Search for the Strangler (17 page)

WBZ ran Michael DeSalvo’s interview on our
11:00 P.M.
newscast on November 7, 1999. The
Globe
and its tabloid competitor, the
Herald,
ran stories about Michael’s interview in their morning editions on November 8. The other local TV stations clamored for interviews
with Michael. When I called Michael to congratulate him, no one answered. “He probably needs some time to himself,” I figured,
but knowing how fragile Michael was at the time, I could not help worrying. My colleague the reporter Charlie Austin caught
up with Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly on November 9 and asked him about the possibility of reopening the Boston
Strangler case. Reilly pointed out that his office had never charged DeSalvo with any of the strangler murders. What he seemed
to forget was that his predecessor Edward Brooke had sold the public on DeSalvo’s guilt. Reilly added that he would be willing
to meet with the strangler victims’ families to discuss their concerns.

A few hours after this interview, the attorney general telephoned me in the newsroom and asked me to state my case. Tom Reilly,
I knew, was politically astute, but he had not been getting the attention he yearned for. I told him my Aunt Mary was said
to have been the final victim in the Boston Strangler case. I also explained why I had serious doubts regarding the guilt
of Albert DeSalvo. The soft-spoken Reilly said he was not familiar with the history of the case, but he offered to look at
the Boston Strangler files and see if there was sufficient cause for a reinvestigation. “I’ll put my top guy on it, and he’ll
get back to you,” Reilly told me.

Several days after the story on Michael DeSalvo ran, I still hadn’t heard from Michael, though I had left a number of messages
on his answering machine. I had given him a private screening of our story before it aired, and he said he liked it, so he
couldn’t be angry at me, I thought. Finally, I received a call from a nurse at a local psychiatric hospital. Michael DeSalvo
was back in rehab. “He claims he’s the son of Albert DeSalvo,” the nurse informed me. “He’s not delusional,” I told her. “He’s
exactly who he says he is. Can I speak with him?”

Michael got on the phone. “Hey, buddy,” he mumbled.

“Michael, what’s going on . . . what happened?” I asked.

“It happened,” he replied. “I was walking down my street the day after the show aired and this little kid pointed at me and
said, ‘There’s the Boston Strangler!’” Michael was crying now. “I just walked past him and straight to the package store,
and now here I am. I’m so sorry.”

“No, Michael, I’m sorry,” I replied. “I made you a promise, and I let you down.” I told Michael not to worry about the case
and that his only concern was getting well. After I hung up, I slammed my knuckles down hard on the desk. I had known he was
vulnerable. I should have done more to protect him. I vowed never to place Michael DeSalvo in that position again.

Now that WBZ-TV had revived it, reporters all over the city were competing for a fresh angle on the Boston Strangler story.
With Michael in hiding now, they were forced to call upon people associated with the case to get their point of view. The
Herald
quoted Dr. Ames Robey as saying he was in favor of exhuming Albert DeSalvo’s body for DNA testing. The paper also interviewed
Jim Mellon. I had read about Mellon several times in connection with my aunt’s case, but I had never been able to track him
down. I thought Mellon had died, but according to the
Herald
the seventy-five-year-old retired police officer was living in Marshfield, which, coincidentally, was F. Lee Bailey’s hometown.
While I was driving along Route 3 caught in heavy traffic heading into the city, I dialed 411 on my cell phone on the off
chance that Mellon’s number was listed. It was. When I reached him at his house, I could tell by the sound of his weary voice
that he’d already been flooded with interview requests.

I said, “Mr. Mellon, I would love to send a reporter to your home to do a follow-up on our story, but more important, I’d
like to meet you myself.”

“Why all the interest in this case, young man?” he asked.

“Sir, my aunt was Mary Sullivan. My mother has lived for nearly forty years with the belief that her sister’s killer was never
caught. I happen to believe she’s right.”

Mellon paused a moment. “Oh, yes, Mary Sullivan . . . that poor girl. I was one of the first officers to arrive at her apartment
that night. Awful—it was just awful.”

I asked him if he had any idea who may have killed Mary. “Well, I don’t think these murders were all done by the same guy,”
Mellon answered. “But in her case, I’m positive it was a boyfriend of one of her roommates.”

I offered up the name Joseph Preston Moss. “That’s your guy,” Mellon said. “You find him, you’ll find her killer.”

I kept Jim Mellon on the phone that morning for a full hour. He told me he had remained on the police force for twenty years
after my aunt’s murder, with much of his career spent walking the beat in some of Boston’s toughest neighborhoods. “I was
passed over when it came to promotions, and it was all because I wouldn’t play ball on the strangler case,” Mellon told me.
Since his retirement from the Boston Police Department in 1985, he and his wife had lived comfortably on his pension in their
home just a few yards from the ocean.

“My kids get a kick out of the fact their old man was involved in something like that,” he said, referring to the Boston Strangler
case. But then he brought the conversation back to the victims, the way he always did. “Those poor girls,” he said. “What
happened to them was horrible. And what happened afterwards was just as bad.” Mellon’s voice trailed off. At first, I thought
I was having problems with my cell phone. But then I realized the investigator had traveled back nearly forty years in his
mind. Mellon was picturing himself inside my aunt’s apartment. He saw the broomstick on gruesome display. He saw the Happy
New Year card next to Mary’s foot.

“As I said, young man, you find Preston Moss, and you’ll find the real killer!” Mellon finally said.

“Can I call on you for help?” I asked.

“Sure, son, I’ll be right here.”

I t was time to find Preston Moss. I knew he had grown up in the Boston suburb of Arlington and attended Boston University
for one year. Mellon told me he had last had contact with Moss in December 1964. After authorities focused on Albert DeSalvo,
Preston Moss dropped out of college and out of sight.

My first course of action was to visit my friends on the I-Team, the investigative arm of WBZ-4 news. Tucked away in their
tiny, cluttered office, team members reporter Joe Bergantino and producer Paul Toomey are Boston’s version of Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein. The I-Team has alerted the public to priest abuse in the Catholic Church and uncovered cost overruns in
the Big Dig project, the largest highway construction project in history. The team has all sorts of investigative tools at
their fingertips. Using one of these, a computer program called Auto-Tracker, you can type in a person’s name, and if that
person has ever applied for a driver’s license, his full name, the town he lives in, and his phone number pop up on the screen.
There could be only one Joseph Preston Moss out there, and an Auto-Tracker search for him was certainly worth a shot. Paul
Toomey typed in Moss’s name, and the program produced a result in seconds. There on the computer screen was the name Joseph
Preston Moss. He was still living in New England.

Jotting down Moss’s phone number and current address, I walked back to my desk, picked up the phone, and started dialing the
number. I was about to speak with the man who may have murdered my aunt. What would I say? I let the telephone ring a couple
of times and then abruptly hung up. Clearly, I was not prepared for this conversation. I told myself I’d call him when I got
home.

In my kitchen that evening, I stared at the tiny piece of paper with the phone number on it, rolling it back and forth between
my fingers. I still wasn’t ready to place the call. I stayed up late into the night, examining every piece of information
I had on my aunt’s murder. Was Moss really the killer? I had thought for a long time that Nathan Ward, Mary’s former boyfriend,
was the strongest suspect. Ward’s volatile relationship with Mary and their sudden breakup offered a motive. There were also
discrepancies in his alibi.

Jim Mellon thought Ward was a flake, but he didn’t believe he was responsible for Mary’s murder. Mellon thought Moss was a
much more likely suspect. He believed Moss was sexually repressed and angry at Delmore for refusing to have sex with him.
Was it because Delmore was seeing someone else, or was it because the apartment was too crowded for any chance of intimacy?
Mellon thought Moss blamed Mary for this. What did I know about this Preston Moss character? The fact that he had failed two
lie detector tests disturbed me. And why had Moss been so interested in the police investigation of Mary’s death?

The next morning, I went about my routine as if nothing was bothering me. While I sipped my coffee and my wife, Laura, drank
her Diet Coke, she asked me if I was doing anything interesting that day. I told her no. At this point, there was no need
to worry her. I waited for her to leave for work before I picked up the telephone and made the call. “Here goes nothing.”
I said to myself. The phone rang three times, and a woman answered. I introduced myself as a journalist from Boston and told
her who I was looking for.

“What’s this about?” the woman asked.

“I’d just like to ask him some questions for a story I’m working on,” I replied. She barked Moss’s name, and a few seconds
later, he picked up the telephone. Introducing myself as a Boston journalist but not mentioning my family connection to Mary,
I said, “I’d like to ask you some questions about the Boston Strangler case, specifically about the murder of Mary Sullivan.”
Moss gasped. Then for several seconds there was an awkward silence. It was as if the ghost from Christmas past had just appeared
at his bedside.

Moss finally broke the silence. “Didn’t they get the guy?” he asked nervously.

“No, not yet,” I replied. “But the good thing about this case is that there’s no statute of limitations on murder. In fact,
weren’t you once considered the prime suspect?” When Moss did not answer, I asked again. “Isn’t it true, Preston, that you
failed two lie detector tests?”

“Yes, but it was way back in the sixties. Those things aren’t scientific.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I replied, doing my best Colombo imitation. “But I got to tell you. There are some people who are
convinced you’re the guy. I know if I was being accused of a heinous crime, I’d do whatever it took to clear my name. Preston,
would you be willing to take a DNA test to settle this matter?”

“No!” Moss shot back, his voice getting louder. “I’m not gonna take any test unless there’s a court order.”

“One may be coming for you some day, Preston, so I’d watch out if I were you,” I advised. Moss slammed the phone down.

I ran through the conversation in my mind. He’s definitely concerned about something, I decided. I would let my words sink
in a bit before trying to contact him again. I had worried him, and, I must admit, it felt good.

When I got to work that day, there was a message for me to call Assistant Attorney General Gerry Leone. It was now late November
1999. I told Leone everything about the case that I thought was important, including my conversation with Moss. Leone promised
to take a fresh look at the Boston Strangler files and then to meet with my family. I told him my mother had waited nearly
forty years to get answers to the questions about her sister’s murder, and a few more months wouldn’t hurt us.

Nonetheless, I knew that to get the full attention of the attorney general’s office, I needed help from the family of Albert
DeSalvo. I also knew Michael was still struggling with personal problems and would be in no shape to meet with the state’s
top law enforcement officials. It was time, then, to call Richard DeSalvo once more. My pitch to Richard took a more urgent
tone this time around. I told him the state of Massachusetts was taking the Boston Strangler case seriously again, but that
time was running out. “It’s now or never, Richard,” I warned. “We need to get this done while many of the key players are
still alive.”

This time, Richard DeSalvo was up to the challenge.

“What the hell, Casey, let’s do it,” he said.

R ichard DeSalvo and I formed a most unusual alliance: the family of an accused serial killer joining forces with the family
of his last alleged victim in a search for the truth. Although we were now a team, we had different goals, however. I wanted
to find my aunt’s killer; to do so I would have to exonerate Albert DeSalvo. Richard wanted to clear his family name, not
so much for his brother’s sake but for his young grandchildren. He simply wanted the stigma removed from his family’s name.

Back at the station, I got word that Edward Brooke was back in Boston and wanted to talk about the Boston Strangler case.
Brooke was writing his autobiography and was trying to drum up attention. My colleagues and I thought it best that I not conduct
the interview because my personal stake in the story could pose a conflict of interest. Again, I relied on my friend the veteran
reporter Charlie Austin to be my voice.

Austin caught up with the retired politician at his Boston office and asked him about the new developments in the case. “Do
you think the case should be reopened?” Austin inquired.

“If it would not bring more pain and suffering to victims’ families, I certainly would have no objection to it,” Brooke answered.

Austin asked Brooke if he had gotten the right man.

The answer was startling. “If you ask me if I’m convinced that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler,” Brooke said, “I can’t
tell them [the victims’ families]. I can’t give them a definitive answer.”