OH OH/PA - Kingsbury Run Murders, Cleveland OH/New Castle PA, 1930's

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OMG What a nut this killer must have been - 80 years ago. Where ever he was doing his dismemberments must have been a very bloody scene.
 
This is a fascinating series of murders. There is already a long thread on the subject in Cold Cases. The chief investigator of these crimes was none other than Elliot Ness, who had led the famous "Untouchables" in Chicago a few years earlier.
 
"Jane Doe II, victim 8, possibly Rose Wallace, was found beneath the Lorain-Carnegie bridge on June 6, 1937. It was estimated that victim number 8 had been dead one year when found, which casts some doubt that the victim was Wallace, who was known to have disappeared only ten months earlier. Dental work was considered a close match both by police experts and by her son, who felt certain that the victim was his mother. A definitive identification was not possible however, since the dentist who performed the work had died years before." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Torso_Murderer


I wonder if they have a photo of this woman and can do a photographic superimposition now?
 
This post has nothing to do with the torso murders, but involves some more recent unsolved homicides in the New Castle/Ellwood City PA area. Does anyone from that area remember a little girl approximately 4 years old who was murdered in Ellwood City PA in the early 90's. The murder would have happened near Pine Valley Bible Camp in Beaver County. The girl's name was probably Bethany.
 
Dexter Mills said:
Hello, everyone. This is my first post on this forum. I wanted to take a moment to greet you all and say I’m glad to be here.

My first post is in regards to the unsolved Kingsbury Run killings in Cleveland in the 1930’s. This case has fascinated me since I was a child. The mystery, since the perpetrator was never caught, and the unnerving level of violence present in the murders. I’ve posted a couple link below in case anyone is unfamiliar with the case.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/unsolved/kingsbury/index_1.html

Here’s a good fictional account of the case as well.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/unsolved/diary/index_1.html

The best resource on the case IMO is “In The Wake Of The Butcher” by James Jessen Badal. He reaches no conclusion about who the Butcher may have been but present several possibilities and lets the reader make their own choice. It was while reading his book that I first became aware of the killings that took place in and around New Castle, Pennsylvania during the same period. The similarities are quite peculiar.

The Cleveland cases featured expert decapitation and dismemberment, in some occasions while the victim may have been conscious. All victims were from the lower rungs of society. Indeed, only two were ever identified, Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo. The others were given numbers and nicknames (the Tattooed Man) in lieu of names. The series lasted roughly between 1934 and 1938.

In 1921, an elderly woman was attacked in her West Pittsburg, Pennsylvania home and virtually beheaded. Her house was next to some railroad tracks that ran through an empty, swampy no-mans-land. Two years later, pieces of a young girl’s body were found in a nearby river. Over the years, headless and chopped up bodies would turn up in what New Castle locals called the “Murder Swamp.” On one occasion, two victims has been arranged in grotesque positions at the edge of the swamp, with their heads partially buried nearby. By 1934, public furor reached a fevered pitch, and a large search party scoured the area for clues. The grisly killings stopped, but then, vivisected corpses began turning up in Cleveland.

Between 1939 and 1942, more bodies were found in and around the Murder Swamp in New Castle. An especially frightening case was when three bodies were found in abandoned railroad cars near McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania in May 1940. Three men beheaded. Only one identified, James Nicholson, a minor criminal and occasional male prostitute. One of the victims had the word “NAZI” carved into his flesh. The heads were never recovered. The final victim in the New Castle series was found in the fall of 1942 besides some railroad tracks, decapitated and unidentified, like so many others.
The one piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit is Robert Robertson, a derelict was beheaded in Cleveland in the summer of 1950. The victim and murder meet the criteria of the previous crimes. Where was the killer for almost a decade? Was the same person responsible?

Cleveland detective Peter Merylo, chief investigator on the case, became convinced that the same individual was responsible for both series of killings. With the exception of one butchery in the summer of 1936, they dovetailed perfectly. Merylo believed the killer rode the trains, either as a worker or a hobo, and performed the murders in empty railroad cars.

The similarities between the Cleveland and New Castle cases are numerous;

1- Expert decapitation and dissection.

2- Victims from lower rungs of society.

3- Bodies found near railroad tracks and out of the way places.

4- Kingsbury Run and the Murder Swamp are near carbon copies of each other.

5- Some victims heads buried (New Castle in 1920’s, Victim No.1 and Andrassy in Cle.)

6- Some victims tossed in pieces into river (New Castle, 1923, Victim No.9, 1937, Cle.)

7- Body parts covered by outdated newspapers in numerous cases in both locales.

8- In both places, the killer arranged some victims in macabre displays (See point 5)

9- Female victims in both cases completely dismembered and casually tossed away.

Much is made of Eliot Ness’s secret interrogation of a top suspect in Cleveland, who was in all probability, Dr. Francis Sweeney. He is detailed in the links I provided. The question remains, if Sweeney was the Kingsbury Run butcher, who committed the New Castle murders? Is it possible the doctor did them? Extremely unlikely. He had no known connection to New Castle, PA or the surrounding area, and was in medical school in St. Louis and in practice in Cleveland through the first series. It is possible two different men, unknown to each other, had the same specific psychosis, which entailed such gruesome murder?

The interrogation and surveillance of Sweeney persuades me that Eliot Ness and the rest of the investigators were grasping at straws, fixating on the best possible suspect, a disturbed doctor who lived near Kingsbury Run who probably got great enjoyment out of playing cat-and-mouse with the police for his own twisted reasons. Indeed, he sent strange postcards to Ness for years while a patient in various mental facilities.

Notably, Eliot Ness and Peter Merylo did not get along, probably due to the latter’s belief that all murders in Ohio and Pennsylvania were done by the same person. Ness and other poo-poohed these theories (as does Crime Library author Marilyn Bardsley.)

My personal opinion is that the Kingsbury Run and New Castle murders were indeed committed by the same person, a person who was not Dr. Francis Sweeney. There are just too many similarities to disabuse the notion for me. What happened to the killer? A man with this warped a pathology doesn’t decide to stop. He won’t stop until he’s locked up or dead. Given the late 1942 cut-off date, it’s possible he enlisted in the armed forces and was killed in World War II. Possibly he was locked away in prison or an institution.

The clue to his identity may lie with the very first elderly woman, killed in West Pittsburg back in 1921. Did the killer know her? She was murdered in her home, (none of the other victims would be found in a private residence) which suggests she knew the killer. Her head was not quite removed from her head, it hung on by a strand of flesh. This suggests her killer was a novice who had not removed a human head before. I’d personally like to know more about her, and about the New Castle murders in general. The only information I’ve found on them is in Badal’s book.
In summation, I think that we have a person who was extremely disturbed and dangerous, who killed far more often than people realize (a body count in the mid-20’s in Ohio and Pennsylvania,) and who got away due to the fact that he was before his time, and law enforcement was familiar with the type of criminal we now call the serial killer.

I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this subject, or if anyone knows anything more about the murders in and around New Castle, PA between 1921 and 1942. Thank you for reading.
Click to expand...

Hello,

I was wondering about this too. I have long been fascinated by the Cleveland Torso Killing case and my interest has been recently rekindled. In looking over this case again, I am paying special attention to the New Castle series. Since this thread started, has anybody learned anything about the New Castle series of 1921 - 1934? Primarily the identity of the elderly woman and the young girl, or perhaps any of the other victims? I would love to learn more, and if anybody has any insight or knowledge they can share, or point me in the direction of a resource I could use to research this further, I would be grateful.

JFG
 
I was reading the Wikipedia article about the Cleveland Torso Murderer, which said
The 12 victims were killed between 1935 and 1938, but some, including lead Cleveland Detective Peter Merylo, believe that there may have been as many or more than 40 victims in the Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown, Ohio area between the 1920s and 1950s.
Click to expand...
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Torso_Murderer"]Cleveland Torso Murderer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Cleveland,_Ohio_Map.png" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Cleveland%2C_Ohio_Map.png/220px-Cleveland%2C_Ohio_Map.png"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/7/77/Cleveland%2C_Ohio_Map.png/220px-Cleveland%2C_Ohio_Map.png[/ame]
I was wondering if these other victims had been identified or if they were like the majority of the Cleveland victims most of whom are still unidentified.
 
Fascinating - there are a lot of transplants from Pittsburgh to Cleveland because of the steel mills. It wouldn't surprise me if someone was involved in the steel mills or the railroads, given the transportation between those two cities at the time.
 
There's pretty good evidence that this individual killed 13 from 1934-38; those being the traditional 12 plus Victim Zero, the Original Lady of the Lake in 1934. He may have murdered four or five more but I'd be surprised if his tally reached 20.

The three victims found in the disused boxcars at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania in 1940 were killed in Youngstown, OH.

Regarding Merylo's 40, a few of the others (outside the 13) were identified.
 
Has a real profile been constructed on this case? I'd be interested in seeing what the profile of a non-gender specific, possibly sexually oriented serial killer would be. I know a little bit from reading books and watching shows, but nowhere close enough to guess. I'd bet money on male, but only because I'm playing the statistics game.
 
It almost certainly was a male although some thought a small round bloody "footprint" found in one of the boxcars could have been the heel mark of a woman's high-heeled shoe. Others thought that perhaps it was the mark of a crutch or a cane.
 
California-Black Dahlia and Evelyn Winters
Illinois-Susanne Degnan and Judith Andersen
Michigan-Lydia Thompson
New York-A couple of torsos, a male at Haverstraw, NY in 1936 and a female found in Lake Ontario near Oswego, NY in 1938
 
STANDREID said:
California-Black Dahlia and Evelyn Winters
Illinois-Susanne Degnan and Judith Andersen
Michigan-Lydia Thompson
New York-A couple of torsos, a male at Haverstraw, NY in 1936 and a female found in Lake Ontario near Oswego, NY in 1938
Click to expand...

Except for the torso in NY, they are all female victims?

Is the Evelyn Winters case the murder where the woman was found nude hanging from a tree? I can't remember the year; I think it was a few years prior to Elizabeth Short's murder?
 
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