One of the nation's first highly publicized missing child cases

Ten-year-old Beverly Potts was last seen at 9:00 p.m. the evening of August 24, 1951, at Halloran Park on Cleveland's West Side. She and her neighbor and friend Patricia Swing had gone to see the Showagon--a troupe of singers, dancers, magicians, and other performers that traveled around Cleveland's neighborhood parks during the summer, giving free performances. Patricia had to be home before dark, but Beverly's parents told her she could stay until the show was over. When she was still not home by 9:30, her...

From 1934 to 1938, Cleveland, Ohio, was racked by a classic battle between good and evil. On one side was the city's safety director, Eliot Ness. On the other was a nameless phantom dubbed the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run," who littered the inner city with the remains of decapitated and dismembered corpses. Never caught or even officially identified, the Butcher simply faded into history, leaving behind a frightening legend that both haunts and fascinates Cleveland to this day. In 2001 the Kent State...

In 2001 The Kent State University Press published James Jessen Badal's In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders--the first book to examine the horrific series of unsolved dismemberment murders that terrorized the Kingsbury Run neighborhood from 1934 to 1938. Through his access to a wealth of previously unavailable material, Badal was able to present a far more detailed and accurate picture of the battle between Cleveland safety director Eliot Ness and the unidentified killer who avoided both detection and apprehension.

In his groundbreaking historical study,...