"The muscles in the neck had retracted," Strauss said, "which indicates that the heads of these victims were cut off while they were still alive ... or at least immediately after death, while their reflexes were still operating. Ah, but the woman found at Euclid beach . . . that's the second woman found there, I should say . . . evidence indicates she was decapitated after death. Otherwise— cause of death could well be decapitation."
Silence hung in the room like a dark, heavy curtain.
Strauss smiled pleasantly, said, "Thank you, gentlemen," took his chart off the easel, and sat down. The wall-mounted fans churned the air.
Ness stood, thanked Strauss, and said, "While in a few instances we've recovered the heads of the victims, I think it's significant that the heads and hands are usually missing."
Chief Matowitz, a friendly-looking bear of a man whose crisp blue uniform bore its customary red lapel flower, spoke from his front-row seat.
"By 'significant,'" Matowitz said, "you mean these are the items by which we'd most likely be able to identify the victims."
"That's right."
"But those items have turned up from time to time," Matowitz said.
"Yes," Ness admitted. "I think in those instances, the murders may have been more spontaneous than others. My feeling is that, for the most part, the killer has stalked his prey, possibly getting to know them, associating with them for several weeks or even months before the kill."
Dr. Williamson, the psychiatrist, spoke from the second row; he was a small bald man in a tan suit. "On what do you base this conclusion, Mr. Ness?"
Ness smiled. "It's less than a conclusion, Doctor. It's part instinct, maybe a little bit common sense. The victims here seem to be of the lower strata of life—little or no family ties, vagrants, drifters, perverts, prostitutes—living on the fringes of society. Specifically, in the vicinity of Kingsbury Run."
"What does that tell you, Mr. Ness?" Williamson asked.
Ness could detect no skepticism in the psychiatrist's voice; it seemed an honest question. He gave an honest answer: "To associate with such a group—without arousing suspicion—the murderer must have been of the same physical makeup . . . that is, a white male, probably a known frequenter of the area."
"Why a male?"
"Well, let's say probably a male. At any rate, well developed and strong enough to do the heavy . . . let's call it, disposal work required. Hauling bodies in the dead of night, that sort of thing. Probably, if he does indeed associate with his victims, he is in their same general age range—twenty-five to forty."
Dr. Gerber, who'd been standing patiently to one side, said, "Let me say that I concur wholeheartedly with Director Ness. It seems to me that the slayer has gained the confidence and possibly the friendship of his victims before beheading them. What we have here, I believe, is that rarest of criminals—the killer who kills for the sheer love of it—a man who sees himself as God, with the power of life or death."
Silence again draped the room.
"I'd like your thoughts, Doctor," Ness said to the psychiatrist.
"I don't have many worth sharing at this point, I'm afraid," Williamson said with good-natured chagrin. "I can tell you only that this murderer does not fit into any recognized form of insanity."
Prosecutor Cullitan, a big man in his late fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and wire-frame glasses, turned and looked at the psychiatrist, startled. "Are you saying this killer is not insane?"
"Hardly," Williamson said. "I'm saying this is not a variety of insanity readily diagnosed and treated. I have done some reading about mass murderers of this general type . . . and I have encountered nothing in my research that closely parallels this. There seems to be a sexual basis to at least some of the crimes—the emasculation of the men, in particular—and it is my understanding that there was sexual attack in several of the cases ..."
Up at the front of the room, both Ness and Gerber were nodding. This fact had not been made public, and it sobered—shocked—the already sober and generally shock-proof audience of men.
"... and that the sexual assault was performed on both male and female victims."
"That's right," Ness said.
"Jesus," somebody in the audience said.
"I would propose," Williamson said, "that there may be a reason, other than clouding identifications, where . . . shall we say, collecting certain body parts is concerned. For one thing, keeping certain parts might be viewed as, well, putting together a trophy collection. For another, we may have a case of genuine necrophilia here."
"What the hell is that?" somebody in back said.
Sam Wild.
Ness repressed a smile; he could not remember seeing the generally unflappable reporter look so ... flapped.
"Sexual interest in the dead," the psychiatrist said, looking back at Wild.
"What do you mean . . . 'interest'?"
"He means sex with the dead," Ness said.
"Oh, Christ," Wild said wearily. "How do you expect me to put that in the paper?"
"I can spell 'necrophilia' if you like," Williamson offered ingenuously, and uneasy laughter rocked the room.
"You may have a point, Doctor," Ness said. "There is some evidence of attempts at body preservation—chemicals applied to the corpses, refrigeration, that sort of thing. What is confusing here is that there are enough elements, enough of a consistent modus operandi, to identify all of these victims as genuinely 'belonging' to the Butcher. But nonetheless, the Butcher is all over the map—men, women, studiously planned killings, impromptu killings, this victim emasculated, this one not, this one sexually assaulted, this one not . . . even organs missing, in the most recent case."
"May I have a word?"
In response to the deep, distinctive voice from the third row, Ness said, "Most certainly, Dr. Watterson."
Dr. Watterson stood, a distinguished-looking, darkly handsome man in his mid-fifties; a surgeon of some renown, professor of anatomy of Western Reserve, Watterson's manner was one of complete, confident authority.
"All of these cases," he began, "indicate dissection by someone showing keen intelligence in recognizing anatomical landmarks as they were approached. As you know, I was called in on several of these cases to give an expert opinion; so I have examined some of the physical evidence itself. The word 'butcher' has been bandied about, and I think it is inappropriate—the technique here is not that of the slaughterhouse—although the subject may indeed have used a butcher knife. We are dealing, I believe, with a doctor or a medical student or possibly a veterinarian. Someone with definite knowledge of anatomy, and at least rudimentary surgical skills. No layman could have attempted such meticulous incisions. We are dealing with an intelligent human being—most likely not a denizen of the lower strata."
Watterson sat down.
Ness said, "Thank you, Doctor. Your views make a lot of sense—and they don't, incidentally, contradict my own. I agree with you that our killer is probably well educated and from the 'right side of the tracks.' But he's going slumming—with a butcher knife."
Watterson nodded from the audience.
Ness said, "Detective Merlo—a few words about your efforts?"
Merlo stood, but Ness motioned him to come forward. The thin, serious-looking detective said, almost shyly, "I wish I had more to report. Obviously our man is still at large. I've been on this case, with a variety of partners, since the beginning . . . well, at least since the first Kingsbury Run killings. At any rate, we've questioned more than fifteen hundred persons, mostly unsavory types in various hobo shantytowns and in the Flats and Kingsbury Run. Every butcher-shop employee in the city has been brought here to the Central station to be questioned. Every doctor in Cleveland and the surrounding area has been subjected to the most thorough scrutiny. We've interrogated medical students, hospital employees, parolees from all state mental institutions, keeping up surveillance on the latter. We've investigated hundreds of letters from almost everywhere—'hot tips' that never led us anywh
ere. We've crawled through rat-infested sewers, sorted through city dumps, fished body parts out of water . . . you name it. And I admit, without shame but without pride either, except for the pieces of the victims in question, we've come up empty-handed so far."
"Not quite," Ness said. "Of the suspects Detective Merlo has brought in for questioning, we've held on to forty-some who were found guilty of offenses ranging from misdemeanors to robbery, burglary, and assault."
The audience began to applaud, but Merlo waved them to stop.
"I appreciate the sentiment," Merlo said, "but I'd prefer we postpone the congratulations until this sick bastard is either dead, or in jail waiting to die."
There were nods of approval in the audience, and Ness put a hand on Merlo's shoulder, saying, "There's been some play in the press about the safety director's office taking charge of this investigation. And that happens to be true. I plan to be personally involved—but Detective Merlo remains on the job. I'm partnering him with one of my own top investigators, Detective Albert Curry, who with Detective Merlo was at the scene of the first Kingsbury Run find."
Ness gestured to Curry, who stood and turned and smiled tightly to the assemblage and sat down.
For the next hour the group discussed and probed the slayings, and finally Ness said, "Gentlemen, I appreciate your attention and welcome these comments, insights, and ideas. But let us keep in mind—tonight we're right where we were the day the first body was found."
The group, many of them nodding solemnly, rose and began threading their way out of the room.
Wild approached Ness and said, "So, you think because you're not a vagrant, you're safe from this guy."
Ness shrugged.
"If that's what you think," Wild said, "you're as nutty as he is. Nuttier. You've declared war on a mass murderer, you fruitcake."
'Well," Ness said pleasantly, "he knows where he can find me. Buy you a drink?"
CHAPTER 5
Kingsbury Run was a good place to live.
That's how Ben saw it. Right in the middle of the city, here was a wide-open place where a man could fend for himself—and keep to himself. There was game to hunt—squirrels, wild dogs, pigeons, Hoover hogs (jackrabbits)—and if a man wanted to make his own fire and cook his own food, he would be left alone. At least Ben usually was. Folks in the jungle, the shantytown near the Thirty-fifth Street Bridge, knew about Ben, and Ben's knife.
Even without his king-size jackknife, Ben was nobody anybody in his right mind would mess with. That knowledge gave Ben a certain amount of satisfaction, if not exactly pride.
Only five six, Ben was broad-shouldered, a barrel-chested, threatening looking mole of a man whose dark blond hair was whitening; his clothes were old, even tattered, but he kept them clean. Unlike some, he had underwear; unlike some, he had shoes (boots, actually). He even had an extra pair, hid, in his cave, that he'd excavated high above the creek bed, away from shantytown, covering the opening with boards and tar paper. It was warm in winter, unlike the paper tents and cardboard hovels some of his neighbors endured. And when it got too damn cold, he could always flop at the Salvation Army—though a little bit of that pious Sally crap went a long way with Ben.
It wasn't like Ben was a hermit. He had friends in his world; he even made new ones from time to time. He was liked. He could sing songs from an Appalachian childhood, songs that were about all that was worth remembering from that childhood. Folks liked Ben's singing. Hobos (Ben didn't consider himself a hobo, but he put up with them, just as he did tramps—but he held no truck with bums) put a lot of stock in storytellers, joke tellers, and singers. There was a lot of time to kill in shantytown.
Nights when up the hill drifted the scent of a fine gump stew stewing—stolen chicken mixed with vegetables from the rubbish bins at Central Market—Ben would wander down, and get sociable. It would mean spending some time with folks—singing, putting up with the socialist talk that he'd once put so much stock in—but that was the price. Even in shantytown, nothing was free.
Ben liked being close to the city; there was something reassuring, comforting, about being in a wilderness bordered by city skyline. Best of both worlds, and both were at his fingertips.
With town so near, he could go scrounging for food at Central Market, mooch two-day-old bread from bakeries, or hit the soup kitchens or missions, and pick up the odd job here and there, when need be. Even a man like Ben needed some money. Coffee and sugar and cigarettes couldn't be scrounged. And drinking canned heat and moonshine got old—sometimes a man needed to sit in a saloon and put away some real honest-to-God beer and, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, hard liquor. That took money. Sometimes a man needed to get his ashes hauled, too—and most of the women riding the rails were either hooked up with some 'bo, or queer. So that took money, too.
He'd never had a wife. He almost did once, when he was working regular, at the slaughterhouse. That was after the war. His brothers told him he was crazy to quit, but they were younger than him, they hadn't been where he'd been. They hadn't got gassed at the Argonne. They hadn't seen waves of young men with guns go charging across no-man's-land to the sound of bombs and bullets and the cries of the wounded and dying. They hadn't put a knife into a wounded comrade to put him out of his misery and stop his screaming.
His family had come from the backwoods to Cleveland around the time he was born (Ben was forty-seven, although he didn't know it, having long since lost track) to get pie-in-the-sky factory jobs like they'd heard so much about. His father worked in a steel mill for about year and then took off forever one day; his mother worked as a seamer in a knitting factory, a sweatshop job that killed her in her twenties. His brothers and sister wandered to other cities and found jobs; Ben had answered the call of the road, just another penniless, unattached drifter hopping freights in search of nothing in particular. Adventure, maybe. Seeing America.
Seeing the world was what he had in mind when he enlisted. And he had indeed seen things in the "great" war, things that had quenched his desire for seeing much more of anything else.
But back home, the public had been protected from the horrors soldiers like Ben had endured; like the song said, "Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell," but you had to have been there to understand. You had to wake up screaming, thinking you were still racing across no-man's-land through bombs and bullets and the cries of ...
His brother Ed was in Chicago, working at Armour in the smokehouse. He helped Ben get a job there; Ben started as a common laborer on the killing floor and made a good impression. He had decided he'd best learn a trade, so he tried real hard, worked real hard; soon the foreman saw that Ben had a way with a knife. Before long Ben was given a better-paying position.
He became a hog killer.
Hogs chained by one rear leg to an overhead conveyer were brought in, squealing, upside down. Ben, standing in one spot as the hogs came helplessly to him, would grip each pig by its throat and dig his knife into its jugular, in a thrust and turn motion. Blood ran off his leather apron; his boots got painted red.
He lasted a week. He didn't ask for any other position at the slaughterhouse; he just hopped a freight and reentered the world of the hobo.
A hobo, which is what Ben was in those days, traveled around looking for work. Whereas tramps were those looking for the open road, for thrills; that described the prewar Ben. But he never was a bum, which was how Ben classified those who never worked at all, beggars who slept in doorways, drunks and junkies, the sort of vagrant that gave folks like Ben a bad name.
In those days after the war, after the slaughterhouse, Ben always thought he'd find work somewhere and settle down. Maybe get back in touch with Ida, the girl in "dry casings" at Armour who he'd been going with when he up and quit the slaughterhouse.
But instead he'd found himself on the hobo circuit, hitting the same towns year after year, seeking out jails to winter in, getting used to a life where lack of material belongings was a blessing, not a curse. He heard
a lot of talk about socialism and communism; there was a sort of hobo underground, with organizations and such, hobo "colleges" and coffee houses, mostly under the wing of the I.W.W., the radical labor party.
And the Depression had swelled the ranks of the wandering homeless, with free-spirited adventurers being outnumbered by the evicted and the desperate. Still, these folks fell right in with the kind of life Ben and others were living. After all, a lot of the men were war vets, like Ben, and had endured much worse. They had lived out of backpacks before.
The last time Ben believed in anything but his animal needs had been back in '32, when he got swept up in the Bonus Army. Ben was pretty radical back then, took it real serious, and that June, Ben and twenty thousand or so other war veterans and their families poured into Washington, D.C.. They were demanding the government cough up the war bonus the vets were not due to receive till 1945. President Hoover liked to say there weren't any hungry people in America, but Ben and thousands of other vets and their thousands of stomachs knew better; starving, jobless, they knew they needed their bonus dough, now.
They put up a Hooverville on Anacostia Flats in the southwest of the nation's capital. This army camp had no tents or barracks; just lean-tos cobbled together out of cardboard boxes and packing crates and scrap metal and tar-paper roofing. Desperation and hope mingled in the air, as communists, socialists, Wobblies, and the just plain hungry climbed on the Bughouse Square-type platform, preaching to the converted about the bonus they had coming. Congress wasn't sold, but did vote to pay passage home for the ex-soldiers.
Hardcore radical leaders urged the Bonus Army to stay on, and only a few thousand took Congress's bribe; the leadership assured those who remained that this battle, this war, would be won. Hoover was already campaigning for reelection—he could hardly afford to oust the Bonus Army by force. Use bayonets against unarmed war veterans, many of whom had their families with them, an army whose only weaponry was petitions? It would never happen.
BUTCHER'S DOZEN (Eliot Ness) Page 5