Search for the Strangler (14 page)

At the police station, Bailey refused to take a sobriety test and would not sign a property sheet for his belongings or sign
for his allowed telephone call. The prosecution called thirty witnesses at Bailey’s trial in April. Each testified that Bailey
had acted peculiarly and irrationally. Bailey’s attorney, Robert Shapiro, had one ace in the hole, however: a lack of concrete
evidence that his client was drunk at the time of his arrest. It was good enough to gain an acquittal. Nonetheless, the California
Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Bailey’s driver’s license for six months because of his refusal to take the sobriety
test.

A year later, Massachusetts made public the names of more than a thousand of the worst tax evaders in the state. One name
on the list was that of F. Lee Bailey, who owed $57,562 in back taxes. In response to this news, Massachusetts Governor Michael
Dukakis asked the state legislature to suspend Bailey’s license to practice law, but lawmakers never took action against Bailey.
The default eventually was settled, and Bailey would remain out of the public eye until the “trial of the century” a decade
later, the murder trial of football legend O. J. Simpson.

The Sullivan family sought to move beyond Mary’s murder. Their home on Sea Street in Hyannis, once filled with Mary’s cheerful
voice, was now ringing with the sounds of grandchildren. As Diane’s second son, born on January 19, 1969, I was part of the
baby boom in the Sullivan family. My earliest memories of my grandparents’ house are joy-filled. It was always the setting
for large family gatherings during the holidays. My brother, Todd, our cousins, and I would spend hours exploring the old
house, finding new spots to hide. Our favorite place was in a spare bedroom just above the kitchen. A small vent in the bedroom
allowed us to listen to the conversations the grown-ups were having on the floor below. Their talk usually bored us, though.
They’d discuss the news of the day, work, and us kids.

One topic that apparently was off limits was my Aunt Mary’s death. I knew Aunt Mary only from her portrait on the mantelpiece,
the same picture that had fallen and whose frame had been smashed after her funeral. Her reframed portrait stood among those
of other family members. I would stare at the photo often as a child, mesmerized by Mary’s chestnut hair, brown eyes, and
the sober look on her face. She appeared very sad to me. My mother, for her part, was not fond of the picture. “I prefer to
remember her smiling,” she would say. Still, Mom never told me what had happened to her sister. An inquisitive little boy,
I would always ask her who the sad lady in the picture was. “She was my sister and my best friend,” Mom would reply. “Where
is she?” I’d ask. “When you’re older,” she would say and kiss my cheek. “When you’re older.”

Years passed. During the summer of 1988, before I entered college, I was sitting on the couch at home with the remote control
in hand, flipping through television channels, when I came across the movie
The Boston Strangler
on Channel 38. I sat glued to the television set watching Tony Curtis go from apartment to apartment, offering women his
killer smile and then something even more deadly. “So this is how it happened,” I thought.

The next day, I felt uncomfortable, not knowing how to broach the subject with my mother. She had already experienced enough
pain in her life. My mother’s third child had been stillborn, and we were both grieving the loss of my father, Donny Sherman,
who had died suddenly in 1986. Over breakfast, we chatted about my summer job and even the pitching rotation of the Red Sox.
Finally, I got up the nerve. “Mom,” I said, “tell me what happened to Mary.” She put her cup of coffee down on the kitchen
counter. “I remember the last time I saw her. It was Christmas,” she recalled. “We were having such a great time. I remember
twice saying, to her, ‘Mary, why move up to Boston now? Stay another week. We’re having so much fun.’ I always wonder if she
would have stayed if I asked her one more time.” Mom spent the next several minutes telling me about Mary’s murder. I could
hear the pain in her voice. Trying to console her, I walked over to her chair and placed an arm on her shoulder. “At least
they got the guy,” I said. Mom looked up at me sadly. “No, no, they never did,” she replied.

My mother’s words gave me my life’s mission. I wanted to ease her pain, but how? I did not see myself becoming a police officer.
Calling me undersized would be an understatement. At five foot, two inches, there was no way I could meet the law enforcement
height requirement. So I decided to become a journalist. I realized that a pen and notepad could be just as effective as a
gun and badge when it came to getting to the truth.

At first, I wanted to prove that my mother was wrong and that Albert DeSalvo really was who he claimed to be. By doing so,
I might close this heart-wrenching chapter in Mom’s life. I knew that DeSalvo had been murdered in prison and if we were certain
he was Mary’s killer, we could gain a certain sense of Old Testament justice from that.

As a journalism student at Boston University, I sat through countless lectures on story structure, lead writing, and interviewing.
I showed an aptitude for the work and was an above-average student for the first time in my life. But my real training as
a reporter would come at night in the bowels of the college library. Fortunately, the library had microfiche copies of all
the local papers, dating back several decades. I grabbed a film reel labeled “
The Boston Globe
” dated 1964, fastened it to the machine, and started to read, scrolling up to January 5, the day after Mary had been killed.
My aunt’s face staring up at me from the monitor, I read the news story, which made heavy use of the words
strangled, murder,
and
rape.
Suddenly I got up and ran to the nearest bathroom, where I lost my dinner. Mary’s murder had become real to me for the first
time.

I went back to the microfiche collection and kept returning there, night after night. The more I read, the more questions
I developed about the case. Each newspaper story contradicted the one that had preceded it. Some reporters had left out key
facts, while others had obviously created facts in an effort to tell a more sensational story. In short, newspapers were useless.
To learn the truth, I would have to track down the people who had actually worked on the case. In the autumn of 1991, I went
to a professor in the broadcast journalism department at the university and pitched the idea of doing a class project on the
Boston Strangler case. “What is there left to tell?” the professor asked. “Everything,” I answered. She told me to go ahead
and see what I could find out.

The first person I called was Tom Troy, the Boston attorney Albert DeSalvo hired after firing F. Lee Bailey. Troy represented
DeSalvo in his unsuccessful attempt to block the opening of
The Boston Strangler.
The six-foot, two-hundred-pound Troy rivaled Bailey for flamboyance. If Bailey had the private plane, Tom Troy often rented
helicopters to make grand entrances in front of courthouses all over Massachusetts. Troy was the son of a Boston cop shot
dead in the line of duty two weeks after Troy was born. His mother had to raise a family that included his brother and two
sisters on a $35,000 trust fund established by a local newspaper. Troy argued his first case in front of a judge when he was
just fifteen years old, saying that his father’s killer should not be paroled. The killer’s parole was denied. Troy was best
known for defending a Tufts University professor, William Douglas, who had been charged with the murder of a Boston prostitute,
Robin Benedict. Although no body was ever found, Douglas confessed to the killing just before his trial was about to begin.

Needless to say, Troy had no reason to sit down for an interview with a college lad. “Look, kid, I’m heading down to Florida
this afternoon and don’t have time for this stuff. Why are you interested in the story anyway?” he asked me. I told him who
my aunt was and that I was beginning to doubt that Albert DeSalvo was the killer. “Casey,” Troy replied, “I’m sorry to hear
about your aunt, I really am. Let me tell you something about Silky DeSalvo. He was no more the strangler than you or me.”
“What makes you so certain?” I asked. He said, “First of all, the guy didn’t have a violent bone in his body. He was a lover,
not a killer. And besides, he told me that the story was bullshit.” I wanted clarification. “You mean he told you that he
wasn’t the strangler?” I asked. “That’s right,” Troy replied. “Albert DeSalvo told me that he was not the Boston Strangler.”

The next name on my list was Dr. Ames Robey. The psychiatrist agreed to meet me on the BU campus. This time, I wanted to make
sure I got the interview on tape. I negotiated with a classmate, offering to shoot his video project in return for use of
his camera. The deal was struck just as Robey was making his way up the steps of the College of Communications. A large man,
Robey cut an impressive figure, even in his seventies. After telling me he still saw patients regularly in his Stoneham home,
Robey discussed with me DeSalvo’s psychological makeup, explaining that DeSalvo was not violent but prone to great exaggeration.
Robey added that he thought George Nassar could have committed some of the Boston Strangler murders. “After so many years,
is there any way this case can finally be solved?” I asked. Robey ran his hand over his bald head. “I know there was semen
left at some of the crime scenes. With what’s now being done with DNA testing, I don’t see why not,” he replied. DNA testing,
I thought. Could it be the key that would unlock the case?

After the Robey interview, I went out to get footage of the outside of two of the apartment buildings where the women had
been killed. With my borrowed video camera, I jumped on the subway, or the T, as it is called by Bostonians, and headed west
on the Green Line, toward 1940 Commonwealth Avenue, the address of the Boston Strangler victim Nina Nichols.

It was a busy Friday afternoon in that part of the city. Many neighborhood residents were college students getting an early
jump on the weekend. While I was setting up my shot, a few guys entered the building with cases of Budweiser under their arms.
I hoped no one would walk into the middle of my shot. As several young women made their way in and out of the building, I
wondered if they had any idea of what had taken place inside.

The last location on my shooting schedule was 44A Charles Street, an address I was in no rush to see. When I found my aunt’s
apartment building, I was unnerved by the fact that it looked exactly as it had in news photos from 1964. For a few moments
I let my imagination get the better of me, traveling back in time to the day of Mary’s murder. If I had been in my spot outside
the building that day, would I have seen my aunt’s killer as he entered her building? Could I have stopped him from committing
the crime? I was brought back to reality when what had been a light drizzle turned to a heavy rain. Quickly videotaping several
exterior shots of the building, I then walked a couple of blocks and ducked into a small tavern called The Sevens. Two men
in suits were sitting at the bar, and a couple of construction workers were in the middle of a heated game of darts. “Brown-Eyed
Girl” by Van Morrison played on the jukebox. The bar seemed familiar to me, almost as if I’d been there before. What I didn’t
know then was that The Sevens had been Mary’s favorite pub during her brief stay in Boston. Sitting down at the mahogany bar,
I ordered a beer and got lost in my thoughts. If only someone had seen something, I told myself. At that moment, I began to
understand the questions and guilt my mother had been haunted by for so many years.

My obsession with the Boston Strangler case started to affect my love life. I didn’t see or talk to my girlfriend for days.
Laura Russell was an Irish-American lass, a finance major at Northeastern University with an adorable smile and a sharp mind.
When we finally got together, she told me she had been noticing a change in me. Even when we were discussing our hopes for
the future, my mind was somewhere in the past. Fortunately for me, Laura refused to let my involvement with the case drive
a wedge between us. “It’s really important to you, so it’s important to me. If the only way to be with you is to become involved
in this . . . I will,” she told me one night, over pizza and beer at her apartment. And Laura turned out to be true to her
word. She became my videographer.

My final interview subject was my mother. I wanted her to tell the world what she had been telling me, that Mary’s killer
could still be out there someplace. We shot the interview outside one sun-splashed autumn afternoon on the Boston Common.
I gave Laura a crash course on filming and sat Mom down on a wooden bench for the interview. Making sure Laura was rolling
tape, I asked my first question: “Mom, how does it feel being here in Boston, just blocks from the place where Mary was murdered?”
My mother paused for a moment, searching her mind for the answer. “I don’t want Mary to be just another statistic, victim
number eleven,” Mom said. “She was a real person, a beautiful girl and a loving sister.”

Laura had never heard my Mom open up like that. “I can’t believe she’s carried this around for so long,” Laura would say later.
“Now I really know why you want to solve this case.”

A fter graduating from college, I began the job hunt. No Boston television stations were hiring reporters straight out of
college, so I jumped from one low-level sales job to another. Frustrated, I would call my Nana Florry for a few words of encouragement.
My grandmother and I were particularly close. She had watched my transformation from aimless teenager to driven adult. “You’re
better than anyone I’ve seen on TV,” she said, trying to boost my confidence. By coincidence, the day I landed my first television
job was the day Florry Sullivan died. I delivered the eulogy at her funeral. It was the spring of 1994, thirty years after
Mary’s murder. The Sullivan family had gathered once again at St. Francis Xavier Church to say good-bye.