The first of the murders occurred on the evening of June 14, 1962. The victim was Anna E. Slesers, a fifty-five-year-old Latvian immigrant who worked as a seamstress. Her son, Juris, who had arrived to take his mother to the Latvian memorial services at their church, discovered her body. He knocked on his mother’s door and after some time with no answer he begin to worry. Finally, he busted through the door only to find his mother’s corpse inside of her bathroom. She was lying twisted on the floor in her open bathrobe, its cord pulled taut around her neck and tied into a bow. It had been the very object that was used to strangle her to death. Forensics experts reported that an unknown foreign object had been used to sexually assault Slesers as well. The apartment had been ransacked to give the appearance of a burglary but valuables such as a gold watch and jewelry were not taken.

After the killing of Slesers, more murders followed, two in one day, in fact. On June 30, sixty-eight-year-old Nina Nichols was found in her Brighton area apartment strangled to death with her own nylon stockings, again tied in a bow like Slesers’s bathrobe cord. Also like Slesers, Nichols had been sexually assaulted. 15 miles away in the Boston suburb of Lynn, the body of sixty-five-year-old Helen Blake was found later that same day. Blake had been killed in much the same fashion as Nichols, strangled with her own stockings, but this time the killer pulled her brassiere over the top of the stocking and tied that article into a bow. She, too, had been sexually assaulted. However, in neither instance was any trace of spermatozoa found, a detail intimating that a foreign object was used in perpetration of these two crimes as well. Blake, although not found until later that day, was the first of the two women to be murdered, somewhere between 8AM and 10AM that morning.

A pattern was now developing, the pattern of a serial killer. Then Police Commissioner, Edmund McNamara, warned the women of Boston to keep their doors locked and to be wary of anyone seeking admittance into their homes, as there had been no signs of forced entry in any of the cases. McNamara also said that the murderer was likely preying upon older women because of a deep-seated hatred towards his mother.

The next victim was fifty-year-old Willie O’Brien (A woman, despite her first name). O’Brien was found killed on the 5th of July and she was one of the worst off when it came to the Strangler’s sheer brutality. She was tortured before being murdered by having a tennis ball shoved inside of her anus. An autopsy revealed that O’Brien’s blood alcohol level was extremely high as well. Did she perhaps have drinks with the man who sexually assaulted her and then strangled her to death with her own hosiery? God only knows.

O’Brien’s murder was followed by the killing of two more elderly ladies in the month of August, Ida Irga, age seventy-five, found on August 21st and Jane Sullivan, age sixty-seven, found on August 30th. Irga had been strangled with a pillowcase and Sullivan with her own stockings. Irga had been sexually assaulted and although Sullivan’s corpse was too badly decayed at the time it was found, it was assumed she had been sexually molested as well. A broomstick with a bloody handle was found near her corpse.

After that, the murders seemed to stop for a while, and the women of Boston issued a collective sigh of relief. But it was to be short-lived. Just three months later another string of murders began. But this time, something was different.

On December 5th, 1962, Sophie Clark, a twenty-one-year-old African American medical student was found strangled to death in her apartment by her two roommates only blocks away from the scene of the initial Slesers murder. They found her nude, with her legs spread apart and her stockings tied tightly in a knot around her neck. However, there were marked differences in this homicide as opposed to the previous rash of strangulations, differences that lead police to suspect a separate killer may have been responsible. Clark was young, she was black, she did not live alone like the previous victims and for the first time semen was discovered at the crime scene on the rug next to her corpse.

Before killing Clark, it seemed that the killer had initially selected another victim in the same apartment complex. Shortly before Clark’s estimated time of death, a man had knocked on the door of Mrs. Marcella Lulka telling her he was sent by the building superintendent to paint the inside of her apartment. When Mrs. Lulka informed him that it was a bad time as her husband was asleep in the next room, the man became agitated and left. The super hadn’t sent anyone to paint apartments, leading police to speculate that Mrs. Lulka had a face to face with The Strangler (or at least one of them). Mrs. Lulka said the man was of average height with honey-colored hair and was likely in his late twenties or early thirties.

The next to go was twenty-three-year-old Patricia Bissette, found strangled to death with her stockings and blouse on New Year’s Eve of 1962. There was evidence of sexual intercourse and she was also found to be in the early stages of pregnancy. Bissette had lived on the same block as Slesers and Clark.

Another three-month lull in the murders came to an abrupt end in early March, when the body of sixty-eight-year-old Mary Brown was found in her Lawrence, Massachusetts (25 miles north of Boston) apartment beaten to death. Although the modi operandi seemed different there was evidence that Clark was strangled and raped as well. Was The Strangler back to elderly ladies? Apparently not, considering the next victim.

The next body was discovered on May 8th, 1963. The victim was twenty-three-year-old Beverley Samans, a beautiful, young graduate student. Samans was found stabbed to death twenty-two times in her apartment by her male friend after she had failed to appear for choir practice. Eighteen of the knife wounds made up a bull’s eye pattern on her left breast. She had stockings and handkerchiefs tied around her neck, but an autopsy showed she had not been strangled. The Strangler? It’s likely that no one will ever be sure.

Three more victims met their fates at the hands of The Strangler, the last being nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan found on January 4th, 1964. She was found nude, semen dripping from her mouth, and the handle of a broomstick…well, let’s not go there. By her feet was found a “Happy New Year’s” card.

The police were working overtime at this point, employing psychics, interrogating suspects, but not making much headway. Then a rapist by the name of Albert DeSalvo confessed to each and every one of the crimes loosely attributed (more so by the public than by the Boston Police Department) to The Boston Strangler.

DeSalvo worked as a press operator at a rubber plant, he was married and had two kids. He was also a serial rapist. After being captured by police following an attempted rape on October 27, 1964, and while awaiting trial for multiple counts of rape that would eventually land him in prison for life, DeSalvo confessed to all of The Strangler crimes. It is thought by many that DeSalvo did this to support his family with the money generated by selling “his story”. DeSalvo was never convicted of The Boston Strangler crimes, but was indeed, sentenced to life in prison for a slew of rape convictions despite being defended by the famed litigator, F. Lee Bailey. Bailey attempted to get DeSalvo an insanity plea based upon his confessions to The Strangler murders. It proved unconvincing to the judge, however, and was ruled inadmissible in court. DeSalvo was murdered in the prison infirmary several years later in 1973.

While F. Lee Bailey was convinced that his client was The Strangler, those close to DeSalvo believed there was no way he could have committed the heinous crimes. In his confession, however, DeSalvo revealed details that only the killer could know, that Sophie Clark had been menstruating and that he had removed a sanitary napkin from her pubic area and thrown it on the floor before assaulting her, that Patricia Bissette had Christmas bells hung above her door and a notebook under her bed, that he had taken a raincoat from Anna Slesers apartment (Slesers had purchased two identical raincoats, and gave one away as a gift. Desalvo picked the gifted raincoat out of a possible fourteen styles shown to him). The details went on and on. However, before his confession DeSalvo had been cellmates with a sinister man named George Nassar, who may have in fact been the real (or one of the real) Strangler(s). Nassar appeared frighteningly familiar to two separate Strangler witnesses, including Marcella Lulka (Lulka said only his hair was different – Nassar’s hair was black, but it could have easily been dyed the honey color that she had observed, or he might have worn a wig). Still, neither woman was one-hundred-percent positive in identifying Nassar. One theory is that Nassar may have coached DeSalvo on what to say, for although DeSalvo was not particularly bright he was known to have an exceptional, possibly even photographic, memory.

Still, Albert DeSalvo got some details very wrong (perhaps these were those from the crimes not committed by Nassar). For example, he claimed to have had intercourse with Mary Sullivan although forensics showed she had only been violated with the broom handle as far as vaginal penetration was concerned. He also claimed to have choked her to death with his bare hands when it had been determined that she was strangled with ligature, namely her own stockings.

The fact is there was never any evidence, aside from his confession, linking DeSalvo to any of The Strangler murders; in fact, he wasn’t even on the list of over 300 suspects the police had compiled during their two-year investigation!

In October of 2000, Albert DeSalvo’s brother Richard DeSalvo and Casey Sherman, nephew of the Strangler’s last victim, Mary Sullivan, united in a common goal to have the bodies of DeSalvo and Sullivan exhumed and tested for DNA evidence, a technique unavailable at the time of the murders. It took a year but in October of 2001 the remains of both DeSalvo and Sullivan were unearthed for further testing. The post-mortem (and I do mean post!Yuck!) autopsies were performed by a team of forensic scientists led by James E. Starrs, professor of forensics at George Washington University. Foreign DNA was found on (in?) Sullivan’s corpse. It did not match Albert DeSalvo’s.

I remember being in Massachusetts’s at the time, driving from Marblehead into Salem for the huge Halloween party they throw there every year. It was raining heavily that night as they announced over the radio the exhumation of the man many believed to be The Boston Strangler. It certainly set the mood and made for good, spooky fun. But then again, what it ultimately meant was that the real killer or killers may have never been brought to justice. Maybe we should get O.J. on it.