Cleveland authorities partners with a nonprofit organization to identify body parts left behind by one of America’s oldest known serial killers using genetic genealogy nearly a century after they were found.

The “Torso Killer,” also known as the “Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run,” killed at least 12 people between 1935 and 1938, according to the Cleveland Police Museum’s website. But recent research has suggested there may have been 20 or more victims, Cleveland.com reported.

Only two of the killer’s victims have been identified. Bodies were rarely found whole, often missing heads that were never recovered.

Those who had heads, which were located at a distance from the rest of their bodies, accordingly Cleveland Police Museum, they are believed to have been floaters not recognized in the disseminated sketches.

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Cleveland police, puzzled since 1934 over the identity of Cleveland’s “Crazy Torso Killer,” had a new problem to solve when bridge tenders on the murky Cuyahoga River dragged five of a woman’s body parts out of the water. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Two victims linked to the unknown killer have been positively identified, according to the museum, as Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo.

Andrassy, ​​a 28-year-old white man, was found decapitated, emasculated, wearing only socks and bleeding in July 1939. Fingertips identified him, the museum said.

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Police searching the crime scene found the body of a woman, believed to be in her 40s, who has never been identified. Parts of Polillo, a waitress and maid, were found carefully wrapped in newspaper in January 1936. The rest of her body, except for her head, was recovered at another location 10 days later. She was also identified by her fingerprints.

Dental records allowed the “unofficial” identification of a third victim, Rose Wallace. But according to the museum, police could not make a definitive determination.

Although no arrest was ever madepolice believe a surgeon named Francis E. Sweeney, who may have had the expertise and equipment to dismember the bodies, was responsible for the murders. He was questioned by police for a week but never confessed, according to the Cleveland Police Museum. However, after he was institutionalized, the killings stopped.

The DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization that conducts and helps fund genetic genealogy testing in cold cases, partnered with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office in an effort to name some of the 10 unidentified victims.

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Detectives and a medical examiner examine the bones of two murder victims found at the East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump August 16, 1938, in Cleveland. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore told Fox News Digital that there is a “very high probability that the DNA Doe Project will be successful in identifying these individuals.”

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“In 1938, there was no DNA testing. They probably couldn’t even imagine. And so the advances we’ve seen in the nearly 100 years are incomprehensible to the people who originally worked. this case, no doubt,” she said.

“You know, the ’80s is when DNA started being analyzed for criminal applications. In the 90s it really started to come into use in the United States. But it took quite a while to get accepted. I mean, we can look back to the OJ Simpson case, for example, you know, where the jury didn’t understand DNA well enough to weigh it as much as we do today and then in the last six years, we’ve done another leap forward with investigative genetic genealogy.

“Direct-to-consumer DNA testing was introduced in 2000 by a company called Family Tree DNA. It was the first time we could test our own DNA to learn more about our family tree and our genetic heritage,” explained Moore. “This became what is now called genetic genealogy. This is the marriage of using DNA testing and genealogical records.

“So people have been genealogists for decades, hundreds of years, really using records to build family trees. And today we are very fortunate to have billions of records online that are being digitized so that most of us can build our family trees from now on. on time, from the comfort of our own home”.

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So far, two of the bodies have been exhumed. One, which WOIO-TV characterized as the killer’s “most famous” victim, is known as “The Tattooed Man.”

Left by the railroad tracks in the summer of 1936, the unknown man’s head was found about 1,500 meters away from his body. Even after police fingerprinted him and widely circulated images of his six tattoos, including the names “Helen” and “Paul,” according to the Cleveland Police Museum, he was never identified.

At the 1936 Great Lakes Exposition, more than 100,000 people saw an exhibit that featured a cast of the man’s head and pictures of his tattoos, but no one reported recognizing him.

The second body to be tested was found on a Cleveland lakeshore in the summer of 1938 and is believed to be the killer’s sixth victim.

Kingsbury Run is indicated on this map by dots locating 10 of the 11 spinning murders that took place there in the 1930s. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

A single anonymous donor is funding lab costs, DNA Doe told CBS News. Although the remains may be contaminated or degraded because of their age, Jennifer Randolph, the nonprofit’s executive director of case management, said DNA Doe has identified older remains before.

“We’ll figure out what the DNA matches are. We’ll build their trees, find those common ancestors, and then, you know, build forward, or maybe look back a little bit, to see who the unidentified individual is.” Randolph told WOIO-TV.

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“So there could still be people alive who know, you know, that these are individuals that were missing from their family and nobody knew what happened to them,” Randolph said. “And regardless of that play, especially considering how, you know, they died, they deserve the dignity and the justice to be commemorated with their names.”

Moore told Fox News Digital that scientists will face a number of challenges working with such ancient remains.

“We’re dealing with degradation, with potential contamination from bacteria. “It’s very difficult to work on what we would call ‘ancient remains,'” Moore explained. “When you’re working with very old cases, you’re almost certainly dealing with degradation where you can’t analyze all the DNA.

“Some of the that DNA will be missed. And then, with the contamination, we see the bacteria insert their own genome into the human genome. And so you have to have skilled scientists who are able to remove that bacterial genome, separate it from the human genome before you can do investigative genetic genealogy.”

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But even older remains have been identified using the practice, Moore said, citing at least one victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, whose family was finally notified in July of this year.

Conformable Fox 59World War I veteran CL Daniel was identified as one of the victims of the 1921 tragedy, and his family was notified 103 years later.

“I have some inside information on this, and it was very, very difficult to get the DNA necessary to do investigative genetic genealogy from those very old remains,” Moore said. “But there was some success, and sometimes it took several rounds at the lab before they finally got that DNA that was viable for our work. It’s quite comparable and it was very difficult.”