For the most part we learned about a decrease in crime during the depression era. This is a post, however, on the unsolved serial killings that took place in Cleveland which came to be accredited to the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run by the press.
It began in the fall on 1934 when a woman's torso with the legs severed at the knees was found washed up on the shore of Lake Erie. The body went unidentified and the incident was quickly forgotten.
Then the bodies of two decapitated, emasculated males were found in 1935 along the Kingsbury Run--a weedy ravine along the east side of Cleveland. The murders were dismissed as passion crimes when one of the bodies was identified as Edward Andrassy, a young man familiar to the police who had been having an affair with a married woman (her husband had threatened Edward's life).
In 1936 in January, the remnants of a 41 year-old prostitute were found behind a butcher shop. In May of that same year a decapitated head was found along Kingsbury Run. A few days later they found a body to match. Though it was heavily tattooed, police were still unable to ID it. At the end of July another headless body was found, this time across town from the Kingsbury Run. A few months later a homeless spotted the torso of a male while waiting for a train.
Over a period of two years, twelve more bodies were found. Despite money incentives in the papers and hundreds of suspect interviews, no one was ever charged with the murders. The remains of the final two victims were found in August of 1938 and after that, the butcher seemed to have disappeared.
There are a few theories as to the identity of the killer. Some suspect that it was a local doctor named Frank Sweeney. Later, an immigrant named Frank Dolezal confessed to the crimes, but recanted, claiming the police beat him to confession. Another theory is that the butcher moved to Los Angeles. And finally that it was a mentally unstable premed student who was from a wealthy Cleveland family.
