“The Strangling Undertaker”

“The Strangling Undertaker” is the press-given name for the killer in the Chicago cases, a label that becomes shorthand for the investigation while remaining distinct from what the evidence establishes about him. The novel shows the nickname moving from newspaper invention into police-room conversation and public reporting; it also shows Zoe Bentley resisting the assumptions packed into it. The phrase makes the case easy to name, but its suggestion of an occupational identity is not proof that the killer is an undertaker.

Origin and Adoption

The name enters the investigation at the Chicago Police Department’s situation room, where Lieutenant Martinez tells Tatum Gray that “The Strangling Undertaker” is what the newspapers started calling the killer. A reporter had coined it only a few days earlier, and it had already caught on. Tatum’s raised eyebrow and dry response—“I can’t imagine why”—make the label’s melodramatic quality apparent without changing its new status as the case’s common name.

The scene gives the phrase an institutional setting: it is spoken among detectives in a room organized around photographs, timelines, and a map of Chicago marked at two locations. Yet the name’s origin is outside that investigative apparatus. It is not introduced as a conclusion reached by the police or as a confirmed description of the perpetrator, but as a reporter’s coinage that has circulated back into the room. The contrast matters: the case has concrete investigative materials, while its most memorable name comes from the public language surrounding it.

A Label Beside the Profile

The nickname gains apparent support from the investigation’s psychological profile, but the evidence keeps the two things separate. Lieutenant Martinez says the profile suggests that the suspect is likely to have worked in a funeral home, and that detectives have begun checking funeral-home records in areas where the killer struck. This is a working lead, not confirmation of an occupation. The word “Undertaker” in the press label can therefore sound more certain than the police information actually is.

The distinction is especially visible in the discussion involving Dr. Ruben Bernstein. Tatum challenges the direction of the investigation, while the detectives describe searching records on the basis of a profile. The nickname belongs to the same charged atmosphere as that profile, but it does not itself supply evidence. Its compactness can make an uncertain possibility feel like an identity already established: the reader hears a title, while the investigators still have a suspect to find.

Zoe Bentley’s Rejection

When Zoe Bentley joins the discussion, she uses the familiar name to open the subject, asking what Dr. Bernstein has to say about “this . . . Strangling Undertaker.” Her phrasing acknowledges that the label is already in circulation, but she does not accept it as a useful account of the killer. Later, when she presents her belief that the man responsible for three earlier killings is also the serial killer currently murdering in Chicago, the name prompts surprise. Zoe then states her objection directly: “I detest that nickname. He is not an undertaker. Just a killer, letting his fantasies and urges take control.”

Her correction is more than a dispute about vocabulary. It refuses to let a newspaper label substitute for an explanation of the person or the crimes. Zoe’s formulation treats the occupational implication as misleading and redirects attention to the killer’s actions and urges. That insistence also contrasts with the institutional and public tendency to make a suspect legible through familiar categories. The phrase is memorable; her objection asks the investigation to look past the memory it creates.

The Name in Public Reporting

The nickname continues to serve as a media reference point. Harry Barry broods over an article about the “Strangling Undertaker” in the Chicago Daily Gazette. His own reporting later involves extensive interviews with Lieutenant Martinez, the Chicago chief of police, and Tatum Gray; Christine Mancuso explains that all three wanted to minimize the FBI’s involvement. The novel thus places the name within a wider process of reporting in which the case is presented to readers and the agencies’ roles are managed.

That reporting context does not establish who first used the phrase beyond Martinez’s account that a reporter coined it, nor does it show that the nickname accurately describes the killer. Instead, the recurrence demonstrates how readily a compact label can organize attention around a case. It gives the public a handle for the crimes and offers journalists a recognizable subject, even as the investigation’s actual work depends on profiles, records, and disputed conclusions. The phrase is consequently both useful and distorting: it names the case, but it can also make an unverified implication feel settled.

Narrative Significance

The nickname’s movement—from a reporter’s invention, to police-room shorthand, to a recurring reference in news coverage—makes the language around the murders part of the investigation’s story. Its authority comes from repetition rather than from proof. The novel sets that repetition against Zoe’s insistence that the killer is not an undertaker, preserving the gap between a vivid public identity and what the characters can responsibly claim.

That gap matters in a story where the wrong person can be made to fit a suspect profile. When the search for Clara’s killer is discussed, a police officer cites Rod Glover’s presence on a search party of seventy-eight people as an alibi, while the account of Manny Anderson emphasizes traits such as social isolation and unusual cartoons as reasons he seemed suspicious. These moments do not establish that the nickname caused an investigative error; they do show why labels and quick characterizations deserve scrutiny. “The Strangling Undertaker” is a striking title, not a finding. Zoe’s rejection keeps that distinction in view and returns the emphasis from the media-made persona to the unresolved question of who committed the crimes.