CRIME: Cleveland Butcher

Anyone who throws a human corpse into the waters around Cleveland can be fined $50, sent to the workhouse for 30 days for violation of a health ordinance. More than likely, anyone who thus polluted Cleveland’s waters would be guilty of murder too, would therefore be prosecuted under Ohio’s murder statutes instead of Cleveland’s health ordinance. Nevertheless, last week when the corpse of a woman, from which the head, arms and legs had been expertly cut, was found in the shallow waters of Lake Erie at Cleveland, police announced that they could use nothing more drastic than the health ordinance against the murderer. This was true, they said, because what they had of the corpse was unidentifiable.

Cleveland’s police did not make this startling announcement out of callousness, nor were they taking lightly the atrocious murder. They made their statement apparently in desperation, on the slim chance that the butcher-murderer would show himself when he learned that his punishment would be so light. Reason for their desperation was that last week’s dismembered body was the eighth that had been found in Cleveland since September 1934, when Torso No. 1, also that of an unknown female, similarly butchered, was found at the same spot. The other six—five males, one female—all dismembered, only two of them identified —were found in the desolate Kingsbury Run section, through which Cleveland’s rapid transit line speeds prosperous Clevelanders to swank Shaker Heights. At last week’s end, Cleveland police admitted they were as hopelessly without clues to Cleveland’s butcher as they were three years ago.