The Unwrapped Ham in the Snow

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Police were able to identify one of the men. They referred to him as the police character. It appeared deliberately leaving them in places where they were likely to be found. Was he taunting the police? Was there some element of gratification in that he found? He needed people to know what it was he was doing. I mean, he wasn't burying these bodies so that they would never be found ever. That was a big part of the frustration of this case.

In 1934, a man collecting driftwood along the Lake Erie shore found a human torso on the beach. No one could figure out what had happened. Over the next several years, more bodies were discovered. Eventually, a coroner assembled something he called the “Torso Clinic” to work on the case. It was made up of about 30 people – doctors, professors, police officers, and a young Prohibition agent named Eliot Ness.

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