It was an evening for book-signing, beer-sipping, and brain-searching about those bullet holes behind the bar.

Paul Heimel was there from his home in Pennsylvania to sell and sign copies of his book, "Eliot Ness: The Real Story."

The beer being sipped is "The Eliot Ness." It's a "Vienna Style Lager" brewed at the Great Lakes Brewing Co. on Market Street, a short walk down from the West Side Market on West 25th.

That's where the two bullet holes are in the woodwork behind the bar. They long have been subject for questions about whether they are connected in any way with Cleveland's one-time safety director. Did they get there when Eliot Ness was shot at? Did Ness put them there?

Well, the bullet holes in the barroom wall made up only a small part of the presentation of "An Evening With Eliot Ness." They expected 50 or so, but 80 to 100 "Nessies" (There is such a word? There is now) crowded an upstairs room of the microbrewery to hear from historians, author Heimel and police officials on the life and times of one of the nation's most noted crime-fighters.

A concensus among the researchers is that more should be made about Ness in Cleveland than about his earlier years in Chicago.

Rebecca McFarland says it is "because Eliot Ness did so much here that I began studying about him seven or eight years ago." The Bay Village woman today is considered one of the top authorities on Ness.

"He had such an impact on Cleveland: he turned us around from the most dangerous city in the country to the safest city in the country."

In 1935, Cleveland was the nation's fifth largest city. Crime was rampant, corruption was the norm, and Eliot Ness was brought in as safety director with what author Heimel calls "a frontier marshal image" after his battles with Al Capone in Chicago.

Heimel and Ms. McFarland may have taken some in the audience by surprise when they pointed out that Ness won many of those Capone battles, but it wasn't the Capone brewery raids by his Untouchables that brought down Scarface; it was Big Al's tax problems.

Ness, they said, had 5,000 bootleg cases filed against Capone for Prohibition violations, but the lawyers decided to go with their tax case first. Capone was indicted in 1931 for tax evasion and was sent to prison. Ness had a strong Prohibition case, they said, but it never went to trial. Still, in newspapers of that time, some reporting mistakes were made and Ness and his Untouchables got credit for "getting" Capone. That was the image Ness brought to Cleveland.

Both researchers say that Ness brought with him a straight-arrow personality: he was an honest man and he expected others to be honest. He shook up the police department, set up the first police training academy in any department in the country, gave the police a new look by re-painting the 32 squad cars red, white, and blue, to make them more prominent, in appearance if not in number, on the crime-ridden streets of the city.

In his six years as safety director, Ness brought many changes and made those streets safe, the experts say.

Ness called his work here "...the most satisfying job I ever had."

It was not totally so.

There were the Kingsbury Run murders.

And wasn't that a spicy bit for consideration and discussion by those sipping Eliot Ness lager from four-ounce sampler glasses that much resembled scaled-down brandy snifters? It was, indeed.

Those murders occurred between September, 1935, and August, 1938, with the finding of body parts of at least 12 victims.

Dr. James Badal says there may have been a 13th victim: a mutilated body brought up from Cleveland waters in September, 1934. Dr. Badal is a professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College and for the past four years has researched the unsolved murders.

"My interest began," he said, "when I was in the eighth grade and a teacher read the class an article on the crimes in Harper's Magazine. His interest subsided until he began reading a lot about Jack the Ripper. "Then, I became interested again and started looking for answers."

Now a recognized expert on the crimes, Dr. Badal didn't find the answers. No one yet has, at least, not answers that can be proved.

One problem, he told the group at the Eliot Ness get-together, is "many of the files on the cases are gone and many of the newspaper stories from the murders are wrong."

The disappearance of the files is mind-boggling.

"Police," he said, "talked with from 5,000 to 9,000 people about those murders and their reports had to fill filing cabinets with paper, and they're gone, just gone." Badal doesn't believe it's because of any criminal activity, "...probably just official mis-management during that period."

The murders of Kingsbury Run were the crimes that Eliot Ness didn't solve either.

There is more research going on now that may lead to a good suspect in those so-called "Torso Murders." Some believe that a Dr. Francis Edward Sweeney was the killer. Among them are writers Marilyn Bardsley and Walter Bell.

Sweeney, they say, was Cleveland-born, a 1928 graduate of St. Louis School of Medicine, and then a surgeon at St. Alexis Hospital. But he and the hospital parted ways, the writers say, and then, in 1936, his wife divorced him. She said he was a "habitual drunk."

The bodies began appearing about the same time...that is, the parts of bodies. Seven men and five women were mutilated; six severed heads were found; pieces of people were pulled from the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, or discovered in vacant lots, alleyways and shallow grave-like ditches.

Surgeon Sweeney had an office near Kingsbury Run.

Coroner Dr. Sam Gerber said the Kingsbury Run killer must have had a good knowledge of anatomy to, in Gerber's words, "accomplish the dissection with such perfect finesse."

Sweeney was an early suspect. There is belief that he was Eliot Ness' prime suspect. But Ness never named his suspect (well, he made up the name, "Gaylord Sundheim.") And no proof ever was found that Dr. Sweeney was the butcher.

Fifteen years after the murders, Ness began getting postcards; some of them are signed with variations of the name, Sweeney. Writer Bardsley draws a strong link from the murders to Dr. Sweeney through evidence and the postcards.

Dr. Badal says that the only thing the postcards really prove right now is that a guy named Sweeney, or someone using the name, "...apparently enjoyed taunting Ness 15 years after the fact."

Well at the "Evening With Eliot Ness," Paul Heimel sold a lot of autographed copies of his book.

Patrick and Daniel Conway sold a lot of The Eliot Ness (and other) beer at their Great Lakes Brewery.

And the answer to the question about those bullet holes in the wall behind the bar? It certainly would add to the color of the place if there were a Ness connection.

But, when asked the question, Ms. McFarland smiled at Pat Conway and said there's not really any good information to show that Eliot Ness had anything to do with those holes, either as the shooter or the target.

In fact, Ms. McFarland says there is a strong liklihood that Ness never carried a gun.

Okay, then what about the long-running television program and the movie about Ness and The Untouchables? McFarland and Heimel say most of it (if any of it) never happened.

Aw shucks!

Give me another Eliot Ness lager, please.

OTHER STORIES by John Herrington

RETURN TO Cleveland, The New American City

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