Transcript: TMI Show - Ohio's Many Serial Killers - Friday, July 26, 2025

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Manila Chan: Hello and welcome to another Rumble Premium episode, a special episode of The TMI Show, the Ted Manila Information Show. I'm Manila Chan. That's Ted Rall. Today's Rumble Premium episode will focus on a fun Friday topic of serial killers. Ted apparently alluded earlier this week that Ohio is the birthplace of many serial killers and probably retained a lot of them. I never knew that Ohioans were so murderous because Ohio is in the heart of the Midwest, where people think of nice Americans, similar to how we think of nice Canadians. I knew that California, where I'm from, is very murderous, perhaps the most murderous.

Well, we'll get into that, but that's also because California is the most populous state. We attract a lot of weirdos from other states. I don’t want to say that our native sons in California are the most murderous. As the birthplace of murderous people, I feel it could be Ohio or Texas, but California gets a lot of these transient murder types. I don’t know if they’re native Golden State murderers. Although we have a lot of murders in general, we do a lot of killing in Southern California, especially. Northern California too, but California is a big place.

Ted Rall: Okay, so let’s address that. California has a big population. It’s one way to keep the population lower, you know, to make sure things don’t get too crowded—by serial killing.

Manila Chan: Right. We get serial killers who are native sons of other states, like Ohio. They’re trimming the herd, so to speak. That’s one way to look at it.

Manila Chan: I want to read this from ABC 5 News Cleveland. Let me read this, and I want Ted’s reaction because, as we found out, California is actually the most murderous state, but Ohio isn’t far behind. Ohio has a reputation, doesn’t it?

Ted Rall: Oh, of being ax murderers and just generally maintaining a longstanding serial killer reputation. It’s a very 1970s thing, I’m telling you.

Manila Chan: According to the local news in Cleveland, they say these are Northeast Ohio’s most notorious serial killers, and this is just the Northeast, Ted. Northeast Ohio has the biggest city in the state. I’ve been to Cleveland. What’s the other big city? Columbus? Cincinnati?

No, Cincinnati and Cleveland. I really liked Cincinnati. It’s a great city.

Manila Chan: These are Northeast Ohio’s most notorious serial killers. You look at these old-timey pictures from 1937. The decapitated body of a woman was found on Lake Erie’s shore. I don’t know why it required two men to carry the bucket of her remains, but okay. It says everyone seems to be binging on documentaries about real-life horror stories these days. This story was published in 2022, during the throes of COVID, so I guess everybody was watching Netflix documentaries about Ted Bundy and similar cases. They go on to say you don’t have to go far to discover grisly crimes that seem too awful to be true. Northeast Ohio has been home to a number of serial killers. For background, the FBI defines serial murder as the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender in separate events. Here’s one example: the Torso Murders.

Ted Rall: I know the Torso Murders. They’re unsolved, I believe.

Manila Chan: The Torso Murders wreaked havoc across Cleveland in the 1930s. The first victim is believed to have been found in September 1934, with the last being found in August 1938. The killer’s signature was removing the head from the body. According to author James Badal, there were 12 murders committed—six men and six women. Of the official 12 victims, only two were positively identified: Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo. They were identified because they had police records, according to Badal. He believes victim number 11 wasn’t actually a victim. She was a body that had already been embalmed. I suspect the murderer had access to it and spread the pieces around just to fool the police. No arrests were ever made.

Ted Rall: That’s awesome. I love that guy’s style. Think about it—just to mess with the cops, he gets a stray random torso. It’s great. It reminds me of a case where the woman’s body was already embalmed, meaning he had access to a morgue or a mortuary.

Manila Chan: Did they ever look into the mortician or the embalmer?

Ted Rall: There was a possible suspect, a guy named Francis Sweeney, but there was no proof. No one was ever indicted. They investigated quite thoroughly, but they never solved the case. You know, 50% of murders in this country go unsolved, so this person was good at what they did. This reminds me of a roommate I had who dated the daughter of a notorious gangster in New York City, the head of a gang called the Westies, active in Hell’s Kitchen, the west forties, the western part of Manhattan. It was an Irish gang. There was a semi-fictionalized movie about them, focusing on three women who ran the gang and protection rackets while their men were in prison or dead. Long story short, this Westies guy had an amazing scam. He killed someone, cut off their arm, and kept it in his freezer. Every time he sent one of his gangsters to assassinate someone, he’d say, “Bring the hand.” They’d shoot the victim, leave the gun at the scene, take the dead man’s hand, and leave its prints on the handgun or knife. The cops thought they were dealing with a serial killer who had killed over 150 people, but it was just the hand. When the gangster was killed himself—his body was found face-first in a urinal at an Irish bar, gracing the front page of the New York Post and the Daily News—they broke into his house and found the arm in the freezer. They were like, “Oh, what a mad genius.” That’s kind of like what the Torso Murderer did.

Manila Chan: I feel like the Torso Murders—do you think Cleveland PD has the resources to bother looking into something from 100 years ago?

Ted Rall: This happened between 1934 and 1938, so what’s the point? The suspect is no doubt dead, so there’s no one to catch. The danger is past. There would be no reason to dedicate even one minute to this. What for?

Manila Chan: You don’t think it even deserves closure? These people have families. I would want to know who it was. I would want to know what happened. I think once it’s gone this far, it’s a historical question, not a crime question anymore.

Ted Rall: The purpose of law enforcement is to catch criminals. This criminal is 100% dead. If this criminal was as young as could be, let’s say they were 14 in 1938, they’re dead now.

Manila Chan: I had never heard of this, so the whole idea of murderous Ohioans is a new concept to me because I just figured I knew my people in California. I know that we’re murderous. I know five or six people who have been murdered. I was forgetting the number. To be murderous in California makes sense, but the Ohio thing shocks me. Why? Because you’re all so nice?

Ted Rall: Because you always thought Ohioans were nice, balanced, Midwestern people? You knew about Jeffrey Dahmer, but you thought he was a one-off psycho serial killer.

Manila Chan: Yeah, I thought he was the one-off.

Ted Rall: No, there are quite a few. I have a list if you want to hear it.

Manila Chan: I do. If you have more, that’s news to me.

Ted Rall: Here, let me give you some, and then we can get back. This guy might be on your list. He’s a Clevelander: Anthony Sowell, born in 1959, had a troubled upbringing, served in the Marines from 1978 to 1985, but was thrown out for rape in 1989. Between 2007 and 2009, not long ago, he murdered 11 people in Cleveland, luring them to his house with promises of drugs or alcohol. He strangled them, often raped their corpses, and stored their bodies in his home and backyard. The discovery of decomposing remains in 2009 shocked the community. I should think so. He was convicted of 82 counts of murder, rape, and abuse. He was known as the Cleveland Strangler, and these were missing Black women.

Manila Chan: What was his name? Anthony Sowell, right? Did you say Samuel Little?

Ted Rall: Anthony Sowell, S-O-W-E-L-L.

Manila Chan: Now who’s this guy, Donald Harvey?

Ted Rall: I have this guy on the list. Samuel Little, from about ten years ago, in the same little town where three cops were just ambushed and killed, the Lorain area.

Manila Chan: Okay, so this guy, Samuel Little—in this photo, you can see him. According to the FBI, Samuel Little confessed to 93 murders, including a few in Northeast Ohio. Authorities said he has been matched to 50 cases, with 43 cases still pending confirmation. Little told investigators he strangled Roberta Tanderek in September 1991 and dumped her body in a wooded area of Firestone Metropark. She was found a few weeks later by a man walking in the woods. The body of the 34-year-old mother was badly decomposed, and the cause of death wasn’t determined. Based on the information provided by Mr. Little, Akron detectives plan to meet with the Summit County medical examiner to reexamine the case. So I suppose, Ted, to your point, they’re only looking into Mr. Little because he was active in the 1990s.

Ted Rall: He’s dead now. He died in 2020 in prison while serving multiple life sentences.

Manila Chan: This photo was from 2013. Speaking of a Clevelander, Cuyahoga Falls isn’t far. Does it count if you’re from Ohio but killed in Kansas?

Ted Rall: We’re talking about serial killers who are from Ohio. Robert Berdella, born in 1949 outside Cleveland, moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he ran a booth at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. He had a history of animal cruelty and odd behavior. Between 1984 and 1987, he kidnapped, tortured, and killed at least six men in Kansas City. He documented his atrocities in journals, using drugs, electric shocks, and injections to subdue victims before killing them. The escape of a survivor in 1988 led to his arrest. He was convicted on multiple counts, received multiple life sentences, and died in prison in 1992. He was known as the Kansas City Butcher.

There are a lot of these guys. I’m not going to get into Dahmer because everyone knows about him.

Manila Chan: That’s the only one I knew of from Ohio.

Ted Rall: He’s very famous. But you’ll like this one. Gary Heidnik, born in 1943 in Eastlake, Ohio, inspired the character Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. He had a traumatic childhood marked by abuse and mental illness, served in the army, but was discharged for being crazy. In Philadelphia in the 1980s, he kidnapped, tortured, and raped six women, killing two by starvation. He could have gotten a job in the IDF. He missed his calling with electrocution in a basement dungeon. His crimes came to light in 1987 when one of his victims escaped. That’s how he got caught. Convicted in 1988, he was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in 1999. Another native son of Ohio.

Native son of Ohio, Michael Madison, born in 1977, had a criminal history including drug and assault charges and grew up in a troubled environment with limited education. Between 2012 and 2013, he killed at least three women in East Cleveland, sexually assaulting and strangling them. Neighbors reported a foul odor, leading to the discovery of bodies in 2013. He received a death sentence, which is still in effect. He’s awaiting execution.

Let me tell you about a personal one. Eugene W. Gall Jr. is a notorious figure linked to a series of violent crimes in the Dayton area during the late 1970s when I lived there. I was in high school and graduated in 1981. Born in Hillsboro, Ohio, Gall’s case stands out for its brutality and controversy surrounding his parole eligibility. His criminal history began in the late 1960s or early 1970s with reports suggesting he committed multiple rapes in the Metro Dayton area while working at a steel mill in Middletown, where JD Vance grew up. In 1970, he was indicted for raping a young girl in Franklin Township and, facing overwhelming evidence, was sentenced to Lima State Mental Hospital before being convicted of armed robbery, abduction, and rape. Sentenced to three to twenty years, he was paroled after just five years in April 1977. He was back at it within months.

On October 20, 1977, I remember this vividly, he abducted 14-year-old Beth Ann Mote while she walked to Oakwood Junior High School in Oakwood, a Dayton suburb. Manila, I was 14 at the same time and walked from my house up Far Hills Avenue about a mile and a half to Fairmont West High School. Beth Ann Mote lived just south of Fairmont West High School and walked about a mile and a half to Oakwood High School on the same road, Far Hills Avenue, Route 48, so you can see why this was chilling to me. A tiny girl at four foot ten and seventy-five pounds, Beth Ann was forced at knifepoint into his car, raped, and stabbed to death in a wooded area of Miami Township. Her body was found a week later in a back alley in downtown Dayton with her school books.

On March 7, 1978, he raped a 13-year-old girl at gunpoint in Dayton. On April 3, 1978, he abducted four Beavercreek schoolchildren from a bus stop, raping two. Two days later, on April 5, 1978, he kidnapped 12-year-old Lisa Jansen in Cincinnati while she walked to school, drove her to Kentucky, raped her, and shot her in the head, leaving her body in a ditch. Arrested the day of Lisa’s abduction after robbing a Kentucky grocery store and shooting state trooper Gary Carey, who survived, Gall faced charges in both states. In Ohio, he acted as his own attorney—you can imagine how that worked out—but it’s always a good move. He pled guilty to kidnapping, raping, and murdering Beth Ann Mote and received a life sentence plus fourteen to fifty years. In Kentucky, he got the death sentence for Lisa Jansen’s murder, which was overturned on appeal, and he served eleven years for the trooper shooting. His Kentucky prison term sparked a 2016 appeal for jail credit in Ohio, which was denied by the courts. His background includes a very violent childhood and brain damage from an injury causing seizures. A lot of these people have brain injuries. In a 1972 declaration of incompetence followed by two years in a mental institution, he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. His mental illness was noted by experts, but the state went after him for severe penalties.

Parole hearings, including one delayed to July 2031, have faced opposition due to his permanently dangerous psychopathic label, with the victims’ families, prosecutors, myself, and Clovis arguing against the idea that he should ever walk free. The establishment narrative portrays Gall as a clear-cut monster, but critical examination reveals gaps—his early parole despite mental health issues, the possibility of unreported victims, and reliance on his confession raise doubts about investigative thoroughness and systemic failure. His case, centered around Dayton, Kettering, and Oakwood, underscored a dark chapter in local crime history. About ten years ago, I was reading the Dayton Daily News, and it said they were considering him for parole and that he might be released in Dayton. I was like, “Oh my God.” The idea that he should ever walk free—Robbie and I talked about it. The idea that that guy should ever walk free, I mean, he’s a complete maniac.

Manila Chan: This goes to what we were talking about on the live show about how there are no mental health institutions for psychopaths like that. America has a big population—over 300 million people, I don’t care what their immigration status is. Let’s say we overestimate; the census says around 320 to 330 million, maybe as high as 350 million. It’s a big population. In every population, there’s always a percentage of people who are mentally disturbed and psychopaths. In fact, there are psychopaths walking around us every day. The difference is those we pass by who don’t murder us can keep it under control, but then there are those who flip out and feed into their psychopathy, whether it’s eating people, raping, or dismembering—who knows, whatever their thing is. I don’t know what that number would actually be, but I’m going to say at least 2% of the American population are psychopaths.

Ted Rall: I thought it was sociopaths.

Manila Chan: Well, I think there’s a difference.

Ted Rall: There is a slight difference; even psychologists have a hard time distinguishing. Let me tell you about some notorious cases from my hometown. There’s the China Arnold case. China Arnold was a Daytonian who, in 2005, murdered her 28-day-old daughter, Paris Talley, by putting her in the microwave.

Manila Chan: Is that what you call someone from Dayton—a Daytonian?

Ted Rall: Someone from Dayton is a Daytonian.

Manila Chan: I’m an Angeleno from Los Angeles.

Ted Rall: She was a Daytonian. But that doesn’t make her a serial killer. There was also a mom in DC in the past year or two who put her kid in the oven, but that doesn’t make one a serial killer.

Manila Chan: No, it’s not a massacre. Some notorious murders.

Ted Rall: Back in the late 1800s, a Daytonian doctor named Dr. Oliver Crook Haugh killed multiple wives and patients. It all came to light when he set his house on fire after his wife threatened to divorce him for all the killing he was doing. He was executed in 1907 by electric chair. Also, there was the still-unsolved case of the Dayton Strangler, who operated between 1900 and 1904, murdered five women and one man, including 11-year-old Ada Lentz and Elizabeth Fulhart. The victims were mutilated and discarded in public places like cisterns. The cases were unsolved despite multiple arrests. A serial killer from Waukegan, Illinois, Alton Coleman, with his girlfriend Deborah Brown, conducted a six-state killing spree focused on Ohio. In Dayton, they were linked to murders during a seven-week rampage targeting their victims with beatings and shootings. He identified himself as a Black nationalist. The most recent mass murder in Ohio was the Dayton shooting at Ned Peppers Bar in the Oregon District in February 2019. A 24-year-old named Connor Betts used an AR-15 and killed nine people, including his sister. He was killed on the spot. No one really knows why he did that. His sister was part of that. These are just some random mass murderous people.

Manila Chan: They all have a thousand-yard stare. That’s the look of executed death row serial killers in U.S. history. The guy on the far left is like a dreamboat. He’s kind of handsome.

Ted Rall: I thought that too. I was like, “God.” That’s like a James Dean look going on there. I mean, I’d reconsider my heterosexuality for that guy. That psycho killer was very handsome.

Manila Chan: I asked Grok why so many serial killers and mass murderers hail from Ohio. Grok says the notion that Ohio produces an unusually high number of serial killers and mass murderers is somewhat overstated, though the state does rank in the top tier for serial killers in several analyses, typically top five to ten, depending on the dataset and whether measuring absolute numbers or per capita rates. For mass murderers, often defined as those killings of four or more people in a single incident, a mass shooting would be a mass murder, but a serial killer is someone who strikes over and over. Allegedly, like Gilgo Beach.

Ted Rall: Allegedly.

Manila Chan: Ohio experiences incidents at a rate comparable to other populous states but doesn’t lead nationally. Below, I’ll break down this data from reliable sources, then explore potential explanations based on criminological patterns and regional factors. Serial killers are typically defined as individuals who murder three or more over a period of time with a cooling-off period between killings. The U.S. has the highest number of documented serial killers globally, an AI estimate says 3,600, and state rankings vary by source due to differences in databases, like the FBI, Radford University, or media compilations, and inclusion criteria, convicted versus suspected.

Ted Rall: We have to be inclusive in the murdery community.

Manila Chan: I don’t know how you’d be inclusive in the murdery community. How do you do that? Show some DEI? I guess. Here’s the comparison of top states based on absolute numbers of known serial killers, not per capita, as larger states naturally have more because we have more people, like California. So data is aggregated from multiple sources for a balanced overview. Thank you, Grok. My home state is number one by pure numbers for obvious reasons. Like I said, we are the most populous state. The estimated number of serial killers is 1,777. That’s a lot of serial killers. Even for a big state, that’s a lot. I kind of think it’s disproportionate. I’d have to scroll down to see these numbers beforehand. That is a ton of serial killers. I’m shocked. Other sources say 15 to 18. Maybe this includes unsolved cases? Why does California have almost 2,000 serial killers? That can’t be right. I’m going to check.

Ted Rall: While you’re doing that, another source says California has a known 15 to 18, with notable examples like Ted Bundy, who was also active in multiple states, the Zodiac Killer, and the Golden State Killer.

Manila Chan: The Zodiac and Golden State Killers were more like movie-style killers because they had their special insignia, right? They would leave weird little clues. So they’re the stuff of movies. Texas comes in as number two, but they’re also a very populous state, supposedly with 984. I don’t know these names—Dean Corll and Henry Lee Lucas? Florida is not a surprise, with 933 according to World Atlas. There’s a woman, Aileen Wuornos, but Ted Bundy was executed there. So does he count as a Florida man? It’s hard to say.

Ted Rall: He was a busy boy all over the place. Illinois is number four with 680. New York comes in at number five. We have Joel Rifkin and David Berkowitz, Son of Sam. Ohio is number six. I looked up per capita, and I have to apologize and withdraw my offline comment to you about California being high per capita. I was wrong. You’re going to freak out, Manila, about this. The number one in the nation for per capita serial killers is Washington, DC, due to a small population and significant serial killer activity. Number two is Sarah Palin’s home state of Alaska, approximately 15 serial killers per million residents based on 51 serial killers between 1900 and 2014, with a small population amplifying the rate. Notorious killers include Robert Hansen, the Butcher Baker. He’s got a little bit of a game going for him.

Manila Chan: I do like the alliteration. For people not following, after that, it’s Nevada, Oregon, and Louisiana. But DC and Alaska? Here’s why Ted knew this would freak me out: DC is a very dangerous city. Per capita is how you calculate your chance of getting struck by lightning—your personal chances of being serial-killed. My chance of being struck by lightning is less than being serial-killed in DC, for example. They calculate based on per capita. I didn’t know Alaska would be number two per capita. But if you think about how remote and desolate it is, you can take reprieves between murders. It’s much harder to do that in DC because there are cameras on every corner. So that’s kind of shocking to me. I thought for sure LA would be higher.

Ted Rall: According to Grok, you are significantly more likely to be killed by a serial killer in Washington, DC, than to be struck by lightning. The odds of being murdered by a serial killer are one in 165,000. That’s not very comforting. With a few million people in DC, if there’s a million people in a city with those odds, that means at any given point, seven or eight of them are going to get killed by a serial killer, not a random act, but a deliberate serial killer. The odds are one in 1.5 million.

Manila Chan: That’s why I don’t know the exact numbers, but I knew off the top of my head that my chances of being killed by a serial killer in DC far surpassed that of being struck by lightning. Nine out of ten people who get struck by lightning survive, by the way.

Ted Rall: Really? Okay. Let’s do some historical stuff. This fascinated me. In Ohio, we’re not serial killers come lately. We don’t just do it in the ‘80s and ‘90s, millennial style. We have a sense of history. Our sense of serial killing and mass murders predates Ohio entering the union as a state in 1803. On March 8, 1782, American militiamen committed a huge war crime. They slaughtered 96 Christian Delaware Native Americans—29 men, 27 women, and 40 children—in Gnadenhutten. But that’s a mass murder, not a serial killing.

Manila Chan: That’s true.

Ted Rall: Also, on September 15, 1812, there was the Copus Massacre. Native American warriors and their British allies killed three settlers while injuring others during the War of 1812. Those are mass murders, but I thought that was interesting. We do have some other historic murders.

Manila Chan: I’m a little surprised to find that, out of the 50 states and U.S. territories and districts, including DC, Ohio even falls in the top ten. I’m seriously shocked. I’ve had a good time every time I’ve been to Ohio, and everyone was always nice. I didn’t get serial-killed. Meanwhile, I’m roaming around DC, and I have around a one in 150,000 chance of being serial-killed.

Ted Rall: Yeah, just from having been in DC for a long time, you’re much closer to being serial-killed. You’re kind of overdue for it. You’re kind of jumping.

Manila Chan: I probably should find a serial killer and just say, “Okay, I’m here. Alright, dude. I know I’m due my odds.”

Ted Rall: The problem is, how do you walk on the street and know you’re looking at a serial killer? Look at this guy. If you go into DuPont Circle and you’re like, “Yoohoo, any serial killers? Hello, serial killers,” what? This guy’s wearing Joe Biden Ray-Bans. He looks like he could be in a band from the ‘80s or one of these millennial hipsters, maybe a bassist for James Taylor.

Manila Chan: That’s what I was hearing about some of the victims, I guess. That’s horrible. Sometimes in their mugshots, they have the death stare, that thousand-mile stare. But other times, the problem is, how do you know when you’re looking at a serial killer? You don’t. This guy, I mean, how do you know? He’s just a guy. Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors didn’t know he was doing that. They were friends with him. David Berkowitz’s neighbors didn’t know he was doing that. Look at this guy. He just looks like any guy. There’s concern that David Berkowitz didn’t do all of those, though. This guy has a pitiful look on his face. He doesn’t look like a serial killer.

This is a compilation of serial killers in the twentieth century in the U.S. Obviously, Ted Bundy—they did a whole Netflix special on him, and they used Zac Efron to play Ted Bundy because, by that era’s taste, people thought he was a hottie.

I’m sure, by the standards of that era. By today’s standards, they picked Zac Efron to play Ted Bundy. I guess he was a good-looking man and very charming. He’s on screen right there. He has a unibrow. I’m kind of not into that. And secondarily, the murderous thing—not into that either. But the unibrow would really annoy me. I’ve not dated people for a lot less than the unibrow. That seems like a fair assessment here. Forget the murderous thing, Ted—the unibrow.

Ted Rall: Yeah, murder. I’ve got to get going, but I want to leave. I’ve got to get my stitches out. We were talking about Dr. Pimple Popper because of it. I had a really gross, deep thing that had to be removed surgically.

Manila Chan: Don’t show us. Nope, not it.

Ted Rall: I do have one more. Tom Dillon, born in 1950 in New Philadelphia, Ohio, in Southeastern Ohio. He was an ordinary guy who worked as an engineer and enjoyed hunting, but his mental state deteriorated. Between 1989 and 1992, he murdered five men in Ohio. He targeted hunters and fishermen, using a rifle to snipe the victims in rural areas. No one figured out that the crimes were connected until he started writing to the police to make fun of them. Finally, in 1992, a friend turned him in, and he died in prison in February 2011. He was known as the Ohio Sniper.

Manila Chan: The cops couldn’t figure it out. He was sniping hunters in the woods? He was a hunter himself and then decided to hunt the most dangerous game?

Ted Rall: Hunt the hunter? Yeah.

Manila Chan: Well, there you go. Apparently, I’m in DC about to be serial-killed.

Ted Rall: Be careful. The sadistic, crazy ones come from my neck of the woods. They do all the weird stuff.

Manila Chan: Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Adios. We’ll see you back on the live show. I hope you enjoyed the premium.

Ted Rall: Adios.

Manila Chan: Bye.