Search for the Strangler

by Casey Sherman

  The next morning, Laura and I waited silently in her hospital room for the doctor. Did we still have our baby? When he arrived, he checked Laura’s vital signs and then placed the stethoscope on her stomach. The baby’s tiny heart was beating strongly. Laura and I looked at each other, smiling. Then I looked up at the ceiling and said, “Thank you.”

  During the next few weeks, I cared for my wife at home with the help of my mom and mother-in-law. At the same time, I was finalizing plans for a meeting in the attorney general’s office in which I also wanted the Boston Police Department to participate. (Before the case had been taken over by the state, the police homicide squad had been in charge of investigating Mary’s murder.) Two days before the meeting, I finally received a call back from the police official in charge of the homicide division and also head of the cold case squad. When I asked him if he could attend the meeting, he said, “No, we won’t be there. And if I were you, I’d stay away from this case.”

  “Why is that?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “Casey, this case is a lot bigger than just a bunch of strangled women.”

  “Lieutenant, I know it’s bigger. But what are you trying to tell me?” I was angry now. There was a pause on the other end of the phone. The official now seemed to realize that he had let a few indiscreet words slip out. He said, “We don’t want to set a precedent here. It’s not the purpose of the cold case squad to go back and reinvestigate unsolved murders.”

  My pale Irish cheeks were flushed red now. “Then what is the purpose of the cold case squad, and how much of my tax dollars are going into it if you’re sitting around playing cards all day?”

  The police official ignored my outburst. He said, “We just don’t think it’s in the best interest of the families involved, that’s all.”

  I reminded him that he was talking with a member of one of the families and that we demanded justice, but that didn’t change his mind about participating in the meeting. I was left wondering what the Boston Police Department was so afraid of.

  Gerry Leone had set the meeting for March 13, 2000. I had told him that my mother and I would be there, along with members of Albert DeSalvo’s family. Hearing from the families was important, but I believed that we also needed input from one of the people who had worked on the case. I dialed Jim Mellon’s number.

  “Mr. Mellon, can I call you to duty one more time?” I asked after telling him about the meeting.

  “You’ve certainly stirred up quite a storm,” Mellon said. “You go public, and they’ll come after you.” Mellon did not need to explain who “they” were.

  “Why are they so worried about this case, Jim?”

  Mellon paused before answering. “Son, this isn’t just about the Boston Strangler. Oh, sure, it’s the biggest case of them all. But what about the would-be Albert DeSalvos out there? The suspects who were pressured to confess to a crime they didn’t commit. The state has a finger in the dike right now, but once they pull that finger out, the flooding begins.”

  It was a colorful way of saying that if we showed that authorities had gotten the wrong guy in the biggest murder case in New England history, it could call into question thousands of other cases the state claimed had been solved.

  “Can I count on you to be there?” I asked Mellon.

  “Oh sure,” he laughed, “us against the state. I like those odds. Plus it will get me out of the house for the afternoon.”

  Now that I had gotten Jim Mellon’s promise to attend the meeting, I needed to make sure that the public was aware of the event. I pitched the idea to my news director, and he decided to allow a reporter, Ted Wayman, to cover the story. No matter what the outcome of the meeting was, at least our viewers would know that an attempt to reopen this case had been made by the families.

  On the day of the Strangler Summit, I met Jim Mellon at a South Shore parking lot and drove him into the city. He wore his traditional Irish scally cap and walking sneakers for climbing the steep hills around Boston’s Government Center. My mother sat in the back of my Chevy Blazer, fidgeting with her bracelet.

  The Massachusetts attorney general’s office is located at One Ashburton Place, behind the statehouse. That day, the streets were lined with parked cars and the lots filled to capacity, so I was forced to park downhill about a quarter mile away, and Mellon’s walking shoes gave him little help as he slowly made his way up the steep sidewalks of Beacon Hill. Finally, I offered to retrieve the car and drop him off in front of the building, but he declined, determined to make it on his own. Breathing hard at the start, he caught a second wind, and we made it to the attorney general’s office with time to spare. During our walk, the retired policeman enlivened the conversation with stories about patrolling the city at the time of the Boston Strangler. It felt good to have him back on the case.

  Before the meeting started, I told my television crew that no cameras would be allowed inside the attorney general’s office, but we would be available for comment after the meeting. Then Gerry Leone’s secretary showed us into a conference room; the DeSalvos arrived shortly after. It was the first time my mother had ever come face to face with a relative of the alleged Boston Strangler. Though obviously uncomfortable, she nonetheless managed a gracious hello. Pulling her aside, I told her everything was going to be okay and reminded her that the DeSalvos were innocent victims, too.

  After several more minutes, Gerry Leone finally arrived, alone.

  “Isn’t the Attorney General going to be here?” I asked.

  “Tom’s really busy and usually doesn’t attend these kind of meetings,” Leone replied. I introduced the family members to Leone and announced that I had also brought along a special guest, the man who had investigated my aunt’s murder in 1964. After a quick nod to Jim Mellon, Leone asked me to state our case briefly. Clearly, he was trying to indicate that he was pressed for time. I reminded Leone that Albert DeSalvo never had been charged with my aunt’s murder or any of the other killings attributed to the Boston Strangler. I also discussed the lack of physical evidence against DeSalvo. Jim Mellon added that he and his colleagues on the Boston Strangler Task Force knew that DeSalvo was not “the guy.”

  “Do you have any new evidence?” Leone asked, apparently unmoved by our presentation.

  “There is no new evidence,” I replied. “It’s all there in the old evidence. You read the case files, Gerry. There was a prime suspect in Mary’s murder, and his name is not Albert DeSalvo. I know where this suspect is. What’s it going to take to capture the real killer?”

  “Murder investigations are not really something we do here in the attorney general’s office,” Leone said, deflecting the question.

  “Your office took jurisdiction over this case after my aunt was killed,” I reminded him. “It’s your responsibility to see it through!”

  “Well, right now the Boston Police Department says it has no more physical evidence from the murder of Mary Sullivan. Boston says the case is no longer a priority. We defer to them. There’s really nothing we can do for you here,” Leone replied.

  “I was told by a Boston police official just yesterday to stay away from this case. I was told that it was a lot bigger than a bunch of strangled women. Is there something that no one wants us to find out here?” I fired back.

  “There’s no conspiracy going on here,” Leone answered. “And besides, does anyone really believe DeSalvo was the strangler anymore?”

  My mother’s eyes lit up at Leone’s comment. “What do you mean, does anybody believe it? Everyone still thinks he did it, and my government allowed it to happen,” Mom said, pointing to Leone.

  Richard DeSalvo and his son Tim jumped in, telling Leone about the harassment they had endured for decades. Richard also said he would like to know who had killed his brother. “I think someone did it to shut him up, and the prison guards were involved,” he said.

  Leone was not swayed. He claimed his hands were tied because the Boston Police Department had no interest in revisiting this case. Then
we were shown out of the conference room.

  “They don’t want to touch it,” Mellon said to me in the hallway. But if Leone thought we would just go away, he was dead wrong. Waiting for us down the hall were Ted Wayman and Dick Ade, a WBZ photographer.

  “What happened in there, Diane?” Wayman asked my mother, the camera rolling.

  “He said there was no evidence left to find my sister’s killer. I’ve only got one question, where did all the evidence go?” she asked in disbelief.

  She knew that the crime lab had confirmed to me that it had a dozen boxes of physical materials taken from the crime scenes. Either Leone knew this, or someone wasn’t telling him the truth.

  I told Wayman we would revisit the case ourselves. I also floated the idea of exhuming my aunt’s body and the body of Albert DeSalvo to see if there was any DNA that would exonerate or incriminate DeSalvo. At this time, I did not know much about forensic science or how to begin such a project. I was bluffing to see how the authorities would respond.

  The attorney general’s office offered only a brief written statement on the meeting. “At this time we do not anticipate any further role for this office in the matter,” it said. Meanwhile, the Boston police spokeswoman, Margot Hill, told the Herald she sympathized with the families. “We feel for them,” she said, “and we share in their frustration, but we don’t have a probative sample of DNA to go forward.”

  On the drive back to the South Shore, Mellon did his best to keep Mom’s spirits up. But I felt defeated. The state with all its resources claimed it could not help us. When I dropped Mellon off at his car, we spoke for a few minutes.

  “Sorry I wasted your time, Jim,” I said.

  “Don’t give up, son,” he replied. “If I’ve learned one thing in my life, it’s that you can’t give up on something you believe in. You’re doing the right thing here. You’ve got to force their hand, Casey. You’ve got to keep giving them hell, son,” Mellon said before he climbed into his car and drove away.

  15 : On Our Own

  That evening, I grabbed an ice-cold bottle of Dos Equis and collapsed on the living room couch, trying to unwind from my long day and deal with my doubts about the future of the case. Laura, regaining strength after her surgery, joined me in the living room. I took the remote control and flipped through the television channels, finally settling on a Discovery Channel documentary about the forensic reinvestigation of the Jesse James case. The notorious outlaw had reportedly been gunned down in 1882 by a member of his own gang, but in later years several men came forward claiming to be James. Had Jesse James faked his own death? That’s what his descendants wanted to know. In 1995, a forensic team led by a George Washington University law professor named James Starrs exhumed the body buried under Jesse James’s tombstone in Kearney, Missouri. By comparing hair samples from the gunslinger’s great-granddaughter to those taken from the remains, Starrs and his team determined with 99.7 percent certainty that the body was that of Jesse James.

  Professor Starrs was featured heavily in the television program. “Why don’t you call this guy?” Laura asked. “I bet he could help you. You have a high profile case, too. I’m sure he’d be interested.” How could it hurt? I decided. The next morning, I called Professor Starrs.

  James Starrs, the son of an English professor and an art teacher, grew up near New York City and early on developed a love for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s master sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. After earning a law degree from St. John’s University, Starrs began his teaching career at George Washington University in 1964, the year of my aunt’s murder. In the late 1960s, Starrs was asked to lead a new forensic science master’s program at the university. As a result, he became a real-life equivalent to his literary hero, Sherlock Holmes.

  Once I got Starrs on the phone, I asked if he knew anything about the Boston Strangler case.

  “You mean Al Salvi?” Starrs replied. I took Starrs’s mistake as a good sign. It indicated to me that he likely did not have a preconception about Albert DeSalvo’s guilt or innocence. “What exactly are you looking for, Mr. Sherman?” Starrs asked.

  I told him about my connection with the case and said, “I don’t believe DeSalvo murdered my aunt, but I’m getting nowhere with the authorities here. We’re not looking for fame, we’re not looking for money. We just want justice. I need to know if it would be possible to find evidence of her killer on my aunt’s body?”

  Starrs went on to tell me there were several factors that could help or hurt a forensic examination of my aunt’s remains. “If she were shot, I’d say you were out of luck. But the fact that she was strangled indicates that her killer could have left hair, blood, or saliva on her body,” he pointed out. It upset me to hear my aunt’s murder talked about so coldly, but science had no room for emotions, and I would have to get used to it.

  Starrs told me that he would be interested in getting involved in the case, but before signing on to such a project, he needed to know everything possible about Mary’s burial. I promised I would get the information he required. Still, the thought of exhuming my aunt’s body was troubling. Was there any other option?

  “Professor, I know the state of Massachusetts still has evidence left from my aunt’s murder. If we sued for it, would we have much of a case?”

  “I’d much rather work with evidence that already exists. An exhumation is always the last resort,” Starrs replied. “But if this case is indeed closed, I don’t see why you or your mother would not be entitled to the materials.”

  “Do you know of any good lawyers in the Boston area?” I asked. I wanted an attorney Starrs would be comfortable working with. He advised me to speak with a friend of his, an attorney named Elaine Whitfield Sharp. Starrs probably did not know this, but Sharp was considered Attorney General Tom Reilly’s arch-nemesis. They had faced each other when Reilly was a district attorney prosecuting the Louise Woodward case, in which Woodward, a British au pair, had been accused of murdering an infant in her care. A British native herself, Sharp felt it her duty to defend the young woman, and she and her lawyer husband, Dan Sharp, masterminded the medical defense in the case, producing medical experts to dispute the existence of the so-called shaken-baby syndrome. However, she was probably best known to the public as the attorney who had hugged and consoled Woodward while the young woman sobbed uncontrollably when the guilty verdict came down.

  Starrs was highly complimentary of Sharp’s work, but I wasn’t so sure she was the right person for the job. Following Louise Woodward’s conviction, Sharp had quit the defense team and was later arrested for drunken driving. She then accused the arresting officer of sexual harassment. (That accusation would come back to haunt the attorney. In 2003, Sharp was found liable of defaming the officer and ordered to pay $208,000 in damages. The verdict is currently under appeal.) I questioned whether she was stable enough to take on the case. Out of respect for Starrs, however, I agreed to meet with the Sharps at their law office in the historic seaside town of Marblehead.

  As I drove to the meeting, on a Sunday afternoon in late March 2000, I drove through Chelsea, Albert DeSalvo’s birthplace. I drove through Lynn, where Helen Blake had met a horrible death. I drove through Salem, where Evelyn Corbin had been strangled. Finally, I arrived in the town of Marblehead. Elaine Whitfield Sharp met me with a smile at the office door and ushered me into their conference room. Dan Sharp was already sitting there with a notepad and pen in his hand. I could tell immediately that the couple was a contrast in styles. The boisterous Elaine reminded me of a matron at a British boarding school—friendly, but you would not want to cross her. Dan was more of an introvert, a person who chose his words carefully. One thing was clear in any case. Elaine Whitfield Sharp was neither shaky nor uncertain of herself. What I saw was an extremely intelligent person who was strong enough to take on the most powerful people in Massachusetts.

  I told the couple I believed that my aunt’s killer was still at large and that Massachusetts authorities were withholding evidence and i
nformation about her murder. After I finished, they nodded to me and then began talking to each other as if I weren’t there. They sparred for several minutes, citing various cases to deflate each other’s analysis. I found it unusual, but it appeared to be effective. In time, they arrived at a common position: that since there was no longer an active investigation into Mary’s murder, her family had a right to both physical and documentary evidence. “The evidence should be considered Mary’s personal property and therefore be handed over to her family,” Elaine concluded. The Sharps agreed to take my family on as clients and urged me to get the DeSalvo family involved as well.

  “There’s one question that still bugs me,” Dan said before I left. “After all these years, why now?”

  I said, “Dan, there’s no statute of limitations on murder. Would you not want a Nazi war criminal brought to justice regardless of his age? People should be held accountable for their crimes no matter how much time has gone by.”

  “You just said the right answer, Casey,” Dan said. “Guess what? You’ll be the family spokesman.”

  By the time I left their office, I was confident that Elaine and Dan Sharp were the right attorneys for me. Both were well versed in police corruption cases, and they conducted their work outside the old-boy network of Boston legal circles. I phoned Richard DeSalvo’s son, Tim, and urged him to meet with Elaine Whitfield Sharp. I was told by both the attorneys and the DeSalvos that the meeting went extremely well. Thereafter, the Sharps and I spent hours together and on the phone planning our legal strategy. We began by sending requests to the five investigative parties in my aunt’s murder: the attorney general’s office, the Boston Police Department, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, the Massachusetts State Police, and the state medical examiner’s office. Each had been involved in the original investigation and could still possess vital information and physical evidence that could help us prove our case. Relying on the Fair Information Practices Act and Freedom of Information Act, the Sharps demanded that all evidence in the Boston Strangler case be turned over to the families of Mary Sullivan and Albert DeSalvo.