By August 1938, the Cleveland Torso Murders had left bodies across Kingsbury Run, the Cuyahoga River, the lakefront, and the city’s industrial edges. In this second part, the case escalates when two more victims appear near the East 9th Street lakefront dump, practically under City Hall’s nose, and the pressure on Eliot Ness becomes impossible to ignore.

This episode follows the investigation as it broadens into medical conferences, dead-end suspects, and the growing belief that the killer knew Cleveland’s poorest districts intimately. It also traces Ness’s most infamous response: the Kingsbury Run raid, the burning of the shantytown, and the desperate attempt to disrupt a murderer who always seemed one step ahead.

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Links:

LaNae's Books: lmriviere.com

Request an Episode: timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com

Visit our website: timeandtalespodcast.com

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Collins, Max Allan, and A. Brad Schwartz. Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America’s Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology. William Morrow, 2021.

“NESS, ELIOT.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University.

“TORSO MURDERS.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University.

“The Torso Murders.” Cleveland Police Museum.

Schwartz, A. Brad. “How Eliot Ness Wound Up Hunting a Serial Killer in Cleveland.” CrimeReads, 6 Sept. 2022.

Wikipedia

Encyclopedia Britannica

In 1930s Cleveland, bodies began turning up in places most of the city tried not to see: Kingsbury Run, the river flats, rail lines, and waste ground crowded with poverty during the Depression. In this episode, we begin the story of the Cleveland Torso Murders—also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run case—and the nightmare that landed on Eliot Ness’s desk when victims started appearing decapitated, dismembered, and, in some cases, never identified at all.

This first part follows the early victims, the panic building around the killings, and the impossible position Ness found himself in: a famous lawman brought in to clean up a city where corruption, class prejudice, and chaos were already working against the investigation. It’s the start of one of the darkest unsolved serial murder cases in American history.

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Check out LaNae's books: lmriviere.com

Request and episode: timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com

Sign up for our newsletter: timeandtalespodcast.com

..............................................

Sources:

Collins, Max Allan, and A. Brad Schwartz. Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America’s Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology. William Morrow, 2021.

“NESS, ELIOT.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University.

“TORSO MURDERS.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University.

“The Torso Murders.” Cleveland Police Museum.

Schwartz, A. Brad. “How Eliot Ness Wound Up Hunting a Serial Killer in Cleveland.” CrimeReads, 6 Sept. 2022.

In 1892, in Exeter, Rhode Island, a grieving family exhumed the body of nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown in a desperate attempt to save her dying brother. This episode follows the real story behind one of America’s most famous vampire legends: tuberculosis, winter graves, folk belief, and the New England vampire panic that turned a family tragedy into a permanent piece of American folklore.

We trace Mercy Brown’s death, the exhumation in March 1892, the medical reality of consumption, and the wider fear that the dead could drain life from the living. It’s a story of grief, disease, and superstition in nineteenth-century New England—and why Mercy Brown still haunts American dark history more than a century later.

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Website: timeandtalespodcast.com

Email: timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com

Read LaNae's New Book: A Vow For Breaking

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Sources:

Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Bell, Michael E. Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires. Carroll & Graf, 2001.

Bell, Michael E. “Vampires and Death in New England, 1784 to 1892.” Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 31, no. 2, 2006, pp. 124–140.

Brown, Mercy Lena. Obituary notice. Providence Journal, 20 Jan. 1892.

Brown, Edwin Atwood. Obituary notice. Providence Journal, 7 May 1892.

“Exhumation of the Brown Family.” Providence Journal, 19 Mar. 1892.

Rhode Island Historical Society. “Have Mercy…” 31 Oct. 2016.

Stetson, George R. “The Animistic Vampire in New England.” American Anthropologist, vol. 9, no. 1, 1896, pp. 1–18.

Tucker, Abigail. “The Great New England Vampire Panic.” Smithsonian Magazine, Oct. 2012.