Cleveland Torso Murders

Cleveland Torso Murders

Abstract
The Cleveland Torso Murders are presumed to have occurred between September 1935 and August 1938 before which one murder occurred that was linked to, but not identified as one of, the Torso Murderer’s victims and after which no further victims were found or speculated. The incidents occurred mostly in the Kingsbury Run area, a one mile stretch of industrial valley 60 feet below street level with a railroad passing directly through it. To the east of Kingsbury Run was the Roaring Third, a district composed of bars, gambling houses and brothels (Nickel, 1989 & Badal 2001). The crimes were committed by a serial murderer with sexual intent whose primary targets were part of a high risk population. Although sexual contact was not surmised the motivation was still sexually-based in the context of lust murder (Morton, 2005).

The Victims
The sexes of the victims in this case are split almost equally between males (seven) and females (five). Ten of the twelve victims were white and the remaining two were black (Nickel, 1989). This range of victims is common in lust murder cases (Arrigo & Purcell, 2006). The victims ranged in age from mid-twenties to mid-forties. Many of the victims remain unidentified due to the lack of heads and limbs so personal information about them is sparse. Only two were identified, victims one and three, both of which had criminal records and could be classified as sexual deviants, victim one a supposed homosexual and victim three a prostitute (Badal, 2001). Since no relatives or friends of any of the victims ever came to identify the bodies it is possible that the victims were part of the down and out crowd, living in the slum. These crimes took place during the Great Depression which increased the number of people living in the shantytowns and thus increased the offender’s pool of possible victims.
All of the twelve bodies were found headless and all but three had been further dismembered. Half of the victims were found...