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

June 6, 1937: Bones in a Burlap Bag

116 Fourteen-year-old Russell Lauer was riding the bus on his way home from the movies. He was about to become part of an emerging and deeply disturbing pattern: children making terrible discoveries. as the bus headed toward Cleveland’s near west side shortly after 5:00 p.M., the boy idly looked out the window and noticed a group of people crowded together on the bank of the Cuyahoga River. Lauer left the bus at the next stop to investigate. Two days before, on June 4, Charles Gallagher, a member of a tugboat crew, had been lost in the river, and the Coast Guard was still dragging the waters for his body. Lauer watched the search until about 5:20 and then took a shortcut through the Flats to his Scranton Road home. He walked through Stone’s Levee, a barren field west of the river sometimes used as a trash dump. The arch of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge towered high above, and the muted roar of rush hour traffic mingled with the sounds of the river. as Lauer passed by the second abutment of the bridge at 5:40, he caught sight of a strange object partly buried in a relatively fresh pile of dirt and refuse. as he approached to get a better look, something suddenly caught the glow of the late afternoon sun; from the glittering gold teeth, Lauer realized he was looking at a human skull. The call came into the detective Bureau at 6:00 p.M. James Hogan and detective Orley May, along with Lieutenants Harvey Weitzel and Walter Keary , detective diskowski, and Sergeant James Mcdonald, headed to Stone’s Levee. While Patrolman Robert Blaha of the Bertillon department photographed the skull, the assembled officers combed the area, locating a heavy, white wool cap—now gray—with a tassel, the sleeve of a woman’s dress, and a “toupee” of kinky black hair. as they dug the dirt away from the skull, they unearthed a dirty, greasy burlap bag, saturated with a grayish-white June 6, 1937 BonesinaBurlapBag Bones in a Burlap Bag 117 powder and held closed with a piece of rotted twine; inside they found a human skeleton minus the arms and legs, a fairly large piece of blackish-gray tissuelike material, and an undated advertisement and partial review from the Plain Dealer, “N. T. G. [Nils T. Grantlund] and his Girls Review, at the Palace Theatre.” Weitzel, noting that the sack was not covered with much refuse, surmised that it had been dumped rather than deliberately buried. Stone’s Levee under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. Fourteen-year-old Russell Lauer points to the spot where he found the skull of victim no. 8. Plain Dealer Collection , Cleveland Public Library. In the Wake of the Butcher 118 Save for the fact that the extremities were missing, there was virtually no physical evidence linking these skeletal remains with the Kingsbury Run butcheries; nor, for that matter, was there any indication that the individual had even been murdered. There was no bullet hole or any other sign of trauma on the skull. The skeleton found in East Cleveland the previous September had been a false alarm, and Hogan and the others no doubt hoped that this one would prove unrelated to the case as well. The signs, however, were ominous: the head had been separated from the body in some fashion, and the torso had been placed in a burlap bag—recalling the manner in which the killer had disposed of some of Flo Polillo’s remains. The next morning, June 7—before the autopsy even took place, before anyone knew whether the skeletal remains were male or female—Plain Dealer headlines raised the possibility of a “Torso Case Link.” and later that same morning, shortly after 11:30 a.M., the coroner’s office formally confirmed that link. It would probably be more accurate to describe the procedure as an examination of the bones rather than an autopsy, and Coroner Gerber brought in anatomy professor dr. T. Windgate Todd of the Western Reserve Medical School to aid pathologist Reuben Straus. Todd had been a major player in a. J. Pearce’s conference the previous summer, and the invitation for him to participate may have been as much a matter of public relations as forensic science. Though the two men could not determine the exact cause of death, the autopsy...