HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES with Earl Staggs --- Albert DeSalvo – Was He Really The Boston Strangler?

Please welcome back award winning Texas author Earl Staggs with his latest installment of his History’s Rich With Mysteries series. This installment he considers the question of whether Albert DeSalvo was The Boston Strangler?

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty.  In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories.  I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend.  While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery. 

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES

Albert DeSalvo – Was He Really The Boston Strangler?

The answer to that question is: realistically - probably not; technically - definitely not since he was never charged, tried, or convicted for The Boston Strangler killings.

Albert Henry DeSalvo, born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 3, 1931, tortured animals as a child and was arrested at the age of 12 for battery and robbery. After a stint in a school for boys, he worked as a delivery boy but was soon returned to the same school for auto theft.  Upon release this time, he joined the Army and served in an Armored Cavalry Regiment. After an honorable discharge, he returned to civilian life in the Boston area.

Between June 1962 and January 1964, thirteen women between 19 and 85 were murdered in and around Boston, most of them also sexually assaulted. Due to the wide gaps in the victims’ ages and other variant details of each case, the police were not convinced they were the work of a single individual. The public and the media, however, chose to believe they were all committed by one man. He was called The Mad Strangler of Boston, The Phantom Fiend, The Phantom Strangler and other names, but eventually became known as The Boston Strangler.

In October 1964, ten months after the last reported Strangler killing, Albert DeSalvo, now married with two children, gained entry to a woman's home by posing as a detective, tied her to her bed, sexually assaulted her, and then left. The woman's description led to his arrest, and when his photo was published, a number of women came forth and identified him as the man who had assaulted them. 

DeSalvo was arrested and charged with a number of rapes. He was NOT connected to the Strangler killings at that time. He was known to the police as “The Measuring Man,” because he approached women posing as a fashion model recruiter and fondled them under the pretense of taking their measurements.  He was also known as “The Green Man,” because he dressed in green when he reputedly committed more than 300 sexual assaults over a two-year period. 

While he was in jail awaiting trial, however, he confessed to being The Boston Strangler. F. Lee Bailey then became his lawyer and set up interrogations and interviews. There was no physical evidence tying him to the killings, but in his confession, DeSalvo gave some details of the murders which had not been made public. Bailey wanted to present an insanity plea for DeSalvo so he would be hospitalized rather than simply imprisoned. Bailey said, "My goal was to see the Strangler wind up in a hospital, where doctors could try to find out what made him kill.” He felt studying serial killers might provide a means of identifying and deterring other mass murderers.

The judge, however, would not allow his Strangler confession or the insanity plea. Instead, DeSalvo was tried and convicted of being a serial rapist and sentenced to life in prison. He was never charged with The Boston Strangler killings. 

So why was his confession not accepted and why was he not charged with being the Strangler? 

From the very beginning of the murders, some investigators found it hard to believe one man committed all the killings attributed to the Strangler. The victims were from different age and ethnic groups, and the MO varied from one to the other. While most of the victims were strangled with articles of their own clothing, one died of a heart attack and two others were stabbed to death, one of whom was also badly beaten.


Two expert examiners felt DeSalvo was not the Boston Strangler. One called him "a very clever, very smooth compulsive confessor who desperately needs to be recognized." A former FBI profiler said, "You're putting together so many different patterns, that it's inconceivable behaviorally that all these could fit one individual." Author Susan Kelly argued that the stranglings were the work of several killers rather than one single man. Adding more doubt was the fact that while DeSalvo was right about some details of the Strangler killings, some of what he said didn’t match the facts. 


A fellow inmate claimed he overheard another convict coaching DeSalvo about the murders. The inmate who coached him may have been George Nassar, who was in prison for an unrelated murder. Many who have investigated the case in great detail now feel Nassar may have actually been the real Boston Strangler.  In fact, the only survivor of the Strangler attacks insisted that Nassar was her attacker, not DeSalvo.

Why would Nassar coach DeSalvo? One theory holds that the two inmates formed a plan between them. Nassar would report that DeSalvo was The Boston Strangler, DeSalvo would confess, and Nassar would collect a reward which he would share with DeSalvo’s wife and children. In this theory, DeSalvo would be providing some financial support for his family in addition to having the everlasting notoriety he craved. Since he was already sentenced to life in prison, he had nothing to lose.

In 1973, Albert DeSalvo recanted his confession to being the Boston Strangler while serving time at a maximum security prison known as Walpole. Shortly after that, he was stabbed to death in the prison infirmary. He may have been killed because he was selling drugs at a lower price that his competition in the prison, or it may have been to keep him from revealing the true identity of The Boston Strangler. Another convict was tried for the murder, but the trial ended in a hung jury. No one else has been charged, and DeSalvo’s murder remains unsolved.

The final chapter in the Strangler story involves DNA evidence.  The only DNA sample from any of the Strangler killings was seminal fluid found near the body of his last known victim, 19-year-old Mary Sullivan. She was sexually assaulted and strangled with nylon stockings on January 4, 1964. DeSalvo's remains were exhumed in July 2013, nearly fifty years after the crime, to obtain a sample of his DNA.  Test results proved that Albert Henry DeSalvo was the source of that fluid and, therefore, he killed her. 

While we can say with reasonable certainty that DeSalvo killed one of the victims attributed to the Strangler, there are serious doubts as to his involvement with the others. Perhaps George Nassar was really The Boston Strangler, or perhaps Nassar was only one of several who committed the crimes. 

So we’re left with a number of unknowns, unsolveds, and unanswereds. Putting it all together, we have to grant The Boston Strangler a solid position in the All-Time Mystery Hall of Infamy.

Earl Staggs ©2015

Earl Staggs earned a long list of Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. 

Email: earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net Website: http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com