A new look at Torso Killer’s victims could reveal more about the mysterious killer

Authorities in Cleveland are working with a nonprofit to identify body parts left behind by one of America’s oldest known serial killers using genetic genealogy, nearly a century after they were found.

The “Torso Killer,” also known as the “Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run,” murdered at least twelve people between 1935 and 1938, according to the Cleveland Police Museum website. But recent research has suggested there could have been 20 or more victims in total, Cleveland.com reported.

Only two of the killer’s victims were identified. The bodies were rarely found whole, often missing heads that were never recovered.

Those that did had a head that was some distance away from the rest of their body, according to the newspaper Cleveland Police Museum, It is believed that they were wanderers who were not recognized in scattered sketches.

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Cleveland police, who have puzzled over the identity of Cleveland’s “Mad Torso Murderer” since 1934, had a new problem to solve when bridge tenders on the murky Cuyahoga River dragged five parts of a woman’s body from the water. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Two victims associated with the unknown killer were positively identified as Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo, according to the museum.

Andrassy, ​​a 28-year-old white man, was found decapitated, disempowered, clad only in socks and drained of blood in July 1939. His fingertips identified him, the museum said.

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Police searching the crime scene found the body of a woman, believed to be in her 40s, who has never been identified. Parts of Polillo, a waitress and barmaid, were found carefully wrapped in newspaper in January 1936. The rest of her body, excluding her head, was found ten days later at a different location. She was also identified by her fingerprints.

Dental records allowed the “unofficial” identification of a third victim, Rose Wallace. But according to the museum, police were unable to make a definitive determination.

Although no arrest was ever madePolice believe a surgeon named Francis E. Sweeney, who allegedly had the expertise and equipment to dismember bodies, was responsible for the murders. He was interrogated by police for a week but never confessed, according to the Cleveland Police Museum. However, after he committed himself to an institution, the killings came to a halt.

The DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization that conducts and helps fund genetic genealogy testing in cold cases, has teamed up with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office in an effort to put names to some of the 10 unknown victims.

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Detectives and a coroner examine the bones of two murder victims found at the East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump on August 16, 1938 in Cleveland. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore told Fox News Digital that there is “a very high probability that the DNA Doe project will be successful in identifying these individuals.”

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“In 1938, there was no such thing as DNA testing. It wasn’t even something that they probably could have imagined. And so the advances that we’ve seen in the last almost 100 years are just unfathomable to the people who originally worked on this research worked.” this case undoubtedly,” she said.

“You know, in the ’80s, DNA was being looked at for criminal applications. In the ’90s, it really started to come into use in the United States. But it really took a while for it to be accepted. I mean, we can for example, looking back at the OJ Simpson case, where the jury didn’t understand the DNA well enough to weigh it as heavily as we would today. Then over the past six years we have made another leap forward in the field of investigative genealogy.

“Direct-to-consumer DNA testing was introduced in the year 2000 by a company called Family Tree DNA. It was the first time we could test our own DNA to learn more about our family tree and genetic heritage,” explains Moore. ‘That became what is now called genetic genealogy. This is the combination of the use of DNA testing and genealogical data.

“So people have been genealogists for decades, hundreds of years, and really using data to build family trees. And we’re fortunate that today we have billions of records online that have been digitized, so most of us have already built our family trees for a long time.” ago, on time from the comfort of our own home.”

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So far, two of the bodies have been exhumed. One, which WOIO-TV characterized as the killer’s “most famous” victim, is known as the “Tattooed Man.”

Abandoned near the railroad tracks in the summer of 1936, the unknown man’s head was found about a quarter mile away from his body. Even after police fingerprinted him and widely distributed photos of his six tattoos, including the names “Helen” and “Paul,” he was never identified, according to the Cleveland Police Museum.

At the 1936 Great Lakes Exhibition, more than 100,000 people saw an exhibit that included a plaster cast of the man’s head and images of his tattoos, but no one reported recognizing him.

The second body to be tested was found on the Cleveland shoreline in the summer of 1938 and is believed to be the killer’s sixth victim.

Kingsbury Run is marked on this map with dots locating 10 of the 11 torso murders that occurred there in the 1930s. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

A single anonymous donor will fund the lab costs, DNA Doe told CBS News. While the remains may have been contaminated or compromised due to their age, Jennifer Randolph, the nonprofit’s executive director of case management, said DNA Doe has identified older remains before.

“We’ll figure out who the relative DNA matches are. We’ll build their trees, find those common ancestors and then, you know, build further or maybe look back a little bit to see who the unidentified individual is,” Randolph told WOIO-TV .

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“So there may still be people alive who know that these are individuals who were missing from their families and no one knew what happened to them,” Randolph said. “And regardless of that piece, especially considering the way they died, they deserve the dignity and justice to be remembered with their names.”

Moore told Fox News Digital scientists will face a host of challenges when working with such ancient remains.

“We’re dealing with degradation and potential contamination by bacteria. It’s very difficult to work on what we would call ‘ancient remains,'” Moore explains. ‘If you work with very old cases, you are almost certainly dealing with degradation where you cannot analyze all the DNA.

“Some of that DNA will be missing. And then, upon infection, we see that bacteria actually insert their own genome into the human genome. And so you need skilled scientists who are able to remove that bacterial genome and separate it from the human genome before we can explore our genetic genealogy.”

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But even older remains have been identified using this practice, Moore said, citing at least one victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, whose family was eventually notified in July of this year.

According to Fox 59World War I veteran CL Daniel was identified as one of the victims of the 1921 tragedy, and his family was notified 103 years later.

“I have some inside knowledge about that, and it was very, very difficult to obtain the DNA necessary to do genetic genealogy from those very old remains,” Moore said. “But there has been some success, and it has sometimes taken several rounds in the lab before they were finally able to get that DNA that was viable for our work. That’s pretty comparable, and it’s been very difficult.”