October 27, 1964: Albert DeSalvo is arrested after breaking into a woman's home and sexually assaulting her. He confesses to being the serial killer known as the Boston Strangler.
There were 13 murders attributed to the Strangler, between June 14, 1962 and January 4, 1964. Even the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a Boston native, didn't deter the killer: Joanne Marie Graff, 22, was killed the day of the funeral, November 25, 1963.
Aside from the fact that they were all unmarried women, there seemed to be very little pattern. Five murders were outside the city limits of Boston, but nearby: One in Cambridge, one in Lynn, one in Lawrence, and two in Salem (home of the witch trials of the 1690s). The women were all white, but seemed not to be targeted based on age, ethnicity, religion, type of employment, level of income, or a shared hobby that could connect them to someone who preyed on a person with that hobby. Nor did any of them seem to have ever met any of the others.
They ranged in age from 19 to 85. The 85-year-old, Mary Mullen, died of a heart attack, and DeSalvo claimed that she collapsed as he grabbed her. But one victim, Beverly Samans, was stabbed, meaning that 2 victims were not strangled.
Even with the ones that were strangled, the method wasn't wholly consistent. Of the 11, 8 were strangled with their own nylon stockings after being raped. The 1st victim, Anna Elsa (Legins) Šlesers, was strangled with the belt of her bathrobe. With 2 others, the object used to strangle them wasn't revealed to the public. Four of the victims did not appear to have been sexually assaulted.
The 1st 4 victims had been found within 16 days in June 1962, the last 3 of these within 3 days, the last 2 on the same day, June 30. On July 8, the Boston Sunday Herald published an article with the title "Mad Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston." At other times, he was known as the "Phantom Strangler" or the "Phantom Fiend." In 1963, Jean Cole and Loretta McLaughlin, reporters for the Boston Record American, with 10 victims to the killer's count, wrote a 4-part series on the case, giving the killer the nickname that stuck: "The Boston Strangler."
Two things that all the victims had in common: All were attacked in their own homes, and none of the homes showed any sign of forced entry. Since the women didn't seem to know each other, it ruled out a common regular acquaintance of all of them. Perhaps he was someone to be expected, or disguised as such: An apartment maintenance man, a repairman, a deliveryman. Some women in the Boston area bought tear gas, some new locks and deadbolts for their doors. Some left town. Still, the Boston Police were not convinced they were all the work of one man.
The youngest victim was Mary Ann Sullivan, 19, on January 4, 1964. And then... no more. Twice before, there had been 4-month gaps. By June 1964, that had been exceeded, but there were no more murders anywhere near Boston that fit the Strangler's modus operandi. For over 9 months, there were no new killings that suggested the Strangler. Perhaps he had died, or had been arrested and jailed on a separate charge.
And then, on October 27, a woman not identified by the police let a stranger in, posing as a detective. He knocked her down, carried her to her bed, tied her to it, sexually assaulted her... and then, instead of killing her, said, "I'm sorry," and left. When the actual police came, she gave a description that other women identified as their attacker. They seemed to have found a rapist known as "The Measuring Man" and "The Green Man."
The police found the man the assault victims described: Albert DeSalvo, 33, originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts, living in nearby Malden at this point. At age 21, he was sent to a reform school, for robbery. After being released, he was sent back for stealing a car. He then served in the U.S. Army -- ironically, with service as a Military Policeman.
In custody, DeSalvo confessed -- to the Boston Strangler murders. Although there was absolutely no physical evidence to tie him to those murders -- DNA testing did not come into wide use until the 1990s -- he gave the police details that they had not released to the general public, details only the killer, or someone working on the case (which DeSalvo was not) could know.
DeSalvo hired F. Lee Bailey has his defense attorney. Bailey, a native of the Boston area, had successfully gotten the murder conviction of Dr. Sam Sheppard, the man on whom the TV series The Fugitive was allegedly based, thrown out. Since there was no evidence other than his confession to tie DeSalvo to the Strangler killings, he was charged with the Green Man rapes instead. Bailey insisted that his client was not guilty by reason of insanity, or else why would he confess to a series of murders, crimes that were more serious?
DeSalvo was convicted on January 9, 1967, and sentenced to life in prison. In February 1967, he and 2 fellow inmates escaped from Bridgewater State Hospital, Massachusetts' facility for the criminally insane. He gave himself up the following day, and was transferred to the maximum-security State Prison in Walpole. There, on November 25, 1973, he was stabbed to death in the prison infirmary. He was 42 years old. His killer was never identified. Maybe the authorities didn't feel like trying very hard.
At any rate, after January of 1964, let alone October of that year, there were no more murders that fit the Boston Strangler's M.O. The police figured they'd gotten their man. But several experts on the subject of murders, including those of serial killers, have pointed out many inconsistences. A wide opinion is that, like the 1888 Whitechapel Murders in London, the murders ascribed to one man were likely committed by more than one man, perhaps several, and that, as with "Jack the Ripper," a single "Boston Strangler" never really existed.
In 2013, however, with DNA evidence available, it was conclusively proven that DeSalvo did kill Mary Ann Sullivan, the last and youngest (19) victim attributed to the Strangler. The other 12? Maybe he killed all of them, or some of them, or none of them. We may never know.
F. Lee Bailey became the most famous defense lawyer in America since Clarence Darrow in the 1920s, but, in most of his high-profile cases, he lost, managing, at best, to get his clients reduced sentences. He defended Patty Hearst against bank robbery charges, and lost. Twenty years later, he was part of O.J. Simpson's defense "dream team," and won. But his actions in that trial were bad enough that another member of the dream team, Robert Shapiro, said in an interview a few hours after the verdict that he would never speak to Bailey again. Bailey later got disbarred for business fraud, and died in 2021.
On April 8, 1964, after the Sullivan murder but before DeSalvo's arrest, Allied Artists released the film The Strangler, starring Victor Buono as the killer. The film's murders bore little resemblance to the real thing. In fact, since the film's victims were nurses, it looked more like a case yet to come, that of Richard Speck in Chicago in 1966. (The 2000 film Frequency also dealt with a serial killer of nurses, albeit a fictional one, in New York in 1969.)
In 1968, 20th Century Fox released The Boston Strangler, starring Tony Curtis as DeSalvo, and Henry Fonda and George Kennedy as the cops who identify and arrest him. DeSalvo was the only person whose real name was used. Nearly everything else was made up, including the suggestion that DeSalvo was afflicted with multiple personality disorder, something that had never been alleged in real life. In 2008, David Faustino starred in Boston Strangler: The Untold Story.
In the 1966 song "Dirty Water" by The Standells, the fadeout has the narrator seem to suggest he's the killer: As the other members refrain, "I love that dirty water," he says, "Have you heard about the strangler? I'm the man, I'm the man!" In 1969, The Rolling Stones sang "Midnight Rambler," and Mick Jagger compares his murdering character to the Boston Strangler.
In 1968, Harvard University, based across the Charles River in Cambridge, where one of the murders had taken place, but playing their home games at Harvard Stadium on the Boston side, went undefeated, and their defense was called "The Boston Stranglers." In the early 1980s, Andrew Toney of the Philadelphia 76ers played such tough defense against the Sixers' arch-rivals, the Boston Celtics, that he was known as "The Boston Strangler."
Some people can make a joke about anything. Henny Youngman, "King of the One-Liners," infamous for, "Take my wife -- please!" came up with this one, longer than most of his jokes:
I took my wife on vacation to Boston. There was a knock on the hotel room door. "Who is it?" I asked. The voice on the other side said, "The Boston Strangler!" I said, "It's for you, dear!"
A year later, I went to Boston on business. There was a knock on the hotel room door. "Who is it?" I asked. The voice on the other side said, "The Boston Strangler!" I said, "I gave last year!"
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October 27, 1964 was a Tuesday. Mary T. Meagher, who won 3 Gold Medals in swimming at the 1984 Olympics, was born. This was also the day of Ronald Reagan's televised campaign speech for Republican Party Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. I have a separate entry for that event.
Baseball season had ended 12 days earlier, when the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series. Football was in midweek.
There were 3 games played in the NBA that night, including a doubleheader at the old Madison Square Garden. The Philadelphia 76ers beat the St. Louis Hawks, 100-81. Then, the Boston Celtics, unaware of the arrest made back home, beat the New York Knicks, 131-103. And the San Francisco Warriors beat the Baltimore Bullets, 101-90 at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium (now the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium).
One game was played in the NHL: The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 3-2 at the Chicago Stadium.
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