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She stood in her apartment, the door unlocked, the evening quiet—until the moment she realized the man standing in her hallway wasn't there to fix a leak. He was there to take her life.
Let’s look closer at the atmosphere of Greater Boston in the early 1960s. It was a time when the world felt like it was turning on a dime, but for women living alone in their apartments, the ground beneath them felt increasingly fragile. Between June 14, 1962, and January 4, 1964, thirteen single women, ranging in age from nineteen to eighty-five, were murdered. Most were sexually assaulted and strangled within the confines of their own homes. There were no signs of forced entry. This detail is what made the terror so intimate, so invasive. The police initially believed that one man was the sole perpetrator. Because the doors were unlocked, it was assumed that these women had let their assailant in. Perhaps they knew him. Perhaps he posed as a service provider, a salesman, or someone needing help. The fear was not just about violence; it was about the violation of sanctuary. Your home was supposed to be your shield, but here, it became a trap. Many residents purchased tear gas and new locks and deadbolts for their doors. Some women even moved out of the area entirely in response to the killings. They fled the city to escape a ghost that seemed to slip through keyholes.
In those days, before we had names for monsters, we had fears. Initially, the crimes were assumed to be the work of one unknown person dubbed 'The Mad Strangler of Boston.' On July 8, 1962, the Sunday Herald wrote that '[a] mad strangler is loose in Boston' in an article titled 'Mad Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston.' The killer was also known as the 'Phantom Fiend' or 'Phantom Strangler,' due to his ability to get women to allow him into their apartments without resistance. It was a figure who existed in the shadows of daily routine. In 1963, two investigative reporters for the Record American, Jean Cole and Loretta McLaughlin, wrote a four-part series about the killer. They dubbed him 'The Boston Strangler.' By the time Albert DeSalvo's confession was aired in open court, the name 'Boston Strangler' had become part of crime lore. But remember this: the name stuck before we knew who actually pulled the trigger. We often confuse the label with the truth. We wrap a story in a title and assume the mystery is solved. But here, the name was just a vessel for a community’s panic.
The murders occurred in several cities across eastern Massachusetts, including Boston itself. This geographic spread complicated jurisdictional oversight for prosecution of the crimes. One department could not simply reach across town to arrest a suspect in another county. Massachusetts Attorney General Edward W. Brooke helped to coordinate the various police forces, trying to stitch together a cohesive strategy from fragmented local efforts. Yet, the pressure mounted. In a move that would later be viewed with deep skepticism, Brooke permitted parapsychologist Peter Hurkos to use his alleged extrasensory perception to analyze the cases. Hurkos claimed that a single person was responsible. This decision was controversial, to say the least. Hurkos provided a 'minutely detailed description of the wrong person,' and the press ridiculed Brooke. It was a desperate grasp for answers in a vacuum of evidence. The police were not convinced that all the murders were the actions of one person, although much of the public believed so. The apparent connections between a majority of the victims and hospitals were widely discussed, hinting at a pattern that law enforcement struggled to define legally or logically.
Let’s pause for a moment on Mary Sullivan. She was nineteen years old, full of life, and she was the final victim of the murders. On January 4, 1964, she was raped and strangled in her Boston apartment. Three ligatures were wrapped around her neck, and a broom handle was lodged in her vagina. A card reading 'Happy New Year' was left by the killer, leaning against her left foot. Think about the cruelty of that note. A celebration of a new beginning placed beside the end of a young woman’s future. It was a message meant to terrify, to show dominance over time itself. Mary Sullivan’s death marked the end of the spree, but it did not mark the end of the investigation. It only deepened the questions. Who was this man? How did he move from apartment to apartment, leaving behind such specific, horrifying signatures? And why did the system fail to catch him until it was too late?
On October 27, 1964, a stranger entered a young woman's home posing as a detective. He tied the victim to her bed, sexually assaulted her, and suddenly left, saying 'I'm sorry' as he went. The woman's description of her attacker led police to identify the assailant as Albert DeSalvo. When his photo was published, many women identified him as the man who had assaulted them. Earlier on that same day, DeSalvo had posed as a motorist with car trouble and attempted to enter a home in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The homeowner, future Brockton police chief Richard Sproules, became suspicious and eventually fired a shotgun at DeSalvo. DeSalvo escaped, but the net was closing. He was not initially suspected of being involved with the strangling murders. After he was charged with rape, he gave a detailed confession of his activities as the Boston Strangler. He initially confessed to fellow inmate George Nassar. Nassar reported the confession to his attorney F. Lee Bailey, who also took on the defense of DeSalvo.
The police were impressed at the accuracy of DeSalvo's descriptions of the crime scenes. There were some inconsistencies, but DeSalvo was able to cite details that had been withheld from the public. This is the kind of detail that usually convinces a jury. Bailey states in his 1971 book, 'The Defense Never Rests,' that DeSalvo even got one detail right that one of the victims was wrong about: DeSalvo described a blue chair in the woman's living room. She stated it was brown. Photographic evidence proved DeSalvo was correct. It was a small thing, a piece of furniture, but it carried weight. However, no physical evidence substantiated his confession. Because of that, he was tried on charges for earlier, unrelated, crimes of robbery and sexual offenses, in which he was known as 'The Green Man' and 'The Measuring Man,' respectively. Bailey brought up DeSalvo's confession to the murders as part of his client's history at the trial in order to assist in gaining a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' verdict to the sexual offenses, but it was ruled as inadmissible by the judge. The courtroom became a place where truth was filtered through procedure, and the confessions were locked away.
We are left with a case that defies simple resolution. DeSalvo was convicted in 1967 for the rape and murder of Mary Ann Sullivan, the final victim, after confessing to being the strangler. But he confessed to thirteen murders, including those attributed to the Boston Strangler, and later recanted these confessions while maintaining his innocence regarding the killings. In 2013, DNA testing linked DeSalvo to the crime scene of Maria de Jesus Santos, a victim killed in 1963, providing physical evidence connecting him to at least one of the strangler's crimes. Despite the DNA link, prosecutors have not charged DeSalvo with the other murders because he died in prison in 1973 before any new charges could be filed. The investigation faced significant challenges due to jurisdictional conflicts between local police departments and state authorities during the early 1960s. Lester Montesi, a former police officer, claimed in later years that he had information about the true identity of the killer, suggesting it might not have been DeSalvo. The case gained widespread media attention and contributed to public fear, leading to increased scrutiny of law enforcement handling of serial crimes. Forensic analysis of the original crime scenes has been re-examined in recent decades to determine if additional suspects or connections exist beyond DeSalvo. The Boston Strangler case remains officially unsolved for most of the victims, as no other individual has been conclusively linked to all the murders. Remember her name. Remember them all. This story is drawn from public records and widely reported accounts. Our thoughts are with everyone affected.