Customer Reviews

The Fourteenth Victim - Eliot Ness and the Torso Murders

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this is an excellent documentary detailing Eliot Ness and his hunt for the notorious cleveland torso murderer.previously only available on a hard to find vhs,this has now appeared on Amazon in an updated dvd edition and i would recommend it to anyone with an interest in this fascinating case.

Fascinating information into a cold case that puzzles experts to this day. Great facts about Ness's involvement with the case. Great for law enforcement buffs out there.

Bravo to Mark Wade Stone and David Brodowski for producing a impeccable, well-rounded, well researched documentary on Elliot Ness and his life after his days in Chicago! While the general public knows about, and has been intrigued over the stories of Elliot Ness and his days of prohabition and fighting crime in Chicago, few know the rest of his story, and how he lived out his days searching for the torso murder. Mark has brought a long-awaited broadcasted ending to a very public figure who's story had a new beginning when Elliot became public safty director of Cleveland. This video is edited in a way that every second counts, if you look away you will miss something. So don't hesitate or blink - The Fourteenth Victim is worth ever moment of your attention! Brilliant!

'The Fourteenth Victim' was so engaging I couldn't help but watch it and get caught in the whole story. Mark Stone did a masterful job of balancing the story to keep my attention but not let me be bombarded with gruesome and gory photos. Anyone could watch it and be totally enthralled with the personal testimonies and the ending....I won't ruin it for you.

Well, this pushed all the right buttons for me!

A true-life mystery, with a fascinating figure at its centre, still unsolved after all these years (well, actually, the last point is infuriating, but that's not the film-makers' fault).

The Cleveland Torso murders occured in the 30s, and the victims were male and female, black and white, even one guy who had some money, though most of them seemed to be homeless. Some of them are not even identified as we speak.

We're familiar with the Elliot Ness of Hollywood makeover; well, Hollywood wouldn't make this story, I'm sure. The Ness of reality after the Capone take-down failed to solve these serial-killings, and had a chequered personal life in tandem. (OK, Hollywood did make a movie about the equally unsolved Black Dahlia case, but it got to linger over the stories of beautiful, brutalized women - the murders of homeless people of either sex wouldn't play as well to Hollywood bean-counters, I'm sure).

It's a very measured, involving work, and a great tribute to the poor victims, whose tough lives ended in horror and whose names, if known, have largely been forgotten. In the absence of justice, this documentary is all that can be done for those lost lives.

As the author of "In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders,"the book upon which "The Fourteenth Victim" is in part based, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the quality of the production as if I were a disinterested party. My book is the end-product of ten years of research into one of true crime's most gruesome unsolved cases--the American version of Jack the Ripper with the country's most famous lawman, Eliot Ness playing a major role. When Mark Sone of Storytellers Media Group first approached me with his proposal to turn my book into a documentary, I reacted with almost parannoid protectiveness. I felt the ingegrity of the historical record, untouched by either exaggeration or sensationalism, must be honored above all else. I need not have worried. The documentary aired on local PBS stations in September, 2003 and again in February, 2004. Ratings were high and the reviews very flattering. I was sufficiently pleased with the result of the project that I readily agreed to furture colaborations. In the future, look for "Dusk and Shadow," Storytellers' documentary companion to my up-coming book, "Twilight of Innocence: the Disapperance of Beverly Potts."