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Criminal

Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and Cleveland’s Torso Murderer

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.738.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1934, a man collecting driftwood along the Lake Erie shore found a human torso on the beach. No one could figure out what had happened. Over the next several years, more bodies were discovered. Eventually, a coroner assembled something he called the “Torso Clinic” to work on the case. It was made up of about 30 people – doctors, professors, police officers, and a young Prohibition agent named Eliot Ness. We're excited to announce Criminal Plus - our new membership program. Sign up to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes, ad-free listening of Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery and members-only merch. Our first bonus episode is available now! Learn more and sign up here: thisiscriminal.com/plus. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Support for this show comes from Krakan.

0:03.0

Krypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,

0:11.0

or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.7

crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.

0:18.4

Krakhan, see what crypto can be.

0:21.3

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. This episode contains descriptions of violence.

0:35.0

Please use discretion.

0:37.0

I was on a sleepover at a summer camp and we're roasting smores around a campfire.

0:48.1

Author Daniel Stashhour.

0:50.3

And the counselor thought it would be a terrific idea to tell this group of young kids

0:57.0

the story of a horrible series of gruesome crimes where the killer had never been caught that took place in the woods

1:07.0

very close to where we were.

1:09.5

And I remember while hearing this story unfold, we had to stop him to get him to explain what the word

1:16.8

decapitation meant and he repeated the phrase many times and the killer is still out there the at all that night. But that was the first time I'd heard the story of the Kingsbury run murders.

1:37.0

I mean, you know, most kids make up scary stories for each other around a campfire but this one this is

1:46.2

like a this is a real story this was a real nightmare that happened.

1:49.4

It is it's a true story and it played out at the height of the Great Depression in Cleveland in the 1930s.

2:00.0

Just before 8 a.m. on September 5th, 1934, a man named Frank Legassie was out collecting

2:07.5

driftwood near Cleveland's Euclid Beach Amusement Park. Euclid Beach is on Lake Erie, and its amusement park was modeled on Coney Island.

2:18.0

The park's slogan was nothing to depress or demoralize.

...

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