Rotten Mango - #172: The Cleveland Torso Butcher Serial Killer

Episode Date: June 12, 2022

They say Lake Erie is haunted. That’s where the “Lady of the Lake” lives. The bizarre pieces of the puzzle started to come together. A 14-year-old girl came out of the lake screaming, she claimed she saw a hand waving to her at the bottom of the lake. A few fishermen pulled up their line to find it tangled with a chunk of blonde hair. Human hair. A ferry operator claimed to see a suspicious bobbing object in the water. He said it looked like a head. What was going on? Why were body parts washing ashore? The dismembered “Lady of the Lake” turned out to be the first victim of the still free “Cleveland Butcher” serial killer. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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in all states or situations prices vary based on how you buy. Betting betta boo. Welcome to this week's mini-sode of rotten mango. I'm your host Stephanie Sue. And they say Lake Erie is haunted. Well, they say that all the great lakes are haunted. It's said that over 6,000 shipwrecks have taken place in the great lakes. Hundreds of them are still undiscovered.

That means thousands of bodies are at the bottom of these massive lakes in the United States. And when I say lakes, if you're not from the U.S. or maybe you are and you've never been to one, me, but if you go to like all the reddit threads, Lake is an understatement. These bodies of water are so massive. They're frightening. They're scary. It's, it's almost like this pit of nothingness. You don't really know what's going on. Now, the lady of the Lake is often associated with Lake Erie, which yeah, the name itself is pretty Erie. They call it Ererie eerie.

Eerie isn't like creepy, right? So if you know anything about urban legends, you might think that the lady of the lake is just some sort of rumor. Some sort of ghost that haunts the dark lake in the middle of the night. One might say that her lover had cheated on her. Maybe he took his mistress upon a boat on Lake Eerie, and the lady had shown up to overturn their boat and all three of them met their fate in the murky waters. Maybe teenagers report seeing her floating across the still water, her long white gown dripping wet, her hair in front of her face weeping. Maybe she appears to men on boats, or couples on boats, warning them that danger is ahead, laughing while she does so.

But that's not really the story of the Lady of the Lake. In fact, her story is much scarier, it's much more grim. The bizarre sightings come together like pieces of some sort of sick puzzle. It was Labor Day weekend. A busy season for Lake Erie, family is flocking to the beaches to get some fresh air. There was an unnamed 14-year year old girl who was amongst the crowd. And more than laying in the sand, you know, when you're 14, you want to explore the water, you want to get up in there.

It might have been a bad idea. Since she was seen screaming bloody murder, running full force out of the lake, she was tripping on the sand, splashing water, waving her arms about, what's wrong, what's wrong? She clamped. She saw a human hand waving at her from the bottom of the lake. Then a couple fishermen, on another day,

had caught their fishing line on something deep in the water. They're trying to haul it, and they're pulling, pulling. And now the freed fishing line comes bobbing to the top of the water, and there was a large chunk of blonde hair tangled onto the hook. Blond human hair was not a hairy fish. Strangely, near that exact same place, a fairy boat operator reported seeing a suspicious object bobbing in the water.

Well what did it look like? I mean suspiciously, it looked like a head. After these reports, authorities searched the entire area for three hours. No mysterious bobbing blonde head was found anywhere. But other parts were. Frank was not scared of the Great Lakes. In fact, Frank liked to go out there every single morning before work searching the beaches of Lake Erie for driftwood.

He wanted to burn this wood. He loved the cool morning breeze, the sun was shining. It wasn't strong, it wasn't blazing down on him, but the mist, it was nice. Shortly before he's about to turn around and head to work, something catches his eye. He looks over, and the water had washed something to shore. He's like, what is that? Looks like a tree trunk. Which would have been, you know, good news for Frank. So he skips on over. Only to discover. It wasn't a tree trunk. Of course it wasn't. It was the rotting half of a woman's dismembered body. Her legs were amputated at the knees. Her chest was amputated in the middle. There were no arms, no shoulders, no chest, and no head.

Frank fell back. He scrambled up to get get his neighbor he had to call the police. And this is the story of the lady of the lake. She's less of an urban legend, you know, less of a creepy story to tell over a campfire, but rather, the first victim of one of the most notorious unsolved serial killer cases in United States history. The Cleveland Butcher. As always, full show notes are available at ronminglepodcast.com, but there is an amazing book on this The Cleveland Butcher, and it's written by James Jessen Battle. I just want to say that he did impeccable research on this case, which must have been an incredibly frustrating process because there were so many discrepancies and even missing police reports, the author had to seek

out the largest surviving collection of files on this case, that was at the city's coroner's office. He investigated with the city morgue and going through the files from one of the lead investigators of this case really helped put things together. He said it was incredibly hard to accomplish since, again, there were so many reported inaccuracies and discrepancies in the released articles. For example, a media article once said that they confused a person's age with their street address.

Interesting. This person's age 9,542. Wendy Hill Drive. So this might be the most detailed comprehensive review of what actually happened with the Cleveland butcher, and we have James, Jess and Bedal to thank for that. Now, let's talk about it. The Cleveland butcher has often been compared to Jack the Ripper. Not for the sole purpose that it remains unsolved for the day. Not for the fact that both serial killers were incredibly gruesome in their killing methods, which they were. But more so because there are so many more questions than there are answers. Why did the

butcher drain the victim's bodies of blood? Why did he amasculate some of his victims? Like completely cut off all the male private parts. Why did he like to decapitate his victims while they were still alive? And what on earth was he doing with all their heads? Were they buried somewhere? Were they in his house a system sort of trophy? Not one suspect fits this theory perfectly. And not only that, the suspects that we talk about today, I mean, they're probably the worst bunch of people ever. There's a chicken fetishes who pays sex workers to decapitate live chickens while he masturbates. This is one of the suspects.

I mean, what I don't even understand. The whole thing is just so puzzling, terrifying, and there's just something about the unknown that makes a murder and a dismember case just even scarier. Now, it would take a while before anyone considered the lady of the lake a victim of a serial killer, and that's why she would be dubbed victim zero. When the pathologist took her body in, he concluded she had been dead for six months, and her body, at least this piece of it, had been in the water for about three to four months, but oddly enough, her flesh didn't look water clogged.

That net that whoever did this put her in some sort of container and then threw her in the water. Okay, makes sense, right? But the killer had preserved her skin. There was some sort of chemical around her skin. In fact, her skin was terrifying because it looked almost like red leather. Imagine a red leather handbag.

That's what her skin looked like. It said that her body was covered in calcium salt and it kept her from decomposing as quickly. Now, there was no DNA testing back then, so the only hope that they had in identifying the lady of the lake was a scar on her stomach. Oh, and the buried bones. You're like, what buried bones?

This sounds crazy, but I swear it actually happened. Two weeks before the lady of the lake's torso was found, a handyman called from a lake sure a state he was working at and he's like, okay, guys, police, are you listening to this? Get this, I'm at work and I found something. It looks like a human vertebrae. Like there's some ribs up in here. Yeah, and I think that there's still some molding flesh on the bones.

And I don't know what it is. I feel like it's human. There's a dead bird laying next to the rotting remains. I mean, it's creepy. Do you guys want to come out here and like, check it out? The deputy sheriff said, why are you calling us? It's probably some rotting remains of an animal. Just bury them in the sand or something.

It's not a biohazard, okay? It's not that serious. Just come on. Get it together. So the handyman buries the bones. And after the lady of the lake was found, all the cops are looking at each other like, oh my god, the buried bone situation was only like 30 miles away.

From two weeks ago, this has to be the lady of the lake. They call up the handyman, they're like, hey, do you know where you buried it? Do you remember exactly where? Of course he didn't. Are you kidding me? So it intense two day search and soos,os and finally the upper torso was dug out. A medical examiner determined it was the perfect match with the partial remains of the lady of the lake, but unfortunately she would remain headless and handless forever. So she would be unidentified.

It was impossible to fingerprint her or even provide a sketch for the public on what she looked like because her head wasn't there. All they could say was that she'd escarn her stomach. But now, at first, the police are like, the lady of the lake killed herself. That makes sense, okay? Maybe it was an accident. Maybe she was caught up in a boat propeller. But when you look at the dismemberment on her body, it was clear that these were knife marks, indicating that someone sat there and cut her with some sort of large sharp tool the kind of tools a

Butcher would use Okay, so you're telling us we're looking for a butcher But whoever also did this was familiar with human anatomy Because the dismemberment was skillful and it's it's not just about getting clean cuts But it's about knowing where the joints are on a human body It's not just about getting clean cuts, but it's about knowing where the joints are on a human body. The only mistake on her whole body

was when the killer tried to sever the right arm from the torso, they somehow missed the joint, and it made the killer grab a saw instead and use brute force to hack through the shoulder blade. Wow. But other than that, the dismemberment was considered very precise, very skillful. So this is where the debate came.

Half the police sat there and said, okay, so it's not a butcher. Maybe it's more of a surgeon? Some sort of medical practice person, because they have to have that much knowledge. Then the other half of the police force said, no, it's gotta be a butcher. A surgeon would never have to use a saw to cut off the arm.

They would know exactly how to manipulate the knife around the joint. Okay, butcher, surgeon. I mean, the police were kind of confused. But beyond that, why did he even cut her up? Why did he put a chemical preservative on her if he was just gonna dump the body? The police thought to start there. They tried to trace the salts, the calcium salt on her body, to see if they could trace

it to the killer. But of course they're not gonna be able to. Tons of readily available household appliances were calcium salt-based. There were no leads. Then a year later, something very, very bad happened. Two teenage boys were tossing around a softball around Jack Ashill. I'm dead serious, that's the name of the hill. Who names these things?

Did you know that there is a river called Murder Kill River? And Jack Ashill? So, yeah, it's like somebody is trolling us all. Anyway, they're throwing around the ball on the hill, and this is on Kingsbury run, which is kind of pertinent to the story Kingsbury run is at this point Well prior to this it was a prehistoric riverbed like the river flows there It's a beautiful place for families and picnics and cute first dates There's tons of green grass trees flowers kids just roam about But after the economic decline in Cleveland,

Kingsbury Run just vanishes. And in its place is this grand field of weeds, bushes, trash, debris, thick smoke from the nearby factories. Instead of families and their kids, people who were without jobs, without homes, they would come to Kingsbury Run. And because of that, railroad police regularly patroled the area. So this is kind of important later. Now, side note, Jackass Hill no longer exist.

I mean, I guess it's sad. I don't know. Not sad. It's up to you. Anyway, two teenage boys are tossing around their ball. And at one point, one of them throws it over the hill and he watches it tumble all the way down. He's like, you go get it. Now you go get it. You're the one that threw it. Well, I don't want to go down there alone. You come with me. No, just go. Are you scared or something? Okay, fine.

We'll race. So the two boys book it down the hill and Peter, the pacemaker, King, the three-minute mile king, leaves James in the dust. Peter and James are the two teenage boys. James can't even keep up. Peter reaches the bottom. He picks up the ball and he's about to do a little victory, woo-woo-woo, but he sees something, and James said,

it's like his face just turned bright white like a ghost. He saw something that was so scary, so terrifying that he ran back up the hill, past James with that much speed as he could muster. What is it, Peter? He could barely push out the words. He had seen a headless body at the bottom of the hill. What? The boys run off to find the police and the police they go down there to a surprise.

They knew that they had been called in for a decapitated body-finding, but they didn't know that they were going to find the bodies of two decapitated bodies. One of the bodies was completely naked except for his socks. And he was laying, there's a picture of this. He was laying on his side in the grass, no penis, no testicles because he had been emasculated, and no head. But it's almost as if someone is peacefully laying on their side in bed. It's a very eerie picture. The other body was naked, but there's evidence that something had been poured on his body to make it look like red leathery skin. Oh, so it's the same killer.

Yes. Now, shockingly, both men, like I said, had been emasculated, not metaphorically, but literally. Emasculation is the removal of both the penis and the testicles. It's different from castration, which is just the removal of the testicles, but there's sometimes used interchangeably. And typically the words are used to describe non-medical procedures of removal. For example, there was a mass-masculation period in Imperial China, where in the 1600s, UNIX, aka slaves or servants to the royal court, would be emasculated. They all had to have their penis chopped off. And it was done pretty painfully. You would be tied up on a table, like no painkillers,

you don't get anything, you don't get frickin' why did I want to call it adrenaline, you don't get anesthesia, your legs are tied up together, people are pinning you down and someone would just come up and slice it off. Yeah, but that was actually a job that a lot of people want. Yes, so they would get it done. Yeah, they want was actually a job that a lot of people want. Yes, so they would get it done.

Yeah, they want, no, they want to become the... The unit, yeah. So a lot of fathers would emasculate their sons. It's not easy to get it very, very hard because they have to hand-select the best of the best to be the servant to the king. So it was really, really special to be one of them. They have a lot of power, a lot of money, a lot of influence.

Geez, Louise. Yeah. Yeah, they would get their testes off and they would wash you with water and stick a tube inside that open wound inside the urethra so you could still pee during the healing process if not that that Euretha would close up. It was supposed to ensure that the unit would be loyal to the emperor afterwards, which is just wild. Because listen, if someone chopped off my left titty, I don't think loyalty is what I'd be thinking. I'd be a little, I'd be pissed.

Because they were emasculated, it's that they were too, they lose connection with the family. They lose connection and want and desire to seek out and creating a family. And it's even said that there was this belief that if you take away the testicles and the penis, there's less aggression and less ambition inside that person, so there'll be a lot more docile. They'll be less likely to want to overthrow the king and become the emperor himself, if that makes sense.

And on top of that, it ensures that no servants are impregnating the emperor's wives or concubines to ensure that the lineage to the throne is pure. And if you're like, oh, this is gross, I hate this. Well, in ancient China, they would also emasculate men for rape or infidelity. Which like, I guess I'm not so passionately against the rape one. But sometimes it was religious. Buckle up, hold on to whatever you have left because it gets wild. An intense Christian sect in Russia was known to practice

emasculation. The woman would have their nipples breasted and most of their labia as well as their clitoris cut off and the men would get rid of all their penis and their testicles. They felt like getting rid of these parts of their body was getting rid of sin. There's actually a condition named after this Christian sect in Russia called the Scoptic Syndrome and it's where someone is so preoccupied with the idea that their genitals are leading to sexual guilt and sexual sin that they'll engage in self-mutilation. Then you have another group of people that like the idea of castration because it's their kink. Yeah, it's a kink. Okay, so typically this kink, they won't go through with the actual castration since it would ruin the fetish, but I believe that most of the kink centers around the anticipation and

the fear of castration as a way to get off. So you have someone threatening to cut off your balls. And you're like, no, keep going. It is, I didn't know, but it's a bigger kink than I thought, to didn't know, but it's a bigger kink than I thought, to each their own, by the way. So back to the story, these men were emasculated and drained of blood. And in this sense, none of the above seems to apply on why they were emasculated. They were not uniques, they were not religious, they probably didn't have a castration kink. So what kind of killer would do something like this? Nearby, the police find pieces of rope in a real to archon, a two-gallon water bucket that had some sort of oily substance inside.

They tested and it's car engine oil, laced with blood and some long black hair. It is very creepy. The police were able to immediately ID one of the victims. His fingerprint was in the freaking system. 29-year-old Edward and Drazi. Edward was known to the police, I guess you could say. He had a criminal record. He definitely wasn't a major criminal, but he did get into a lot of trouble. He loved going to the bars and start drunken fights. It's rumored that he liked to carry around an ice pick, because you just never know when

things go south. And whenever you might need it, it said that whenever Edward was super drunk, he would go to the local graveyards and just plop down on a grave, a random person's grave and take us snooze, take a nap. He had a hard time keeping a job, he did briefly work at a hospital, but that turned out to be a tumultuous relationship. At that one hospital, he was fired and rehired 11 times. Which like the HR manager is a paperwork god at this point or not. I don't know why you would keep rehiring that. And this is the hospital where he's met his wife,

Lilian. Now the way that they meet is so dramatic, like everything in this case. Lilian was taking care of a female patient and all the other nurses warned her. They're like, you know, don't get too close to that female patient. She seems like she's catonic. I know.

I know most of the time she sits on the floor scaring off at the wall, okay? But she's extremely dangerous. Never turn your back on her. Keep your distance. She could sqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq C'mon, you any second. Well, Lilian walked past the patient's room one day and the patient is sitting next to an open window, just getting soaking wet from the rain that's pouring into the room. Lilian goes in to either move her or close the window but the patient just starts violently attacking her,

just screaming bloody murder, like I'm talking full-on nightmare scene. Thank God for the handsome orderly Edward and Drazi who comes to the rescue and subdues the patient. And that's how the two met and they fall in love. Now soon Lillian is pregnant and she realizes this is nothing I didn't shine any armor that I thought I was hoping for. He was never home.

He was out all times a drinking, one time they got into such a nasty fight Lillian grabbed a high heeled shoe and cracked him on the head with it. There's like a permanent scorn is head from it. Whether you're doing intense to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread

at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are, whenever we need it. Download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier or paid subscription starting at $12.99 per month. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in there?

Aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this? No, who's gonna catch us? What a police! It was the height of the crack era and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're gonna want some drug dealers and I know how

to do it really well. This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100% I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series, available now on the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a big guy man, but I love being that dirty mother f***er. Lilian moved out to live with her parents.

She gave birth to her daughter that Edward only met like one time. Now, two weeks before Edward's murder, this is where things start getting a bit tense. Edward was accused of having an affair with some man's wife, and that man allegedly threatened to kill Edward for sleeping with his wife. Or at least that's what Edward was telling his family. He said no, I didn't sleep with anybody's wife, but that's, it's just, it's a rumor I never had an affair. He also never told't sleep with anybody's wife. That's, it's just, it's a rumor I never had it at a fair. He also never told the family the couple's names.

A week after that, Edward seemed to be even more depressed and upset. What's going on? Edward, what's wrong? Why are you so down? He told them that he had gotten into a fight with an Italian guy. And he said, well, I stabbed the guy.

And now is getting his after me. And I'm terrified, and I don't know what to do. This family's like, well, let us help you, what's the guy's name? Who did you stab? No, no I can't, I can't. If you do something it's just gonna make it worse besides, the whole gang is behind him. And a few days before his death, Edward came home with a head wound. Edward what happened?

Oh, I can't remember. What do you mean? What do you mean you can't remember? I just don't remember. What do you mean? What do you mean you can't remember? I am, I just don't remember. Edward was allegedly scared for his life and suspicious things were happening around him. And not too long after that, Edward's body was found. His body was autopsy'd and the corner gassed. He was shocked and scared all at once. The cut on Edward's neck was very clean cut, indicating that the killer was very strong and confident in his actions. But that's not the terrifying part.

The terrifying part was that Edward, his cause of death, was the decapitation. He wasn't- How would they find out what that? So there's no other fatal wounds in his system, and it doesn't seem like he had overdosed on any drugs. Oh. That is the only wound. Now, it's a very unusual way to murder someone.

The police know that they're dealing with someone incredibly deranged, and there was some hope that Edward wasn't conscious when he was decapitated, but there were rope burns on his wrist. So it's believed that he was tied up when it happened. Side note, another depressing end to this saga, is that the two boys that discovered the bodies, they all died within a decade. Mind you, they were teenage boys, but Peter the older boy was struck by a drunk driver, and James was killed during World War II. So who killed Edward? It's almost like a riddle to the police in the sense that all the potential suspects have crazy motives and even crazier alibis.

It almost seems in this case not a single person was normal. Reports start pouring in, and one of the strangest leads initially was the strongest, was a man who was seen on top of Jackass Hill multiple times, surveying the area with binoculars, and he looked Italian. Reliefs that's what the witnesses said, so could it be that this Italian man was the one that Edward had stabbed and he was scoping out the best places to put Edward's body later. Well, the police they end up taking a few years to find him, and when they finally find the Italian guy, the whole thing turns out to be a K-drama.

The mysterious man with binoculars said, no, no, no, no, I wasn't trying to find a place to hide a dead body, you have to believe me, I wasn't, I was just, I was waiting for my lover. You're what? Okay, so I was having an affair with a married woman. She lived on the other side of King's Berry Run. Whenever a husband left house, she would come out and wave a tablecloth out the window.

As a signal to me, as a white tablecloth that I could come over and, you know, to the dirty. I was always watching from the top of Jackass Hill with my binoculars for the signal. I swear you have to believe me. I wasn't trying to dump a body. I was trying to dump a nut. Sorry what? But the story checked out and the police moved on to a cult. They called it a voodoo cult, which is kind of insensitive.

Now allegedly, Edward had visited a man a part of this quote voodoo cult before his passing. And when the police went through Edward's belongings, they found four eerie photos. That's how they described it. All photos were of Edward in four different poses, standing, sitting on a bed, on a chair, surrounded by pictures of nude or semi-nude woman in a Japanese lantern. Now, the photos weren't sexually explicit in any way,

but it was strange, it was just weird, it was a strange photo shoot to say the least, it's hard to see the creative directive behind the photos is weird. The police were able to find the person who took the picture and it was a 50 year old man, John Mosner. Now, he said, I'm sure Edward visited my house a few times, but I can't even remember the last time he came over. I don't remember the last time I saw him if I'm being honest.

The police looked around his house and it was the same style as all the decor in the pictures of Edward, so it's clear that the photos were taken in John's house, but they couldn't arrest him for that. Later the police get a tip, hey, you need to check out that John Mosner guy. He's really creepy. He tries to hit on everyone and anyone and I'm just saying he's weird. Now the police go and they search his house and what they found it's so random and kind of shocking. They find 67 pieces of

silverware belonging to different hotels in the area. John Mosner like to go and steal spoons from hotels. You go to a hotel, maybe he would eat, maybe he wouldn't, but he would always take a spoon or a fork, just kind of bizarre. Like, why are you stealing random spoons from hotels? It's not implied that he was like doing drugs with the spoons, just what are you doing? They also found some suspicious stains

on the floor of the attic, a small box of love notes from young men and an intense hunting knife with a six inch discolored blade. Now, the police are ecstatic, they thought they had their man, they excitedly arrest him, they do a little victory fist palm, their hand cuffing him, and they really jump in the gun, or the knife on this case. Because the dark staining on the knife was just rust, and the dark stains on the attic will it was hard to argue that it was enough to kill someone, is very little blood. So they had to let John go, but John would later be arrested for charges unrelated to the murder.

With Wilde's thought, later, the police find a picture in John's collection of a young sailor that would later resemble a victim that was believed to be by the Cleveland Butcher. So was John Mosner the Cleveland Butcher? I don't know, it's hard to say, because everybody's a suspect. Now, the second victim that was on the bottom of Jackass Hill, with Edward, presented a much bigger challenge to the police. He was killed weeks before Edward, which means that his fingerprints were unable to idea because he was so badly decomposed.

They were able to determine that the cause of death again was decapitation. He was dubbed John Dough One. Now the police did not connect these murders with the lady of the lake, even though the same calcium salt was used to preserve the skin, and they were all decapitated, but since one was a woman and disposed in a lake, the police assumed that the two men were part of some love triangle or love square gone wrong,

because both their penises were gone. I mean, it only made sense. But there was a question that would knock the detectives. Remember how Jackass Hill was set to have pretty strong police presence? Well nobody said that there were any bodies at the bottom of the hill. And yet nobody saw the bodies the day till the two teens went down there, but it's not a hidden place. So that meant that the killer must have brought the two bodies here at the same time. But it's clear that these two men were killed somewhere else and at very different

times. There's weeks in between. They were immasculated someone else too. And since their heads were nowhere to be found, the bottom of the hill is definitely not the scene of the crime. So if the killer brought the two bodies down together and John Doe died much earlier than Edward, where was his body storage for weeks?

Why would the killer wait to bring his body down with Edwards? And to add more to this puzzle, the bodies were heavy. You can't drive down the hill. So the only way was to park at the top of the hill and bring the bodies down, which is a lot of work and brute strength. I mean, okay, I'm like maybe he forget to roll the bodies down, but he didn't. There were no marks on the bodies or the weeds or the grass to suggest that he did, so the killer carried each corpse down, I mean, just the physical strength

that that would take is insane. And why did the butcher leave the clothes and the robe and the bucket of oil for the police to find? I mean, I get it. Testing wasn't right back then, but it's still known then, as it is now, the more evidence, the more little pieces of this

and that that you leave for the police, there's so many more ways to tie you down to the crime. Then let's talk about the ham situation. A few months later, 2.30 a.m. Josephine was in bed with her husband and she couldn't fall asleep. In fact, she was losing her freaking mind. Her dog would not stop barking. Just please, can we just get a moment of peace?

Just can we just sleep? There is nothing outside. But as Josephine lay there, angry, annoyed, and trying to fall back asleep, she saw she could hear some noises in the yard outside. It was very creepy, she did not investigate. But the next morning, a neighbor had woken up from Josephine's dog barking, and she decides,

you know what, I'm gonna investigate. This dog has been driving me nuts all night. Around 11 a.m. she starts poking around. Now, the apartment or the houses were near the heart manufacturing plant. And she sees two baskets sitting in the snow. She pears inside briefly. Ham.

Ham wrapped up in a newspaper. Huh, that's weird. She walked to the nearest meat market cause it was just down the alley and she said, hey, I don't know if it's like a wrong delivery, but I think someone just left ham at the heart factory. Like, just, I think I was meant to go to you or maybe it's your ham, I don't know if it's like a wrong delivery, but I think someone just left ham at the heart factory. Like just, I think I was meant to go to you or maybe it's your ham, I don't know.

There's just like a basket of ham. They're like, what? Oh shoot, that's our ham, we gotta get the ham. So the owner runs to the ham basket and he peels back the newspaper and he being a meat shop owner realizes it that it wasn't ham. It was frozen human body parts.

The police are immediately called to the scene and inside of the newspaper wrappings were the lower half of a woman's torso. Two thighs, a right arm and a hand, there were pieces of coal embedded in the skin. Later that day, the police find a third burlap bag, which was blood stained and had some chicken feathers stuck to it.

Strange. The remains belong to one person, and she was IDed through her finger trips, as Florence Palillo. She was a part-time waitress, bartender, and a sex worker. And honestly, she had a rough life. She was battling alcohol addiction. People who knew her said that she was just as sweet as can be. She was generous.

She was kind. But you know, she had been dealt some really shitty cards in life. The only known photo of her was her mugshot, and her head was never found. The autopsy did uncover a lot of terrifying things. Lawrence's entire reproductive system had been removed. Her entire body had been drained of blood. Her heart was virtually bloodless, and all the cuts on her body, since she was heavily dismembered, they were incredibly clean, which indicated the use of a knife rather

than a saw. So that's kind of important because a lot of criminologists say that, if a nor- I don't want to say normal person, but let's say you're a first-time killer. Let's say you kill out of crime of passion, or maybe you kill spous for money. If you want to dismember them, which is already very rare, you would typically use a saw. You wouldn't really use a knife. I mean, if you have a saw. Now, on certain parts of the body, the killer seemed to be enraged. He was like wrenching limbs from their sockets, just like pulling them apart. So why was the killer draining the blood? Do you guys remember Richard Walter from the Vadox Society? One of the leaders in criminology, the serial killer profile, he said, not only does he

believe the heads, well most of the severed heads that were never found, he believes that the butcher was keeping them as trophies. And he believes the drained blood was a profound clue to the butcher's perverted sexual pleasures. Richard said he believed the butcher was draining the victim's blood in a body of water. So the victim could be in a lake or a bathtub, just in some sort of body of water. And the pleasure the butcher would feel draining his victim's blood, it's like when you try squeezing a sponge under water at home.

You feel the water gently tickling the hairs on your arms. You feel the soaked sponge, all of the water come out through your fingers. Maybe it's a cool sensation. Maybe the water is cold, but the water inside the sponge is warmer. He said that's the kind of pleasure, the butcher experiences, when he drains the victims of blood. An intense sexual pleasure. So the police, I mean, they don't have much to go off of. They don't have Richard Walther, they did notice the chicken feathers though, so they started investigating. A local chicken shop was nearby, and this is, you know, nearby the third burlap sack

that was found. They interviewed the owner, he was unable to ID the burlap sacks, they searched his entire place, they found nothing. And again, the police made a grave mistake of not realizing that Flos Marta was connected to the two men on Jocke Ashill. They had no idea they were dealing with the serial killer. They thought that their number one suspect was a man named Harry Martin, because Flow was in a relationship with this guy at one point and he was horrible. He had given her multiple black eyes and beat her often, and the police thought he's got to be the killer.

But they never tracked him down for the murder. So more remains of flow were found, but her head was still not found to this day. The next victim was found not too long after, and the victim's disposal was a bit different. Two young boys were skipping school so they could go fishing, and while they were headed to their fishing destination, they spotted what looked like a rolled up ball of trousers. Did someone lose their pants? No, how does that work?

They just took off their pants. Well, maybe after the lake, their original thought was, maybe they left their wallet inside the pants. We can buy snacks. So they start picking at it with a stick and it unraveled like a Christmas present. And they were just left standing there, jaw dropped, forever traumatized, staring at a decomposing severed human head. The boys ran home, found the nearest adult and told them everything.

The pictures of the head, I mean it's terrifying. The victim's eyes were closed as if he was peacefully sleeping and had just been wrapped up in a blanket. The police knew that the head had to be placed there in the last 30 hours and that whoever's had this was was not killed at the scene. For one, there was no blood in the area and two, the rest of the body was nowhere to be found. The police autopsy the head and all they could gather was that he was maybe 20, 25 good-looking and there were hesitation cuts. Now, this could be argued that the butcher was not good at what he was doing, or more realistically, that he was torturing his victims.

Since that, it's how he killed them by decapitating them. So they just have nobody just the head, and they decide to put it up for display at the city's mark. They're like, hello, public! Come on through and see if you can identify this man's head. More than 2,000 people filed through the mark, I would say more so because they were fascinated and intrigued by seeing a decapitated head. Nobody recognized him. So the rest of the body was found eventually. And he had a ton of tattoos. A lot of them had some sort of nautical meanings like an anchor. And this is why they believed that he was a sailor. Now, he really resembled a picture that was in John's house. Remember the guy? That took pictures of Edward?

With the rusty knife, that was part of the quote, voodoo cult. Well, when he was confronted, he said, oh, that guy? No, it can't be the same guy, because I took that picture 20 years ago. And you said that this victim is what, 2025? Well, that means he would have been like an infant

in the picture. That would make sense. The police never fact checked it, though. They just won with it. They were like, yeah, I trust you. I mean, it could have been very an infant in the picture, that would have made sense. The police never fact checked it though. They just went with it. They were like, yeah, I trust you. I mean, it could have been very well taken a year ago, yesterday. But the sailor would never formally be identified. Soon after, another body was found.

He would be dubbed John Doe 3 and then another, John Doe 4, and then quickly a John Doe 5. In any of these cases, no leads, no ID, nothing. All that they gathered was at the butcher, whoever he was was getting more violent. John Doe 5 had a split open chest and everything was removed. Someone had removed all of his organs. There were hesitation marks all around his body, and more bodies were found later. And they have been speculated to be the butchers, but they're not confirmed. So it's speculated that the butcher had anywhere between 4 to 2 dozens upon dozens of victims,

and all the leads were going cold. All of Cleveland now were certain. There's a freaking serial killer on the loose. And a few days later, two boys walk in home, they see a skeleton in a field nearby. They freak out, and since now the whole town is on edge there's this huge press and huge huge intense debacle over this freaking skeleton. Is it another butcher victim decapitated? Where is it? How long has this monster been hiding? How old is the skeleton? Shockingly a schoolteacher comes forward and says, wait that's mine. What? What do you mean

that's yours? Oh no, I'm not the Cleveland butcher. That was a gift. A what? So I inherited the skeleton from my father-in-law and I'm actually moving out of Cleveland soon. I don't want to take the skeleton with me, so I paid some neighborhood boys to bury it. And they didn't? I guess not. They just wanted the money. They just threw it into the field. On closer inspection, the skeleton was wired together in certain parts, so it made the story plausible. So they're like, okay, fine.

Now, this is the public making assumptions, right? Because they're scared. Why were the police so embarrassed? Let me tell you why. Well, the medical examiner was quick to announce that the quote victim had been dead for about a month, but in reality, the skeleton was over 15 years old. So it just made them look so dumb,

like the whole team, not just the medical examiner at the police, everybody looked dumb. So now the police, they gotta catch the killer to make up for their lost ego. They start exploring a wild goose chase of leads, including sex workers calling in a tip. Hi, this weird man was paying me to cinch his chest hair with a piece of burning paper.

He would have me light it on fire and he would lay there while I straddle him. And I would just put the, put the paper and the flame close to his chest hair and the smell of burning hair would fill the room and at the end he wanted me to pretend to stab him and he would ejaculate. Maybe that's the butcher. Another lead, a woman called terrified and said, oh my god, oh my god, I just saw a man. He was hacking at a severed head. It's gotta be the butcher, please help.

There's flesh flying everywhere in this parking lot. Turns out the man was butchering a watermelon. Yeah, which, I mean, I don't think that's a very sustainable way to get all the watermelon flesh, but it was flying everywhere. There were reports that the butcher was an escapee from a local mental hospital. Did you know? The butcher, he escaped. He just lost it one day.

Poof! His mind was gone. And he was plagued with these hallucinations telling him to kill. He was a former butcher. The police did go after a former butcher. He was tipped off by his neighbors who called to say, Hey, you know the Cleveland butcher? Well, I think it's my neighbor because he's chasing us around with an axe. Do you think it's him? When the police sit down

to talk to him, he said, oh no, no, I'm not the butcher. I'm just chasing the evil spirits away from my neighbors. I need to kill them. But only I need to figure out if they're male or female first. The spirits. The man was promptly arrested for chasing people with an axe. Speaking of random arrests that were made, do in part to the Cleveland Butcher investigation, someone called the police to say, hi, I was driving past the house and there's this man there, but more importantly his dog was outside just playing with a severed head. A human head, yeah, yeah it's weird. So the police expected it to be a severed chucky doll because you know how dogs are, but when they get there, what do you know?

Real severed head. Oh my. Uh-huh, the man was arrested, but acquitted on the basis that, well, they couldn't identify the head. And he was allegedly not the butcher because he really only had one dead body in his possession. Um, okay.

Yeah, then the police got called out to a gas station. There was a man wielding around a butcher knife, declaring, I now possess the deep secret. The secret everybody has been wanting of how to transplant heads. He said he could graft human limbs and swap heads with people successfully. You always say you wanted to look like her. Well, now I can do it. I can swap

your heads by the neck and nobody dies. I know how to do it. The investigation started looking like a joke. I'm going to be honest with you. Okay. And the circus was being led by Elliot Ness. He was put in charge of the case. And let's just say he didn't know how to handle his team. One of the police officers working on this case came out to say, the killer is most likely a marijuana addict because both the desire for thrill and homicidal obsession are easily induced by the loco weed cigarettes.

The loco weed cigarettes. Are you talking about a joint, sir? Is that what you're, I'm blind right now? I have never met a homicidal person that was high on weed. They're so chill. They're too chill. The investigation started targeting pretty much anyone that was without a home in Cleveland.

And the public was just... They were getting no good guidance on what to do. Who to be wary of? For example, NBC's unsolved mysteries had a segment dealing with the case, and they portrayed the killer as this weak neurotic little man, this little man that was upset and he had a little chip on his shoulder and he just wanted to show the world how big and bad he was. The authorities said, no, we're looking for a muscle man. And I knew that's what we're looking for, like bodybuilder status.

Yeah, those fitness gurus, you better watch out, could be a butcher. Was it a butcher or a surgeon, maybe a medical student? Most agreed that the butcher made the most sense. Now, Richard Walter, the serial killer profile, said this about the authorities. You don't have to be a butcher to carve someone into little pieces. You don't have to be an undertaker to drain them up blood.

The fact of the matter is, and I don't know if this is motivational or not But he said anyone can do it and do it competently. You just have to want to in addition the killer doesn't have to be big or powerful He can be a small man. All he has to be is clever If he can get people drunk then he can do anything Then another woman was found decapitated in Lake Erie. And of course, everyone was like,

oh my God, the Cleveland Butcher's second female victim in the lake, the third female victim. But in the lake, later authorities speculated that there was an abortion farm nearby. So abortion farms are like a really weird term for when abortions are illegal, women will go to kind of like a basement and they'll get an illegal abortion.

And so the police are like, don't freak out, it's not a serial killer, it's just an abortion gone wrong. And that's why. Now, this huge debate came to be on how to tell if she had an abortion or if she was pregnant at one point, and the whole debate literally circled around how big her boobs were. Like, it was just wild. People were sitting there, like professionals and investigators were sitting there arguing, well, her boobs were swollen, so just wasn't looking good.

Ultimately, the police knew nothing and they had no leads. Jane Del One would remain unidentified. More and more butchered remains were popping up all over the city. And Elliott Ness was feeling the tremendous weight and pressure of his drop. With the new victim popping up every seven months, it wasn't looking good for him or his future career.

He starts doing some questionable things, like questioning the coroner's professionalism essentially. I mean, listen, there's no easy way to break it to families or to communities that another dismemberment and murder took place, and that they haven't caught the killer yet. But the butcher was almost upping the ante. First suspected 13th victim, he scattered a bunch of the victim's dismembered body parts around a big butter can.

When the police opened up the butter can, the victim's head was inside. So yeah, the investigation was feeling extra desperate. What did they do? They start driving through all the impoverished areas of King's Berry Run, and they just fingerprint everyone that was without a home. And it was this weird feeling and everyone was like, wow, gee, thanks, police. I'm so glad that if the serial killer gets me and cuts my head off, but you can somehow find

my dismembered hand somewhere. At least you know, it's me that's missing ahead. That's great. I like it. It was bad. The police even put out a $100,000 reward, which led to a lot of questionable calls, like someone calling to tell the police that they know without a shadow of doubt in their racist little heart that the killer was either a sexually infected female sex worker or a insert racial slur claiming to be a doctor.

Excuse me, what? But the police also had some weird leads, like the chicken gardener. He had a weird kink. And that's why they thought he was the butcher. Let me explain. The chicken gardener was 25 when he first walked in to a chicken shop.

He was buying some chicken breasts for his pasta, maybe a soup. There was a woman working there. And she was in the process of slicing off the head of a live chicken. And he felt something he had never felt before. The amount of sexual arousal, sexual satisfaction he had gotten from that was unbearable. So once a week from then on, he would buy a live chicken.

Go to a sex worker, pay her to cut off the bird's head while he frantically masturbated. He once asked the sex worker to rub the bloody knife all over him. When the police interviewed the chicken gardener, they realized you couldn't be him. He would win set any of the crime scenes. He loved violence against chickens and not so much on humans. Or at least that's what the police thought. I mean, can they be sure? I don't really know. The detectives they let him go. Then, the police become preoccupied with the rumors about the butcher, that he was either a funeral home in Balmer or some sort of Morgan employee. They would know it to do. They had the tools like rubber sheets to pull it off and all the scalpoles and

stuff. There was a rumor that a mysterious doctor was a heavy drinker, and he had entered the operating room one day, and he had cut off the patient's head. While the nurses were horrified, during a routine operation, he was arrested and sent to a mental hospital, and he has escaped now, and he is the butcher. Then there was the letter that the police received from the alleged butcher. It read, Chief of Police, you can rest easy now, as I've come out to sunny California for the winter, I felt bad operating on those people, but science must advance.

What did their lives mean in comparison to the hundreds of sick and diseased twisted bodies? Just laboratory guinea pigs found on any public street. No one missed them when I failed. My last case was successful. I now know the feeling of other pioneers in the industry. Right now I have a volunteer who will absolutely prove my theory. They call me mad, they call me a butcher, but the truth will come out.

The police were able to trace the letter back to a doctor named Dr. Devere. They couldn't establish a link between him and the murders, so he was able to go, and that's terrifying that he's still a doctor. And that is the story of the butcher. That's it. There was another suspected victim of the serial killer after a 12 year long hiatus, and it really begged the question, was the butcher back?

Was this a copycat? Was this not the butcher at all in just another sick twisted mind? And even then, we still have so many questions. Where did the butcher meet his victims? How did he choose them? It didn't seem like he only went after men or only after women. Where did he kill them?

Why did he want some heads found and not others? Why did he emasculate them, drain them up blood? Why did he turn their skin to leather? Where did he kill his victims? I mean, his murders were gruesome. It would have left a ton of blood everywhere. Now, the police didn't let it go. In fact, a lot of people's lives were ruined

with the police trying to find a scapegoat. A man named Frank Dole is all was one of them. It was very clear that the police had fed him his confession and he did not want to confess and he was pressured. Even the head detective, Meryl O. Stepden, and refuse to believe that Frank was the killer, just it didn't make sense. And part of his confession, it just wasn't feasible.

He claimed to have thrown a victim's head into the lake, but at the time that he claimed he did it, the lake was completely frozen over. So how are you going to do that? Frank claimed that he was treated poorly by the sheriff's office and that he was beat by the police. His ribs were bruised and he had a bruised eye and nose, and the confession was beaten out of him. But while awaiting his trial, he mysteriously died in prison.

He had quote hung himself, sure he did. In 2010, Frank Dolezal, after his death, was cleared of all charges, and he was proclaimed to be falsely accused and likely murdered in prison. Then another guy named Frank was accused of being the butcher, and this whole thing was a saga. The head of the investigation, Elliott Ness, and Frank had some really intense rivalry,

I guess that's what you could call it. Frank maniacally wrote dozens of letters taunting Elliott and his family. His letters ranged from crazy to downright threatening and harassment. Frank's obsession would have made sense if he indeed was the Cleveland butcher, but we'll never know. He's long gone now. And that is the unsolved mystery of the Cleveland butcher. What are your thoughts? I mean, have you seen so many strange people all tied up in a case? And I'm talking about the suspects, by the way, not the victims. Richard Walter believes that it's not just four or five or even thirteen victims. He

believes with a serial killer profile like that of the butcher, there were more than 20 other killings in the Eastern Ohio and even Western Pennsylvania that clearly bear the mark of the butcher. He says, I believe the killings only stopped when he died of natural causes, was killed or committed suicide. So he believed the guy is dead? Yeah, but he's probably killed 20 plus people. And that's really scary to think is that zero killers, they only stop when they're caught or dead.

It's just something in their brains. They can't stop. Richard Walter ended it with, the killer was smarter than the investigators, and he proved it. He got sexual gained pleasure by creating dependence, dread, and degradation in his victims. He had the same desire that governed the behavior of modern serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. The saddest his pleasure is almost always sexual, and it's insatiable.

Like he will never be satisfied. And that is the story of the Cleveland Butcher. I hope you guys enjoyed today's mini-suit, and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode. Stay safe. Bye!