The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, was an unidentified serial killer who was active in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, in the 1930s. The killings were characterized by the dismemberment of twelve known victims and the disposal of their remains in the impoverished neighborhood of Kingsbury Run. Most victims came from an area east of Kingsbury Run called "The Roaring Third" or "Hobo Jungle", known for its bars, gambling dens, brothels, and vagrants. Despite an investigation of the murders, which at one time was led by famed lawman Eliot Ness, then Cleveland's Public Safety Director, the murderer was never apprehended.
William Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett, was a British barrister, judge, politician and preacher who served as the alternate British judge during the Nuremberg Trials.
Dismemberment is the act of cutting, ripping, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise disconnecting the limbs from a living or dead being. It has been practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, especially in connection with regicide, but can occur as a result of a traumatic accident, or in connection with murder, suicide, or cannibalism. As opposed to surgical amputation of the limbs, dismemberment is often fatal. In criminology, a distinction is made between offensive dismemberment, in which dismemberment is the primary objective of the dismemberer, and defensive dismemberment, in which the motivation is to destroy evidence.
Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury was a British pathologist. His cases include Hawley Crippen, the Seddon case, the Major Armstrong poisoning, the "Brides in the Bath" murders by George Joseph Smith, the Crumbles murders, the Podmore case, the Sidney Harry Fox matricide, the Vera Page case, and the murder trials of Louis Voisin, Jean-Pierre Vaquier, Norman Thorne, Donald Merrett, Alfred Rouse, Elvira Barney, Toni Mancini, and Gordon Cummins. Spilsbury's courtroom appearances became legendary for his demeanour of effortless dominance.
Hawley Harvey Crippen, usually known as Dr. Crippen, was an American homeopath, ear and eye specialist and medicine dispenser. He was hanged in Pentonville Prison in London for the murder of his wife Cora Henrietta Crippen. Crippen was one of the first criminals to be captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy.
George Joseph Smith was an English serial killer and bigamist who was convicted and subsequently hanged for the murders of three women in 1915. The case became known as the Brides in the Bath Murders. As well as being widely reported in the media, it was significant in the history of forensic pathology and detection. It was also one of the first cases in which striking similarities between connected crimes were used to prove guilt, a technique used in subsequent prosecutions.
Anthony John Hardy was an English serial killer who was known as the Camden Ripper for dismembering some of his victims. In November 2003, he was sentenced to three life terms for three murders, but police believe he may have been responsible for up to six more.
Winnie Ruth Judd, born Winnie Ruth McKinnell, also known as Marian Lane, was a medical secretary in Phoenix, Arizona, who was accused of murdering her friends, Agnes Anne LeRoi and Hedvig Samuelson, in October 1931. The murders were discovered when Judd transported the victims' bodies, one of which had been dismembered, from Phoenix to Los Angeles, California by train in trunks and other luggage, causing the press to name the case the "Trunk Murders". Judd allegedly committed the murders to win over the affections of Jack Halloran, a prominent Phoenix businessman.
Buck Ruxton was an Indian-born physician convicted and subsequently hanged for the September 1935 murders of his common-law wife, Isabella Ruxton, and the family housemaid, Mary Jane Rogerson, at his home in Lancaster, England. These murders are informally known as the Bodies Under the Bridge and the Jigsaw Murders, while Ruxton himself became known as The Savage Surgeon.
Richard Francis Cottingham is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least eighteen young women and girls in New York and New Jersey between 1967 and 1980. He was nicknamed the New York Ripper, the Torso Killer and the Times Square Killer, since he was convicted of three murders that occurred there that included mutilation.
The Crumbles Murders are two separate and unrelated crimes which occurred on a shingle beach located between Eastbourne and Pevensey Bay, England—locally referred to as "the Crumbles"—in the 1920s. The first of these two murders is the 1920 bludgeoning murder of 17-year-old Irene Munro, committed by two men: Jack Field and William Gray. The second murder to occur upon the Crumbles is the 1924 murder of 38-year-old Emily Kaye, who was murdered by her lover, Patrick Mahon.
Jeffrey Howe was a British businessman who was murdered by Stephen T Marshall.
The Long Island serial killer is an unidentified suspected serial killer who is believed to have murdered between 10 and 18 people over a period of nearly 20 years, and to have disposed of their bodies in areas on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. Most of the known victims were sex workers who advertised on Craigslist.
Richard Lawrence Marquette is an American serial killer who killed three women, drained their blood, mutilated and dismembered their bodies, and scattered their remains between 1961 and 1975. He was the first person ever to be added as an eleventh name on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List, in connection with the 1961 murder of Joan Caudle in Portland, Oregon. He has been incarcerated at the Oregon State Penitentiary since June 1975.
Norman Thorne was an English Sunday school teacher and chicken farmer who was convicted and hanged for what became known as the chicken run murder. Thorne murdered his fiancée Elsie Cameron on 5 December 1924 at his chicken farm in Crowborough, Sussex, and later dismembered and buried her body.
Peaches is an unidentified female whose torso was discovered on June 28, 1997, in Lakeview, New York, near Hempstead Lake State Park. The cause of the woman's death is listed as homicide, apparently by decapitation. As of 2023, she remains unidentified since her skull has yet to be found. The woman had a tattoo on her left breast depicting a heart-shaped peach with a bite taken out of it and two drops falling from its core, which resulted in her nickname. As of December 2016, additional skeletal remains found on Long Island in 2011 have been positively identified as belonging to Peaches, along with the remains of her child. As a result, Peaches is now linked to the Long Island serial killer as a potential victim.
The Thames Torso Murders, often called the Thames Mysteries or the Embankment Murders, were a sequence of unsolved murders of women occurring in London, England from 1887 to 1889. The series included four incidents which were filed as belonging to the same series. None of the cases were solved, and only one of the four victims was identified. In addition, other murders of a similar kind, taking place between 1873 and 1902, have also been associated with the same murder series.
Oak Grove Jane Doe is an unidentified murder victim found dismembered in the Willamette River south of Portland, Oregon near Oak Grove over a period of several months in 1946. The first discovery consisted of a woman's torso which was found wrapped in burlap, floating near the Wisdom Light moorage on April 12, 1946; this led the media to dub the case the Wisdom Light Murder.
The Oklahoma City Butcher is an unidentified serial killer who murdered three women between 1976 and 1986 in Oklahoma City. The killer murdered, dismembered, and mutilated young homeless Native American women.
Ruth Belle Waymire was a formerly unidentified female murder victim whose dismembered body was found in Spokane, Washington in 1984. Her body was recovered from the Spokane River on June 20, 1984, and was missing the hands, feet, and head. 14 years later, in 1998, a skull was found elsewhere in Spokane that was later determined as belonging to Waymire. While transporting the skull for forensic analysis, the detective responsible for the case was accompanied by his young daughter, who said "Since we have another person in the room, we should name her. Let's call her Millie". She was identified on March 29, 2023 by Othram.
