09/18/03

A new ending soon could be written to one of the most compelling stories of 20th century America.

How compelling?

Imagine today if Cleveland attracted as its safety director one of the most heralded crime fighters in the country. After taking the job, corrupt police captains and notorious mobsters start falling. In just a few years, Cleveland goes from being one of the most dangerous cities in America to one of its safest.

But, at the same time, there's a serial killer on the loose in the city. The unknown killer ranks as one of the worst in history, as monstrous as Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson. Headless bodies and parts of 13 victims are found throughout the city, though mostly in an industrial ravine east of downtown, called Kingsbury Run. The killings became known as the Torso Murders.

Yet, it really happened, more than 60 years ago. What history hasn't said is that this killer claimed another casualty _ the famous crime fighter Eliot Ness, who was Cleveland's safety director from 1935-42.

Ness was the killer's 14th victim, said Mark Stone of Lakewood, producer and editor of a documentary The Fourteenth Victim, which will have its debut at 10 tonight on WEAO-TV, part of the PBS network.

Stone and photographer Mark Brodowski used to work for PBS station WVIZ-TV before they formed Storytellers Media Group Ltd. The Fourteenth Victim is their second production.

Police and history experts interviewed by Stone in the documentary say Ness was tormented by the murderer because he couldn't solve the case. Ness, who never had failed before in law enforcement, took it personally.

The man they called the Untouchable, due to his rejection of bribes while working previously in Chicago, was touched in another way. The former federal agent, sworn to fight illegal booze during Prohibition, began to abuse alcohol, the documentary notes.

Two of the bodies were found within view of Eliot Ness' office and he lost it, Stone said. That's when he ordered the burning of the shanty town in Kingsbury Run. But there were no more killings after that. Ness may have been untouchable, but he wasn't infallible.

Stone's documentary suggests a murder suspect _ Francis Sweeney, who was a medical resident at St. Alexis Hospital, near Kingsbury Run. Though Ness confronted Sweeney, he never had him arrested as the killer.

Sweeney committed himself to a mental institution in 1938 and, ironically, the murders stopped, Stone said.

Following a hit-and-run drunken driving accident and a failed run at Cleveland mayor, Ness left Cleveland in disgrace. He settled in remote Coudersport, Pa., where he and his wife, Betty, lived quietly, almost forgotten.

The only person who seemingly remembered Ness was Sweeney, according to the documentary, which relates that Sweeney sent a stream of postcards to his nemesis. Stone interviewed friends of Ness and his wife who said the couple was frightened of the suspect. One postcard was signed Your paranoidal nemesis. Sweeney died in 1963, six years after a heart attack claimed Ness.

But police may have the final word. Recently, Stone was visiting the Cleveland Police Museum at the Justice Center downtown with Tom Armelli of the Cleveland Peace Officers Memorial Society. In the museum were five of the haunting postcards saved by Betty Ness. Armelli noted that DNA could be recovered from the postcards' stamps to help identify the suspect.

Negotiations are under way between police and the Western Reserve Historical Society as to which postcard should be sacrificed in removing the stamp. DNA analysis will take about eight weeks.

In addition to its premier tonight, copies of The Fourteenth Victim are available for purchase at the police museum or at www.storytellersmediagroup.com on the Internet.

Stone said his company is working on a documentary about the 1951 disappearance of the Cleveland girl Beverly Potts. Future subjects could include the 1954 Marilyn Sheppard murder and the 1977 Mafia bombing of Danny Greene.

There's always new stuff about those subjects, he said. We really think there's a national audience for these Cleveland stories.