The Boston Stranglers

by Susan Kelly

  Armed with this data, Bailey went down to Bridgewater. Albert, who was polite and diffident during that brief meeting, answered all the questions the lawyer asked him promptly and apparently accurately. He also wanted to know if two things would be possible, says Bailey: whether he could be sent to a decent mental institution and whether the sale of his story would realize sufficient profits to make life financially comfortable for Irmgard and the children. 13

  One other person was present at this meeting: George Nassar.

  Bailey informed Donovan and Sherry of what Albert had told him. Then he made the two detectives an offer: He would, he said, record his next question-and-answer session with Albert and allow them to listen to the tape. But nothing on it could be used against his client. Sherry and Donovan agreed to the proposal, furnished Bailey with more “secret” information about the murders, and left the lawyer’s office.

  Meanwhile, Ames Robey was still wondering what the hell was going on. He called Edward Brooke and said, “Something’s up with the Strangler business.”

  Dictaphone in hand, Bailey returned to Bridgewater the following day. It was during this second meeting that the lawyer was convinced that Albert was the Strangler. “Anyone experienced in interrogation learns to recognize the difference between a man speaking from life and a man telling a story that he has either made up or gotten from another person,” Bailey wrote in The Defense Never Rests. “DeSalvo gave every indication that he was speaking from life.”14

  As he had promised, Bailey played the tape for Donovan and Sherry. They, he writes, were as quickly and firmly convinced on the basis of what they heard in playback that Albert was the Phantom Fiend as Bailey himself was when he listened to Albert live.

  Following this, Bailey says, “Boston Police Commissioner Edmund McNamara agreed to come to my office at once. As Donovan left to pick him up, I called Dr. Ames Robey and asked him to come over from Bridgewater.”

  McNamara and Robey appeared as requested. Bailey played the tape for them. When the last echoes of Albert’s mechanically reproduced voice had died away, according to Bailey, the commissioner fired up a big cigar and asked his men for their recommendations. 15

  Of this story, McNamara says today, “Absolutely untrue.” He never listened to the tape, he maintains, and in fact turned on his heel and walked out of Bailey’s office as soon as the lawyer made it clear what he proposed to do. Right away, McNamara says, Bailey wanted to strike a deal—before telling McNamara who the suspect was or what this individual was supposed to have done. The commissioner, of course, knew precisely what Bailey had in mind.

  “I said, ‘Look, if you’re talking about DeSalvo, forget it.’ Bailey almost fell off his chair.” Then McNamara added, “You got the wrong guy. Go see the district attorney.”

  Before he left Bailey’s office, McNamara noted that a large quantity of Chinese food had been brought in and dished out to Donovan and Sherry. They had also been offered and had accepted drinks.

  Robey confirms that a considerable amount of liquor flowed during the meeting, although most of it went down the throats of the two cops rather than that of Bailey.

  The commissioner took his leave. “I blasted John Donovan for even taking me there,” he remarks today.

  Despite his anger with Donovan and Sherry at having involved him in the incident, McNamara still maintains a high regard for the investigative abilities of his two lieutenants. They entered into the deal with Bailey out of sheer frustration at their failure to solve the strangling murders, he says. But: “You can fault my guys a little for being suckers.”

  Of the tape Bailey had played for the detectives, McNamara remarks, “Who knows how it was edited?”

  Says Donovan today, “I’m sure it was legitimate, what we did.”

  Bailey wanted Albert to take a polygraph test. Donovan, he writes, agreed to the idea with alacrity. Robey objected; he wanted to give a physical examination to Albert first. Bailey fumed at the delay this would entail—he felt the examination wasn’t necessary, because all anyone needed to submit to a lie detector test was a pulse and that Albert certainly had—but finally conceded to Robey’s demand. First he counseled Albert to behave himself with Robey, whom he states his client disliked intensely.

  The next day Robey pronounced Albert fit to take a polygraph.16

  Bailey and Donovan agreed that the head of the Strangler Task Force, John Bottomly, should be apprised of what had transpired over the past few days. Bailey told Donovan to give Bottomly a call; he himself had to go to Springfield to give a speech.

  Bailey and Bottomly spoke later that day. Bottomly, according to Bailey, mentioned that the Task Force had been just about to zero in on Albert themselves (Phillip DiNatale, one of the Task Force investigators, had in fact been sent down to Bridgewater to get Albert’s palm print). Bottomly agreed that a lie detector test sounded useful and promising.

  Bailey never got to administer the polygraph to Albert. When he turned up at Bridgewater the next day with the equipment, he was directed not to his client but to the office of Superintendent Charles Gaughan. Gaughan told Bailey that he had been instructed to deny the lawyer access not only to Albert but to George Nassar.

  The order had come from the attorney general.

  Bailey said to Gaughan that perhaps some legal action or the threat thereof might change his mind.17 Today he says that Bottomly was behind the move to deny him contact with his clients because the Task Force chief wanted to take over the case. “He filed a series of lawsuits in federal court preventing me from seeing DeSalvo.”

  Edward Brooke, however, disputes this claim: “I issued that order myself.”

  Brooke was unhappy with Bailey’s conduct in making the initial visit to Bridgewater to see Albert without first informing Jon Asgeirsson of his intentions. “I was upset by the fact that F. Lee had done this,” Brooke says today. “And I called the other lawyer [Asgeirsson].” What Bailey did was not technically illegal, Brooke comments, but the ethics of it were very questionable. “I even threatened to go to the Bar Association.”

  In short order, the Record American broke the news that the Boston Strangler was incarcerated at Bridgewater and that he was being represented by F. Lee Bailey. Today, Bailey says he isn’t really sure how the Record obtained its information. He theorizes that a Boston police officer tipped off one of the reporters who were always hanging around the station.

  When the Record hit the stands, Attorney General Brooke hit the roof. To add to his displeasure was the fact that a television crew had turned up at Bridgewater and was milling around outside the gates trying to get shots of the wing where DeSalvo was being held. Brooke went to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and got an injunction preventing anyone involved in the Strangler case from speaking to the press.

  A month or so before Albert had begun his confession, Irmgard had left Massachusetts with Judy and Michael. The stigma of her husband’s arrest in Cambridge on sexual assault charges had been too painful to endure; she sought surcease as well as refuge with her sister in a western state where the name DeSalvo meant nothing to anyone. On March 7, whatever separate and fragile peace she had achieved was shattered. Bailey called her with the information that her husband’s name and face would be on the front pages of tomorrow’s newspapers in connection with a horrific story. He advised Irmgard to change her name (which she had already done) and go deeper into hiding. He would be flying out to speak with her immediately.

  Gerold Frank reports that Irmgard received another telephone call, this one from an individual who spoke German, Irmgard’s native language. He informed her that he was calling on behalf of F. Lee Bailey because Mr. Bailey feared his own phone might be tapped. Someone from Bailey’s office was en route to see her as they talked, he said.18

  Then Albert’s brothers Frank and Joe came on the line. They confirmed the appalling news Bailey had so dramatically broken—that Albert had confessed to being the Boston Strangler. Irmgard must, they emphasized, do
whatever Bailey’s representative told her to do.

  She heard, but she didn’t believe. Ten days later she telephoned Albert at Bridgewater and told him that if he didn’t stop spouting these monstrous lies, she would kill herself and Judy and Michael.

  11

  Wheeling and Dealing

  From Charles Gaughan’s office at Bridgewater, Bailey writes, he went back to Boston and agonized over Albert’s position as a pawn in Bottomly’s power play. Attorney General Brooke had not accepted Bailey’s phone calls. Was it possible, the lawyer mused, that Brooke too wanted to take credit for solving the stranglings? To further his own political aspirations? And could the same be said of Boston’s Democratic mayor, John Collins? Collins would be the big winner if his police department rather than the attorney general’s office got the laurels for cracking the Strangler case.

  Bailey filed the legal papers necessary to overturn Brooke’s ban on the lawyer’s access to his client George Nassar. He did not file a similar petition with respect to Albert, he states, although he prepared the appropriate papers. By telegram, he notified Albert at Bridgewater of these recent developments—and cautioned him to watch out for those who might attempt to trick or manipulate him into unguarded speech.

  Brooke also was eager to protect Albert’s rights, reasoning that if the man were incompetent to stand trial, he might be equally incapable of picking his own lawyer. The attorney general therefore determined that a guardian be appointed to oversee Albert’s affairs. He explained this to Bailey at a meeting in the attorney general’s office. Bailey in his turn argued that the notion of the state choosing counsel for even an insane defendant violated the essence of the adversarial system. He and Brooke agreed to take the matter to court.

  Bailey retained his own attorney to represent him in the upcoming battle with Brooke. It was Paul Smith, George Nassar’s original counsel for the Irvin Hilton slaying.19

  “Word of a possible break in the Strangler case had leaked out,” Bailey writes in The Defense Never Rests, “and the Suffolk County Courthouse was filled with newsmen as I picked my way over cables and past cameras to the courtroom door.”20

  Ames Robey remembers this event well: “I almost couldn’t get off the elevator. There were even representatives from Reuters and Tass. Every network, every Boston newspaper—the place was a madhouse. I managed to get off and wend my way to the courtroom door. Just as I was about to go into the courtroom, Bailey grabbed me. Dragged me into the little lawyers’ anteroom there and said, ‘Ames, you’ve got to say he [Albert] is competent.’ Why would I have to say that? Because Lee had filed a charge against me for malpractice because I’d done a lumbar puncture on a [Bridgewater] patient we suspected of having syphilis, oh, some months before, and the patient claimed he was having headaches. Well, after a spinal tap, almost everyone has headaches if they don’t lie flat and you remove some pressure. You’re very likely to have a headache for three hours. And Bailey said, ‘If you don’t [find Albert competent], it will cost you everything.’ I said, ‘Lee.’ He, by the way, had me by both lapels. I’m much taller than Lee. I said, ‘Lee, let go of me or I’ll back out of this room sobbing as I go. Don’t ever threaten me again, Mr. Bailey.’ He dropped me like a hot rock.”

  The inadvertent ringmaster of this media circus, Judge Arthur Whittemore, ruled that two state-appointed psychiatrists would decide the issue of Albert’s competence.

  Afterward Bailey phoned his own expert on mental health issues, Dr. Robert Ross Mezer, hypnoanalyst William Joseph Bryan III, and attorney Melvin Belli for advice and consultation.

  Bailey has consistently and vigorously maintained that he originated and carried out the plan that Albert be allowed to confess to the stranglings in return for a grant of immunity from prosecution and an assurance of being given good psychiatric treatment at a decent facility. But certain records appear to contradict Bailey. In a memo to Brooke dated April 27, 1965, Bottomly mentions having proposed the same idea earlier to the attorney general. And was Bailey the major figure in all the negotiations and legal maneuverings on Albert’s behalf as he presents himself as being in The Defense Never Rests? Or did Jon Asgeirsson, whom Bailey relegates to the background in his book, play a much more active role in these events? Very possibly the latter. At any rate, it was from Asgeirsson rather than Bailey that Bottomly sought approval of the idea he’d outlined to Brooke:

  At the Friday hearing before Judge Whittemore, Bill Cowin [Assistant Attorney General William Cowin] advises that it was learned that the state psychiatrist will testify that DeSalvo is not competent to stand trial and at best it is very doubtful that he is competent to make sound decisions in the management of his own affairs. After receiving that information I arranged for an appointment with Asgeirsson to explore the possibility of implementing the suggestion I made earlier to you [Brooke] to make a determination about DeSalvo one way or the other.

  That meeting was held with Asgeirsson this morning [April 27, 1965] ... I suggested one idea was to have the Attorney General after consultation with and the consent of the three District Attorneys involved agree to the permanent commitment of DeSalvo in a mental institution after interrogation convinces him that DeSalvo is the strangler. I advised him that this suggestion was made informally and no publicity could result, and that if it was publicized the idea must be withdrawn immediately. He represented to me that he did not feel that it was necessary to consult with Bailey on this matter at this stage, and that he was genuinely concerned that if he did consult with him adverse publicity might well result. It is obvious that he is increasingly disenchanted with his relationship with Bailey. [Emphasis added.]

  If Asgeirsson was unhappy with his co-counsel (if that is indeed the role Bailey played), he apparently wasn’t the only one. Bottomly noted to Brooke that Asgeirsson “advised that the members of DeSalvo’s family, particularly Joseph, were becoming increasingly disenchanted with Bailey.”

  In the course of this meeting, Asgeirsson and Bottomly also took up the matter of Albert’s guardianship. The Task Force chief proposed that Charles Gaughan, Superintendent of Bridgewater, assume that position. Asgeirsson objected and counterproposed Joseph DeSalvo. He and Bottomly then agreed to confer with Joseph about the matter along with William Cowin, the assistant attorney general delegated to handle the filing of any guardianship petition.

  On May 4, Bottomly penned another memo to Brooke in which he referred to his continuant conversations with Asgeirsson about Albert’s fate within the judicial system. Bailey was not party to these talks—clearly very crucial ones—either.

  On May 5, Brooke met with the district attorneys of Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk counties to discuss how the investigation of Albert’s alleged involvement in the stranglings ought to be pursued. If Bailey attended that meeting, there is no reference to his presence.

  Although Bottomly was working with Asgeirsson on his own plan to have Albert indicted for at least one of the thirteen murders, he did not then believe that Asgeirsson’s client was the Boston Strangler. “On that assumption,” he remarked to Brooke, “I am strictly from Missouri.”

  On May 6, according to The Defense Never Rests, Bailey and the attorney general’s office reached a decision concerning the matter of Albert’s guardianship. The man chosen to assume it was George McGrath, a former corrections commissioner for the Commonwealth. Bailey was entirely satisfied with the choice; he thought highly of McGrath.21

  But was he the architect of McGrath’s appointment, as his book suggests? A message from William Cowin to Bottomly, dated May 6, 1965, gives a slightly different version not only of how the guardianship agreement was struck, but of who the principals in it were:

  Judge McMenimen this morning appointed George McGrath temporary guardian of the person of Albert DeSalvo and Joseph DeSalvo temporary guardian of the estate of Albert DeSalvo. The judge accepted Jon Asgeirsson’s representation that he was satisfied with this arrangement [emphasis added] and refused to set a date for a hearing on the p
ermanent appointment at this time.

  McMenimen feels that since counsel have agreed there is no need for further proceedings yet. I imagine that if Bailey returns now and makes a commotion he will get a very cool reception from the Probate Court.

  According to Cowin, then, not only was Bailey not in the attorney general’s office engineering the guardianship agreement, he wasn’t even in town.

  In June of 1965 Bailey had to defend George Nassar, who was then being tried for the murder of Irvin Hilton. When the trial was well under way, Bailey says, Lieutenant Andrew Tuney (“a tall, handsome man”) of the Strangler Task Force came to him to inquire about the possibility of interviewing Albert about the thirteen murders. Bailey consented, provided that George McGrath be present during the interrogation and that anything Albert said remain inadmissible as evidence. Tuney accepted the deal. John Donovan would be his co-interviewer.22

  Whatever arrangement Bailey had made with Tuney, however, was anticipated by an agreement Bottomly had long since struck with Asgeirsson. As Bottomly wrote Brooke on May 4, “I have indicated to Asgeirsson that [Albert‘s] interrogators would be me, Lt. Tuney and the head of the homicide bureau of the community when that particular crime was the subject of interrogation. Tapes would be made of the interrogations, transcriptions would then be prepared. The ‘evidence’ [note Bottomly’s quote marks here] could then be thoroughly evaluated and compared with other information.”

  Interestingly, Bottomly was as of April 27 considering John Donovan as cointerrogator. A week later he seems to have changed his mind.