Sunday, April 22, 2001
The History Channel and an international organization of crime solvers are interested in the Austintown man's theory.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
AUSTINTOWN -- For more than 57 years, a series of murders spanning Youngstown, New Castle and Cleveland has remained unsolved. A township man believes he has the answer.
At least 24 people between 1921 and 1943 were killed in the three cities. The killer followed a similar pattern in each murder, strangling the victims, often mutilating the bodies and taking some of the clothing.
Books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles have been written about the deaths, many following the theory held by investigators at the time, that the killer was a doctor from the Cleveland area.
Bob Mancini, 43, of Austintown, doesn't accept that theory. He's spent more than 4,000 hours researching the case, studying old police files, newspaper articles detailing the crimes and books on serial killers and psychological profiling.
His theory: "The killer's not from Cleveland; he's from New Castle," Mancini said. "It's not a mad doctor. It's a railroad worker; and I'm just out to prove I'm right and they're wrong."
All the murders occurred along the railroad, leading Mancini to his conclusion about the killer's line of work.
Mancini rattles off the details of the grisly murders: 12 killed in Cleveland and 12 between Youngstown and New Castle. Some were decapitated; some heads were never found. Some were dismembered.
The slain include men and women, black and white. Many of them were transients, some prostitutes.
An upstairs bedroom in Mancini's North Roanoke Avenue home is dedicated to his investigative hobby. Red pegs on a map tacked to the wall pinpoint the locations where each body was found. Files of articles and police documents fill a book shelf.
On TV: Mancini's only connection to the case is his interest. He's writing a book on the murders and his theory about the killer. He's also featured on "Perfect Crimes," a new show on the History Channel. The program featuring Mancini will air at 9 p.m. Thursday, 1 a.m. Friday and 6 p.m. April 29.
The legendary Eliot Ness, most noted for his work in bringing down mobster Al Capone, investigated the cases and concluded the New Castle and Youngstown killings weren't connected to those in Cleveland. Mancini believes other investigators abandoned the connection theory because of Ness' pronouncement.
The killer was dubbed the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, an area near Cleveland where bodies were found. The techniques he used to decapitate and dismember the bodies led authorities to believe he was a doctor in the Cleveland area.
Mancini believes the killer grew up on a farm and that his work with animals, rather than medical training, led to his skill with a knife. Using guidelines created by the FBI, Mancini developed a profile that led him to a suspect. Because the murders started in New Castle, Mancini believes that's where the killer lived.
"I did a crisscross of everybody who lived in New Castle at that time and worked for the railroad," he said.
Likely suspect: Because serial killers generally don't stop killing until they're either caught or killed, Mancini theorized that the murderer died about six months after the last killing.
He used the history room in the library in New Castle to look up obituaries, looking for someone who died during that time and matched the other profile characteristics.
His research led him to a man who enlisted in the Army at 43 and died in an explosion while at training camp 50 days after the last murder was committed. Mancini declined to identify his suspect, citing relatives who remain in the area.
He has been invited to present his theory to the Vidocq Society, a nonprofit international organization based in Philadelphia.
The group, named for an 18th-century French detective, includes experts in forensic science and criminal investigation who look into cold cases.
Richard Walter, a founder of the organization and a forensic psychologist and crime profiler, said he initially considered Mancini one of the Sherlock Holmes wannabes who often contact him about cases.
"Then I became somewhat interested," he said. "I thought, 'There's some potential there.'"
Mancini is "certainly going in the right direction," Walter said, adding that the new hypothesis is more plausible than what's previously been suggested about the case.
After Mancini's presentation, a date for which hasn't been set, Vidocq members will help Mancini in his investigation and try to determine if his idea is correct.
A driver for ABF trucking company, Mancini became an amateur detective about nine years ago when surgery on his shoulder kept him out of work.
How he began: He was wandering the library, searching for reading material when a book caught his eye. "It was the Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, and it was a big book, so it stuck out on the shelf," Mancini said.
He started leafing through and read about a series of murders that occurred from the 1920s through the 1940s in the Cleveland area.
"It said there were similar murders at the time in Youngstown and New Castle, but they were never connected," Mancini said.
So he started digging out old articles in The Vindicator and Cleveland and New Castle newspapers.
"I got some strange looks at the library because I was asking for these articles with headlines like 'Headless body found,' 'Another torso found,'" he said.