Read Online Though Murder Has No Tongue by James Jessen Badal - Free Book Online

20th.
    Apparently, some unidentified members of the press corps decided it might be a good idea to check with Peter Merylo and ask what he thought of all this. After all, the torso murders had been the exclusive property of the Cleveland Police Department since the beginning, whether one officially marked that beginning at September 1934 or September 1935. Merylo had worked the case virtually full time since September 1936 under the guidance of Safety DirectorEliot Ness. And the police had repeatedly come up empty; the most massive investigation in city history had seemingly crashed against an impregnable wall of mystery. Yet the county sheriff’s office, with the aid of Pat Lyons, had blown the case open in a bit less than a year. Though the
Press
reported on July 6 that Merylo was “angered by the sheriff’s intrusion into his specialty,” the wily detective played his cards carefully and close to the vest—at least, for the time being. He pointed out to the
Plain Dealer
that Dolezal’s alleged assertion that he had been drinking with Flo Polillo the night of January 25 could not possibly be true, since then-coroner Pearce had determined she had been dead two to three days before January 26, when her partial remains were found. At this point, Merylo’s shot across the bow did little damage to the sheriff’s case, but the veteran cop was silently and deliberately arming his torpedoes.
    F RIDAY , J ULY 7
    That evening, Sheriff O’Donnell announced with great fanfare that he had obtained a confession—at least a confession of sorts. “Dolezal said he killed Mrs. Polillo and I believe him,” Pat Lyons told the
Plain Dealer.
“Suspect Says He Struck Woman with Fist When She Threatened Him with Butcher Knife in Quarrel,” proclaimed the
Press.
Deputy Harry S. Brown, Chief Deputy Clarence M. Tylicki, and Chief Jailer Michael F. Kilbane had subjected Dolezal to a continuous and brutally intense interrogation—no less than forty hours, according to the
Cleveland News
—since his arrest two days before, and the suspect had finally broken. “We were in my room drinking Friday night. . . . She was all dressed up and wanted to go out. She wanted some money. She grabbed for $10 I had in my pocket. I argued with her because she tried to take some money from me before. . . . She came at me with a butcher knife. . . . Yes, I hit her [Flo Polillo] with my fist,” the
Plain Dealer
reported the next day. “She fell into the bathroom and hit her head against the bathtub. I thought she was dead. I put her in the bathtub. Then I took the knife—the small one, not the large one—and cut off her head. Then I cut off her legs. Then her arms.” (The
Press
also “quoted” Dolezal’s narrative; and although the story is the same, the wording is rather different, thus raising a significant issue: how accurate were these reporters when it came to quoting a source? Just how rigorous—or casual—were press standards when it came to the use of quotation marks? The problem is further compounded in this case by the suspect’s reportedly very poor command of the English language; by all accounts from friends and family, he spoke broken English at best. Just whose words were those that the eager press establishment was quoting?) Dolezal placed this deadly confrontation at 2 A.M .on January 25, the day before the initial set of her remains was discovered. Following his confession, the sheriff and his men whisked their prisoner off to the lakeshore at East 49th just so he could point to the exact spot where he allegedly tossed Flo Polillo’s head into the frigid waters; then they headed back to Hart Manufacturing so he could similarly indicate where he had deposited the produce baskets containing the initial set of Polillo’s body parts. That evening, Cleveland’s press corps got their first look at the alleged Mad Butcher of Kingsbury