The Boston Strangler
is the name given to the murderer of 13 women in the Boston, Massachusetts area during the early 1960s. The crimes were
attributed to Albert DeSalvo based
on his confession, details revealed in court during a separate case, and DNA evidence
linking him to the last victim. Since then, parties investigating the crimes
have suggested that the murders (sometimes referred to as "the silk stocking murders") were committed by more than
one person.
Names
Initially, the crimes were assumed to be the work of one unknown
person dubbed "The Mad Strangler of
Boston." The July 8, 1962
edition of the Sunday Herald,
declared "A mad strangler is loose
in Boston," in an article titled "Mad
Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston." The killer was also known as the "Phantom Fiend" or "Phantom Strangler" due to his
ability to get women to allow him into their apartments. In 1963, two
investigative reporters for the Record
American, Jean Cole and Loretta McLaughlin wrote a four-part
series about the killer, dubbing him "The
Boston Strangler." By the time
that DeSalvo's confession was aired in open court, the name "Boston Strangler" had become
part of crime lore.
Events
Between June 14, 1962, and January 4, 1964, 13 single women
between the ages of 19 and 85 were murdered in the Boston area. Most were sexually assaulted and strangled in their
apartments; police believe that one man was the perpetrator. With no sign of
forced entry into their homes, the women were assumed to have let their
assailant in, either because they knew him or because they believed him to be
an apartment maintenance man, delivery man, or other serviceman. The attacks
continued despite extensive media publicity after the first few murders, which
presumably should have discouraged women from admitting strangers into their
homes. Many residents purchased tear gas and new locks and deadbolts for their
doors. Some women moved out of the area.
The murders occurred in several cities, including Boston, complicating jurisdictional
oversight for the prosecution of the crimes. Massachusetts
Attorney General Edward W. Brooke helped to coordinate the various police
forces. He permitted parapsychologist Peter Hurkos to use
his alleged extrasensory perception to analyze the cases, for which Hurkos
claimed that a single person was responsible. This decision was controversial. Hurkos provided a "minutely detailed description of the wrong person," and
the press ridiculed Brooke. The police
were not convinced that all the murders were the actions of one person,
although much of the public believed so. The apparent connections were widely
discussed between a majority of the victims and hospitals.
Victims
Anna Elsa (Legins)
Šlesers, 56, sexually assaulted with an unknown object and strangled with the
belt on her bathrobe; found on June 14, 1962, in her third-floor apartment at 77 Gainsborough Street, Fenway, Boston.
Mary Mullen, 85,
died from a heart attack; found on June 28, 1962, in her apartment at 1435 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. In his
confession, DeSalvo said she collapsed as he grabbed her.
Nina Frances Nichols,
68, sexually assaulted and strangled with her nylon stockings; found on June
30, 1962 in her home at 1940 Commonwealth
Ave., Boston.
Helen Elizabeth Blake,
65, sexually assaulted and strangled with her nylon stockings; found on June
30, 1962 in her home at 73 Newhall St.,
Lynn, Massachusetts.
Ida Odes Irga,
75, sexually assaulted and strangled; found on August 19, 1962, in her apartment
at 7 Grove Street, Beacon Hill, Boston.
Jane Buckley Sullivan,
67, sexually assaulted and strangled with her nylon stockings; found on August
21, 1962 in her home at 435 Columbia
Road, Dorchester, Boston.
Sophie Clark, 20,
sexually assaulted and strangled with her nylon stockings; found on December 5,
1962 in her apartment at 315 Huntington
Ave., Fenway, Boston.
Patricia Jane Bullock
Bissette, 23, strangled with her nylon stockings; found on December 31,
1962 in her home at 515 Park Drive, Fenway,
Boston.
Mary Ann Brown,
69, raped, strangled, beaten, and stabbed; found on March 6, 1963, in her
apartment at 319 Park Ave., Lawrence,
Massachusetts.
Beverly Samans,
25, stabbed to death; found on May 6, 1963, nine days before her 26th birthday,
in her home at 4 University Road in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Marie Evelina
(Evelyn) Corbin, 58, raped and strangled with her nylon stockings; found on
September 8, 1963, in her home at 224 Lafayette
St., Salem, Massachusetts.
Joann Marie Graff,
22, strangled with her nylon stockings; found on November 23, 1963, in her
apartment at 54 Essex St., Lawrence,
Massachusetts.
Mary Anne Sullivan,
19, sexually assaulted and strangled with nylon stockings; found on January 4,
1964 in her apartment at 44-A Charles
St., Boston.
The murders of Margaret
Davis, 60, of Roxbury and Cheryl
Laird, 14, of Lawrence, was originally attributed to the Boston Strangler but were later found
to be unrelated cases.
DeSalvo's confession
On October 27, 1964, a stranger entered a young woman's home
posing as a detective. He tied the victim to her bed, sexually assaulted her,
and suddenly left, saying "I'm
sorry" as he went. The woman's description of her attacker led police
to identify the assailant as Albert
DeSalvo. When his photo was published, many women identified him as the man
who had assaulted them. Earlier on October 27, DeSalvo had posed as a motorist
with car trouble and attempted to enter a home in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The homeowner, future Brockton police Chief Richard Sproules, became suspicious
and eventually fired a shotgun at DeSalvo.
DeSalvo was not initially suspected of being involved with
the strangling murders. After he was charged with rape, he gave a detailed
confession of his activities as the Boston
Strangler. He initially confessed to fellow inmate George Nassar. Nassar reported the confession to his attorney F. Lee Bailey, who also took on the defense
of DeSalvo. The police were impressed at the accuracy of DeSalvo's descriptions
of the crime scenes. There were some inconsistencies, but DeSalvo was able to
cite details that had been withheld from the public.
No physical evidence substantiated his confession. Because
of that, he was tried on charges for earlier, unrelated crimes of robbery and
sexual offenses, in which he was known as "The
Green Man" and "The
Measuring Man", respectively. Bailey brought up DeSalvo's confession
to the murders as part of his client's history at the trial in order to assist
in gaining a "not guilty by reason
of insanity" verdict to the sexual offenses, but it was ruled as
inadmissible by the judge.
DeSalvo was sentenced to life in prison in 1967. In February
of that year, he escaped with two fellow inmates from Bridgewater State Hospital, triggering a full-scale manhunt. A note
was found on his bunk addressed to the superintendent. In it, DeSalvo stated
that he had escaped focusing attention on the conditions in the hospital and
his own situation. Immediately after his escape, DeSalvo disguised himself as a
U.S. Navy Petty Officer Third Class,
but the next day he gave himself up. Following the escape, he was transferred
to the maximum-security Walpole State
Prison. Six years after the transfer, he was found stabbed to death in the
prison infirmary. His killer or killers were never identified.
Multiple-killer theories
Prior to DNA confirmation in 2013, doubts existed as to
whether DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler.
At the time when he confessed, people who knew him personally did not believe
him capable of such vicious crimes. Creating doubt of a serial killer, who
characteristically has a certain type of victim and method of murder, the women
killed by "The Strangler"
were from a variety of age and ethnic groups, and there were different modi
operandi.
In 1968, Dr. Ames
Robey, medical director of Bridgewater
State Hospital, insisted that DeSalvo was not the Boston Strangler. He said the prisoner was "a very clever, very smooth compulsive confessor who desperately
needs to be recognized." Robey's opinion was shared by Middlesex District Attorney John J. Droney,
Bridgewater Superintendent Charles
Gaughan, and George W. Harrison,
a former fellow inmate of DeSalvo's. Harrison claimed to have overheard another
convict coaching DeSalvo about details of the strangling murders.
DeSalvo's attorney Bailey believed that his client was the
killer, and described the case in The
Defense Never Rests (1995). Susan Kelly, the author of the book The Boston Stranglers (1996), drew from
the files of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts "Strangler Bureau". She argues that the murders were
the work of several killers rather than a single individual. Former FBI profiler Robert Ressler
said, "You're putting together so
many different patterns [regarding the Boston Strangler murders] that it's
inconceivable behaviorally that all these could fit one individual."
John E. Douglas,
the former FBI special agent who was one of the first criminal profilers,
doubted that DeSalvo was the Boston
Strangler. In his book The Cases That
Haunt Us, he identified DeSalvo as a "power-assurance"
motivated rapist. He said that such a
rapist is unlikely to kill in the manner of crimes attributed to the Boston Strangler; a power-assurance
motivated rapist would, however, be prone to taking credit for the crimes.
In 2000, attorney and former print journalist Elaine Sharp took up the cause of the
DeSalvo family and that of the family of Mary
Sullivan. Sullivan was publicized as being the final victim in 1964,
although other strangling murders occurred after that date. Sharp assisted the
families in their media campaign to clear DeSalvo's name. She helped organize
and arrange the exhumations of Mary
Sullivan and Albert H. DeSalvo,
filed various lawsuits in attempts to obtain information and trace evidence
(e.g., DNA) from the government, and worked with various producers to create
documentaries to explain the facts to the public.
Sharp noted various inconsistencies between DeSalvo's
confessions and the crime scene information (which she obtained). For example,
she observed that, contrary to DeSalvo's confession to Sullivan's murder, the
woman was found to have no semen in her vagina and she was not strangled
manually, but by ligature. Forensic
pathologist Michael Baden noted that DeSalvo got the time of death wrong.
This was a common inconsistency also pointed out by Susan Kelly in several of the murders. She continues to work on the
case for the DeSalvo family.
DNA evidence
On July 11, 2013, the Boston
Police Department released information stating that they had found DNA
evidence which linked DeSalvo to the murder of Mary Sullivan. DNA found at the
scene was a "near-certain
match" to Y-DNA taken from a nephew of DeSalvo. Y-DNA is passed
through the direct male lines with little change and can be used to link males
with a common paternal-line ancestor. To determine conclusively that it was
DeSalvo's DNA, a court ordered the exhumation of his body in order to test his
DNA directly.
On July 19, 2013, Suffolk
County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, and Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis
announced the DNA test results proving that DeSalvo was the source of seminal
fluid recovered at the scene of Sullivan's 1964 murder.
In popular culture
The 1964 film The
Strangler was inspired by the unsolved killings.
The 1968 film The
Boston Strangler starred Tony Curtis
as Albert DeSalvo. Henry Fonda co-starred.
The 2007 novel The
Strangler by William Landay
depicts the family of an attorney on the Strangler
task force.
A 2008 film The Boston
Strangler – The Untold Story stars David
Faustino as DeSalvo.
The 2010 television film The
Front, starring Andie MacDowell
and Daniel Sunjata depicts a
detective who reopens an unsolved 1960s murder of a woman who may have been the
first victim of the Boston Strangler.
The plot suggests that DeSalvo was not the only perpetrator of these Boston murders.
The Boston Strangler
made an appearance in the episode "Strangler"
of CBS's American Gothic, where he
was summoned by the antagonist sheriff Lucas
Buck to get rid of Merlyn Temple.
However, Lucas leaves town to attend
a convention, and Albert DeSalvo -aka The
Boston Strangler- decides to do more than just try to kill Merlyn.
The Boston Strangler
was featured as a central figure in the second episode of TNT's Rizzoli & Isles, starring Angie Harmon and Sasha
Alexander. The episode was called "Boston
Strangler Redux", featuring a new serial killer who killed women with
the same names as the original Strangler's
victims. He is eventually revealed to have been one of the original detectives
investigating the case who tried to frame the man whom he believed to be the
real Boston Strangler.
He and the Zodiac Killer
are featured in Image Comics' The Roberts.
A waxwork of Albert DeSalvo was featured in an
episode of the British comedy series Psychoville. The waxwork comes to life
in a fantasy sequence (along with those of John George Haigh, John Christie,
and Jack the Ripper), trying to
persuade character David Sowerbutts
to kill a man by strangling. The others accused him of having several
personalities, referencing the 1968 movie.
In the 13th episode of the second season of Crossing Jordan titled "Strangled", the characters
have a Cold Case party where they role-play the investigation into two murders that fit the MO of the Boston Strangler.
A Boston hardcore
band is named The Boston Strangler.
The Rolling Stones
released "Midnight Rambler"
on the album Let It Bleed in 1969.
The song is a loose biography of Albert
DeSalvo; "the Boston
Strangler" is mentioned in the lyrics once.
A 2016 podcast entitled "Stranglers"
delves into the Boston Strangler
investigation and features clips of the DeSalvo confession tapes and interviews
with relatives of the key players in the investigation, including chief
investigator Phil DiNatale's sons.
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