The Boston Strangler

by Frank, Gerold;

  “I did that one time before, too … It was Irmgard. I grabbed her right by the throat, she made me feel so low, as if I was asking for something I shouldn’t have, that I wanted something dirty. I wanted to kill her that night! Asking her to make love was asking a dead log to move. It was always ‘Do it quick, do it fast, get it over with—’ She treated me lower than an animal … I loved her so much, yet I hated her. I was burning up. How many nights I would lie next to her, so hot, so wanting to be loved and to love her—and she would not … She reminded me of her. ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it!’” He paused, then with infinite bitterness: “Irmgard—‘Don’t do it, it’s not nice’—Irmgard said that to me just the night before. The same way! The same way! And she, right through the gag she was saying, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it!’ She was lying there, I could see everything … And still she talked. It wasn’t the loudness to me, it was just the way she said it … The thing I was doing, there was nothing wrong to do it. ‘Don’t do it, it’s not nice.’ It’s not this, it’s not that …”

  On and on he went with his soliloquy. It was Beverly become Irmgard become Beverly …

  * Danvers State Hospital is a mental institution in Danvers, Massachusetts.

  25

  Good Friday, April 8, 1966.

  F. Lee Bailey, a man not easily thrown off his stride, put down his telephone, all but stunned. John Bottomly had just called to inform him that he was going to resign as Assistant Attorney General. He had had a disagreement with Attorney General Brooke over matters unrelated to the stranglings. He felt it impossible to remain in office. He was resigning as Assistant Attorney General, as Chief of the Criminal Division (a post to which he had been appointed a few months before), and as chief of the “Strangler Bureau.” He was withdrawing, as well, from the Brooke-For-United-States-Senate campaign. He was returning to the private practice of law. An official announcement would be made in a few hours.

  The break between Bottomly and Brooke was completely unexpected. Indeed, until a month ago Bottomly had been talked about as his running mate, as a candidate for Attorney General to succeed Brooke. His resignation would give Boston political writers material for days, but uppermost in Bailey’s mind was one question: what was now to be done with Albert DeSalvo?

  The past seven months since DeSalvo completed his story had been a period of legal sparring. Until today the strategy of both State and defense had been directed toward a trial. DeSalvo’s case was a tremendous challenge to Bailey. He sought neither to set the man free nor to let him die in the electric chair. Rather, he wanted him placed in a hospital where doctors could study him, in the hope that society might learn what prompts the apparently senseless rape-murders that so frequently shock the country. Yet in this case, all law was reversed: it was the criminal who bore the burden of proving his guilt, and of relieving Boston of the fear that the Strangler was still about. There was no precedent for anything like this. As Bailey was to say later, “Albert was on the left bank of a river and my job was to get him to the right bank without letting him drown.”

  Bailey had rejected two other ways this might have been managed: presenting the case to a grand jury with the expectation that the jury would no-bill any murder indictments on grounds of insanity, or denominating Albert the Strangler and committing him to an institution for the rest of his life on the ground that the case could not be legally proved in court.

  A trial was the best resolution for it would establish judicially that Albert was the Strangler. Then he could receive the required medical attention and analysis. No top-flight psychiatrist would devote himself to Albert unless he was sure that he was the Strangler. To give him such study and attention would cost tremendous amounts of money, it would take distinguished specialists who charged large fees, and it would require a long period of time. Bailey thought of Albert as a criminal research project without parallel: the man possessed virtually total recall; he was alert, intelligent, rational; he had demonstrated that he was a good hypnotic subject; and he was ready to cooperate in every way in order to learn about himself.

  The procedure had already been arranged with Bottomly. Indictments for all thirteen murders were to be obtained in the three counties in which the crimes were committed and the trial was to be held in one county, probably Suffolk County, with a jury chosen from residents of the three counties. It would last from four to six weeks. Bottomly would coordinate the prosecution, conducted by the three district attorneys, as he had coordinated the search.

  Now, however, Bottomly had removed himself from the picture.

  Bailey’s first move was to arrange a meeting with Brooke for himself, Jon Asgiersson, co-counsel, and George McGrath. Was Brooke prepared to go forward as planned? This meant, as Bailey saw it, now that Albert had carried out his part—he had told his story—that State psychiatrists would examine him to determine his sanity or insanity at the time of the murders; if insane, detectives—Donovan, Tuney, DiNatale—would take his formal confession; and indictments and trial would follow with, hopefully, a directed verdict of insanity.

  Brooke was in a dilemma. Not only was there considerable doubt as to whether the State had sufficient legal evidence—for there were no witnesses to the crimes, or physical evidence linking DeSalvo to any of the murders—but there had been no criminal charges; all that existed were DeSalvo’s own self-incriminating statements. There was also the fact that in this election year the case was politically dangerous. Brooke was the leading Republican candidate for the Senate seat to be relinquished by Senator Leverett Saltonstall, who had announced his retirement. The prosecution could be placed in a highly embarrassing position. Brooke, whose private polls indicated that he would be elected in November, was concerned lest he be accused of trying to make political capital out of a sensational murder case—of climbing to the Senate over the bodies of the Strangler’s victims.

  It seemed clear, at the meeting, that Brooke, if he moved at all, would do so very circumspectly.

  Bailey pointed out that DeSalvo had told his story only because the Attorney General’s office had agreed on procedures and promised to supervise the prosecution of DeSalvo’s case by the three district attorneys. If Brooke left office in January without taking any action, the case would fall into the hands of Brooke’s successor—and what certainty was there that the new man would carry out the original understanding on the basis of which DeSalvo had exposed himself so completely?

  The meeting ended with Brooke’s promise that he would explore the matter further. Perhaps, he said, he might consider appointing a special assistant—an eminent lawyer of unimpeachable reputation—to study the case and then go ahead with it as he saw fit, thus divorcing it completely from politics.

  The weeks passed. No special assistant was appointed.

  On May 25th a second conference was held. At the meeting Brooke suggested that the case could move forward if detectives began taking DeSalvo’s formal confession. Bailey demurred. He said that months earlier Bottomly, in Brooke’s presence and with Brooke’s approval, had agreed “to furnish us with some evidence of Albert’s mental condition” before Bailey would permit him to confess. Brooke, as Bailey later recounted it, said he did not recall this condition.

  The fact was that there had been considerable discussion of this matter in the last six months, and the exact status of the understanding reached was unclear. It became apparent to Bailey that agreements made earlier with the Attorney General’s office had been considerably diluted by the time Bottomly resigned. Customarily, in criminal cases the State and the defense assume an “adversary” position. What Bailey had asked for was a form of cooperation that seemed to neutralize that position. The lawyer, however, argued that in a case without precedent—one in which the defense produced the criminal—the usual ground rules had to be modified. He could not allow his client to confess unless he had some assurance that DeSalvo could do so without putting himself in the electric chair. As a defense attorney he dared not gamble on what the Stat
e’s psychiatrists might say.

  On this impasse the meeting ended. But just before they parted, the lawyer said to Brooke, “I still have the vehicle to try the Strangler case without risking the chair. I am considering asking for a speedy trial of Albert as the Green Man, in Middlesex County.” The charges pending against him there had nothing to do with the stranglings, but the State’s psychiatrists would have to testify and so their opinions would become known.

  If they said Albert had been insane, Bailey would allow him to confess to the murders. If they decided he had been sane, Bailey would ask each psychiatrist, “Do you know the complete history of this man? Does your opinion take into account the fact that he killed thirteen women?” To prove this, Bailey would subpoena Bottomly to testify to what Albert had told him during the long weeks of interrogation; then he would call upon Tuney and DiNatale to testify, thus supplying the corroborative evidence they had been accumulating in the intervening months.

  One way or another Bailey felt sure he would be able to denominate Albert as the Strangler without risking the chair.

  Brooke was agreeable to the Green Man trial. He would ask District Attorney John J. Droney of Middlesex County to go forward on it.

  Early in June Bailey filed a motion for a hearing on Albert’s competency to stand trial as the Green Man.

  The corroborative evidence Tuney and DiNatale had been gathering was the result of the most exhaustive scrutiny of DeSalvo’s story. Since his final interrogation on September 29, 1965, the two detectives, with Sandra Irizarry at their side, had worked daily over the transcript—more than fifty hours of interviews—filling more than two thousand pages.

  Their task had been the comparison of every statement of fact made by DeSalvo with every fact known about the crimes.

  Under Tuney’s direction a series of mimeographed score sheets were run off. Entitled “Analysis of Statements by Albert DeSalvo,” each sheet was ruled into seven columns. The first was headed Statement by DeSalvo; the next, True/False; then, four columns listing sources from which these facts might have been learned by Albert, or by someone who conceivably might have fed him the information—Newspapers; Local Police Department Reports; Crime Scene Photographs; Autopsy Report. The seventh and last column was headed Comments.

  Obviously, the investigators were interested in those true statements DeSalvo had made that had not appeared in, or could not have been elicited from any of the four sources. In this category his score was impressive—and grew more so as the examination continued on through the thirteen murders.

  In the case of Evelyn Corbin, for example, DeSalvo had made forty-two statements of fact. Of these, thirty were found to be true, four false, and eight impossible to prove true or false (for instance: “I used the toilet. I looked in a drawer”). Twelve out of the thirty true statements were not to be found in the four sources. One had to assume that he knew these facts from having been there.

  Sometimes corroborative evidence appeared in an unexpectedly dramatic fashion. DeSalvo, relating how he attacked Gertrude Gruen, the German waitress who alone of his victims escaped him, had told Bottomly that he first removed his Air Force jacket—it was warm in her apartment—and tossed it over a blue chair. Lieutenant Tuney telephoned Miss Gruen, now living in another city. Yes, the man had placed his jacket over a chair. She had told that to the police, and it had been in the newspapers, she recalled. But a blue chair? No. She had never owned a blue chair. The chair in her apartment in Boston had been brown.

  Two weeks later Tuney received a special delivery letter from her. She must apologize. She had been rummaging among her belongings and had come across a color photograph she once took in her apartment when she had a few friends over. There was the chair, clearly visible—and unmistakably blue.

  Time and again DeSalvo was found to be right. He had said there was a notebook under Beverly Samans’ bed. She had probably been making out a shopping list, he thought. Both statements were true. No sources mentioned them.

  DeSalvo had mentioned hearing a soft jingle of bells when he pulled open Patricia Bissette’s door early that Sunday morning. He was correct about the door. It was one of the few apartment doors in Boston that opened outward, for this was a violation of the fire laws. Though he might have known about the door from his Measuring Man days, how could he know about the bells? One of Pat’s friends had told Phil DiNatale that Pat had attached them to the door only a few days before her death.

  Sophie Clark, DeSalvo had said, had been menstruating—“she was just finishing,” he had told Bottomly. He had torn off the napkin and thrown it behind her TV set. Police had reported the existence of what they called “a special article of apparel,” but had not specified where they found it. It had in fact been found behind the TV set.

  Finally, of all the details, harmless or shocking, printable or unprintable, one would never be forgotten by the team of two men and one woman working so diligently on the score sheets. DeSalvo had said Sophie’s napkin was stained. He had given the dimensions of the stain: one inch by two.

  On a hot day in early June, 1966, Lee Bailey visited DeSalvo at Bridgewater. The lawyer was in excellent spirits. On June 6 the United States Supreme Court had, based on his appeal, reversed the conviction of his client, Dr. Sam Sheppard of Cleveland, for the murder of his wife. The following day the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had, based on his appeal, reversed the conviction of his client, George Nassar, for the murder of Irvin Hilton. These were two enormous victories for a lawyer who had been practicing less than six years and had only this month reached his thirty-third birthday.

  Now at last the case of his client Albert DeSalvo seemed to be on its way to a conclusion, too. The news Bailey had for DeSalvo was that a hearing would be held at the end of the month on his competency to stand trial. If found competent, as Bailey expected, his trial as the Green Man most likely would be scheduled for the fall.

  Albert had been kept busy at Bridgewater. He had been working in the kitchen, preparing breakfasts for the nurses; he had been assisting in the dispensary, helping the orderlies on their rounds; and he had continued his care of the old men, giving them showers, making up their beds, and tending to their wants.

  And he had thought and thought again of his life—his childhood, his introduction to sex, his marriage, and what had happened after that.

  On this visit, he began relating his thoughts to Bailey. (He had already told some of this to McGrath during earlier visits.) The lawyer listened sympathetically. Albert was around his own age. It was clear to Bailey that Albert had never before discussed himself, or his sexual guilts, with a contemporary on a man-to-man basis. Bottomly and McGrath had represented the remote and somewhat fearful authority of the law, the doctors and psychologists the equally remote and puzzling impersonality of medical science. He could talk to Bailey on almost a first-name basis.

  He had always been a loner. He had never confided in anyone. “I was never part of the crowd,” he said. He thought it might be because he never drank or smoked. His father’s drunken rages had made him hate liquor. As a child he was a coward. He ran away from a fight. “I had no confidence in me—or in anyone else.” He was astonished to discover, after he entered the service, how well he could fight. He had always taken good physical care of himself. Even here, at Bridgewater, he kept in condition by doing twenty-five pushups every morning, noon and night. He was proud that he had won the Middleweight Army Championship of Europe, and held it for two years. At five feet eight and a half he was smaller than many men, but he found he could drop the biggest man.

  School had not been too unhappy an experience for him, except for the ten months he had been sent to Lyman School. At Williams, “I never got good marks, but the teachers liked me—I was a kind of teacher’s pet, running errands, buying sandwiches for them—so I got by.”

  He liked to swim—and now and then, when he had a chance on neighboring farms, to ride horses. At one stage he became fascinated with bows and arrows. He went
about with a friend, shooting alley cats. He never understood why he did this or what kind of a satisfaction he derived from it. He had no special feeling for cats, neither liking them nor disliking them. Bailey noted that Albert could never explain the sudden hostility that would come over him.

  He stole as far back as he could remember. His father showed him when he was five how to shoplift from the five-and-ten. When Albert spoke of his father, his voice rose. His father would bring home drunks “and all kinds of things would go on in the house.”

  Albert did not know how far back his first sexual memory reached, but one early scene never left his mind. “I was maybe nine or ten. I was in bed, this girl was blowing me and the door opens and in walks my brother, catching us.”

  When he was fifteen, “a married woman—she had a kid my age—took me into her bedroom and showed me how to do every kind of sex perversion.” Albert found that his participation could continue for a long time: he seemed inexhaustible, driven to seek sexual satisfaction almost without rest.

  When he was sixteen, upon graduating in June, 1948, from Williams School, he took a summer job as a dishwasher in a Cape Cod motel. He spent most of his spare time on the roof, from where he could look directly into some of the rooms and see couples making love. Watching, he would relieve himself by repeated masturbation. He had been an involuntary voyeur during his childhood: since puberty voyeurism had become a regular means of sexual stimulation—and fulfillment.

  That September of 1948 he enlisted in the Army. He was a “spit and polish” soldier—“always the sharpest uniform, best-dressed, shoes polished, best-kept vehicles.… I made Colonel’s Orderly twenty-seven times.” This gave him time to look around for women during the day, especially soldiers’ wives.

  He remained in the Army from his seventeenth to his twenty-sixth year. By the time he was mustered out in February, 1956, married and the father of a baby daughter, his sexual needs had brought him into conflict with the law only twice—both times in his last year in the Army, when he had been stationed at Fort Dix. The first incident was the indictment for molesting a nine-year old girl; the second came two months later when he was arrested for disorderly conduct. Actually, he had been seized as a Peeping Tom. The charge was dropped and Albert emerged with his honorable discharge and moved to Malden with his wife and child. He was hired as a press operator by the Biltmore Rubber Company, in nearby Chelsea. Soon he had bought a car and made a down payment on the house at 11 Florence Street. He was proud of being a good provider and a good family man, home every night with his family.