Though Murder Has No Tongue (29 page)

It would be both instructive and sobering at this point to recall the testimony provided by the Jones sisters on the final day of the inquest. “They were worrying him [Frank Dolezal] to death,” Lillian declared, “and they were punching him and beating him and everything like that.” And Ruby Lee insisted she overheard Pat Lyons say, “He will never come out of the County Jail alive. . . . He will never walk out of the County Jail.” Why would Lyons make such an incriminating statement in public? Assuming he was not just blowing hot air, what was the basis for this damning pronouncement? It could have been a simple case of macho bravado. Gerber did not subpoena him to testify at the inquest—a clear indication that no one thought Lyons had anything directly to do with Frank Dolezal's death. Though he had been deeply involved in Dolezal's arrest and had been celebrated in the press for apparently cracking the case, he had had nothing to do with the interrogation or anything else that happened in the county jail after July 5—at least as far as that can be determined. Though he does appear in some of the photographs that show Dolezal being escorted to a waiting automobile, Lyons virtually disappears from newspaper coverage shortly after the July 5 arrest. He may, therefore, have been feeling marginalized; hence, his statement could be read as a boastful attempt to reinsert himself into the heart of the action—to appear “in the know” and more deeply involved in subsequent events than he actually was. Or perhaps he did know what was going on behind the closed jailhouse door; thus his damning pronouncement should be seen as a clear admission that Frank Dolezal's death was indeed deliberate and premeditated.

W
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HERE A
D
EAL
? (P
ART
2)

The evidence is regrettably even less than scant; but if there was a deal of some sort, it was signed, sealed, and delivered after Frank Dolezal's death on August 24, 1939. The only way to approach this touchy issue seventy years after the fact is to look very carefully at what the people potentially and most likely involved did or did not do, what they did or did not say in response to unfolding events during the crucial three-year period between Dolezal's death and Eliot Ness's departure from Cleveland in 1942. “It'll Be Lonesome without Sweeney,” read the lead to a
Press
story by politics editor Richard L. Maher in the September 14,
1939, issue of the city daily. Three weeks after the death of Frank Dolezal and slightly more than two after the inquest, “Congressman Martin L. Sweeney, the West Side Democrat who once led the insurgent legions of the local democracy will sit out the current mayoralty campaign.” Citing the demands of his congressional seat in the nation's capital, “For the first time in years the congressman will watch the campaign parade go by and won't be marching along as he has in every campaign since 1931.” Maher's piece was brief, but the announcement was startling: Cleveland's most colorful and noisy politician suddenly withdraws almost entirely from the local public arena! And that this dramatic move should occur less than three weeks after Dolezal's “suicide” and the subsequent inquest is obviously food for thought. Sweeney reveled in the local political scene with the gusto of a gourmand contemplating a five-course meal. Could his duties in the nation's capital really be so pressing that he would so readily vacate the Cleveland arena and the political fray? Or was there something else behind this announcement? Again, the possibility of some sort of deal rears its head. Was Sweeney's decision wholly his own and a mere coincidence in its timing, or was there a quid pro quo understanding with city administration that compelled him to remove himself from local politics, at least temporarily, to protect his cousin's identity? But, again, did either side have the necessary ammunition to force a deal? In the immediate aftermath of the secret May 1938 hotel-room interrogation, Eliot Ness had little or nothing that pointed to Francis Sweeney's guilt, save a polygraph examination conducted by the best in the business plus his personal suspicions. There was, however, nothing to support any kind of overt legal action against him; and, quite frankly, Martin Sweeney had nothing with which to bargain. What could he possibly threaten to do or say if the Burton-Ness regime didn't keep its suspicions about his cousin's potential guilt secret? It's hard to believe he would lower himself to beg for a favor from men he attacked and despised. Presumably, by August–September 1939, nothing had changed, in spite of the controversy surrounding Frank Dolezal's arrest and death. Given these circumstances, what sort of deal could possibly have been struck?

It's safe to assume that if there were enough solid evidence to arrest and try Francis Sweeney for murder, no one in city administration or law enforcement would sit still for a deal that would protect him in any way. Police Chief George Matowitz's son and grandson insist unequivocally that he would never accept any kind of arrangement that would shield a murderer whose guilt could be proven in court; and both of Detective Peter Merylo's daughters similarly maintain that their father, totally apolitical animal that he was, would never keep quiet in the face of any secret wheeling and dealing. Martin
Sweeney may have been a huge thorn in the side of Cleveland's Republican administration; but he was, when all is said and done, a duly elected public official who—smoke-filled backroom shenanigans aside—had done nothing illegal. To tar and feather him with suspicions, however well founded, about his cousin's guilt in the city's four-year nightmare would amount to nothing more than character assassination—hardly the sort of behavior to be expected from straight arrows such as Eliot Ness and Mayor Burton. If some sort of “understanding” was reached between Martin Sweeney and the city administration, it would probably be more accurate to call it an arrangement or a gentlemen's agreement rather than a deal. The secret hotel-room interrogation and polygraph examination may have convinced Ness of Francis Sweeney's guilt; but because of the lack of any hard evidence to support this conclusion, there
was little the Ness office could do but keep the doctor under constant surveillance, in the hope of a break. Perhaps, just perhaps, the message was somehow conveyed to Congressman Sweeney that his cousin was “a person of interest” and that his surveillance would continue, but discreetly. And in return for this promise of total discretion, the city administration expected him to behave himself on the local political stage and use whatever influence he may have with his deranged cousin and his family to keep the former safely off the street. The clearest indication that there must have been some sort of mutually agreed upon understanding that resulted in a shroud of secrecy around Francis Sweeney's name that lasted for decades lies in the subsequent words and actions of three men most deeply involved in the Kingsbury Run investigation: Eliot Ness, Royal Grossman, and David Cowles. When in the 1950s Ness broke his twenty-year silence about his suspect with Oscar Fraley, he opted for the odd pseudonym “Gaylord Sundheim” rather than the actual name, “Francis Edward Sweeney”; Grossman, citing a promise made to Ness, would not divulge the suspect's name to researcher Marilyn Bardsley in the early 1970s; and Cowles refused to use it when he talked about the case on tape in 1983. Three men who had been deeply involved in the clandestine hotel-room interrogation, arguably the most significant event in the Kingsbury Run murder investigation saga, all refused to use the suspect's name. At first blush, it certainly sounds like a deal. When Bardsley finally uncovered the Sweeney name on her own, she phoned Cowles (then living in Florida) and simply said, “Francis Edward Sweeney.” The startled Cowles barked back at her, “Who gave you that name?”

A shotgun marriage or a simple case of political expediency? Cleveland mayor Harold Burton (left) and Congressman Martin L. Sweeney lobby the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C., on October 21, 1938, for the construction of a new VA facility in Cleveland. The secret hotel-room interrogation and lie detector test involving Francis Sweeney had taken place in May of that year. Frank Dolezal would be arrested in July 1939. Although it is tempting to see this unlikely alliance as part of some sort of deal between the Burton administration and Congressman Sweeney, there is no surviving hard evidence that this was the case.

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. F
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WEENEY THE
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UTCHER OF
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INGSBURY
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UN
?

Today, no hard evidence exists to support Francis E. Sweeney's guilt; and obviously there was none, or at least very little, seventy years ago. If there had been any solid proof, Ness would have had Sweeney arrested and brought up on charges immediately. However deep his suspicions may have been and in spite of what his gut may have told him, Ness was forced to turn the doctor loose after interrogation, because there was no solid evidence beyond Leonard Keeler's polygraph examination—which, of course, would not have been admissible in court. Unfortunately, Arnold Sagalyn's unsuccessful attempt to trail Sweeney around downtown Cleveland cannot be precisely dated; but as late as February 1940 (the date of Peter Merylo's encounter with him), the doctor was still being carefully watched. All of this ongoing surveillance
suggests that Ness and his colleagues, in spite of Keeler's assertion, were not entirely convinced of Sweeney's guilt, still trying to build their case against him, or—at the very least—simply keeping an eye on him.

In the best of all investigative-forensic worlds, the accumulation and objective analysis of evidence should point to the most viable suspect. The process should not work the other way around; one should not pick a suspect and then try to fit the evidence to him. (For the Ripper killings and the Lizzie Borden case, veritable industries have grown around the practice of identifying a suspect—usually someone who, up until this posthumous coronation, had never attracted any attention—and then tailoring the body of known facts to fit him or her.) Unfortunately, with Kingsbury Run, there is no other way to proceed. In the many years since the murder-mutilations and the investigation into them, too much vital evidence has disappeared, too much of the official paperwork has been dispersed by the bureaucratic winds, and the names of too many other potential suspects have been lost. All of the numerous, compelling, but undeniable links between Francis Sweeney and the Kingsbury Run killings may remain purely circumstantial and coincidental. They are, however, numerous and compelling.

In her petitions for divorce, Mary Sokol Sweeney places the beginning of her husband's mental decline, alcoholism, aberrant behavior, and violence in 1929—two years after their marriage and roughly a year after the completion of his medical studies. She did not, however, file an affidavit questioning his sanity until December 1, 1933. It was an extraordinarily bold legal move for a wife and mother to take in the early 1930s, and one can only assume that life in the Sweeney household must have become unbearably difficult, perhaps even dangerous. Modern profiling theory holds that serial killers are propelled into their murderous activities by a stressor of some sort—something in their private lives that tips an already fragile and damaged psyche over the edge. After a month-long incarceration at City Hospital in December 1933, Francis Sweeney was discharged into his wife's custody. Within a week, she was back in court filing another affidavit. The first piece of the Lady of the Lake's body washed up on the shores of Lake Erie on September 5, 1934; but then Cuyahoga County coroner Arthur J. Pearce fixed the never-identified woman's time of death as March 1934. To this day it is still not entirely clear that the Lady of the Lake should be officially counted among the torso victims. Assuming, however, that she belongs in the Butcher's tally and that Sweeney was, indeed, her killer, it is possible to argue that Mary Sokol Sweeney's legal assaults on her husband's sanity in December 1933 and January 1934 were the necessary triggers that pushed him to murder for the first time. And, interestingly enough, this first
victim was a woman. Had Francis Sweeney conveniently transferred his rage toward his wife to another target?

Two young boys discovered the body of the first officially recognized torso victim, Edward Andrassy, at the base of Jackass Hill on September 23, 1935. Andrassy's only reasonably steady job had been at City Hospital, where he had been employed as an orderly in the psychiatric ward. He seems to have left, or been fired from, the facility around the time Judge Nelson J. Brewer had Francis Sweeney arrested and committed to City Hospital for observation and psychiatric evaluation in response to Mary Sokol Sweeney's affidavit. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine exactly when Andrassy lost his job at the hospital, but he could conceivably still have been working there during the period of Francis Sweeney's incarceration—thus affording an opportunity for the two men to meet and establish some sort of relationship. Andrassy reportedly used the ruse that he was a doctor specializing in female problems as a seduction tool, and investigating officers found medical books in his room at his parents' house after his death. Medical texts were expensive and not easy to come by; if the two men did become acquainted at the hospital in late 1933 or early 1934, Sweeney could easily have been the source of those books. Assuming this scenario is correct, why, then, would Francis Sweeney kill Andrassy almost two years later in September 1935? In response to another stressor or to something Sweeney perceived as a personal betrayal? The presence of rope burns on Andrassy's wrists suggests rage or some sort of payback; and as dismembered bodies accumulated over the next three years, those marks would remain an utterly unique feature. Whoever murdered Andrassy seems to have known him and apparently to have killed him out of anger.