Authorities in Cleveland are partnering 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,” murdered at least 12 people between 1935 and 1938, according to the Cleveland Police Museum website. But recent investigations have suggested there could have been 20 or more victims in total, Cleveland.com reported.

Only two of the murderer’s victims were identified. The bodies were rarely found whole, often missing heads that were never recovered.

Those that did have heads, which were located at a certain distance from the rest of their bodies, according to the Cleveland Police Museum, It is believed that they were vagrants who were not recognized in the sketches released.

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

According to the museum, two victims linked to the unknown killer were positively identified as Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo.

Andrassy, ​​a 28-year-old white man, was found decapitated, castrated, wearing only socks and drained of blood in July 1939. His fingers identified him, the museum said.

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Police searching the crime scene found the body of a woman, probably in her 40s, who was never identified. Parts of Polillo, a waitress and waitress, were found carefully wrapped in newspapers in January 1936. The rest of her body, except for her head, was recovered elsewhere 10 days later. She was also identified by her fingerprints.

Dental records allowed for the “unofficial” identification of a third victim, Rose Wallace. But, according to the museum, police were unable to make a definitive determination.

Although no arrest was ever madePolice believe that a surgeon named Francis E. Sweeney, who would have had the experience and equipment to dismember bodies, was responsible for the murders. Police questioned him for a week but he never confessed, according to the Cleveland Police Museum. However, after being admitted to an institution, the murders stopped.

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

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Detectives and a coroner examine the bones of two murder victims found at the Lakeshore landfill on East 9th Street on 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, DNA testing didn’t exist. It wasn’t even something they probably could have imagined. And so the advances we’ve seen over almost 100 years are simply unfathomable to the people who originally worked on this case. “without a doubt,” he said.

“You know, the ’80s was when DNA started being analyzed for criminal applications. The ’90s is when it really started to be used in the United States. But it really took quite a while before it was accepted. I mean, we can go back to the OJ Simpson case, for example, where the jury didn’t understand DNA well enough to weigh it as much as we would today. So, it’s really come leaps and bounds then, in the last six years, we’ve taken another leap forward. with genealogy research genetics.

“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,” Moore explained. “That became what is now called genetic genealogy. It’s the marriage of the use of DNA testing and genealogical records.

“So people have been genealogists for decades, for hundreds of years, really using records to build family trees. And today we are very fortunate to have billions of records online that are digitized so that most of us can build our family trees a long time ago.

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

Abandoned near railroad tracks in the summer of 1936, the unknown man’s head was found about 1,500 feet away from his body. Even after police fingerprinted him and widely disseminated photographs 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 showing a plaster cast of the man’s head and images of his tattoos, but no one reported recognizing him.

The second body to be analyzed was found on the shore of Cleveland’s lake 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 torso murders that occurred there in the 1930s. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

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

“We’ll find out who the relative DNA matches are. We’ll build their trees, find those common ancestors, and then, you know, move 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 that these are individuals who were missing from their family and that no one knew what happened to them,” Randolph said. “And regardless of that piece, especially considering how they died, they deserve the dignity and justice of being commemorated with their names.”

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

“We’re dealing with degradation, possible bacterial contamination. It’s very difficult to work with what we would call ‘ancient remains,'” Moore explained. “When you’re working with very old cases, it’s almost certainly a degradation where not all of the DNA can be analyzed.

“Some of that DNA is going to be missing. And then with pollution, we see bacteria inserting their own genome into the human genome. “And so you need to have trained scientists who are able to remove that bacterial genome and separate it from the human genome before we can do our research genetic genealogy.”

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

According 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 inside information on that, and it’s been really difficult to get the DNA that’s needed to do research genetic genealogy from those very old remains,” Moore said. “But there has been some success and sometimes it took several rounds in the lab before they were finally able to get that DNA that was viable for our work. That’s pretty comparable and it’s been very difficult.”