The Strangler, Gordon went on, had “many problems. He used to beat up his mother cruelly—she was an idiotic, domineering woman—and his two sisters live unhappy lives. The family comes from Maine or Vermont. He’s terribly lonely—when he’s in the city I see him sleeping in cellars, but he likes to wander about the streets watching women, wanting to get as close as possible to them.” He paused, and said, with surprising emotion, “You see, the poor fellow is in a continual search for his mother, but he can’t find her because she’s dead.”
Phil listened without any comment. The three men were seated in the interrogation room where suspects were brought for questioning. Phil sat behind a large wooden desk while the two others sat side by side in front of it.
“How many murders do you think he committed?” Phil asked.
“Oh, not more than four, maybe five,” Gordon replied.
Could Mr. Gordon tell him something about the stranglings? Say, the first one?
“Oh, yes,” said Gordon. “That was Anna Slesers. I picture him standing about on the corner of Huntington and Gainsborough, with a sort of decrepit looking appearance—tan sweater with black and orange border, and brown work pants, and white sneakers. I had no idea why he was there when I first pictured him. It just seemed he was standing there hours at a time.
“Then, as his mental image began to develop, I saw him leaning against a tree in front of the building at 77 Gainsborough Street. An ice cream truck drives up, jangles its bell, and all the kids playing on the street run over to it. He takes this minute to dash into the building, up the stairs, and knock on Anna’s door. She opens it; he thinks she’s his mother; he goes to her with his arms out, he wants to hug her, to show her how sorry he is that he beat her; and as he goes toward her, she backs up, and resists his advances, and then he can’t help it: he chokes her and kills her.” Gordon paused.
“Then what happened?” Phil asked.
Gordon shook his head. “I can’t tell you—I don’t want to tell you—it’s just too brutal.” Then, “You must realize, Mr. DiNatale, that when I tell you this, it’s very much an actual event to me, and I think I’m participating in it—I get ill, if you really want to know.”
Phil looked at him. Then he opened the desk drawer and brought out six photographs. They were police photographs of men Phil had seized in the act of mugging people or breaking into buildings and shops in the Back Bay area. All six had turned out to have records as sex offenders, and Phil had kept their photographs. “Mr. Gordon,” he said, “look at these.” He spread them out on the desk. “Is the Strangler any one of these?”
Gordon studied them. He pushed one aside, and examined the others again. Then he sat back and pointed to the photograph he had selected. There was no doubt in his voice. “This is the man I see. Either he’s the Strangler or he’s his twin brother.”
Phil looked at it. It showed an extremely tall, cadaverous young man in his twenties with hollow cheeks, a curl of black hair over his forehead, a lantern jaw—a man perfectly fitting the description Gordon had given him a few minutes before. On the back of the photograph was the name, Arnold Wallace.
Now, suddenly, Phil remembered. On August 19, 1962—two days before Ida Irga was found—he had collared Arnold Wallace (which is not his true name) breaking into a tea shop on Newbury Street. Brought into the light, Arnold was a frightening spectacle: over six feet two inches, skin the color of clay, a long lean face and enormously long arms that seemed to reach almost to his knees. He was twenty-six, a mental patient at Boston State Hospital. He had been committed by his family, but had ground privileges which meant he could leave his ward and stroll about. He had simply walked off a few days before, and had been prowling about the city, sleeping in the basements of apartment houses. His record had shown him to be “assaultive”—he had punched and beaten his mother—and to “brood about sex.”
Phil had kept his prisoner in jail overnight and next morning took him in a van to court. On the way he tried to question him. It wasn’t easy to communicate with Arnold. Sometimes he simply stared at Phil, without a word, no matter how many questions were asked. At other times he responded with a foolish grin—was it only foolish, or was it a little contemptuous?—and uttered a few noncommittal words. He showed interest only when Phil asked, “Arnold, tell me, do you like women? You like girls?”
At this Arnold rubbed his knuckles and nodded. “Oh, yes, I like women. I like them all very much.”
“How about old ladies?”
Arnold’s long face grew dreamy. “I like them too. I like to hug and kiss them—”
The court had ordered Arnold returned to the hospital, and Phil had added his photograph to his collection.
But now this man, this astonishing Gordon, had described Arnold Wallace with frightening accuracy—even to his habit of sleeping in cellars—and had done it before being shown the photograph.
Phil revealed nothing of what he thought. “Okay,” he said. “How about some of the other stranglings. Sophie Clark, for example?”
He mentioned Sophie Clark because, like Anna Slesers, her murder had taken place in the Back Bay.
“That was different,” said Gordon. “I picture Sophie’s killer as a Negro, a big, husky man. He knocked on her door—Sophie knew him, knew his voice—and she opened it, and he just pushed his way past her. That’s why there’s no broken lock or chain. As he entered, his right leg struck a semicircular glass coffee table.” Gordon spoke as if remembering, and went on to describe the hallway and living room: two sofas, one brown, one black, on one of which Sophie used to sleep; a telephone table and over it two prints hanging on the wall. The kitchen door to the back hallway had been nailed shut.
Phil listened impassively. He had been joined by his colleagues, Jim Mellon and Detective Frank Craemer, while Gordon talked. The detailed information Gordon poured out with such assurance was all but overwhelming. A Negro was a suspect in the Sophie Clark murder—a six-foot-three handsome youth of twenty-four, to be called here Lewis Barnett, who considered himself a Don Juan—indeed, boasted that women often paid him for his favors. No one could have gotten into Sophie Clark’s double-locked and bolted apartment unless she admitted him. She knew Barnett. He had taken her out at least once. But she was deeply in love with her fiancé back in Englewood, New Jersey, and as she told her roommates, Lew had to count her one of his few failures. He had dropped into the apartment once before; he could have done so this afternoon, forced himself on her, and when she refused him, became so enraged that he strangled her, perhaps even unintentionally.
Aloud, Phil asked, “What did the killer do to Sophie?”
“I don’t want to go into that,” Gordon said again. “I told you it makes me sick. I dream about the brutality; I can’t sleep nights.” He stopped, a little agitated. “I’ll tell you after all this is all over.”
When would that be?
“Oh, real soon.” Gordon grew expansive. “Sooner than you think. When this whole thing is solved, Phil,” he said earnestly, “and the Strangler has reached his climax, when he reaches the top of the world, he’ll shout and put his arms out and will tell everybody, ‘I’m the man who did it!’” Gordon jumped to his feet, threw his arms out, and cried, “‘I am the Strangler! I’ve reached my limit, and this is it! Now, what are you going to do about it?’ And when this fellow confesses,” Gordon went on excitedly, “it’s going to be like a big carpet rolled out in front of you and all the answers will be so simple you’ll kick yourself for months at a time that you couldn’t see it!”
He sat down and everyone stared at him.
Gordon himself broke the silence. “I have to get home, I have work to do,” he said. “I was just thinking about those two girls attacked the other night. If you fellows could take me where it happened, I might be of some help.”
About three weeks earlier, on April 9, two co-eds at Northeastern University, returning separately to their dormitory, were attacked, one after the other, a few streets apart, not far
from the Anna Slesers apartment by a man they described as very tall and “dirty, dirty, dirty,” as though he had just “come out of a coal bin.” The girls had been seized from behind, their scarves had been tightened about their necks, and they had been thrown violently to the ground. The man attempted to rape them, but their screams drove him away. Each girl had noticed a missing front tooth.
“That fits Arnold, and Lord knows, he’s filthy enough, sleeping in cellars,” said Gordon.
Phil thought, Who knows how far to go with this? Yet the man had picked out Arnold Wallace’s photograph. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.” A moment later the group—Gordon, his attorney, Phil, Jim Mellon, and Frank Craemer, were driving to Westmorland Street, a long thoroughfare in Back Bay in the area where the two girls had been attacked. On Westmorland Street they left the car and continued on foot.
What took place that May evening was an extraordinary exhibition that none of the detectives would forget. As Gordon came near the scene, he seemed to bristle; he grew more and more excited. He increased his pace until he was trotting, the others hastening after him, darting to one side of the street, stopping short, absorbing the atmosphere about him, then suddenly to the other side, sniffing, listening, meanwhile talking urgently under his breath, “I’ll hide here—the girl comes, I’ll grab her—I’ll wait for her here—” The others realized that Gordon was enacting the role of the Strangler. Now Gordon became the witness: “He grabs her—his pants are open, his penis is out—he throws her to the ground—she screams, lights go on, windows go up, students look out—he’s scared now, he’s running up the alley—he cuts across the street—”
Gordon raced to the other side. When the others caught up to him, he was portraying a terrified fugitive. “Where’ll I go?” he moaned. “Where’ll I go? I’ll hide in this car—” He scurried to the parked police car. “He jumps inside, he thinks: ‘I’ll hide—I’ll wait—I’ll wait an hour, two hours—they’ll go away … Oh, I can’t stand those police sirens, they’re getting louder—’”
Suddenly he wheeled and began running down the street again, the others behind him. After a few steps, Jim Mellon stopped short. He thought to himself, Are you nuts? Sweet Mother of Christ, if you go on with this, you’re batty! He stood there for a moment. He saw Gordon’s burly figure silhouetted in the lamplight as he ran, crouching. His lawyer and Frank Craemer trotted behind him and lumbering doggedly after them was Phil DiNatale. I’ve had it, Mellon thought. He turned on his heel, went back to the police car, made himself comfortable in the back seat, and waited.
Back in his office, Phil gave the subject of Paul Gordon some thought. DiNatale had grown up in a police family. His father, a detective, had been in the force forty-three years. His four brothers and his two uncles were police officers. Phil had listened and benefited from their experience, and he had learned one important rule: keep an open mind, no matter how strange a man or his story might seem. This Gordon might be a crackpot. Yet perhaps he could sense things as others could not. Phil had never heard of extrasensory perception. From what he could make out of the attorney’s briefing, it was something like a woman’s intuition. Phil made several calls that night and the next day—among them to a physician, a priest, and two nuns. Had they heard of ESP? The physician said he believed it did exist in some measure; the priest said it was most difficult to determine; one nun had studied it in college, the other knew nothing about it.
I’ll go along with this fellow, Phil decided. I’ll find out if he’s worth while. If not, I’ll drop him. But I’ll stick with him, step by step. He would have to do it on his own time, Phil knew, because he wasn’t sure what his superiors might think. I want to see what makes this fellow tick, he told himself. Why is he coming forth with this information? For the reward? Is he mentally sick? Is he a con man? Why does he stop his description just before the murder? Because he doesn’t know? Or because he does know? Could he be the killer himself? He’s big and strong enough. There’s a reason Gordon is telling us all this, thought Phil, and I’m going to find out why.
A week later Gordon dropped in again. He gave a few more details of the stranglings. “Say, would you fellows take me to some of the murder apartments?” he asked. Impressions, he said, would be far more powerful on the scene.
Phil listened to this suggestion with more eagerness than he showed. He and Jim Mellon had been checking on Arnold Wallace. Gordon was uncannily close to the truth. Phil had found a former landlady with whom Arnold’s mother roomed before her death in 1961. She recalled how Arnold fought with his mother, beating and punching her to give him her welfare checks. “Once I heard an awful crash,” she said. “I ran out to see Mrs. Wallace in a heap at the foot of the stairs and when I looked up there was Arnold, standing at the top of the stairs, grinning. If that poor woman knew her son was coming over she’d run out screaming, ‘He’s going to murder me.’” Arnold might actually have had a hand in her death. She had undergone an operation at Boston City Hospital on April 14, 1961. Arnold visited her shortly after she came down from surgery. When a nurse entered her room a few minutes later, Arnold was gone, but his mother lay unconscious on the floor, the various tubes through which she had been fed and given plasma torn from her body. She died later that day without regaining consciousness.
Arnold insisted that she was sleeping peacefully when he left. If one wished, one could assume that she had convulsively thrown herself out of bed. But nurses said wooden sides had been fitted to it …
Important as that was in placing Arnold into the psychological pattern of the Strangler, more important was the fact that he had escaped from Boston State Hospital five or six times—and each time coincided with a strangling!
Was that coincidence only? thought Phil. Or had Gordon, with his ESP, actually zeroed in on the Strangler? There was no use questioning Arnold: he denied everything, but he was schizophrenic, and his answers made little sense.
Aloud Phil said, “That sounds like a good idea, Paul.” Jim Mellon was not on duty that evening, but Detective Craemer and two other colleagues went along. They decided to go first to Sophie Clark’s. The group drove there and parked near her apartment house at 315 Huntington Avenue.
Gordon spoke. “The killer first met Sophie in that drugstore.” He pointed to the Gainsborough Pharmacy on the corner of Huntington and Gainsborough Street. Around the corner was Anna Slesers’ apartment. “They had a cup of coffee together, and he got to know her. She’d shop at the A and P a few doors down the street there. He’d see her in the place, then walk home with her.”
He led the others to the rear of 311 Huntington Avenue. He was about to go into the basement when Phil said, “Sophie didn’t live in this building, Paul. She lived two doors down, at 315.” Gordon brushed him aside. “I know, but the killer entered this cellar. You see, they all connect, like dungeons.” Gordon was moving rapidly now, and the detectives were hard put to keep up with him as he hustled into the first building, out of it, into another, through service entrances, around furnaces and storage rooms, until they were in the basement of 315—Sophie’s building.
Phil marveled, thinking, I’m eighteen years in the Back Bay, I know these places, but, by God, this character knows them as well as I do … Either he’s a good bird dog, or that ESP really means something, or else he’s been here before and memorized the place.
Gordon suddenly stopped. “See that door? The killer hid behind it for a couple of hours waiting for Sophie to come home. It was a wet slushy day; he was conscious he would leave wet footprints, so he rubbed his feet to dry them over there, and he was nervous, smoking cigarettes all the time. You open that door and you’ll find a pile of butts behind it. Chesterfields.”
Dutifully Phil opened the heavy door: three or four butts lay on the cement floor. They did not appear to be stacked: rather they were spread over a five square foot area. But a man might have flipped them so they fell in that pattern. They were Chesterfields.
“Now, please follow me,” sai
d Gordon. He hurried up two flights of back steps. “We’re coming to a door with plate glass on it,” Gordon announced. Sure enough, around a turn in the stairs they came upon a glass-plated door. Now they were before Apartment 3C, directly under the Sophie Clark apartment. Gordon had become agitated; perspiration showed on his forehead; he was actually trembling.
“What’s the matter, Paul?” Phil asked.
Gordon was pale. “There is something inside there that upsets me. It’s making me ill.”
“Well,” said Phil casually, “you know, Paul, this isn’t Sophie’s apartment. Hers is one flight up—4C.”
“Oh, oh!” said Gordon. “You see, when I get near it—”
They went up one more flight and stood at the door of 4C. Gordon seemed to have himself under control, his voice strong and eager. “As you go in the door, remember that coffee table I told you about. The telephone table, the prints on the wall, the two sofas I mentioned—one black, on the right side of the living room, one brown, on the other side. The killer sat in the brown one for a while. You’ll find a bookcase in the right-hand corner near the window and a gray easy chair next to it.”
The furnished apartment in which Sophie and her two roommates had lived had since been rented by two youths attending Boston University. One boy was home and let the men in. There was no indication that he knew what had taken place there before.
The Boston Strangler Page 8
