Search for the Strangler (19 page)

Once I got Starrs on the phone, I asked if he knew anything about the Boston Strangler case.

“You mean Al Salvi?” Starrs replied. I took Starrs’s mistake as a good sign. It indicated to me that he likely did not have
a preconception about Albert DeSalvo’s guilt or innocence. “What exactly are you looking for, Mr. Sherman?” Starrs asked.

I told him about my connection with the case and said, “I don’t believe DeSalvo murdered my aunt, but I’m getting nowhere
with the authorities here. We’re not looking for fame, we’re not looking for money. We just want justice. I need to know if
it would be possible to find evidence of her killer on my aunt’s body?”

Starrs went on to tell me there were several factors that could help or hurt a forensic examination of my aunt’s remains.
“If she were shot, I’d say you were out of luck. But the fact that she was strangled indicates that her killer could have
left hair, blood, or saliva on her body,” he pointed out. It upset me to hear my aunt’s murder talked about so coldly, but
science had no room for emotions, and I would have to get used to it.

Starrs told me that he would be interested in getting involved in the case, but before signing on to such a project, he needed
to know everything possible about Mary’s burial. I promised I would get the information he required. Still, the thought of
exhuming my aunt’s body was troubling. Was there any other option?

“Professor, I know the state of Massachusetts still has evidence left from my aunt’s murder. If we sued for it, would we have
much of a case?”

“I’d much rather work with evidence that already exists. An exhumation is always the last resort,” Starrs replied. “But if
this case is indeed closed, I don’t see why you or your mother would not be entitled to the materials.”

“Do you know of any good lawyers in the Boston area?” I asked. I wanted an attorney Starrs would be comfortable working with.
He advised me to speak with a friend of his, an attorney named Elaine Whitfield Sharp. Starrs probably did not know this,
but Sharp was considered Attorney General Tom Reilly’s arch-nemesis. They had faced each other when Reilly was a district
attorney prosecuting the Louise Woodward case, in which Woodward, a British au pair, had been accused of murdering an infant
in her care. A British native herself, Sharp felt it her duty to defend the young woman, and she and her lawyer husband, Dan
Sharp, masterminded the medical defense in the case, producing medical experts to dispute the existence of the so-called shaken-baby
syndrome. However, she was probably best known to the public as the attorney who had hugged and consoled Woodward while the
young woman sobbed uncontrollably when the guilty verdict came down.

Starrs was highly complimentary of Sharp’s work, but I wasn’t so sure she was the right person for the job. Following Louise
Woodward’s conviction, Sharp had quit the defense team and was later arrested for drunken driving. She then accused the arresting
officer of sexual harassment. (That accusation would come back to haunt the attorney. In 2003, Sharp was found liable of defaming
the officer and ordered to pay $208,000 in damages. The verdict is currently under appeal.) I questioned whether she was stable
enough to take on the case. Out of respect for Starrs, however, I agreed to meet with the Sharps at their law office in the
historic seaside town of Marblehead.

As I drove to the meeting, on a Sunday afternoon in late March 2000, I drove through Chelsea, Albert DeSalvo’s birthplace.
I drove through Lynn, where Helen Blake had met a horrible death. I drove through Salem, where Evelyn Corbin had been strangled.
Finally, I arrived in the town of Marblehead. Elaine Whitfield Sharp met me with a smile at the office door and ushered me
into their conference room. Dan Sharp was already sitting there with a notepad and pen in his hand. I could tell immediately
that the couple was a contrast in styles. The boisterous Elaine reminded me of a matron at a British boarding school—friendly,
but you would not want to cross her. Dan was more of an introvert, a person who chose his words carefully. One thing was clear
in any case. Elaine Whitfield Sharp was neither shaky nor uncertain of herself. What I saw was an extremely intelligent person
who was strong enough to take on the most powerful people in Massachusetts.

I told the couple I believed that my aunt’s killer was still at large and that Massachusetts authorities were withholding
evidence and information about her murder. After I finished, they nodded to me and then began talking to each other as if
I weren’t there. They sparred for several minutes, citing various cases to deflate each other’s analysis. I found it unusual,
but it appeared to be effective. In time, they arrived at a common position: that since there was no longer an active investigation
into Mary’s murder, her family had a right to both physical and documentary evidence. “The evidence should be considered Mary’s
personal property and therefore be handed over to her family,” Elaine concluded. The Sharps agreed to take my family on as
clients and urged me to get the DeSalvo family involved as well.

“There’s one question that still bugs me,” Dan said before I left. “After all these years, why now?”

I said, “Dan, there’s no statute of limitations on murder. Would you not want a Nazi war criminal brought to justice regardless
of his age? People should be held accountable for their crimes no matter how much time has gone by.”

“You just said the right answer, Casey,” Dan said. “Guess what? You’ll be the family spokesman.”

By the time I left their office, I was confident that Elaine and Dan Sharp were the right attorneys for me. Both were well
versed in police corruption cases, and they conducted their work outside the old-boy network of Boston legal circles. I phoned
Richard DeSalvo’s son, Tim, and urged him to meet with Elaine Whitfield Sharp. I was told by both the attorneys and the DeSalvos
that the meeting went extremely well. Thereafter, the Sharps and I spent hours together and on the phone planning our legal
strategy. We began by sending requests to the five investigative parties in my aunt’s murder: the attorney general’s office,
the Boston Police Department, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, the Massachusetts State Police, and the state
medical examiner’s office. Each had been involved in the original investigation and could still possess vital information
and physical evidence that could help us prove our case. Relying on the Fair Information Practices Act and Freedom of Information
Act, the Sharps demanded that all evidence in the Boston Strangler case be turned over to the families of Mary Sullivan and
Albert DeSalvo.

None of us believed that the five parties involved in the original investigation would hand over the evidence without a drawn-out
fight. In the meantime, I needed something to demonstrate publicly that our cause was just. It had to be big, and it had to
be irrefutable. The biggest piece of evidence in the case I could think of was Albert DeSalvo’s confession, the only thing
that connected him to the crimes. John Bottomly had taped his lengthy interviews with DeSalvo and then reportedly hidden the
original tapes in a bank vault. There were also rumors that copies of those tapes existed.

The answer lay not far away from Mary’s grave. My mother reminded me that she had once heard about a Cape Cod police officer
involved in my aunt’s murder case. The Barnstable County sheriff, Nick Eldredge, had been asked to question witnesses in the
Hyannis area following Mary’s murder. He and his deputy, Tom O’Malley, jumped at the chance to work on such a high-profile
case. But that raised a question. There was not much in the way of crime on Cape Cod back in the 1960s. Nick Eldredge was
the man you wanted to see when a lobster trap went missing, but could he investigate a murder?

Tom O’Malley’s wife said her husband and Eldredge had once been invited to Boston to discuss the DeSalvo confession with their
big city colleagues. The meeting broke up early because of some emergency, and the cops from Cape Cod found themselves alone
in the conference room. One of the Boston officers had forgotten to take back some of the tapes of DeSalvo’s confession, and
when Nick Eldredge realized no one was coming back for the tapes, he stuffed them in his jacket and headed home to the Cape.
Surprisingly, no one ever came looking for the tapes, and Eldredge held on to them for the next thirty years. Nearing death
in the mid-1990s, Tom O’Malley had told my mother the story. “Everybody thinks I have the tapes, but I don’t. Nick Eldredge
has the tapes,” O’Malley claimed.

Eldredge was still living on Cape Cod. After retiring from the sheriff’s department, he had run a successful private detective
agency for several years. I telephoned him, explained who I was, and asked if he still had this piece of strangler history.
Though very guarded on the phone, he finally admitted that he still had the tapes. When I asked how he had gotten them, he
claimed copies were handed out to many police officials who worked the case.

Before I stood a chance of hearing the confession for myself, I needed to gain Eldredge’s confidence. On the phone I praised
his long and distinguished career and asked him to meet with me. Eldredge agreed to the get-together, but he would make no
guarantee about the tapes. He would not even meet me at his home; instead, he chose a parking lot in Hyannis.

Despite his advanced age, Nick Eldredge was still an imposing figure. He was tall with large, powerful hands; I winced as
he took my hand and squeezed it. The day of our meeting in the parking lot, Eldredge was wearing a gray windbreaker with a
pin prominently displayed on the lapel.

“What is the pin for?” I asked.

“I’m still a deputy sheriff, and I could get called back to duty at any time, so let’s make this quick,” he replied proudly.

“So, Nick,” I said, “where do you want to talk? We could grab a cup of coffee somewhere.”

“Oh, no,” he said, looking around the parking lot. “I’ve got just the place. Follow me.”

Hopping in my Blazer, I pulled behind Eldredge’s sedan. I sat behind him for a full five minutes until the road was clear
enough for him to venture out. We drove around Hyannis for almost half an hour, Eldredge keeping a steady pace of about twenty
miles an hour. Where the hell was he taking me? I couldn’t tell if he was trying to throw someone off his trail, of if he
simply had forgotten where he was going. Finally, though, we pulled into the “Bat Cave,” the Senior Citizens Center of Hyannis.
Eldredge took another five minutes to park, throwing his car into reverse, then forward, until it was just right—right in
the middle of two spaces, that is. As he got out of the car, I noticed that he had a thick folder tucked under his arm. Inside,
he asked the woman at the front desk if we could have a private room. She nodded, but warned us that the bridge club had reserved
the room in forty minutes, so we’d have to hurry. We started with some small talk. Eldredge told me that he wanted to sell
the DeSalvo tapes and cash in on his work on the case. He also asked me if I wanted to write a book with him. I shrugged and
said anything was possible. My eyes were focused on the folder. “Nick, can I take a look at that?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he replied, putting one large hand on top of the manila file.

“Look, Nick, I’m not here to pass judgment on your work in this case. I simply want to find out if DeSalvo is guilty or innocent.
I just want to make sure justice was done for Mary.”

Eldredge’s grip on the folder loosened; then he took out a couple of documents for me to see. One was particularly interesting.
Dated January 22, 1964, it was a five-page list of evidence taken from my aunt’s apartment by the Boston Police homicide unit.
The list contained 245 items. Had the police department lost 245 pieces of evidence? The list included a charm bracelet my
mother had given Mary when the two were kids; she had never gotten it back. Eldredge also had Mary’s prom picture in his folder.
My family had only a handful of pictures of Mary, and here was this stranger with her only prom picture! I swallowed my anger
and asked him to let me hear Albert DeSalvo in his own words.

Okay, I’ll let you listen to them,” Eldredge said. “But if you ever believed that DeSalvo was
not
the Boston Strangler, these tapes are gonna change your mind.”

Eldredge’s words disturbed me. Could all my work have been for nothing? Had Albert DeSalvo really murdered my aunt, after
all?

We set up another meeting, this time at Eldredge’s lawyer’s office. I wanted to go alone, but my attorney Elaine Whitfield
Sharp insisted on going with me. “If I’m going to represent the families in this case, I must be privy to everything,” she
said. How could I argue? Eldredge was less than pleased by her presence and said he wouldn’t play the tapes unless she waited
in the car. After a good deal of pleading by Eldredge’s lawyer, Elaine obliged, rolling her eyes at me as she went out.

“You can’t be too careful!” Eldredge explained.

When Eldredge pressed “play” on the recorder, I took a deep breath and listened intently to DeSalvo’s nasal voice as he described
how he had murdered Mary Sullivan. There were two other men in the room with DeSalvo during the taping: John Bottomly and
DeSalvo’s legal guardian, George McGrath.

BOTTOMLY
: The scarf . . . how did you use it?

DESALVO
: I tied her up with it.

BOTTOMLY
: In what fashion did you tie her? Did you tie her legs too?

DESALVO
: This thing has a lot of colors in it, very dark colors.

BOTTOMLY
: What did you use it for?

DESALVO
: Ah . . . tying of her hands.

BOTTOMLY
: The tying of her hands. You had her hands tied in front of her? She still had her clothes on?

DESALVO
: Yes.

MCGRATH
: She sitting on her bed or lying on it?

DESALVO
: She’s lying on the bed.