Search for the Strangler

by Casey Sherman

  Bailey claims Nassar also pleaded with him to travel to Bridgewater State Hospital to meet DeSalvo, after which Bailey contacted the Boston Police Department and asked for information to help him determine whether DeSalvo was involved in the Boston Strangler case. Bailey writes that police gave him answers to five questions that only the killer could know. Bailey says he quizzed DeSalvo on those unreleased crime scene details, and that DeSalvo passed that test.

  Knowing the publicity that was likely to result from this sensational case, Bailey advised DeSalvo’s wife to take her young children as far away from Boston as possible. Irmgard DeSalvo told Bailey she had a sister living in Colorado, and Bailey gave her money for three plane tickets.

  4 : Snow Job

  Special Officer Jim Mellon knew something was amiss with the DeSalvo case because Albert DeSalvo was simply too eager to tell his story. Mellon hoped Irmgard DeSalvo could fill some of the holes in the mystery.

  Arriving in Colorado, Mellon rented a car and drove to the small community of Golden, tucked deep into the Rocky Mountains. Irmgard and the two children were living in a trailer park just outside town. Mellon had rehearsed his approach to Irmgard. He would offer his irresistible Irish smile and a few sympathetic words, in the hopes she would talk to him. Knocking gently on the aluminum door, he watched as she nervously approached. “Who are you? Why have you come here?” Irmgard said with a thick German accent. Her eyes darted across the snow-covered parking lot, looking for newspaper reporters, whom Bailey had warned her against. But when Mellon took out his police badge from his coat pocket to identify himself, Irmgard quickly ushered him inside.

  Mellon was pleased to see that the children were not home. “I’d like to speak with you about your husband,” he told her. Looking annoyed, Irmgard flipped the bangs of her platinum blonde hair off her forehead. “I don’t know what he’s thinking,” she said. “He’s always got some scheme to make it rich. He’s always trying to be the big man.” Irmgard paced back and forth in the small trailer.

  Mellon tried to ease the tension. “Just between you and me, dear,” he said with a wink, “I don’t think he’s the strangler, either.” He then asked Irmgard to call her husband at Bridgewater State Hospital, saying, “Just ask him what he’s up to. Albert could be setting you and the children up for a great fall.”

  Irmgard complied with Mellon’s suggestion. Hearing her husband’s voice for the first time in weeks, she began to scream, “Why are you telling everyone you’re the Boston Strangler? This is crazy!”

  Jim Mellon leaned closer to listen to Albert’s reply.

  “Just calm down,” Albert said. “Bailey’s got everything taken care of. Look, there’s a lot of money to be made here. Just keep quiet, and everything will be fine.”

  “But there’s a police officer here from Boston asking questions. How can you tell me everything is going to be fine? You’re telling people lies, you’re telling them you’re the Boston Strangler,” Irmgard shouted into the phone.

  “Relax, Irm, I never told anyone I was the strangler. Put that cop on the phone,” Albert demanded.

  Mellon put the receiver up to his ear.

  “Who the hell are you?” DeSalvo inquired.

  Mellon thought for a second and then replied, “I’m the guy that’s gonna expose you for the fraud that you are.”

  “Put my wife back on the phone,” DeSalvo ordered. He then asked Irmgard to continue the conversation in German, and the couple talked for several more minutes. Mellon had no idea what they were discussing, but it was not pleasant, judging by the harsh tone of Irmgard’s voice.

  After she hung up, Mellon thanked her for her time and promised that he’d stay in touch. By now Mellon was certain that DeSalvo was no serial killer. But why would Albert DeSalvo confess to crimes he did not commit? In part it was his wish for fame and money. Not only did DeSalvo dream of a lucrative book deal, but he and his friend George Nassar also hoped to cash in on a reward. The Attorney General was offering $10,000 for information that would lead to the Boston Strangler’s arrest. The two inmates believed that ten grand was being offered for each victim, bringing the total to $110,000. (This was untrue.) Nassar would turn DeSalvo over to the authorities, and the two of them would split the reward.

  But fame and money were not the only factors in DeSalvo’s actions. He told his family and F. Lee Bailey that he was afraid to go to prison. Bailey convinced DeSalvo that by confessing to the stranglings, he would be spared prison and be sent to a secure psychiatric hospital, where his criminal mind would be studied.

  When Jim Mellon returned to Boston, he was determined to pursue Joseph Preston Moss, the man he now considered the prime suspect in Mary Sullivan’s murder. Moss had recently dropped out of Boston University, a move his friends blamed on the stress of the investigation. Believing the young man was about to crack, Mellon made a formal request to John Bottomly to place a wiretap on Moss’s home phone. He thought he would have no trouble convincing Bottomly, who had also called Moss the number one suspect in Sullivan’s murder. He told Bottomly about the trip to Colorado and the bizarre phone call between the DeSalvos. “He’s just in it for the money. I don’t care what he claims to know about the murders, this guy is a con man,” Mellon argued. Bottomly did not share Mellon’s skepticism about DeSalvo. “We’re going with DeSalvo and that’s it,” Bottomly said. Mellon continued to argue his point, but his superior refused to budge, and Mellon realized that the play had already been set in motion. Albert DeSalvo would not only confess to Mary Sullivan’s murder, he would confess to all the murders, thereby tying this incredible case up in a neat bow. Soon after his meeting with Bottomly, Jim Mellon resigned from the Boston Strangler Task Force.

  While cleaning out his desk at the task force office, he opened Mary Sullivan’s case file one last time, stared at the girl’s picture, and said softly, “I’m sorry, Mary.” As punishment for quitting the task force, Mellon was taken out of plainclothes and put back in uniform. One day he was investigating one of the biggest murder cases in history, and the next he was on Dorchester Avenue, frisking a shoplifter for a stolen candy bar. Nevertheless, he has never regretted quitting the task force and at the time was disgusted with his task force colleagues for not quitting also.

  Albert DeSalvo’s confessions to the Boston Strangler murders were spread out over the next several months. His first interrogator was F. Lee Bailey, who claimed he had received information from DeSalvo about the murders that proved his guilt. The following transcript comes from a taped conversation between Bailey and DeSalvo at Bridgewater State Hospital on March 6, 1965, about the murder of Anna Slesers:

  BAILEY: What floor was the apartment on?

  DESALVO: The top floor.

  BAILEY: Do you know how many flights that was from the street?

  DESALVO: Probably four to five, or five to six. I think it was five. I’m not sure.

  BAILEY: And how did you gain entrance to the apartment?

  DESALVO: I knocked on the door and I . . . she allowed me in. . . . I talked to her about some work I had to do in the apartment. She had a blue robe on; undoubtedly she was getting ready for a bath, because the light was on in the bathroom and there was water, I’m pretty sure, in the bathtub. And as she walked, and I was behind her, I hit her on the head with this object I had in my hand, and she fell. And as she fell, I reached over the back of her and put my arms around her neck, and we fell together on the floor. [DeSalvo goes on to say that he lay with Slesers on the floor until she was helpless in his arms.] The blood was going all over me, and when I got up and looked, I was full of blood on my black and white jacket. I had her [bath]robe belt, a blue one, and I put it around her neck and tied it and left it on her. She was still alive, and I had intercourse with her.

  BAILEY: And when you left her, how was she dressed?

  DESALVO: I left her lying on the floor with her legs wide open about five feet from the bathroom. I went to the bathroom and washed up afterwards.

  BAILE
Y: What was the position of her robe?

  DESALVO: Open.

  BAILEY: Not on?

  DESALVO: No, I don’t think . . . no, her arms were still in her sleeves.

  BAILEY: Did she have anything on under the robe?

  DESALVO: Nothing.

  BAILEY: Can you describe her physically in any way?

  DESALVO: Flat busted, a very small thin woman.

  BAILEY: How tall?

  DESALVO: About five feet five, or five four.

  BAILEY: What color hair did she have?

  DESALVO: Dark brown and very short.

  BAILEY: Did she have any marks or scars that you recall?

  DESALVO: No I don’t [recall].

  BAILEY: And where was she bleeding from?

  DESALVO: The back of her head or on top.

  BAILEY: And when she was lying down on the floor, as she bled, which way was her face . . . toward the ceiling or upside down?

  DESALVO: That I don’t remember.

  BAILEY: Was there a pool of blood anywhere on the floor?

  DESALVO: No, it was only on me.

  BAILEY: Do you remember how many rooms [there] were in the apartment?

  DESALVO: There was a large one, the bathroom, and the kitchen . . .

  BAILEY: And the bathroom?

  DESALVO: Very small.

  BAILEY: And as you went into the apartment, which way did you turn to the bathroom?

  DESALVO: Left, to the bathroom.

  BAILEY: And can you see the bathroom when you’re at the door?

  DESALVO: I don’t think so.

  BAILEY: Any other recollection of what the interior of the bathroom was like, colors, decorations?

  DESALVO: No, it was like a yellow . . . maybe I’m wrong.

  BAILEY: Now, when you left the apartment; how long were you there first?

  DESALVO: Twenty minutes. It was a sunshiny day . . . A very nice day.

  BAILEY: All right. And when you left the apartment, did you take anything with you?

  DESALVO: Twenty dollars.

  BAILEY: Anything else?

  DESALVO: No . . . yes, oh yes, I’m sorry. I did take something else. Because of the . . . I went in the bathroom and washed all the blood off, took my shirt off and my jacket. I went looking for something to put over me and I found a light tan . . . like a raincoat . . . and it was very short on my arms, but I thought I oughta have something to cover me to walk out of the building without a shirt on. So I did, and I bundled up my bloody clothes, and I put the bundle in some [kind of a bag].

  BAILEY: Where did you go when you left the apartment?

  DESALVO: I went downstairs . . .

  BAILEY: Did you lock the door when you left?

  DESALVO: Yes . . . I closed it, and it probably snapped locked.

  BAILEY: Did you check it?

  DESALVO: No, I didn’t.

  BAILEY: You still had gloves?

  DESALVO: Yes.

  BAILEY: Did you take them off?

  DESALVO: As soon as I got out the door.

  BAILEY: Now, was your appearance in that neighborhood much like it is today? If someone had seen you, would you look the same, or was your hair different?

  DESALVO: My hair was very long; it was combed to both sides, waved to both sides.

  BAILEY: Was it the same shade as it is now?

  DESALVO: Oh no, [I had] thick black hair.

  BAILEY: Well, your hair is now brown, I take it.

  DESALVO: But when I have oil in it, my hair looks black.

  BAILEY: Oh, I see. Okay. Now, again. The knot . . . how did you tie this knot in the cord?

  DESALVO: I gave it two turns . . . the first one . . .

  BAILEY: Two loops and then tightened it?

  DESALVO: Tightened it, and then the other one one time. But on this one, I don’t know when I did it, if it got tangled into a bow or not or what. But I do know that it is possible that a bow was made, but not purposely.

  BAILEY: Now, on what area of her neck would the knot be; front, side, or back?

  DESALVO: Front.

  BAILEY: Under the chin?

  DESALVO: Yes.

  It could be argued that Albert DeSalvo assuredly was inside Anna Slesers’s apartment on the June day when she was murdered in 1962, but serious questions arise when you look at the sources of information DeSalvo had available to help him paint a picture of the murder scene. A description of Slesers’s physical appearance had been in the newspaper, along with her vital statistics, such as her height and weight. That Slesers was getting ready for a bath at the time she was killed had also been printed in the Record American, and the color of the woman’s housecoat had been mentioned three times, in both Boston newspapers. What is more, Ames Robey, the psychiatrist, has pointed out repeatedly, Albert DeSalvo had a very good memory.

  But if Albert DeSalvo fed off the newspapers to help put together a believable confession, where did he get the details of facts that were not printed in the newspapers? Mellon believes he knows the answer. In the months after quitting the task force, Mellon tried to get the Boston Strangler case out of his mind. But one evening in the summer of 1965, Mellon received a telephone call from the secretary at the task force. “What do you want from me?” Mellon asked. “Take me back to the first strangler murder, the murder of Anna Slesers,” she replied. “What color was the couch in Slesers’s apartment?” Mellon hesitated, his mind racing. Why would she need this information? “Oh, my God, they’re feeding these details to DeSalvo,” Mellon thought to himself. So he lied and told the secretary that the couch was blue with orange trim. There is no way to determine whether this incorrect information was given to DeSalvo, however, since a description of Slesers’s couch was not listed in the transcript of the confession.

  Another indication of Albert DeSalvo’s mendacity is that he got into trouble when he went off script. DeSalvo told Bailey that once he left Selsers’s apartment, he went to an army-navy store around the corner and bought a new shirt, because his own was covered with blood. But there was no army-navy store in Slesers’s Back Bay neighborhood. The last clothing store in the area had gone out of business in February 1962, four months before Slesers was killed.

  By August 1965, there had not been a strangling since Mary Sullivan’s, more than a year and a half before. For months after Sullivan’s slaying, newspaper columnists had blasted the authorities for their inability to solve this case. But now the columnists moved on to other, fresher topics. Still, the Boston Strangler Task Force was viewed as the laughingstock of Massachusetts law enforcement, and John Bottomly had to do something drastic to change this perception and thereby ensure his political future.

  On August 11, 1965, Bottomly traveled to Bridgewater State Hospital to interview Albert DeSalvo. More seasoned members of the task force opposed the move because Bottomly had no experience in interrogation. As for Bailey, he insisted on one stipulation: any confession DeSalvo made would not be used against him in court. Bottomly readily agreed, a decision that would haunt the case for decades to come.

  Bottomly met DeSalvo in a small room at the hospital. Sitting next to DeSalvo was an attorney, George McGrath. A judge had ruled that DeSalvo was not competent to handle his own affairs, and McGrath, a friend of Bailey’s, had been chosen as his legal guardian. Bottomly had brought with him a few legal notepads and several pens as well as reels of audiotape for his tape recorder. He also had a folder stuffed with crime scene photos. In standard police interrogations, suspects are never allowed to look through pictures of the crime scene. Doing so would give the suspect added information about the murder. But Bottomly said that showing the photos to DeSalvo would jog his memory. Laying some photos of the Anna Slesers murder scene on the table, Bottomly hit the record button on his tape machine and began to interview the suspect. DeSalvo told Bottomly the same things he had told Bailey about Slesers’s murder. They quickly moved to Nina Nichols, Boston Strangler victim number two.

  DeSalvo’s confession to the Nichols murder got off
to a rocky start, however. DeSalvo told Bottomly her apartment was directly across from a fire door leading from the stairway. A later visit to the building by investigators proved this to be inaccurate. DeSalvo did tell Bottomly that Nichols had come to the door in her bathrobe, which was true. But this fact had been printed in the newspaper. He also said the victim lived on the fourth floor, that she had been wearing tennis shoes, and that the killer had left her lying on the floor of the apartment. But all these details had also been chronicled in the newspaper. DeSalvo also stated that he had ejaculated inside Nichols’s vagina. But again, the fact that Nichols had been raped was highly publicized, and there was no mention of sperm inside the vagina in Nichols’s autopsy report. DeSalvo also said, incorrectly, that the victim had been wearing stockings at the time she was killed. In addition, DeSalvo said that Nichols had scratched him and drawn blood with her fingernails. But the medical examiner had found no trace of skin or blood underneath her fingernails.

  Bottomly next questioned DeSalvo about the death of Helen Blake, who had been murdered the same day as Nichols, a few miles north of Boston in the city of Lynn. When asked to describe the exterior of Blake’s apartment building, DeSalvo said its front was sided with hard oak. The outside of Blake’s apartment building, however, was not wood but concrete halfway up; above that was brick. DeSalvo also told Bottomly that there was some kind of name on the front door, like The Manor. This statement also proved false. Moreover, in describing the layout of Blake’s apartment, DeSalvo placed the bathroom to the left of the front door, though it was actually on the right as you walked into the apartment.

  When Bottomly asked DeSalvo how he had gained access to Blake’s apartment, DeSalvo said, “I told her I was going to do some work for her on the ceilings. She was in the midst of shaking out some rugs when she opened her door. The rugs were on the window in the room.

  “She was bent facing the bed, and I put my arms around her neck, but she went into a dead faint. A little blood was dripping from her nose, and she wore glasses,” DeSalvo said. He maintained that he had taken off Blake’s pajama bottoms and had sex with her while she was unconscious. After raping Blake, DeSalvo claimed, he had grabbed a bra from her dresser and wrapped it around her neck. DeSalvo also said he tied a nylon stocking in three loops around her neck.