The Boston Stranglers
Page 43
“Visitor Hunted in Strangling,” Richard Connolly Boston Herald, January 1, 1963.
“Volpe ‘Shocked,’” Boston Globe, February 25, 1967.
“Walpole Inmate Suspect in DeSalvo Murder,” Robert Ward and Seymour Linscott, Boston Globe, November 27, 1973.
“Wellesley Girls and Harvard Men: ‘Better Than Reading a Racy Book’,” Gloria Boykin, Record American, January 17, 1967.
“When Fear Was in Season,” Loretta McLaughlin, Boston Globe, June 6, 1992.
“Widow 5th Victim of Strangler,” Boston Globe, August 22, 1962.
“With the Keys Rest Was Easy,” Ray Richard, Boston Globe, February 25, 1967.
“Woman Found Strangled in Back Bay Apartment,” Boston Herald, June 15, 1962.
“Woman Slain in Back Bay Home,” Boston Globe, June 15, 1962.
“Women Beware! He’s a Smoothie,” Jean Cole, Record American, February 25, 1967.
“Women Lock Up, Wait for News,” Jonathan Klarfeld, Boston Globe, February 25, 1967.
BOOKS
Bailey, F. Lee, and Harvey Aronson. The Defense Never Rests. Stein and Day: New York, 1971.
Dershowitz, Alan M. The Best Defense. Random House: New York, 1982.
Frank, Gerold. The Boston Strangler. NAL: New York, 1966; Signet/NAL: New York, 1967. All quotes taken from the 1967 edition.
Hearst, Patricia Campbell, with Alvin Moscow. Every Secret Thing. Pinnacle Books: New York, 1982. (Previously published by Doubleday.) All quotes taken from the 1982 edition.
Rae, George William. Confessions of the Boston Strangler. Pyramid Books: New York, 1967.
MAGAZINE ARTICLES
Cameron, John, “That Fatal Silk Stocking Caress,” Inside Detective, June 1963.
Higgins, George V., “The Wrong Man?” Memories, Spring 1968.
Kahn, Ric, “The Toughest S.O.B.’s in Town,” Boston, December 1983.
Kelly, Susan, “The Untold Story Behind the Boston Strangler,” Boston, April 1992.
Linn, Edward, “F. Lee Bailey: Renegade in the Courtroom,” Saturday Evening Post, November 5, 1966.
Russell, Dick, “True Crime Stories.” Boston, September 1982.
Anna Slesers, 56, the first victim. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Site of Slesers’s murder on Gainsborough Street, Boston.
Helen Blake, 65, the third victim. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Ida Irga, 75, the fourth victim. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Site of Irga’s murder on Grove Street, Boston.
Sophie Clark, 20, the sixth victim. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Sketch of a suspect drawn by Clark’s neighbor, Marcella Lulka. (Courtesy James McDonald)
Site of Clark’s murder on Huntington Avenue, Boston.
Patricia Bissette, 23, the seventh victim. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Site of Bissette’s murder on Park Drive, Boston.
Beverly Samans, 26, the eighth victim. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Site of Samans’s murder on University Road, Cambridge.
Lafayette Street, Salem, where ninth victim, Evelyn Corbin, 58, was murdered.
Corbin’s killer left evidence of his entry on the fire escape outside her window.
Essex Street, Lawrence, where tenth victim, Joann Graff, 23, was murdered.
Mary Sullivan, 19, the final victim. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Site of Sullivan’s murder on Charles Street, Boston.
Albert Henry DeSalvo, 33. (Photo courtesy Cambridge Police Department)
DeSalvo (left) as a young man.
(Photo courtesy Richard and Rosalie DeSalvo)
DeSalvo served in the army from September 1948 to February 1956. (Photo courtesy Richard and Rosalie DeSalvo)
DeSalvo’s nine-day trial was headline news.
(Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Record American investigative reporters Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole at site of Irga’s murder. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Dr. Ames Robey in 1995.
Strangler Task Force Coordinator John S. Bottomly in August 1959. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Boston Police Commissioner Edmund McNamara in April 1962. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke.
(Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Retired Salem Police Department Lieutenant John Moran.
Captain William R. Burke, Jr.
Former Cambridge Police Officer Michael Giacoppo.
Defense Attorney Jon Asgeirsson in 1968. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
(From left to right) Dr. Robert Ross Mezer, Defense Attorney F. Lee Bailey, and Boston Police Lieutenant John Donovan at DeSalvo’s Green Man trial, January 13, 1967. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Attorney Thomas Troy in 1968, the year he began representing Albert DeSalvo. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Francis C. Newton, Jr., DeSalvo’s last attorney. (Photo courtesy Francis C. Newton, Jr.)
George Nassar, 32, at his arraignment for the September 1964 murder of Irvin Hilton, 43. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Composite sketch of Hilton’s killer drawn by Andover Police Officer William Tammany. (Courtesy Massachusetts Attorney General’s Archives)
The Andover service station where Hilton was murdered.
Lawrence Police Department sketch of the suspect in the 1948 murder of Dominic Kirmil. (Courtesy Massachusetts Attorney General’s Archives)
DeSalvo showing off his handcrafted jewelry at Walpole State Prison. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
DeSalvo dancing with an unidentified older woman during a senior citizen’s outing to Walpole State Prison. (Photo courtesy the Boston Herald)
Timothy and Richard DeSalvo at the October 26, 2001, exhumation of Albert DeSalvo.
DeSalvo’s casket is raised.
(From left to right) Traci Starrs, James Starrs, and Timothy DeSalvo watch as Mitchell Calhoun videotapes DeSalvo’s exhumation.
Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals connected to this story.
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Notes
1 Neither wishes to be further identified.
2 The two other murders to which DeSalvo confessed are also considered unsolved.
3 No relation to Jane Sullivan.
4 Frank, p. 40.
5 Report of Attorney General Edward W. Brooke: Coordination of Investigations of Stranglings, August 18, 1964, p. 8.
6 Frank, p. 100.
7 Bailey, p. 144.
8 Frank, p. 334.
9 Frank, p. 251.
10 Bailey, p. 143.
11 Bailey, pp. 144—45.
12 Bailey, p. 145.
13 Bailey, pp. 144—45.
14 Bailey, p. 151.
15 Bailey, p. 153.
16 Bailey, pp. 153—54.
17 Bailey, pp. 155—56.
18 Frank, p. 248.
19 Bailey, pp. 156—58.
20 Bailey, p. 158.
21 Bailey, p. 166.
22 Bailey, p. 166.
23 Bailey, p. 167.
24 He professed no knowledge of the slayings of M
argaret Davis or Modeste Freeman. He did, however, claim to have caused the death of eighty-five-year-old Mary Mullen of Brighton on June 28, 1962. The story Albert allegedly told was that he’d broken into Mrs. Mullen’s apartment and attempted to strangle her. But she died of a heart attack first. Mrs. Mullen’s death had previously been attributed to natural causes. A very good suspect in the killing of Modeste Freeman was incarcerated in Bridgewater in 1964.
25 Bailey, pp. 171-72. Bailey may have been overreacting here. There wasn’t much chance Albert would be executed: no convicted felon had been in Massachusetts since 1948. Even Nassar would escape the chair.
26 Bailey, p. 173.
27 Bailey, p. 178.
28 What Governor Peabody had in fact offered was ten thousand dollars total for a solution to any one or all of the killings. Albert’s misapprehension would be confirmed at his 1967 trial.
29 Bailey, p. 172.
30 Bailey suffered a similar odd lapse of memory in the fall of 1968, when asked in U.S. District Court when he had first met Albert. Bailey wasn’t exactly sure; he thought it might have been in February of 1965. In 1971, he was able to specify the date as March 4, 1965, citing the Bridgewater visitors’ book as his source. The log does confirm that Bailey was at Bridgewater that day.
31 And who was now its acting medical director, Robey having left to become director of the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
32 Out on bail after his November 3 arraignment, he was being sought by police on November 5 for questioning on out-of-state assault charges.
33 Singer Connie Francis, appearing at Blinstrub’s in Boston, took time out from her rehearsal schedule to attend one day of the trial. Albert was reported to have thought that very nice of her. Ironically, Francis herself would in later years fall victim to a rapist more savage than any of Albert’s Green Man victims claimed him to be.
34 On the armed robbery charge; the indecent assault convictions earned him a ten-year sentence.
35 Richard and Joseph would be indicted but never tried or convicted for aiding and abetting the escape. The next day, Richard would also be arrested by the FBI and charged with illegal possession of a weapon and transporting it over state lines. Richard’s defense was that his employer, a New Hampshire trucker, required his drivers to keep a handgun in their vehicles. The FBI, which stated that Richard’s arrest had nothing to do with Albert’s escape, did not pursue the charge. Richard’s lawyer was Jon Asgeirsson.
36 Superintendent Charles Gaughan, who had been pleading for years that the state upgrade security at its principal holding facility for the criminally insane, without result, may have been grimly amused by this sudden flurry of attention.
37 A lawyer must obtain one of these from his home state to be eligible to conduct legal business in another state.
38 Bailey, p. 235.
39 Droney, like DeSalvo, misunderstood the amount. It was $10,000.
40 Richardson says today, “I never had warm feelings for Bottomly.”
41 The Boston Herald had recently merged with the Traveler. Several years later, the Herald-Traveler would merge with the Record American, becoming the Herald-American. In 1982, under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch, it would become, again, the Boston Herald.
42 Here called Lisa Gordon. All the victims were given pseudonyms.
43 A story widely current in legal, media, and show business circles has it that the prison escape scene in the Charles Bronson movie Breakout was inspired by this incident.
44 Charles Burnim was the lawyer in Bailey’s office who had argued Albert’s appeal of his 1967 conviction before the Supreme Judicial Court.
45 DeSalvo’s comments would find a haunting parallel in remarks made long after his death by Patricia Campbell Hearst in her 1982 memoir of her kidnapping, Every Secret Thing (with Alvin Moscow, Pinnacle Books, 1982). Hearst’s father had hired Bailey and his associate J. Albert Johnson to represent his daughter at her 1976 bank robbery trial. Part of Bailey’s fee would be the right for Bailey to write a book about the case: “Al [Johnson] had said he would be giving me a paper to sign later on. Meanwhile, he said, I had to learn to trust my attorneys... About three days after my conviction, Al came to me with a letter. ”Remember the paper I told you I was bringing you to sign one day? Well, here it is.” The letter was to a publisher. It stated that I agreed to F. Lee Bailey writing a book about me and the trial and pledged I would cooperate with him and not compete with a book of my own for at least eighteen months after his was published. I couldn’t argue. I signed it for him, confused as to the necessity for it.” (p. 449)
46 Except for occasional interpolations in brackets for the purpose of clarification, the transcript is reproduced exactly. No attempt has been made to regularize spelling or punctuation.
47 Troy says today that Bailey told him outside the courtroom that Robert McKay was in fact F. Lee Bailey. Bailey says today that Robert McKay was Albert DeSalvo.
48 Bailey’s repetition of the phrase “I don’t recall” during this court proceeding resonates again in the memoir of Patricia Campbell Hearst. Hearst, who writes that her attorney instructed her to give brief answers to all questions asked her at her trial, comments also that he coached her in the use of certain key expressions. “For some reason I could not fathom, Bailey added that I should never say on the witness stand, ‘I can’t remember.’ If I could not remember something, I should reply, ‘I don’t recall.’ ” (Hearst, p. 426.)
49 In Walpole, Albert had slashed his wrists, although not badly enough to do him any permanent damage. No doubt his despair was real enough, but the gesture was probably more histrionic than it was a genuine suicide attempt.
50 In three and a half pages of testimony, Burnim used this expression nine times. Even Garrity latched on to it.
51 It must have been contagious.
52 Bailey, p. 242
53 Bailey, p. 237.
54 Women were still, however, attracted to him. But they were probably reacting more to his sinister glamour as a celebrity felon than to the man himself. He had contact with a woman in Maine; he had also developed a long-distance relationship (of which very little is known) with a woman in the South to whom he occasionally sent money. And he was visited fairly frequently by another woman, married with several children, whom Richard DeSalvo suspected of running drugs into the prison.
55 Being the comedian that he was, he specialized in choker necklaces, which were sold to the public.
56 According to F. Lee Bailey, Albert said that he recognized Erika Wilsing and Marcella Lulka. (Lulka’s photograph had been in the newspapers.) Of the tentative identification of George Nassar, Bailey states in The Defense Never Rests (p. 164) that it was rigged by someone at Bridgewater who wanted to deflect suspicion away from Albert and onto George Nassar.
57 The “girls” were in their early thirties, married, and mothers.
58 Frank, p. 274.
59 Dr. Bryan had acquired his hypnoanalytic skills from his parents, a pair of vaudevillians whose stage act included inducing members of the audience to emulate chickens.
60 The ellipsis and italicizations in the above passage are Rae’s (p. 13).
61 An interesting echo of the horrified remark he’d made to a Cambridge police detective in 1964: “I wouldn’t hurt no broads. I love broads.”
62 To be discussed fully in chapter 33.
63 Newspaper accounts gave varying numbers.
64 Albert had always maintained his innocence of this murder. There would have been little point in him faking a confession; Roy Smith had already been convicted of killing Mrs. Goldberg on the basis of very good evidence.
65 Bottomly and McGrath were doubtless referring not to the reward money offered for the solution to the killings (which DeSalvo couldn’t collect if he were the killer) but to potential book and movie sales.