TheBoston Strangler is the name given to the murderer of 13 women inGreater Boston during the early 1960s. The crimes were attributed toAlbert DeSalvo based on his confession, on details revealed in court during a separate case,[1] andDNA 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]
Initially, the crimes were assumed to be the work of one unknown person dubbed "The Mad Strangler of Boston".[4] On July 8, 1962, theSunday Herald wrote that "[a] mad strangler is loose in Boston" in an article titled "Mad Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston".[5] The killer was also known as the "Phantom Fiend"[6] or "Phantom Strangler",[7] due to his ability to get women to allow him into their apartments. In 1963, two investigative reporters for theRecord American,Jean Cole[8] andLoretta 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.
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. Originally, the police believed that one man was the sole perpetrator. With no sign of forced entry into their homes, the women were assumed to have let their assailant in, either because they may have known him or because they believed him to be a service provider. The attacks continued despite extensive media publicity after the first few murders. Many residents purchasedtear gas and newlocks anddeadbolts 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.Massachusetts Attorney GeneralEdward W. Brooke helped to coordinate the various police forces.[4][15] He permittedparapsychologistPeter Hurkos to use his allegedextrasensory 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]
| Name | Age | Date of murder | 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 |
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On October 27, 1964, a stranger entered a young woman's home posing as adetective. 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 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 amotorist with car trouble and attempted to enter a home inBridgewater, Massachusetts. The homeowner, futureBrockton police chief Richard Sproules, became suspicious and eventually fired ashotgun at DeSalvo.
DeSalvo was not initially suspected of being involved with the strangling murders. After he was charged withrape, he gave a detailed confession of his activities as the Boston Strangler. He initially confessed to fellow inmateGeorge Nassar.[16] Nassar reported the confession to his attorneyF. 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,[17] 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 fromBridgewater State Hospital, triggering a full-scalemanhunt.[18] A note was found on his bunk addressed to the superintendent. In it, DeSalvo stated that he had escaped to focus attention on the conditions in the hospital and his own situation. Immediately after his escape, DeSalvo disguised himself as aU.S. NavyPetty Officer Third Class, but he gave himself up the following day. After the escape, he was transferred to the maximum securityWalpole State Prison. Six years after the transfer, he was found stabbed to death in the prisoninfirmary. His killer or killers were never identified.
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 AttorneyJohn 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.[19]
DeSalvo's attorney Bailey believed that his client was the killer, and described the case inThe Defense Never Rests (1971).[4] Susan Kelly, author of the bookThe 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. FormerFBIprofilerRobert Ressler said, "You're putting together so many different patterns [regarding the Boston Stranglermurders] that it's inconceivable behaviorally that all these could fit one individual."[20]
John E. Douglas, the formerFBI special agent who was one of the first criminal profilers, doubted that DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. In his bookThe 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.[21]
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 pathologistMichael 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.[21]
On July 11, 2013, the Boston Police Department announced that they had found DNA evidence that linked DeSalvo to the murder of Mary Sullivan.[22] DNA found at the scene was a "near certain match" toY-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. A court ordered the exhumation of DeSalvo's corpse to test his DNA directly.[23] On July 19, 2013, Suffolk County District AttorneyDaniel F. Conley, Massachusetts Attorney GeneralMartha Coakley and Boston Police CommissionerEdward 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.[24]