Though Murder Has No Tongue Read Online Free PDF Page A

waves of Czech immigrants, the largest occurring between 1870 and the onset of World War I.) Whatever may have prompted, or forced, him to leave his homeland remains a mystery. Grinding poverty, high taxes, and lack of work drove many of his countrymen to the United States during this period; and as, perhaps, one of the older males in a large family, he may have seen it as his duty to lessen the financial burdens on his beleaguered parents by seeking his fortune on the other side of the Atlantic. In the early years of the twentieth century, Cleveland was a thriving and growing industrial center with a reputation as an ethnic melting pot that rivaled New York’s. These circumstances alone would have been sufficient to attract a young Czech man on his own for the first time in his life. Frank Dolezal, however, was following an older sister, Anna, who had already come to America, in 1903 or 1904, and made her home in Cleveland. (An obscure piece of Dolezal family legend maintains a second sister, Antonia, or, perhaps, Antonie Dolezal Lesky, had also made the journey to the United States, though when she came and where she may ultimately have settled are unknown. There is no record of her in Cuyahoga County, which raises the possibility that “Anna” and “Antonie/Antonia” may have been the same person.) In 1913, on the eve of the Great War, one of Frank’s younger brothers, Charles, became the third or fourth Dolezal sibling to cross the Atlantic. (Charles’s given name was actually Karel. “Frank,” therefore, may have been a similarly Anglicized version of something else, possibly Franz.)
    Apparently, the two brothers lived quietly together for the next seven years, though exactly where is difficult to determine. None of the several Charles and Frank Dolezals listed in the Cleveland city directories between 1913 and 1919 would seem to fit the bill. It was not until 1920 that directory compilers took note of the brothers, both bricklayers, living at 3217 West 56th. In 1920, Charles married Louise Vorell, and from that point on, Frank was essentially on his own. In the years immediately following Charles’s marriage, the first signs of a curious introverted silence—something akin to estrangement—developedbetween the two brothers. They saw each other rarely and remained steadfastly oblivious to the mundane details of each other’s lives. This same emotional distance and unwillingness, even inability, to communicate openly would characterize Dolezal family relationships in succeeding generations. Little or nothing of the family past was ever discussed openly; everything Mary Dolezal Satterlee (Charles’s granddaughter and Frank’s great-niece) learned about her family history came to her in vague whispers or through her own determined digging.

    The Frank Dolezal that Cleveland never knew. This photograph documents the 1920 marriage of his brother Charles to Louise Vorell. From left: Frank Dolezal, Louise Dolezal, Charles Dolezal, unidentified child, Lillian Vorell, Frank Vorell, and unidentified female. Courtesy of Mary Dolezal Satterlee.
    Whether one marks the beginning of the Kingsbury Run murders sometime in 1934 (when the Lady of the Lake turned up on the shore of Lake Erie) or September 1935 (the deaths of Edward Andrassy and his never identified companion), by late summer 1936, the string of gruesome atrocities had propelled Cleveland into an embarrassing national spotlight. Cleveland’s movers and shakers dreaded the constant stream of negative publicity the city was attracting internationally. The Great Lakes Exposition was also scheduled to open that summer—potentially attracting thousands of visitors—and theRepublicans were holding their 1936 national convention here, as well. All this activity could add up to a major economic shot in the arm for an old industrial city still reeling from the disastrous effects of the Great Depression. The torso