The victims appeared to be lower class individuals – easy prey during the Great Depression. Many were known as "working poor" who had nowhere else to live but the ramshackle shanty towns, or "Hoovervilles", in the area known as the Cleveland Flats.

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During the time of the "official" murders, Eliot Ness, leader of the Untouchables, was serving as Cleveland's Public Safety Director, a position with authority over the city's police and ancillary services, including the fire department. Ness contributed to the arrest and interrogation of one of the prime suspects, Dr. Francis Sweeney, and personally conducted raids into shantytowns and eventually burned them down. Ness' reasoning for doing so was to catalogue fingerprints to easily identify any new victims, and to get possible victims out of the area in an attempt to stop the murders.

Protect and serve