Boston Strangler

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Boston Strangler is the name given to the murderer of 13 women in Greater Boston during the early 1960s. The crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo based on his confession, on details revealed in court during a separate case,[1] and DNA evidence linking him to the final victim.[2]

In the years following DeSalvo's conviction – but prior to the emergence of this DNA evidence – various parties investigating the crimes suggested that the murders (sometimes referred to as the "Silk Stocking Murders") were committed by more than one person.[3]

Names

Initially, the crimes were assumed to be the work of one unknown person dubbed "The Mad Strangler of Boston".

Record American, Jean Cole[8] and Loretta McLaughlin,[9] wrote a four-part series about the killer, dubbing him "The Boston Strangler".[10][11][12]
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 service man. The attacks continued despite extensive media publicity after the first few murders. Many residents purchased

deadbolts for their doors.[13][4] Some women even moved out of the area in response to the killings.[14][4]

The murders occurred in several cities, including Boston, complicating jurisdictional oversight for prosecution of the crimes.

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.[4] Hurkos provided a "minutely detailed description of the wrong person", and the press ridiculed Brooke.[15] 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 between a majority of the victims and hospitals were widely discussed.[4]

Victims

Name Age Discovery of body Location of body
Anna Elza Slesers 55 June 14, 1962 77 Gainsborough Street, Boston
Mary Mullen 85 June 28, 1962 1435 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Nina Nioma Nichols 68 June 30, 1962 1940 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Helen Elizabeth Blake 65 June 30, 1962 73 Newhall Street, Lynn
Edes "Ida" Irga 75 August 19, 1962 7 Grove Street, Boston
Jane Sullivan 67 August 21, 1962 435 Columbia Road, Boston
Sophie L. Clark 20 December 5, 1962 315 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Patricia Jane Bissette 23 December 31, 1962 515 Park Drive, Boston
Mary Ann Brown 69 March 6, 1963 319 Park Street,
Lawrence
Beverly Florence Samans 23 May 6, 1963 4 University Road,
Cambridge
Marie Evelina "Evelyn" Corbin 57 September 8, 1963 224 Lafayette Street,
Salem
Joann Marie Graff 23 November 23, 1963 54 Essex Street,
Lawrence
Mary Anne Sullivan 19 January 4, 1964 44-A Charles Street, Boston

DeSalvo's confession

Gainsborough Street, site of the first murder attributed to the Boston Strangler

On October 27, 1964, a stranger entered a young woman's home posing 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. Bailey states in his 1971 book, The Defense Never Rests, that DeSalvo got one detail right that one of the victims was wrong about: DeSalvo described a blue chair in the woman's living room. She stated it was brown. Photographic evidence proved DeSalvo was correct.

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

Petty Officer Third Class, but he gave himself up the following day. After 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

Doubts persist as to whether DeSalvo was the sole perpetrator behind the Boston Strangler murders. At the time of his confession, people who knew him personally did not believe him capable of such vicious crimes. Several factors created doubt that a serial killer was involved, given that they characteristically have a certain type of victim and method of murder: women killed by "The Strangler" were from a variety of age and ethnic groups, and they were murdered using multiple methods.

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.[16]

DeSalvo's attorney Bailey believed that his client was the killer, and described the case in The Defense Never Rests (1971).

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."[17]

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.[clarification needed
] 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.[18]

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 continued to work on the case for the DeSalvo family.[18]

DNA evidence

On July 11, 2013, the Boston Police Department announced that they had found DNA evidence that linked DeSalvo to the murder of Mary Sullivan.

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.[21]

In popular culture

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Anglin, Robert J. (January 13, 1967). "Albert DeSalvo is 'Boston Strangler'; Defense says he killed 13". The Boston Globe.
  2. Britannica
    . Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  3. ^ "Albert DeSalvo". Case Files. Modus Operandi - Serial Killers. Archived from the original on January 18, 2000. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Gardner, Erle Stanley (May 1, 1964). "The Mad Strangler of Boston". The Atlantic. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  5. ^ "Mad Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston". Sunday Herald. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  6. ^ Bardsley, Marilyn. "The Boston Strangler". TruTV.com. Archived from the original on May 10, 2013. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  7. ^ "Crime: The Phantom Strangler". Time. March 22, 1963. Archived from the original on December 22, 2008. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  8. ^ O'Laughlin, Frank (August 13, 2015). "Jean Cole Harris, 89, Former Newspaper Reporter". Patch. Charlestown, MA. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  9. Boston Globe. Archived from the original
    on February 24, 2023. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  10. Smithsonian Magazine
    . Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  11. .
  12. . (Bibliography showing article dates)
  13. ^ Byers, Margery. “Fear walks home with the women.” Life, February 15, 1963.
  14. .
  15. ^ a b "The Senate: An Individual Who Happens To Be a Negro". Time. February 17, 1967. Archived from the original on February 20, 2008. Retrieved December 24, 2010.
  16. ^ Connolly, Richard (February 29, 1968). "Doctor Says DeSalvo Not Strangler". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on June 11, 2016. Retrieved July 5, 2017.
  17. ^ The Boston Strangler Archived May 11, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, 48 Hours Mystery, 15 February 2001. CBS News
  18. ^ a b "bostonstrangler.org". Archived from the original on February 2, 2005. Retrieved August 24, 2008.
  19. ^ "New DNA Testing Ties Boston Strangler To 1964 Mary Sullivan Murder « CBS Boston". Boston.cbslocal.com. July 11, 2013. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
  20. ^ Bidgood, Jess (2013), "50 Years Later, a Break in a Boston Strangler Case", The New York Times, retrieved July 11, 2013
  21. ^ Otis, Ginger Adams (July 19, 2013). "DNA confirms Albert DeSalvo's link to 'Boston Strangler' killing of Mary Sullivan: authorities". New York Daily News. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  22. . Retrieved October 5, 2009.
  23. Wicked Local
    . Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  24. ^ "Fiction Book Review: The Strangler".
  25. ^ "Boston Strangler: The Untold Story (Video 2008) - IMDb". IMDb.
  26. ^ "Serial Killer Cinema: 6 Movies Inspired by the Boston Strangler". CrimeFeed. Archived from the original on June 10, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2017.
  27. ^ ""American Gothic" Strangler (TV Episode 1998) - IMDb". IMDb.
  28. ^ "Rizzoli & Isles: Boston Strangler Redux". IMDB.
  29. .
  30. TheGuardian.com
    .
  31. ^ "Crossing Jordan (2001) - 2x13 - Strangled". Episode World.
  32. ^ "Boston Strangler Interview". Salad Days Magazine. Archived from the original on February 8, 2015.
  33. ^ "Phillip J. DiNatale, 67, Dies; Led Boston Strangler Inquiry". The New York Times. January 31, 1987. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
  34. ^ Davis, Clint (November 17, 2016). "Boston Strangler murders get 'Serial' treatment in new true-crime series". WKBW Buffalo. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
  35. ^ Fleming, Mike Jr. (October 4, 2021). "Keira Knightley To Star In 20th Century Studios' Boston Strangler; Scott Free, LuckyChap Producing". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
  36. ^ Kroll, Justin (November 17, 2021). "Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola & Chris Cooper Join 20th Century's Boston Strangler". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
  37. ^ Couch, Aaron (November 30, 2021). "David Dastmalchian Joins Keira Knightley in Boston Strangler (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
  38. ^ Bowker, Brittany (December 8, 2021). "Dispatches from 'Boston Strangler' set: Filming continues in the South End". The Boston Globe. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
  39. ^ Article about Sebastian Junger's Book A Death in Belmont. Time magazine, April 3, 2006.

External links