Time & Tales Podcast

Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: PART TWO

By August 1938, the Cleveland Torso Murders had left bodies across Kingsbury Run, the Cuyahoga River, the lakefront, and the city’s industrial edges. In this second part, the case escalates when two more victims appear near the East 9th Street lakefront dump, practically under City Hall’s nose, and the pressure on Eliot Ness becomes impossible to ignore. This episode follows the investigation as it broadens into medical conferences, dead-end suspects, and the growing belief that the killer knew Cleveland’s poorest districts intimately. It also traces Ness’s most infamous response: the Kingsbury Run raid, the burning of the shantytown, and the desperate attempt to disrupt a murderer who always seemed one step ahead. ................................................................ Links: LaNae's Books: lmriviere.com [http://lmriviere.com] Request an Episode: timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com [timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com] Visit our website: timeandtalespodcast.com [http://timeandtalespodcast.com] .................................................................. Collins, Max Allan, and A. Brad Schwartz. Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America’s Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology. William Morrow, 2021. “NESS, ELIOT.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University. “TORSO MURDERS.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University. “The Torso Murders.” Cleveland Police Museum. Schwartz, A. Brad. “How Eliot Ness Wound Up Hunting a Serial Killer in Cleveland.” CrimeReads, 6 Sept. 2022. Wikipedia Encyclopedia Britannica

Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: PART ONE

In 1930s Cleveland, bodies began turning up in places most of the city tried not to see: Kingsbury Run, the river flats, rail lines, and waste ground crowded with poverty during the Depression. In this episode, we begin the story of the Cleveland Torso Murders—also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run case—and the nightmare that landed on Eliot Ness’s desk when victims started appearing decapitated, dismembered, and, in some cases, never identified at all. This first part follows the early victims, the panic building around the killings, and the impossible position Ness found himself in: a famous lawman brought in to clean up a city where corruption, class prejudice, and chaos were already working against the investigation. It’s the start of one of the darkest unsolved serial murder cases in American history. ............................................... Check out LaNae's books: lmriviere.com [http://lmriviere.com] Request and episode: timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com [timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com] Sign up for our newsletter: timeandtalespodcast.com [http://timeandtalespodcast.com] .............................................. Sources: Collins, Max Allan, and A. Brad Schwartz. Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America’s Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology. William Morrow, 2021. “NESS, ELIOT.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University. “TORSO MURDERS.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University. “The Torso Murders.” Cleveland Police Museum. Schwartz, A. Brad. “How Eliot Ness Wound Up Hunting a Serial Killer in Cleveland.” CrimeReads, 6 Sept. 2022.

Mercy Brown & the New England Vampire Panic

In 1892, in Exeter, Rhode Island, a grieving family exhumed the body of nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown in a desperate attempt to save her dying brother. This episode follows the real story behind one of America’s most famous vampire legends: tuberculosis, winter graves, folk belief, and the New England vampire panic that turned a family tragedy into a permanent piece of American folklore. We trace Mercy Brown’s death, the exhumation in March 1892, the medical reality of consumption, and the wider fear that the dead could drain life from the living. It’s a story of grief, disease, and superstition in nineteenth-century New England—and why Mercy Brown still haunts American dark history more than a century later. ................................................................... Website: timeandtalespodcast.com [http://timeandtalespodcast.com] Email: timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com [timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com] Read LaNae's New Book: A Vow For Breaking [https://www.lmriviere.com/shop/p/a-vow-for-breaking-signed-copy] ................................................................... Sources: Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. University of Chicago Press, 1995. Bell, Michael E. Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires. Carroll & Graf, 2001. Bell, Michael E. “Vampires and Death in New England, 1784 to 1892.” Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 31, no. 2, 2006, pp. 124–140. Brown, Mercy Lena. Obituary notice. Providence Journal, 20 Jan. 1892. Brown, Edwin Atwood. Obituary notice. Providence Journal, 7 May 1892. “Exhumation of the Brown Family.” Providence Journal, 19 Mar. 1892. Rhode Island Historical Society. “Have Mercy…” 31 Oct. 2016. Stetson, George R. “The Animistic Vampire in New England.” American Anthropologist, vol. 9, no. 1, 1896, pp. 1–18. Tucker, Abigail. “The Great New England Vampire Panic.” Smithsonian Magazine, Oct. 2012.

The Dark History of Abandoned Mines

In the United States, abandoned mines still hide across deserts, mountains, forests, and public land: open shafts, flooded pits, collapsed tunnels, and unstable ground left behind by gold rushes, hard-rock mining, and coal extraction. In this episode, we trace the dark history of abandoned mines from California and Nevada to Colorado and Appalachia, and ask a harder question beneath it all: when people vanish in remote country, how often is the answer under their feet? From Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms to Nevada and West Virginia, this episode follows real deaths, disappearances, and recoveries tied to old mine country while looking at the larger hazard footprint still spread across the United States. It’s a story about ghost landscapes, forgotten industry, and the deadly holes America never really closed. ................................................................ Links: timeandtalespodcast.com [http://timeandtalespodcast.com] timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com [timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com] instagram.com/timeandtalespodcast [http://instagram.com/timeandtalespodcast] ................................................................. Sources Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2024 NCIC Missing and Unidentified Person Statistics Travis W. Heggie, “Dead Men Walking: Search and Rescue in U.S. National Parks” United States Bureau of Land Management, Abandoned Mine Lands United States Bureau of Land Management, AML Dangers California Legislative Analyst’s Office, Improving California’s Response to the Environmental and Safety Hazards Caused by Abandoned Mines Nevada Division of Minerals, Nevada Abandoned Mine Lands Report 2012 U.S. Government Accountability Office, Abandoned Mine Land: Opportunities Exist to Improve Support for Economic Development and Facilities Planning in Coal Communities, GAO-24-106680

The Voynich Manuscript

In 1912, rare-book dealer Wilfrid Voynich opened a small vellum codex in Italy and found a manuscript unlike anything he had seen before: strange plants, bathing women, foldout diagrams, star charts, and page after page of writing no one could read. More than a century later, the Voynich Manuscript remains one of the most famous unsolved texts in the world. This episode traces Voynich’s discovery, the manuscript’s trail backward through Prague, Jesuit collections, and the court of Rudolf II, and the modern fight to explain what it is: cipher, lost language, hoax, or a real medieval book we no longer understand. ...................................................... Links: timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com [timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com] timeandtalepodcast.com [http://timeandtalepodcast.com] ....................................................... Sources: * Yale Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Beinecke MS 408 * Johannes Marcus Marci of Cronland to Athanasius Kircher, presentation letter preserved with the manuscript * Wilfrid M. Voynich, published statements and correspondence on the manuscript after its 1912 acquisition * University of Arizona radiocarbon dating results on the Voynich Manuscript parchment, 2009 * M. E. D’Imperio, The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma * René Zandbergen, Voynich.nu [http://Voynich.nu], provenance and research documentation * Yale Beinecke records on the manuscript’s twentieth-century chain of custody from Voynich to Kraus to Yale