Boston Strangler

Albert DeSalvo
Boston Strangler
03.09.1931 - .11.1973
ZWER publishing ltd.
nikola.goregrind@gmail.com
Between June 14, 1962 and January 4, 1964, thirteen single women in the Boston area
were victims of either a single serial killer or possibly several killers. At least eleven of
these murders were popularly known as the victims of the Boston Strangler. While the
police did not see all of these murders as the work of a single individual, the public did.
All of these women were murdered in their apartments, had been sexually molested,
and were strangled with articles of clothing. With no signs of forced entry, the women
apparently knew their assailant(s) or, at least, voluntarily let him (them) in their
homes. These were respectable women who for the most part led quiet, modest lives.
A lonely stretch of Beacon Hill Street, Boston around the time of the Boston Strangler incidents
Even though nobody has ever officially been on trial as the Boston Strangler, the public
believed that Albert DeSalvo, who confessed in detail to each of the eleven "official"
Strangler murders, as well as two others, was the murderer. However, at the time that
DeSalvo confessed, most people who knew him personally did not believe him capable
of the vicious crimes and today there is a persuasive case to be made that DeSalvo
wasn't the killer after all.
This story presents both sides of the argument and lets you make the decision for
yourself. It is not an easy decision to make as many psychiatrists, lawyers,
criminologists, authors and friends of Albert DeSalvo have discovered.
Of the eleven official Boston strangling victims, six were between the ages of 55 and
75. Two possible additional victims were 85 and 69 years of age. The remaining five
victims were considerably younger, ranging in age from 19 to 23.
Not that 55 years of age is really old. Not these days and not really in 1962. And
certainly not for Anna E. Slesers, a petite divorcee who looked years younger than her
age. More than a decade earlier, she had fled Latvia with her son and daughter and
settled in her small apartment in a quiet old-fashioned neighborhood in the Back Bay
area.
Anna Slesers
77 Gainsborough Street is one of many brick town houses that had been subdivided
into small apartments to meet the needs of people with limited incomes, both students
and retired people. Anna Slesers, a seamstress making $60 a week, lived on the third
floor.
On the evening of June 14, 1962, she had finished dinner and just had enough time to
take a quick bath before her son Juris was to pick her up for the Latvian memorial
services that were being held in her church that night. In her robe, she went into the
bathroom and turned on the water, listening to the inspiring strains of the opera
Tristan und Isolde.
Just before seven o'clock, Juris knocked at his mother's door. No answer and the door
was locked. He was annoyed. He hadn't wanted to take his mother to the services in
the first place. Juris pounded on the door and then he began to get worried. Was she
sick, perhaps lying helpless on the floor inside? Maybe even worse, she had sounded so
depressed on the phone when he spoke to her the night before. He threw his weight
against the door twice and it flew open.
His worst fears were confirmed when he saw her lying in the bathroom with the cord
from her robe around her neck. He telephoned the police and his sister in Maryland to
tell her about the tragic "suicide." Gerold Frank in The Boston Strangler describes how
Homicide Detectives James Mellon and John Driscoll found her:
Mellon was always to remember his first sight of Anna Slesers' body, its sheer, startling
nudity, and the shockingly exposed position in which it had been left. She lay
outstretched, a fragile-appearing woman with brown bobbed hair and thin mouth, lying
on her back on a gray runner. She wore a blue taffeta housecoat with a red lining, but
it had been spread completely apart in front, so that from shoulders down she was
nude. She lay grotesquely, her head a few feet from the open bathroom door, her left
leg stretched straight toward him, the other flung wide, almost at right angles, and
bent at the knee so that she was grossly exposed. The blue cloth cord of her housecoat
had been knotted tightly about her neck, its ends turned up so that it might have been
a bow, tied little-girl fashion under her chin.
The apartment was made to look as though it had been ransacked. Anna's purse was
lying open with its contents partially strewn on the floor. A wastebasket in the kitchen
had been rummaged through with some of the trash on the floor around it. Drawers
had been left open in the bedroom dresser, their contents moved about. A case of color
slides had been carefully placed not dropped on the bedroom floor. The record player
was on, but the amplifier had been turned off. But despite this attempt to make the
scene look like a robbery, a gold watch and other pieces of jewelry were left
untouched.
Anna had been strangled with the cord of her robe which had been tied around her
neck tightly into a bow. Her vagina showed evidence of sexual assault with some
unknown object.
A detailed investigation into her life revealed a woman completely involved in her
church, her children, her work and her love of classical music. She kept to herself and
had very few friends. There were no men in her life aside from her son.
Police assumed that the crime had started out as a burglary. When the burglar saw the
woman in her robe he was overcome by an uncontrollable urge to molest her, killing
her afterwards to avoid being recognized.
A couple of weeks later on June 30, sixty-eight-year-old Nina Nichols was murdered in
her apartment at 1940 Commonwealth Avenue in the Brighton area of Boston. The
apartment looked like it had been burglarized: every drawer had been pulled open,
possessions lay scattered around wildly on the floor as though a tornado had ripped
through it. But, oddly enough, one open drawer revealed a set of sterling silver that
had been untouched, as were the few dollars in her purse, her expensive camera and
the watch on her wrist. The killer had gone through her address book and her mail for
some unknown reason. Later it was determined that nothing had been taken. The
chaos of disorder, the ransacking was for nothing.
She was found with her legs spread, her housecoat and slip pulled up to her waist. Tied
tightly around her neck were two of her own nylon stockings with the ends tied
ludicrously in a bow. She too had been sexually assaulted. Blood had been found in the
vagina. The time of death was estimated to be around 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
The retired physiotherapist led a very quiet and modest life. She had been widowed for
two decades and had no male friends except for her brother-in-law.
Helen Blake
That very same day, some fifteen miles north of Boston in the suburb of Lynn, Helen
Blake met a similar death sometime between 8 and 10 A.M. The sixty-five-year-old
divorcee had been strangled with one of her nylons. Her brassiere had been looped
around her neck over the stockings and tied in a bow. Both her vagina and anus had
been lacerated, but there was no trace of spermatozoa. She was found lying face down
nude on her bed with her legs spread apart.
Her apartment had also been thoroughly ransacked. It appeared as though the two
diamond rings that Helen wore had been pulled from her fingers and taken. The killer
had tried unsuccessfully to open a metal strongbox and a footlocker.
Police Commissioner Edmund McNamara was very alarmed. A warning went out to
women in the Boston area to lock all of their doors and be wary of strangers. He
cancelled all police vacations and transferred all detectives to work for Homicide. A
thorough investigation began of all known sex offenders and violent former mental
patients. They were looking for a madman, one that probably attacked older women
because of some hatred of his mother. A former FBI man, McNamara called on the
Bureau to hold a seminar on sex crimes for his fifty best detectives.
Ida Irga
On August 19, seventy-five-year-old Ida Irga, a very shy and retiring widow fell victim
to the Strangler. She was found two days later in her apartment at 7 Grove Avenue in
the Boston's West End. As in the other deaths, there was no sign of forced entry.
Whoever killed her, she had probably let in voluntarily.
Police Sergeant James McDonald described how he found her: "Upon entering the
apartment the officers observed the body of Ida Irga lying on her back on the living
room floor wearing a light brown nightdress which was torn, completely exposing her
body. There was a white pillowcase knotted tightly around her neck. Her legs were
spread approximately four to five feet from heel to heel and her feet were propped up
on individual chairs and a standard bed pillow, less the cover, was placed under her
buttocks." It was an alarming parody of an obstetrical position, which faced the front
door of the apartment and was the first thing anyone saw when coming through the
entrance. Most of these details were withheld from the press.
She had died from manual strangulation. Dried blood covered her head, mouth and
ears. She, too, had been sexually tampered with although no spermatozoa were
present.
Jane Sullivan
Within twenty-four hours of Ida Irga's murder, a sixty-seven-year-old nurse named

Jane Sullivan was killed in her apartment at 435 Columbia Road in Dorchester, across
town from where Ida lived. She had been dead for some ten days before she was
found.
Police found her on her knees in her bathtub with her feet up over the back of the tub
and head underneath the faucet. She, too, had been strangled by her own nylons,
probably in the kitchen, bedroom or hall where blood was found on the floors. She may
have been sexually assaulted, but the corpse was so badly decomposed that it could
not be determined. However, there were bloodstains on the handle of a broom. There
was no sign of forcible entry, nor was the apartment ransacked, even though Jane's
purse was found open.
Woman places bottles in front of a door as an early warning device
Panic gripped all of Boston.

Boston got a 3-month breather, which gave the police a chance to check out absolutely
everyone they wanted to check out. Nothing much came of this flurry of diligent
activity except a long list of people who probably were not the Strangler.
Sophie Clark
Vacation ended December 5, 1962, when Sophie Clark, a popular and attractive
twenty-one-year-old African-American student at the Carnegie Institute of Medical
Technology was found by her two roommates. The apartment Sophie shared was at
315 Huntington Avenue in the Back Bay area, a couple of blocks away from Anna
Slesers' apartment.
Sophie lay nude with her legs spread wide apart in the living room strangled by three
of her own nylon stockings which had been knotted and tied very tightly around her
neck. Her half-slip had also been tied around her neck. There was evidence of sexual
assault and semen was found on the rug near her body.
There was no sign of forcible entry, but Sophie was very security conscious and had
insisted on having a second lock on the apartment door. She was so cautious that she
even questioned friends that came to the door before she let them in, yet her killer had
somehow convinced her to let him in. Sophie had struggled with her murderer. The
killer had rummaged through the drawers in the apartment and had examined her
collection of classical records.
Sophie had been writing a letter to her boyfriend when she was interrupted, probably
by the Strangler. She did not date anyone in the Boston area and was very reserved
with the opposite sex.
There were some differences now that had not surfaced in the earlier Strangler
murders. Sophie was black and she was young and she did not live alone. Also, for the
first time, there was evidence of semen at the scene of the crime.
When police questioned the neighbors, Mrs. Marcella Lulka who lived in the same
building mentioned that around 2:20 that afternoon a man had knocked on her door
and said that the super had sent him to see her about painting her apartment. He then
told her that he'd have to fix her bathroom ceiling and complimented her on her figure.
"Have you ever thought of modeling?" he asked her.
She put her finger to her lips and the man became angry. His character seemed to
change completely.
"My husband is sleeping in the next room," she told him. He then said he had the
wrong apartment and left hurriedly. She described him as between 25 and 30 years
old, of average height and with honey-colored hair, wearing a dark jacket and dark
green trousers.
Was this the Strangler? Very likely, since the building superintendent had not
dispatched any one to check on his tenants. Also, 2:30 in the afternoon was
approximately the time that Sophie Clark had been murdered.
Patricia Bisette
Three weeks later twenty-three-year-old Patricia Bissette, a secretary for a Boston

engineering firm, was discovered on Monday, December 31, 1962, when her boss
became worried about her. He went to her apartment that morning to pick her up for
work, but she had not answered the door. When she never arrived at work, he went
back to her apartment building at 515 Park Drive in the Back Bay area in which Anna
Slesers and Sophie Clark had lived. Her apartment was locked, so her boss with the
help of the custodian climbed through a window into the apartment.
They found her in face up in bed with the covers drawn up to her chin, looking like she
was taking a nap. Underneath the covers, she lie there with several stockings knotted
and interwoven with a blouse tied tightly around her neck. There was evidence of
recent sexual intercourse and she was in an early stage of pregnancy. There had been
some damage to her rectum.
The killer had searched her apartment.
Things were quiet for a couple of months. The police took the opportunity to backtrack
and look for any clue that would link these people together. Any person that they may
have all known or met; any place they may have all visited or shopped. Creeps, nuts
and perverts were checked again, but with no significant results.
In early March of 1963, twenty-five miles north of Boston in Lawrence, sixty-eightyear-old Mary Brown was found beaten to death in her apartment. She had also been
strangled and raped.
Beverly Samans, victim
The murder scene moved back to Boston two months later. On Wednesday, May 8,
1963, Beverly Samans, a pretty twenty-three-year-old graduate student missed choir
practice at the Second Unitarian Church in Back Bay. Her friend went to her apartment
and opened it with the key she had given to him.
The moment he opened the door, she lay directly in front of him on a sofa bed, her
legs spread apart. Her hands had been tied behind her with one of her scarves. A nylon
stocking and two handkerchiefs tied together were tied and knotted around her neck.
Over her mouth a cloth had been placed. Under it, a second cloth had been stuffed into
her mouth.
While it appeared that Beverly had been strangled, she had, in fact, been killed by the
four stabwounds to her throat. She had sustained twenty-two stab wounds in all -eighteen of which were in a bull's eye design on her left breast. The ligature around her
neck was "decorative" and not tied tightly enough to strangle her. The bloody knife was
found in her kitchen sink. She had not been raped by man or object, nor was there any
spermatozoa present in her body. It was estimated that she had been dead
approximately 48-72 hours and had probably been killed between late Sunday evening
or Monday morning.
She was studying to be an opera singer and had planned to try out for the Met in New
York that year. Police speculated that because of her singing she had developed very
strong throat muscles that may have made strangulation more difficult and resulted in
her stabbing.
The police were getting desperate. Someone had put them in touch with an ad
copywriter named Paul Gordon who supposedly had special ESP qualities, who claimed
that he knew who the Strangler was and what he looked like. The police were more
than normally receptive to this untraditional approach. Paul began his description of the
man who killed Anna Slesers:
I picture him as fairly tall, bony hands, pale white skin, red, bony knuckles, his eyes
hollow-set. I was particularly struck by his eyes. His hair disturbed me a little because
he has a habit of pushing back a little curl of hair that falls on his forehead. He's got a
tooth missing in the upper right front of his mouth. He's in a hospital or some kind of
home. He's not confined; I know that, because I see him walking across a wide
expanse of lawn. He can walk about, and he does a lot of sitting on a bench on the
grounds.
He has many problems. He used to beat up his mother cruelly she was an idiotic,
domineering womanand his two sisters live unhappy lives. The family comes from
Maine or Vermont. He's terribly lonely when he's in the city I see him sleeping in
cellars, but he likes to wander about the street watching women, wanting to get as
close as possible to them. You see, the poor fellow is in a continual search for his
mother, but he can't find her because she's dead.
One of the detectives brought out a number of photos of men who had been caught
mugging or breaking and entering into buildings in the Back Bay area. Gordon
identified one of them, an Arnold Wallace, as the Strangler, who matched the
description that Gordon had given earlier.
Wallace was a 26-year-old mental patient at Boston State Hospital who had "ground
privileges". A few days earlier he had wandered away and was sleeping in the
basement of apartment houses. He was violent and had beaten his mother on occasion.
Then Gordon switched to the murder of Sophie Clark, correctly describing her
apartment in minute detail as though he had been there. The killer, Gordon said, was a
large, husky black man who Sophie knew. The detectives were flabbergasted by the
detail in which he described the apartment. Not only was that, Lewis Barnett, who fit
Gordons description, a suspect in Sophie's murder. He had dated her once and it was
possible that she would have let him in her apartment.
Gordon said that the Strangler would identify himself soon and confess. "And when this
fellow confesses, it's going to be like a big carpet rolled out in front of you and all the
answers will be so simple you'll kick yourself for months at a time that you couldn't see
it."
When the police went to check on Arnold Wallace they found out that he had escaped
the hospital five or six times, which happened to coincide with the strangling deaths.
Gordon also went to the hospital so that he could see Arnold Wallace in the flesh. "He's
the man," Gordon told them positively.
The police decided to look into Gordon's activities before they went any further with
Arnold Wallace. Gordon had been to the hospital before he had talked to the police, so
he could have seen Arnold on the grounds. Maybe the whole thing was a hoax. Maybe
Gordon was the Strangler.
Arnold, whos IQ was between 60-70, was given a lie detector test. His low intelligence
and his inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality made communication
difficult. The test was inconclusive. He was taken back to the hospital, while police tried
to check out all of the circumstantial evidence.
There was another quiet period during the summer of 1963. June, July and August
passed without another strangling. Then on September 8, 1963, in Salem, Evelyn
Corbin, a pretty fifty-eight-year-old divorcee, who passed herself off as more than a
decade younger, was found murdered.
She had been strangled with two of her nylon stockings. She lay across the bed face up
and nude. Her underpants had been stuffed into her mouth as a gag. Around the bed
were lipstick-marked tissues that had traces of semen as well. Spermatozoa were
found in her mouth, but not in her vagina.
Her locked apartment had been searched, but apparently nothing was stolen. A tray of
jewelry had been put on the floor and her purse had been emptied onto the sofa. One
strange clue could not be explained. Outside her window on the fire escape was a fresh
doughnut, which was not deposited or thrown there by anyone in the building.
On November 25, the Boston area was still grieving for the loss of their beloved
President John F. Kennedy who had been assassinated three days earlier. While most
American stayed numbly glued to their television sets, Joann Graff was raped and
murdered in her ransacked Lawrence apartment.
The very conservative and religious twenty-three-year-old industrial designer had died
shortly before the President. Two nylon stockings had been tied in an elaborate bow
around her neck. There were teeth marks on her breast. The outside of her vagina was
bloody and lacerated.
At 3:25 P.M., the student that lived above her heard footsteps in the hall. His wife had
been concerned that someone had been sneaking around in the hallways, so he went
to the door and listened. When he heard a knock on the door of the apartment opposite
his, the student opened his door to find a man of about twenty-seven with pomaded
hair, dressed in dark green slacks and a dark shirt and jacket.
"Does Joan Graff live here?" He asked, mispronouncing Joann's name.
The student told him that Joann lived on the floor below the apartment at which he was
knocking. Moments later, he heard the door open and shut on the floor beneath him
and assumed that Joann had let the man in her apartment. Ten minutes later, a friend
telephoned Joann, but there was no answer.
The morning before Joann's death, in the apartment down the hall from Joann's, a
woman heard someone outside her door. Then she saw a piece of paper being slipped
under her door. She watched, mesmerized, as it was being moved from side to side
soundlessly. Then, suddenly, the paper vanished and she heard footsteps.
Mary Sullivan
A little over a month later on January 4, 1964, two young women came home after
work to their apartment at 44A Charles Street. They were stunned to find their new
roommate, nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan murdered in the most grotesque and
shocking fashion.
Like the other victims, she had been strangled: first with a dark stocking; over the
stocking a pink silk scarf tied with a huge bow under her chin; and over that, another
pink and white flowered scarf. A bright "Happy New Year's" card had been placed
against her feet.
It got worse: she was in a sitting position on the bed, with her back against the
headboard. Thick liquid that looked like semen was dripping from her mouth onto her
exposed breasts. A broomstick handle had been rammed three and a half inches into
her vagina.
Enough was enough. Certainly people faulted the police for many things, but the reality
was that serial killers are very difficult to find, especially smart ones that don't leave
clues. In spite of the panic that women experienced all over Boston and its suburbs,
the fact was that women were continuing to let the killer(s) into their apartments. The
police could only guess whether these women admitted him to their homes because
they knew him or because he was able to trick them into letting a stranger inside.
A couple of weeks after the murder of Mary Sullivan, Massachusetts Attorney General
Edward Brooke took over. On January 17, 1964, the highest-ranking law enforcement
officer in the state made the case his own, showing the city that it was his top-most
priority.
Edward Brooke
Brooke was no ordinary law enforcement type nor was he an ordinary politician. He
was a very handsome, intelligent and polished professional. He was also the only
African-American attorney general in the country. Even more remarkable was the fact
that he was a Republican in a solidly Democratic state.
There were some real political risks to doing this, particularly if the Strangler were
never captured, but Brooke's plan made a great deal of practical sense.
He meant no disrespect for the Boston police, but this was an unusual case that
spanned five police jurisdictions. The group Brooke was putting together would
coordinate the activities of the various police departments. There would be permanent
staff assigned to the Strangler that would not be pulled off to work on other crimes.
There would be no withholding of information between the area's police departments
because of petty jealousies or feuds.
Furthermore, Brooke's task force would mollify the newspapers. Two women reporters,
Jean Cole and Loretta McLaughlin, for the Record-American had made a crusade out of
exposing the Boston Police Department's mistakes, charging them with extreme
inefficiency.
To head up this task force formally called the Special Division of Crime Research and
Detection, he selected a close friend, the Assistant Attorney General John S. Bottomly.
John S. Bottomly on the right
Bottomly was a controversial choice because of his lack of experience in criminal law.
However, as Bottomly's supporters pointed out, he was exceptionally honest and
bubbled over with enthusiasm. It was a "nontraditional case" and Bottomly was a man
of nontraditional methods.
Not every one shared the enthusiasm about Bottomly's qualifications. Edmund
McNamara, the Boston Police Commissioner reportedly said, "Holy Jesus, what a
nutcake." Novelist George V. Higgins, who worked for Associated Press at that time,
said that he "never heard a reference to Bottomly without the word asshole attached
"as either a suffix or a prefix. I started to think maybe it was part of the guy's name."
Bottomly's top team consisted of Boston Police Department's Detective Phillip DiNatale
and Special Officer James Mellon; Metropolitan Police Office Stephen Delaney; and
State Police Detective Lieutenant Andrew Tuney. Dr. Donald Kenefick headed up a
medical-psychiatric advisory committee with several well known experts in forensic
medicine.
Two months later, Governor Peabody offered a $10,000 reward to any person
furnishing information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who had
committed the murders of the eleven "official" victims of the Strangler.
The Strangler Bureau, as the task force became known, had several major pieces of
business before it could hit the ground running. It had to collect, organize and
assimilate over thirty-seven thousand pages of material from the various police
departments that had been involved in the case.
For the medical committee, they had the task of developing the profile of the kind of
person who would commit the murders. The forensic medical experts saw important
differences between the murders of the older women and the younger women. For that
reason, they thought it was unlikely that one person was responsible for all of the
killings. In other words, there were copycats.
What kind of person would be capable of such murders? Dr. Kenefick reported what his
team believed the police should be looking for:
He was at least 30 years old, a probably a good deal older. He is neat, orderly, and
punctual. He either works with his hands, or has a hobby involving handiwork. He most
probably is single, separated or divorced. He would not impress the average observer
as crazy He has no close friends of either sex."
Peter Hurkos, psychic
At Bottomly's suggestion, Brooke finally consented to a risky move: the involvement of

Peter Hurkos, the well-known Dutch psychic. Two private groups paid for Hurkos'
services and expenses. He was a difficult person to work with and ultimately got into
difficulty for allegedly impersonating an FBI agent.
Hurkos did identify a suspect -- one who the Strangler Bureau had investigated. The
suspect was a shoe salesman with a history of mental illness. However, there was no
evidence whatsoever to link the shoe salesman with the murders. Eventually, the man
committed himself to an institution.
The Strangler Bureau's credibility suffered on account of Hurkos.
A couple of years before the strangling murders began, a series of strange sex offenses
began in the Cambridge area. A man in his late twenties would knock at the door of an
apartment and if a young woman answered, he would introduce himself: "My name is
Johnson and I work for a modeling agency. Your name was given to us by someone
who thought you would make a good model." He would hasten to assure her that the
modeling would not be in the nude or anything like that, just evening gowns and
swimsuits. The pay was $40 an hour. He had been sent to get her measurements and
other information if she was interested. Apparently a number of women were
interested and flattered and allowed him to take out his tape measure and measure
them.
He seemed like a nice enough people with a charming, boyish smile. When he was
finished, he told them that Mrs. Lewis from the agency would be contacting them if the
measurements were suitable. Of course, there was never any call from Mrs. Lewis
because neither she nor the modeling agency existed. Eventually, some of the women
contacted the police.
On March 17, 1961, Cambridge police caught a man trying to break into a house. Not
only did he confess to breaking and entering, but he confessed to being the "Measuring
Man."
Albert DeSalvo
His name was Albert DeSalvo, a 29-year-old man with numerous arrests for breaking
into apartments and stealing whatever money he found. He lived in Malden with his
German wife and two small children. He worked during the day as a press operator in a
rubber factory.
When asked why he perpetrated this pathetic charade, he responded: "I'm not goodlooking, I'm not educated, but I was able to put something over on high-class people.
They were all college kids and I never had anything in my life and I outsmarted them."
The judge, ultimately sympathetic to DeSalvo's role as a bread-earner, reduced the
sentence he received to 18 months. With good behavior, DeSalvo was released in April
of 1962, 2 months before the first victim of the Strangler, Anna Slesers, was found.
Albert DeSalvo was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 3, 1931. His
parents, Frank and Charlotte had five other children. His father was a violently abusive
man who regularly beat his wife and children. As a boy, he was delinquent, arrested
more than once on assault and battery charges. Throughout his adolescence, he went
through periods of very good behavior and then lapses into petty criminality.
His mother Charlotte remarried and did her best to keep her son out of trouble. Their
relationship, aside from the disappointments she suffered when he got into trouble,
was a reasonably good one.
He was in the Army from 1948 through 1956 and was stationed for awhile in Germany.
There he met his wife, Irmgard Beck, an attractive woman from a respectable family.
At one time, he was promoted to Specialist E-5, but later was demoted to private for
failing to obey an order. He received an honorable discharge.
In 1955, he was arrested for fondling a young girl, but the charge was dropped. That
year, his first child was born. Judy had a physical handicap in the form of congenital
pelvic disease. This problem had a large impact on DeSalvo's homelife.
Edmund McNamara
His wife was terrified that she would have another child with a physical handicap and
did everything she could do to avoid sex. DeSalvo on the other hand had an
abnormally voracious sexual appetite, requiring sex many times a day.
Between 1956 and 1960, he had several arrests for breaking and entering. Each time,
he received a suspended sentence. In 1960, his son Michael was born without any
physical handicaps.
In spite of his brushes with the law, Albert seemed to stay employed. After he worked
as a press operator at American Biltrite Rubber, he worked in a shipyard and
subsequently as a construction maintenance worker. Most people who knew Albert
DeSalvo liked him. His boss characterized him as a good, decent, family man and a
good worker. He was a very devoted family man and treated his wife with love and
tenderness.
Aside from being a thief, he had another serious character weakness: he was a
confirmed braggart. He always had to top the other guy, no matter what the situation
was. Police Commissioner Edmund McNamara summarized the problem: "DeSalvo's a
blowhard."
Early in November of 1964, almost three years after he had been released from jail,
DeSalvo was arrested again. This time the charges were more serious than breaking
and entering and measuring prospective models.
On October 27, a newly married woman lay in bed dozing just after her husband left
for work. Suddenly, there was a man in her room who put a knife to her throat. "Not a
sound or I'll kill you," he told her.
He stuffed her underwear in her mouth and tied her in a spread eagle position to the
bedposts with her clothes. He kissed her and fondled her, and then he asked her how
to get out of the apartment. "You be quiet for ten minutes." Finally he apologized and
fled.
She got a very good look at his face. The police sketch reminded the detectives of the
Measuring Man.
They brought DeSalvo to the station where she was able to observe him through a oneway mirror. There was no doubt about it. He was the man. DeSalvo was released on
bail. Routinely, his photo went over the police teletype network and soon calls came in
from Connecticut where they were seeking a sexual assailant they called the Green
Man, because he wore green work pants.
Police arrested him at home and arranged for the victims to identify him. He was
mortified that his wife would see him in handcuffs. His wife was not surprised. Albert
was obsessed with sex. No one woman would ever be enough for him. In fact, the
Green Man had assaulted four women in one day in different towns in Connecticut. His
wife told him to be completely truthful and not to hold anything back.
He admitted to breaking into four hundred apartments and a couple of rapes. He had
assaulted some 300 women in a four-state area. Given DeSalvo's tendency to
aggrandize, it was difficult to tell if the number was really that high. Many of the
instances had gone unreported and in those that were, the women were reticent to
describe what all he did to them.
"If you knew the whole story you wouldn't believe it," he told one of the cops. "It'll all
come out. You'll find out."
DeSalvo was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for observation. While the police did
not believe that DeSalvo could be the Strangler, they wanted the psychiatrist there to
examine him.
Shortly after DeSalvo arrived at Bridgewater, a dangerous man named George Nassar
also became an inmate. He had been charged with a vicious execution-style murder of
a gas station attendant. Nassar was no ordinary thug. His IQ approached genius level
and his ability to manipulate people was highly developed. While in prison for an earlier
murder, he had been studying Russian and other subjects. He was put in the same
ward with DeSalvo and became his confidant.
In early March of 1965, DeSalvo's wife Irmgard got a call at her sister's house in
Denver from a man named F. Lee Bailey who said he was Albert's attorney. He told her
to assume a different name, leave the area with her children and go into hiding at once
to avoid the deluge of publicity that was going to descend upon her if she didn't do
what he said. "Something big is going to blow up about Albert it will be on the front
pages of every newspaper in 24 hours. I'm flying out to see you tomorrow so I can
help you myself."
The next day she was told that Albert had confessed to being the Strangler. She hung
up on the man in disbelief. She couldn't understand why he would confess to such a lie.
There was no way that she could believe that he was capable of such brutality. It had
to be another of Albert's attempts to make himself seem important. Some newspaper
must be offering him money. That had to be the reason.
What had brought all of this about? Well, Albert was starting to think about money:
money specifically to support his family while he was in jail. He had a pretty good idea
that with the charges against him that he could end up spending the rest of his life in
jail. Somehow he had to take care of Irmgard and his two children. The idea of selling a
story and collecting reward money began to take shape in his mind.
Some months earlier before Albert was sent to Bridgewater, his lawyer Jon Asgiersson
went to see Albert who asked him, "What would you do if someone gave you the
biggest story of the century?"
"Do you mean the Boston Strangler?"
Albert said yes.
"Are you mixed up in all of them, Albert? Did you do some of them?"
"All of them," Albert admitted. He thought the story might bring some money for his
family.
Asgiersson wasn't quite sure what to do with this information and seriously considered
the possibility that Albert was insane. He began a quiet inquiry.
F. Lee Bailey
Meantime, Albert went to Bridgewater and struck up his friendship with George Nassar.
Regardless of whose idea it was, the two discussed the reward money for information
leading to the conviction of the Strangler. Nassar and DeSalvo mistakenly assumed
that $10,000 would be paid for each victim of the Strangler or a total of $110,000 for
the eleven official victims. If Nassar turned him in and DeSalvo confessed, they could
work out a deal to split the money.
DeSalvo, who expected to spend the rest of his life in an institution, did not intend to
get himself executed. But then, no one had been executed in the state for seventeen
years.
There was a good chance that he could convince the shrinks that he was insane and
could spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital instead of a prison. Not too bad,
considering the alternatives, especially when he didn't have to worry about money for
his family.
F. Lee Bailey, who had already distinguished himself in the Dr. Sam Sheppard case,
was George Nassar's lawyer. Bailey heard about DeSalvo from Nassar and went to visit
Albert with a Dictaphone on March 6. Not only did Albert confess to the murders of the
eleven "official" victims, but he admitted to killing two other women, Mary Brown in
Lawrence and another elderly woman who died of a heart attack before he could
strangle her.
F. Lee Bailey in The Defense Never Rests says he felt very comfortable being around
DeSalvo:
That was one of the pieces that fell into place in the puzzle of the Boston Strangler. It
helped explain why he had been able to evade detection despite more than two and a
half years of investigation. DeSalvo was Dr. Jekyll; the police had been looking for Mr.
Hyde.
One of the things that struck me about DeSalvo at our first meeting was his courteous,
even gentle manner. I stared at him, seriously considering the possibility that he might
be the Strangler, and I felt something that verged on awe. As for DeSalvo, his gaze
dropped from time to time in what appeared to be embarrassment.
DeSalvo was thirty-three at the time, about five-nine with broad shoulders and an
extremely muscular build. His brown hair was combed back in an exaggerated
pompadour. His nose was very large, and his easy smile was emphasized by even
white teeth.
When Bailey questioned him on what DeSalvo wanted of him, DeSalvo was quite
forthright: "I know I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life locked up
somewhere. I just hope it's a hospital, and not a hole like this [Bridgewater]. But if I
could tell my story to somebody who could write it, maybe I could make some money
for my family."
Albert DeSalvo
Bailey thought that there must be someway to allow him to confess without setting him
up for execution. But foremost in Bailey's mind was determining if DeSalvo was really
guilty without putting his client in jeopardy. Bailey called Lieutenant Donovan and
suggested that he might have a suspect for him, but first he wanted Donovan to
provide him with some questions to ask the suspect that would help determine if he
was for real.
Armed with his Dictaphone, Bailey went to visit DeSalvo a second time on March 6,
1965. Albert mentioned that Detective DiNatale from the Attorney General's Strangler
Bureau had taken a sudden interest in him and had come to take his palm print the day
before. Bailey had to work fast if he was going to be able to protect his client.
Bailey says of that interview: "I became certain that the man sitting in that dimly lit
room with me was the Boston Strangler. Anyone experienced in interrogation learns to
recognize the difference between a man speaking from life and a man telling a story
that he either has made up or has gotten from another person. DeSalvo gave me every
indication that he was speaking from life. He wasn't trying to recall words; he was
recalling scenes he had actually experienced. He could bring back the most
inconsequential details the color of a rug, the content of a photograph, the condition of
a piece of furniture. Then, as if he were watching a videotape replay, he would describe
what had happened, usually as unemotionally as if he were describing a trip to the
supermarket."
DeSalvo described his attack on seventy-five year-old Ida Irga in August of 1962:
I said I wanted to do some work in the apartment and she didn't trust me because of
the things that were going on and she had a suspicion of letting, allowing anybody into
the apartment without knowing definitely who they were. And I talked to her very
briefly and told her not to worry, I'd just as soon come back tomorrow rather than in
other words, if you don't trust me, I'll come back tomorrow, then. And I started to walk
downstairs and she said, 'Well, come on in.' and we went into the bedroom where I
was supposed to look at a leak there at the window and when she turned, and I put my
arms around her back
[Bailey asks him where the bedroom was relative to the front door and how he got to
the bedroom]
I think it went through a parlor as you walked in, and a dining room and a bedroom.
Oh, before the bedroom was a kitchen and the bedroom was way back. The bed was
white. It wasn't made, either She was in the midst, probably, of making the bed up.
And there was an old dresser there and I opened the drawers up and there was nothing
in them, nothing at all. They were empty. And, uh, when I did get her by the neck and
strangler her
[Bailey asks if he grabbed her from behind]
Yes. Manually. I noted blood coming out of her ear very dark the right ear. I remember
that, and then I think there was the dining room set in there, a very dark one, and
there was brown chairs around it, and I recall putting her legs up on her two chairs in a
wide position one leg in each chair
Bailey asked him why he would choose such an old woman to attack.
DeSalvo told him that "attractiveness had nothing to do with it." She was a woman.
That was enough.
DeSalvo then described the attack on Sophie Clark, the twenty-two-year-old student
who was killed in December of 1962:
She was wearing a very light, flimsy housecoat, and she was very tall, well built, about
36-22-37. Very beautiful
[Her apartment] had a yellowish door, a faded yellow door. And she didn't want to let
me in, period. Because her roommates weren't in there at the time and I told her I
would set her up in modeling and photography work, and I would give her anywhere
from twenty dollars to thirty-five dollars an hour for this type of modeling.
There was a place where there would be what do you call a flat bed, where you put a
something over it, but you take it off, you can use it to sit on, like a couch? It had
fancy little pillows on it, colorful ones, and purple ones. It looked like a purple or black
cover.
There were so many details that he remembered that could be checked with the police.
Bailey called Lieutenant Donovan and his colleague Lieutenant Sherry to his office and
they listened to the Dictaphone, which Bailey played at different speeds to disguise
Albert's voice.
The detectives listened very closely when DeSalvo described the attack on Sophie
Clark:
First DeSalvo said that when he attempted intercourse with Sophie he discovered she
was menstruating. He described the napkin he removed from between her legs, and
the chair he had thrown it behind. Second, he said that as he was going through
Sophie's bureau looking for a stocking to knot about her neck, he knocked a pack of
cigarettes to the floor. He named the brand and described the place on the floor where
he left them. At this, Sherry grabbed the briefcase and pulled out a photo showing a
bureau and a pack of cigarettes just as Albert had described them. On the back of the
photo there was an inscription "Homicide Clark, Sophie December 5, 1962. (The
Defense Never Rests)
Commissioner McNamara and Dr. Ames Robey, the psychiatrist at Bridgewater, were
called into the consultation. After talking with DeSalvo, Bailey got him to agree to
cooperate with the police and take a lie detector test. They really couldn't go too far
without getting John Bottomly, the head of Edward Brooke's Strangler Bureau,
involved.
Subsequently, there was a lot of unpleasant legal wrangling while Bailey tried to
protect his client from execution and Attorney General Brooke wanted to keep control
of the investigation. The stakes were now higher in so much that Brooke was going to
run for senator with the incumbent retiring. Resolution of the Strangler case would be a
nice boost to his campaign.
The issue of intensive questioning of DeSalvo on all of the murders and checking out
every detail of his confession was critical. Finally, on September 29, 1965, the
interrogation was completed. More than fifty hours of tapes and 2,000 pages of
transcription resulted. While each detail of the confession was checked out, Bottomly,
Brooke and Bailey tried to work out the rules for whatever would happen next.
The original doubts about whether DeSalvo really was the Strangler were quickly
dissipating:
Details piled upon details as DeSalvo recalled the career of the Strangler, murder by
murder. He knew there was a notebook under the bed of victim number eight, Beverly
Samans; he knew that Christmas bells were attached to Patricia Bissette's door. He
drew accurate floor plans of the victims' apartments. He said he'd taken a raincoat
from Anna Slesers's apartment to wear over his T-shirt because he had taken off his
bloodstained shirt and jacket. Detectives found that Mrs. Slesers had bought two
identical coats and had given one to a relative. They showed the duplicate to DeSalvo,
along with fourteen other raincoats tailored in different styles. DeSalvo picked the right
one.
He described an abortive attack on a Danish girl in her Boston apartment. He had
talked his way into the place, and had his arm around her neck when he suddenly
looked in a large wall mirror. Seeing himself about to kill, he was horrified. He relaxed
the pressure and started crying. He was sorry, he said, he begged her not to call the
police. If his mother found out, [he lied] she could cut off his allowance, and he
wouldn't be able to finish college. The young woman never reported the incident. With
nothing to go on other than DeSalvo's memory, DiNatale found her. Not surprisingly,
she remembered the incident vividly.
Eventually, the Strangler Bureau came to the same conclusion that F. Lee Bailey had
Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. Now, there was a much larger issue to
contend with: how to justly serve the rights of the confessed Strangler and the
demands of the people for justice.
Nobody that knew DeSalvo believed that he was the Strangler: his wife and family, his
former employers, his lawyer, an eminent prison psychiatrist, and even the police who
had become very familiar with Albert with his frequent arrests for breaking and
entering. Everyone who knew him thought of him as a very gentle, decent family man,
who just happened to be an incorrigible small-time thief.
Susan Kelly in The Boston Stranglers: The Public Conviction of Albert DeSalvo and the
True Story of Eleven Shocking Murders makes a persuasive argument for DeSalvo
being innocent of the strangling murders.
She cites a number of reasons why she and others still believed that DeSalvo was
innocent. One of the strongest of these reasons is that there was "not one shred of
physical evidence that connected him to any of the murders. Nor could any eyewitness
place him at or even near any of the crime scenes. Albert had a relatively memorable
face, particularly because of his prominent, beak-like nose.
The Strangler (or Stranglers, since some experts believe that it had to be at least two
different murderers and possibly more) was seen by a number of eyewitnesses.
One was Kenneth Rowe, the engineering student who lived on the floor above Joann
Graff's apartment. He spoke to the stranger who was looking for her apartment just
before she was killed. When Rowe was shown a photo of Albert DeSalvo, he did not
recognize him as the man looking for Joann.
Jules Vens who ran Martin's Tavern right near Joann Graff's apartment in Lawrence did
not identify DeSalvo as the man who, dressed identically to the man Rowe had seen,
had come into the tavern nervous and agitated as though someone were following him.
Eileen O'Neil could not identify DeSalvo as the man who she saw in Mary Sullivan's
bathroom window around the time of her death.
Plus, Kelly points out, "three fresh Salem cigarette butts were found in an ashtray near
Mary Sullivan's bed. Neither Mary nor her roommates smoked this brand. A Salem
cigarette butt was found floating in the toilet of Apartment 4-C at 315 Huntington
Avenue in Boston the day Sophie Clark died there Albert DeSalvo did not smoke."
Even more remarkable were the reactions that two very important eyewitnesses had to
seeing Albert and his killer friend George Nassar. Marcella Lulka, who lived in the same
apartment building as Sophie Clark, had an encounter with a man called "Mr.
Thompson" who said he had come to paint her apartment. This man was about 5 feet
nine with pale honey-colored hair combed straight back over an oval face. She said he
could have been a light-skinned black or a white man. She estimated his age as around
25 years old. She got rid of him by telling him that her husband was asleep inside her
apartment. This encounter was just before Sophie Clark was murdered.
"Mrs. Lulka later sketched for police a portrait of "Thompson." It shows a delicately
featured young man with a long, narrow face, a very thin nose, a point chin, and large,
almond-shaped eyes. It looks nothing like Albert DeSalvo." (Kelly).
When Albert began confessing to the stranglings, Bottomly rounded up Mrs. Lulka and
Gertrude Gruen so that they could secretly view Albert in prison. Gertrude Gruen was
considered at that time the only woman who survived an encounter with the Strangler.
She had given her attacker a good fight and he fled.
Both women thought that they were coming to view one man Albert DeSalvo. Neither
realized that they would see another man also George Nassar. The women posed as
visitors in the prison's visiting room. Nassar was the first one to enter the room to
meet with the prison social worker. Gerold Frank describes this unexpected reaction:
[George Nassar] darted a sharp glance at her [Gruen], and then a second. She
thought, There's something upsetting, something frighteningly familiar about that man.
Could he know her?
At that moment, DeSalvo entered and took his place across the table from Dr. Allen.
Miss Gruen looked at him. No, he was not the man who talked with her, attempted to
strangle her, the man with whom she fought, the man who fled when her screams
brought workers on the roof peering into her windows.
But the man now talking to the social worker, the man who had turned his dark eyes
on her so sharply
Moments later, in Dr. Robey's office, surrounded by police, she said agitatedly, "I don't
know what to say Im so upset." She appeared on the verge of a breakdown. Finally
she was able to talk.
It was not Albert DeSalvo, she said. When she had been shown his photographs a week
earlier, she'd thought she saw certain similarities. "Now, I know he is not the man,"
she said. But the first man who entered George Nassar I realize how shocked I was
when I saw him. To see this man, his eyes, his hair, his hands, and the whole
expression of him" He looked like the man who attacked her, walked, carried himself
like him, his posture. "My deep feelings are that he had very great similarities to the
man who was in my apartment."
But she was not sure. She wept with frustration. She wanted so badly to identify this
man.
And Marcella Lulka, who had also been brought to identify DeSalvo?
She had not been sure when shown his photographs a few days before. Now, she said,
seeing him in person, she must definitely eliminate him. But the prisoner who preceded
him Nassar when she saw him enter, her heart jumped. In every way but one his eyes,
his walk, his furrowed face, his dark, speculative gaze he was her mysterious caller of
that dreadful afternoon. Only his hair was different. "Mr. Thompson" had honey-colored
hair, as she had told detectives. This man's hair was black. Might it not have been dyed
the day she saw him"
The motive for DeSalvo confessing to the crimes remains the same whether he actually
committed them or not. He believed that he would be spending the rest of his life in jail
for the Green Man attacks and wanted to use the confession to raise money to support
his wife and children. Plus, to a braggart like DeSalvo, being the notorious Boston
Strangler would make him world famous. Dr. Robey testified that "Albert so badly
wanted to be the Strangler."
One of the key issues that Kelly addresses with mixed success is the accuracy of the
voluminous confession and its myriad of details, some of which were correct and some
of which were not. How did Albert DeSalvo, a man of average or less than average
intelligence convincingly absorb so many, many details about the victims and their
apartments if he was not the Strangler?
Kelly points out that Albert had an exceptional memory. Dr. Robey testified that he had
"absolute, complete, one hundred per percent total photographic recall." One of his
lawyers. Jon Asgeirsson noted that "Albert had a phenomenal memory. Another of his
lawyers, Tom Troy agreed, "It was remarkable."
Robey cites an example of how he tested Albert's ability to make instantaneous mental
carbon copies of people, places, and things: "We had a staff meeting [at Bridgewater]
with about eight people. Albert walked in and walked out. The next day we had him
brought back in. Everyone had on different clothes, was sitting in different positions. I
said, "Albert, you remember coming in yesterday? Describe it."
Albert did, perfectly (Kelly)
She also cites a number of sources of information available to Albert to learn what he
did about the crimes:
1. The newspaper accounts were extraordinarily detailed. The Record American
printed up a chart, along with the victims' photos, called "The Facts: On
Reporters' Strangle Worksheet." This chart was a summary of all the important
details of each crime, what victims were wearing, their hobbies, affiliations, etc.
Kelly says, "That DeSalvo had memorized this chart is apparent because in his
confession to John Bottomly, he regurgitated not only the correct data on it but
the few pieces of misinformation it contained as well.
2. Leaks by law enforcement agencies, particularly the Strangler Bureau, which was
criticized for being lax with its accumulated material, and the Suffolk County
Medical Examiner, who allegedly held a number of unauthorized press
conferences in which he freely distributed information about the victim autopsies.
3. Albert's own research as a burglar put him in many of the apartment buildings in
which women were murdered. He knew the layouts of the apartments and,
according to Kelly, had visited each apartment after the murder.
4. Information deliberately and inadvertently fed to him by people anxious to wrap
up the investigation, such as John Bottomly who, according to Kelly, "did
knowingly and quite intentionally provide Albert with information about the
murders while he was taking the latter's confession to them which explains why
the only version of it [the confession] ever made public was abbreviated and
heavily doctored. The full version virtually exonerates DeSalvo."
5. Possible information provided by another suspect who could have coached
DeSalvo on the details. Police speculated that George Nassar could have been
one such source of information.
Finally, experts never saw the stranglings as the work of one individual. The modi
operandi were not identical and the victims as a group were quite dissimilar. Kelly
summarizes some of the more obvious differences:
No similarity whatsoever exists between the relatively delicate killing of Patricia

Bissette, whose murderer tucked her into bed, and the ghastly homicidal violation
inflicted on Mary Sullivan, whose killer's intent was not just to degrade his victim by
shoving a broom handle into her vagina but to taunt the discoverer of her corpse by
placing a greeting card against her foot. Beverly Samans was stabbed but not sexually
assaulted; Joann Graff was raped vaginally and strangled. Evelyn Corbin had performed
probably under duress oral sex on her killer. Jane Sullivan was dumped facedown to rot
in a bathtub. Ida Irga was left in the living room with her legs spread out and propped
up on a chair.
Serial killers tend to select and stick with a particular kind of victim. For example, Jack
the Ripper picked prostitutes; Ted Bundy picked pretty, longhaired young girls; Jeff
Dahmer young boys, etc. The strangling victims represent a wide disparity in age and
attractiveness and race which flies in the face of serial killer profiling expertise. A very
likely explanation is that some of the crimes were committed by one individual,
especially the murders of Ida Irga, Jane Sullivan and Helen Blake.
And what about Mary Mullen, the elderly woman who died of a heart attack? Kelly says
that this may be the only killing of which DeSalvo is guilty. He probably burglarized her
apartment and she died of fright. Did the same Albert DeSalvo who carried his
unintended victim over to her couch and fled without stealing anything savage the
bodies of Ida Irga and Jane Sullivan?
The Mary Brown affair raised some interesting questions. She had been raped,
strangled and beaten to death in Lawrence in early March of 1963. Albert's confession
to this crime was very sketchy and many of the details were incorrect. Perhaps, Albert
had been told about this crime from the Bridgewater inmate who was really
responsible. Kelly says Mary Brown lived on the same street as the man that George
Nassar shot to death in 1948.
Once the Commonwealth was satisfied that DeSalvo was the Strangler, very sticky
legal issues had to be resolved before any trial could be held. Basically, DeSalvo's
confession was inadmissible as evidence.
Bailey put it this way to Brooke and Bottomly: "When I met Albert, there were enough
indictments pending against him to pretty much ensure that he'd never be walking the
streets again. Now, I've helped him disclose that he's committed multiple murders, it's
a certainty he'll never be released. Show me some way to avoid the risk of execution
I'll run the risk of conviction, but not execution and you can have anything you want. I
know damn well that neither of you really wants to see him killed. Tell me, is that
asking too much?"
Brooke didn't think Bailey was asking for too much, but he wanted to think about it
some more. At this point he was a solid candidate for the Senate and they agreed that
it would be a mistake to have the DeSalvo trial in the midst of the campaign. At least
Bailey could get a ruling on whether DeSalvo was mentally competent to stand trial.
And despite the objections of Dr. Robey, DeSalvo was found competent to stand trial.
DeSalvo, after competency hearing
Finally on January 10, 1967, Albert DeSalvo was tried on the Green Man charges.
Bailey explained that "the basic strategy by which I hoped to convince a jury to find
Albert not guilty by reason of insanity was simple: I would attempt to use the thirteen
murders he had committed as the Boston Strangler to show the extent of his insanity.
To do this, I would try to get both his confession and its corroboration by police into
evidence. Certainly the problem was unusual: I wanted the right to defend a man for
robbery and assault by proving that he had committed thirteen murders."
Donald L. Conn led the prosecution team, F. Lee Bailey the defense in Judge Cornelius
Moynihan's court. Conn called four Green Man victims with very similar stories.
DeSalvo would either jimmy the door or con his way in to the apartment verbally. He
would tie the woman, strip her and fondle her breasts, demand fellatio or cunnilingus,
but stopped short of rape. He used a knife or toy gun to ensure cooperation. After he
was done, he took money and jewelry from the victims. Bailey did not cross-examine
the witnesses because he felt he had nothing to gain by doing so.
Bailey said in his opening statement that he had no doubts that DeSalvo committed the
crimes as charged and the only "issue was whether the Commonwealth could prove
that he was not insane at the time." Bailey brought forth his expert witnesses to testify
to Albert's paranoid schizophrenia. They said that while Albert knew what he was doing
was wrong, "his Green Man crimes were the result of an irresistible impulse."
Conn pointed out that the non-sexual aspects of the crimes jimmying the locks, lying to
gain entrance and the theft of valuables were not a result of irresistible impulse. The
psychiatrist agreed that only the sexual assaults were.
The jury thought about it for four hours, found DeSalvo guilty on all counts and
sentenced him to life in prison. The psychiatric help he wanted was denied.
Bailey was very angry: "My goal was to see the Strangler wind up in a hospital, where
doctors could try to find out what made him kill. Society is deprived of a study that
might help deter other mass killers who lived among us, waiting for the trigger to go
off inside them."
Albert DeSalvo in jail, showing his choker jewelry
Albert DeSalvo was serving out his life sentence at Walpole State Prison, now called
MCI-Cedar Junction, when he was stabbed to death in the infirmary in November of
1973. The night before he was murdered, he telephoned Dr. Ames Robey and asked
him to meet with him urgently. DeSalvo was very frightened. Robey promised to meet
with him the next morning, but Albert was murdered that night.
Albert had asked one other person to meet with him and Robey a reporter. Robey
explained," He was going to tell us who the Boston Strangler really was, and what the
whole thing was about. He had asked to be placed in the infirmary under special lockup
about a week before. Something was going on within the prison, and I think he felt he
had to talk quickly. There were people in the prison, including guards that were not
happy with him. Somebody had to leave an awful lot of doors open, which meant,
because there were several guards one would have to go by, there had to be a fair
number of people paid or asked to turn their backs or something. But somebody put a
knife into Albert DeSalvo's heart sometime between evening check and the morning."
Officials believed that Albert's death was related to his involvement in a prison drug
operation. 3 men were tried, but twice the trials ended in hung juries.
Albert wrote this poem a few years before his death:
Here is the story of the Strangler, yet untold,
The man who claims he murdered thirteen women,
young and old.
The elusive Strangler, there he goes,
Where his wanderlust sends him, no one knows
He struck within the light of day,
Leaving not one clue astray.
Young and old, their lips are sealed,
Their secret of death never revealed.
Even though he is sick in mind,
He's much too clever for the police to find.
To reveal his secret will bring him fame,
But burden his family with unwanted shame.
Today he sits in a prison cell,
Deep inside only a secret he can tell.
People everywhere are still in doubt,
Is the Strangler in prison or roaming about?
Although Albert De Salvo was never charged with the strangulation murders of 11
women due to a lack of evidence, many thought that he was the Boston Strangler,
especially after he confessed. Two people very close to the case believe he didn't do it.
One is Albert's brother Richard DeSalvo; the other is Casey Sherman, the nephew of
the strangler's last known victim, Mary Sullivan. Both men and their families are
convinced that Albert DeSalvo did not kill Mary Sullivan. If they are correct, their
findings may not only overturn the prosecution's case against DeSalvo but will almost
certainly cast doubt on the entire Boston Strangler case, in which 11 Boston-area
women were sexually assaulted and murdered between 1962 and 1964.
Diane Dodd, left, sister of Mary Sullivan, with her son, Casey Sherman
Ironically, it was DeSalvo's own taped confession that convinced the families he was
not the killer. "Police say he had to be the killer because he knew things that only the
killer would know, but when we listened to the confession tape, it's completely wrong.
He confessed to events that simply never happened." said Casey Sherman. Mary
Sullivan, who was killed in 1964 at age 19, was Casey's mother's sister.
Albert DeSalvo in 1973
Albert DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker with a wife and children, confessed to all of the
Boston Strangler murders, as well as two others. But, there was never any physical
evidence connecting him to the crime scenes. He did not match witness descriptions of
possible suspects. His name was not on a list of more than 300 suspects compiled by
case investigators and he was never tried in any of the killings. DeSalvo was sent to
prison for life for another string of rapes and sexual assaults and was stabbed to death
in the maximum-security state prison at Walpole in 1973 but not before he recanted
his confession. At the time of his death, he was in fear of his life and had been housed
in the prison infirmary to provide him additional protection.
Richard DeSalvo, being interviewed by the press
In October 2000, the two families united to have Sullivan's remains exhumed for DNA
testing, a technology that was not available nearly 37 years ago. They hope the
results, expected in early 2001, will put further pressure on prosecutors to release to
them old evidence they hope will clear DeSalvo. Sherman and his family also believe
that his aunt's killer is still at large. For the DeSalvo's, the primary motivation is to
clear their family name. Richard DeSalvo said that members of his own family have
been constantly berated and assaulted because of the Boston Strangler case and that it
has led to rifts in the family.
All 11 women believed to be the Strangler victims were strangled with articles of their
own clothing, and one was also stabbed repeatedly. The prosecution has always argued
that Albert De Salvo possessed information that only the killer would know. Sherman
countered by suggesting that DeSalvo could have gotten details about Sullivan's
slaying from the newspapers. This view is supported by Susan Kelly in her 1995 book
{Boston Stranglers: The Wrongful Conviction of Albert De Salvo and the True Story of
Eleven Shocking Murders} -- but she goes further suggesting that DeSalvo could have
learnt the details from the "real" killer in prison. In his confession, DeSalvo said he
strangled Mary Sullivan with his hands. In reality, she was strangled with her own
clothing. DeSalvo also claimed to have raped her when evidence has proven that she
was sexually assaulted with a broomstick. A forensic scientist who took part in an
autopsy arranged by the families said experts were unable to find the effects of a blow
DeSalvo claimed to have inflicted on Sullivan. Also, the families said DeSalvo claimed
to have left a knife and a sweater at the murder scene but neither was found.
Tests are also being conducted on 68 samples of hair, semen and tissue taken from
Sullivan's exhumed body. Richard DeSalvo said his brother's body would also be
exhumed if it would help their case. Sherman said a prime suspect in his aunt's death
is a former boyfriend of one of her roommates as there was no evidence of forced entry
into her apartment.
Richard De Salvo believes his brother confessed to the Boston Strangler killings
because he knew he was going to prison for life for other crimes and wanted to cash in
on book and movie deals and use the proceeds to take care of his family. According to
the families, DeSalvo's lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, convinced him that if he confessed, he
would go to a mental institution rather than prison.
Recent photo of F. Lee Bailey
Even though Bailey still claims that Albert DeSalvo is the Boston Strangler, he supports
the familys campaign to have DNA tests carried out, as he believes that the results will
prove that DeSalvo did it.
The state attorney general's office is currently "reviewing" the Sullivan slaying but has
continually denied the familys access to evidence because they consider the case is
still unsolved. In October 2000, a judge ordered the two sides to try to work out a
compromise but the Boston authorities have been less than cooperative. Jerry Leone,
chief of the Massachusetts attorney general's criminal bureau, said that if evidence
does point to someone other than DeSalvo as Sullivan's killer, it doesn't necessarily
cast doubt on all the other Boston Strangler murders and doesn't mean the other cases
will be reinvestigated. "We are looking into the Sullivan case because it's the only case
that has any evidence that can be used in a viable prosecution right now," Leone said.
On the other hand, Richard DeSalvo believes that if it is proven his brother didn't kill
Mary Sullivan, it raises a serious question about who really killed the others.
Attorney General Thomas Reilly
In recent months, Attorney General Thomas Reilly has made it very clear that he will
not allow the release of any evidence causing the families to reactivate their lawsuit
against the state of Massachusetts.
On February 23 2001, Judge William G. Young reinstated the lawsuit, which calls for
the release of all evidence pertaining to the original investigation so that the families
can pursue their own investigation. The state has since sought a motion of dismissal.
After a private investigation conducted by Casey Sherman, both families are even more
convinced that DeSalvo was coerced into confessing in the belief that he would receive
favorable attention if he did. To support their case the families have offered the results
of the forensic tests carried out on Mary Sullivan's remains, which have shown no
indications of head trauma and damage to the fragile neck bones normally associated
with strangulation.
The matter now rests with Judge Young. Should the lawsuit be successful, the
authorities will be ordered to hand over to the families, all evidence pertaining to the
Boston Strangler investigation for the purposes of private analysis. If the lawsuit fails
the family is expected to launch an appeal. More importantly, if the DNA results prove
conclusively that DeSalvo was not the killer, the entire case may be reopened and a
new hunt instigated for the real Boston Strangler.
On October 20, 2001, Court TV reported that new DNA tests would be performed on
evidence taken from the remains of Mary Sullivan, one of 11 victims attributed to the
alleged Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo.
Thomas Reilly, the Massachusetts Attorney General, told Court TV that he had ordered
the tests to be performed: "The family has raised legitimate questions in terms of the
way it was investigated, they've asked us to look into things and we are."
The family of Mary Sullivan has long argued that she wasn't a victim of the Boston
Strangler and believes that her real killer is still alive.
This latest development was a direct result of individual investigations that were
mounted by relatives of both Sullivan and DeSalvo, which brought additional pressure
on authorities to reconsider their findings.
A week later, on Friday October 26, 2001, a report by Associated Press described how
Albert DeSalvo's body had been exhumed from a gravesite in Massachusetts and taken
to a forensic laboratory in York College Pennsylvania for examination. The following
Saturday an autopsy was conducted on the remains in the hope of attempting to prove
De Salvo's innocence of the murders and possibly, to identify his killer.
James E. Starrs, a professor of forensic sciences at George Washington University, led
the team of scientists who performed the autopsy: Starrs is best known for his
identification work on other high-profile cases including the Lizzie Borden hatchet
murders, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the outlaw Jesse James.
He told AP: "The family has been unsatisfied all these many years concerning the death
of Albert DeSalvo and failure to find anyone guilty of the death."
On Thursday, December 13, 2001, Court TV reported that DNA evidence taken from
Mary Sullivan's remains did not provide a match to Albert DeSalvo. During a news
conference, James Starrs told reporters: "We have found evidence and the evidence
does not and cannot be associated with Albert DeSalvo."
Starrs made it very clear that the evidence only clears DeSalvo of sexual assault. While
he did not give details of the analysis, he told reporters: "If I was a juror, I would
acquit him with no questions asked."
Mary Sullivan's nephew, Casey Sherman, who has always doubted that DeSalvo killed
his aunt or any of the other victims attributed to him, said he feels vindicated by
Starrs' finding: "If he didn't kill Mary Sullivan, yet he confessed to it in glaring detail,
he didn't kill any of these women."
Sherman also told reporters that, prior to De Salvo's confession; police had what they
considered as "a prime suspect" in Sullivan's murder but dropped the case after
DeSalvo confessed. Sherman urged police to "go after the real killer" who, according to
him, is still alive and living in New England.

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Boston Strangler

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Albert DeSalvo

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Within twenty-four hours of Ida Irga's murder, a sixty-seven-year-old nurse named

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Woman places bottles in front of a door as an early warning device

Panic gripped all of Boston.

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Three weeks later twenty-three-year-old Patricia Bissette, a secretary for a Boston

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Beverly Samans, victim

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John S. Bottomly on the right

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Peter Hurkos, psychic

At Bottomly's suggestion, Brooke finally consented to a risky move: the involvement of

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No similarity whatsoever exists between the relatively delicate killing of Patricia

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DeSalvo, after competency hearing

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Albert DeSalvo in jail, showing his choker jewelry

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Albert DeSalvo in 1973

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Richard DeSalvo, being interviewed by the press

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Recent photo of F. Lee Bailey

Attorney General Thomas Reilly

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