TORSO.JPG
Investigators examine a murder scene during the Torso Murderer's spree in the 1930s.The torso murderer sent Cleveland into a panic with a killing spree that claimed a number of homeless victims. The killer, who was never caught, also became the boogeyman for a generation of Clevelanders.
(The Plain Dealer Historical Photo Collection)
Whatever happened to the movie about the Cleveland Torso Murders and the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run?
"Whatever happened to . . . ?" is a weekly series updating some of the most newsworthy and interesting local stories covered in The Plain Dealer. Have a suggestion on a story we should update? Send it to John C. Kuehner at jkuehner@plaind.com.
Today, we answer this question:
Whatever happened to the movie about the Cleveland Torso Murders and the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run? The movie has been to what the film industry calls development hell, and back again. But interest in the project remains high, and it looks like a feature film will finally happen.
It specifically would be a movie based on "Torso," an Eisner Award-winning graphic novel by former Clevelanders Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko, with art by Bendis.
Published as a trade paperback in 2001, it recounts one of the darkest episodes in Cleveland history.
Between September 1935 and August 1938, the bodies of seven men and five women were discovered in or near Kingsbury Run, which was then a "hobo jungle" in a creek bed running from East 90th Street and Kinsman Road to the Cuyahoga River. A 13th body, found washed up near Bratenahl in 1934, later was added to the tally.
Most of the victims were homeless or transients. Most were never identified. Their bodies were decapitated and mutilated with such precision that the killings had to be the work of someone familiar with anatomy.
The murderer became known as the Torso Killer, or the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run -- an American version of Jack the Ripper, whose mutilated victims were prostitutes in Victorian England.
Like Jack the Ripper, the Torso Killer was never officially caught -- despite the largest investigation in Cleveland police history and the efforts of Eliot Ness, the mob-busting "Untouchable" who came to Cleveland as safety director from Chicago in 1935.
The case has inspired books, films, TV programs, websites and even a tour. The graphic novel "Torso" was originally a comic book series.
Todd McFarlane, the creator of the comic book character "Spawn," optioned it for a movie, with a script by Bendis and Andreyko. When it didn't get off the ground, former Fox Studios chief Bill Mechanic joined the project and brought in director David Fincher, who'd done "Zodiac," another serial killer thriller.
Paramount Pictures picked up the project in early 2006 and ordered a new script. At one point, the film was expected in 2008 -- with Matt Damon starring as Eliot Ness, in a cast including Gary Oldman, Casey Affleck and Rachel McAdams.
Again nothing happened. The rights reverted in 2009 to Andreyko and Bendis, who had become one of the top writers in the comics world at Marvel.
Now "Torso" is being reanimated as a lower-budget, independent thriller, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Filmmaker David Lowery, who was widely praised for his Sundance film "Ain't Them Bodies Saints?," has agreed to write and direct, the Reporter said in April. The movie will be produced by Circle of Confusion, which produces AMC's "The Walking Dead." Bendis and Andreyko are also producing.
Bendis told the Reporter that he never doubted the cinematic potential: "It's a cool, true story that very little people know of. You think you know the story of Elliot Ness? You don't. You know the story of serial killers? You don't. And that's how I kept the faith."