Authorities in Cleveland are teaming up with a nonprofit organization to identify body parts left behind by one of America’s oldest known serial killers, using genetic genealogy, nearly a century after their discovery.

The “Torso Killer,” also known as the “Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run,” murdered at least 12 people between 1935 and 1938, according to the Cleveland Police Museum website. But recent research has suggested there could have been 20 or more victims in total, Cleveland.com reported.

Only two of the killer’s victims have been identified. Bodies were rarely found whole, heads were often missing and were never found.

Those who had a head located at a distance from the rest of their body, according to the Cleveland Police Museum, It is believed that they were drifters who were not recognized in the sketches released.

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Cleveland police, perplexed since 1934 as to the identity of Cleveland’s “crazy chest murderer,” had a new problem to solve when bridges over the dark Cuyahoga River pulled five body parts from the water. a woman. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Two victims linked to the unknown killer have been positively identified, according to the museum, as Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo.

Andrassy, ​​a 28-year-old white man, was found decapitated, emasculated, wearing only socks and drained of blood in July 1939. His fingers identified him, the museum said.

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Police searching the crime scene discovered the body of a woman, probably aged around 40, who has never been identified. Parts of Polillo, a waitress and bartender, were found carefully wrapped in newspaper in January 1936. The rest of her body, except for her head, was found in another location 10 days later. She was also identified using her fingerprints.

Dental records led to the “unofficial” identification of a third victim, Rose Wallace. But, according to the museum, the police have not been able to make a final decision.

Although no arrests were ever madepolice believe that a surgeon named Francis E. Sweeney, who would have had the expertise and equipment to dismember the bodies, was responsible for the murders. He was questioned by police for a week but never confessed, according to the Cleveland Police Museum. However, after he was institutionalized, the killings stopped.

The DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization that conducts and helps fund genetic genealogy testing in unsolved cases, partnered with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office to attempt to name some of the 10 unidentified victims.

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Detectives and a coroner examine the bones of two murder victims found at the Lakeshore dump on East 9th Street on August 16, 1938, in Cleveland. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore told Fox News Digital that there is “a very high probability that the DNA Doe Project will be successful in identifying these individuals.”

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“In 1938, DNA testing didn’t exist. It wasn’t even something they probably could have imagined. And so the advancements that we’ve seen over the course of almost 100 years are just incomprehensible to people. people who originally worked on this case, without a doubt,” she said.

“You know, it was in the ’80s that DNA started to be examined for criminal purposes. It was in the ’90s that it really started to be used in the United States. But it took some time before it’s accepted I mean, we can go back to the OJ Simpson case, for example, you know, where the jury didn’t understand the DNA well enough to really evaluate it as well. heavily that we would today. So it’s really come on leaps and bounds and then over the last six years, we’ve made another leap forward in the field of investigative genetic genealogy.

“Direct-to-consumer DNA testing was introduced in 2000 by a company called Family Tree DNA. It was the first time we could test our own DNA to learn more about our family tree and genetic heritage,” explained Moore. “It became what we call today genetic genealogy. It is the marriage of the use of DNA testing and genealogical records.

“So people have been genealogists for decades, for hundreds of years, actually using records to build family trees. And we’re really fortunate today to have billions of records online that are being digitized so that most of us can build our family trees way back in time, from the comfort of our own homes.”

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So far, two of the bodies have been exhumed. One of them, whom WOIO-TV called the killer’s “most famous” victim, is known as “the tattooed man.”

Left near the railroad tracks in the summer of 1936, the unknown man’s head was found approximately 1,500 feet from his body. Even after police fingerprinted him and widely released photos of his six tattoos, including the names “Helen” and “Paul,” according to the Cleveland Police Museum, he was never identified.

At the 1936 Great Lakes Exposition, more than 100,000 people saw an exhibit featuring a cast of the man’s head and images of his tattoos, but no one reported recognizing him.

The second body to be tested was found on Cleveland Lake in the summer of 1938 and is believed to be the killer’s sixth victim.

Kingsbury Run is marked on this map with dots locating 10 of the 11 torso murders that took place there in the 1930s. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

A single anonymous donor funds the lab costs, DNA Doe told CBS News. Although the remains may be contaminated or degraded due to their age, Jennifer Randolph, the nonprofit’s executive director of case management, said DNA Doe has previously identified older remains.

“We’ll figure out who the relative DNA matches are. We’ll build their trees, find those common ancestors and then, you know, move forward or maybe look back a little bit, to see who the unidentified individual is.” Randolph told WOIO-TV.

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“So there may still be people alive who know, you know, these are individuals who have disappeared from their families and no one knows what happened to them,” Randolph said. “And whatever that piece is, especially given the way they died, you know, they deserve the dignity and justice to be memorialized with their names.”

Moore told Fox News that digital scientists will face many challenges working with such ancient remains.

“We’re dealing with degradation, potential contamination with bacteria. It’s very difficult to work on what we would call ‘ancient remains,'” Moore said. “When you’re working on very old cases, you’re almost certainly dealing with degradation where you can’t analyze all of the DNA.

“Some of this DNA will be missed. And then, with contamination, we see bacteria inserting their own genome into the human genome. And so, you have to have qualified scientists who can eliminate this bacterial genome, separate it from the human genome before we can do our genetic genealogical investigation. »

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But even older remains have been identified through the practice, Moore said, citing at least one victim of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre whose family was finally notified in July of this year.

According to Fox 59First World War veteran CL Daniel was identified as one of the victims of the 1921 tragedy, and his family was informed 103 years later.

“I have inside information on this, and it’s been really, really difficult to get the DNA needed to do a genetic genealogy investigation from these very ancient remains,” Moore said. “But there was some success, and sometimes it took several trips to the lab before we were finally able to get that viable DNA for our work. It’s pretty comparable, and it was very difficult.”