by Susan Kelly
Kenefick referred to this hypothetical sexual sadist and killer as “Mr. S.” He too was fairly positive there had to be more than one of them operating. He ended his report to the Task Force by wishing them “Good hunting! ”
Not only did the Medical-Psychiatric Committee attempt to probe the mind-set of a pathological killer, it also set out to probe the psyches of his victims. Carola Blume, the resident graphologist, analyzed the handwriting of the murdered women in the hope that some character trait revealed by it might provide the explanation for the victims’ dreadful fates.
Would any of this help solve the killings? The Task Force could only hope so. With every passing day the trail of Mr. S. was growing colder and colder.
Brooke had vowed “to leave no stone unturned” in the search for the killers. It was for this reason, he said, that he ultimately consented to do what so many letters and phone calls to the attorney general’s office had been urging: bring in a psychic.
According to Gerold Frank, Bottomly was the prime mover behind this decision “because he had long been intrigued by telepathic experiments conducted by friends in the National Aeronautic and Space Administration Laboratories in Cambridge.”6
Ames Robey has a slightly different perspective on the situation: “Bottomly’s mother was fascinated by ESP and psychic phenomena. And she kept bugging him to get a seer, get a seer, it’s the only way you’ll ever catch the Strangler. He finally said yes just to shut her up.”
Edmund McNamara reacted to the proposal with outraged disgust: “I said, ‘Fine. Why don’t I just fire all my detectives and hire a bunch of gypsies with crystal balls to solve crimes?’ ” He forbade his two principal investigators, John Donovan and Edward Sherry, to have anything to do with any seers the Strangler Bureau might retain.
Brooke left it to Bottomly to choose a suitable psychic, and the one Bottomly chose was Peter Hurkos, whose biography Bottomly had read in Jess Stearn’s book about the paranormal, Door to the Future. Hurkos was a Dutch housepainter who, at the age of thirty-five, had fractured his skull and emerged from the resultant coma a telepath. The Task Force coordinator put out the word to his assistants: Find me this man. They did, in Hollywood, where he was prepping actor Glenn Ford to play him in a movie.
Hurkos accepted Bottomly’s offer and arrangements were made to bring him to Boston. Under cover of night, he flew into the Providence, Rhode Island, airport rather than to Logan International. He had insisted on that condition in order to minimize the chance of a Boston reporter spotting him and spreading the word that the famed “psychic detective” was in town. Such publicity would, Hurkos maintained, interfere with his concentration. Accompanying the incognito seer was a six-foot-eight-inch-tall armed bodyguard in full cowboy regalia who left a trail of bug-eyed and slack-jawed airport personnel in the wake of his John Wayne swagger.
To give Hurkos his due, he did actually seem to have some kind of telepathic ability. And to give Bottomly his due, the taxpayers of Massachusetts didn’t have to foot the bill for Hurkos’s services, either. “It didn’t cost the Commonwealth anything,” says Roger Woodworth, adding that Hurkos’s fee was paid by two private citizens’ groups.
Brooke was as eager to avoid publicity as was Hurkos. To this end, he requested from the press—and got—a voluntary embargo on news coverage of the Dutch seer’s trip to Boston. “This unselfish action,” Brooke later wrote, “was an extraordinary example of cooperation in a most highly competitive industry.” It must have been a relief to Attorney General Brooke as well.
Hurkos was not the world’s easiest guest. He was put up for a while—a short while—at the Commander Hotel in Cambridge, and a city detective was assigned to babysit him for the duration. The cop had his work cut out for him. In the middle of the night the detective was roused from sleep by a frantic phone call from Hurkos, who demanded to be removed from the hotel immediately. He was unable to rest, the psychic claimed, because the ghosts in the Revolutionary War cemetery near the Commander were screaming at him. Mindful of his duty, the detective climbed out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and drove to the hotel to pick up Hurkos. Not knowing what else to do, he then brought Hurkos back to his own home. Once inside the cop’s house, however, Hurkos refused to stay. It was the presence of the detective’s children that disturbed him. Their innocent aura would prevent him from picking up the evil vibrations of the Strangler.
It says a great deal about the Cambridge detective’s powers of self-control that there wasn’t a male strangling victim.
Less than forty-eight hours after the psychic hit town, the Boston police officers assigned by Bottomly to work with him were pleading to be let off the hook.
“Nobody particularly wanted to be with him,” comments former Inspector John Moran, in a classic understatement. Moran looks thoughtful. Then he remarks, “They should have taken him down to the track and let him pick the horses.”
Even Bottomly seems to have entertained second thoughts about Hurkos. Two days after the seer arrived in Boston, Bottomly received a confidential report that Hurkos was the defendant in a breach of contract suit in Wisconsin. He was also an adulterer. “That is conduct,” Bottomly wrote frostily, “of which I personally do not approve.”
Hurkos did identify a Strangler suspect, and it was one whom the Task Force had already seriously considered. This individual, a shoe salesman, was as innocuous in manner and appearance as Donald Kenefick had predicted (a loaded word, in this context) he might be. Six months later Brooke wrote that this suspect was “a lifetime celibate with a history of mental illness [who] inexplicably joined three marriage clubs.” The man’s brothers had been trying to persuade him to seek professional help for some time before he came to the attention of the Task Force. Recent bizarre changes in his behavior had them worried. These changes had also worried the police in the town where the man lived.
Hurkos was convinced of this suspect’s guilt. His mission in Boston complete, he left town assuring his hosts that in the person of the shoe salesman they had their man. They didn’t; there was no physical evidence nor any eyewitness to connect the man to any of the murders. He ended up voluntarily committing himself to a mental institution.
Despite the departure of Hurkos, the Strangler Bureau hadn’t concluded its dealings with him. As a parting gift, someone in the office had given him a card identifying the bearer as “a special honorary assistant attorney general,” a title as high-sounding as it was meaningless. That piece of paper and a nickel would buy Hurkos a cup of coffee, but he was an avid collector of law enforcement memorabilia and added the card to his considerable store of toy credentials and badges.
The gift would come back to haunt, so to speak, its giver.
All the while Hurkos had been in Boston sniffing out the psychic spoor of the Strangler, the FBI had been looking for him. Not because it wanted his help in solving a case; it wanted to arrest him. For impersonating one of its agents at a gas station in Milwaukee.
Hurkos was taken into custody in New York City.
On February 10, 1964, a story by Bill Norton and Bob Castricone entitled HURKOS FRAMED—BROOKE AIDE appeared on page one of the Globe. In it the two reporters described Hurkos’s arrest and arraignment and then went on to quote a “spokesman” for Attorney General Brooke as saying, “I think the charges [against Hurkos] are as phony as a $3 bill.” The speaker then went on to characterize the arrest as a deliberate attempt on the part of the FBI to discredit the Strangler Task Force. And, finally, the spokesman indulged in a bit of nose-thumbing: “It took us two hours to discover him [Hurkos] in an actor’s home in California. Yet, it took the FBI almost two months to find their man.”
This spokesman, or at least the person whom the article purported to quote, was Bottomly.
On Valentine’s Day the Task Force coordinator fired off a four-page, single-spaced typed letter to James Handley, special agent-in-charge of the Boston FBI office, denying that he had made the statements attributed him by Norton and Castricon
e—except for the jibe about the FBI’s dragged-out pursuit of Hurkos. Bottomly should have left bad enough alone at that point. Instead, he went on to write: “As a result of our conversation on February 12, 1964, I am of the opinion that regardless of the exact words I used on February 10, 1964 you and those you represent consider it not only irresponsible for me ever to imply criticism of the FBI, but that it is wrong for me to criticize and I should not do it. In addition to correcting the record, this letter is written to inform you and those you represent that I disagree strongly with that position. I believe criticism has value. It is my hope and expectation that the FBI can survive criticism. In some cases, I would suggest that the FBI might be improved by listening to it rather than attempting to stifle or suppress it. Finally, I happen to be proud of the political society in which I live and the heritage of which we are beneficiaries, and I resent strongly any attempt by you or those you represent to restrict my voicing or writing my opinions freely ... In closing, I reiterate my sincere wish that the FBI in the future advise the Department of the Attorney General of any investigation or impending arrest of any consultant which this Department is planning to retain or has retained. I share with you the desire for cooperation. However, I value criticism and accept it in the spirit in which it is given in the hope that I may learn therefrom and improve myself thereby.”
At that point, Edward Brooke was probably devoutly wishing he’d never heard of Hurkos, and maybe not of Bottomly, either. Of course the matter didn’t end there. The incorporeal presence of Hurkos would linger, like the bad smell emitted by a clogged drain. Brooke was still deflecting media queries about the incident a month later.
Did the Hurkos affair hurt the image of the Strangler Bureau?
“It made it a laughingstock,” snorts Gordon Parry, a forensics expert who investigated the deaths of Patricia Bissette and Mary Sullivan.
One year later, the point was moot, because in March of 1965 an inmate of Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Bridgewater, a state facility for the sexually dangerous and criminally insane, confessed to being the Phantom Fiend, Mr. S., murderer of thirteen women.
His name was Albert Henry DeSalvo.
PART TWO
5
The Measuring Man
Who was the man who claimed to be the Boston Strangler?
Albert Henry DeSalvo, the third of six children, was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 3, 1931, to Charlotte and Frank DeSalvo, natives of Newfoundland. In today’s jargon, the family would be described as dysfunctional. The reality was far worse than this euphemism could ever encompass. Frank DeSalvo, a fisherman and a skilled machinist, was arrested repeatedly for refusing to support his wife and children. It would have been much better for them had he committed the kind of crime that would have kept him in prison for a long stretch and out of their lives. He was a monster of abuse to Charlotte and the four boys and two girls, beating them regularly with fists, belts, and pipes. On one occasion he pulled a gun on Charlotte; on another he broke her fingers, serially snapping them like dry twigs. According to Albert, Frank had once sold him and his sisters to a Maine farmer for nine dollars. He also brought home prostitutes and had intercourse with them in front of the children. Albert also claimed that his father taught him how to shoplift.
Richard DeSalvo, Albert’s younger brother by five years, confirms the stories of Frank DeSalvo’s sadistic, almost insane, brutality: “I recall being under the bed a lot, because that was where I was safe.” Richard tells a story of how Frank, in an alcohol-fueled rage, began pummeling Charlotte. “He pushed her into the washing machine—it was the old-fashioned kind with a wringer—and she got cut badly and bruised.” Albert tried to intervene to protect his mother. “My father picked him up by the throat and shook him in the air.”
Albert started grade school in September 1937 and in September 1943 was enrolled in a special class at the Williams School in Chelsea. Two months later had had racked up his first arrest—for assault and battery with intent to commit robbery. The take was $2.85. His victim was a boy approximately his own age.
Albert was given a suspended sentence to the Lyman School, a reformatory for delinquent boys. He continued on at Williams, working after classes as a florist’s delivery boy, a shoeshine boy, and a dishwasher. He also got a paper route. He liked going to the movies, he told his social worker, although he didn’t “love” them.
He feared walking alone at night. Dark streets held a special terror for him.
Although Christmas that year was a good one for Albert (Santa was generous), four days afterward he was arrested again by the Chelsea police. Once more the charge was assault and battery and larceny. This time Albert’s sentence to the Lyman School was enforced.
By September of 1944 the fortunes of Charlotte DeSalvo and her six children had improved measurably. Separated repeatedly, she and Frank had finally divorced, the decree becoming final that year. Charlotte, legally released from her bondage to the man who had made her so miserable for so long, became a new woman. A social worker who visited the divorcee and her children at 353 Broadway saw someone who “has taken renewed vigor in the bettering of her home and all that goes with it. She is receiving $31.31 from the mother’s aid program and, in addition, she has been working each morning for half a day at the Slade’s Photo Shop in Chelsea. Observation indicates that she is putting her resources to good use. She has not been bothered by her husband for a long time and seems considerably relieved because of former pressure. She is still keeping company with one Paul Kinosian and anticipates marriage in August of 1945. Mr. Kinosian has been exceptionally kind to the children, and she vows that the present affair is on the level. She feels that Albert should be with her.”
The social worker and the trustees of the Lyman School agreed with Charlotte’s self-assessment. On October 26, 1944, Albert was paroled.
He was thrilled to be back at home. He resumed his job as a florist’s delivery boy, and attended classes regularly at Williams. His first report card in 1945 was a very good one. He was enthusiastic about sports. Says Richard DeSalvo: “We used to go an hour or an hour and a half early to school so we could play softball or touch football, depending on the season.”
All throughout 1945 and half of the following year Albert kept out of trouble. He left his after-school job at the florist’s to take another at the Gold Medal Tonic Company in Chelsea. He joined the Boys’ Town Club and hoped to go to summer camp. He worked for his stepfather Paul (whom Charlotte had indeed married on schedule in August 1945) at Shaffer’s Junk Shop in Chelsea.
All this success his social worker attributed to a better home life. And it is true that Paul Kinosian, unlike Frank DeSalvo, worked hard to support his new family. But circumstances otherwise were not entirely rosy. Kinosian, according to Richard DeSalvo, was given to bursts of temper he directed at his stepchildren and the daughter he and Charlotte had together. As punishment for disobedience or insolence, Richard recalls, Kinosian would “take two cans of fruit from the cupboard and make me stand on them. Then I had to hold out my hands and balance a hairbrush on one of them. If my hand started to shake, Paul would belt me.” When Richard was sixteen, Kinosian picked him up, threw him physically out of the house and onto the porch; he landed on his head and split his scalp. Richard left home thereafter. He paid one return visit and Kinosian went after him with a hammer.
Still, Richard recalls, there were a lot of good times—many more and much better than with Frank. Kinosian would play ball or horseshoes with the boys, or take them fishing. And when he worked as a trucker, he would sometimes bring Richard on trips. “He was ignorant,” Richard says. “He could have been a hell of a lot nicer person. He didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be violent.”
Albert, Richard says, joined the service to escape from Paul.
But before that, there was more trouble with the law. At the end of August 1946, Albert was sent back to Lyman. The charge: unlawful use of an automobile. On September 9, at 6:00 A.M.,
he and two other boys ran from Lyman. Albert was probably talked into the flight by one of the others. Picked up by the authorities and returned to custody, he was required to earn three thousand merits before the trustees would consider parole. They did not hold out much hope for him.
Nonetheless, he was freed on probation in early 1947 and sent home. He went back to school. On Saturdays he worked for a fruit peddler. His dearest wish, he confided to a social worker, was to earn and save enough money to buy Charlotte a Mother’s Day present. Years later, he would be arrested for committing a burglary in order to buy his wife and daughter Valentine’s Day candy and cards.
All throughout 1947 and 1948 Albert kept up his studies and kept out of trouble. He joined the YMCA, went to dances there, and took various other odd jobs—shining shoes again and working on a pickle truck. His behavior at home was helpful and cooperative. His goal was to graduate from the ninth grade at Williams and enlist in the military.
He did indeed fulfill the former ambition, and spent the summer of 1948 working as a waiter in a sandwich shop in Harwich on Cape Cod. But the application to join the army he made in early September was rejected because he was still on parole from Lyman. Instead, he took a job with a laundry in Chelsea. It turned out to be very temporary; the army reconsidered its initial decision and took him as a recruit in the middle of the month.
Albert had two periods of active duty, the first lasting from September 16, 1948, to June 25, 1951, the second from June 26, 1951, to February 15, 1956. Both times he received an honorable discharge. From basic training at Fort Dix and Camp Kilmer in New Jersey he was sent to Germany, where, in 1949, he met a young woman named Irmgard Beck. Albert attained the rank of Specialist E-5 and served as a colonel’s orderly. In July 1951 he was reassigned to Camp Kilmer. One month later he managed again to run afoul of the law, this time the military rather than the civil. In August he was court-martialed for failing to obey an order and busted back to private.