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SERIAL KILLERS			Date Added
	Albert DeSalvo		May 2002

	Bio
	Full Name	Albert Henry DeSalvo
	Date of Birth	3 September 1931
	Known Also As	The Boston Strangler The Phantom Strangler The Green Man The Measuring Man
	Hit Count	13
	Information & Pictures
	On the evening of 14 June 1962, twenty five year old Juris Slesers walked up the stairs to his mother's apartment on Gainsborough Street in Boston, Massachusetts. He had arranged to drive her to a memorial service at the Latvian Lutheran Church in nearby Roxbury. Mrs Slesers, a petite fifty five year old divorcee, had fled Soviet occupied Latvia with her son some twenty years earlier. For the past three months, since Juris had moved out, she had lived alone in her tiny third floor apartment.
	[ Anna Slesers ] The Boston Strangler's first victim, Anna Slesers, was 55 when she died. She had been born and brought up in Latvia, where she gained a degree in agronomy - the science of land and crop management. Married with two children, Anna Slesers divorced in the late 1930's and then fled Latvia when it was annexed by the USSR as a consequence of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact. In 1950, she and her children reached the USA. Her daughter, Maija, married in 1960 and moved to Maryland. Anna then lived with her son, Juris, until the beginning of June 1962, when she moved to an apartment in a converted townhouse in Gainsborough Street. She led a quite respectable life, working as a seamstress for $60 a week. Her social life, such as it was, revolved around the Latvian Lutheran Church and her love of classical music - the apartment was a short walk from the Symphony Hall.
	Juris knocked on the door but there was no answer. He presumed his mother had popped out to do some shopping, so he sat on the front steps and waited. Three quarters of an hour passed and Juris became concerned. He went back upstairs, hammered on the door and shouted his mother's name. There was still no response, so he put his shoulder to the door and broke into the apartment. Juris looked in the living room and the bedroom, both of which were oddly untidy, but there was no sign of his mother. He then headed for the bathroom.
	[ Albert DeSalvo ]
	Anna Slesers was lying just outside the bathroom door. She was wearing a blue taffeta housecoat which was spread wide apart at the front, leaving her effectively nude. She lay with her left leg stretched out and her right leg flung at right-angles with the knee bend so that she was grossly exposed. The cord of her housecoat was knotted tightly around her neck and fastened under her chin in a crude bow. She was obviously dead. The police led by Special Officer James Mellon, arrived on the scene within minuted of receiving Juris Slesers' call. Despite the fact that there was little sign of disturbance, it was obvious to Officer Mellon that he was dealing with a murder. Mrs Slesers had been sexually assaulted and then strangled. He initially suspected someone had broken into the apartment with the intention of committing robbery, had found Mrs Slesers in a state of undress, and was seized by an uncontrollable sexual urge. The intruder then assaulted Mrs Slesers and strangled her to prevent her from identifying him. Thr police conducted a thorough investigation : house to house enquiries were carried out; relatives and friends were interviewed; a few possible candidates for the crime were picked up and questioned. But the police made no real headway and, gruesome though the crime was, it soon became just another statistic. Boston averaged more than a murder a week at that time and, with a total lack of clues, the police accepted that their chances of ever finding the man responsible for Anna Slesers' death were very slim.
	[ Helen Blake ] The two women strangled on 30th June 1962 - Nina Nichols and Helen Blake - did not know each other, but, strangely they had much in common. Nina Nichols was a retired health care professional. Although three years older than Helen Blake, she appeared younger, and enjoyed a lively social life visiting friends and relatives in the Greater Boston area. She also loved music. Mrs. Nichols had been widowed 20 years before her death but, despite her outgoing nature, had no men friends. She had held the position of Chief Physiotherapist at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital until her retirement in 1959, when she moved to her apartment on Commonwealth Avenue. Helen Blake (above left) was a sixty five year old retired nurse of modest means. She had been married once, briefly, but the marriage had been annulled in 1927, when she was 30. Since then, she had lived quietly, sharing her life with a small circle of female friends. She was an accomplished pianist and a keen concert-goer.
	At five o'clock on 30 June, two weeks later, Nina Nichols, a 68 year old retired physiotherapist, returned home to 1940 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. She had just spent a few days in the country with friends. As soon as she got into her apartment, Mrs Nichols called her sister, Marguerite Steadman, to say that she would be over for dinner at 6pm. The sisters chatted for a while but Nina Nichols cut their conversation short, saying: "Excuse me, Marguerite, there's my buzzer. I'll call you right back." Mrs Nichols didn't call Marguerite back, nor did she arrive for dinner at 6pm. By 7pm her sister was becoming concerned and asked her husband, attorney Chester Steadman, to telephone her sister to make sure everything was all right. There was no reply to his call. Another half an hour passed, and the Steadman's were becoming alarmed. Nina was a methodical woman, noted for her punctuality. Maybe she had been taken ill. Chester Steadman called the building janitor, Thomas Bruce. Would he go up to Mrs Nichols' apartment to see if she was still there? Bruce went upstairs, knocked on the door and, when there was no reply, opened it with his pass-key. He never set foot inside. What he sae from the doorway was enough to tell him everything. The apartment had obviously been burgled; drawers were pulled over out and clothes were strewn all over the floor. But there was worse, much worse.
	[ Thomas Bruce ]
	Bruce could see into the bedroom directly ahead of him, and on the floor was the nude body of Nina Nichols. Around her neck, tied so tightly that they cut into her flesh, was a pair of stockings. They were knotted under her chin in a clumsy bow. Detective Lieutenant Edward Sherry was soon at the scene with Medical Examiner Dr Michael Luongo. The similarities to the Slesers murder were immediately obvious to both men. Both women had been sexually molested and then strangled, both had been left in a grossly exposed state, and then there were the telltale bows in the ligatures. There was no sign of forcible entry to either apartment; both had been ransacked but apparently nothing taken in either case, despite the fact that high value, easily disposable items like jewellery and cameras had been lying around. The police came to the conclusion that the murderer had never intended to commit a robbery; he had merely wanted to give the impression of doing so. So what were they dealing with? Two murders did not constitute serial, but Sherry and his colleagues had a terrible gut feeling that there was a sexual psychopath on the loose in Boston. They did not have to wait long before their fears were confirmed. Two days later on 2nd July, police received a call from the neighbours of Helen Blake, a sixty five year old retired nurse. Helen had not been seen for a couple of days. Her friends had been concerned and had borrowed a pass key from the building supervisor. They had opened the door of her apartment, had seen signs of a burglary and had been afraid to go in.
	[ Albert DeSalvo ]
	When the police entered the apartment they found Helen Blake lying face down on her bed. She was naked except for a pyjama top, which had been pushed up to her shoulders. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a pair of stockings. A brassiere was also tied around her neck, and fastened under her chin in a bow. The medical examiner estimated that Blake had been dead for about three days. Boston Police Commissioner, McNamara was winding up a conference on the murders of Anna Slesers and Nina Nichols when Detective Lieutenant Donovan told him that Helen Blake's body had been found. As Donovan gave him the details of the killing, McNamara expressed the feelings of the whole police department. "Oh, god," he said, "we've got a madman loose!" What McNamara could not know was that these three murders were just the beginning and that, over the next eighteen months, ten women would be strangled and sexually assaulted in Boston. The city would become paralysed with terror. Not since Jack the Ripper staled the East End of London seventy five years earlier had the world seen sexual murder on this scale. As the public screamed for a solution to the atrocities, the police mounted the greatest manhunt known in modern crime, using every known detection technique, both natural and supernatural. They used computers, clairvoyants and psychometrists, psychiatrists with hypnotic drugs and truth serums, psychologists, experts on anthropology, graphology and forensic medicine. But they found themselves confronted by a man whose brutality and insanity was matched by enormous cunning. He appeared to be able to gain access to locked apartments, molest and kill women, and never leave a single clue.
	[ Albert DeSalvo ]
	The day after the discovery of Helen Blake's body, Police Commissioner McNamara cancelled police leave. There was a round up of all known sex offenders and anyone between the age of 18 and 40 who had been release from a mental institution in the previous two years was investigated. The police had a press conference during which they appealed to women, particularly those living alone, to keep their doors and windows locked, to admit no strangers, and to report any prowlers, obscene phone calls or letters. They set up an emergency hotline which was to be manned 24 hours a day. Over the next few weeks, the police were deluged with telephone calls and letters conveying tips, suspicions and alarms, both genuine and spurious. Lieutenants Sherry and Donovan, Special Officer Mellon and Detective Phil DiNatale, along with scores of other detectives, spent long hours covering leads and tracing and picking up possible suspects. The police held identity parades and administered lie detector tests on scores of men. None of them were the Strangler.
	[ Ida Irga ] Aged seventy five, Ida Irga lived alone since being widowed in the 1930's. She was a keen concert-goer and and out-patient of Massachusetts Memorial Hospital.
	Towards the end of August there had been no more killings, and McNamara was beginning to hope that the Strangler had sated his hideous cravings. Then on 21st August, they found Ida Irga. A seventy five year old widow, Mrs Irga had been dead for two days. She had been strangled by human hands, but a pillow case had also been tied round her neck in a bow. Like the other victims, she had been sexually molested. Again, the apartment had been ransacked, yet no property had been removed. There was no doubt that Mrs Irga was the Strangler's fourth victim.
	[ Jane Sullivan ] Aged sixty seven, she was a night-shift nurse at Longwood Hospital. She came from an Irish family, was wary of men and had never married.
	Ten days later, police discovered he had struck again. This time his victim was Jane Sullivan, a sixty seven year old nurse. She was found in the bathroom of her Dorchester apartment. She had been dead for more than a week. Her body was half kneeling in the bath, her face and arms submerged in six inches of water so that her buttocks were exposed. She had been strangled with two of her own stockings. The killing had taken place somewhere else in the apartment and she had been placed in the bath after she was dead. Three months passed without a strangulation but, far from relaxing, the people of Boston were becoming hysterical. The Strangler was seen everywhere. Every prowler, every flasher, every obscene phone caller was automatically presumed to be him. A housewife in Brockton dropped dead of a heart attack when she found herself confronted by a stranger on her doorstep. He turned out to be selling encyclopaedia's. The Strangler dominated the media. The Boston Advertiser launched an 'Appeal to the Strangler'. "Don't kill again," it began. "Come to us for help. You are a sick man. You know it..." The Strangler did not accept the paper's invitation. The police, with the help of a host of experts, had built up a complex psychological profile. He was, as they believed, between eighteen and forty years old, white, highly intelligent but psychopathic, He might well be homosexual or bisexual and he probably suffered from schizophrenia. He hated women, particularly older women, and had probably been brought up by a domineering mother. To his actual identity though, they still had no clue.
	[ Sophie Clark ] A student hospital technician, aged twenty, from New Jersey. She shared her apartment with two other women.
	When the next killing occurred on 5th December 1962, even their psychological profile proved at least partially incorrect. The last victim, Sophie Clark, could not have been more different from the established Strangler 'type'. She was an attractive twenty year old black student who shared a flat with two female flatmates.
	[ Patricia Bissette ] Aged twenty three, Patricia Bissette also shared an apartment at Back Bay. She was on month pregnant when she died.
	And Patricia Bissette, who was found strangled and sexually assaulted on New Year's Eve, was twenty three and white. It was now obvious that the Strangler struck at random and no woman in Boston, young or old, black or white, living alone or living with others was safe.
	[ Beverly Samans ] Beverly Samans, aged twenty three, she was a graduate student and would be opera singer. She worked part time as a music therapist in hospitals.
	On Wednesday 8 May 1963 thirty three year old Oliver Chamberlin called round to see his fiancée, Beverly Samans, a graduate student at Boston University. There was no answer when Chamberlin rang the bell of Beverly's apartment, so he let himself in with his own key. He aw her at once. She was sprawled on a sofa bed in the living room and was naked. Her wrists were tied behind her back with sequin-studded silk scarves. A blood stained stocking and two handkerchiefs were knotted around her neck. Beverly, however, had not died of strangulation. She had been stabbed twenty two times in the throat and left breast. There was no doubt, however, that this was the work of the Strangler, whose body count had risen to eight.
	[ Evelyn Corbin ] Evelyn Corbin was fifty eight, she was a vivacious divorcee who looked much younger than she was. Evelyn lived alone and worked in a factory.
	Three months passed before the Strangler struck again. Number nine was a vivacious fifty eight year old divorcee called Evelyn Corbin. She was found by a neighbour, strangled, assaulted and grossly exposed. Again the police found no clues, except for a donut on the fire escape outside Mrs Corbin's apartment. Friday 22nd November 1963 is a day that no American will ever forget. President John F Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, Texas. The following day the entire nation was in shock, but for the Strangler it was business as usual. This time the victim was a shy twenty three year old, Joann Graff. He strangled her with her own black leotard and left her nude body on a day bed in her apartment. Christmas came and the people of Boston did their level best not to let the Strangler ruin the holiday season. Indeed he did not strike over that period but, shortly after new year.
	[ Mary Sullivan ] Mary was aged nineteen years old and was a secretary who had moved into her shared apartment in Beacon Hill just three days before her death.
	Pamela Parker and Patricia Delmore returned from work to find their nineteen year old flatmate, Mary Sullivan, brutally murdered. It was the most grotesque and macabre killing so far. In the words of the police report, Mary's body was "on the bed in a propped position, buttocks on pillow, back against headboard, head on right shoulder, knees up, eyes closed, viscous liquid dripping from her mouth to right breast, breasts and lower extremities exposed, broom stick handle inserted in vagina..." Knotted around her neck were a stocking and a silk scarf tied together in a huge bow. A bright card which read 'Happy New Year!' was propped against her left foot. The public outrage was intense and, two weeks later, the Attorney General, Edward W. Brooke Jnr, announced that the Attorney General's Office of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was taking over the investigation. The crime against the people of Boston had reached a point where it was intolerable. The Strangler task force worked tirelessly throughout 1964, expending literally hundreds of thousands of man hours. There were no further strangulations, but the police's determination to identify and convict the Strangler was undiminished. They periodically came up with suspects and a parade of bizarre figures were brought in for questioning, only to be released. There was the Finnish dish washer, the homosexual show salesman with religious fixations, the brilliant Harvard drop-out who thought he was the reincarnation of Othello. And then there were the 'confessors', an assortment of oddballs who regularly confess to crimes that they haven't actually committed. By the autumn of 1964 the authorities were no nearer to catching the Strangler. It was now nine months since he had struck and there was a feeling that the killer might have moved out of the area, committed suicide or merely quit. Then on 27th October, the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received a complaint from a young housewife which was destined to open a whole new avenue of enquiry. She told detectives that she was dozing in bed, after seeing her teacher husband off to work, when a man appeared at the door of her bedroom. He was about 30, medium build, wearing green slacks and large sunglasses. The man had come slowly towards her and said, "Don't worry, I'm a detective." The young woman had yelled at him to get out, but the man had leapt forward, pinned her to the bed and held a knife to her throat. "Not a sound," he had commanded, "Or I will kill you." The intruder had gagged his victim with her underwear, then tied her ankles and wrists to the bedposts so that she was spread-eagled. He proceeded to kiss and fondle her body. Suddenly he had stopped, got to his feet, loosened her bonds slightly. "You be quiet for ten minutes," he said. "I'm sorry," he added and then fled the apartment.
	[ City Under Siege ] During the Strangler scare, the homes of many women in Boston became like fortresses. Some extra-cautious householders even placed tin cans on their staircases to trip up night time intruders.
	After she had finished giving her statement to detectives, the young woman spent several hours with a police artist trying to establish a likeness of her attacker. Between them they did a good job. One of the detectives recognised the face immediately. "That looks like the Measuring Man," he said. The 'Measuring Man' was well know to Boston Police. He had been convicted and jailed in 1960 for breaking and entering and indecently assaulting young women. He had gained his nickname because he had a habit of posing as an artist's agent, calling on young women and taking their measurements for supposed employment as models. The Measuring Man's real name was Albert Henry DeSalvo.
	[ Albert DeSalvo ]
	Thirty three year old maintenance man DeSalvo was picked up and brought to the police headquarters at Cambridge. He denied assaulting the young woman but she identified him immediately. DeSalvo was charged and taken into custody. As a matter of routine, the Cambridge Police tele-typed DeSalvo's picture to neighbouring states. The response was astounding. Messages poured in from New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut to say that DeSalvo had been identified by scores of women as being the man who had sexually assaulted them. In some areas he was known as the 'Green Man' because of his penchant for green trousers. If the reports were accurate, DeSalvo's energy was staggering. It appeared that in a single day, 6th May 1964, he had assaulted four women in four different towns in Connecticut - New Haven, Hamden, Meriden and Hartford.
	[ Albert DeSalvo ]
	DeSalvo denied everything and refused to answer any questions until he had spoken to German-born wife, Irmgard. She was duly delivered to him and detectives watched them as they whispered together. Then she said aloud to DeSalvo "Al, tell them everything, don't hold back."
	[ Albert DeSalvo & his wife, Irmgard ]
	DeSalvo heeded his wife's advice and told detectives: "I have committed more than 400 breaks (breaking and entering), all in this area, and there's a couple of rapes you don't know about." As the investigation widened, detectives soon realised that DeSalvo was not exaggerating. They estimated that over the past two years he had committed sexual assaults on more than 300 women. DeSalvo was shipped to Boston State Hospital for observation while he awaited trial for the 'Green Man' offences. Doctors found him to be 'overtly schizophrenic and potentially suicidal', and on 4th February 1965, Judge Edward A. Pecce ordered him to be committed to Bridgewater State Hospital "until further orders from the court". DeSalvo should really have been caught up in the 'Strangler Dragnet' three years earlier, because of an administrative anomaly, he had been listed on the computer as a break and entering man rather than a sex offender, and so he had been overlooked when Boston police were conducting routing questioning early in the case. Now they wanted to know if he was involved.
	[ Albert DeSalvo & his son, Michael ]
	DeSalvo was horrified at the suggestion that he might be connected with the killings. "No, no," he wept. "I've done some terrible things to women - but I've never killed anyone." Detectives were initially inclined to believe him. DeSalvo didn't fit their profile of the Strangler, and he simply wasn't smart enough to have got away with it. In Bridgewater, DeSalvo befriended a convicted killer named George Nassar and soon he was using him as a confidant. DeSalvo hinted to Nassar that he was the Strangler. There was a $110,000 reward offered to anyone giving information which led to the capture and conviction of the Strangler, and Nassar saw this as a perfect chance to make a fast buck.
	[ George Nassar ] George Nassar was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital after the murder on 29th September 1964 of Irvin Hilton, a 44 year old Texaco petrol station attendant. Fount to have schizophrenic and paranoid tendencies. Nassar was kept for long-term observation. At Bridgewater, he met Albert DeSalvo. On 26th June 1965, Nassar was tried for Hilton's murder and found guilty. He was placed on Deathrow at Walpole State Prison, pending appeal from his lawyer, Lee Bailey. On 7th June 1966, his conviction was quashed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
	He informed his attorney, F. Lee Bailey. Bailey went to see DeSalvo and recorded his confession to all 11 Boston stranglings, plus another two killings which the police had not previously connected with the Strangler. Bailey turned a copy of his tape over to the police and the Attorney General's Office. At first everyone was sceptical. Not only did DeSalvo fail to fit their profile, he had also gained a reputation as a braggart. But he was questioned at length, he started to disclose facts about the killings that only the Strangler could have known, facts that had been deliberately kept secret to catch out the 'confessors'. DeSalvo drew diagrams of the various apartments where the killings had taken place, and under hypnoanalysis described the actual stranglings in gruesome detail. Finally the authorities were forced to accept that he might indeed be the Boston Strangler.
	[ John S. Bottomley ] John Bottomley, the man to whom Albert DeSalvo would reveal all his crimes during taped confessions, was a native of Boston and the son of an influential Massachusetts Republican. A graduate of Deerfield, Harvard and Boston University Law School, Bottomley served as Assistant US Secretary, established in Berlin to rule Germany after the Second World War. He then progressed to the Attorney General's Office, where he entrenched his reputation as a formidable administrator with the Eminent Domain, a department that dealt with the acquisition of private land for public use. Bottomley's appointment, as a forty two year old, in January 1964, to supervise the Strangler investigation was a sensitive one, because of the unprecedented intervention of the Attorney General's Office in a criminal case. But he's skills enabled him to establish a trusting relationship with DeSalvo which would prove crucial in obtaining the confessions.
	It was the spring of 1965. The manhunt, now in its third year, was wound down and the investigation team was reduced to two men. Assistant Attorney General John Bottomley spent several months interviewing DeSalvo, talking him through each murder in minute detail. DeSalvo proved to have an incredible memory and his descriptions of the various murders left Bottomley in absolutely no doubt that Albert DeSalvo and the Boston Strangler were one and the same person. Bottomley had his confession, but he had no one to corroborate it. DeSalvo's victims could not testify against him and there were no eye witnesses to identify him. A man cannot be convicted solely by his own uncorroborated testimony. After all that effort, the state still had no case. DeSalvo had committed other crimes, however, for which the police had ample evidence. On the last day of June 1966 Albert DeSalvo attended a hearing at Middlesex County Courthouse in East Cambridge, which was designed to determine whether he was mentally fit to stand trial for the 'Green Man' offences. It was his first public appearance since he had been committed to Bridgewater on 4th February 1965. Everyone in the court knew that DeSalvo was probably the Boston Strangler, yet that case was not allowed to be mentioned.
	[ Albert DeSalvo ]
	Dr Mezer and Dr Tartakoff appeared as expert witnesses for the prosecution. They said that, in their opinion, Albert DeSalvo was suffering from a committable mental illness but was quite capable of standing trial. Dr Robey, however, who had originally committed DeSalvo to Bridgewater, disagreed completely. He said: "He is suffering from schizophrenic reaction, a chronic undifferentiated type with very extensive signs of sexual deviation... My opinion is that I cannot - repeat - cannot consider him competent to stand trial..." Dr Robey added that, in his opinion, DeSalvo would react to cross examination by getting "in such a state that he would not be making sense." Ten days later Judge Cahill accepted the prosecution argument and found Albert DeSalvo competent to stand trial. The following year DeSalvo was tried and convicted of armed robbery, breaking and entering, theft, assault and sex crimes against four women, all of whom were lucky enough to live to identify their attacker. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. While Albert DeSalvo was never to stand trial as the Boston Strangler, the system had made sure he would never be free again. As it turned out, the length of his sentence was academic. On 26th November 1973, Albert DeSalvo was found dead in his prison cell in Walpole State Prison. He had been stabbed sixteen times. The identity of his killer has never been established.
	[ Albert DeSalvo ] DeSalvo was taught in prison to make fake jewellery - with conscious irony he specialised in 'choker' necklaces. Taken in March 1973, this is the last known photograph of the Strangler.
	Few grieved DeSalvo's death. His fellow inmates at Walpole State Prison closed ranks and refused to reveal his killer's identity. His wife had long since returned to Germany to build a new life. For most people, it was no bad thing that the Strangler - who had never actually been tried for the Strangler killings - would now not even be able to walk the length of his prison cell.
	[ Britain's 'The Sun' Newspaper ]
	The years in which DeSalvo turned Boston into a city of fear and mourning were the turning point in the history of American multiple murders. Before the 1960's, the United States had thrown up just on or two serial killers in a decade. Then, however, their numbers began to increase; 6 in the 1960's 17 in the 1970's 25 between 1980 and 1984 Today, it is reckoned that there are between 30 and 50 serial killers 'out there'.
	[ David Berkowitz ] In February 1979, David Berkowitz held a press conference at Attica Prison at which he claimed that his story about Sam Carr and demon possession had been a hoax. He said he had brought the .44 pistol, knowing precisely what he intended to do.
	Peter Hurkos, the Dutch psychic called in by the police to help track the Strangler, was himself arrested on 8th February 1964, on a charge of impersonating an FBI Agent.
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