Boston Strangler

Anna Slesers, a seamstress and devout churchgoer, was the first victim to be murdered on the evening of 14 June 1962. She lived alone in a modest brick house apartment at 77 Gainsborough St in Boston’s bedsit district.

Her son Juris was supposed to stop by to pick her up for a memorial service. When he discovered her body in the bathroom with a cord tied around her neck in a bow, Juris assumed she had committed suicide.

Homicide Detectives James Mellon and John Driscoll found her in an obscene state, nude and stripped of dignity. She had been sexually assaulted. The apartment appeared to have been ransacked, with Anna’s purse and its contents scattered across the floor.

Despite what appeared to be a robbery, a gold watch and pieces of jewelry had been left behind. The police settled on the hypothesis that it was a botched burglary.

Just under three weeks later, on 28 June 1962, eighty-five-year-old Mary Mullen was also found murdered in her home.

Two days later, the body of sixty-eight-year-old Nina Nichols was discovered in the Brighton area of Boston. Again, it appeared to be a burglary despite valuable silver having been left untouched. The ransacking did not seem to make sense to detectives.

Nichols was also found in a state of undress, her legs spread apart and her stocking tops tied in a bow. Was this the trademark of the same killer?

Then, on the same day, a second body was discovered a few miles north of Boston in the suburb of Lynn. Helen Blake was a sixty-five-year-old divorcée.

Her murder was more gruesome. She had suffered lacerations to her vagina and anus. Again, the bow trademark was evident, this time made by tying her bra around her neck. Like the previous crimes, the scene appeared to be a burglary.

After this brutal slaying, it became clear that Boston had a psychotic serial killer in its midst. Police Commissioner Edmund McNamara canceled all police leave due to the severity of the situation, and a warning was issued through the media to Boston’s female population.

Women were advised to lock their doors and be cautious of strangers.

It was not long before McNamara’s fears were realized. A fourth brutal slaying took place at 7 Grove Garden in Boston’s West End on 19 August. The victim was seventy-five-year-old widow Ida Irga.

Again, she had been strangled. She lay on her back on the floor wearing a brown nightdress, which had been ripped and exposed her body. Her legs were spread apart and resting on two chairs, and a cushion had been placed beneath her buttocks. Again, there was no sign of forced entry.

Less than 24 hours later, the body of Jane Sullivan was found not far from the previous victim at 435 Columbia Rd in Dorchester. The sixty-five-year-old nurse had been murdered a week earlier and was found dead in the bathroom. She had been strangled with her own nylons.

Terror spread throughout Boston with fears of another attack, but the Strangler did not strike again until three months later. This time, the victim was young.

Twenty-one-year-old Sophie Clark was an African American student who was very security conscious and rarely dated. Her body was found on 5 December 1962, a few blocks away from the first victim, Anna Slesers.

Sophie was found nude and had been sexually assaulted. She had been strangled with her own stockings, and semen was discovered for the first time. Somehow, despite Sophie being a very careful woman, she had still allowed the murderer inside.

Although Sophie did not fit the same profile as the other victims, the police were certain it was the work of the same killer.

Furthermore, this time they had a lead regarding the killer’s possible identity when a female neighbor informed the police that a man had knocked on her door insisting he had been sent to paint her apartment. He finally left after she told him that her husband was sleeping in the next room.

Three weeks later, another young woman’s life ended tragically. Twenty-three-year-old Patricia Bissette was pregnant when she was found dead in her apartment, again near the area where Anna Slesers and Sophie Clark had lived.

Bissette was discovered by her employer after she failed to report for work. Her body lay in her bed covered by sheets, but she had been sexually assaulted and strangled with her own stockings.

While the city appeared to have been spared another attack for several months, the police desperately tried to find any connection between the women and people they might have known. Every sex offender in the Boston Police files was interviewed and investigated, yet nothing emerged.

Then a series of murders began again. This time, the body of sixty-eight-year-old Mary Brown was found strangled and raped twenty-five miles north of the city in March 1963.

Two months later, the ninth victim associated with the same madman was Beverly Samans. The twenty-three-year-old graduate had missed choir practice on the day of her murder, Wednesday, 8 May 1963.

Samans was found with her hands tied behind her back using one of her scarves. A nylon stocking and two handkerchiefs had been tied around her neck. Bizarrely, a piece of cloth covering her mouth concealed a second cloth that had been stuffed inside. Four stab wounds to her neck most likely caused her death rather than strangulation.

There were another twenty-two stab wounds on Samans’ body, eighteen arranged in the shape of a bull’s-eye on her right breast. She had been raped, but there was no evidence of semen. It was believed that because of her strong throat muscles from singing, the killer resorted to stabbing instead of strangulation.

The police, now desperate, even sought the help of a clairvoyant. He described the killer as a mental patient who had escaped from Boston State Hospital on the days the murders occurred.

However, this theory was soon dismissed when another murder was committed. On 8 September 1963, in Salem, Evelyn Corbin, a youthful-looking fifty-eight-year-old divorcée, became the latest victim.

Corbin was found nude, lying face up on her bed. Her underwear had been stuffed into her mouth, and once again there were traces of semen, both on lipstick stains and inside her mouth. Corbin’s apartment had been ransacked in a similar manner.

On 25 November, Joann Graff, a twenty-three-year-old industrial designer, was raped and killed in her apartment in the Lawrence section of the city. Several descriptions of her attacker matched those of the man who had asked to paint Sophie Clark’s neighbor’s apartment. The description detailed a man wearing dark green slacks, a dark shirt, and a jacket.

On 4 January 1964, one of the most gruesome murders was discovered when two women came across the body of their roommate. Mary Sullivan was found dead sitting on her bed with her back against the headboard.

She had been strangled with a dark stocking. She had been sexually assaulted with a broom handle. This obscenity was made even more disturbing by the fact that a Happy New Year card was wedged between her feet.

The same hallmarks of the killer were evident: a ransacked apartment, few valuables taken, and victims strangled with their own underwear or scarves tied into bows.

The city was gripped by panic, and the situation prompted the appointment of a top investigator to lead the hunt for the Strangler. Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the state, began work on 17 January 1964 to bring the serial killer to justice.

Pressure was on Brooke, the only African American Attorney General in the country, to succeed where others had failed.

Brooke led a task force that included assigning permanent staff to the Boston Strangler case. He brought in Assistant Attorney General John Bottomly, who had a reputation for being unconventional.

Bottomly’s team had to sift through thousands of pages of material from different police departments. Criminal profiling was relatively new in the early 1960s, but they developed what they believed was the most likely description of the killer.

He was believed to be around thirty years old, neat and orderly, worked with his hands, and was most likely a loner who might be divorced or separated.

In reality, finding the killer happened by chance rather than through any member of the police force tracking him down.

After serving a prison sentence for breaking and entering, DeSalvo went on to commit more serious crimes. After breaking into a woman’s apartment, he tied her to the bed, held a knife to her throat, molested her, and then fled.

The victim gave the police a detailed description that matched the composite sketch created from his previous crimes. Shortly afterward, DeSalvo was arrested.

After being identified in a police lineup, DeSalvo admitted to robbing hundreds of apartments and committing several rapes. He then confessed to being the Boston Strangler.

Although the police did not believe his confession at the time, DeSalvo was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. He was assigned an attorney named F. Lee Bailey.

When Bailey informed DeSalvo’s wife that her husband had confessed to being the "Strangler," she refused to believe it and suggested he was doing it solely for payment from newspapers.

During his stay at Bridgewater, DeSalvo became friends with another inmate, an intelligent but highly dangerous killer named George Nassar.

The two allegedly arranged to split any reward money that would be paid to someone who provided information leading to the identification of the Strangler. DeSalvo accepted that he would spend the rest of his life in prison and wanted his family to be financially secure.

Bailey interviewed DeSalvo to determine whether he really was the notorious killer. The attorney was shocked to hear DeSalvo describe the murders in remarkable detail, including the furniture inside his victims' apartments.

DeSalvo believed he had everything planned. He thought he could convince the psychiatric board that he was insane and then remain imprisoned for the rest of his life. Bailey could then write his story and earn much-needed money to support DeSalvo’s family.

In his book The Defence Never Rests, Bailey explains how DeSalvo managed to avoid detection. DeSalvo was Dr. Jekyll; the police were searching for Mr. Hyde.

After a second visit and hearing DeSalvo describe the murder of seventy-five-year-old Ida Irga in gruesome detail, Bailey became convinced that his client was the Boston Strangler.

When Bailey asked DeSalvo why he had chosen a victim of such an advanced age, he calmly replied, "Attractiveness had nothing to do with it."

After many hours of questioning and discussing minute details such as what the victims wore and how their apartments looked, both Bailey and the police became convinced that they had found the killer.

One particularly disturbing revelation came when DeSalvo described an aborted attack on a Danish woman. While strangling her, he caught sight of himself in a mirror.

Horrified by the ghastly image of what he was doing, he released her, begged her not to tell the police, and then fled.

One of the biggest problems surrounding this case was the number of people who believed that DeSalvo was innocent. Despite his own confessions, there appeared to be no physical evidence linking him to the murders. DeSalvo also had a prominent beak-like nose, which no witnesses remembered.

Two female witnesses, Marcella Lulka and Gertrude Gruer, were called to identify DeSalvo. Lulka had lived in the same building as murder victim Sophie Clark and had been approached on the day of Clark’s murder by a man calling himself "Mr. Thompson," who claimed he had been sent to paint her apartment. Gruer was the only victim to escape from the Strangler.

Neither woman identified DeSalvo, but ironically both were disturbed when they caught sight of fellow prisoner George Nassar in the same building. Nassar’s posture, movements, and physical features seemed familiar to the stunned women. Ironically, this revelation went no further.

Could it be that DeSalvo realized he could gain fame and earn money for his family by claiming to be the Strangler?

It was discovered after several tests that DeSalvo possessed a photographic memory. It is possible that he had read every detail of the murders and their circumstances in publications such as the Record American, which printed a chart containing such information.

DeSalvo may also have broken into the victims’ apartments after they had been killed. However, the most contentious aspect was that the murders did not appear to have been committed by the same person.

Some victims were elderly, while others were young. Some had been raped, while others had been strangled and left in degrading positions. Serial killers tend to follow the same pattern and not deviate from their modus operandi.

DeSalvo’s attorney was determined to protect his client from being sentenced to the electric chair.

DeSalvo’s confession was inadmissible in court, and Bailey believed there were enough charges against his client relating to his history of break-ins and assaults to ensure a life sentence rather than execution as the Boston Strangler.

On 10 January 1967, Albert DeSalvo went on trial. Bailey attempted to persuade the jury to convict DeSalvo only for the crimes connected with the so-called "Green Man" attacks, during which he broke into apartments and molested women. Bailey hoped DeSalvo’s confession to thirteen murders would instead demonstrate his insanity.

Victims of DeSalvo’s "Green Man" crimes testified. Evidence showed that DeSalvo had broken into their homes, tied them up, and sexually molested, but not raped, them before leaving.

Bailey argued for a verdict that would take DeSalvo’s mental state at the time of the assaults into account. An expert witness testified that DeSalvo was schizophrenic and understood how to gain entry to apartments but could not control his sexual urges.

The jury ultimately found DeSalvo guilty on all counts, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment but denied psychiatric treatment.

Bailey was disappointed that DeSalvo would not receive treatment, believing it represented a unique opportunity to study the mind of a killer and discover the triggers or motives that lead to murder.

DeSalvo was incarcerated in what is now known as MCI-Cedar Junction prison in Massachusetts. In November 1973 he got word to his doctor that he needed to see him urgently. DeSalvo had something important to say about the Boston Strangler murders. The night before they were to meet DeSalvo was stabbed to death in prison.

Because of the level of security in the prison it is assumed that the killing had been planned with a degree of co-operation between employees and prisoners. Whatever the case, and although there were no more murders by the ‘Strangler’ after DeSalvo had been arrested, the Strangler case was never closed.

In 2001, DeSalvo’s body was exhumed and DNA tests were taken and compared to evidence taken from the last Strangler victim, Mary Sullivan. There was no match. Although this only proved that DeSalvo had not sexually assaulted Ms Sullivan it didn’t rule out his involvement in her murder.

The family of DeSalvo and the nephew of Mary Sullivan continue to believe in Albert DeSalvo’s innocence of the murders of thirteen women. They are convinced that the killer is still alive. Despite calls from both families for evidence to be brought forward so they can reactivate lawsuits, the state of Massachusetts has so far declined.