5


     The police department put detectives Peter Merylo and Martin Zelewski on the case full time. They move deftly through the seedy underworld that constitutes the Run and the Roaring Third, often dressing the part, often on their own time. By the time the case had run its course, the two had interviewed more than fifteen hundred people, the department as a whole more than five thousand. This would be the biggest police investigation in Cleveland history.

 

.
 Detective Peter Merylo
     The November elections return Harold Burton as Mayor, but Coroner Pierce is replaced by the young democrat, and now legendary, Sam Gerber. Gerber’s fierce dedication to medicine, along with his degree in law, put him at the forefront of the investigation.
     February 1937: A man finds the upper half of a woman's torso washed up on shore east of Brahtenahl. Unlike all previous victims, the cause of death had not been decapitation; this had happened after she was already dead. The lower half of the torso washed ashore three months later at about E. 30 Street. The woman was in her mid-twenties. She was never identified.  

     BACK   |    NEXT