by Bill James
Leaving Cleveland, he may have vowed that he would kill no more, that he would “regularize” his life. The vow didn’t hold, and he resumed his murderous ways in Youngstown in 1939. His health probably began to fail him in the early 1940s, and he was probably dead by the early 1950s.
The killer certainly lived alone in Cleveland, although he may have been married from about 1919 to 1923. He was probably about 6'2'' tall, and weighed 210 to 225 pounds. (A bloody footprint was found on the “murder train” in 1940; it was of a size 12 boot, indicating a large but not exceptionally large man. He was extremely strong, as is evident from many of his actions, such as carrying two bodies several hundred feet down a steep hill to stage their discovery on a hillside. A man of ordinary size and strength could not have accomplished this, and an obese man could not have accomplished it.)
The killer was intelligent, and he could read and write. (Old newspapers were found with many of the bodies, indicating not only that the Butcher read newspapers, but that he kept them around.) However, the suggestion that he may have been a doctor or have had some medical training is without merit, and should be disregarded. (This suggestion, as many readers will know, was quite common in pre-1970 serial murder cases in which victims were dismembered or eviscerated. The suggestion was often made by coroners or medical examiners, but it derives from an obvious fallacy. The coroner observes the dissection of the body, and realizes that the killer has some anatomical knowledge. “I have this kind of anatomical knowledge,” the medical man realizes, “because I am a doctor. Therefore, because the killer knows the same kind of things that I know, he must also be a doctor.” But this is a fallacy, because it assumes that the killer must have acquired this specialized knowledge the same way that the doctor has acquired it—while in reality, he may have acquired it in numerous other ways. Like cutting up bodies.)
The Butcher had a trade, working with his hands. He may have been a machinist, a mechanic, a heavy-equipment operator or a carpenter. He may even have been a butcher. (Although he opened the decade in prison, by the mid-1930s he had a house or secure apartment to use as his base of operations. He may have had a car. This was the Depression, and many, many people were homeless—therefore, the killer must have had something significant he could rely on, as a source of income.
Organized serial murderers in our time are very often small businessmen. Serial murderers are never wealthy or extremely successful, except in fiction, because they are never highly motivated. Their obsession drains away enough energy to prevent them from focusing on significant work objectives. They are, however, very often intelligent people who hold decent jobs and work hard at them.)
All of this is speculation, of course, but I think it’s all fairly safe. That is, IF the Butcher of Kingsbury Run and the murderer of the New Castle Swamp were indeed the same man, then we know a great deal about him, and we can reasonably infer more. Let me now go one step further, and speculate about what might also be true. It might also be false, of course, but I am trying to push the envelope so that, if a couple of the guesses I make here turn out to be correct, and if someone else will follow through on the investigation, and if we get tremendously lucky, we might yet be able to actually identify this madman.
If the killer was born about 1895–1898, and if he was a big, strong, healthy man, then where does that place him? That places him right smack in the middle of World War I. If your grandfather was born in 1898, and if he was a big, strong, healthy man, then your grandfather was in World War I.
And what was World War I noted for?
Bayonet fighting. Mustard gas, land mines and bayonet fighting.
The Butcher, I would suggest, may have been in World War I. He may have observed or participated in bayonet warfare, and may indeed have killed enemy soldiers with his knife or with his trenching tool. Many American soldiers did do this.
But while most of those soldiers were sickened and appalled by the War, the Butcher may have had a different reaction. He may have thought that it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. He may have had an unexpected sexual climax after decapitating an enemy soldier, accompanied by a feeling of great power and force, and may have spent the rest of his life attempting to recapture that feeling.
If he was young and inexperienced in 1917–18, a man from an unhappy and abusive home (as he probably was), then the War may have been the first “successful” experience of his life. He may have had his first sexual experiences in Europe during the war. He may have won medals for his courage. It may have been the first time in his life that he had been singled out for praise and honor.
Without knowing who he was or where he was, it is impossible to be any more specific about the War experiences that he might have had. But if he did have this experience, and if he did find it thrilling, then he might have attempted to keep it alive in his mind through reading about it, fantasizing about it, and re-enacting it. He probably would have read books and articles about war, particularly those emphasizing its most gruesome aspects. He probably read the Police Gazette and/or any similar publications, which featured stories about violent crimes.
This, then, would explain what is otherwise one of the most puzzling aspects of the crime. One of the three victims found on the train at McKees Rocks in May, 1940, had the word “NAZI” carved into his chest. When I first read this, I thought “Well, that’s not the same man.” It seemed unlikely that a veteran serial murderer, more than twenty crimes into his career,
a) would begin carving words on the victims, not having done so before, and
b) would choose to carve into the victim’s chest something taken from current headlines. The Nazis had just invaded Poland, just weeks before this murder was committed, but I was surprised that a current news story would re-shape long-established behavior.
But if he was in World War I, and had been re-enacting it in his fantasies, then of course it makes all the sense in the world that he would label his victim a German soldier. The War in Europe broke out in September, 1939. The Butcher, inactive or nearly inactive for a year before then, killed four people in late 1939.
There is another distinction between these murders and the crimes in Cleveland, which helps to explain the change in pattern. In Cleveland the Butcher had a house. After he fled Cleveland he apparently did not have a secure place to take his victims, either because he was homeless or, more probably, because he was living in a rooming house or a walkup apartment, or (conceivably, although it is unlikely) because he had re-married. The victims on the train in McKees Rocks had been murdered on the train, where their bodies were discovered months later.
In the Cleveland murders there were inconsistencies in what was found. Sometimes entire corpses were found, no longer intact, but other times parts were missing. It may well be that the Butcher did carve words into the torsos of some earlier victims, but that he was canny enough to dispose carefully of those body parts, so that the police would not have the evidence of what he had written.
My final guess is that the Butcher probably was dead by the early 1950s. There are several reasons for saying this. First, leaving aside ridiculous speculation such as that tying the Butcher to the murder of the Black Dahlia, there is little evidence that he was active after 1941 (although the 1950 murder, mentioned earlier, of Robert Robinson does appear to be either a genuine extension of the pattern or a copycat crime).
Second, single men die earlier than any other class of persons—earlier than single women, earlier than married men or women. Single men are inclined to indulge their bad habits. While many single men are exceptions to the rule, because they do discipline themselves, it does not seem likely that this individual would have been among the self-disciplined minority. The Butcher almost certainly hung around bars and consorted with prostitutes. It is probable that he had self-destructive personal habits.
Third, when the victims were found on the train in 1940, “on a plank a few feet away was a circular mark in blood. Lawmen theorized that it
might have been left by a peg leg or the heel of a woman’s shoe.” (Quote is from Torso.) I doubt seriously that there was a woman there with high-heeled shoes, and the Butcher did not have a peg leg, either earlier in his career or in 1939. There is, however, something like a peg leg that is much more common: a cane. The Butcher, in December, 1939, may have been walking with a cane, which may suggest that he was recovering from an injury, or even that he was developing a permanent disability.
There is another theory that suggests itself here. The Butcher’s last known victim was in 1941. The United States entered World War II in December, 1941. Could the Butcher have re-enlisted at that time, packed his bayonet and gone back to Europe?
There’s no absolute reason he couldn’t have. He would probably have been about 43 years old at that time. Many hundreds of World War I veterans did re-enlist at the outset of World War II. Despite his prison record, the army probably would have welcomed him back, if he was just reasonably healthy, and might have started him out as a Sergeant, since he had previous combat experience. Such an individual might very possibly have requested assignment to Europe, and may have died there during the War.
So that’s my biography of the Butcher—born in Cleveland, Youngstown, Pittsburgh or New Castle about 1895–1898, spent his childhood in New Castle, went into the army about 1917, mustered out in 1918 or early 1919, may have been married in 1919 to a New Castle woman. In 1922 he suffered a major stress, possibly the breakup of his marriage.
In 1924 or 1925 he was convicted of a serious crime, and sent to prison. Released in 1933 or 1934, he moved to Cleveland, and lived in Cleveland’s Third Ward. In 1938 he was interviewed by the police, and fled Cleveland, taking up residence in Youngstown, where he continued to murder people. He was a large man with a trade, he could read and write, and he was of above-average intelligence. He may have died as early as 1942 or as much as 12 years later.
This biography is specific enough that it is statistically very improbable that there would be a “random match” to it—thus, if we can identify an individual who matches this biography, we have probably identified the Butcher of Kingsbury Run. The place to start looking, if anybody takes a notion, would be newspapers and police records for New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1923 and 1924. I would guess that there would be no more than 50 to 100 persons convicted of serious crimes in that time. Only a handful of those would fit the general description of the Butcher (a large World War I veteran, in his mid- to late twenties). Another place to start would be military records.
The downside is that it might be nearly impossible to prove that such an individual was in Cleveland from 1934 to 1938, even if he was. The Butcher probably was taking active steps to minimize his visibility within the community. He probably did not have a phone, and he probably did not own the house where he lived. He may have used a false name. He did use an automobile, so there is a possible source of records, but it is equally likely that he was a mechanic or auto body worker, or that he had access to automobiles for some other reason. He may also have simply stolen a car when he needed one.
It is a general rule that serial murderers reflect the patterns of those they kill. Ted Bundy and John Norman Collins, who killed beautiful co-eds, were handsome college students themselves. Wayne Williams, who killed black children, was a child-like black man.
The Butcher killed nameless people, people who were impossible to identify despite the vigorous efforts of the Cleveland police. Despite our best efforts, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to put a name on him.
XV
The 1930s were the high water mark of the “Mad Dog Criminal at Large” type of story. The essence of the Mad Dog Criminal at Large type story is that “there is this person running around killing people. We know who he is, we know what he looks like and we know who he has killed, but we don’t know where he is right now and we don’t know who he will kill next.” This story has a long history, and it still crops up occasionally—for example, the 1997 story of Andrew Cunanan, who killed Gianni Versace and others, was a Mad Dog Criminal at Large story. It’s a sub-genre of the “Killer on the Loose” story.
There were many such stories in the 1930s, the biggest of which was John Dillinger, but others included Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, and Ma Barker and her boys. Guns were out of control—you could get a machine gun pretty easily in 1930—times were tough, and these people saw themselves as romantic desperadoes battling against a system that was trying to destroy them. The press, up until about 1934, cooperated in portraying them as romantic desperadoes. And then, about the same time as the Hauptmann trial, something changed, and I don’t really know what. Some idea swept the newspaper industry, some vague realization that “we are promoting human tragedy to sell newspapers, and we should be ashamed of ourselves,” and they stopped doing it. Mostly. For a while.
Crime stories in the 1930s can be divided into three groups: the Mad Dog stories, the Organized Crime stories (of which Al Capone was the largest), and the traditional crime stories, which focused not on criminals (like Dillinger and Capone) but on crimes. The biggest crime stories of the 1930s, focusing on crimes, were:
1) The Lindbergh kidnapping,
2) The Massie case,
3) The Scottsboro Boys, and
4) The Winnie Judd “Trunk Murderess” case.
I’ll try to summarize these very briefly … if you need more, you know where the internet is.
Thalia Massie was the wife of a Navy Lieutenant stationed in Hawaii. She was twenty years old, had grown up well-off and spoiled, and she still had a lot of growing up to do. On September 12, 1931, she had a fight with her husband at a party, threw a drink on somebody and stormed out. This was not the first time such a thing had happened.
She didn’t show up at her house until some hours later, and when she did she was covered with cuts and bruises. She reported that she had been raped by five men, native Hawaiians.
Police investigated, and arrested five men—probably not the right ones—who were duly put on trial. Remember, at this time Hawaii was not a state; Hawaii was an American territory, with a diverse population and remnants of a system of royalty. The arrest of the five locals was unpopular with the native population, and pitched the island nation into high tension and occasional turmoil. The jury was unable to agree upon the guilt of the accused, and a mistrial resulted.
Ms. Massie’s mother was a strong-willed, high-born woman named Grace Fortescue. Mrs. Fortescue and Mr. Massie and two other sailors went looking for the accused men, and found one of them, a young man named Joseph Kahahawai. Mr. Kahahawai’s body was later found in the back seat of Mrs. Fortescue’s car.
This flipped the story up to another level, and then, as if that wasn’t circus enough, Clarence Darrow entered the case. He was the lawyer for Grace Fortescue and those accused with her. By now, we’re using terms like “international incident” and “riots in the streets.” The aging Darrow, in his last big case, put forward the theory that this was an “honor killing,” not a murder but an honor killing. An honorable murder. In modern parlance he was asking for jury nullification.
The jury didn’t buy it, thinking perhaps that murder in general is dishonorable, but the governor did. The defendants were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in jail, but the governor, Lawrence Judd, commuted their sentence to one hour. Thalia Massie never really recovered. She divorced Massie two years later, attempted suicide then and periodically over the next three decades, and died in 1963 of an overdose of barbiturates, circumstances suggesting suicide.
There is a very good 1966 book about the case, Something Terrible Has Happened, by Peter Van Slingerland (Harper & Row). Van Slingerland was a Harvard graduate and an experienced screenwriter, and he knew how to tell a story, although this book appears to have been the only major success of his publishing career.
Something Terrible Has Happened is the best title ever for a crime book; that actually is what I was going to call thi
s book until I realized the title had already been used. Those exact words appear in countless crime books; it is what one says to prepare a loved one for a life-altering revelation. Those words turn the “crime story” inside out by exposing the human beings standing on what otherwise appears to be a vast and grisly stage. Something has happened to us which is so big that our lives will not be the same anymore. Something has happened which is so foreign to us that before I can tell you about it, I must first prepare you for the possibility that I will tell you about it. There is a seriousness and an urgency in those words that forces the reader to look for just a second at the vulnerable souls flung suddenly into a vicious carnival.
It’s a good book, but Van Slingerland has a slant that I don’t quite get. Van Slingerland is convinced that the accused men were innocent, which is probably true, but only probably. His argument—like my argument in the case of Lizzie Borden—rests heavily on the time frame. Joseph Kahahawai couldn’t have committed the crime, he argues, because he was—I think this is my favorite alibi in the history of crime—he was at that very moment almost a mile away, assaulting some other woman. There’s a police report showing that he was, a road rage incident. The time frame of the Massie assault is locked in place by the observations of a dozen or so people, almost all of whom were drinking heavily or were thugs, or both. Two of the five “innocents” accused had prior convictions for attempted rape—not including the man who was, at the moment, beating up another woman. It strikes me as an odd coincidence.
Van Slingerland makes constant references to the “alleged” rape, and there is a lengthy discussion about the lack of “evidence” of an actual rape. Well, no one questions that this very attractive young woman was abducted off the streets in the middle of the night—there were witnesses—and there is no question that, when she turned up an hour or so later, she had cuts and bruises, torn clothes and a broken jaw. She said she had been raped. What’s your theory? Contents of her purse, broken, were recovered from the place where she said she had been taken. So the doctors failed to do an appropriate medical examination. So what?