October 27, 1964: The Boston Strangler Is Arrested… Or Is He?

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!"

*

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.

September 27, 1958: “The Defiant Ones” Premieres

September 27, 1958: The Defiant Ones premieres. It stars Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis, Theodore Bikel, Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Akins, Cara Williams, and, in what turned out to be his last role, Carl Switzer, a.k.a. Alfalfa from Our Gang.

One actor it did not star was Marlon Brando, who was originally supposed to star with Poitier, but Poitier was unavailable at the time. Director Stanley Kramer wanted Poitier so badly that he delayed filming. But, by the time that Poitier was available, Brando wasn't. Curtis was.

Another that this film could have starred, but didn't, was Robert Mitchum. At age 14, he had been arrested for vagrancy in Savannah, Georgia, and was put on a chain gang. He turned down the role because he knew that even chain gangs were segregated in the South. To his credit, once Curtis got the role, he insisted that Poitier have equal billing.

Noah Cullen (Poitier), black, and John "Joker" Jackson (Curtis), white, are shackled together because "the warden had a sense of humor." They are on a truck loaded with prisoners that crashes, allowing them to escape. Despite their mutual hatred, they are forced to cooperate, as they are chained together. At first, their co-operation is motivated by self-preservation, but gradually they begin to respect and like each other.

They end up being captured by a lynch mob, who threaten to hang both of them, but they are saved and aided by a big white man (Chaney) who was once a chain-gang prisoner himself. They meet a fatherless boy named Billy (Kevin Coughlin), who takes them home. His mother (Williams) breaks their chain, but sets them up to be captured. Joker gets shot, and the film ends with the Sheriff (Bikel) finding him, barely alive, in Cullen's arms.

Switzer was murdered just 4 months after the film's release. Chaney died in 1973. Coughlin was hit by a car and killed in 1976, only 30 years old. Akins died in 1994, Kramer in 2001, Curtis in 2010, Bikel in 2015, Williams in 2021, and Poitier on January 6, 2022.

*

September 27, 1958 was a Tuesday. Actor Shaun Cassidy was born. And these baseball games were played:

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 9-5 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Ted Williams and Pete Runnels hit home runs for the Red Sox. Eddie Yost hit one for the Senators. Harmon Killebrew appeared as a pinch-hitter, but did not reach base.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente did not play.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Al Kaline went 1-for-4 with 3 RBIs.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. For the A's, Roger Maris went 0-for-3 with 2 walks.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Cincinnati Redlegs, 6-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Warren Spahn was the winning pitcher, and helped his own cause with a home run. Red Schoendienst and Frank Torre also hit home runs. Hank Aaron went 0-for-2, and was then replaced. For the Redlegs, who were restored to the Reds name the next season, Frank Robinson went 0-for-5.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-4 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Ernie Banks went 0-for-4 with a walk.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the San Francisco Seals, 11-7 at Seals Stadium in San Francisco. Stan Musial went 1-for-5. Willie Mays went 2-for-5 with an RBI.

* And the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles were rained out at Yankee Stadium. The game was rained out the next day, as part of a regular-season-ending doubleheader. The Yankees swept it, 7-0 and 6-3. In the opener, Yankee manager Casey Stengel trusted Don Larsen to start. Unlike in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, he didn't trust him to take a shutout into the 6th inning, even though he'd allowed only 1 hit and 1 walk. Ryne Duren pitched the 6th and the 7th, and Johnny Kucks pitched the 8th and the 9th, finishing the 2-hit shutout. Tom Sturdivant won the nightcap.

Over the 2 games, Mickey Mantle went 3-for-7 with a walk. Yogi Berra went 0-for-3 with a walk in the 1st game, and sat out the 2nd game. Brooks Robinson did not play in the 1st game, but went 1-for-4 in the 2nd.

March 29, 1959: "Some Like It Hot" Premieres

Left to right: Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon

March 29, 1959: Some Like It Hot premieres. It features 3 all-time legends at their peak -- 4, if you count director Billy Wilder.

The film begins in Chicago in 1929, with a pair of jazz musicians: Tony Curtis plays Joe, a saxophone player and an irresponsible ladies' man; and Jack Lemmon plays Jerry, a nervous double bass player. Prohibition is in progress, and Chicago is ground zero for gangland defiance of it. Joe and Jerry work in a speakeasy run by "Spats" Colombo, played by George Raft.

The speakeasy gets raided by the police. Spats finds out a rival gang's leader ratted him out, and so he has the gang gunned down, a reflection of the real-life St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Joe and Jerry see it, and know that Spats know the saw it. They have to get out of Chicago immediately: The weather is cold, but the heat is on them.

They disguise themselves as women named Josephine and Daphne, and join Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators, an all-female band on a train to a gig in nice warm Miami. On board, they meet the band's singer, Sugar Kowalczyk, a.k.a. Sugar Kane, played by Marilyn Monroe. Among the other "girls" in the band is a fiddler played by future Star Trek actress Grace Lee Whitney.

Sugar confides in the new "girls," saying that saxophone players have taken advantage of her in the past, and she wants to meet "a gentle, bespectacled millionaire" in Miami. So, upon arrival, while they perform -- Joe and Jerry in drag -- Joe takes on a 2nd disguise: "Junior," an heir to Shell Oil. Sugar likes him.

Curtis was then married to another blonde bombshell, Janet Leigh. Their daughter, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, was born between the end of filming and the release of the film. Curtis would later make the shocking claim that he didn't like kissing Monroe, the most popular sex symbol of the era.

An actual millionaire, the much-married, aging, mama's-boy Osgood Fielding III, played by Joe E. Brown, pursues "Daphne." Joe convinces Jerry to keep Osgood occupied onshore so that "Junior" can take Sugar to Osgood's yacht, and pass it off as his own. Once on the yacht, to "reel her in," Joe/Junior claims impotence, and that he would marry a woman who could cure him. She "cures him."

While this is going on, Osgood and Jerry/Daphne dance the tango all night. Back at the hotel, Jerry tells Joe, "I'm getting married!" Joe says, "Congratulations. Who's the lucky girl?" Jerry says, "I am!" Joe snaps him out of it, reminding him that he's "a boy."

But at least they're safe, right? Wrong: There's a Mob sit-down in Miami, and Spats is going to be there. They have to flee, and Joe, as Junior, calls Sugar on the phone, and tells her that he has to break up with her and marry a woman of his family's choosing, breaking her heart.

Joe and Jerry hide under a table at the banquet, and see Johnny Paradise, a young hitman played by Edward G. Robinson Jr., son of another actor well-known for playing gangsters, shoot and kill Spats. (There's an inside joke: Johnny is constantly flipping a coin, which was a gesture that Raft had made famous in gangster movies a quarter of a century earlier, possibly also inspiring the Batman villain Two-Face.) Now, they're in the clear of Spats, but not his enemies.

They put on their drag disguises. Joe sees Sugar onstage, singing a lament to lost love. He runs onto the platform and kisses her, causing Sugar to realize that Josephine and Junior are the same person. Jerry persuades Osgood to take "Daphne" and "Josephine" away on his yacht. Sugar runs from the stage at the end of her performance, and jumps aboard Osgood's launch just as it is leaving the dock with Joe, Jerry, and Osgood.

Joe tells Sugar the whole truth, and tells her that she deserves better, but Sugar wants him anyway, realizing he is the first man to genuinely care for her. Meanwhile, Jerry tries to get out of his promise to marry Osgood, by listing reasons why "Daphne" and Osgood cannot marry, including, "I've been living in sin with a saxophone player!" Osgood says, "I forgive you." Daphne says, "I can never have children!" Osgood says, "We can adopt some." Finally, Jerry rips off his wig, and says, "I'm a man!" And Osgood says, "Nobody's perfect."

The film ends there, but leaves it ambiguous as to how Joe and Jerry can stay out of the Mob's crosshairs. There would be no Federal Witness Protection Program until 1970. The easiest presumption is that Osgood could have used his wealth and connections to get them new identities -- identities which did not require them to pose as women.

So here, we have a film with gang violence, premarital sex, impotence, cross-dressing, a potential same-sex marriage, and a man questioning his gender identity -- all this, in a film released in 1959. The Ike Age. The Frigid Fifties, rather than the Fabulous side of the decade. The Hays Code, the puritanical guide that had ruled Hollywood with an iron fist since 1934, refused to approve the film. Ordinarily, this would have been a death blow: People would have been afraid to go see it, lest they be branded as "immoral."

Billy Wilder didn't care. He had already directed Ninotchka, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch (with Monroe), Love in the Afternoon, and Witness for the Prosecution. Some of these films had already tried the censors' patience. Along with his next film, The Apartment, Wilder proved that he didn't need the Hays Code's approval, and that people would watch his movies, anyway. It took until 1968, and a few more challenges, for the Code to finally fall.

Some Like It Hot was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, but won only one, for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- possibly Wilder's comeuppance for his defiance.

In 1972, the film was adapted into the Broadway musical Sugar, with Elaine Joyce in the title role, and Robert Morse and Tony Roberts as Joe and Jerry. It was re-adapted with an all-black cast under the Some Like It Hot name in 2022, and won 4 Tony Awards, including J. Harrison Ghee, who, as Jerry and Daphne, became, along with Alex Newell for Shucked at the same ceremony, the 1st nonbinary actor to win a Tony Award. (Since both were playing born-male roles, they had been put in the "Best Actor" category, rather than "Best Actress.")

At the time of filming, Marilyn Monroe was married to playwright Arthur Miller, and 4 months pregnant, making her curvier than ever. (I still wonder if Lemmon's line, "It's like Jell-O on springs!" was an ad-lib.) But she lost the baby, and she and Miller soon split up. She died in 1962. Edward G. Robinson Jr., a.k.a. Manny Robinson, also died young, at 40, of a heart attack in 1974. He had outlived his legendary father by only a year.

Joe E. Brown died in 1973, George Raft in 1980, Jack Lemmon in 2001, Billy Wilder in 2002, and Tony Curtis in 2006.

UPDATE: On April 5, 2022, 7 days after posting, the film's last surviving castmember died: Nehemiah Persoff, who played Mob leader "Little Napoleon" in the Miami banquet scene. He was 102 years old.

*

March 29, 1959 was a Sunday. Hockey star Brad McCrimmon was born. His sport was into its Stanley Cup Playoffs, but no games were played on this day. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season.

There were 2 games played in the NBA. The Syracuse Nationals beat the Boston Celtics, 133-121 at the Onondaga County War Memorial (now the Upstate University Medical Arena) in Syracuse, New York. Dolph Schayes scored 39 points. And the Minneapolis Lakers beat the St. Louis Hawks, 106-104 at the St. Paul Auditorium in St. Paul, Minnesota. Rookie Elgin Baylor scored 33 points.