Though Murder Has No Tongue

by Badal, James Jessen

• ISBN13: 9781606350621
• ISBN10: 1606350625
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-08-01
• Publisher: Kent State Univ Pr

Summary

Though Murder Has No Tongue is the story of Frank Dolezal, the only man actually arrested and charged with the infamous "Torso Murders" in Cleveland, Ohio, during the late 1930s. Dolezal, a fifty-two-year-old Slav immigrant, came to the attention of sheriff's investigators because of his reputation as a strange man with a stockpile of butcher knives. According to rumors, he threatened imagined transgressors and had a penchant for frequenting bars in the seedy neighborhood where dismembered bodies had been recently discovered. Dolezal was arrested in July 1939 and never saw freedom again.

Author Biography

James Jessen Badal is assistant professor of English and journalism at Cuyahoga County Community College in Cleveland. He was elected to the board of trustees of the Cleveland Police Historical Society in 2001. He is the author of In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders (The Kent State University Press, 2001) and Twilight of Innocence: The Disappearance of Beverly Potts (The Kent State University Press, 2005).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Chaos
The Maelstrom	p. 3
The Bricklayer, the Cop, and the Private Eye	p. 12
History through a Glass Darkly	p. 30
Violent Death on a Hot Afternoon	p. 58
Revelations
An Interlude: Mary Dolezal	p. 67
Behind the Veil	p. 74
CSI Mercyhurst and Beyond	p. 99
Reckoning
All in the Family	p. 113
Conspiracy and Cover-up	p. 126
Fearful Symmetries and Damning Coincidences	p. 132
Conclusions, Fragments, and Loose Ends	p. 164
Epilogue: The Tragic Story of Anna and Joseph Nigrin	p. 175
Afterword: Gaylord Sundheim	p. 180
Appendix: Chronology and Summary of Historical Documents Regarding Francis Sweeney, M.D.	p. 193
Bibliography	p. 211
Index	p. 213
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