The Boston Stranglers

by Susan Kelly

  “Mary must be asleep,” said Patricia, referring to their new roommate, Mary Sullivan. “Let’s use the key.”

  Inside the apartment, Pamela opened the bedroom door and glanced into its darkened interior. She saw Mary on the bed. Her assumption that Mary had been napping apparently confirmed, Pam went to the kitchen to help Pat fix dinner.

  About fifteen minutes later, Pam yelled to Mary that the meal was ready. Pat banged on the bedroom door. “Gee, she won’t wake up,” Pat said.

  Pam opened the door, switched on the light, and took a good look at what lay on the bed. She backed from the room, stumbling, and gasped at Pat, “Look, look.”

  Pat did. “My God,” she said. “She’s been raped; get the police.”

  The two young women flung themselves down the stairs and out onto Charles Street, screaming.

  A Boston police motorcycle officer, John Vadeboncour, heard them. Barely coherent, Pam and Pat told him of their discovery. Vadeboncour sprinted up the steps of 44A Charles Street and into the apartment. He cast an appalled look at the scene in the bedroom and called for detectives.

  This, from the official report, is what met the horrified gaze of Pam, Pat, and Officer Vadeboncour:

  The body of the deceased was on one of two twin beds, the one nearer the door leading to the kitchen of the apartment. The body was in a sitting position at the head of the bed, leaning against the headboard. The thighs and knees are flexed, and spread apart. The neck is flexed, the chin resting on the upper chest, and the head leaning toward the right ... The body is nude except for the partial cover of the shoulders by a blouse and bra. The breasts are bare. The mouth contains mucoid sticky secretions, a dried strand of this extending from the mouth towards a dried streak of similar material on the skin of the right breast, and on the right anterior chest wall. A broom handle is present in the vagina [to the extent of 3½ inches], the whole broom extending out flat on the bed in front of the body ... About the neck are tied three ligatures consisting of (A) a charcoal-colored nylon stocking, (B) a pink silk scarf, and (C) a pink and white scarf with floral design ... The only clothing present, and this about the shoulders, is a white bra and a yellow and beige striped blouse ... [The first ligature] is extremely tight causing a deeply depressed furrow, completely encircling the neck ... [There are] acute traumatic injuries of both breasts.

  Her killer had moved her body from one bed to another.

  Propped up against the left foot of the victim was a card that read “Happy New Year!”

  Mary Sullivan would have turned twenty on January 11. On that day, those who knew and loved her did not attend her birthday party. They received condolence calls.

  She was buried on January 8 after the celebration of a solemn high requiem mass in Saint Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis, her hometown.

  Police estimated that shortly after Pam and Pat had run screaming into the night, perhaps four hundred spectators jammed Charles Street outside the building in which the murder had taken place. Extra officers had to be called to restore the flow of traffic on the narrow thoroughfare that was one of the main routes in and out of Boston.

  One of the spectators was nineteen-year-old William Robert Evans of Arlington, Patricia Delmore’s fiance. He informed the police that Mary, whom he had only recently met, had been frightened because someone had been on the fire escape outside the apartment a few nights previously. He added, “The girls have been worried about a defective window in the kitchen for about a month.”

  That night Newton police arrested nineteen-year-old Richard Brunette for the kidnapping and armed robbery of Christine and Elizabeth Tracy.

  The victims’ statement that their attacker had wanted to flee Boston because he was “wanted for murder” resonated with the Boston Homicide Unit. The Boston Common Garage, where Brunette had initiated the kidnapping, was barely three blocks from Mary Sullivan’s apartment. And she probably had died close to 5:00, when Brunette was trying to escape the city.

  The detectives questioned Brunette well into Sunday. He denied killing Mary Sullivan.

  Mary Anne Sullivan, the second of six children of Mr. and Mrs. John T. Sullivan of Sea Street in Hyannis, was a small girl, no more than five-foot-three, with dark chestnut hair and an olive complexion. She was considered attractive as well as high-spirited, although the principal photograph of her published in the newspapers after her death conveys neither of these attributes: It shows, rather, a young woman who looks much older than her age, her expression somber, her lips clamped together in a prim, almost sour line.

  Diane Sullivan Dodd remembers her sister as “cute and chubby.” Popular as well. “Everybody liked her,” says Mrs. Dodd. “She didn’t have any enemies.” Although her manner was quiet, her sense of humor was abundant. “She was the funniest person in the world.” She fretted about her weight. “Mary would go to church at lunch instead of eat,” recalls Mrs. Dodd, “because she was always on a diet.”

  Mary grew up on Cape Cod and attended Barnstable High School. In the summer of 1961, while she was working with her best friend, Meredith (Merry) Ward, at the Hyannis A & P, she acquired her first boyfriend, Nathan Ward, Meredith’s brother. Nate was on leave from the army.

  Mary’s mother disapproved strongly of Nate; he was, she felt, a bad influence on her sixteen-year-old daughter. An honors student in high school, he had turned down a scholarship to divinity school to go into the service. Perhaps he had made this decision because he was, according to one of Mary’s sisters, “a terrible atheist.” He also gave Mary Communist tracts to read, and a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which Mrs. Sullivan promptly confiscated and burned.

  Mary adored Nate. Possibly part of his appeal for her was the disfavor in which her mother held him. More likely she was simply swept away by the emotional tide of a first romance. While Nate was away on duty, he sent her poems as well as letters. She kept them in a box; she still had them at the time of her death.

  Nate left the army at around the same time that Mary graduated from high school, in June 1962. On July 9, Mary moved out of the family home and into a local rooming house. Mrs. Sullivan felt that she had done so under pressure from Nate. Mary said she wanted privacy. With her she took the hope chest and the set of luggage Nate had given her, the former as a graduation present.

  The romantic idyll soon went bad. Mary and Nate began to argue almost constantly, Mary’s sister Diane would later tell police. Another witness maintained that he was verbally abusive, yelling insults at her in the presence of their friends. He played on her the kind of practical jokes that verge on torture, such as going into her apartment to turn up the thermostat on hot days.

  There was an even darker undercurrent to Mary’s life in the summer of 1962 than simply her troubled relationship with Nate. She had possibly become wildly, in fact dangerously, promiscuous. It is impossible now to judge whether this was the cause, the effect, or the symptom of her problems with Nate.

  She began to frequent a cottage in South Dennis occupied by a large group of young men. After her death, police interviewed as many of these youths as could be traced. What they had to say about Mary was profoundly disturbing:

  First time I met Mary Sullivan was in late June or early July at the cottage. I think that the other girls, Sharon and Natalie, brought her down. Within two or three weeks I knew she was a pushover, but I was afraid to get involved. One night when Mary was taking on most of the guys, when my turn came, she jerked me off. I’m not sure if it was the night of the gangbang or if it was just me. I had a few drinks ... Even though she and I were alone in the bedroom I was apprehensive, and now as I think back even though Mary Sullivan gave me a hand job, I could have had a blow job. There were other nights in the cottage during the summer when I was there that Mary would have relations with the guys, but as I told Officer Daly, I was always afraid if I tried there would be serious consequences.

  Another youth “stated there was a party in the cottage [in the last week of June] and that he danced
with her and then went outside in a car, owner unknown ... she was grabbing his private and he then let her commit an unnatural act (oral intercourse) on him.”

  The dreary and revolting litany continued. Several young men openly referred to Mary as “a pig” when describing her to police. “No one wanted to bother with her,” said another, meaning that she was fine as a vessel for sexual release but not good enough to be taken to the movies or to dinner. Yet another youth told police that one night, as he lay in a chair in a drunken stupor, he regained consciousness to find Mary attempting to fellate him.

  With no shame or guilt, or even embarrassment, a fifth young man described to police how he had tried to rape Mary one evening after she had passed out from heavy drinking. But first, he cut off her clothing with a razor—“all but her panties, those I took off.” The rest of the assault—the boy himself called it a rape—came to nothing. The youth was so intoxicated he fell asleep on top of Mary. “When I woke up, she was gone.” He thinks she drove home nude; she had at any rate left her shredded clothing behind her. He later burned it in the cottage fireplace, he thought.

  The incident became a local joke.

  All these heroes marveled over the fact that Mary, who dressed so neatly and demurely, and who wore so little makeup, could behave so sluttishly. None of them seemed to feel that their own behavior had been anything but entirely acceptable.

  Only one young man, Christopher Sweeny, manifested a shred of decency when speaking of Mary. “She appeared to be a very nice, quiet girl ... I never had anything to do [sexually] with her; [I] felt sorry for her. Every week she would come to the cottage and guys would be getting to her.”

  How much of the above was true, and how much the invention—or the braggadocio—of a locker room mentality, will never be known. One of Mary’s girlfriends, Paula Houle, said that Mary was “above reproach morally.” One of Mary’s sisters, however, told police that Mary was “irresponsible and capable of anything and not a person who could be judged according to the norms of normal people.”

  Paula Houle counterclaimed that this sister was a troublemaker, a heavy drinker, “a nut,” and the real problem child in the Sullivan family.

  Carola Blume analyzed Mary’s handwriting for the Strangler Task Force. What she found was a young woman who “had sexual satisfaction. She possessed a womanly kindness. Mary would go along with any kind of abnormal tendencies just to please a person, but had no abnormal tendencies herself. It is believed that Mary would have made a good wife for somebody, that she was the passive type, typically feminine, accepting. She would not give any resistance. Perversion was not in her personality, but she would go along with it.”

  The caption beneath Mary’s high school yearbook photo read that she was “of more than common friendliness ... happy-go-lucky with a cheerful attitude toward life.” To this “bright-eyed girl,” the encomium added, parties, dancing, and singing “bring many happy hours.”

  There must have been precious few “happy hours” in the desperate summer of 1962.

  In October of that year, Mary moved to the Sun Dial Village cottages in Hyannis, taking a second-floor apartment. Her “official” boyfriend Nate was already living downstairs with a few other young men who were attending Cape Cod Community College. He and Mary were still involved, although how closely is difficult to say. He continued to berate her. When the weather got cold, he’d pull the reverse of his summertime trick and turn off the heat in her apartment. Mary probably fought back a lot less hard than she could—or should—have. The passivity that Carola Blume would later comment on might have been, in the most literal sense possible, her ultimate fatal flaw.

  There was, however, one hopeful sign.

  With her change of residence, Mary also suddenly—and drastically—changed her sexual habits for the better. She went to a dance held at a youth club in West Roxbury on October 26. There she encountered several of the young men who had used her over the summer. Said one of them, “I tried to make out. She refused to let me put my hands under her clothing. She said the summer was over and she was trying to change.”

  Another youth confirmed this statement. According to the police report, he “was under the impression that nobody made out with [Mary] on this particular night because she appeared to have reformed; also, that she was not the push-over she had been before.”

  Also attending this dance, in Mary’s company, was the sister who called her “irresponsible.” The sister, according to the police report, introduced herself to the other guests with a phony surname.

  In the second half of her senior year in high school, Mary had been a food service worker at Cape Cod Hospital. During her stay in Hyannis, she worked as a door-to-door seller of encyclopedias and for the telephone company. Jerrell Wilcox, a phone company coworker, thought highly of Mary, describing her as “very sentimental.”

  She was also very generous. In December of 1962, she took in a pregnant and unmarried friend, Jean. Jean, in addition to her other difficulties, was unemployed and broke. Mary let her live in the Sun Dial Village apartment for three months without paying rent.

  Mary’s generosity was all the more impressive in view of the fact that she herself was unemployed from January to April of 1963. To pay the rent and buy groceries, she took in ironing. Her clients were male students at Cape Cod Community College.

  Jean moved out in March, and in June, Mary acquired another roommate, Wendy, who because she had a job at a local nursing home was able to contribute to the household upkeep. Wendy was also a student at the community college, as was her boyfriend Mike—who lived downstairs with Nate Ward for a short while.

  In August of 1963, Mary and Nate finally parted. The breakup was probably acrimonious; Mrs. Sullivan later stated that Mary’s defection had sent Nate into “a wild rage.” However it came about, the split was long overdue. Mrs. Sullivan said that Mary had instigated the parting, which if true shows that she was finally developing some healthy spirit. It is possible that Mary had wanted out of the relationship long before, but had procrastinated for fear of insulting Merry Ward.

  Perhaps it was simply that she had found a more appealing man. In the late summer of 1963 she became friendly with Tommy Bahr, who was working as an assistant manager of the Barnstable Howard Johnson’s. They went to church together every Sunday at Saint Francis Xavier. They began dating in mid-September.

  Tommy had just moved in downstairs with Nate, who was also a waiter at the Howard Johnson’s. The tension must have been considerable.

  Nate found himself a new girlfriend, Betty. Mary’s sister Diane thought he had done so solely to make Mary jealous. He had not lacked for female companionship prior to that; in July he had impregnated a young woman from Connecticut.

  Wendy, Mary’s new roommate, disliked Nate intensely. She thought him cowardly, a game player. And he eyed her in a way she considered “perverted.”

  He was certainly not stable in his employment. Between the summer of 1962 and that of 1963 he held four jobs: at a dredging company, at a gas station, at a trading stamp redemption center, and at Howard Johnson’s. He also enrolled in the community college but soon dropped out.

  In the fall of 1963, Mary left the Sun Dial apartment and went to live in Whitman, near Cape Cod, with Merry Ward, now married to a man named Frank Lombardi. She commuted to Boston, where she had taken a job at Filene’s—and where she would meet Pat Delmore and Pam Parker. She continued to date Tommy Bahr.

  Nate’s new girlfriend, Betty, moved in with Wendy.

  A week before her death, Mary quit Filene’s and took a receptionist’s position with a Boston finance company. She went to work there on Friday, January 3, 1964. Her first day at work would be her last.

  Just two days before that, she had moved in with Pam and Pat at 44A Charles Street.

  By the winter of 1963, Mary was again having boyfriend problems. Tommy was not sufficiently attentive; she took up with a man named Clyde in order to make Tommy jealous, or so her friend Wendy said
. Furthermore, someone identified only as “Don, a steeplejack [who] was staying at the Reindeer Motel in West Yarmouth,” had been badgering Mary to date him. She would have nothing to do with this man, succinctly described by Wendy’s boyfriend Mike as “a creep.” Don was so desperate for Mary’s favor that he pleaded with Mike to intercede for him. Mike declined.

  On January 4, 1964, the day of Mary’s death, Wendy received a letter from her. It had been written just before Mary’s move to Boston. She had gone, she informed Wendy, to a New Year’s party in Whitman, which had been “lousy.” At 1:00 A.M. on January 1, she drove to Sun Dial Village. There she saw Tommy with another woman.

  Patricia Delmore would later tell police that she thought Mary had shown up at 44A Charles Street sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 A.M. on January 1, in the mistaken belief that either Pam or Pat would be there.

  Wendy seemed sure that after leaving Sun Dial Village, Mary had driven to Clyde’s place in Centerville.

  Diane Sullivan Dodd says today that Mary spent the predawn hours of New Year’s Day sitting in Saint Anthony’s Shrine in Boston.

  Mary moved into 44A Charles Street on January 1, a Wednesday. On January 2, Pat’s boyfriend William Robert Evans and one of his buddies visited the apartment. All three young women had been present; Evans was introduced to Mary. He and his friend stayed from 7:30 until 11:00 that night.

  The next day, the last full day of Mary’s life, Pam noticed that her apartment key had been removed from the case in which she normally kept it.

  Mary went to work. She left the finance company at 5:30 and drove to a service station, where she had the license plates on her blue Vauxhall—bought with a loan cosigned by Merry Ward Lombardi’s husband—changed.

  At 7:30 that night, Evans returned to 44A Charles. Speaking through a closed door, Mary informed him that Pat had gone to visit her parents in Lowell. Evans would tell police that he thought he heard a man’s voice, low but nasal, inside the apartment. It had stopped as soon as he had knocked. It might have been the voice of a radio announcer. Evans was curious enough, he said, to check later whether any programs broadcast at that hour featured a host or a disk jockey who spoke in such a fashion. He could find none that did.