by Susan Kelly
The copycat factor is vividly demonstrated in the case of Mabel St. Clair, an elderly woman who was found dead in the bathroom of her Lynn apartment on the afternoon of October 27, 1964. She had been strangled to death; the murder weapon was the stocking found around her neck. The immediate suspect in the case was the young Boston woman who was found standing in the hall outside Mrs. St. Clair’s apartment shrieking hysterically.
The name of this young woman, a long-term mental patient, had cropped up in police files in the days after the murder of Patricia Bissette. An anonymous phone caller had informed police that this young woman had attempted to strangle a nurse while a patient at Boston State Hospital; she therefore might well be the Phantom Fiend.
After being taken into custody, this suspect was briefly questioned by Andrew Tuney of the Strangler Task Force. He reported to John Bottomly, who in turn wrote to Edward Brooke: “She was asked about the possibility of complicity in the other stranglings. She denied any connection with them. She recognizes that having confessed to this murder [of Mabel St. Clair] it would make little difference to her to admit involvement in other murders. She offered the opinion that the publicity about the Strangler probably influenced the method by which Mabel St. Clair was murdered.”
The same publicity—and the template for homicide provided by the Record American’s “Strangle Worksheet” —no doubt influenced others as well, including the person who murdered Effie MacDonald in Bangor, Maine, in March of 1965.
Serial killers tend to stick to a certain type of victim: Ted Bundy murdered young, white, very attractive college women who wore their hair long and parted in the center; John Wayne Gacy and Dean Corll murdered young white boys; Anthony Jackson chose young white female hitchhikers. Wayne Williams murdered young black males. Even Jack the Ripper confined himself to prostitutes. A serial killer still at large78 in Tennessee victimizes only redheaded women.
The Boston strangling victims were young, middle-aged, old, white, black, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. The only similarity between them was that most had some connection, however tenuous, with the medical world, either as patient or practitioners. And virtually everyone falls into one category or the other—mostly the former—at some point in life.
Did Albert DeSalvo kill anyone? Possibly Mary Mullen, a name that does not appear on the roster of strangling victims but to whose murder he confessed anyway. DeSalvo told Bottomly that the eighty-five-year-old woman had admitted him to her apartment at 1435 Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton on June 28, 1962 after he explained he had been sent to do some work there.
Albert was not quite sure how it happened, but suddenly his arm was around her neck—prior to that they had been chatting quite pleasantly—and then Mrs. Mullen was dead. He hadn’t choked her (and indeed there were no marks of violence on her body); she had simply expired of heart failure.
Her death was attributed to natural causes.
When Virginia Thorner testified at Albert’s 1967 Green Man trial, she claimed that he had stated to her in 1964 that he had killed an elderly woman, but that the authorities weren’t aware of it.
His use of the singular here is important, because the deaths of six women over the age of fifty-five (counting the youthful-appearing Evelyn Corbin) were attributed to the Strangler. If Albert had killed them all, why cite just one—especially if his purpose in making this claim was to terrorize Mrs. Thorner into submission?
In the case of Mary Mullen, it seems most likely that Albert broke into her apartment with the intent to burglarize it, encountered Mrs. Mullen, and simply frightened her to death by his very presence. Overwhelmed by guilt—and Albert was prone to severe attacks of guilt79—he set Mrs. Mullen’s body on the couch and fled without removing any valuables from her apartment.
And why would a man who had treated with such savage disrespect the corpses of Ida Irga, Jane Sullivan, and Helen Blake be so delicate in his treatment of the body of Mary Mullen? There is a logic even to extreme pathology—often a very rigid one—that does not exist here.
Albert’s feeling of responsibility for the death of Mary Mullen—and if he did break into her apartment and inadvertently frighten her to death, he was under Massachusetts law technically guilty of a homicide committed in the perpetration of a felony—may have been one of the factors that drove him eventually to confess to the stranglings.
Mary Brown, who was raped, stabbed, strangled, and beaten to death in Lawrence sometime on the evening of March 5 or during the day on March 6, 1963, was not on the Strangler Task Force’s original list of victims—she had, in fact, specifically been discounted. Her name was put back on the roster when Albert mentioned it, although Bottomly was not very interested in taking his confession to that crime. This was possibly because Albert’s confession was not a very good one—he got many of the salient details wrong.
A number of authorities believe that Albert was given sketchy information about the murder of Mary Brown from the Bridgewater inmate who had actually committed that crime.
Mary Brown lived on Park Street in Lawrence, where Domenic Kirmil, the man shot to death by George Nassar in 1948, kept his shop.
For some former high-ranking Boston Police Department officials, the prime suspect in the death of Anna Slesers was someone very close to her, an individual who had the motive, means, and opportunity to kill her.
Anna’s son, who had discovered her body and told police that he thought she had committed suicide, stated that although his mother would have considered herself presentable clad in a bathrobe, she would never have admitted a stranger to her apartment when she wasn’t wearing her dentures.
She was without them when her body was found.
There were odd codas to three other of the murders.
The agitated and disheveled man who had entered Martin’s Tavern in Lawrence at 4:30 on the afternoon of Joann Graff’s murder had visited the bar two and a half hours earlier. He had asked then for a “Lucky” beer. Jules Vens, the proprietor of the tavern, had never heard of that brand. The man remarked that it was sold on the West Coast.
Fourteen months later, while interviewing strangling suspect Peter Burton at Bridgewater State Hospital, Ames Robey asked his patient if he drank. Burton replied, “Yeah, you know, beer.” Robey asked him what his favorite brand was. Burton replied that it was Lucky Lager, sold only in California.
At the time of Joann’s murder, Burton was living in New Hampshire. Lawrence is five miles from the state line.
On January 4, 1964, the day of Mary Sullivan’s death, a young, light-haired man with a hysterical laugh walked into a bar on Charles Street, a few blocks down from the murder scene, and asked for a Lucky Lager.
On that same day, Peter Burton was getting married in Troy, New York.
On May 6, 1963, Arthur W. Barrows, a prime suspect in the murders of the elderly women, was freeloading in Harvard Square. A priest at Saint Paul’s church recalls giving him $1.50 for food.
Beverly Samans, who took in waifs and strays and mental patients, had died only hours earlier.
An inmate of Bridgewater State Hospital, incarcerated there during the same period as were George Nassar, Albert DeSalvo, Peter Burton, and Arthur Barrows, states firmly that Albert DeSalvo was coached for his role as the Boston Strangler by another inmate who had actually committed the crimes, or some of them: “I was there when all of this was being put together,” the man claims. “I was there in the prison yard sitting next to a tree as DeSalvo and [the other inmate] would talk each day. They would come out to the prison yard and sit next to a tree and [the other inmate] would tell DeSalvo things, like how he had inserted a bottle in one of the victims, what color a room was, or how the victim looked, or how old she was ... Bottomly put two and two together and he knew then that [the other inmate] was his man. He wanted to save the public the money trying anyone, and what the hell, both [the other inmate] and DeSalvo were not going anyplace.”
Dan Doherty, DeSalvo’s social worker during his Walpole incarc
eration, says today that Albert never showed the slightest sign of violence: “He was a delightful rogue. There’s no way he could have killed a girl.” Doherty has had a lot of experience working with hard cases. “I had the Brink’s guys and the wiseguys from the North End [members of the New England Mafia based in Boston] and Albert didn’t fit in with them.”
Doherty remembers asking one of the imprisoned Cosa Nostra soldiers if he believed DeSalvo was the killer of eleven women.
The curt response: “The Strangler’s not Italian.”
Doherty put the same question to another wiseguy and got the same answer.
The upper echelon of the Mafia held similar views. Speaking two years after Albert’s death, Joseph “The Baron” Barboza commented disgustedly to an associate that some fool down at Walpole State Prison had taken the rap for being the Boston Strangler.
35
Last Moments
On a Sunday night in late November 1973, a few hours before he was stabbed to death in his quarters in the infirmary of the state prison at Walpole, Albert DeSalvo made at least two telephone calls. One of them, to his brother Richard, was lighthearted. The other was not.
Between the time he hung up the phone after speaking with Richard and the time he made his next call, something bad had happened—something that had terrified Albert. Either that, or he had been feigning his earlier jollity with Richard.
Ames Robey, who in 1973 was director of forensic psychiatry for the state of Michigan, had come back to Massachusetts the weekend after Thanksgiving to testify at a criminal trial unrelated to the stranglings. That Sunday night, he received a phone call from Albert. Albert had heard through the prison grapevine that Robey was back in the area.
It was ironic that the last known telephone call that DeSalvo would ever make would be to Ames Robey, whom DeSalvo had once despised for his refusal to believe that he was the Strangler. DeSalvo obviously had a change of heart, because he told Robey that he wanted to see him as soon as possible. The matter was one of great urgency.
“He was really scared,” says Robey.
Robey agreed to meet Albert at the prison at 9:00 A.M. the following day.
It was never to be. Early Monday morning, as Robey was finishing shaving and dressing, he flipped on the radio. A news bulletin reported that Albert DeSalvo, forty-two, had been found stabbed to death in his bed at Walpole.
One story has it that Albert was killed in a fight over two pounds of institutional bacon.
Another has it that Albert died in the aftermath of a quarrel over drugs. Says a Walpole80 inmate, “The things in prison that are important to some cons are dope, sex, and money. The cons that ran Walpole back in the seventies used Mr. DeSalvo ... They made him the dope man. To a con that didn’t know what was going on, he was a big shot.”
The inmate observes that the hard cases wielded tremendous power. “One word from one of these prisoners and you could end up hurt or dead. Sometimes, they don’t hurt you; they break you or use you.” DeSalvo, who enjoyed his illusory role as a big shot, wasn’t aware that he was actually being used.
“Most cons didn’t like Albert to start with,” the inmate continues, “even though we all knew he wasn’t the Strangler. One night one of the so-called tough guys went to see Albert in his cell in the hospital unit and asked Albert for some dope.”
DeSalvo’s role as drug kingpin had gone to his head. “He reminded this guy that he had not paid his bill from the last few times. This con that wanted the drugs was a tough s.o.b., and had killed before, so he took out a knife and stabbed Albert and left him laying on the bed as if he fell asleep reading a book.”
According to Ames Robey, Albert had asked one other person to meet him at Walpole that Monday morning—a reporter.81
Why?
“He was going to tell us who the Boston Strangler really was, and what the whole thing was about,” says Robey.
And why had Albert been so frightened when he’d spoken to the doctor?
“He had asked to be placed in the infirmary under special lockup about a week before,” Robey says. “Something was going on within the prison, and I think he felt he had to talk quickly. There were people in the prison, including guards, that were not happy with him.”
And how had Albert’s murder been arranged?
If it was an inmate who did the killing, Robey, who is very familiar with the prison layout, says the murderer “would have had to get out of one block, out of his cell, out of his corridor, out of his section, out of his whole ward down a hallway with two or three doors into the infirmary, in through the administration area, into the patient area, through that into the inner area, and then into Albert’s room. All of which was always supposed to be kept locked. Somebody had to leave an awful lot of doors open, which meant, because there were several guards one would have to go by, there had to be a fair number of people paid or asked to turn their backs or something. But somebody put a knife into Albert DeSalvo’s heart sometime between evening check and the morning.”
Bill O’Donnell, a senior corrections officer at Walpole during the time of DeSalvo’s imprisonment, is another who is convinced the murder was drug-related: “The reason Albert was killed was because he was attempting to run a drug operation out of the hospital.”
O’Donnell continues: “I knew Albert because the warden at Walpole felt he had been handed a hot potato [when DeSalvo was transferred there after his 1967 escape from Bridgewater]. He ordered DeSalvo to be kept in a cell in the hospital area, with a twenty-four-hour guard.”
O’Donnell was the day guard. He got to know DeSalvo very well. “Albert was examined by many doctors,” says O’Donnell. All of them concluded that Albert didn’t have the personality of a psychopath typical of a serial killer.
One day DeSalvo and O’Donnell had the following conversation:
Out of the blue, Albert asked, “Do you believe I’m who they say I am?”
“Who’s that?” O’Donnell replied, knowing full well but feigning innocence.
“The Boston Strangler,” Albert said.
“Oh, Albert,” O’Donnell said. “For Chrissake, you’re no more the Boston Strangler than I am.”
“Well, who do you think it was?” Albert asked.
O’Donnell named a name, that of DeSalvo’s very close associate in prison.
Albert nodded. Neither he nor O’Donnell ever again raised the subject.
O’Donnell was off-duty the night DeSalvo was slain.
Three men were charged with Albert’s murder and tried twice. Both times the trials ended in hung juries.
Says the Walpole inmate, “The man who killed Mr. DeSalvo has been free for years now and is still running around someplace out there ... I can’t give you his name. It wouldn’t bring Albert back.”
Other sources remain convinced that Albert’s murderer is still incarcerated within the prison system.
The manuscript DeSalvo told his brother Richard that he was writing, the biographical document that would finally set straight the record of his life, was never found.
One of Albert’s literary efforts, a poem, survives. It was composed several years before his death:
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?
“Albert,” says Ames Robey with a sigh, “was a showman.”
Epilogue
This is what has happened to some of the principal actors in the Strangler drama:
Jon Asgeirsson practices law in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
F. Lee Bailey has law offices in Boston and West Palm Beach, Florida. In 1973 he was indicted for mail fraud and successfully defended by Alan M. Dershowitz. In 1976, after being found guilty on bank robbery charges, Patricia Campbell Hearst retained a new lawyer to challenge her conviction. Ms. Hearst maintained that Bailey had failed to represent her fully because his interests were engaged elsewhere. Although a lower court dismissed the claim, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco noted that Bailey had “created a potential conflict of interest” in seeking a publishing contract for a book about the Hearst case while it was ongoing. After his February 1982 arrest on drunken driving charges in San Francisco, charges against which he was successfully defended by Robert Shapiro, he wrote How to Protect Yourself from Cops in California and Other Strange Places.
Bailey is a commentator for Court TV. With Robert Shapiro, he participated in the defense of O. J. Simpson, accused of the double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
John S. Bottomly was suspended in 1980 for six months from the practice of law in Massachusetts for mismanaging a trust. In 1968, he discovered that sixty thousand dollars’ worth of bearer bonds was missing from his office, a fact that Bottomly did not bother to report to any of the trust’s principals until several years later. In 1981, he was indicted for and found guilty of state tax evasion committed in 1973. The judge presiding over the disposition of both cases was Hiller Zobel, who in March 1967 had been appointed by the Boston Bar Association to investigate the professional conduct of F. Lee Bailey.
