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263 “Every once in a while we still get a tip on the damn thing,” reflected homicide head Lieutenant david Kerr on the Kingsbury Run murders in the late 1940s. The book is never closed on unsolved homicides; after more than seventy-five years, the torso killings are still officially regarded as an open case. In the summer of 1950, a new generation of police officers answered the call and searched through the steel girders where Robert Robertson’s dismembered remains were found. For them, the Kingsbury Run murders were already legend. The men who had worked on the case may have faded from the public’s memory as the murders themselves disappeared from the headlines, but in the police department, they enjoyed a reverence previous generations had reserved for Civil War veterans. Only another cop could understand the grinding frustration of working so hard for so long and having virtually nothing to show for it. Orley May left the force in 1944 to become safety director in Berea. He died in January 1968 at the age of seventy. during World War II, Emil Musil worked with federal authorities investigating counterfeit rationing stamps. He retired in 1948, served another twenty years as treasurer of the city’s Retired Police association , and died at age seventy-three in 1970. James T. Hogan resigned in 1941 with thirty-six years of service behind him. He died three years later. Martin Zalewski passed away in November 1958. Peter Merylo left the force in 1943. No one in the department thought the dedicated Butcher hunter would ever retire, but having put in his twenty-five years, he quietly resigned. Chief Matowitz’s support of the torso investigation may have been on-again, off-again, but his public support for his handpicked torso investigator never wavered. In July 1939 the epilogue In the Wake of the Butcher 264 chief had praised Merylo as “the hardest working man on the force.” “He doesn’t know what it is to be at home,” he told the Press on July 8. “He has put in hours and hours of overtime and has never asked for a minute of it back. . . . He has crawled through filth and dirt, into cellars and into attics. He has had to deal with bums and perverts and all sorts of repulsive people. He has put more men in jail than any other man on the force.” a detailed examination of the official reports and other papers Merylo took with him on retirement demonstrates that, in spite of his reputation for independence and occasional bull-in-the-china-shop tactics, he was a thorough professional who played by the book and outwardly respected the lines of authority no matter what his personal opinions may have been. He always made sure his superiors wrote official letters of thanks to law enforcement personnel in other states and jurisdictions who had cooperated in the torso investigation and often responded personally to well-intended tip letters from all over the country. He went on to be chief of plant police at Tinnerman Products after his retirement. But investigative work was truly in his blood, so, after a brief flirtation with a State department offer to work in the Hawaiian Islands during World War II, he set up his own detective agency. Kingsbury Run, however, never strayed far from his thoughts; he scanned out-of-town newspapers looking for telltale stories and corresponded with law enforcement personnel outside Cleveland. “In my 25 years in the Cleveland Police department I had never given up on any case that I was ever assigned to,” he wrote in his memoirs, “nor did I ever intend to give up the investigation of the Cleveland Torso Murders.” His detractors would argue that professional zeal had become personal obsession. He was on his way to his office in the old arcade when he collapsed and died in May 1958 at the age of sixty-three. Though largely self-taught in chemistry and the other sciences, david Cowles became a recognized pioneer in law enforcement, bringing the Cleveland Police department into the modern era by emphasizing the application of science in solving crimes. He became an expert on the polygraph and trained others in its use. Cowles retired from the force in 1957 at the age of sixty-one but kept abreast of developments in the field of scientific investigation. He died at age ninety in 1988. dr. Samuel Gerber won reelection as county coroner handily...

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