Search for the Strangler (7 page)

Mellon discussed his conclusions with John Bottomly in December 1964. Bottomly shocked the investigator by dismissing the
evidence out of hand. Instead, he said the task force was now focusing on Albert H. DeSalvo, an inmate at the Bridgewater
Psychiatric Hospital. Mellon was familiar with all the suspects in the Boston Strangler case, but he had never heard of DeSalvo.
Yet Bottomly said there were rumors that DeSalvo was going to confess to all of the murders.

During the same discussion, Bottomly asked Mellon to help locate DeSalvo’s family. It was known that he had a young wife and
two small children, but they had vanished from the family’s home. “We know he had an apartment in Medford. Why don’t you start
there?” Bottomly instructed. It took all of one afternoon for Mellon to find Albert DeSalvo’s wife. Driving to Medford, just
a few miles north of Boston, he inquired about the DeSalvo children at a local elementary school. There he learned that the
records of Albert DeSalvo’s daughter, Judy, had been sent to an elementary school in Golden, Colorado. DeSalvo’s son, Michael,
was too young to be enrolled in school. Mellon returned to the task force office and handed the information to Bottomly. “Pack
your bags, Jim. You’re going to Colorado,” he was told.

That night, Mellon took a commercial flight from Logan Airport to Denver. During the long and bumpy flight, Mellon chain-smoked
Pall Malls and read the police file on Albert Henry DeSalvo.

A lbert Henry DeSalvo was born on September 3, 1931, on the outskirts of Boston in the port city of Chelsea. Chelsea, which
covers roughly one square mile, is known as Boston’s poor sister to the north. Today the city has a strong Latino population,
but during the Great Depression it was a haven for destitute immigrant families from Italy and Ireland.

Like Mary Sullivan, Albert DeSalvo was the third of six children. His mother, Charlotte, was the daughter of a Boston firefighter.
His father, Frank DeSalvo, was a plumber by training but a petty thief by trade. Albert was five years old when his dad took
him to a store and taught him the art of shoplifting. When the elder DeSalvo wasn’t training his son to become a modern-day
Oliver Twist, he was treating his family to what seemed like a never-

ending series of beatings. At age seven, young Albert could only look on as his drunken father punched Albert’s mother in
the mouth, scattering several of her teeth across the room. Frank DeSalvo then made his children watch as he snapped each
of his wife’s fingers, pulling them back until they broke.

His father beat not only Albert’s mother but Albert as well. During one drunken rampage, Frank DeSalvo struck his young son
across the back with a lead pipe. Officers from the Chelsea Police Department were constantly called in to break up domestic
disputes in the DeSalvo household. They would usually find Frank DeSalvo drunk and screaming and a tearful Charlotte on the
floor in a pool of her own blood. The elder DeSalvo was arrested many times for beating his wife, but she always took him
back.

Money was extremely tight in the DeSalvo household. Although Charlotte did make some money as a seamstress, the DeSalvos were
always on welfare. Frank DeSalvo spent his days drinking, his nights cavorting with women in the family’s cramped Chelsea
tenement. When Charlotte was out of the house, he brought prostitutes home and made his children watch while he had sex with
them.

Albert later would claim that his father had once sold him and two of his sisters to a Maine farmer for nine dollars. According
to this story, which was printed in several books as factual, the three children were held captive for several months until
their father brought them home. But Richard DeSalvo, Albert’s younger brother, says the claims of child slavery are altogether
bogus. “Albert was a great storyteller,” Richard says.

But even if the DeSalvo household was only half as bad as Albert claimed, it still was no place for a young boy to grow up.
To escape his father’s drunken beatings, young Albert ran away several times, usually sleeping under the docks in nearby East
Boston, an area that was popular with the city’s urchins. Here, under the massive wooden pylons, Albert DeSalvo would learn
many skills from the other young ruffians.

DeSalvo was only twelve years old when he was arrested for beating up and stealing $2.85 from a neighborhood paperboy. Because
he had no prior criminal record, he was given a suspended sentence. Five weeks later, after he and a friend broke into a house
and stole jewelry worth $27, DeSalvo was caught with the stolen goods. The judge was not so lenient this time. DeSalvo was
committed to the Lyman School for Delinquent Boys on December 29, 1943. Opened in 1848, the school was in 1943 the oldest
reformatory in the United States and home to some eight hundred boys, most of them sentenced for violent crimes. The school
taught the standard reading, writing, and arithmetic, but most left with what they may have deemed more useful skills. Lyman
was a farm system for the streets, where boys would teach each other things like pickpocketing and the fastest way to hot-wire
a car.

Albert DeSalvo would stay at the Lyman School for ten months. During this time, he was examined by a state psychiatrist, Dr.
Doris Sidwell, who concluded that Albert was of normal intelligence. She also noted that the boy was deeply afraid of his
father and was highly suggestible.

DeSalvo stayed out of trouble while at the Lyman School and was paroled in October 1944. That same year, his father vanished,
taking with him the dark cloud that had hung over the family. Charlotte DeSalvo divorced him a year later. Thus, when Albert
returned to his family in Chelsea, he no longer had to fear another violent eruption from his father.

Though he showed little aptitude for schoolwork, Albert DeSalvo received a different education outside the classroom, where
he was romancing a thirty-five-year-old woman with a son his own age. And sex was not the only thing on DeSalvo’s mind. It
did not take long for him to return to his life as a thief. In 1946, he was arrested for stealing a car and sent back to the
Lyman School.

Paroled in 1947, DeSalvo went back to school. This time, he took honest jobs, completed the ninth grade, and then tried to
enlist in the United States Marine Corps, which rejected him for being overweight. DeSalvo then gave the U.S. Army a try.
He passed the physical and took the oath to defend his country on September 16, 1948, at Fort Banks, Massachusetts. After
basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, he was shipped overseas to Bremerhaven in Germany to join the 7720th European Command.
DeSalvo was stationed at Headquarters Command for the fourteenth Armored Cavalry for three months before being transferred
to Company G in Bamberg, Germany. There he served as an assault rifleman and light weapons infantryman. He also worked as
a truck driver and motor messenger clerk. DeSalvo’s superiors seemed to like the young man from Boston. His efficiency ratings
ranged from “good” to “excellent.” The army also awarded him a good conduct medal, the Army of Occupation Medal with a Germany
Clasp, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Sharpshooter Badge with a Rifle Bar.

DeSalvo also found success in the military boxing ring. Standing five feet, ten inches and weighing by this time 155 pounds,
the young DeSalvo was a fighter to be reckoned with, a veteran of many street wars in his hometown who had learned defensive
moves from fighting with his own father. Crowned middleweight champion of Company G, he rose to the rank of sergeant but then
was brought up on charges for failing to obey a lawful order from a noncommissioned officer. Tried by a summary court-martial
on August 17, 1950, he was reduced to the rank of private and fined fifty dollars. Later that year, he was honorably discharged
as a private first class and reenlisted for another tour of active duty.

It was during this time that DeSalvo met Irmgard Beck, a young German woman, at an army dance. Beck, who lived with her parents
in nearby Frankfurt, spoke English and was captivated by the smooth-talking DeSalvo. The two were married on December 5, 1953.
DeSalvo took his young wife back the states, where he was first stationed at Fort Hamilton, New York, and then at Fort Dix.

Married life proved difficult for Irmgard DeSalvo. Albert was constantly demanding sex, and when she said she was too tired
for it, he sought excitement elsewhere. On January 5, 1955, DeSalvo was arrested for molesting a nine-year-old girl. The girl
claimed that a soldier had knocked on her front door saying he was looking for a place to rent. After she allowed the man
inside, she said, he attempted to fondle her chest and thighs. The girl’s brother then came into the room, and the man fled.
The brother told police that the suspect had a “Jimmy Durante nose.” Around that time, a woman in the area reported a similar
story about a man trying to talk his way into her home. She had written down his license plate number, which was Albert DeSalvo’s.
When DeSalvo was brought in for questioning regarding both cases, the nine-year-old identified him as the soldier who had
attacked her. Denying the accusations, he was released on $1,000 bail. Fortunately for DeSalvo, the girl’s mother feared the
publicity the case would bring and refused to press the complaint. The charges were dropped, and the army did not take action.

Soon after, Irmgard DeSalvo discovered she was pregnant. The couple’s first child, Judy, was born later that year. The birth
of a daughter did little to ease the growing tension between Albert and Irmgard. Judy had been born with a rare pelvic disease
and wore specially fitted removable casts in order to correct her crippled hip. Father Albert would tie the cast with big
colorful bows to keep it tight around Judy’s leg. It was something of a game between father and daughter.

In 1956, DeSalvo left the army. He moved his family to his hometown of Chelsea and began searching for work. But honest work
did not supply the kind of money and excitement he sought. In early 1958, he was arrested for trying to break into a house
during the night. Found guilty, he received a suspended sentence, but less than a month later, he was arrested in Chelsea
for two daytime break-ins. DeSalvo told the judge he committed the crimes because he desperately needed money to buy his wife
and daughter gifts for Valentine’s Day. The story must have struck a chord because the judge gave DeSalvo another suspended
sentence.

In the summer of 1959, DeSalvo and his wife returned to Germany. While there, Albert hatched a scheme that he would later
use to great effect back in the United States. He visited U.S. Army post exchanges, claiming that he worked for
Stars and Stripes,
the army newspaper, and selected female employees for a phony “Best Sweetheart of All” contest, taking their measurements
and promising first prize to the one who kissed him. This ploy kept him busy for the two months he and his wife and child
spent in Germany. But by the fall, DeSalvo was back in Chelsea and back in trouble with the law. In October 1959, he was arrested
for breaking and entering and again received a suspended sentence.

A healthy son was born to Albert and Irmgard in 1960. Michael’s birth appeared to bring about a brief change in Albert. For
the first time in his marriage, he came home at night for dinner and played with the kids. But the interlude did not last
long. On St. Patrick’s Day in 1961, while Irish-American revelers were cramming local pubs, DeSalvo attempted to break into
a house in Cambridge. Spotted by two police officers, he fled on foot. After a brief chase, one of the cops, too exhausted
to continue, fired a warning shot into the air, and DeSalvo froze. The officers found burglary tools in his jacket. After
he was booked, DeSalvo was stripped down and thrown into a cell at Cambridge Police Headquarters, where he stayed for six
days with barely anything to eat. He later told his family it was worst experience of his life.

While in custody DeSalvo offered the first of many startling confessions to police. He boasted to investigators that he was
the mysterious “Measuring Man,” the nickname given by police to an offender who had sexually assaulted several Cambridge women.
The suspect would spot attractive women walking the streets around Harvard Square, follow them home, and then approach them
at their doors. Passing himself off as a representative from a modeling agency, he’d ask the women if they ever dreamed about
appearing in magazines or in the movies. Then he would take out his measuring tape and ask the aspiring models if he could
size them up.

The Measuring Man played the perfect gentleman until he placed the tape measure around a woman’s breasts, at which point he
would grope and paw the victim. Most of the victims reacted angrily, and the Measuring Man would vanish quickly. The technique
evolved from DeSalvo’s beauty contest scam in Germany. Concerning the fact that he had approached young women near the campus
of Harvard University, DeSalvo said, “I’m not good-looking. I’m not educated, but I was able to put something over on high-class
people.” Brought to trial in the Measuring Man case in May 1961, DeSalvo confessed to assaulting a dozen women but was found
guilty only on two counts: assault and battery and lewdness. But this time there was no suspended sentence: DeSalvo was given
two years at the Billerica House of Correction. The sentence was later reduced, and DeSalvo was freed in April 1962.

Once out of jail, the young father of two found steady work as a painter and laborer with the Munro Company in Chelsea. DeSalvo
usually worked alone but would sometimes ask his younger brother, Richard, also a Munro employee, to help him. As the body
count began to rise in the so-called Boston Strangler case, DeSalvo began to take notice. “He was always looking through the
paper, reading about the murders,” Richard recalls.

In September 1962 Albert got a new job, as a handyman for a Malden contractor, Russell Blomerth. His work put him in close
contact with many housewives, likely a dangerous temptation for DeSalvo. Yet he doesn’t seem to have acted on his sexual urges
while doing jobs for Blomerth in various homes, even though he worked in close contact with several women, including Mrs.
Miguel Junger of Belmont, Massachusetts, whose son Sebastian would grow up to write
The Perfect Storm,
a best-selling book about doomed Gloucester fishermen.