Cleveland in the 1930s was a city on the rise. The completion of what are now regarded as our architectural gems were reality. Steadily, the population continued to grow, embracing a melting pot of laborers needed to support our economically powerful steel and manufacturing base. Millionaire’s Row was in its heyday. The Great Lakes Exposition and the Republican National Convention were slated for 1936 as well as other conferences and conventions. Despite the effects of the Great Depression, many people were again doing well.

     It is against this backdrop that one of the most prolific and gruesome serial killers of all time carried out his acts of horror, distracting the citizens of our city from the much needed pride and prosperity of the times. Thirteen people were brutally murdered over the course of four years beginning in 1934-all of them decapitated-most of them while they were still alive. Although then Safety Director Eliot Ness claimed to have solved the crimes, no suspect was identified, and no one was brought to trial. The murders ended as abruptly as they had begun. To this day the Kingsbury Run Murders remain one of the most sensational and intriguing unsolved crimes in our nation's history.

     Kingsbury Run is a prehistoric riverbed running from the flats to about E 90 Street. The train and rapid transit tracks of the era still run through it. Bordered on the north by Woodland Avenue, and on the south by Broadway Avenue, Kingsbury Run was a dark, dreary and dangerous place in the 1930's. The dispossessed of the Great Depression lived in appalling conditions; trash and filth dominating the makeshift “hobo jungle” that occupied much of the Run. These people, most of them transients, often rode the rails to escape the brutal Cleveland winters or simply to keep moving. The area just to the east of the Run was known as “The Roaring Third”, home to bars, brothels, flophouses and gambling dens. In this grim setting, the most notorious murder case in Cleveland’s history would begin to unfold.


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