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Kingsbury Run cuts across the east side of Cleveland like a jagged wound, ripped into the rugged terrain as if God
himself had tried to disembowel the city. At some points it is nearly sixty feet deep, a barren wasteland covered with
patches of wild grass, yellowed newspapers, weeds, empty tin cans and the occasional battered hull of an old car
left to rust beneath the sun. Perched upon the brink of the ravine, narrow frame houses huddle close together and
keep a silent watch on the area.

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Angling toward downtown, the Run empties out into the cold, oily waters of the Cuyahoga River. There, dingy banks
sprout a concrete and metal forest of drawbridges, storage tanks, and blackened factory buildings that flourish in
the yellow sulphurous fumes and the fiery glow of the blast furnaces.

Kingsbury Run is like an open sore, festering with refuse and decay. Yet, among the old tires and empty wine bottles
exists a small city of nomadic men, swept into the ravine by the wave of Depression that surged across the country
in the 1930's. Their squat cardboard and tin shacks dot the ominous landscape. Small campfires penetrate the
darkness, illuminating the rugged and desperate ugliness of the Run. The men lay sleeping, their heads against the
cool earth, oblivious to the haunting wail of passing freight trains.

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Two men lay quietly in the grass, not far from one another, beneath the curling smoke that veils the stars, unaware of
the great impact their presence will have upon the city.
When the sun rose above the horizon, streaks of golden light filtered through cracks in the makeshift walls of the
shanties. Hairy arms stretched toward the lightened sky, forcing moist air into yawning mouths. Above the Run, the
grinding sound of early morning traffic contrasted with the melodic chirping of birds and the playful voices of children
on their way to school. The two men still slept. The warm September air caressed them lightly. Olive green
grasshoppers bounced lazily through the high waving grass, while other winged creatures fluttered and coasted on
the soft breeze flowing into the ravine.

Later that afternoon two young boys, laughing loudly beneath the clear sky, stumbled through the weed-choked
grass to the foot of a steep embankment called Jackass Hill. One of them saw something sticking out from the
weeds and went to investigate. He gasped at the hideous sight and soon the two frightened boys streaked back up
the narrow path. They scrambled on their hands and knees to the top of the ridge and ran into a man who stopped
them in their flight.

"Hey! Hey there! What's the big hurry? You almost ran me down." The tall man saw the fear in their eyes. "What's the
matter? What're you two boys up to?"

One of them gasped for breath and somehow found his tongue. "There's a man down there—and he—he hasn't got
any head!"

Detectives Emil Musil and Orly May were the first Cleveland policemen on the scene. They found not only one
headless man, but two, both washed and drained of blood. The police report dated September 23, 1935, described
what they found at the foot of East 49th St. and Praha Avenue: "the bodies of two white men, both beheaded, lying in
the weeds; both bodies were naked except that one of them had socks on. After an extensive search the heads of
both men were found buried in separate places, one about 20 feet away from one of the bodies and the other head
was buried about 75 feet away from the other body. Both men's penises had been severed from their bodies and
were found near one of the heads. We also found an old blue coat; light cap and a blood stained union suit. Nearby
was a metal bucket containing a small quantity of oil and a torch. "It was apparent that oil, acid or some chemical
was poured over one of the bodies as it was burnt to quite an extent; it was also evident that both bodies had been
there several days as they had started to decompose."

Coroner Arthur J. Pearse described the one man eventually referred to Victim One, as "decapitated with one testicle
missing. Skin tanned and leathery as from an acid. Dead from 7-10 days. Homicide by person or persons at present
unknown. Death by decapitation, hemorrhage, and shock." He was estimated to be between 40 and 45 years old,
approximately 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 165 pounds. His hair was dark brown.

Laboratory analysis of the skin of Victim One came back with the following results: "The skin of this victim had a
reddish yellow color and was tough (hard) not unlike bacon rind. The skin was carefully washed in benzol, dried, and
examined under the microscope. Nothing of importance, other than the hair follicles minus the hair, was noted. It
appeared as though the hair had either been shaved or burned off. The skin itself was hard and tough, and very
resistant to both acids and alkalis. Warm or hot water however caused it to swell and curl although no difference in
texture resulted. It was finally decided that scorching would produce such a condition. This however on dead tissue
only.
"Examination of the contents of the bucket disclosed evidence of crankcase drainings (oil), partially decomposed
human blood, and considerable black straight hair (probably human).

"Conclusions: Appearances, together with certain findings to indicate that this body after death was saturated with
oil and fire applied. The burning however was only sufficient to scorch, hence the peculiar condition of the skin."

The man had been decapitated while alive with a sharp instrument, leaving his skin sharply cut and the muscles
retracted. Advanced decomposition prevented the taking of any good fingerprints.

His companion was a man in his twenties with blue-gray eyes, brown hair and light complexion. He had been five feet
11 inches tall and approximately 150 pounds. He was nude except for his black cotton socks. He had eaten a
vegetable meal shortly before he died. Unlike Victim One, he had only been dead 2-3 days.
He too had been murdered by decapitation, a very unusual way of killing someone. There were rope burns on each
wrist, raising the specter of a man emasculated and decapitated while fully conscious, hands tied behind

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Fingerprints identified Victim Two as Edward A. Andrassy,one of the first men found decapitated by the 1935 Serial
Killer, of 1744 Fulton Road who was approximately 28 years old at the time of his death. At one time, he had been an
orderly in the psychiatric ward at Cleveland City Hospital. He met a nurse at the hospital and married her in 1928, but
she left shortly afterwards and bore him a daughter sometime later. When he left the hospital job in 1931, he sold
magazines for awhile. At the time of his death, he had no job or visible means of support. His parents, Hungarian
immigrants from a once aristocratic family, were very concerned about the kind of life he led and the people he
chose as associates. His father Joseph Andrassy and his brother John identified the body at the County Morgue.
They had last seen Edward four days earlier.

The tall, slender Andrassy was a dark-haired, handsome man with an extremely unwholesome reputation. He had
once been arrested on a concealed weapons charge and had spent time in the Warrensville Workhouse. He had also
been picked up several times for intoxication.

Andrassy's mother Helen told police that two months earlier a middle-aged man came to their home and said he was
going to kill Edward for "paying attentions to his wife." Just before he left home for good, Andrassy had been afraid to
leave his house. He had told his sister that he stabbed an Italian in a fight and that the mob was after him.

His father said that his son frequented the E. Ninth Street and Bolivar Road area and associated with people of
questionable character. One of the detectives remembered him as a "snotty punk the kind of fellow gives a cop a lot
of lip when he's questioned. Once I had to knock him down."

In John Bartlow Martin's book Butcher's Dozen he recounts a bizarre story told by a married couple to the police:
"The man, who had known Andrassy most of his life, said that early in the summer Andrassy had remarked 'how bad'
the man's wife looked. 'She had female trouble,' the man said. Andrassy then spoke up and told them that he was a
'female' doctor and that he would like to examine her. In doing so Andrassy committed sodomy upon her (it isn't clear
whether her husband did not protest because he didn't understand or because Andrassy was bigger than he was).
He then told the couple that if he would go home and get his instruments he could fix her within a month, so that she
could have children. But they told Andrassy not to bother."

There were some of his associates that believed Andrassy to be bisexual. While rumors abounded, the only thing
police found that might give credence to any interest in men was the five physical culture magazines they found in his
room. Still, there were too many people who claimed that he had male lovers to be completely ignored. Some of his
close friends were known to be homosexual.

Steven Nickel in his book Torso summarizes some of the sordid discoveries: "Andrassy had dealt in pornographic
literature; he had smoked marijuana; he had gone to Detroit earlier in the summer and had been forced to leave
suddenly after angering an Oriental gangster; he had been romantically involved with a married woman whose
husband had vowed to kill him. Few people would have made a more likely candidate for murder than Edward
Andrassy."

After a few days of investigation, the police summed up their theories: (1) the murders were crimes of passion, not
racket related, (2) a woman will be found to have played some part in the case, (3) the victims were taken to Kingbury
Run after their deaths, (4) the two victims knew each other and were killed by the same person, (5) the unidentified
man was killed first, his body immersed in some sort of fluid until the killer could trap and murder Andrassy, (6) each
victim, after his hands were tied, was executed by some sharp instrument, like a butcher knife. Police were quite
sure that each victim would have had to be carried, probably at night, down the steep embankment of Jackass Hill.
Automobiles and trucks couldn't get any closer to the ravine than 100 feet from Praha Avenue.

Police reconstructed the timing of events leading up to Andrassy's murder. He left home on the Thursday evening,
September 19, 1935, not telling his family where he was going. From Coroner Pearse's report, he was killed Friday
night. On Monday afternoon his body was found. No one was ever found that had seen him after he left his home on
Thursday.

Police spent weeks trying to trace what happened to Andrassy that weekend, but with no luck. Nor did police ever
identify the man with him, known only as Victim One. Eventually, all clues led to dead ends and the police activity died
down.

Nobody at the time tied the two weird murders to an incident a year earlier when the lower half of a woman's torso
washed up on the shore of Lake Erie near the Euclid Beach amusement park. The legs had been severed at the
knees. Coroner Pearse had estimated that the woman's bisected torso had been in the water some 3-4 months. The
odd skin coloration suggested that the body had been scorched or treated with a chemical, perhaps a preservative.
Two weeks earlier, the upper portion of the woman's torso washed up on the shore 30 miles away, but the man who
discovered it did not realize at that time it was part of a human body. The rest of her was never found.

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She was never identified and did not fit any missing person's report. While she was never officially considered part of
the Kingsbury Run murders, she was very much unofficially considered the first in the series. The newspapers called
her "The Lady of the Lake" and later, Victim Zero.

By the November 1935 mayoral election, the city of Cleveland was tired of the growing burden of crime that had
escalated out of control. Decades of political and police corruption had turned Cleveland into a haven for mobsters
and bootleggers. To make this point clearly, Republican Harold Burton was swept into office on a promise to clean up
the crime and rehabilitate the police force.

In December Burton started to make good on that promise by appointing Eliot Ness, a young man with a good
reputation as a crime fighter, safety director to head up the city’s police and fire departments. Ness lost no time
launching a major attack on gambling and police corruption. At the same time he made plans to upgrade the caliber
of rookie cops and establish a modern police academy. With the dashing young Eliot Ness dominating the
newspapers on a daily basis, Clevelanders had every reason to believe that crime was on the run in their city.