The Torso Clinic, as the press came to call it, met at seven the next evening in the ballistics lab on the second floor of the Central Police Station. Shortly before seven, grave-looking men began filing into the stark, high-ceilinged room. Work desks with comparison microscopes had been moved to one side, as had various file and card cabinets, to make room for rows of folding chairs; an aisle had been left to allow the slide projector its path to the screen set up before them. Few of the men were taking their seats as yet; they were studying in churchlike silence the wall of torso-murder photos the coroner had arranged for his guests. Coroner Samuel Gerber had also set a table, just in front of the large bulletin board where the photos were thumb-tacked, a table covered by a white cloth as if a meal were about to be served; but rather than china and silverware, the coroner provided an arrangement of human bones, including several skulls. The photos, and bones as well, were clearly labeled as to which victim or victims were represented.
Ness had stood in the hallway greeting the clinic attendees, shaking hands, thanking them for coming at such short notice. Among them were Dr. G. Clifford Watterson, professor of anatomy at Western Reserve University medical school; Dr. Louis A. Williamson, superintendent of the Newburg state hospital for the insane; Police Chief George Matowitz; County Prosecutor Frank T. Cullitan; Sergeant Hogan, head of the homicide squad; several other doctors, including a psychiatrist in the probation department of criminal courts; and various detectives, including Merlo and Curry, all of whom had worked one or more of the individual killings.
A brace of reporters had also been invited, to give evenhanded coverage to all the papers. The representative of the Plain Dealer was the last to show.
"You sure you know what you're doing?" Sam Wild, lighting up a Lucky Strike, asked Ness.
"Yes."
Wild was a tall, pale, bony-looking man in his mid-thirties. His hair was dark blond and curly and his features were pointed, giving him a pleasantly satanic look. He wore a white seersucker suit and a blue bow tie and a straw fedora with a blue band.
"Your self-confidence is an example to us all," Wild said, exhaling smoke, smiling, looking like a happy cadaver. "But you're putting more on the line than just your good name, you know. Like your ass, for instance."
"Sam, I'm just doing my job here."
"Bullshit. Your job is to be an administrator. Your hobby is chasing crooks down. But I'm not complaining. You always do right by me where the headlines are concerned, and this is sure as hell no exception."
Wild had been exclusively attached to City Hall, specifically to cover the activities of the safety director, for well over a year now.
"I'll get you your headlines," Ness said.
Wild laughed. "Christ, you're a smug son of a bitch! Well, I'm with you, pal. Only, you lead the way. I'll be right behind you- watching behind you."
"With my 'ass' on the line like it is," Ness said with a quiet smile, "that'll come in handy."
Wild's smirk dissolved and he stared at Ness with a curious blankness. "Aren't you afraid?"
"Not really."
"Don't shit me, Eliot. Don't you realize what you've done?"
"Sure. I'm risking embarrassment… maybe a career setback.. if I don't pull this one off."
"Embarrassment? Career setback? You've come out and publicly made the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run your personal public enemy number one! That sick fucking son of a bitch is into wholesale human slaughter."
"I noticed," Ness said, taking Wild's arm, leading him into the lab, where the men were settling into their chairs, to one of which Ness led Wild. "Now sit down and get out your notepad. You ain't seen nothing yet."
"I haven't been covering this ghoulish damn story-"
"Well, you are now," Ness said, and sat him down.
He walked down the aisle and turned and faced the assemblage of men, many of whom were trusted colleagues, such as Cullitan and Matowitz, while others-such as the various doctors who'd been asked in as experts-he knew only by reputation.
"Again, my thanks to all of you for rallying at such short notice," he said. "This is an emergency measure, as with the recent discovery of Butcher victim number nine, it's clear that these inhuman killings have reached epidemic proportions. It's my hope that this conference will channel various expert opinions-pointing the way toward a solution to this mystery. I'd like to turn the proceedings over to Coroner Gerber."
There was polite applause as Coroner Gerber, a small, sallow man, rose from the front row and began by taking off his suit coat. Most others in the room followed the coroners lead, as the several wall-mounted fans weren't nearly up to combating the warmth of this summer night. Ness, who left his coat on, sat in the front row.
Gerber, eyes large and dark and mournful behind wire-frame glasses, was a man of forty who looked older, white beginning to overtake his dark hair, including his mustache, lines creasing his face.
Nonetheless, he had great energy as he spoke, moving restlessly before his audience.
"This mass-murder mystery is the equal of any of the famous mass-murder cases known in history," Gerber said with a strange combination of enthusiasm and dread. "Equal in interest, gruesomeness, and-most important, gentlemen-ingenuity on the part of the murderer." He glanced toward the back of the room and said, "Lights."
And the lights went out and the projector came on. In photos sometimes larger than life, the sorry parade of dismembered bodies began.
Of the victims whose bodies were found by the two boys at the bottom of Jackass Hill on September 23, 1935, one had been identified, through fingerprints: the younger man, Edward Andrassy, twenty-eight years old, a minor street tough in the so-called Roaring Third precinct, the seedy, crime-ridden area adjacent to Kingsbury Run. Possibly a homosexual, Andrassy had once been employed at Cleveland City Hospital as an orderly. The older, stocky victim had not been identified.
On January 26, 1936, in the Roaring Third itself, the next victim emerged, in several installments. First, a local butcher, attracted by the insistent barking of a dog behind a nearby factory, found various body parts of a white woman-lower torso, right arm, both thighs-wrapped in newspaper, left in two burlap bags and a half-bushel basket. Thirteen days later, the left arm and lower legs turned up behind an empty building on Orange Avenue, SE, near East Fourteenth Street. Though the head had not yet turned up, identification was made by fingerprints, an identification confirmed by the woman's ex-husband, who recognized an abdominal scar. The woman was Florence Polillo, a forty-one-year-old, heavyset, heavy-drinking prostitute.
On June 5, 1936, two colored youngsters playing hooky from school were wandering Kingsbury Run much as had those two other boys in 1935. Just half a mile from Jackass Hill, the boys noticed a pair of trousers balled up and stuck under a tree on the embankment. One of the boys grabbed a stick and poked at the pants, and a head rolled out and tumbled to their feet.
This was the head of the handsome young man, thought to be a sailor, whose heavily tattooed body had turned up intact in bushes nearby; the elaborate body markings seemed to insure prompt identification. While the sailor's fingerprints were not on file, a poster detailing his tattoos and including a photo of his handsome, almost pretty, dead face had been widely circulated to the press (and was still on display at the expo). To date, he remained unidentified.
On July 22, 1936, a man's head had been found separated from his body; the two lay fifteen feet apart in the weeds near railroad tracks and a hobo camp, in the dismal, desolate Big Creek region on the West Side of town. This victim-like the tattooed apparent sailor-had not been emasculated. He remained unidentified, his death mask on display at the expo.
On September 10, 1936, a hobo hopping a freight spotted two halves of a male torso bobbing in the fetid, stagnant pool where the sewers flowed out from under Kingsbury Run into the Cuyahoga. Police fished out the torso halves, then with grappling hooks brought up the lower legs and thighs. Then they provided a diver with the thankless job of the decade: to go exploring for the arms and head in the pool of excrement. When this task proved as fruitless as it had been unpleasant, the pool was drained, flushed with a fire hose. No head. No arms. No identification. Also no genitals: the Butcher had, with this victim, reverted to his emasculating ways.
February 23rd of this year, the upper torso of a young woman washed up on Euclid beach from the icy waters of Lake Erie, where it had apparently drifted from the Cuyahoga. The woman was not identified, but the discovery caused police to recall another similar incident.
Two and a half years before, on September 5, 1934, a man gathering driftwood on that same beach had discovered the lower torso of a woman; a few days later, a suitcase containing the headless upper torso was fished out of the same waters. Prior to the February 23rd discovery, Gerber conceded, this slaying had not been connected to the Mad Butcher. It had not yet been officially added to the roster.
On June 5th, a fourteen-year-old boy walking under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, kicking stones, kicked a skull. The rest of the skeleton was nearby. The body had probably been under the bridge for nearly a year, Gerber said; the victim had been decapitated, but the skeleton was otherwise intact-including bridgework with three gold teeth. From the formation of the jawbone and the skull, Dr. Watterson, professor of anatomy at Western Reserve University School of Medicine, had deduced the victim was a colored woman.
"Which brings us to the most recent victim," Gerber said as slides of the Third Street Bridge discovery began filling the screen, "who has yet to be identified. What we know about this deceased gentleman is that he was approximately six feet tall, weighed one hundred and eighty-to-ninety pounds… and his heart, liver, and various other vital organs were removed. Lights."
As the lights came up, the men on the folding chairs winced as their eyes got used to the light. Ness glanced around at them; this was a somber group, sickened and perhaps numbed by the shocking, dismaying material they'd viewed in Gerber's wall display and his slide presentation. Overkill on Gerber's part, perhaps; but overkill on the part of the Butcher, most certainly.
Ness rose, turned, and spoke to his audience. "Seeing this panoply of the Butchers handiwork should bring home to us just what it is we're facing-just what it is we have to put an end to. Now, I've asked Dr. Strauss, our county pathologist, to say a few words."
Strauss, a dignified, heavyset man, displayed on an easel a large chart of the crimes, comparing them as to dismemberments, condition of bodies, clothing, and other factors. He mentioned that the decapitations were invariably made between the third and fourth vertebrae of the neck.
"The muscles in the neck had retracted," Strauss said, "which indicates that the heads of these victims were cut off while they were still alive… or at least immediately after death, while their reflexes were still operating. Ah, but the woman found at Euclid beach
… that's the second woman found there, I should say… evidence indicates she was decapitated after death. Otherwise- cause of death could well be decapitation."
Silence hung in the room like a dark, heavy curtain.
Strauss smiled pleasantly, said, "Thank you, gentlemen," took his chart off the easel, and sat down. The wall-mounted fans churned the air.
Ness stood, thanked Strauss, and said, "While in a few instances we've recovered the heads of the victims, I think it's significant that the heads and hands are usually missing."
Chief Matowitz, a friendly-looking bear of a man whose crisp blue uniform bore its customary red lapel flower, spoke from his front-row seat.
"By 'significant,'" Matowitz said, "you mean these are the items by which we'd most likely be able to identify the victims."
"That's right."
"But those items have turned up from time to time," Matowitz said.
"Yes," Ness admitted. "I think in those instances, the murders may have been more spontaneous than others. My feeling is that, for the most part, the killer has stalked his prey, possibly getting to know them, associating with them for several weeks or even months before the kill."
Dr. Williamson, the psychiatrist, spoke from the second row; he was a small bald man in a tan suit. "On what do you base this conclusion, Mr. Ness?"
Ness smiled. "It's less than a conclusion, Doctor. It's part instinct, maybe a little bit common sense. The victims here seem to be of the lower strata of life-little or no family ties, vagrants, drifters, perverts, prostitutes-living on the fringes of society. Specifically, in the vicinity of Kingsbury Run."
"What does that tell you, Mr. Ness?" Williamson asked.
Ness could detect no skepticism in the psychiatrist's voice; it seemed an honest question. He gave an honest answer: "To associate with such a group-without arousing suspicion-the murderer must have been of the same physical makeup… that is, a white male, probably a known frequenter of the area."
"Why a male?"
"Well, let's say probably a male. At any rate, well developed and strong enough to do the heavy… let's call it, disposal work required. Hauling bodies in the dead of night, that sort of thing. Probably, if he does indeed associate with his victims, he is in their same general age range-twenty-five to forty."
Dr. Gerber, who'd been standing patiently to one side, said, "Let me say that I concur wholeheartedly with Director Ness. It seems to me that the slayer has gained the confidence and possibly the friendship of his victims before beheading them. What we have here, I believe, is that rarest of criminals-the killer who kills for the sheer love of it-a man who sees himself as God, with the power of life or death."
Silence again draped the room.
"I'd like your thoughts, Doctor," Ness said to the psychiatrist.
"I don't have many worth sharing at this point, I'm afraid," Williamson said with good-natured chagrin. "I can tell you only that this murderer does not fit into any recognized form of insanity."
Prosecutor Cullitan, a big man in his late fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and wire-frame glasses, turned and looked at the psychiatrist, startled. "Are you saying this killer is not insane?"
"Hardly," Williamson said. "I'm saying this is not a variety of insanity readily diagnosed and treated. I have done some reading about mass murderers of this general type… and I have encountered nothing in my research that closely parallels this. There seems to be a sexual basis to at least some of the crimes-the emasculation of the men, in particular-and it is my understanding that there was sexual attack in several of the cases…"
Up at the front of the room, both Ness and Gerber were nodding. This fact had not been made public, and it sobered-shocked-the already sober and generally shock-proof audience of men.
"… and that the sexual assault was performed on both male and female victims."
"That's right," Ness said.
"Jesus," somebody in the audience said.
"I would propose," Williamson said, "that there may be a reason, other than clouding identifications, where… shall we say, collecting certain body parts is concerned. For one thing, keeping certain parts might be viewed as, well, putting together a trophy collection. For another, we may have a case of genuine necrophilia here."
"What the hell is that?" somebody in back said.
Sam Wild.
Ness repressed a smile; he could not remember seeing the generally unflappable reporter look so… flapped.
"Sexual interest in the dead," the psychiatrist said, looking back at Wild.
"What do you mean… 'interest'?"
"He means sex with the dead," Ness said.
"Oh, Christ," Wild said wearily. "How do you expect me to put that in the paper?"
"I can spell 'necrophilia' if you like," Williamson offered ingenuously, and uneasy laughter rocked the room.
"You may have a point, Doctor," Ness said. "There is some evidence of attempts at body preservation-chemicals applied to the corpses, refrigeration, that sort of thing. What is confusing here is that there are enough elements, enough of a consistent modus operandi, to identify all of these victims as genuinely 'belonging' to the Butcher. But nonetheless, the Butcher is all over the map-men, women, studiously planned killings, impromptu killings, this victim emasculated, this one not, this one sexually assaulted, this one not.. even organs missing, in the most recent case."
"May I have a word?"
In response to the deep, distinctive voice from the third row, Ness said, "Most certainly, Dr. Watterson."
Dr. Watterson stood, a distinguished-looking, darkly handsome man in his mid-fifties; a surgeon of some renown, professor of anatomy of Western Reserve, Watterson's manner was one of complete, confident authority.
"All of these cases," he began, "indicate dissection by someone showing keen intelligence in recognizing anatomical landmarks as they were approached. As you know, I was called in on several of these cases to give an expert opinion; so I have examined some of the physical evidence itself. The word 'butcher' has been bandied about, and I think it is inappropriate-the technique here is not that of the slaughterhouse-although the subject may indeed have used a butcher knife. We are dealing, I believe, with a doctor or a medical student or possibly a veterinarian. Someone with definite knowledge of anatomy, and at least rudimentary surgical skills. No layman could have attempted such meticulous incisions. We are dealing with an intelligent human being-most likely not a denizen of the lower strata."
Watterson sat down.
Ness said, "Thank you, Doctor. Your views make a lot of sense-and they don't, incidentally, contradict my own. I agree with you that our killer is probably well educated and from the 'right side of the tracks.' But he's going slumming-with a butcher knife."
Watterson nodded from the audience.
Ness said, "Detective Merlo-a few words about your efforts?"
Merlo stood, but Ness motioned him to come forward. The thin, serious-looking detective said, almost shyly, "I wish I had more to report. Obviously our man is still at large. I've been on this case, with a variety of partners, since the beginning… well, at least since the first Kingsbury Run killings. At any rate, we've questioned more than fifteen hundred persons, mostly unsavory types in various hobo shantytowns and in the Flats and Kingsbury Run. Every butcher-shop employee in the city has been brought here to the Central station to be questioned. Every doctor in Cleveland and the surrounding area has been subjected to the most thorough scrutiny. We've interrogated medical students, hospital employees, parolees from all state mental institutions, keeping up surveillance on the latter. We've investigated hundreds of letters from almost everywhere-'hot tips' that never led us anywhere. We've crawled through rat-infested sewers, sorted through city dumps, fished body parts out of water.. you name it. And I admit, without shame but without pride either, except for the pieces of the victims in question, we've come up empty-handed so far."
"Not quite," Ness said. "Of the suspects Detective Merlo has brought in for questioning, we've held on to forty-some who were found guilty of offenses ranging from misdemeanors to robbery, burglary, and assault."
The audience began to applaud, but Merlo waved them to stop.
"I appreciate the sentiment," Merlo said, "but I'd prefer we postpone the congratulations until this sick bastard is either dead, or in jail waiting to die."
There were nods of approval in the audience, and Ness put a hand on Merlo's shoulder, saying, "There's been some play in the press about the safety director's office taking charge of this investigation. And that happens to be true. I plan to be personally involved-but Detective Merlo remains on the job. I'm partnering him with one of my own top investigators, Detective Albert Curry, who with Detective Merlo was at the scene of the first Kingsbury Run find."
Ness gestured to Curry, who stood and turned and smiled tightly to the assemblage and sat down.
For the next hour the group discussed and probed the slayings, and finally Ness said, "Gentlemen, I appreciate your attention and welcome these comments, insights, and ideas. But let us keep in mind-tonight we're right where we were the day the first body was found."
The group, many of them nodding solemnly, rose and began threading their way out of the room.
Wild approached Ness and said, "So, you think because you're not a vagrant, you're safe from this guy."
Ness shrugged.
"If that's what you think," Wild said, "you're as nutty as he is. Nuttier. You've declared war on a mass murderer, you fruitcake."
'Well," Ness said pleasantly, "he knows where he can find me. Buy you a drink?"