In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland’s Torso Murders
By James Jessen Badal

The crime:

A serial killer stalked Cleveland in the 1930s, leaving chunks of his dismembered victims scattered about in different places. He was never captured, and to this day it’s still debated how many people he may have killed, though he’s usually credited with an even dozen.

The book:

In his Introduction to what is still the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the Cleveland killings, James Jessen Badal mentions how he complained to a newspaper staff writer “about the sheer amount of digging sometimes required to nail down relatively minor facts,” and how he “could work for days hunting information that would yield only half a sentence of finished text.” “‘You’re writing a book of record,’ he [the staff writer] remarked casually – his way of reminding me such frustrations went with the territory.”

In the Wake of the Butcher is the kind of book that true crime aficionados really appreciate, being “a book of record” on the famous series of killings that rocked Cleveland in the 1930s. Badal mentions Philip Sugden’s masterful The Complete History of Jack the Ripper as a sort of model, which is aiming high indeed but I don’t think he’s far off. A later, more popular book, American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s Jack the Ripper by Daniel Stashower, covers a lot of the same ground (while putting more of a focus on Ness), but I still prefer Badal’s work not just as a source but for its quickness and readability.

Of course, being a book of record does involve the odd “just the facts” data dump. For example, this isn’t how you want to set a scene:

Monday, September 23, was a pleasant fall day in Cleveland with a high of 71 degrees. After school at about 5:00 in the afternoon, two young boys – sixteen-year-old James Wagner of 4511 Gallup Avenue and twelve-year-old Peter Kostura of 4465 Douse Avenue – tossed a softball back and forth along the upper edge of Jackass Hill, a sixty-foot slope on the south side of Kingsbury Run where short stretches of both East 49^th and East 50^th meet the gully.

Thankfully, there isn’t too much of this. Instead, Badal moves things along briskly and the material is well organized around chapters dealing with each of the discovered bodies followed by a round-up of the possible suspects.

There’s no denying it’s a puzzling case. There was an abundance of evidence, but it pointed in different directions and the police didn’t have the forensic capabilities to test it as thoroughly as they would today. And so questions proliferate.

So, for starters: “When he disposed of his victims, the Butcher seemed to manifest an odd combination of obsessive neatness and casual sloppiness. Or, despite appearances, was everything carefully arranged? Was there some dark, obscure personal meaning behind every detail of the scenes he left behind?”

Moving on to other basic questions: Was there any significance to the way the bodies were cut into pieces, or was that just something the killer did to make their disposal easier? Was there a sexual element to the killings, given that some of the male victims had been emasculated? But then women were killed as well and there was no evidence of specifically sexual violence. Some heads were never found – did the killer keep them, or just dump them some place where they were less likely to turn up? And why did the killer drop off body parts, even from the same body, in different places? Why were they wrapped up or put into boxes? “Is there some pathological explanation for this,” Badal asks, “or are the reasons purely practical?” Why was there evidence that some of bodies had been chemically treated? Did the Butcher kill all of them or were some of the bodies stolen from a morgue? Was there a single killer, or a pair of killers at work? Or perhaps a killer cult? Were the victims linked in some way? And who were the victims? Only two, possibly three, were ever identified. Were they all transients?

All of these questions have to be kept in mind when evaluating the various suspects. Though in fact there seems to have been only one suspect  who was seriously considered. Despite the arrest and eventual police murder (as it almost certainly was) of the pathetic Frank Dolezal, he almost assuredly had nothing to do with the killings. Nor did any of the other individuals Badal mentions. Which leaves us with Dr. Francis (Frank) Edward Sweeney.

Sweeney fit the very basic profile that detectives came up with, ticking the boxes of being a former doctor, a big man, and mentally disturbed. Eliot Ness, for one, seemed convinced of his guilt. But despite hauling him in for extensive (and extra-legal) questioning, there was never any hard evidence connecting him to the murders. One thinks of the oft-quoted wisdom of Sherlock Holmes (oft-quoted by Holmes himself): that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I’ve never understood this, as when you rule out the impossible all you’re left with is the possible, which is not necessarily the truth, or the actual.

The reason such an aphorism is misplaced in the case of the Butcher is that it suggests that when you rule out all the other suspects, the only one left, Sweeney, must be the perp. But this is a step that goes much too far. Sweeney is only the most likely of the available suspects. “I roughly estimate that we have checked approximately 7300 suspects in connection with these crimes,” the lead detective on the case, Peter Merylo, would relate in his memoirs, “and it is very doubtful whether the real torso killer was ever amongst them.” Of course, at this distance, and with all of the original police reports having disappeared, it’s impossible to be conclusive, but I’m inclined to agree.

I’ll end with just a couple of notes on the supporting material. On the plus side, for those with strong stomachs there are lots of pictures, including grisly shots of body parts both in situ and at the morgue. On the other hand, there are only a few maps and these are lousy: difficult to read (unless you’re already familiar with Cleveland streets) and with none of the key locations marked (accompanying text tells you where to look). So a hit and a miss there.

Noted in passing:

Americans have gotten bigger over the last several generations, growing both taller and wider. Obesity has been described as an epidemic, affecting some 1/3 of the population and contributing to a decline in average lifespans for the first time since they started keeping records of such things.

What has also changed is the public perception of obesity. Once upon a time appearing to be well fed was a sign of one’s affluence, which it may still be in certain parts of the world. But in the U.S. being overweight is now largely seen as a marker of lower class lifestyles involving little exercise and lots of junk food.

Given this sad state of affairs, it was interesting to return to the world of yesteryear when people, and especially poor people like the denizens of Kingsbury Run, were smaller. This is where Badal’s attention to detail turned up something interesting. Here are the height and weight of some of the Butcher’s (adult male) victims: 5’11”, 150 pounds; 5’11”, 165 pounds; 5’5”, 145 pounds; 5’10”, 145 pounds; 5’5”, 155 pounds; 5’7”, 145 pounds. No evidence of super-sizing there.

By comparison, in 2020 the average U.S. man’s weight was 195-200 pounds.

Takeaways:

There are suspects in any unsolved crime. And some of those suspects may seem more likely than others. But you have to keep in mind that the “most likely suspect” can only be a judgment made from a line-up of available suspects, and in many cases, “none of the above” might be likelier still.

True Crime Files