Though Murder Has No Tongue (31 page)

Peter Merylo remained the only prominent figure in local law enforcement deeply involved in the Kingsbury Run investigation who seems not to have accepted Sweeney's guilt—or, at the very least, to have entertained
serious doubts. Although he left the Cleveland Police force in 1943, he pushed forward his own investigation into the torso killings and pursued other suspects he considered viable until his death in 1958. A dedicated lawman like Merylo would never have wasted his time and energy in such a fashion if he were convinced that Sweeney was the Butcher.

At some undetermined time, Sweeney began sending his nemesis Eliot Ness jeering cards and letters, though it is difficult to tell whether he was simply venting his rage at the individual who, in his mind, unfairly tormented him or taunting the most famous lawman in the country for not being able to build a case against him—perhaps both. (In 1948, his growing obsessions with the safety director even prompted a rambling and incoherent four-page missive to J. Edgar Hoover complaining of “Nessism”—an action that triggered a minor FBI investigation into who he was and whether his communications to the bureau should be taken seriously.) But no matter how twisted and unhinged his logic became during his various rants at Eliot Ness, Sweeney always remained clever enough to never admit anything openly. He slipped only once—and even that seeming admission is subject to interpretation. If he was, indeed, referring to Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, when he identified himself as “
The-American
/
Sweeney
” on one of his postcards to Ness, then this is as close as he comes to a confession.

With any cold case, especially one this old, a researcher-commentator is going to be limited by the material that has survived. Usually, there is simply no way of telling how much potential evidence may have been lost and what the nature of that evidence may have been. Though an investigator must always be mindful that the body of extant fact and evidence—simply by the luck of the draw—may produce a somewhat skewed picture of events, he should not, indeed, cannot, build castles in the air by speculating about what is not there to be analyzed. In cold case research, the dots must be connected conservatively and with extraordinary caution. Jack the Ripper still remains the best known and most infamous serial murderer in history, and the vast catalogue of books detailing his crimes and searching for his identity run the gamut from lurid, tabloid sensationalism to carefully reasoned scholarship. Donald Rumbelow, however, one of the most renowned Ripper scholars, confesses that students of the crimes are occasionally haunted by the notion that when Jack's true identity is finally revealed in the hereafter, all the Ripperologists will stare blankly at each other and mumble, “Who?” Is it similarly conceivable that the Butcher could turn out to be someone of whom no one has ever heard or just a name buried in a corner of an obscure police report? Cleveland's official search for the Butcher was certainly not perfect, and law enforcement personnel may not have fully understood the
serial killer dynamic; but by the standards of the day, the investigation—the most massive and intense in city history—was professional and thorough. Though possible, it is difficult to believe that the perpetrator could pass so completely unnoticed with so many trained professionals searching for him. As of this writing, most of the existing evidence—circumstantial though some if it may be—and all the accumulated Kingsbury Run legends point, fairly or unfairly, to a single individual: Dr. Francis Edward Sweeney.

N
OTES

The Merylo report of February 6, 1940, describing his and partner Martin Zalewski's interrogation of Francis Sweeney is among the detective's collection of reports, papers, and manuscripts. See the bibliography for a fuller description.

The taped interview with David Cowles and the transcripts of that interview are both on file at the Cleveland Police Historical Society Museum.

The account of the Walter Winchell announcement concerning the imminent arrest of a suspect in the torso murders appears in the unpublished manuscript Peter Merylo coauthored with
Cleveland News
staff writer Frank Otwell. It is a part of the collection referred to above.

Thomas Matowitz's quotations are from an interview conducted by Mark stone on June 10, 2004.

John Fransen's dossier on Francis Edward Sweeney is on file at the Cleveland Police Department.

The letter to Pat Lyons from the law firm of Minshall & Mosier is in his collection of documents. See the bibliography for a fuller description.

Mary Sokol Sweeney's two divorce petitions are in the Cuyahoga County Probate Court Archives.

Marilyn Bardsley provided me the account of Al Archacki's encounters with Frank Sweeney.

Marilyn Bardsley obtained the FBI documents relevant to Frank Sweeney through the Freedom of Information Act. See the bibliography for a more detailed breakdown.

Chapter 11

C
ONCLUSIONS
, F
RAGMENTS
,
AND
L
OOSE
E
NDS

A
ll the
recoverable pieces of the huge puzzle have been gathered and arranged as carefully as possible. From newspaper accounts, police reports, and other documents—both public and private—it is clear that certain events took place, that certain statements were made. From those same sources it can be inferred that some things apparently did not happen or seem not to have been said. Silences and inactivity assume significance through timing. If common sense dictates or suggests that a particular player in the drama would most likely respond in some way to a single occurrence or chain of events, and that individual remains inactive or silent, then that lack of response becomes at least interesting and, perhaps, significant. Does all this add up to a premeditated murder as part of a grand conspiracy and cover-up to shield the identity of a suspected killer? A tabloid journalist would undoubtedly scream “yes”; but I can only say, “Murder, apparently; cover-up, obviously; conspiracy, perhaps!”

At first blush, Eliot Ness's almost total silence during the period of Frank Dolezal's arrest, incarceration, and death seems strangely uncharacteristic of a man who enjoyed such a glowing reputation for honesty and incorruptibility. If the safety director knew—or, at least, suspected—that Francis Sweeney was guilty of the Kingsbury Run murders, why would he sit idly by while the local press meticulously raked over and reported every lurid detail, charge, and countercharge in the unfolding Dolezal saga? Wouldn't the country's most famous G-man, the straight shooter sporting a Boy Scout reputation, have intervened in some way, especially when it became clear to him that Dolezal's rights under the law were being so seriously violated that the ACLU had to ride to the rescue? But, realistically speaking, what could Eliot Ness have done? The only avenue open to him would have been a legal one; and
as safety director of the City of Cleveland, he did not have the authority to wield any control over the sheriff of Cuyahoga County. When Detective Peter Merylo stormed into Chief of Police George Matowitz's office after Dolezal's arrest, loudly declaring that his own careful investigation had cleared the man of any involvement, his boss counseled him that political realities in the city were such that the sheriff must be allowed to build his own case without any interference from other law enforcement agencies. Presumably, those same political realities would have constrained Eliot Ness as well.

Peter Merylo, however, was something of a bull in a china shop. He would never have allowed political considerations to interfere with the apprehension and prosecution of criminals; for him, a guilty man was a guilty man. It isn't clear from his memoirs whether the press came to him, seeking his opinions, or he went to them. Either way, Merylo became the Deep Throat of the entire Dolezal affair. As long as reporters respected his anonymity, he exposed the holes in Dolezal's trio of confessions and the sheriff's case to the eager gentlemen of the press establishment who dutifully repeated every nugget of information he gave them. Did Ness know of the veteran cop's behind-the-scenes maneuvering? I suspect he did; thanks to his group of secret operatives, sometimes referred to as the Unknowns, there was very little going on in the underbelly and back alleys of Cleveland that the safety director didn't know about. The working relationship between Ness and Merylo was professional but strained. Merylo didn't particularly care for the safety director, but he did outwardly respect the lines of authority. I also suspect Ness would have turned a blind eye to Merylo's activities because, at the very least, the detective's anonymous whistle-blowing was a way of challenging the sheriff's office without violating some code of public political decorum.

The case against Frank Dolezal had been unraveling in fits and starts almost from the day he was arrested, July 5. By the end of the month, almost all of the allegations concerning his guilt in the Kingsbury Run murders had evaporated, leaving behind a single charge of manslaughter in the death of Flo Polillo. As Merylo watched from the sidelines, he probably reasoned the entire case would collapse completely when presented to the Grand Jury in September and Dolezal would be released, an assumption probably shared by Eliot Ness. There was, therefore, no need to publicly intervene on his behalf; the slow grinding of justice's wheels would ultimately solve the whole problem. It must have come as a very nasty surprise to both men when, on August 24, Dolezal turned up dead. Peter Merylo's daughter Winifred Buebe remembers that Dolezal's unexpected death left her father deeply disheartened. As one who believed in the system of American law enforcement and had worked in that field most of his professional life, he
found it hard to understand and impossible to accept that such a glaring miscarriage of justice could be allowed to happen.

Eliot Ness did not attend the inquest Gerber convened on August 26. It's questionable he even had the legal right to do so, but it is probably safe to assume someone there reported back to him. In January 1942, Francis Sweeney was discharged from the Sandusky Soldiers' and Sailors' Home; and at the end of April Ness resigned his position as safety director and left Cleveland for Washington, D.C. Whether he was still having his operatives track the doctor's movements during this brief period is impossible to say now; but there can be little doubt that any lingering interest in keeping Sweeney under surveillance would have faded rapidly after Ness's departure.

“Ya know what you get when you cross a scientist with a prostitute?” grumbled a burly ex-cop in spring 2004. “A fuckin' know-it-all! And that was Sam Gerber. Everyone hated the guy.” Samuel R. Gerber was a Cleveland institution and celebrity, indeed, a veritable monument. He served as Cuyahoga County coroner for fifty years. Until his 1986 retirement, the man and the office were inseparable in the minds of most county residents. And he did have his detractors and enemies. He could be haughty, combative, arrogant, and protective of his turf—as his high-handed behavior during the Sheppard murder case of 1954 clearly demonstrated. But he was also a highly respected author and lecturer on forensic matters. He had, and continues to have, a legion of loyal supporters and admirers, some still employed at the coroner's office.

Accurately assessing Gerber's behavior and determining the exact nature of the role he played in the Dolezal affair and Ness's suspicions about Francis Sweeney are at once difficult and illuminating. In 1936, when Gerber was elected coroner of Cuyahoga County, the official body count in the torso murders stood at six—seven if the Lady of the Lake is included. His predecessor, Arthur J. Pearce, had handled those first victims and had been the guiding force behind the groundbreaking torso clinic. No doubt Pearce's shadow loomed oppressively over the new coroner as he assumed his responsibilities, and Gerber was quick to put his own stamp on the forensic side of the investigation largely through statements to the press. At the time of Dolezal's death, he was a few months shy of his third year into his tenure. When he arrived at the jail on August 24, he probably made a snap judgment about the cause of death, based on a cursory glance at the scene and what he heard from the sheriff and his deputies: a dead body with a wound on
the neck, the remnants of a noose hanging from the hook in the cell, and assurances from everyone present that Dolezal had been found hanging. It all added up to a suicide.