Cleveland Torso Murders

Case background and investigation

The Cleveland Torso Murders were a series of killings attributed to an unidentified offender, sometimes called the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History at Case Western Reserve University, the remains of about 12 people, seven men and five women, were found between 1935 and 1938, all of them decapitated and dismembered. Some researchers have argued that the true number of victims was higher, but 12 is the figure generally treated as the official count.

The first two bodies were found on September 23, 1935, in Kingsbury Run, a ravine on the city's east side. One was identified through fingerprints as Edward Andrassy, 29. A third victim, Florence Polillo, was found on January 26, 1936. Further remains were discovered between June 1936 and August 1938, including a man found on June 5, 1936, who became known as the Tattooed Man because of the six tattoos on his body. Andrassy and Polillo were the only victims positively identified; a third was tentatively identified as Rose Wallace on the basis of dental records.

The investigation involved Cleveland Safety Director Eliot Ness, county coroner Samuel Gerber and police detective Peter Merylo, who worked on the case for years. According to CBS News, the Tattooed Man remained unnamed even though his fingerprints and tattoos were recorded and a plaster cast of his head was shown to large crowds at the 1936 Great Lakes Exposition.

No one was ever tried for the murders. Frank Dolezal was arrested in August 1939 and, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, confessed to killing Polillo; he died in the county jail before any trial, in what was officially recorded as a suicide by hanging. Published accounts state that he had withdrawn his confession. Dr. Francis Sweeney, a physician, was questioned by Ness and has been named as a suspect in later accounts, but he was never charged and died in 1964. Neither man was convicted of any of the killings.

In the summer of 2024, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office began working with the nonprofit DNA Doe Project to exhume unidentified victims buried in a potter's field and to attempt identification through investigative genetic genealogy. Cleveland television station WOIO reported in August 2024 that the first two sets of remains exhumed were those of the Tattooed Man and a second unidentified man. The DNA Doe Project's case pages listed both cases as still undergoing testing when they were checked in September 2026, and no identification had been announced. The murders remain unsolved.