Unsolved Murders Disappearances In Northeast Ohio

The Agatha Award–nominated account of Northeast Ohio’s most chilling unsolved crimes from the author of Wicked Women of Ohio. Cold case files litter the desks of authorities all across Northeast Ohio. Louise Wolf and Mabel Foote, Parma teachers, were on their way to school one winter morning when a maniac sprang from the bushes and bludgeoned them to death. When young Melvin Horst went missing on his way home from playing with friends in 1928, many thought he was kidnapped or accidentally killed by a bootlegger’s car. Charles Collins’s death looked like suicide but was proved otherwise by two preeminent surgeons and has remained a mystery for more than one hundred years. Author Jane Ann Turzillo recounts eight unsolved murders and two chilling disappearances in Northeast Ohio’s history. Includes photos!

No-Body Homicides: The Evolution of Investigation and Prosecution examines how police and prosecutors have become more successful in obtaining convictions for homicide when the remains of the victim are unavailable as evidence. Based on an examination of over 600 cases in the United States and Canada, this book shows the length some killers will go to avoid punishment and the determination of police and prosecutors to bring them to justice. For over 300 years, murderers in the United States and Canada could avoid prosecution by successfully disposing of the body of their victim. No-Body Homicides provides the reader with a historical overview of prosecutions in which a killer destroyed or hid the body of the victim. It explains why prosecutions were once extremely rare, and how legal, attitudinal, and technical changes have made them more common. The book also explores how the logic of no-body homicide prosecutions differs from body-present homicides. It allows police and prosecutors to draw on the accumulated experience of hundreds of prosecutions. For criminology students, it provides fascinating insights into the process of investigating and prosecuting homicides – as well as a glimpse into the motivations and practices of killers who are so determined to avoid punishment that they remove the bodies of their victims. No-Body Homicides will be of practical interest to police or prosecutors confronted with a missing person’s case that could be sinister. It is also written to be appropriate as a supplementary text in an undergraduate criminology class or for an aficionado of “True Crime.”

New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award-winner Daniel Stashower returns with American Demon, a historical true crime starring legendary lawman Eliot Ness. Boston had its Strangler. California had the Zodiac Killer. And in the depths of the Great Depression, Cleveland had the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. On September 5th, 1934, a young beachcomber made a gruesome discovery on the shores of Cleveland’s Lake Erie: the lower half of a female torso, neatly severed at the waist. The victim, dubbed “The Lady of the Lake,” was only the first of a butcher’s dozen. Over the next four years, twelve more bodies would be scattered across the city. The bodies were dismembered with surgical precision and drained of blood. Some were beheaded while still alive. Terror gripped the city. Amid the growing uproar, Cleveland’s besieged mayor turned to his newly-appointed director of public safety: Eliot Ness. Ness had come to Cleveland fresh from his headline-grabbing exploits in Chicago, where he and his band of “Untouchables” led the frontline assault on Al Capone’s bootlegging empire. Now he would confront a case that would redefine his storied career. Award-winning author Daniel Stashower shines a fresh light on one of the most notorious puzzles in the annals of crime, and uncovers the gripping story of Ness’s hunt for a sadistic killer who was as brilliant as he was cool and composed, a mastermind who was able to hide in plain sight. American Demon reconstructs this ultimate battle of wits between a hero and a madman.

Who Killed...? depicts fifteen of Cleveland's most notorious, heinous, and mysterious unsolved murders. Through laborious research and interviews with investigators and families of the victims, Jack Swint has laid out particulars of these unsolved murders: from frustrations of law enforcement officials, to grieving family members, to the coping of local communities trying to make sense of the random acts of madness. As a whole, Who Killed...? reveals the dark underbelly of a city still struggling to diffuse the rage and brutality that so many of its inhabitants possess.

Award-winning true crime author Jane Turzillo brings together the strippers, gangsters, robbers, shady politicians, and more from Cleveland's rough and rowdy past. From world-class museums and popular sports teams to peaceful parks and charming neighborhoods, Cleveland has a lot to offer. But it has a wilder, darker side. Along the one-block passageway called Short Vincent, tourists and celebrities mixed with bookies and mobsters for drinks and dinner, underworld gossip, and all kinds of entertainment. In 1969, Ted Conrad disappeared with $215,000 in stolen cash. An obituary more than fifty years later finally told authorities where he went. In the wee hours of March 24, 1970, someone slipped up to the front of the Cleveland Museum of Art and planted a bomb on the marble pedestal that supported Rodin's The Thinker. Who and why remain unknown.

Chronicles the events surrounding the 1951 disappearance of ten-year-old Beverly Potts in Cleveland, Ohio, discussing how it became the nation's first highly publicized missing child case and why it is still unsolved more than fifty years later.

Ohio history overflows with tales of enterprising thieves. Vault teller Ted Conrad walked out of Society National Bank carrying a paper sack containing a fifth of Canadian Club, a carton of Marlboros and $215,000 cash. He was never seen again. Known as one of the most successful jewel thieves in the world, Bill Mason stole comedian Phyllis Diller's precious gems not once, but twice. He also stole $100,000 from the Cleveland mob. Mild-mannered Kenyon College library employee David Breithaupt walked off with $50,000 worth of rare books and documents from the college. John Dillinger hit banks all over Ohio, and Alvin Karpis robbed a train in Garrettsville and a mail truck in Warren. Jane Ann Turzillo writes of these and other notable heists and perpetrators.