The Boston Strangler

Anna Slesers, an immigrant from Latvia lived in Boston at 77 Gainsborough Street. She was 55 years old and worked as a seamstress. Having finished dinner on the evening of June 14, 1962, she saw that she had enough time to take a bath before her son Juris arrived to pick her up for the Latvian memorial services held at her church that night. She put on the opera music of Tristan und Isolde and went into the bathroom. When Juris arrived he got no answer when he knocked on his mother’s door and becoming worried forced the door open. He found his mother lying on the bathroom floor with the cord of her bathrobe around her neck. Juris telephoned the police and his sister in Maryland to inform them of this tragic “suicide.”

When homicide detectives James Mellon and John Driscoll arrived they found the body of Anna Slesers lying at gross angles, partially exposed and the cord tied almost in a tight bow under her chin. She had also been sexually assaulted by some unknown object. The apartment looked as if it had been ransacked with Anna’s purse contents strewn on the floor and dresser drawers left open. The record player was still on but the amplifier had been turned off. However, no jewelry was taken.

Then on June 30th, 68-year-old Nina Nichols was murdered at 1940 Commonwealth Ave. in the Brighton area of Boston. She was found with her nylon stockings wrapped around her neck and tied in a bow. Nina also had been sexually assaulted. Her apartment had been ransacked and again nothing was taken. That very same day some fifteen miles north of Boston in the suburb of Lynn 65-year-old Helen Blake met with death as well. She had been strangled with one of her nylons and her brassiere had been looped around her neck over the stockings and tied in a bow. She was found lying face down nude on her bed. In Helen’s case, two diamond rings had been pulled from her fingers and taken. The killer had also unsuccessfully tried to open a metal strongbox and a footlocker.

A warning went out to all women in the Boston area to lock their door and be wary of strangers. Detectives began a thorough investigation of all known sex offenders and violent former mental patients. They figured that the killer was a madman who had some hatred for his mother. On August 19th 75-year-old Ida Inga fell prey to the strangler. She was found in her apartment at 7 Grove Avenue in Boston’s West End. Again there were no signs of forced entry therefore she must have let her killer in voluntarily. Ida Inga was found lying on her back in her living room in a position that was an alarming parody of an obstetrical position. A white pillowcase was knotted tightly around her neck. Dried blood covered her head, mouth and ears and she too had been sexually assaulted.

Within 24 hours of this murder, a 67-year-old nurse named Jane Sullivan was killed across town from Ida at 435 Columbia Road in Dorchester. She had been dead for some ten days before she was found. Jane was found on her knees in her bathtub with her feet up over the back of the tub and her head underneath the faucet. She had been strangled with her nylons and blood was found on the kitchen, bedroom and hall floors. Blood was also found on the handle of a broom. In her case, the apartment had not been ransacked but it did appear that she had let her killer in voluntarily. Boston was in the grip of panic.

An uneasy peace settled over Boston for three months. Then on December 5, 1962, 21-year-old Sophie Clark, an African-American student at the Carnegie Institute of Medical Technology was found by her two roommates. The apartment they all shared was at 315 Huntington Avenue in the Black Bay area, just a couple of blocks away from Anna Slesers’ apartment. Sophie lay nude in the living room strangled by three of her own nylon stockings and her half-slip tied tightly around her neck. There was evidence of sexual assault. What was unusual in this case was that Sophie had insisted on a second lock on the apartment door and even questioned friends that came to the door before she let them in yet the killer had convinced her to let him enter. Sophie had struggled with her murderer and he had rummaged through her drawers and had examined her collection of classical records. The differences from the earlier strangler murders were that Sophie was black, young and did not live alone.

Upon questioning neighbors the police found out from Mrs Marcella Lulka that in the afternoon a man had knocked on her door saying the super had sent him to see about painting her apartment. He told her he would have to fix the bathroom ceiling and complimented her on her figure and asked if she had ever done any modeling. The woman put a finger to her lips and the man became very angry. His character changed completely. She said her husband was sleeping in the next room. After that, he said he had the wrong apartment and left quickly. The neighbor described him as being between 25 and 30 years old, of average height, with honey-colored hair, wearing a dark jacket and dark green trousers. But was he the strangler? It appeared likely because the super had not sent anyone to check on any tenants and it was in the afternoon that Sophie had been murdered.

Three weeks later Patricia Bissette a 23-year-old secretary for a Boston engineering firm was discovered on Monday, December 31, 1962. Her boss arrived to pick her up for work but she didn’t answer the door. When she didn’t arrive for work he went back to her apartment at 515 Park Drive in the Black Bay area. It was the same area in which Ann Slesers and Sophie Clark had lived. Since her apartment was locked he got the custodian and they climbed in through a window. They found her in bed with the cover drawn up to her chin. Underneath the cover, there were several stockings knotted and interwoven with a blouse tied tightly under her neck. There was evidence of recent sexual intercourse and she was in an early stage of pregnancy. There had been some damage to her rectum. The killer had searched her apartment.

Again quiet prevailed for a couple of months during which the police continued their investigation. Then in early March of 1963 25 miles north of Boston in Lawrence 68-year-old Mary Brown was found beaten, strangled and raped in her apartment. Two months later on Wednesday, May 8, 1963, Beverly Samans a 23-year-old graduate student had missed choir practice at the Second Unitarian Church in Black Bay. Her friend had a key to her apartment and went to see what was the matter. He opened the door and saw her lying on the sofa bed. Her hands had been tied behind her with one of her scarves. A nylon stocking and two handkerchiefs had been tied together and were knotted around her neck. Over her mouth was a cloth and underneath a cloth had been stuffed into her mouth. Beverly had actually been killed by four stab wounds to her throat. Altogether there were 22 stab wounds with 18 being in a bull’s eye design on her left breast. The nylons and handkerchiefs around her neck were merely a design as they were not tied tight enough to strangle. In the kitchen sink, the police found the bloody knife that had been used. In this case, Beverly had not been raped.

The police were getting desperate as the body count rose and no suspects were forthcoming. They brought in a psychic named Paul Gordon who examined the cases of the murdered women. However, nothing positive surfaced.

The summer of 1963 passed quietly. Then on September 8, 1963, 58-year-old Evelyn Corbin was found murdered in Salem. She had been strangled with two of her nylons and lay across her bed face up and nude. Her underpants had been stuffed in her mouth as a gag. Around the bed were lipstick-marked tissues that had traces of semen as well. Her apartment was also found locked and after the murder, it had been searched. The one unexplainable clue was a fresh doughnut that had been put outside her window on the fire escape.

On November 25th people in the Boston area were grieving the loss of President John F. Kennedy. While most Americans stayed home by their TV sets watching the events of the assassination Joann Graff was raped and murdered and her Lawrence apartment was ransacked. The 23-year-old industrial designer had been strangled with two nylon stockings tied in a bow around her neck. There were teeth marks on her breast. On the afternoon of November 25th, the wife of the student living in the apartment above Joann was concerned that someone was sneaking around the hallways so he went to the door to listen and heard a knock on the door to the apartment opposite his. When he opened the door to look out he saw a man of about 27 with pomaded hair, dressed in dark green slacks and a dark shirt and jacket. The man asked, “Does Joan Graff live here?” mispronouncing her name. The student told him that she lived on the floor below. Moments later he heard a door open and shut on the floor beneath and assumed that Joann had let the man into her apartment.

Then on January 4, 1964, two young women returning home from work to their apartment at 44A Charles Street found their new roommate 19-year-old Mary Sullivan grotesquely murdered. Mary had been strangled with a stocking over which a pink silk scarf had been tied in a huge bow under her chin. A “Happy New Year” card had been placed against her feet. She was in a sitting position on the bed propped up by the headboard. Thick semen like liquid oozed out of her mouth and was dripping onto her breasts. A broomstick handle had been rammed into her vagina.

After this murder on January 17, 1964, Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the state took over the case. He put together a strong task force and Governor Peabody offered a $10,000 reward to any person offering information leading to the arrest or conviction of the person who had committed the murders. The forensic medical experts saw the important difference between the murders of the older women and the younger women and thought it unlikely that one person was responsible for all the killings.

A couple of years before the strangling murders there was a man who was known as “The Measuring Man” who began a series of strange sex offenses in the Cambridge area. He supposedly convinced women that he was to take measurements of them for possible modeling jobs. On March 17, 1961 the police caught a man trying to break into an apartment and he confessed to being the “Measuring Man”. This was 29-year-old Albert DeSalvo who had numerous arrests for breaking into apartments and stealing money. He lived in Malden and had a German wife and two small children. He worked as a press operator in a rubber factory. DeSalvo was sentenced and sent to jail. His sentence was then reduced to 18 months and he was released in April of 1962 which was 2 months before the first strangler victim Anna Slesers was murdered.

Early in November of 1964, DeSalvo was arrested again. The month before on October 27, a newly married woman was dozing in bed. Her husband had left for work. Suddenly she discovered that there was a man in her room who put a knife to her throat and told her not to make a sound or he would kill her. He stuffed her underwear in her mouth and tied her to the bedposts. He kissed and fondled her then fled the apartment. She had a good look at his face and the police sketch reminded the detectives of the “Measuring Man”.

DeSalvo was brought to the police station. The woman identified him as her attacker. DeSalvo was released on bail and his photo went over the police teletype network. Before long there came a call from Connecticut where they were seeking a sexual assailant they called the “Green Man” because he wore green work pants. The police arrested DeSalvo and arranged for the victims to identify him. DeSalvo admitted to breaking into 4 hundred apartments and a couple of rapes. He had assaulted some 300 women in a four-state area. He was placed in the Bridgewater State Hospital for observation. However, the police did not believe that DeSalvo could be the Boston Strangler.

In early March of 1965 DeSalvo’s wife, Irmgard got a call at her sister’s house in Denver from a man named F. Lee Bailey, who said he was Albert’s attorney. He advised her and the children to go into hiding because something big was about to blow up about Albert and the publicity would be huge. The following day Irmgard was told that Albert had confessed to being the Boston Strangler. His wife couldn’t understand why he would confess to something which wasn’t true. She just couldn’t believe that Albert was capable of such brutality. When some months earlier while he was in Bridgewater Albert had hinted to his lawyer at the time Jon Asgiersson that he was the Boston Strangler Asgiersson thought that just possibly Albert may be insane.

In Bridgewater, Albert became friends with George Nassar (a murderer) and they came up with the idea that the reward for information about the Strangler was $10,000 per victim and that if Nassar turned in DeSalvo and DeSalvo then confessed they could work out a deal to split the money. DeSalvo also figured that he could convince everyone that he was insane and spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital instead of a prison. Albert confessed to F. Lee Bailey that he murdered the eleven “official” victims plus two other women. DeSalvo was 33 years old at the time and simply said that if he could tell his story to somebody who could write it he could make money for his family.

When Bailey went to see DeSalvo on March 6, 1965, Bailey said of that interview that he became certain that the man sitting opposite him was the Boston Strangler because he spoke of everything as from life, from having experienced these things and remembered the most minute details. However, no one that knew DeSalvo his family, his friends, his former employers believed that he was the Boston Strangler. There came other doubts the engineering student Kenneth Rowe who lived above Joann Graff’s apartment and spoke to the stranger looking for her apartment did not recognize DeSalvo when he was shown his picture. Eileen O’Neil couldn’t identify DeSalvo as the man whom she saw in Mary Sullivan’s bathroom window around the time of her death. At several crime scenes cigarette butts were found but DeSalvo didn’t smoke. There came other witnesses and they were certain of one thing that DeSalvo was not the Strangler.

There remained the utmost question how could DeSalvo know so many details about the victims and their apartments if he wasn’t the murderer?

The interrogation was completed on September 29, 1965. Eventually, everyone working on the investigation came to the same conclusion Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler and he was found to be competent to stand trial. On January 10, 1967, he was tried on the Green Man charges. DeSalvo was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to life in prison. DeSalvo was never charged with the strangulation murders of 11 women due to lack of evidence. The Boston Strangler having taken so many innocent lives was to continue living. Then fate intervened and while Albert DeSalvo was serving out his life sentence at Walpole State Prison, now called MCI-Cedar Junction he was stabbed to death in the infirmary in November of 1973.

A few years before his death Albert DeSalvo wrote this eerie poem:

Here is the story of the Strangler, yet untold,

The man who claims he murdered thirteen women,

young and old.

The elusive Strangler, there he goes,

Where his wanderlust sends him, no one knows

He struck within the light of day,

Leaving not one clue astray.

Young and old, their lips are sealed,

Their secret of death never revealed.

Even though he is sick in mind,

He's much too clever for the police to find.

To reveal his secret will bring him fame,

But burden his family with unwanted shame.

Today he sits in a prison cell,

Deep inside only a secret, he can tell.

People everywhere are still in doubt,

Is the Strangler in prison or roaming about?

The question still remains – was he or wasn’t he?