Who Was The Boston Strangler

The case of the Boston Strangler riveted the nation and everyone was just in a frenzy. They were crimes that terrorized a city. So when Albert DeSalvo confessed to killing 13 women, everyone thought the case was closed. After all when he was incarcerated the stranglings stopped. The last victim was 19 year old Mary Sullivan. But her family is convinced the real killer got away. They have launched an investigation to prove it. Can new evidence and modern science turn this case upside down and will this mystery ever be solved?

When Albert DeSalvo confessed to the killing of 13 women the investigators were only too eager to close the case that had been such a pain in their sides for so long. Perhaps a little too eager, ignoring crucial evidence as to the true killers identity. Mary Sullivan was a lot of fun who loved life. The memories of her big sister are still vivid in the mind of Diane Dodd who was only seventeen when her sister was brutally strangled to death. To the rest of the world, Mary Sullivan is merely the final victim of Albert DeSalvo, the self confessed Boston Strangler. But Albert DeSalvo was never convicted of Mary's Murder nor in fact of anyone else's. He was never even charged with a single count of Homicide. No physical ever connected him to any of the murders. Diane Dodd is absolutely positively that Albert DeSalvo did not kill her sister. From the beginning, Diane says, someone got away with murder. Diane and her son, Casey Sherman, are pushing for the state to reopen the long dormant case.

They are working with their own attorneys and scientists. Casey hopes new technology will provide new clues. Loretta McLaughlin was covering the crime beat when the murder spree began in 1962. It was during the Kennedy administration, a very innocent time. But that June the very first victim of the Boston Strangler was found and the city was terrorized. 55 year old Anna Slesher was found in her Boston apartment, naked with the belt of her robe tied tightly around her neck. Special Officer Jack Melon still can't forget that sight. Over the next ten weeks the bodies of four other older women were found strangled. Three with stockings tied with ghoulish bows around their throat. The atmosphere became quite hysterical after a while. Decades later, Author Susan Kelly researched the Stranglers chilling legacy. With no apparent motive and no forced entry, the police were stymied. There was a great rivalry between police departments and even within police departments and everyone had a theory.

Suddenly, as mysteriously as they began, the stranglings stopped for three months. Then in December 1962 another body was found but this time the victim was only 20 years old. The man the newspaper was calling "The Phantom Phene" was going after younger women. By the end of 1963 there were 10 victims, some old, some younger and many had been sexually assaulted. That year Mary Sullivan spent the Christmas holidays at her family's home in Cape Cod. Dianne tried to talk Mary into staying there but Mary excited over a new job was off to Boston. Diane got a letter from her on January 4th 1964. In it she says "Dear Diane & Family, I have just gotten settled... ". That very day her roommate made a horrifying discovery. Mary was the youngest victim, her murder the most depraved. The murderer had left a greeting card saying "Happy New Year" propped up against her foot. With Mary's death the political pressure to solve the case was on.

Former US Senator Edwin Brooke, then State Attorney General, set up a special task force nicknamed "The Strangler Bureau". It was headed by John Bottomly, a respected real estate attorney but with no background in the law. For more than a year, the task force investigated thousands of suspects. But then, someone not even on their list began to talk. And a young Lawyer named F. Lee Bailey was listening. Albert DeSalvo, a 33 year old handyman and Father of two was saying he was the Boston Strangler. Maybe the investigators were a little too eager to believe him. Richard and Rosalee DeSalvo worked hard to create a good home for their five children. No easy task thanks to Richard's Brother, Albert DeSalvo, the self confessed Boston Strangler. The DeSalvos were dumbstruck when of all people, Diane Dodd sought them out. After all, her sister is believed to be the Strangler's last victim. The two families have become the most unlikely of allies.

They are on a mission to prove to the world what they have always believed, namely that Albert DeSalvo was not the Boston Strangler. His Brothers and sisters say he was one of the kindest individuals they ever knew who would offer you the shirt off his back. But when he was a child he had not known much Love from his own Father. As an adult, Albert had frequent run ins with the law. He got suspended sentences until 1981 when he developed a new routine, posing as a modeling agent. He would knock on young women's door and when she came to the door he would say "Your an attractive woman and I would like to take your measurements" and they would let him, in fact he was amazingly successful at this. They called him "The measuring man" and as such he served 11 months in prison for assault. The stranglings began in 1962, two months after DeSalvo got out. They ended 10 months before he was back in prison again. This time they called him "Green Man".

He would don green work clothes and talk his way into women's homes and then he would assault them. He was sent to the Bridgewater State Hospital for psychiatric evaluation, where he made friends with another inmate named George Nasser who was facing his second murder charge. Nasser says he was very nervous and very defensive and he was desperately seeking some kind of direction. DeSalvo asked Nasser to introduce him to his lawyer, a young F. Lee Bailey. When Bailey asked Nasser what he thought he said he thought DeSalvo probably was the Boston Strangler. By this time Investigators on the police were exhausted and clueless. Former Lt. Andy Tunney said the investigation was going nowhere and was stunned to learn that DeSalvo had confessed to Bailey. Tunney says that they were skeptical at first but since it seemed that Bailey was convinced it helped convince them. DeSalvo would talk but nothing he said could be used against him because he was declared mentally incompetent.

The head of the Task Force, John Bottomly began the interviews. When he went in he was only supposed to ask 6 or 7 questions but instead he stayed there several hours. Bottomly was vastly inexperienced giving away a lot of crucial information by asking a lot of leading questions. The Investigators weren't happy with the interview at all. Investigators poured through the flawed confession trying to sort out what DeSalvo knew first hand. Andy Tunney says that in the final analysis he knew too much to not be the Boston Strangler. DeSalvo confessed to all 11 murders and then added two more for a total of 13. Bailey still has little doubt that his client was the Boston Strangler. But the investigators did not verify any of the statements made by DeSalvo with physical evidence. Today DNA can crack cases that are decades old. And Richard DeSalvo hopes that DNA will finally clear his brother's name. He has given a sample of his DNA to the new team of experts who are going to reexamine the case.

Forensics expert James Starr is leading a team of independent scientists including Dr. Henry Lee all volunteering to help the Families. They want to compare DeSalvo DNA to evidence from the crime scene if any has survived. But since most, if not all, of the evidence is long gone they are probably going to have to exhume Mary Sullivan's Body to try to find evidence. More than three decades after her gruesome murder Forensics are exhuming the remains, hoping to use today's technology to probe yesterday's secrets. For Mary Sullivan's sister, Diane Dodd, this was an unavoidable decision. For without a new lead the new investigation is stymied because they have no evidence from the original crime scene itself. So for the second time, Mary's body is subjected to autopsy. Officially the family's investigation is not the only ongoing investigation. The police never charged anyone with the crime and never officially closed the case. The investigation simply stopped when Albert DeSalvo confessed to killing 13 women.

Author Susan Kelly says she has heard the confession tapes and says they are full of inaccuracies but that all those inaccuracies were overlooked because they were so anxious to solve the case. Susan Kelly says that for example in the murder of Beverly Samons he did not know how many times she had been stabbed. He said he thought it was 5 or 6 times when it was, in fact, 21 times. Mary Sullivan's Nephew says his investigation into Mary Sullivan's murder also shows amazing discrepancies. He has obtained parts of DeSalvo's taped confession. DeSalvo claimed to have had intercourse with Mary. But the first autopsy contradicts that claim although semen was found in her mouth but DeSalvo didn't seem to know about that. And although he did get some things right in his confession, there is nothing that is in his confession that wasn't available in the newspapers at the time.

In fact another clue to this mystery was that the details that DeSalvo got wrong in his confession were the same details that the newspaper got wrong as well. Kelly notes that despite the sensational headlines about the crimes, these crimes were not identical. One was stabbed, some were sexually abused, some strangled, and one tucked neatly in bed. Robert Wressler is a criminalist and former FBI profiler. He says that it is inconceivable that all these murders could be attributable to one individual. Adding to the doubt is DeSalvo's history. If he was The Boston Strangler then he murdered 13 women and then suddenly stopped murdering, downsizing if you will, to sexual assault. Wressler says he has never seen a pattern like that in the 40 years he has been in this business. He says you just don't have a person commit a series of homicides and then suddenly revert to rapes. Remember, DeSalvo was arrested for a series of assaults. Even people who were there at the time had doubts about his confession.

Psychiatrist Ames Roby, who evaluated DeSalvo, says DeSalvo claims to have done his own on site research. He says he doesn't think that DeSalvo had ever been to the murder scenes at all. It was just that DeSalvo wanted to be this world famous murderer. Special officer James Melon believes that the task force was just too anxious to wrap up the case. So why would Albert DeSalvo confess to murders he had absolutely nothing to do with. Melon says that according to his wife he was always looking for a get rich quick scheme and he had expected to make a lot of money, to be famous, and to go to a very nice psychiatric facility. But F. Lee Bailey insists his client was no impostor. Senator Brooke, who led the task force is not as sure. Many will say that the killings stopped after Albert DeSalvo was behind bars. But the fact is that the killings stopped a full 10 months before Albert DeSalvo was arrested for sexual assault. And there has never been a span of 10 months between any of the murders.

After the second autopsy, Mary Sullivan is again laid to rest. Her sister says the exhumation was not the ordeal she so dreaded. The scientists have found new material to examine. In Connecticut James Starr and Henry Lee are examining that evidence to try and determine once and for all if Albert DeSalvo really was The Boston Strangler. They find a head hair from the pubic region of Mary's body. It will be tested for DNA. In Washington, meanwhile, Walter Rowe is carefully examining Mary Sullivan's every fingernail. She may have scratched her killer. Author Mary Kelly believes there were at least a half a dozen killers. In fact before DeSalvo's confession, Investigators agreed with her assessment. In one of their reports it states "It is probably that the homicides were not committed by one person. There was evidence in one of the cases that the man who killed her was the man who impregnated her. By now most of those suspects are dead or in prison for other crimes.

At the time Attorney General Brooke had no grounds for murder charges against anyone. But he was prosecuted for other crimes. F. Lee Bailey defended him in those other cases, such as "The Green Man" incidents. The trial started in January 1967, five years since the first murder. By then Albert DeSalvo was the title character for a best selling book. The simple appeal of being the most feared serial since Jack the Ripper did appeal to his sense of grandiosity. He wanted to be world famous and F. Lee Bailey helped make him so by arranging the sale of the rights to his life story the year before. Much of the money went to support his family because he could never work again. That appealed to DeSalvo as well. Reporter Loretta McLaughlin had covered the stranglings from the beginning. The prosecution stuck to the actual charges against DeSalvo which were that the witnesses said that he had conned his way into their home, robbed and then molested them. The defense however, brought up other matters.

Bailey hoped to get his client off on an insanity defense saying in effect he is the Strangler so he has got to be crazy. He put two psychiatrists on the stand who all said DeSalvo was very sick. The goal, Bailey says, was to have DeSalvo committed to a good hospital. But Bailey's strategy failed and Albert DeSalvo was convicted. So DeSalvo never faced a single count of Homicide in court but in public opinion DeSalvo was a convicted serial killer. DeSalvo was sentenced to life. But now James Starr thinks that he has found evidence that despite his confession will set the record straight on The Boston Strangler case and prove once and for all that DeSalvo did not kill Mary Sullivan. DeSalvo claimed that he killed Mary not with any ligature but with his bare hands. If that were true than the hyoid should be fractured but it isn't. In the meantime Massachusetts's Attorney General announces another possible lead. The State now intends to do its own testing.

The families of Albert DeSalvo and Mary Sullivan are suing the State of Massachusetts with the help of Attorneys Elaine and Dan Sharp. So far the State has refused to share it's new found evidence. At the very least the families want their own scientists present when the State does its testing. To date their has never been any evidence to connect DeSalvo to any of the murders. He was sent back, temporarily ,to the State hospital he detested. In fact he hated it so bad that one month later DeSalvo broke out. Police mounted a massive manhunt warning the public that a dangerous killer was on the loose. 33 hours later DeSalvo walked into a shoe store and turned himself in. He was sent to the maximum security prison at Wahlpole. When asked how DeSalvo knew so much about the murders Nasser, the man who introduced DeSalvo to F. Lee Bailey, says he picked up the information from him and other people as well as the newspapers. He says he also loved the media attention.

Many people think that Nasser is the real Boston Strangler but Nasser denies it. As the years passed, Albert's family became disenchanted with the image he had so carefully honed. In 1969, 20th Century Fox was about to release the movie "The Boston Strangler". DeSalvo went to court to stop it but he lost and the Judge ruled that he had sold the rights to his life story willingly. In 1973, eight years after DeSalvo confessed, his Brother says he wanted to set the record straight. He told his Brother that he really wasn't The Boston Strangler and gave the reasons why he confessed falsely. Weeks later phychiatrist Ames Rovey says DeSalvo told him that he had set up a meeting with a reporter. He asked Rovey if he wanted to be there for the real story of The Boston Strangler. But the very morning the meeting was to take place, Richard DeSalvo got a devastating phone call. Albert DeSalvo had been stabbed repeatedly.

He bleed to death in his cell during the night. F. Lee Bailey contends that DeSalvo was killed during a drug dispute. Richard DeSalvo insists Bailey is dead wrong. He is convinced that his death was all about the information he had about who The Boston Strangler really was. Against the wishes of his other siblings, Richard buried his Brother in a marked grave. No one was ever convicted of killing Albert DeSalvo, like Mary Sullivan his murder remains a mystery. Certainly if Albert DeSalvo was looking for notoriety he found it as there is a whole cottage industry of Albert DeSalvo memorabilia available on the Internet. But if DeSalvo thought he would make a fortune from his life story he was sadly mistaken. And after his death say the family says got only a few thousand dollars. Nor says F. Lee Bailey did he make a lot of money off the saga and as for the new investigation, that is being done pro bono.

Albert DeSalvo was ruled out as the contributor of the hair and other physical evidence found on Mary Sullivan's body. So who is the real Boston Strangler? No one knows for sure and that's what makes this story a mystery to this day..