Free Though Murder Has No Tongue by James Jessen Badal

it or not, his first public statements tended to damage the sheriff’s case against Frank Dolezal. “Our records show some slight differences in the manner in which Mrs. Polillo’s body was dismembered and the manner in which others were,” he told the
Plain Dealer,
“but I still feel that the murderer of Mrs. Polillo is responsible for all the crimes. While it is possible that two men committed the crimes, it is unlikely that one would pick up where the other left off or that the manner of dismembering would be so similar. It is more probable that, as the murder series continued, the torso murderer changed his style.” Dolezal’s refusal to admit he killed the other victims now became an obstacle for the sheriff. O’Donnell’s first step was to shore up Dolezal’s confession to Flo Polillo’s murder and then try to link him to the others, but the notion that he was only responsible for the death of Polillo had been established and would stubbornly persist.
    Always mindful of how useful city newspapers could be in publicizing—even supporting—his crime-battling initiatives, Eliot Ness courted the press with the practiced finesse of a Hollywood press agent. Perhaps taking a page from the safety director’s playbook, Sheriff O’Donnell now began trying to exploit and manipulate the press to the advantage of both his office and its case against Frank Dolezal. Unfortunately, he lacked the safety director’s suave style, and his approach to reporters was considerably more heavy-handed. To O’Donnell’s credit, he staged some of the scenes in the unfolding Dolezal drama for maximum public effect, allowing reporters and photographers full access to his activities; but when newspapermen turned too nosy or belligerent in his estimation, or when he could not control the situation,he turned defensive, often displaying a petulance that simply convinced the press corps that he was hiding something, that here was something deliberately left unsaid worth digging for. One of O’Donnell’s more successful operations, however, was a very visible, highly publicized return visit to the scene of the supposed crime, Frank Dolezal’s former residence at 1908 Central Avenue, for a thorough reexamination of its bathroom. His men tore out the bathtub and examined the stains and filth underneath and along the bathroom walls. Western Reserve University chemist Enrique E. Ecker scrapped samples of the various stains for further analysis. The coroner’s office promised to search through the collected evidence of the Polillo murder to see if there was anything with her blood on it that could be compared to the samples gathered at the Central Avenue apartment; there were even some rather pointed comments about exhuming her body if necessary.
    At the time of his arrest on July 5, Dolezal had been sharing his apartment for a month with Harold Kiersner, a twenty-three-old ex-con who had served two years in Leavenworth for liquor-law violations. On July 8, Kiersner wrote an article for the
Press
recounting his experiences with his recently arrested roommate. (Though Kiersner’s name appears at the top of the piece, it is extremely doubtful he actually wrote it. Attributing the article to him was probably an editorial ploy to increase circulation; an article actually written by someone who had lived with the accused would obviously be seen as a major scoop.) “I slept with him the night before he was arrested for the torso murders,” the article declares. “I don’t know whether he killed that woman. Sometimes I don’t think he did. He liked a pretty face, but he never did go for women.” Kiersner painted a disturbing portrait of a troubled man who drank at least twenty bottles of beer a day, angered easily when intoxicated, and was overwhelmed by frequent crying jags. Almost as an afterthought, Kiersner noted, “He speaks English very