'American Demon' delves into Cleveland history and Eliot Ness's pursuit of a serial killer
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In the 1930s, Cleveland was beset by a serial killer who left his dismembered victims in various spots around the city, to be found by passersby, or in Lake Erie, where parts of victims would wash up on shore.
That decade was also when the young Eliot Ness, fresh off helping to bring Al Capone to justice in Chicago, moved to Cleveland and became the city's safety director where he supervised the police, fire and building departments.
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The two Depression-era stories fascinated Daniel Stashower, who was born and raised in Cleveland and now lives in Maryland. Stashower, author of nonfiction books including “The Hour of Peril” and “The Beautiful Cigar Girl,” loosely links the two stories together in a jaunty, fast-moving true-crime adventure.
The links are loose because, as Stashower demonstrates, Ness was far less involved in the hunt for a killer than one might have expected — and when he did finally get involved, he possibly did more harm than good.
Stashower suggests that Ness kept to the sidelines because the victims of the killer — homeless men and women, prostitutes and “hobos” — were people who lived at the fringes of society.
When Ness did get involved, it was, horrifyingly, by burning down a homeless camp and sentencing its inhabitants to work camps on the theory that if a ready supply of victims wasn't available, the killer might slow down his activities.
Ness in Cleveland more usefully occupied himself with systematically working to eliminate police corruption, which was plentiful.
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He also demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for alcohol, and, after his first wife got tired of his never being around, tried on a brief second marriage, in which he and his “artist and model” wife became “Cleveland's answer to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, throwing boozy, high-spirited dance parties, at least one of which ended with the new Mrs. Ness peeling off her dress and plunging into Lake Erie.”
Meanwhile, bodies, or, more usually, parts of bodies, kept turning up, in Lake Erie and elsewhere. Some appeared to have been hurriedly dumped, while others apparently were preserved before dumping, and more carefully placed. Often, the body parts appeared to have been cut with surgical precision.
Stashower describes the discoveries and the bodies in vivid, often gruesome detail, so the squeamish might want to steer clear.
Police officers, with varying approaches and theories, did their best to identify a killer or killers, with little success.
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Stashower does make a convincing case that the identity of the killer may have been known to Ness and others. Frank Sweeney, “a discredited doctor with a history of mental problems” who wrote taunting letters to Ness years later, after he had been institutionalized, is believed not to have been adequately pursued as a suspect because he was part of a politically powerful family.
The book is not just a story of Ness and the Torso Killer, but of Cleveland's three daily newspapers and the circulation wars precipitated by the killings. Lovers of lurid prose and efforts at euphemism will find plenty to relish here.
Anyone with an interest in the history of Cleveland, the fate of Eliot Ness or unsolved crimes should find this book of interest.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Eliot Ness chases serial killer in Daniel Stashower's 'American Demon'
