Strangled

by Brian McGrory

  The city had been panic-stricken, just as Justine Steele predicted it would be again. Dog pounds were cleaned out. Locksmiths worked twenty-hour days. The streets emptied after dark. Single women set up phone trees to check on one another’s safety.

  The investigation, at least on my first, brisk read, sounded like a mess, led by then state attorney general Stu Callaghan, who used his success on the Strangler case to win election to the U.S. Senate, where he remains. The Suffolk County district attorney’s office fought with the state attorney general’s office, which fought with the Boston Police, which fought with the state police. There was so much fighting I’m surprised the Strangler’s victims were the only ones who wound up dead.

  Then in 1965, more than a year after the last of the killings, Albert DeSalvo, a smooth-talking laborer who was described in stories as having the odd gift of being able to slip into a crowded room completely unnoticed, confessed. He was being held in a state prison for sexually dangerous convicts at the time. He had never been a suspect. In the company of his now-famous lawyer, H. Gordon Thomas, he provided cops with vivid details of many of the crime scenes. Like Mongillo said, he was neither charged in any of the slayings nor convicted. Instead, he was sentenced to life in prison on an unrelated rape charge. He later recanted his confession when he learned his family could not profit from any of the book or movie deals that the Strangler killings had spawned.

  He was stabbed to death in prison in 1973 by an unknown killer on the day before he was to meet with his lawyer to provide what he had described as an important revelation. Reading between the yellowed lines of these old stories, it didn’t look like authorities had busted a gut trying to crack Albert DeSalvo’s murder.

  I opened up a folder of newspaper photographs from the era and saw a much younger version of now police commissioner Hal Harrison — then a police detective — sitting beside Senator Stu Callaghan, who was then the state attorney general, at a press conference announcing DeSalvo’s confession. I saw multiple shots of DeSalvo in various settings. I saw a shot of a Boston PD detective identified in the caption as Bob Walters walking out of a Charles Street apartment building that was the site of the last strangling attributed to DeSalvo.

  That last photograph stopped me cold, though at first I wasn’t sure why. I stared at it longer and harder, harder and longer. And then it struck me — hard. Charles Street. Beacon Hill — the site of the Jill Dawson slaying. I strained my eyes to see the address above the door on the brick town house, but the picture was too grainy to clearly see the numbers. I was peering so close that my forehead banged against the table, making me reflexively jump back in surprise. I leapt up and ran over to the counter where Chad or Chadwick or Chad Wick was chortling through his nose at something he had just read in The Economist.

  “Do you have a magnifying glass I could borrow?” I asked.

  He shot me a look like I was an idiot. Do they have a magnifying glass? It’s their weapon of choice in the Record morgue. He opened a drawer and asked in a nasally voice, “How strong do you need?”

  How do you answer that? I hesitated and replied, “Pretty strong.”

  He seemed to understand and handed me a perfectly nice magnifying glass, handle first. I headed back over to my conference table and held the glass about two inches above the photograph. I immediately saw the number clear as day, even though in the photograph it was night — 146; 146 Charles Street, Boston, Massachusetts. I thought I knew what I had, but to be sure, I snapped up the phone and called up to the newsroom.

  “Mongillo here.”

  “Flynn here.”

  “I’m on the other line.”

  “Doesn’t matter. What was the address of the Jill Dawson murder earlier this week?”

  “One forty-six Charles Street.”

  “You’re an animal.”

  “You’re my bitch.”

  I’m not sure his salutation was really necessary, but I got what I needed. I riffled through the files again, looking for stories on the other murders, until I finally found one from the Fenway — 558 Park Drive, to be exact, the same location where we found Lauren Hutchens’s strangled body that morning. The modern-day killer was retracing the steps of the old Strangler — a discovery that sent one of those electric chills up my back and into my neck.

  Something else kept nagging at me about that Charles Street photograph as well — something about the scene, or the people in it. I placed the magnifying glass over the shot again and scanned the sidewalk, inside the windows of the awaiting police car, the street — until there it was: the young, handsome face of one Hank Sweeney walking several paces behind Detective Walters. Hank Sweeney is a retired Boston Police homicide detective. Far more important to the point of this story, he was also a very good friend who owed me a very large favor.

  “Thank you, Hank Sweeney,” I murmured to myself.

  I picked up the phone again and called Hank’s cell, a number I knew by heart, even if I hadn’t called it in over a year.

  He picked up on about the third ring, his voice as smooth and calm as ever.

  “Hank, how’s about I buy you the best steak at Locke-Ober in thirty minutes?”

  “That place is so ten minutes ago, Jack. How’s about I meet you over at Grill 23 instead?”

  That’s really what he said. The guy is in his mid-seventies and he’s talking like a sophomore coed at Wellesley High. Beyond that, he’s questioning my taste in restaurants. And beyond even that, maybe he could act a little more excited about having the pleasure of my company again.

  “No, Locke-Ober,” I replied. I mean, you can push me around on a lot of things, but not about restaurants. “I’ll see you there.” And just like that, I was on my way — hopefully for a lot more than a good meal.

  10

  Tony, the world’s most hospitable maître d’, greeted me at the door of Locke-Ober as if he hadn’t seen me in months — mostly, I suppose, because he hadn’t. Life sometimes gets in the way of fine dining, tough as that fact is to accept.

  “I was starting to think you went out and bought an oven,” he said, giving me that low-lying handshake that is his trademark.

  “I did, but then I couldn’t get a license to operate it,” I replied.

  He laughed, God love him. Then he asked, more confiding now, “Everything all right?” I merely shook my head and flashed a smile of futility. He nodded in agreement.

  A word about Tony: solid. And another: knowing. He’s stood at the host’s podium of Locke-Ober for forty years, which makes him a relative newcomer at the restaurant, but still an institution in the town. He has seated kings and Kennedys, tycoons and tyrants, always with a gracious demeanor and just the right amount of solicitude.

  “I hear you’ve gotten married,” he said. “That will always shake things up a bit.”

  I shook my head again and smiled with even more futility. “I walked to the brink of the altar before I realized I was standing in the wrong church,” I said.

  Tony nodded, looking away from me, not betraying even a hint of surprise.

  “Smart boy,” he said. “I’ve got three weddings behind me already, and I’m thinking of a fourth.”

  “How’s biz?” I asked.

  He looked behind him into the three-quarters-filled dining room and said, “Can’t complain.” And he didn’t. It wasn’t his style, even if he had something to complain about.

  I said, “I’m meeting a gentleman, which might be the most liberty that’s ever been taken with that term, by the name of Hank Sweeney. Tall, dark, and not particularly handsome. A retired member of our distinguished police force. Have you seen him?”

  Tony nodded back into the room. “He’s sitting near Yvonne, drinking on your tab as we speak.”

  I poked my head around the corner and sure enough, there was Hank Sweeney, with a lowball glass containing what looked like a Tom Collins in his hairy hand, lounging in a chair at a table pushed up against the wall beneath the famous portrait of a woman named Yvonne
.

  As I previously mentioned, I hadn’t seen Hank in roughly a year, a fact I immediately regretted upon seeing him again. He pulled himself to his feet with a look that was equal parts appreciation and warmth, and as I walked toward him, he wrapped his arms around me in a long and wistful hug. When he finally spoke in that whiskeyed, raspy voice of his, he said, “Like it was only yesterday.”

  I replied, “We let too much time get away from us, Hank. Too much time.” He gave me a hard, final slap on the top of my back, and we both took our seats.

  Hank, for those keeping score, is one of my favorite people in life. About a year earlier, I wrote a story that led to the mayor’s resignation. In my reporting, I came to learn that Hank, my Hank, had been compromised many years ago in a scandal involving the FBI and the Boston Police. I conveniently left that part out of print. He conveniently helped me with key information. After I filed, I didn’t call him the next day, nor did he call me. A day turned to a week turned to a month turned to a year, two great friends floating foolishly apart. Maybe I was disappointed in him. Perhaps he had been angry at me or embarrassed by what I learned. Whatever it was, all of it washed away in the dining room of Locke-Ober in that split second when we came together again.

  Hank had thrown on a sport coat and a tie for this occasion, which I knew he would. I noticed he had slimmed down quite a bit, nearly to the point of being svelte, and I told him so.

  He laughed softly, that laugh that begins inside his chest, shakes his shoulders, and makes his head bob up and down a little bit. “Son, if I start looking and acting my age, then I might as well just hang the whole thing up and go back to that pit in Florida where you found me.”

  He was referring to the time I knocked on his door in some godforsaken retirement community in inland Florida a few years before because I figured he’d have some information on a story I was reporting. He did, and he helped me, but even better than the insight he provided, he gave me friendship. Hopefully, he was about to give me both of those all over again.

  The waiter, Luis, twenty-four years in the café, came over with menus, a fresh drink for Hank, and a Sam Adams for me. “Compliments of Tony,” he told me solicitously.

  “Please tell Tony that I thank him for the compliment,” I replied.

  Hank and I made some standard-issue bullshit, which felt good. We both ordered the signature lobster bisque, along with dry-aged sirloins, some hashed browns, and a plate of asparagus that I already knew Hank would drench in hollandaise. When the food arrived, I met his eye across the table and said, “I need you on something again.”

  “Always needing something,” he said, feigning annoyance, but I could see it all over his face that he was anything but annoyed.

  I said, “Was Albert DeSalvo the Boston Strangler?”

  He took two big spoonfuls of what it’s worth pointing out was an absolutely delicious bisque, put his spoon on the plate beneath the bowl, wiped his lips, and asked, “Why?”

  A fair question, and I say that as someone who generally hates it when my inquiries are met with inquiries rather than answers. Still, I said to him, “I’ll tell you in a minute. First, answer me.”

  He took a sip of his drink. He looked down at the table where the breadbasket sat, though I was sure he wasn’t really looking at the bread. Then his eyes settled on mine again and he said, “Depends who you ask.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “I don’t really know. I was a junior detective then. I made detective about halfway through the killing spree and was put straight into homicide because they were stretched so thin and because the whole city was so damned scared. My role was minimal.”

  “But Hank, I know you, you’re a good listener. What were your superiors saying? What did your gut tell you?”

  Hank took another spoonful of bisque, a little more relaxed now. He said, “That’s what I mean when I say it depends who you ask.” He paused again before asking me, “You want the elaborate answer?”

  “I want the best answer, yeah.”

  He sighed deeply, as if he was collecting himself, then began.

  “There were three lead detectives on the case. Each one had their own theory.

  “The most senior guy was Lieutenant Detective Bob Walters. He was always something of a mentor to me. He believed that there might have been a serial killer who offed a few women, maybe three, maybe four, maybe five — six tops. I think he might have even had a suspect in mind by the end. But he always believed that the last six or seven murders were either the work of a second serial killer, or a bunch of copycat killers — disgruntled husbands, angry boyfriends. They know there’s a serial strangler out there. They realize if their wife or girlfriend shows up dead, she’s immediately going to be lumped in with the other victims.”

  “Did you have proof that some of these were copycat killings?”

  “Nothing forensic, only circumstantial. The reality is that serial killers, especially in sex crimes, virtually never dramatically change the profile of their victims mid-spree. The Strangler did. He started with older victims who almost always lived alone, and by the end, his victims were twenty, twenty-five, thirty years younger, many of them living with other people. It never made any sense.”

  Luis came and hurriedly cleared away our soup bowls, dropping off two fresh drinks in the process. He was followed by a second waiter, delivering the steaks, starch, and asparagus. Sweeney surveyed his plate, then the rest of the table, and said, “The thing about not hanging out with you over the past year is that it allowed me to lose about fifteen pounds.”

  We both lit into our beef. I said, “Go on.”

  Hank swallowed another bite of sirloin and began anew. “The second detective you may or may not know. Name of Mac Foley. A damned good homicide investigator. He was a young upstart back then, put on the case for his sheer brains. He never believed DeSalvo was the Strangler. Didn’t think he had it in him to commit murder. Thought his confession was too pat. Never bought into any of it.”

  I asked, “He thought they were a bunch of copycat killings and that the Strangler was a myth?”

  “No. Maybe he thought one or two of them were copycats, but everyone thought that. He had another suspect in mind. He chased that theory to the ends of the earth trying to prove that he was the killer. I remember him being damned close, too. And then one day DeSalvo confesses and the books get shut and all the detectives get sent home, case closed, thank you very much.”

  I asked, “And the third?”

  “You’ve heard of him. Hal Harrison, then another young, upstart detective. I have no idea what he believed during the killing spree, but when DeSalvo confessed, he bought hook, line, and sinker into that — along with another guy you’ve heard of, Senator Stu Callaghan, who was back then the attorney general. They never seemed to question it, never looked at any other possibility. If DeSalvo said he was the strangler, then in their heads, he was the strangler all right.”

  A busboy, who hadn’t been a boy in about five decades, silently cleared the plates, then made way for Luis, who cleaned up our crumbs and presented dessert menus in one seamless exercise. Hank ordered a glass of port; I asked for a plate of the macaroons. Dining at Locke-Ober without having macaroons is like going to Italy without eating pasta.

  “Which camp were you in?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, my cell phone vibrated in my coat pocket. Normally, I wouldn’t talk on the phone in this dining room. It just didn’t seem right. But given my current circumstances, I apologized to Sweeney and quietly answered the call, which was from Peter Martin.

  I hadn’t even offered so much as a hello when Martin said, “Bad news. Justine’s made up her mind. She wants that story held for at least one day, maybe two. I think the acting mayor got to her again and pleaded for more time. I tried like hell.”

  I was too stunned to argue and too angry to try. So I said, “Big mistake. We’ll talk in the morning. Hopefully, we’re not playing catch-up when someone else re
ports a serial killer.”

  Martin said, “I know. Believe me, I know. I’ll see you here early.” I looked at my watch — 10:40 p.m.— and knew that Martin was still in the Record newsroom. He had probably been there, no exaggeration, since his call to me at about five in the morning, and didn’t have so much as an exclusive story to show for it in the following day’s paper. Sometimes the news business really sucks.

  I hung up. Sweeney said to me, “Good God, son, it looks like the gypsies just ran off with your dog and your baseball glove. What’s going on with you?”

  I told him. I told him about the notes from someone identifying themselves as the Phantom Fiend. I told him about the visit to Park Drive that morning, seeing the strangled young woman sitting in a chair, a macabre prop in some madman’s game. I told him about the incident on the river the night before, the anger in the police commissioner’s voice that morning, the fact that Mac Foley was proving to be anything but helpful.

  He nodded all the way through, until finally I asked him, “So which camp were you in, Hank?”

  “Doesn’t matter who I was with,” he said in that raspy voice. “I was a nothing back then, as junior as an April bud on a New England tree. But if I were you…”

  He stopped here, took his first sip of port, gave an approving sigh — suddenly, everyone’s a vino critic — and continued. “If I were you, I would track down Detective Walters, a man who I respected very much — and still do. I would ask him why he believes DeSalvo wasn’t the Boston Strangler. I think you might find what he has to say to be of significant interest.”

  He sipped his port again. I said, “I will. I absolutely will. But regardless of what he has to say, how can you ever prove a negative? How can you prove that a dead man wasn’t the killer that everyone believed him to be?”

  Hank smiled, his smile turning into a soft, knowing laugh. “That’s easy, son. Easy. Forensics. Science.”