Search for the Strangler (11 page)

DESALVO
: I . . . I came inside her.

BOTTOMLY
: Did you come anywhere but inside her?

DESALVO
: It’s possible that I did come on the floor afterwards.

BOTTOMLY
: And what did you do after you had intercourse with her?

DESALVO
: Well, she started to wake up, and I grabbed a nylon stocking, and she was the one I had to tie really tightly. . . . She
started to fight, and I know I made it so tight I was unable to see it.

BOTTOMLY
: And what kind of knot did you put in the stocking?

DESALVO
: Three and one . . . two turns over and one. One on top.

BOTTOMLY
: Okay, so it’s two.

DESALVO
: And I also . . . when she was . . . well, that’s another reason why that I put the panties in her mouth, because she’s waking
up, but she’s still not able to do nothing. To keep her from screaming, I put her pants in her mouth.

BOTTOMLY
: And what about the clothes that she was wearing as you walked in, and what was there at the last?

DESALVO
: I stripped her naked. I stripped her naked, I do recall this.

BOTTOMLY
: Was she wearing a bra?

DESALVO
: Yes.

BOTTOMLY
: Was she wearing anything else also?

DESALVO
: There could have been a half-slip.

BOTTOMLY
: Anything else?

DESALVO
: A white . . . she had stockings on and shoes.

BOTTOMLY
: Now, did you do anything else with the bra?

DESALVO
: The bra I could have put around her neck, but I’m not sure on this one.

BOTTOMLY
: Did you put anything else around her neck? Other than the bra and her stocking?

DESALVO
: Yes . . . a kerchief . . . no, let me think. Let me think . . .

BOTTOMLY
: Something she might be wearing?

DESALVO
: Yes.

BOTTOMLY
: What?

DESALVO
: [A] blouse. Ah, this is a [snaps fingers] . . . let me think . . .

BOTTOMLY
: Remember, now, she started to come to and you had to put the panties in her mouth, and you tied the very tight knot with
the stocking . . .

DESALVO
: Could be a handkerchief.

Professional law enforcement agents cite this passage as another example of how not to conduct an interrogation. DeSalvo claims
he ejaculated inside Clark, but Bottomly then slyly indicates the killer also ejaculated elsewhere in the apartment. DeSalvo
makes a mistake by saying he “stripped her naked.” Knowing this is not true, Bottomly then asks him if he kept her bra on,
in effect steering DeSalvo back onto the right track. When the interrogator asks DeSalvo if he “did anything else with the
bra,” the question implies that the killer used more than one ligature.

Even with Bottomly’s none-too-subtle assistance, DeSalvo’s efforts to implicate himself in the Clark murder were so flawed
that they should have been repudiated by authorities. First, DeSalvo told Bottomly that Sophie Clark had greeted him at the
front door without her glasses on. However, Clark’s roommates said she had very poor eyesight and was never seen without her
eyeglasses. DeSalvo also incorrectly described the color of Clark’s bathrobe, telling Bottomly it was a “white-type throw-on.”
Clark had been wearing a blue floral housecoat when she was killed. In addition, DeSalvo claimed the victim had been wearing
black high heels, but the case file indicates that at the time of her death she had on rubber-soled loafers. Finally, DeSalvo
maintained he had seen several musical instruments and some bottles when he walked in the front door of the flat. There were
no instruments or empty bottles inside Clark’s apartment.

Admittedly, DeSalvo correctly stated that Sophie Clark had been menstruating, a fact never reported in the press. So where
did he get his information? Jim Mellon claims that DeSalvo was coached by his lawyer and members of the Boston Strangler Task
Force. After all, it was in their interest to make DeSalvo the Boston Strangler.

DeSalvo also could have received details of the killings from George Nassar, who himself was a suspect in the murder of Sophie
Clark. At the time of her death, he lived just a few blocks away from her, in Boston’s South End neighborhood. In his confession
to Clark’s murder, DeSalvo mentioned that he had visited the apartment of another black woman in Clark’s building, at 315
Huntington Avenue, that same day. He said he had told the woman he was there to do some painting, but was scared off when
the woman claimed her husband was next door and would be home soon. Marcella Lulka, a resident of 315 Huntington Avenue, told
the police that a man had knocked on her door the day Clark was murdered. She described the man as approximately five feet,
nine inches tall, about 150 pounds, with brown hair. When police took Lulka to Bridgewater State Hospital in an effort to
identify DeSalvo, Lulka watched as a group of inmates ate dinner, DeSalvo among them. Lulka said that DeSalvo was not the
man who had come calling but that the man next to DeSalvo looked very familiar. That man was George Nassar.

DeSalvo’s account of the killing of the twenty-six-year-old aspiring opera singer Beverly Samans also conflicted with known
facts. The Samans killing bore little resemblance to the other Boston Strangler murders in that the Cambridge woman was not
only strangled but also butchered. Susan Kelly, in her 1995 book
The Boston Stranglers,
writes that Albert DeSalvo told authorities he stabbed Samans twice with a switchblade that he later discarded in a marsh.
In reality, she had been stabbed seventeen times to the throat and left breast. The murder weapon—a paring knife, not a switchblade—was
found in the kitchen sink.

Patricia Bissette had been strangled inside her Park Drive apartment, just beyond Fenway Park. DeSalvo incorrectly told Bottomly
the woman lived across the street from a hospital. He also said he had taken her pajama bottoms off in the living room and
then forced her to strip completely naked. Bissette’s pajama bottoms were actually found in her bedroom, and she was not naked
but wearing her bathrobe when police discovered her body.

DeSalvo’s photographic memory also failed him when he was asked to describe the murder of strangler victim number nine, Evelyn
Corbin. DeSalvo claimed he had talked his way into Corbin’s apartment and then forced her to have sex. He said Corbin complained
that because of a physical condition, she could not have intercourse but under duress, she offered to perform oral sex. But
there is no mention in Corbin’s autopsy report about a preexisting medical condition and the oral sex act had been described
in the newspaper. DeSalvo added that after the sex assault, he had choked Corbin with his bare hands and then used a pair
of nylons to finish the job. But Corbin’s hyoid bone and the cartilages of her larynx and trachea were intact. DeSalvo described
the victim as five foot, five inches tall with brown hair. Corbin was only five foot, two inches tall, and her hair was platinum
blond. DeSalvo also described reddish wallpaper in her apartment, but Corbin’s walls were stucco. Of the major details that
DeSalvo did get right in the Corbin murder, most had been printed in the newspapers.

Despite DeSalvo’s repeated mistakes, Bottomly pressed on. The tenth victim would be next, twenty-two-year-old Joann Graff.
Although DeSalvo liked to visit the scenes of the strangler’s crimes, he clearly never had traveled to Graff’s apartment in
Lawrence. DeSalvo told Bottomly that Graff lived on the first floor of her building; her apartment was on the third floor.
He described it as a “one-room flat.” He apartment had a separate kitchen and a bathroom. He said Graff had been wearing a
black leotard when he strangled her. Every newspaper account mentioned that Graff had been strangled with a leotard, but because
her slacks and panties were found intertwined on the bedroom floor, police believed it was unlikely that she had been wearing
the leotard found around her neck. DeSalvo claimed he had strangled her with the leotard and a single nylon stocking, but
the autopsy report states that two nylon stockings were tied around her throat. DeSalvo, the man described by psychiatrists
as having a photograph memory, could not even remember the month of Graff’s murder. He could remember only that it had occurred
sometime after September 1963.

I t had been more than a year since Mary Sullivan’s murder, and her sister Diane had lost all hope that police would find
the killer. Diane had graduated from Barnstable High School, but instead of backpacking across Europe with her older sister
as they had planned, she went to work as a hairdresser in her aunt’s beauty salon. Though she maintained a cheery outlook
on life to her friends and coworkers, there was pain inside.

She did find comfort with her boyfriend, Donny Sherman, an active-duty marine who had been introduced to her by Mary. In the
months after the murder, Diane had felt a need to get on with her life and jumped at the chance to marry him soon after high
school graduation. Following a small wedding, Donny went back to duty with the U.S. Marines, and Diane remained on Cape Cod,
awaiting the birth of their first child and dreading the thought of the first anniversary of her sister’s murder. On January
4, 1965, when she was nine months pregnant, Diane once again drove to Sea Street Beach to talk to her sister. Despite a strong
winter chill coming off the water, a warm feeling came over Diane as she walked the snow-covered sand. She held her growing
stomach and asked her angel Mary to watch over her baby. Two weeks later, on January 19, 1965, Diane gave birth to a son,
Todd Forrest Sherman.

As Diane grew into her new and demanding role as a mother, she never lost sight of the Boston Strangler investigation. Because
the family no longer received phone calls from the police, Diane had to rely on newspapers for updates on the search for Mary’s
killer. Yet the story, which had dominated the news for so long, now was relegated to an occasional mention. John Bottomly
was keeping Albert DeSalvo’s confessions a secret from everyone, including his own boss, Attorney General Edward Brooke, who
was engaged in a tight race for the U.S. Senate, with his hope for success seemingly tied to a resolution of the Boston Strangler
case. (Bottomly was concerned that Brooke would see the flaws in his interrogation of DeSalvo.) Brooke had promised the public
swift justice when his office took over the case, and he believed the public would not forgive him if the killer or killers
were not found soon.

An FBI memorandum dated September 24, 1965, states that its Boston office had received information from the Massachusetts
attorney general’s office and the Boston commissioner of police indicating that local authorities believed they had located
the person responsible for the eleven strangulation murders that had occurred in Boston. Local authorities identified the
suspect to the FBI as Albert Henry DeSalvo, then incarcerated at the Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts.

Though the federal authorities were supplied with a name, they weren’t told much else. In a letter to James L. Handley, special
agent in charge of the Boston office of the FBI dated October 29, 1965, John Bottomly wrote that “because of the present state
of the investigations and the demands associated with the preparation of cases for possible presentation to grand juries,
it does not appear to be appropriate at this time to divulge information about the modus operandi or possible admissions of
Albert Henry DeSalvo. However, please be assured that this Department [the attorney general’s office] will cooperate at the
earliest possible date when disclosure of such information could not possibly jeopardize investigations or legal proceedings.”

John Bottomly was apparently trying to buy time. If he gave DeSalvo’s confession tapes to the FBI, serious questions could
be raised about the man’s guilt. DeSalvo himself did not share these worries. He was now completely immersed in his new role
as the Boston Strangler, a designation that certainly carried more weight with his fellow inmates than the Measuring Man.
DeSalvo even added two more names to the victims’ list, sixty-nine-year-old Mary Brown and eighty-five-year-old Mary Mullen.
As with his other confessions, DeSalvo did not let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Mary Brown had been stabbed
to death on March 9, 1963, inside her Lawrence home. When asked to describe the place, DeSalvo said Brown lived in a gray
clapboard house. The house was actually painted brown with asbestos shingling. DeSalvo also said that when he entered the
home, he had had to open a door and turn right to go up the stairs. The stairs were in fact straight ahead from the door.
DeSalvo then claimed that he had grabbed a fork from the silverware drawer and stabbed Brown in the right breast. Photos taken
at the crime scene showed that Brown had been stabbed in the left breast. Finally, DeSalvo said he had not had time to steal
anything from the apartment. But again, crime scene photos contradicted his confession. The victim’s apartment had been ransacked.

Mary Mullen died nearly a year before Mary Brown. Albert DeSalvo remembered every detail in the Mullen case because he was
there on the night she died. Mullen’s death was not a homicide, however; she had dropped dead of a heart attack when she saw
DeSalvo. He had told his brother Richard that he had broken into an elderly woman’s apartment on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston
on June 28, 1962, having thought no one was home and he would have plenty of time to search for valuables. But when he entered
the apartment, he was startled to find Mary Mullen in her bathrobe in the hallway. The fright was too much for Mullen, who
collapsed on the floor. DeSalvo told his family that he had picked up the dead woman, placed her on the couch, and covered
her body with a blanket. Mullen’s death is the only one DeSalvo was really responsible for, and it tore him up inside. Richard
DeSalvo says Albert wept when he spoke about the experience and swore he would stop breaking into people’s homes.