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

“Good Cheer, the American Sweeney”

223 Eliot and Elizabeth Ness’s adopted son Robert Eliot Ness died at age thirty of leukemia on august 31, 1976. In memory of her husband, Sharon Ness donated her father-in-law’s scrapbooks to the library at the Western Reserve Historical Society the following year. The materials meticulously document the small victories and major triumphs of Eliot Ness’s career through newspaper clippings, conference programs, personal letters, and official commendations. among the voluminous scrapbooks, however, are some remarkably strange items: a virtually incoherent letter and five loose postcards, each bearing one or more cryptic messages, weird pronouncements, and taunting jokes. The sender decorated four of the cards by pasting on pictures clipped from newspapers or magazines. These cards, all sent from dayton in the mid-1950s to Eliot Ness’s office in the Union Commerce Building, are variously addressed to ‘‘Eliot (Esophogotic) Ness,” “Eliot-Am-Big-U-ous Ness,” “Eliot (Head Man) Ness,” “Eliot-Direct-Um Ness,” and simply “EliotNess .” The writer frequently underlined words or portions of them (the underlinings seem so purposeful and selective, that it is tempting to see them as a part of the writer’s jokes), and often connected words through a liberal use of dashes. The messages themselves, though handprinted, are occasionally illegible: sometimes because of the quality of the printing, occasionally because other features such as stamps and postmarks obscure some of the wording. Most of the sometimes witty and intellectual pronouncements read like highly personal but disjointed jokes, and some use verbal puns. One card pictures dayton’s deeds Carillon—a tall, knife-blade-like structure—on the “Goodcheer,theAmerican Sweeney” In the Wake of the Butcher 224 front and reads in part, “In-das-Freudiology / this-organ-has-the-eminenceof -a-reamer. / Whether-the-chimes / peal-the-note-for- / bell-ringing-effect / or-not-is the- / Macbethean-question” (a probable reference to the famous lines in act II, scene II of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?”). a partially obscured message on the same card seems to say, “Be seeyn of / ya some time in / US court of peals.” another card sends “R’gards-to / Slap-Hap / McCord,” while another states, “With-the-advent-of-Spring / the apis-apidae-willagain / gather-the-precious-nectar / from-ye-olde-curiosity-locus.” The sender has written around the printed words “post card” on the message side of one so as to read, “mental-defective / Post Carded / this.” On three of the four cards to which the writer attached illustrations, he left a message under the picture. The words underneath what seems to be a vaudeville comic or movie comedian, sticking out his tongue, unfortunately are completely illegible. “Who-is-tother-guy? your / astralpreeminence ? Wah-Hoo,” he asks under what looks like a shot of two men behind bars from a Hollywood film. Below an ad for pansy seeds, he assures , “No nothing-xplosive-herin.” He has allowed the advertisement for “Handbook for Poisoners: A Collection of Famous Poison Stories edited and with an introduction by Raymond T. Bond” to speak for itself. Three of the five cards bear a name, most likely the sender’s. Beside the picture of the deeds Carillon stand the words, “A-Signatur / The-Sweeney Boy / R-member,” and a message next to the pansy ad reads, “Good-Cheer / The-American / Sweeney” (a sly reference to the English mass murderer Sweeney Todd?). Beside the ad for the poisoner handbook stands the stark pronouncement, “F.E. Sweeney-M.D. / Paranoidal-Nemesis / The-Better-Half of Legal-Exaction / Will-upon you one day?” Unlike the handprinted postcards, the letter, sent to Eliot Ness from the veterans’ hospital in dayton on February 14, 1954, is written in script: “Enclosed a few items for your, Personal Perusal, as to Hermacy Reference, ‘Per Se’, should all or any have no significant application—Would that you Present to Special agent McCord for a Personal Extraction herefrom and if again in the negative, tis no doubt as of some, Perverted, information having dominant dwelling, a loft in my, ‘Wind Sheets’ I trust that we shall meet again amongst more favorable ‘Federal issues’?” Under the signature “Frank E. Sweeney M D” stands a postscript: “P.S. ‘Phony’, criminalization— Is tough, at any monetary Bargaining? as well as Phony Pschotization?” Unfortunately, the enclosed “few items” have not survived. The reference “Good Cheer, the American...