by Susan Kelly
The con man had fallen for yet another con.
Albert spoke at length of his embittered love for Irmgard: “I gave her everything. I gave her every dime I ever had. Never kept a dime in my pocket. I didn’t drink. Didn’t go out anywhere. Didn’t go out nights for two years.”
“She gave nothing in return,” Bottomly observed.
“Nothing,” Albert said. “Ah, you might say I tried to buy her. That’s one way of looking at it. But I loved her so much that I would give her anything. See?”
He grimly predicted that Irmgard might change her name, might remarry, might flee to the ends of the earth. But she would never escape his memory.
Bottomly told Albert that a detective had interviewed Irmgard at her new home out west.
“How did she talk about me?” Albert asked eagerly.
“What kind of attitude did she say?”
“Oh terrific,” Bottomly assured him. “She was—couldn’t praise you enough.”
“She still cares for me in many ways,” Albert said.
“Oh, yes,” Bottomly said. “Yes.”
The Task Force chief explained to Albert how Edward Brooke had charged him with the responsibility of solving the strangling murders.
“In other words,” Albert commented, “he gave you something you couldn’t handle?”
“I don’t know,” Bottomly replied. “Here we are. Maybe we could handle it.”
Albert then remarked that in the six months that had elapsed since he’d begun confessing to the murders, the Task Force hadn’t been able to find a trace of evidence to connect him to the crimes. All they had was one man’s (interestingly, Albert here referred to himself in the third person) statement of guilt.
“That’s right,” Bottomly said. “I couldn’t do it without your admission.”
“Right,” Albert said. “But I—I—”
“And even more than that,” Bottomly continued, “I have to convince myself that your admissions aren’t self-serving. I’ve explained this to you.”
“Yuh, you—”
“You—you’ve got motives that, uh, could explain why you’re confessing—I’m not saying they are—but they could explain why you’re confessing though you may not have done [all the murders]. You might have done some and you tie them all in. You might have done one, and you might not have even done any.”
“That’s right,” Albert said.
He spoke scornfully of Jon Asgeirsson, telling Bottomly that the information he’d given the attorney in January of 1965 (when he’d told Asgeirsson he was the Strangler and furnished details about a few of the murders to bolster his claim) had been a complete fabrication. He also told Bottomly that it was Asgeirsson who’d advised him in early 1965 to feign hallucinations so he’d be transferred out of the East Cambridge jail and into a mental institution while awaiting further legal action on the Green Man charges.
Bottomly asked Albert if Ames Robey had been a party to this fakery.
“Nah,” Albert said dismissively. “He has no brains to have any conspiracy, to be honest witcha.”
Albert did not confess to the murders in their chronological order—probably because, despite his much-vaunted memory, he not only had terrible trouble recalling when some of them occurred but even that some of them had occurred. But if Albert couldn’t come up with a date, Bottomly would oblige with it—along with any other relevant details Albert might require to flesh out his rambling fantasy of rape and murder.
That Albert was not only receptive to these cues but was also desperately trying to anticipate the kind of response Bottomly wanted, and to gauge from Bottomly’s reaction whether he was answering the Task Force chief’s questions “correctly,” is obvious in the following exchange about the murder of Anna Slesers. Bottomly had asked Albert to describe the victim’s clothing.
ALBERT: ... The type of blue robe she had on was like a cloth, you know what I mean?
BOTTOMLY:: Flannel?
ALBERT: Ya, oh well ah, flannel if you want it cotton.
BOTTOMLY: Cotton.
ALBERT: Ya but ah—
BOTTOMLY: Thick or—
ALBERT: Ah, it was a kind I don’t like. It bothered me. Very funny thing to it.
BOTTOMLY: Ya.
ALBERT: But it was nothing funny about it. It was just dark. It was a navy, a light navy blue you might call it—light.
BOTTOMLY: Ya.
“And there was that on that there on her,” Albert concluded, in what must have been a near-babble.
Despite Albert’s apparent desire to get off the subject of the housecoat, Bottomly kept pressing the point, asking what color the robe’s lining had been.
ALBERT: The lining—
BOTTOMLY: Yuh? The inside—
ALBERT: There was no lining.
BOTTOMLY: Well, the inside, on the inside, do you remember?
ALBERT: As far as I can remember, blue.
BOTTOMLY: Yuh. You don’t remember any different color?
ALBERT: Not—no.
BOTTOMLY: OK. Now do you wanna, do you wanna go on to some other cases or do you work with—
ALBERT: I’ll do anything you want but—
He had certainly tried. And failed. The proper answer to the question about the lining of the housecoat would have been “red.” The garment was thus described in the autopsy report. That and the police report taken at the crime scene stated that the outer part of Anna’s robe was blue cloth.
The “Strangle Worksheet” chart published in the Record had described the housecoat as “blue quilted taffeta” with no reference to any kind of lining. One wonders if this was where Albert got his description of the robe, and whether his impression that there was something “very funny” about it referred to the quilting he’d read of in this paper.
Bottomly had further questions about the crime scene that Albert couldn’t answer.
BOTTOMLY: Do you remember a wastebasket in her kitchen? Do you see a wastebasket? Do you see a table?
ALBERT: Ah, there is ah, (whisper) I can picture this, um, wastebasket? On her? I don’t recall, but I do remember what her bedroom set looked like.
There was in fact a wastebasket in Anna’s kitchen, and bits and pieces of its contents were strewn about the floor near it. Anna’s killer may have rifled the basket, for whatever bizarre reason.
This fact had not been printed in the newspapers, and Albert was clearly unaware of it.
Albert was on a little surer ground when Bottomly questioned him about Anna’s personal interests.
BOTTOMLY: Was [the record player] playing?
ALBERT: I think it was playing and ah, I shut it off. I’m not sure. It’s possible—
BOTTOMLY: Well, if it was playing do you remember the music, the kind of music?
ALBERT: It was like um, I call it long-hair music. Everybody has there [sic] own name. It’s ah—
BOTTOMLY: Anything you recognize.
ALBERT: Oh, no. It would be um, like symphonies and stuff like that.
The “Strangle Worksheet” had described Anna as enjoying “symphonic music.” The radio component of her stereo system had been turned off, although the record player itself was still on when her body was discovered. This fact was also publicized in the press.
Albert’s problem with dates was given a slapstick exposition when he and Bottomly tried to establish exactly when he was supposed to have killed Nina Nichols.
ALBERT: It was just before the first part of the next month. I don’t know if it was the 31st or the 30th—I do recall it was on a—
BOTTOMLY: What month was it?
ALBERT: It was—uh—in June.
BOTTOMLY: O.K. Well how many days in June?
ALBERT: I don’t know.
BOTTOMLY: Don’t you remember the old song—“thirty days hath September—April, June and November”?
ALBERT: No, I don’t—
BOTTOMLY: Well, there are thirty days in June—ALBERT: Must have been the last one.
BOTTOMLY: So
you think it was June 30th?
ALBERT: I’d say June 30th—if it’s on a Saturday.
BOTTOMLY: If it’s on a Saturday? You’re positive it was done on a Saturday.
ALBERT: I know.
BOTTOMLY: All right. O.K. then—what‘s—that’s one, two, three. Now what’s—No. 4.—
ALBERT: I want to do—this is where I’m getting mixed up in.
BOTTOMLY: Yes?
ALBERT: I’m getting mixed up in years—
BOTTOMLY: Well, that’s—I’ll help you there—that’s 196-
ALBERT: No, I—let me do it.
BOTTOMLY: All right.
ALBERT: This is what’s messing me up. Now these were done in ’62.
BOTTOMLY: Yes.
ALBERT: Uh, there was three [murders] in June? BOTTOMLY: Yes.
ALBERT: Now, there’s nothing in July whatsoever.
BOTTOMLY: Any particular reason you remember that?
ALBERT: No.
BOTTOMLY: Just didn’t do anything?
ALBERT: There’s nothing in July.
Albert also had trouble remembering where Nina lived.
BOTTOMLY: What her apartment number? ALBERT: Either 34 or 43.
BOTTOMLY: You’ve got the numbers mixed up in your mind, huh? Those two numbers, three and four, in order or the other.
There was some confusion about the first and second floors in Nina’s building.
BOTTOMLY: The ground floor is—
ALBERT: Still doesn’t go—
BOTTOMLY: You call the ground floor the first floor—
ALBERT: That’s what messing me up.
BOTTOMLY: The first floor you call the second floor. ALBERT: Yah.
BOTTOMLY: And the second floor up from the ground floor, you call the third floor.
ALBERT: The way I can see it now—if it’s all right with you—
BOTTOMLY: Sure.
ALBERT: The way I can see it—the elevator shaft—it’s a nice one—the elevator went all the way up—and I think—to my knowledge—that these two old ladies—was not the next one up the second like I said—but the next one—and—
BOTTOMLY: That would be the third floor. ALBERT: Well maybe—to you it’s—not the third floor—to me it’s only—the second.
BOTTOMLY: To you—we’ll use your system. ALBERT: No, I’m reverting back to yours, now. I’m forgetting the bottom, and I’m sayin, that one here, which would be the first to you, and the second one, which would be the third like I always said it was, right?
BOTTOMLY: But it’s the second—it’s the second floor above the ground floor.
ALBERT: Yah. So therefore I would say that I was going one more and forget that and then go another one and say that she was on the fourth floor. BOTTOMLY: Right—okay.
ALBERT: Becuz I was so high up—in Nina Nichols’ apartment—and I would say she was on the fourth floor.
BOTTOMLY: Right.
Albert then described Nina.
ALBERT: All right. Now. Also, on her—she did have glasses. And—
BOTTOMLY: You’ve said that before.
ALBERT: But I know now—she had that—her hair wasn’t bad at all—nice-tight-like—but it wuz gray. BOTTOMLY: Uh huh.
ALBERT: This is to me, seeing her now as she is—understand me? Her hair is gray—and she was a very frail woman between five five and a half and five-six, no more. Y’know there’s sumthin funny about what she had on her feet—y’ know that? BOTTOMLY: This is still Nichols?
ALBERT: This is Nina Nichols. She has sumpin on her feet—that was different. Y’know that? it wuz—ah—like—like tennis shoes or—
BOTTOMLY: Uh huh.
ALBERT: I could be wrong—
BOTTOMLY: Sneakers?
ALBERT: Sneakers, like—Rubber, they were rubber. BOTTOMLY: Uh huh.
All these details of Nina’s appearance were given in the “Strangler Worksheet,” even to the sneakers.
Albert knew he had committed a murder in Lynn, but couldn’t remember the victim’s name. The Task Force chief refreshed him.
BOTTOMLY: You mean Blake.
ALBERT: That’s it. Blake, Helen Blake.
BOTTOMLY: Yes.
ALBERT: Ah, on her she had that pj they call em, pajama top and bottom too. I’d swear I left her she was the only one I left on her stomach.
BOTTOMLY: You did leave her on her stomach. ALBERT: Did leave her on her stomach. I remember
I did. I left her right on her stomach. When I first picked her up.
BOTTOMLY: Well, would you say you had, you described that before that she was facing the bed and then . . .
ALBERT: And then I picked her up. No when I, I remember this here, let’s see like this over here and she went under my left arm and I picked her up. BOTTOMLY: Uhuh. She passed right out?
ALBERT: And then.
BOTTOMLY: She pretty heavy Albert?
ALBERT: She’s heavy. She must been about 140 or 150 lbs. and ah I laid her facing me at first. BOTTOMLY: Right.
ALBERT: And I do remember playing with her busts, she had a very large bust and I did have intercourse with her.
BOTTOMLY: While she was facing you.
ALBERT: Ya. And I did remember, I remember putting a nylon stocking around her neck too and then there was a bra. It was on the dresser, ah, there was a bra there, a white bra and I remember taking the bra and also putting it and tying it around her neck too. And, ah, she was all blue in the face. I remember this. And I turned her over, I remember, before leaving. I turned her over on her stomach with her feet straight down.
BOTTOMLY: Do you remember any reason why you did it or you just did it? Were you thinking of anything when you did it?
ALBERT: No, but it’s so clear, I thought of it last night. It all came to me last night. I went all the way back to the first day. You were asking me about dates. BOTTOMLY: Right.
That Helen’s body had been left prone on the bed, that she had been wearing pajamas, and that stockings and a bra had been intertwined about her neck were details of her killing that had repeatedly been published in the Record. The “Strangle Worksheet” said that a sexual assault on her had been “evident.”
Albert had claimed he’d had intercourse with Helen.
According to the autopsy report, there were no spermatozoa present in either her vagina or her rectum.
22
The Confessions of Albert DeSalvo, II
Albert claimed to have been in a “fog” when he murdered Ida Irga, which is one reason why the account of the killing he gave to Bottomly on August 24 is so riveting.
BOTTOMLY: What happened in August?
ALBERT: There wuz two in August.
BOTTOMLY: How do you remember?
ALBERT: I remember because the first one was this—on Grove Street.
BOTTOMLY: Who was that?
ALBERT: Ida Orger—Ida Orger—uh—
BOTTOMLY: How do you—
ALBERT: Right back the Massachusetts General Hospital.
BOTTOMLY: Mmmm-hmmm.
ALBERT: There was a street, the main drag, going that way and then there was uh—on Grove there—I don’t know how many floors were there, three or four floors or five floors, but to me, to me anyhow it was on the top floor.
BOTTOMLY: Uh-huh?
ALBERT: And this was uh—
BOTTOMLY: You went all the way to the top on this one?
ALBERT: All to the top, yuh. There wuz a front door, right. As you walk up there’s a bunch of stairs maybe, uh, maybe six stairs, right, and on the left was some bells and then, uh, this had a buzzer type door—
BOTTOMLY: Buzzer door?
ALBERT: Buzzer type—well there was a—uh.
BOTTOMLY: Street door and then an inside door?
ALBERT: No, uh, it was a double door meaning, uh, she hadda ring the bell for the buzzer, right.
BOTTOMLY: I see. Right.
ALBERT: And then the stairway would be right there. And you hadda pass quite a few apartments going up.
BOTTOMLY:
Could she talk to you when you rang the bell? Was there a telephone—speaker?
ALBERT: Uhhh—I don’t think so. No, becuz when I gut ta—when I gut all the way up the stairs, right?
BOTTOMLY: Yes?
ALBERT: She was already on top of the landing.
BOTTOMLY: She was waiting for you?
ALBERT: Oh, yes. She was already on the landing, on the stairs.
BOTTOMLY: Did you meet anybody going up?
ALBERT: Uhhh—Jeez, I think one door on the way up wuz maybe that much open, and about four or five inches where you can look in or more than that. It was open, but I went right back, right by it—
BOTTOMLY: You didn’t see anybody in there?
ALBERT: No, and I went all the—she was on top of—on top of the landing—
BOTTOMLY: On the top floor?
ALBERT: On the top floor rather looking over the railing.
BOTTOMLY: Right.
ALBERT: And, uh, as I was coming up and make that little curve that goes to the apartments was the—on the left of the stairs on the top and I—I’m not sure if there was another place, another apartment, but I know that there was another set of stairs going up. I don’t think it was an apartment but there was another set of stairs there, uhhh—
BOTTOMLY: Going to the roof?
ALBERT: Possibly, but there was a set of stairs there—she was to the left.
BOTTOMLY: Well did this other set of stairs look like the stairs you’d come up, the same kind of stairs? ALBERT: Somethin’ like them, yes, same thing, about the same. But—uh—she was right there, she talked to me and uh—
BOTTOMLY: What line did you use there?
