The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (58 page)

of the November 1983 telephone conversation between On March 15, 1986, 37-year-old James Burns was Lucas in Texas and Toole in Florida, monitored by prowling leather bars in search of a companion for the police? At the time, Henry and Ottis had not seen or night, undeterred by his own diagnosis of AIDS two spoken to each other in at least seven months, deprived weeks earlier. Vagrants found his body in a London of any chance to draft a script, but their dialogue lends basement, mutilated with a razor, sodomized, and chilling support to the later confessions.

smeared with human excrement, his tongue bitten off in LUCAS: Ottis, I don’t want you to think I’m doing this the frenzied attack that took his life. Three weeks later, for revenge.

on the afternoon of April 5, AIDS victim Anthony Con-nolly was found by children playing in a railroad shed, TOOLE: No. I don’t want you to hold back anything his body slashed and smeared with human offal in a about me.

carbon-copy homicide.

LUCAS: See, we got so many of them, Ottis. We got to Lupo was leaving a gay bar on the night of April 18

turn up the bodies. Now, this boy and girl, I don’t when he met an elderly tramp on Hungerford Bridge know anything about.

and something inside of him suddenly “screamed out at
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LUPO, Michele

the world.” Assaulting the stranger, Lupo kicked him in stocking, but once more his prey escaped. This time, the groin and strangled him on the spot, afterward police received a full report and escorted the victim on a dumping his body into the Thames. The following day, tour of gay bars to identify the culprit, finally spotting Lupo met Mark Leyland at Charing Cross, and the men Lupo on the night of May 15. A search of Lupo’s home made their way to a public restroom for sex. Once there, revealed one room converted to a modern torture Leyland changed his mind, whereupon Lupo pulled an chamber, and his confiscated diaries were reported to iron bar and attacked him. Escaping with his life, Ley-contain the names of many prominent connections.

land reported the incident as a mugging, later telling the Convicted at his trial in July 1987, Lupo received four truth to police after Lupo’s arrest. (He has since disap-life sentences and two terms of seven years each (for peared.) Victim Damien McClusky was last seen alive in attempted murder), with the judge’s assurance that in a Kensington tavern on April 24, 1986. His body—

his case, “life meant life.” Interpol investigated other strangled, raped, and mutilated with a razor—was dis-mutilation deaths in Amsterdam, West Berlin, Ham-covered some time later in a basement flat.

burg, Los Angeles, and New York City, seeking connec-On the night of May 7, Lupo picked up another gay tions to Lupo and his various trips abroad, but no partner, attempting to strangle him with a black nylon further charges were filed.

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M

“MAD Butcher of Kingsbury Run”

tive. The younger man, identified as 29-year-old The gully known as Kingsbury Run lies like a scar Edward Andrassy, was a bisexual ex-convict with a across the face of downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Sixty long record of petty arrests in Cleveland. Retraction of feet deep in places, the ancient creek bed is lined with the neck muscles on both corpses pointed to decapita-more than 30 pairs of railroad tracks serving local faction as the likely cause of death.

tories and distant cities, bearing cargo to Pittsburgh, On January 26, 1936, a Cleveland butcher was

Chicago, or Youngstown or whisking commuters to alerted to the presence of “some meat in a basket”

posh bedroom communities like Shaker Heights. Dur-behind his shop. Investigating, he was stunned to find ing the Great Depression, Kingsbury Run was also a two human thighs, one arm, and the lower half of a favorite camp site for hoboes and a playground for chil-woman’s torso. The upper torso, lower legs, and miss-dren with time on their hands. In the latter 1930s, it ing arm were found behind a vacant house on February became the focal point of America’s most fascinating 7 several blocks away, but fingerprints had already murder mystery—a puzzle that endures to this day—

identified the victim as Florence Polillo, a 41-year-old though, in fact, the case had its origins elsewhere, on prostitute. Her head was never found.

the shores of Lake Erie.

Four months later, on June 5, two boys found the sev-On September 5, 1934, a driftwood hunter found the ered head of a man in Kingsbury Run, a mile from the lower portion of a woman’s torso buried in sand at spot where Andrassy and his nameless companion were Euclid Beach, eight miles east of downtown Cleveland.

found in September 1935. Railroad workers found the The victim’s legs were severed at the knees, her skin dis-matching body on June 6, but victim number five colored by the application of a chemical preservative. A remained anonymous, despite publication of numerous coroner extrapolated height and age from the pathetic distinctive tattoos. His fingerprints were not on file in evidence available, but victim number one did not Cleveland, and he had not been reported missing.

resemble any of Cleveland’s known missing women.

On July 22, 1936, the naked, headless body of an She was never identified, police adding insult to injury unknown man was found beside Big Creek in the sub-by their stubborn refusal to count her as an “official”

urb of Brooklyn, across town from Kingsbury Run. The victim once a pattern of crime became apparent.

only victim slain on Cleveland’s southwest side, this A year later, on September 23, 1935, boys playing in new “John Doe” would also be the only victim killed Kingsbury Run found two headless male bodies, nude where he was found. Decomposition foiled all efforts to but for stockings worn by the younger victim. Both had identify the corpse.

been emasculated, and their severed heads were found A hobo spotted number seven—or a portion of

nearby. The older victim, unidentified, had died at least him—in Kingsbury Run on September 10, 1936. The five days before the younger, and his skin possessed a dismembered remains were floating in a stagnant pond, reddish tinge from treatment with a chemical preserva-and police divers were called to retrieve two halves of
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“MAD Butcher of Kingsbury Run”

the torso, plus the lower legs and thighs. The severed River, underneath the Third Street Bridge. Police head, along with arms and genitals, was never found.

retrieved the upper trunk and severed thighs that after-Decapitation had not been the cause of death, but med-noon, but other pieces surfaced in the days to come. By ical examiners could not identify another cause.

July 14, authorities had everything except the nameless Soon after the discovery of victim number seven, victim’s head, and that was never found.

Detectives Peter Merylo and Martin Zalewski were On April 8, 1938, a woman’s lower left leg was assigned to the “torso” case full-time. Over the next fished out of the Cuyahoga, behind Public Square. The two years, they investigated hundreds of leads, cleared missing left foot, both thighs, and two halves of the scores of innocent suspects, jailed dozens of perverts torso were hauled ashore, wrapped in burlap, on May and fugitives—all without bagging their man. The 2, but the victim’s head, right leg, and arms remained at press, meanwhile, ran banner headlines on the futile large.

search for Cleveland’s “Mad Butcher,” speculating end-The last “official” victims—male and female, killed lessly on motives, the identity of the victims, and the at different times—were found on August 16, 1938, by killer’s supposed surgical skill.

workmen at a lakeside rubbish dump. The new “John On February 23, 1937, the upper half of a woman’s Doe” was nothing but a skeleton, decapitated in famil-torso was found at Euclid Beach, almost precisely iar style, missing two ribs, plus both hands and feet.

where the first (still unacknowledged) victim was dis-Murdered no later than February 1938, he may have covered in September 1934. The lower trunk was found died as early as December 1937. The female victim was in Lake Erie, off East 30th Street, on May 5, while the cut into nine pieces, but all were accounted for. She had head, arms, and legs remained forever missing.

been killed sometime between February and April On June 6, the skeleton of a black woman—missing 1938, her identity forever disguised by advanced one rib, plus the bones of arms and legs—was found decomposition.

beneath the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. The victim was In January 1939, the Cleveland Press reprinted the decapitated, and Coroner Samuel Gerber placed her following letter, mailed from Los Angeles:

death sometime in early June of 1936. In April 1938, Chief of Police Matowitz:

the son of Rose Wallace “identified” his mother’s remains on the basis of dental work, but problems You can rest easy now, as I have come to sunny Califor-remained. Wallace had disappeared in August 1936, nia for the winter. I felt bad operating on those people, two months after the victim’s estimated date of death, but science must advance. I shall astound the medical and her Cincinnati dentist was deceased, his files profession, a man with only a D.C.

destroyed, rendering positive identification impossible.

What did their lives mean in comparison to hun-Detective Merylo accepted the shaky ID, but it brought dreds of sick and disease-twisted bodies? Just labora-him no closer to the arrest of a suspect.

tory guinea pigs found on any public street. No one Exactly one month after number nine was found, the missed them when I failed. My last case was successful.

lower torso of a man was sighted in the Cuyahoga I know now the feeling of Pasteur, Thoreau and other pioneers.

Right now I have a volunteer who will absolutely prove my theory. They call me mad and a butcher, but the truth will out.

I have failed but once here. The body has not been found and never will be, but the head, minus the features, is buried on Century Boulevard, between Western and Crenshaw. I feel it my duty to dispose of the bodies as I do. It is God’s will not to let them suffer.

“X”

No buried heads were found in Los Angeles, and the manhunt shifted back to Cleveland. On July 5, 1939, sheriff’s deputies arrested a Slavic immigrant, 52-year-old Frank Dolezal, and launched a marathon interrogation of their suspect. Dolezal eventually confessed to murdering Andrassy and Polillo, flubbing many details that were Coroner Samuel Gerber with a victim of Cleveland’s “Mad

“corrected” in later confessions. He later retracted all Butcher” (Author’s collection)

statements, charging detectives with third-degree tactics,
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MALVO, Lee Boyd, and MUHAMMAD, John Allen

and suspicious stains found in his flat were identified as as Robert Robertson. Coroner Samuel Gerber, responsi-animal blood. On August 24, Dolezal “committed sui-ble for handling most of the Butcher’s “official” victims, cide” in his cell, found hanging from a wall hook shorter reported that “The work resembles exactly that of the than he was, and the autopsy revealed four ribs broken torso murderer.”

by beatings in jail. Today, no one regards him as a serious In retrospect, it is clear that the Mad Butcher mur-suspect in the “torso” case.

dered at least 16 victims between 1934 and 1939. He On May 3, 1940, three male corpses were discovered may have slaughtered the 1950 victim as well, and in abandoned boxcars at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, speculation links the same elusive suspect with a series outside Pittsburgh. All had been decapitated, and the of “headless murders” around New Castle, Pennsylva-heads were missing; one was otherwise intact, while nia, between 1925 and 1939. No firm connections two had been dissected at the hips and shoulders. Killed were established in that case, and the number of New in the cars where they lay, the men had been dead from Castle victims has been wildly inflated by sensational three to six months, and all three bodies had been journalists, but the crimes were committed in close scorched by fire. The most “complete” victim was iden-proximity to rail lines serving Cleveland and

tified as 30-year-old James Nicholson, a homosexual Youngstown. None of the New Castle victims were ex-convict from Wisconsin. The killer had carved the ever identified, and the identity of their killer—like the word “NAZI” on Nicholson’s chest, inverting the “Z”

whereabouts of the Mad Butcher’s eight trophy

by accident or by design. Authorities unanimously heads—remains a mystery.