Cleveland Torso Murderer

What the record shows

The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also called the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, is the unidentified offender held responsible for a series of killings in Cleveland, Ohio, between September 1935 and August 1938. According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, published by Case Western Reserve University, the remains were believed to be those of 12 victims, seven men and five women, all of whom had been decapitated and most of whom had been dismembered. Only three were ever identified. No one was ever tried for any of the murders, and the case remains open.

The first two bodies were found together in Kingsbury Run, a creek bed that runs from East 90th Street and Kinsman Road to the Cuyahoga River, on September 23, 1935. One was identified by fingerprints as Edward Andrassy, 29, a former hospital orderly; the other was never identified. On January 26, 1936, the remains of Florence Polillo were found near Orange Avenue and identified by fingerprints; her head was never recovered. According to the Wikipedia article, the later victims included an unidentified man with six tattoos found in June 1936, whose death mask was displayed to the public in the hope of identifying him, and a woman found under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in June 1937 who was tentatively, but never conclusively, identified as Rose Wallace. Nine more bodies were discovered between June 1936 and August 1938, most of them in or near Kingsbury Run, the Cuyahoga River in the Flats, and the lakefront. Most victims appeared to be transients or derelicts living in shantytowns; several were found long after death, and the heads of several were never found.

The investigation was conducted by the Cleveland Police Department, with Detective Peter Merylo working the case for six years, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Eliot Ness, the former federal agent, was Cleveland's director of public safety during the official murder period and took a direct role. Wikipedia reports that on August 22, 1938, six days after the last two bodies were found at the East Ninth Street dump within sight of City Hall, Ness dispatched search teams across the shantytown districts; the shantytowns in Kingsbury Run were then raided and burned, officially to clear unsafe housing and to fingerprint and move on potential victims. No further bodies attributed to the series were found in Cleveland after that date. Thousands of people were interviewed over the course of the investigation.

In July 1939 the Cuyahoga County sheriff's office arrested Frank Dolezal, a bricklayer who had known Florence Polillo, and announced that he had confessed to killing her. According to the Wikipedia article, Dolezal recanted and said the confession had been beaten out of him. He was found hanged in his cell in the county jail on August 24, 1939, before he could be tried; the death was officially recorded as a suicide. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History notes that despite intensive police work there was never sufficient evidence to make a case against any other suspect. Various other names have been put forward by authors and researchers since, but no person was ever named in a charging document in connection with the series.

Investigators and later writers have also considered whether the Cleveland killings were connected to dismembered bodies found in western Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that in May 1940 three headless bodies were found in boxcars in the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad yards at McKees Rocks, and that officials suspected the Kingsbury Run killer, but that an official link was never made. Some researchers argue that the Cleveland total is much higher than 12, with figures of 20 or more cited; Wikipedia also records a 1997 theory that more than one killer was responsible. None of these extensions is part of the official count.

The case has seen a new investigative effort in recent years. Cleveland 19 News reported in August 2024 that the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office had begun exhuming unidentified victims from unmarked graves at Memorial Park Cemetery in Highland Hills, working with the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses investigative genetic genealogy to identify unknown remains. Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Gilson said the work would be difficult given the age of the remains, and the DNA Doe Project said its aim was to return names to the victims. As of 2026 the offender has not been identified and, given the passage of nearly ninety years, is presumed dead.