness: The Real Story

Ness is famous for another great failure. Departing him hometown of Chicago, he spent some time busting up stills and almost getting killed by hillbillies before becoming Cleveland's Safety Director in late 1935, responsible for overseeing the Police and Fire Departments. He was not a detective or a man on the street policeman, he was a political appointee with the responsibility of managing the safety of the sixth largest city in America.

Shortly before his tenure began, mutilated bodies were left, on occasion, around the city. They were eventually attributed one killer, the so-called Torso Murderer. Ness never caught this supposed serial killer, and there are those who claim this fact plagued him with doubt the rest of his life. Married three times and most likely infertile, Ness died a penniless alcoholic in Coudersport, PA. Like Ulysses Grant before him, he managed through a co-writer to squeeze out a biography before his death and it is that book that made it possible for him to be so popular, to this day, especially, it would seem, among hip-hop artists.

Of course, it is easy to simplify a man's life, someone else's life, just as it is to simplify a murder case - when you are looking for a particular narrative, you can bend the facts however you like. Ness was a successful Safety Director, bringing Cleveland up to the 1930s with modern police techniques that brought down crime and arguably improved the quality of life in the city.