In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland'd Torso Murders, Authoritative Edition, Revised and Expanded

June 5, 1936: The Decapitated Tattooed Man

62 As the summer of 1936 approached, city leaders had reason to be optimistic about Cleveland’s economic and financial future. First, the city had landed one of the season’s two prize political plums—the Republican national convention. after the city had spent $150,000 to spruce up Public Hall’s yawning interior, the Republicans gathered there between June 9 and 12, nominating alf Landon to challenge Franklin d. Roosevelt for the presidency . Fifteen days later, on June 27, the Great Lakes Exposition opened for a one-hundred-day run. The project, intended to celebrate the centennial of Cleveland’s incorporation as a city, was the brainchild of Frank J. Ryan and Lincoln J. dickey. Cleveland philanthropist dudley S. Blossom chaired a civic committee that raised $1.5 million to convert a 135-acre stretch of lakeshore real estate—embracing the Mall area, Public Hall, and the Stadium—into a massive exposition site which drew four million visitors to the Erie shore the first year and three million more in 1937. The Townsend Club—a relatively minor organization born out of the Depression and devoted to the concept of a government subsidy for senior citizens—planned to hold its convention in Cleveland in mid-July, and the american Legion would follow suit in September. If the city’s movers and shakers had their way, the summer of 1936 would be a golden one, lifting both the city’s spirits and its financial prospects. The last thing anyone wanted was negative publicity about Cleveland. On the morning of Friday, June 5, workmen put the finishing touches on Public Hall, readying it for the Republican delegates who would be arriving four days later. Several miles away at about 8:20, two young african american boys—eleven-year-old Louis Cheeley of 2635 East 65th and thirteen-year-old Gomez Ivey of 5800 Haltnorth Court—were walking June 5, 1936 theDecapitatedtattooedMan The Decapitated Tattooed Man 63 south through Kingsbury Run along a path by the New york Central Railroad tracks. Though Kingsbury oral tradition holds that they were on their way to Outhwaite School, the youngsters were actually playing hooky to go fishing. In the early morning stillness, the two boys strolled through the desolate landscape close to where the East 55th Street bridge spanned the gorge. about a thousand feet southwest of Kinsman Road, between the train tracks and the rapid transit line, the boys spotted a pair of brown tweed trousers, wrapped in a bundle under a willow tree. “We see the pants all rolled up,” Gomez Ivey later told the Plain Dealer on June 6, “and we think maybe there’s money in the pockets.” The boys tentatively poked at the bundle with a fishing pole, causing it to unroll slowly. Beneath one of the pant legs, a grimy human head appeared. “We’re so scared we run straight The head of victim no. 4 found in Kingsbury Run on June 5, 1936. Morgue personnel cleaned it before putting it on public display. Cleveland Police Historical Society. In the Wake of the Butcher 64 home,” Ivey related. “I wanted to ask my mother what to do but she wasn’t home. When she came in at about 5 o’clock she tells us to see a policeman.” The boys then told Patrolman Hendricks of the Fifth Precinct station at East 55th and Woodland about their grim discovery. He seems to have tried to locate the head before radioing for help, but because the two boys had fled in terror and could not be sure of its exact location, Hendricks could not find it. The by now familiar cast of law enforcement personnel began to gather on the scene. at 5:40, detectives Orley May and Emil Musil, both of whom had been deeply involved in the andrassy and Polillo murders, responded to the radio call, joining Sergeant James Hogan, head of homicide , david L. Cowles of the Scientific Investigation Bureau, officers from the Sixth Precinct and others in the desolate setting of Kingsbury Run. Before police examined the pants, Bertillon assistant James Benacek took a picture of the boys’ grisly find. The badly faded photograph shows the filthy head lying on its side—eyes closed, lips parted—partially exposed beneath one of the trouser legs. Stuffed inside the legs of the trousers, which were torn in the back, police found a bloody white polo shirt ripped at...