Though Murder Has No Tongue Read Online Free PDF Page B

incurred Merylo’s displeasure—if not his wrath—by summoninghim to his office and demanding to know how much progress he had made on the case. Merylo fixed Ness with an incredulous stare and most likely bit his tongue; he was still sifting through all the files, he replied, though he had come to the conclusion that the killings were sex crimes. The meeting was a clash of opposites: on the one hand, the tough, older, streetwise cop who personally ranked his colleagues by their gritty determination, willingness to give their all to the job, as well as their demonstrated competence and accomplishment; on the other hand, the younger, dapper, ex-G-man (already a legend) who courted the press, hobnobbed with the society set, and could usually call on enough political savvy to deal effectively with the ruling elites of the city. It was not an auspicious beginning; the professional relationship between Merylo and Ness would follow a strained and difficult path for the duration of the investigation.
    In late November 1936, just two months after having been assigned to the Kingsbury Run murders, Merylo and Zalewski pulled Frank Dolezal into the central station for questioning. The bricklayer had come to their attention through an unidentified “pervert” they had rounded up and interrogated thanks to a tip. The suspect admitted frequenting a dive at the corner of East 20th and Central, a sleazy neighborhood watering hole where both Edward Andrassy and Flo Polillo—the only two victims to be positively identified—often drank. He also fingered Frank Dolezal as an establishment regular, branded him a pervert, and said he had spent a lot of time in the bricklayer’s run-down apartment at 1908 Central Avenue. For the two veteran cops, the possible link between the mysterious Dolezal and the only two victims to whom a name could actually be attached was enough. It was a simpler time for law enforcement officials; the procedural guidelines dealing with the arrest and questioning of potential suspects were considerably more lax in the 1930s than they are today. Merylo and Zalewski simply barged into Dolezal’s apartment and surprised their uncomprehending quarry sitting at his kitchen table. With only a slight nod to any sort of legal ceremony, the pair identified themselves as detectives, searched his apartment for weapons (they found nothing), arrested him (apparently without charges), and hauled him in for interrogation. Unfortunately, neither of the two different sets of memoirs Merylo left behind provides much evidence as to their line of questioning and also fails to give any indication as to how they handled Dolezal (the good, old-fashioned third degree? or something more gentle and humane?) or how long they held him. Dolezal, however, maintained that he did not know Edward Andrassy at all and insisted he knew Flo Polillo only “slightly.” “We went over his background,” Merylo wrote; “we talked to his friends and neighbors. We investigated his job record; we found outwhere he had worked before he went to work for the WPA; we talked to the 21-year-old pervert who lived with him as his ‘lover,’ and we talked to prostitutes who had visited his apartment.” Merylo also checked with police officers who had known Dolezal for years; and, though they maintained he was a pervert, they reported his relatively clean record, declaring him an honest man. Though the two detectives subsequently cut Dolezal loose, they continued to keep him under some sort of surveillance. “We kept pretty close tab on Frank during those days,” Merylo declared in his memoirs. “We knew where we could find him—whenever we wanted.” In August 1938, Merylo pulled Dolezal in for questioning a second time. Unfortunately, the details surrounding this second interrogation are extremely sketchy; there is virtually nothing in Merylo’s memoirs or his surviving official reports