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wait for you to join.

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Now here's the show.

2:30

This episode contains descriptions of

2:32

violence. Please use discretion.

2:38

I was on a sleepover at

2:40

a summer camp, and

2:42

we're roasting s'mores around

2:44

a campfire. Author Daniel

2:46

Stashour. And the counselor

2:49

thought it would be a terrific

2:52

idea to tell this group

2:54

of young kids the story

2:56

of a horrible series of gruesome

2:59

crimes

3:00

where the killer had never been caught

3:03

that took place in the woods very close to

3:05

where we were. And I remember

3:08

while hearing this story unfold, we

3:11

had to stop him to get him

3:13

to explain what the word decapitation

3:15

meant. And he repeated

3:18

the phrase many times, and

3:20

the killer is still out there.

3:25

We're eight or nine years old. I don't think anybody at all

3:27

slept at all that night, but

3:30

that was the first time I'd heard the

3:32

story of the Kingsbury Run murders.

3:36

I mean,

3:36

you know, most kids make up

3:38

scary stories to for

3:41

each other around a campfire. But this one, this

3:44

is like a, this is a real story. This is a

3:46

real nightmare that happened.

3:48

It is. It's a true story. And

3:51

it played out at the height

3:53

of the Great Depression in Cleveland in

3:56

the 1930s.

3:58

Just before 8am, On September 5,

4:02

1934, a man named Frank Lagasse was

4:05

out collecting driftwood near Cleveland's

4:08

Euclid Beach Amusement Park.

4:10

Euclid Beach is on Lake Erie, and

4:12

its amusement park was modeled on Coney Island.

4:16

The park's slogan was, Nothing

4:18

to depress or demoralize. Frank

4:22

Lagasse would apparently go out collecting driftwood

4:24

most mornings before he went to work.

4:27

But on this morning, he saw something he

4:29

didn't understand.

4:31

He steps a bit closer,

4:34

and it turns out to be

4:37

parts of a human

4:40

torso

4:41

that are washed up and partially

4:43

buried on the beach. It

4:46

was the lower half of a woman's body.

4:48

The legs had been cut off at the knees.

4:52

He ran to a nearby house to call the police,

4:55

and when the body was transported to the county morgue,

4:58

the coroner thought the woman had died six

5:01

to eight months earlier, but had only

5:03

been in the water for a short time. The

5:07

woman's skin appeared to have been treated

5:10

with some kind of chemical, but

5:12

the coroner didn't know what the chemical was

5:14

or why, and

5:17

determining the woman's identity seemed

5:19

nearly impossible. What

5:21

they did notice was that

5:23

there appeared to be a kind of surgical

5:25

precision that had been practiced

5:28

by the killer, presumably by the

5:30

killer, while dismembering the body.

5:34

The coroner said that he seemed

5:36

able to navigate

5:39

the difficult joints and ligatures as they

5:41

were approached, and this led investigators

5:44

to conclude that he must

5:47

have some kind of experience, perhaps

5:49

medical training, maybe he

5:51

was a surgeon of some kind, or a butcher,

5:55

but it seemed that he knew

5:57

what he was doing.

5:59

touched off a massive

6:02

search for the

6:05

remaining body parts. They

6:07

even employed the Boy Scouts,

6:10

if you can imagine such a thing, to help

6:12

in the search for body parts.

6:15

The next morning, a handyman

6:17

named Joseph Hadock read about the

6:19

discovery of the woman's body in the newspaper.

6:22

He couldn't believe it. Two

6:25

weeks earlier, he'd found what

6:27

looked like the upper part of a human torso

6:30

on a beach outside of the city.

6:32

There is a dead seagull next to it. Joseph

6:36

Hadock had called the sheriff,

6:38

and the sheriff dismissed it as part

6:41

of an animal. He told Joseph

6:43

Hadock to bury it in the sand.

6:47

When he saw the newspaper story about the woman,

6:49

he called the police again and took them

6:51

to the place where he'd buried the remains.

6:54

When they were analyzed by the coroner, they

6:57

were determined to be remains of the

6:59

same woman. That

7:02

same week, a teenager was swimming

7:04

in Lake Erie and reportedly

7:06

saw a human hand under the water.

7:09

She told her father it looked like it was

7:11

waving at her.

7:13

She wanted him to come and see, and he

7:16

did, later telling police, quote,

7:19

I'm sure it was a human hand.

7:22

But the detectives couldn't find anything.

7:25

Pieces of body parts were turning

7:28

up, were being gathered for several days afterwards,

7:30

which must have been just as horrifying

7:33

as you can imagine.

7:35

And the police were stymied. They

7:37

just didn't know how to

7:39

move forward. A reporter

7:42

asked a detective if it was a perfect

7:44

crime, and the police officer

7:46

said no.

7:48

But it was, quote, so

7:50

close to being perfect that we don't

7:53

know what to do next. I'm

7:56

Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. One

8:03

year later, in September of 1935, two boys, 12 and 16,

8:05

were out throwing a ball.

8:16

The ball sails wide. It

8:18

rolls down a hill, a very steep incline

8:21

called Jackass Hill, and

8:23

they race each other to the bottom. And

8:26

the older boy gets there first. And

8:28

when he gets to the bottom, he spies something

8:32

poking out from the brush at

8:34

the bottom of the hill. And he turns around and

8:36

he says to his friend, turn around,

8:39

don't come any closer. There's a man

8:41

without a head down here.

8:43

The police got there very quickly. And

8:47

it turned out there were two

8:49

bodies, two sets of remains,

8:53

both decapitated. Police

8:56

were able to identify one of the men. They

8:59

referred to him as a police character. Meaning

9:02

he was known to law enforcement.

9:04

He'd been in trouble with the law. But

9:06

the police naturally thought, well, we're

9:08

on our way. We've identified

9:11

this guy. We will be able to

9:13

work backwards, find out what

9:16

happened here.

9:17

And they worked very, very hard,

9:20

but got nowhere.

9:22

About four months later, in January 1936,

9:26

the owner of a meat market walked out

9:28

of the back of his shop

9:30

and saw what he said he thought was a

9:32

wrapped ham in the snow.

9:35

He unwrapped it to find a human arm wrapped

9:38

in newspaper.

9:40

He called the police, who came

9:42

and unwrapped even more body parts in

9:45

the snow behind the shop. So

9:49

was there a sense that he was trying to

9:52

make some sort of dramatic... Whoever

9:54

was doing this, the person that was committing these

9:56

crimes, was trying to make some sort of dramatic reveal

9:59

for those that...

9:59

that were finding these body parts. I

10:02

mean, he wasn't burying these bodies

10:04

so that they would never be found ever.

10:07

No, and that was a

10:09

big part of the frustration of this

10:11

case. Why was he

10:15

leaving these parts? It appeared, deliberately

10:18

leaving them in places where they were

10:21

likely to be found. Was he taunting

10:24

the police? Was that, was

10:26

there some element of gratification

10:28

in that, that

10:31

he found he needed people to

10:33

know what it was he was doing?

10:36

It was a very,

10:37

very strange

10:39

series of events. The

10:41

coroner in Cleveland assembled something

10:44

he called the torso clinic. It

10:47

was made up of about 30 people, including

10:50

anatomy professors, doctors,

10:52

police, and a psychiatrist.

10:55

They brought together these experts

10:57

in the hope that if they

11:00

got these varied opinions together in one room,

11:03

they would come up with a way

11:06

of moving forward. But they

11:08

recognized at the time that

11:10

they had drifted into really

11:13

uncharted territories and that it would

11:15

take a truly original

11:18

and heroic effort to get to the bottom

11:20

of this thing.

11:22

One of the members of the so-called torso

11:24

clinic was the city's brand

11:26

new safety director, a

11:28

young man named Elliot Ness, who'd

11:31

moved to Cleveland after living in Chicago,

11:33

where he'd made a name for himself

11:37

as the guy who'd brought down Al Capone.

11:44

We'll be right back.

11:57

Elliot Ness started his career running credit. checks

12:01

and then got a job with the U.S. Treasury Department's

12:04

Prohibition Bureau. They

12:06

had a big problem, Al Capone.

12:10

In June of 1931, the Chicago

12:12

Tribune reported on the quote sensational

12:15

rise of Al Capone on a tidal

12:17

wave of beer ministering to

12:20

a $20 million a year thirst.

12:23

He had a $50,000

12:25

pinky ring. He rode around town in

12:27

an armor-plated Cadillac. He

12:30

passed out diamond-studded

12:32

belt buckles to his friends. And

12:35

supposedly he once said, you

12:37

can get a lot farther with a smile and a gun

12:39

than you can with just a smile. And

12:43

it seemed that

12:46

nothing could be done about it. By some

12:48

estimates, the Chicago bootlegging machine,

12:50

at the height of the Prohibition years, had

12:53

set aside $1 million each month,

12:55

that's each month, to grease

12:58

the palms of crooked officials.

13:00

In November of 1930,

13:03

Al Capone rented a storefront and

13:05

put up a banner that read, Free

13:07

Soup, Coffee and Donuts for the Unemployed.

13:11

His soup kitchen became the largest in

13:13

the city, serving three meals a day.

13:16

Second helpings were allowed. No

13:19

questions were ever asked.

13:21

On Thanksgiving of 1930, his

13:24

soup kitchen reportedly served dinner

13:26

to 5,000 people in Chicago.

13:30

An unnamed source identified as a Capone

13:32

associate told the Associated Press

13:35

he couldn't stand it to see those poor devils

13:38

starving, and nobody else seemed

13:40

to be doing so much, so the big boy

13:42

decided to do it himself.

13:45

People called him Good-hearted Al.

13:47

Elliot

13:50

Ness, as a young Prohibition agent,

13:52

assembled a team and planned raids

13:55

to uncover Al Capone's hidden breweries

13:58

around the city

13:59

and arrest them. the men working them, sometimes

14:02

called Alki Cookers. How

14:06

was Al Capone? What

14:08

did he do to make all this beer, to make

14:10

this happen? It was very

14:13

clever. And

14:16

Ness himself admired Capone's

14:19

business sense, his cleverness in

14:22

setting up this network

14:25

of illicit breweries

14:27

that pumped out beer. And they

14:31

either paid off officials to look

14:33

the other way, or had

14:35

a series of moves in place that allowed

14:37

them to move their operations from place

14:39

to place, always staying just a step ahead

14:42

of investigators. So

14:44

it was a real

14:47

challenge just to find these breweries,

14:51

much less to shut them down.

14:54

Ness in particular tried

14:57

to bring diligence and integrity

15:00

to the Prohibition Bureau, which was

15:03

generally thought to have been incompetent

15:05

or corrupt. And Ness, for Ness,

15:08

it was more than just about

15:11

prohibition. He understood

15:13

that

15:15

prohibition had allowed

15:17

more serious forms of crime to flourish,

15:20

because so many police and politicians were

15:23

on the take. This was

15:25

a theme that he returned to again

15:27

and again throughout his career, that prohibition

15:30

had put power into the hands

15:32

of the mob.

15:34

And a lot has been written about

15:36

the failures of prohibition. Congressman

15:39

at the time basically

15:41

said it was just all a ghastly farce. One

15:44

official said that enforcing

15:47

the law was like trying to dry up

15:49

the Atlantic Ocean with a blotter.

15:51

But it was Ness's job, and he

15:54

was determined to do it.

15:57

But before he could raid an Al Capone brewery,

17:59

there was a doorway in it. They

18:02

popped through that and managed

18:05

to scoop up the brewmaster

18:08

and quite a few of his accomplices. It

18:10

was the first time, Ness said, that

18:13

prisoners had been taken in a Capone

18:15

brewery raid.

18:18

Did Capone do

18:21

anything? Did he try to buy

18:24

off Elliot Ness?

18:25

Oh, yeah. I mean, that was...

18:29

That had been the business model. Capone was great

18:32

at buying people off. And

18:36

Ness told this one story

18:38

about some of Capone's men driving

18:41

by, some of his men, basically throwing

18:43

a big wad of cash at them. And

18:46

the men picked it up and threw it back,

18:48

which made Ness very, very

18:51

proud indeed. And when

18:53

they found that they couldn't buy off

18:55

these men, these supposedly

18:57

untouchable men, there

19:00

were threats, but those didn't work

19:03

either.

19:03

Untouchable meaning what? Untouchable

19:06

meaning they couldn't be touched by bribes.

19:11

They conducted more raids in the first half

19:13

of 1931, and Elliot

19:15

Ness said they found and seized 25 breweries.

19:20

Did Elliot Ness make a dent

19:22

on Al Capone's business? At

19:25

one time, newspapers were saying that Ness

19:28

had so dried up Capone's

19:30

network that it was

19:32

costing him millions of dollars. Ness

19:36

understood

19:37

his role as part of

19:40

a larger effort to bring down

19:42

Capone. In

19:44

June of 1931, Al Capone was charged with 23 counts

19:49

of income tax evasion.

19:51

A week after that, he was charged

19:53

with prohibition violations. Elliot

19:57

Ness describes it as 5,000 violations.

19:59

of the liquor law.

20:02

He told a reporter, we

20:04

did our part, but the real

20:07

work of sending Capone to prison was

20:09

done by the tax investigators. Our

20:12

job was more spectacular. That

20:14

was all. But let's face

20:16

it. You've got a story here where

20:20

Capone may or may not be sent to prison

20:23

based on a strict interpretation of

20:25

tax law

20:27

on information gathered by a

20:29

roomful of accountants.

20:32

And at the center of it, there's this

20:34

handsome young prohibition

20:36

agent driving a truck

20:38

through the doors of breweries.

20:41

That's the story that the reporters latched

20:43

onto. And let's face it, which movie

20:45

would you rather see?

20:48

What happened to Al Capone? Well,

20:51

it was a long and a

20:53

spectacular trial,

20:55

at the end of which Capone

20:58

was actually convicted of

21:00

tax evasions and

21:02

sent to prison. But

21:05

something that, an aspect of

21:07

this story that doesn't

21:09

often get told is even after that conviction,

21:12

for a while, Ness and

21:14

the prohibition team kept working

21:17

on the assumption that

21:20

Capone would do his time, get out, and

21:22

as Capone himself said, the

21:25

organization would kind of hold together while

21:27

I was away. And there was this

21:30

thinking that Capone would get out of prison and

21:32

just sort of pick up where he'd left off. So

21:34

it was very important

21:36

to Ness and to others that

21:38

the conspiracy case be kept current

21:41

so that additional

21:43

charges could be brought to bear. That

21:45

never happened, as it turned out, because very

21:47

quickly, after Capone

21:50

arrived in prison, it was

21:53

discovered that

21:55

he was already in the advanced stages of

21:57

syphilis.

21:59

Although he did

22:02

eventually get out of prison, he was never the same man

22:04

and never took power again.

22:08

In June of 1931, the New

22:10

York Times wrote that the untouchables, quote,

22:13

impervious to threats of death and bribes,

22:16

have accomplished their

22:17

mission. The

22:19

peace ends, the untouchables

22:22

are waiting for further orders. I

22:25

mean, the press about Eliot Ness was really

22:27

over the top, one paper said no

22:30

soldier on the battlefield ever performed

22:32

more heroic work than

22:35

has Eliot Ness.

22:36

Yes, and

22:38

he's going to have a real struggle to

22:41

live up to his own reputation, to

22:43

fill his own shoes.

22:46

By the end of 1933, prohibition was over. Al

22:51

Capone was in prison. Eliot

22:54

Ness reportedly said to a colleague,

22:57

did you ever think you wanted something more

22:59

than anything else in the world?

23:01

And then, after you got it, it

23:04

wasn't half as good as you expected. Has

23:07

that ever happened to you? At 31,

23:11

Eliot Ness moved to Cleveland. He

23:14

landed a job as the director

23:17

of public safety. And

23:19

this is a position

23:21

that put him in charge of the entire

23:23

police department

23:25

and the fire department and

23:27

a whole lot more. It was a big, big

23:30

promotion, so big, in

23:33

fact, that a lot of people assumed

23:35

he would fall flat on his face.

23:38

In Chicago, he'd been in charge of a

23:40

handful of guys.

23:41

And now, he's running

23:43

a department of thousands of city

23:46

employees in one of America's biggest

23:48

cities. And what's more, he's the youngest

23:51

person ever to hold the position.

23:54

He moved to Cleveland right around

23:56

the time people started finding body

23:58

parts, all over. the city. We'll

24:02

be right back.

24:18

Elliott Ness was sworn in as the safety director

24:21

in Cleveland in December of 1935, less than

24:25

three months after the two boys

24:27

found a body with no head at the bottom of Jackass

24:30

Hill,

24:31

and more than a year after the man collecting

24:33

driftwood had found a woman's torso

24:35

near Euclid Beach Amusement Park.

24:38

He was the director of public safety.

24:41

He was at the top of the pyramid.

24:44

The police chief reported to him, nobody

24:48

expects a director of public

24:50

safety to solve a murder any

24:52

more than they expect him to walk a beat or

24:54

rescue cats stranded in trees,

24:58

except when it's Elliott

25:00

Ness. People did

25:02

expect action from Elliott Ness. They

25:04

expected heroics. Ness

25:07

had made a point of saying that he would lead

25:09

from the front lines.

25:12

One month into the job, he told a

25:14

reporter he'd use the same

25:16

tactics we used against Capone. He

25:19

went on to say, quote, all crime

25:21

is alike.

25:23

And then more body parts appeared.

25:27

Two

25:27

kids found a man's head under

25:30

a willow tree when they skipped school to

25:32

go fishing. More

25:34

than a month later, a teenager was walking

25:37

on a path through the woods and came across

25:39

a body without a head. Police

25:42

later found the head nearby. And

25:45

then that September, a man was about

25:47

to hop onto a moving train when

25:50

he looked down into a creek and

25:52

saw a torso.

25:54

The mayor told Elliott Ness

25:56

to take this whole thing over personally.

25:58

Yes, the

25:59

The mayor dropped it on his desk. This

26:03

was at a time when the city of Cleveland

26:05

was struggling mightily

26:08

to shake off the lingering effects of

26:10

the Great Depression. And

26:13

the mayor, a man named Harold Burton, had

26:15

put together this series of events

26:18

to

26:21

broadcast to put forward the notion that

26:23

Cleveland was a place to do business. All

26:25

roads led to Cleveland. It was a place

26:27

where there should be business conventions and

26:32

all the railroads converged and they

26:34

were building a spectacular skyscraper

26:38

to anchor the whole effort. And

26:42

at the margins of this, there's this

26:44

uncaught serial killer. It didn't look

26:46

good for the city's image. The

26:49

mayor was concerned and he

26:51

put Ness directly on it. So

26:54

Ness put together a team in

26:56

the mold of the Untouchables

26:57

and they worked outside the system

27:00

and under the radar trying to get information

27:03

off the criminal grapevine.

27:05

And he said very little publicly,

27:07

but there was one notable statement. He said,

27:09

I'm going to do all I can to

27:12

aid in the investigation.

27:14

I want to see this psycho

27:17

caught.

27:19

In February of 1937, a man

27:21

found another

27:22

torso almost in the same place

27:25

where the first had been found in 1934 near

27:28

Euclid Beach Amusement Park.

27:31

A head with gold teeth was found

27:33

that June.

27:35

In March of 1938, a dog

27:37

came running out of some woods about 60 miles

27:40

outside of Cleveland in Sandusky

27:43

with a human leg in its mouth.

27:45

The coroner said,

27:47

from the appearance of the bone, it looks

27:49

like a professional job.

27:51

And I'm sure a surgeon's soul was used. It

27:56

puts the investigators onto

27:58

a suspect that... that

28:00

hadn't gotten any serious scrutiny before.

28:05

From the beginning, investigators

28:07

had believed that the killer

28:09

must have knowledge and training

28:11

that allowed for the surgical precision

28:14

of the dismemberments performed on the

28:16

victims, a doctor or a butcher,

28:18

that was the theory. And

28:21

this

28:24

severed limb that was discovered near Sandusky,

28:26

Ohio,

28:28

put them on the trail of

28:30

a particular suspect.

28:32

They called him Dr. X.

28:35

His real name was Frank Sweeney.

28:37

He was a doctor who had fallen

28:40

on hard times and had a

28:42

substance abuse problem. He

28:44

checked a lot of boxes. Ness's

28:47

team started tailing Dr. X. And

28:51

apparently the

28:52

suspect took a perverse pleasure

28:54

in it, like a form of hide and seek.

28:57

There are stories that he even called

28:59

police headquarters to taunt

29:01

them

29:02

on the poor quality of the surveillance effort.

29:04

He'd say something to the effect of, wow,

29:06

that guy who had tailing me wasn't very good.

29:09

If he wants to try again, I'll be in such

29:11

and such a department store tomorrow afternoon.

29:14

Well, at one stage, Ness

29:17

and his men scooped this guy up and

29:19

grilled him for a very long time in

29:22

a hotel suite.

29:23

The details are sketchy and contradictory,

29:27

but one of Ness's colleagues said that the interrogation

29:30

went on for a week or

29:32

possibly two in eight

29:34

hour stretches, but

29:36

the suspect never cracked and

29:39

Ness finally had to let him go.

29:42

Three months later, a woman's torso

29:45

was found at the dump.

29:48

As police searched the area, people

29:50

came to watch. One

29:52

man saw the investigation on his way home

29:54

from work and decided to go back

29:56

to the dump later that evening and bring

29:58

his wife and a friend.

30:01

And when he did,

30:02

he stumbled onto the remains of a man. Civilians

30:07

offered to try to help police officers make

30:09

sure there weren't more bodies in the dump. And

30:12

the police accepted help from about 100

30:14

volunteers. Daniel

30:17

Stashauer says they were called torso

30:19

detectives.

30:21

One newspaper characterized the

30:23

uncaught serial killer as Cleveland's

30:26

shame. For

30:29

a time, Ness was seen

30:31

to be doing all he could to

30:34

run the killer to ground. But it was natural that over time,

30:36

no matter what he was doing behind the scenes,

30:40

and he wasn't talking about it very

30:42

much, about what he was doing behind the scenes, the

30:45

press began to turn. They began

30:48

to wonder, why

30:50

is this killer still out

30:51

there? Two days

30:53

after the search, Eliot Ness

30:56

organized a raid on a part of town where a

30:58

lot of people had built shelters. By

31:01

some accounts, because he believed that

31:03

the murderer was targeting the city's

31:05

poorest men and women. And

31:07

by some accounts, so he could search the shelters

31:10

for knives or other evidence.

31:13

At least 60 men were arrested.

31:16

And then Eliot Ness ordered the fire chief

31:19

to soak the entire area in coal oil

31:22

and light it on fire.

31:25

An editorial in the Cleveland Press

31:27

on August 19, 1938 read,

31:31

Safety Director Eliot Ness's raid

31:34

upon the packing box homes

31:36

may contribute something to the capture of

31:38

the torso killer.

31:40

We doubt it.

31:43

Many of the men arrested were charged with

31:45

vagrancy and sentenced to workhouses.

31:49

One week later, Frank Sweeney, Dr. X,

31:53

had himself admitted to a veteran's facility

31:56

called the Soldiers and Sailors' Home.

31:59

that when Sweeney checked

32:02

himself into this veteran's home,

32:05

he had placed himself beyond the

32:07

reach of law, that it was the equivalent of getting

32:09

himself locked up in an

32:11

asylum where the law couldn't

32:13

touch him. That wasn't strictly

32:16

the case. He could

32:18

come and go almost at will,

32:20

and

32:22

Ness arranged to have him followed when

32:24

he did. But

32:27

the killings appeared to have stopped

32:30

at that point. And

32:33

although the investigation

32:36

continued

32:38

and Sweeney remained under surveillance,

32:41

by 1938, the

32:44

killings appeared to have come to an end.

32:48

By this point,

32:49

Eliot Ness's wife had left him.

32:52

He also seemed to be

32:54

blowing off steam in a way

32:56

that began to draw

32:59

attention. And it's

33:01

an unhappy irony that

33:04

the most famous prohibition agent

33:06

of all time

33:08

had some real momentum with alcohol.

33:11

And this problem began to get worse

33:14

over time. There were nightclubs

33:17

and hotels that reserved

33:19

tables for his exclusive use.

33:23

And at least one friend insisted that

33:26

he wasn't a heavy drinker, but that he could keep

33:28

at it for long periods without

33:30

giving any appearance of being swacked.

33:33

Well, I don't know if that was true or not, but he

33:36

appeared to be swacked much of the time and

33:38

people were beginning to notice.

33:41

Around 5 a.m., one morning in 1942, when

33:43

he was 38, he

33:46

was driving home from a bar called the Vogue Room

33:49

and got into an accident.

33:51

His car slips

33:53

on an icy patch, slams into another

33:55

one, and a

33:58

gentleman is hurt.

33:59

has to be taken to the hospital, and

34:02

the details are a little sketchy

34:04

and a little confused, but there

34:07

was some criticism that Ness

34:09

did not identify himself and

34:12

left the scene before police

34:15

arrived. And it

34:18

seemed that the time had come to

34:20

step down from the post of

34:23

safety director.

34:25

He tried to make something work for himself in

34:27

the private sector. But it turned

34:30

out Ness didn't have much of a head for

34:32

business. Still,

34:35

he worked very hard at it, but

34:38

without a great deal of

34:40

success. An editor

34:43

at Cleveland's Plain Dealer said

34:45

that Eliot Ness had peaked too

34:47

young. A friend said,

34:50

quote, he simply ran out of gas.

34:53

At one point, he got a job at a bookstore.

34:57

And then one day, he was at a bar with

34:59

a friend in New York.

35:01

His friend had invited a writer named Oscar

35:03

Fraley to join them. So

35:06

the two friends are just catching

35:08

up while Ness sits at the bar

35:11

drinking. And after

35:14

a while, when Ness's friend

35:17

is kind of talked out, he turns to Fraley

35:19

and he says, you know,

35:21

you ought to talk to this guy. This

35:24

is the guy who took down Al Capone.

35:26

He says, it was very dangerous. He's

35:28

got stories to tell. Fraley

35:31

sort of looks at Ness and in Fraley's words,

35:33

he says, you know, he couldn't believe this mild mannered

35:36

guy had anything to do with it. Ness

35:39

looks back at him and says, it was

35:41

dangerous.

35:43

And for whatever reason, Ness

35:45

just starts talking

35:47

and they talk through the night.

35:48

And Ness is telling stories of Chicago

35:51

and the Untouchables and Capone

35:53

and Fraley is mesmerized. And

35:55

when it's all over, Fraley says,

35:58

you know, you should write a book. book. And

36:02

one thing leads to another, and

36:04

they collaborate on the

36:07

book

36:07

that became The Untouchables.

36:12

Ness did not live to see The

36:14

Untouchables published. He died

36:16

in 1957 of a heart attack

36:18

at the age of 55,

36:20

and the book appeared a few months

36:22

later.

36:24

The book was adapted into a TV show in 1959.

36:26

It ran for four

36:28

seasons.

36:30

And then it was made into a movie, with

36:32

Kevin Costner playing Eliot Ness

36:35

and Robert De Niro playing Al Capone.

36:39

He

36:40

died hoping that the book would be a success,

36:43

but believing himself to be a forgotten

36:45

figure.

36:51

Do you think Frank Sweeney was the torso

36:53

murder? For my purposes,

36:56

it's enough that Eliot

36:58

Ness believed it. I

37:00

could argue this case up or down.

37:04

Frank Sweeney was definitely not

37:06

a good guy. And in

37:09

Ness's papers in Cleveland, there

37:12

are taunting postcards that

37:14

Sweeney sent to Ness over

37:17

the course of years. Ness

37:20

had clearly gotten under Sweeney's skin in

37:22

a big way, and he wrote him these

37:24

postcards that are

37:27

very hard to understand. They're full

37:29

of bizarre references, and they're

37:32

strange underlinings and attempts at

37:35

humor. And

37:37

Sweeney walks right up to the edge of

37:39

saying something that appears to implicate

37:42

himself, but he never crosses over. There

37:44

was nothing there that rises to the level of

37:47

a confession. It's possible

37:50

that Sweeney just

37:52

bitterly resented what

37:54

Ness had put him through. But

37:57

do I think he did it?

37:59

Yeah. I do.

38:14

Learn more about Elliot Ness in Daniel

38:16

Stashower's book American

38:19

Demon, Elliot Ness and the Hunt for

38:21

America's Jack the Ripper. We'll have

38:23

a link in the show notes.

38:25

Criminal is created by Lauren Sporre

38:28

and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior

38:30

producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising

38:32

producer. Our producers are

38:34

Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily

38:37

Clark, Lena Sillison and Megan Kinane.

38:40

Our technical director is Rob Byers. Veronica

38:43

Simonetti mixed this episode. Engineering

38:46

by Ross Henry.

38:48

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations

38:50

for each episode of Criminal. You can see

38:53

them at this is criminal dot com. We're

38:56

on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and

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Instagram at criminal underscore podcast.

39:01

We're also on YouTube at YouTube dot com

39:03

slash criminal podcast.

39:06

Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina

39:08

Public Radio WNC. We're

39:11

part of the Vox Media podcast network.

39:14

Discover more great shows at podcast

39:16

dot Vox media dot com. I'm

39:19

Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. All

39:38

right, so I'm going to press record. This

39:41

guy here.

39:46

Hello, hello. OK,

39:49

so Russ, she sounds

39:51

good. OK. And

39:53

we're recording. OK. Lauren,

39:57

how how long have you wanted to be the host of a

39:59

true crime? You're already

40:04

laughing. How does that microphone

40:06

feel? I prefer

40:09

to be over there in the windowless dark

40:11

control room where I've been for the last 10 years.

40:15

Lauren, welcome

40:17

to Criminal Plus.

40:21

Do you want to introduce yourself? I'm Lauren Spore,

40:23

the co-creator of Criminal

40:25

Podcast. And this is

40:27

Love Podcast. And Phoebe Reads a Mystery? I

40:30

am the co-creator of Phoebe Reads a Mystery. One might say

40:32

I'm the whole creator of Phoebe Reads a Mystery. I

40:35

think it was that one was my idea. Solo.

40:39

You and I have been making these shows

40:41

for a really long time

40:44

now, almost 10 years.

40:45

We have 200

40:47

episodes. How many episodes do we? Over 200.

40:52

All this time, you've had no interest

40:56

in ever being on the microphone.

40:59

That's not true. I've done like, I think there's, I've done like

41:01

four or five. Remember

41:03

I did that Raymond Chandler story? Very

41:05

early on. Mm-hmm. I did one

41:07

where I talked to my dad about an old

41:09

1960s Jacksonville case. Yeah, that

41:11

was a good episode.

41:13

Thank you. Do you think that there are

41:15

people where it's a very clear

41:17

divide, people who would be very happy

41:19

to be on the microphone and

41:21

people who would not? Do

41:24

you think you are either a person who likes

41:26

the mic or doesn't like the mic?

41:29

I think that you, isn't

41:31

that why you had a microphone tattoo? That

41:34

was one of the first jokes I ever told you that

41:36

I had a tattoo of a microphone.

41:39

And remember how long you believed me? Oh, why wouldn't

41:41

I? I

41:43

don't have any tattoos. I was remembering that

41:46

you, I was remembering your outfit the first

41:48

time I met you. Do you remember? So

41:50

I probably, this was 10

41:52

years ago. We

41:55

were both working at the

41:58

story with Dick Gordon, which was... was a

42:00

national public

42:03

radio show. We were both producers

42:06

and I had been away

42:08

for a while. And I don't

42:11

know what, I just had taken a break from

42:13

being a producer. And when

42:16

I came back, Lauren had begun working

42:18

as a producer. And for some

42:20

reason they put us in the same

42:23

little work area. We

42:26

had two desks, but it

42:28

was a very, it was a cubicle situation. And

42:31

I

42:32

didn't know who Lauren was. And I

42:34

was just really focused on pitching

42:37

really good stories. And

42:39

I think I was wearing a blue

42:41

jean jacket with holes

42:44

in the elbows probably. Shred,

42:46

just shredded. Shredded, but not

42:49

on purpose. I mean, out of, out of wear, not on,

42:51

it wasn't a fashion statement. And probably

42:54

a pair of Blundstones.

42:56

I think you might've been wearing square-toed

42:58

fry boots. Yeah. Well,

43:01

it was, what? And you were wearing about 65

43:04

silver bangle bracelets that

43:07

went all the way up to your elbow. If you could change one

43:09

thing about working with me over the past 10 years,

43:11

would it be my bracelets?

43:15

Oh my God.

43:20

That's a little bit of the first bonus episode

43:22

available to listeners who sign up for our new membership

43:25

program, Criminal Plus. Members

43:28

will also get to listen to Criminal without any ads,

43:31

as well as This Is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.

43:34

Plus, you'll get access to an exclusive

43:36

merch store and virtual events.