Search for the Strangler

by Casey Sherman

  Bottomly’s deficient interrogation skills are evident from his questions to DeSalvo about Helen Blake’s clothes.

  BOTTOMLY: Do you remember the material that the pajamas were made of?

  DESALVO: Yes, well no, it wasn’t . . . it was, uh, cotton.

  BOTTOMLY: You think it was striped?

  DESALVO: Yes.

  BOTTOMLY: White with a colored stripe?

  DESALVO: I’d almost swear it was stripes or some little design.

  In this exchange Bottomly was obviously leading DeSalvo. There is no way of knowing whether DeSalvo could have accurately described Blake’s striped pajamas because his interrogator was dropping hints about their design. And DeSalvo got many other details wrong. Though he told Bottomly he’d raped the victim, vaginal and rectal swabs showed no traces of sperm. Though he stated that he had bitten Blake hard on her breast, the autopsy report doesn’t mention any marks on the victim’s breasts. Though he also claimed to have bitten Blake’s stomach in several places, the medical examiner had found no sign of this during his autopsy, either.

  The inaccuracies do not end there. DeSalvo told Bottomly, incorrectly, that windows in Blake’s apartment had been partially open, with rugs hanging out of them. In fact all the windows in Blake’s apartment had been shut; two rugs were found folded inside the front door of the apartment. When asked by Bottomly to describe Blake’s living room, DeSalvo spoke at great length about a white mantelpiece with pictures on it. There was no mantelpiece in the apartment.

  The answers to most of the questions he got right involved matters that had been widely publicized in the newspapers, such as the fact that Blake’s killer had removed her pajama bottoms but left her top on. DeSalvo also flip-flopped on some of his answers. Initially, he told Bottomly that he had left Helen Blake on her back on the bed. Weeks later, DeSalvo told Bottomly, correctly, that Blake had been left on her stomach, with her feet hanging straight down off the bed. Did Albert DeSalvo, a man with a photographic memory, forget how he had killed Helen Blake? Or was he being tutored throughout his confession to provide the right answers?

  Next on the list of victims was Ida Irga. DeSalvo told Bottomly, “I just picked her bell at random. I rang three other bells, and whoever came to the door, that’s how it happened. She was the first to answer. She argued with me at first. I said I wanted to do some work in the apartment, and she didn’t trust me because of the things that were going on, and she had a suspicion of allowing anybody into the apartment without knowing definitely who they were. I talked to her very briefly and told her not to worry. I said, ‘If you don’t trust me, I’ll just come back tomorrow.’ I started walking downstairs, and she said, ‘Well, come on in.’ I walked in with her, and we went into the bathroom, where I was supposed to look at a leak there at the window. When she turned, I put my arms around her neck and . . .”

  DeSalvo went on to say that he had strangled Irga, had had intercourse with her limp body, and ejaculated inside her. There are many discrepancies between his account of the Irga murder and details from the crime scene and autopsy. First, the autopsy showed no trace of semen. Further, though DeSalvo claimed the victim had been wearing a black and white checkered bathrobe the night she was killed, Irga’s housecoat was brown with white polka dots. When describing how he had killed the woman, DeSalvo told Bottomly he had strangled her manually from behind. In reality, Irga’s killer had choked her to death with a pillowcase. DeSalvo did accurately describe Irga’s apartment building and the general layout of the flat, but the psychiatrist Ames Robey dismisses claims that DeSalvo committed the murders. “Just because he knew what the apartments looked like doesn’t mean he was the strangler,” Robey argues. “Albert told me that he had visited several of the crime scenes because he was so fascinated by the case. As a maintenance man, he had apartment keys to half the buildings in Boston.” What is more, task force records indicate there was a newspaper story or crime scene photo to account for almost every correct answer DeSalvo gave to questions about the Irga murder. But, though DeSalvo’s confession to the murder of Ida Irga was riddled with holes, Bottomly failed or refused to see them.

  The discrepancies in DeSalvo’s confession to the murder of the next victim are even more disturbing. When asked to provide the date and time when he killed Jane Sullivan, DeSalvo could not answer. “I don’t know, see,” he said. “When this certain time comes upon me, it’s a very immediate thing. When I get up in the morning and I get this feeling and . . . instead of going to work, I might make an excuse to my boss and I’d start driving. I’d start in my mind . . . building this image up, and that’s why I found myself not knowing where I was going.” Clearly, DeSalvo was a professional confessor. If he could not answer a question, he would change the course of the conversation.

  Granted, DeSalvo accurately described Sullivan’s apartment building on Columbia Road in Dorchester, but he admitted that he’d been to the building several times over the years. Further, his description of the murder scene was inaccurate. DeSalvo claimed that the floor in Sullivan’s apartment had been covered in a thick layer of white dust. The crime scene photos show that the flat had been swept clean. DeSalvo said he had left the victim in the bathtub facing the wall. Sullivan had been discovered in her bathtub, as reported in the newspaper, but she was not facing the wall. Rather, she had been placed face down in six inches of water, her body in a crouching position.

  DeSalvo also said he had tried to strangle Jane Sullivan manually, but then his hands got tired, and he grabbed a broom handle and wedged it under her chin. According to DeSalvo the makeshift garrotte had had little effect on the victim, so he threw it on the floor and left it there. The fact that Sullivan was attacked with a broomstick had appeared in several newspaper accounts. However, the broomstick had not been left on the apartment floor. Whoever murdered Jane Sullivan had taken the time to store the weapon neatly back in the broom closet.

  Bottomly’s interrogation of DeSalvo would last another thirty hours over a number of days. The days spent sitting across from Bottomly and his tape machine began to wear on DeSalvo; his mistakes became more glaring over time.

  BOTTOMLY: What was the next door you knocked at?

  DESALVO: Sophie Clark, and she was wearing a light, flimsy housecoat. And she was tall, well built, about 36-22-37. Very beautiful.

  BOTTOMLY: How old?

  DESALVO: To me she looked twenty, and she was, I think, twenty and . . .

  BOTTOMLY: Describe her apartment. What kind of door did it have?

  DESALVO: It was a yellowish door . . . and she was very, she didn’t want to let me in, period, because her roommates weren’t in there at the time and they were going to be there very shortly. I said something about I would set her up in modeling and photography work, and I would give her anywhere from twenty to thirty-five dollars an hour for this type of modeling. And she invited me in to talk to her . . .

  BOTTOMLY: How long did you talk with her?

  DESALVO: Five minutes.

  BOTTOMLY: Where was she when you attacked her?

  DESALVO: [The] parlor.

  BOTTOMLY: In the parlor. The moment you walked in from the front door?

  DESALVO: Yes.

  BOTTOMLY: How did you do it?

  DESALVO: I gathered her around the back, and she was so tall that we fell back into this thing that was . . .

  BOTTOMLY: The settee [couch].

  DESALVO: Yes, where they had these . . .

  BOTTOMLY: Pillows?

  DESALVO: Pillows. And, for as strong as the girl was, she passed out right away.

  BOTTOMLY: Uh-huh. Did you scissors her?

  DESALVO: Yes, that’s what did it. And she was knocked out. I tied her up. . . .

  This exchange draws particular criticism from law enforcement officers. After reading the transcript, Sergeant Conrad Prosnewski, a long-serving veteran of the Salem, Massachusetts, Police Department, said it is clear that Bottomly had never conducted an interrogation before. “You never give thi
s kind of information to a suspect. [Bottomly] lets DeSalvo know there were pillows on the couch, and he strongly indicates to his suspect that the victim was struck in the head with a pair of scissors,” Prosnewski points out.

  As the interrogation continued, DeSalvo said, “No, I’m wrong there. On Sophie Clark, this Negro girl, I did not have to tie her at all. She’s the one who . . . was menstruating very lightly. I remember when I . . . she had the white thing on. I ripped that off her and threw it behind a chair.”

  BOTTOMLY: How did you remove this thing?

  DESALVO: I just grabbed it.

  BOTTOMLY: What material was it made of?

  DESALVO: The same as any Kotex, that’s it.

  BOTTOMLY: After you took that off, where was she now?

  DESALVO: Lying on the floor.

  BOTTOMLY: Okay, what did you do then?

  DESALVO: There was a coffee table to the right, and I propped her legs up, and I had intercourse with her.

  BOTTOMLY: Did you get bloody?

  DESALVO: No.

  BOTTOMLY: She was very light. . . .

  DESALVO: Yes, and she started to come to.

  BOTTOMLY: She did?

  DESALVO: Yes.

  BOTTOMLY: And did you relieve yourself at any time with respect to the colored girl?

  DESALVO: I . . . I came inside her.

  BOTTOMLY: Did you come anywhere but inside her?

  DESALVO: It’s possible that I did come on the floor afterwards.

  BOTTOMLY: And what did you do after you had intercourse with her?

  DESALVO: Well, she started to wake up, and I grabbed a nylon stocking, and she was the one I had to tie really tightly. . . . She started to fight, and I know I made it so tight I was unable to see it.

  BOTTOMLY: And what kind of knot did you put in the stocking?

  DESALVO: Three and one . . . two turns over and one. One on top.

  BOTTOMLY: Okay, so it’s two.

  DESALVO: And I also . . . when she was . . . well, that’s another reason why that I put the panties in her mouth, because she’s waking up, but she’s still not able to do nothing. To keep her from screaming, I put her pants in her mouth.

  BOTTOMLY: And what about the clothes that she was wearing as you walked in, and what was there at the last?

  DESALVO: I stripped her naked. I stripped her naked, I do recall this.

  BOTTOMLY: Was she wearing a bra?

  DESALVO: Yes.

  BOTTOMLY: Was she wearing anything else also?

  DESALVO: There could have been a half-slip.

  BOTTOMLY: Anything else?

  DESALVO: A white . . . she had stockings on and shoes.

  BOTTOMLY: Now, did you do anything else with the bra?

  DESALVO: The bra I could have put around her neck, but I’m not sure on this one.

  BOTTOMLY: Did you put anything else around her neck? Other than the bra and her stocking?

  DESALVO: Yes . . . a kerchief . . . no, let me think. Let me think . . .

  BOTTOMLY: Something she might be wearing?

  DESALVO: Yes.

  BOTTOMLY: What?

  DESALVO: [A] blouse. Ah, this is a [snaps fingers] . . . let me think . . .

  BOTTOMLY: Remember, now, she started to come to and you had to put the panties in her mouth, and you tied the very tight knot with the stocking . . .

  DESALVO: Could be a handkerchief.

  Professional law enforcement agents cite this passage as another example of how not to conduct an interrogation. DeSalvo claims he ejaculated inside Clark, but Bottomly then slyly indicates the killer also ejaculated elsewhere in the apartment. DeSalvo makes a mistake by saying he “stripped her naked.” Knowing this is not true, Bottomly then asks him if he kept her bra on, in effect steering DeSalvo back onto the right track. When the interrogator asks DeSalvo if he “did anything else with the bra,” the question implies that the killer used more than one ligature.

  Even with Bottomly’s none-too-subtle assistance, DeSalvo’s efforts to implicate himself in the Clark murder were so flawed that they should have been repudiated by authorities. First, DeSalvo told Bottomly that Sophie Clark had greeted him at the front door without her glasses on. However, Clark’s roommates said she had very poor eyesight and was never seen without her eyeglasses. DeSalvo also incorrectly described the color of Clark’s bathrobe, telling Bottomly it was a “white-type throw-on.” Clark had been wearing a blue floral housecoat when she was killed. In addition, DeSalvo claimed the victim had been wearing black high heels, but the case file indicates that at the time of her death she had on rubber-soled loafers. Finally, DeSalvo maintained he had seen several musical instruments and some bottles when he walked in the front door of the flat. There were no instruments or empty bottles inside Clark’s apartment.

  Admittedly, DeSalvo correctly stated that Sophie Clark had been menstruating, a fact never reported in the press. So where did he get his information? Jim Mellon claims that DeSalvo was coached by his lawyer and members of the Boston Strangler Task Force. After all, it was in their interest to make DeSalvo the Boston Strangler.

  DeSalvo also could have received details of the killings from George Nassar, who himself was a suspect in the murder of Sophie Clark. At the time of her death, he lived just a few blocks away from her, in Boston’s South End neighborhood. In his confession to Clark’s murder, DeSalvo mentioned that he had visited the apartment of another black woman in Clark’s building, at 315 Huntington Avenue, that same day. He said he had told the woman he was there to do some painting, but was scared off when the woman claimed her husband was next door and would be home soon. Marcella Lulka, a resident of 315 Huntington Avenue, told the police that a man had knocked on her door the day Clark was murdered. She described the man as approximately five feet, nine inches tall, about 150 pounds, with brown hair. When police took Lulka to Bridgewater State Hospital in an effort to identify DeSalvo, Lulka watched as a group of inmates ate dinner, DeSalvo among them. Lulka said that DeSalvo was not the man who had come calling but that the man next to DeSalvo looked very familiar. That man was George Nassar.

  DeSalvo’s account of the killing of the twenty-six-year-old aspiring opera singer Beverly Samans also conflicted with known facts. The Samans killing bore little resemblance to the other Boston Strangler murders in that the Cambridge woman was not only strangled but also butchered. Susan Kelly, in her 1995 book The Boston Stranglers, writes that Albert DeSalvo told authorities he stabbed Samans twice with a switchblade that he later discarded in a marsh. In reality, she had been stabbed seventeen times to the throat and left breast. The murder weapon—a paring knife, not a switchblade—was found in the kitchen sink.

  Patricia Bissette had been strangled inside her Park Drive apartment, just beyond Fenway Park. DeSalvo incorrectly told Bottomly the woman lived across the street from a hospital. He also said he had taken her pajama bottoms off in the living room and then forced her to strip completely naked. Bissette’s pajama bottoms were actually found in her bedroom, and she was not naked but wearing her bathrobe when police discovered her body.

  DeSalvo’s photographic memory also failed him when he was asked to describe the murder of strangler victim number nine, Evelyn Corbin. DeSalvo claimed he had talked his way into Corbin’s apartment and then forced her to have sex. He said Corbin complained that because of a physical condition, she could not have intercourse but under duress, she offered to perform oral sex. But there is no mention in Corbin’s autopsy report about a preexisting medical condition and the oral sex act had been described in the newspaper. DeSalvo added that after the sex assault, he had choked Corbin with his bare hands and then used a pair of nylons to finish the job. But Corbin’s hyoid bone and the cartilages of her larynx and trachea were intact. DeSalvo described the victim as five foot, five inches tall with brown hair. Corbin was only five foot, two inches tall, and her hair was platinum blond. DeSalvo also described reddish wallpaper in her apartment, but Corbin’s walls were stucco. Of the major details that D
eSalvo did get right in the Corbin murder, most had been printed in the newspapers.

  Despite DeSalvo’s repeated mistakes, Bottomly pressed on. The tenth victim would be next, twenty-two-year-old Joann Graff. Although DeSalvo liked to visit the scenes of the strangler’s crimes, he clearly never had traveled to Graff’s apartment in Lawrence. DeSalvo told Bottomly that Graff lived on the first floor of her building; her apartment was on the third floor. He described it as a “one-room flat.” He apartment had a separate kitchen and a bathroom. He said Graff had been wearing a black leotard when he strangled her. Every newspaper account mentioned that Graff had been strangled with a leotard, but because her slacks and panties were found intertwined on the bedroom floor, police believed it was unlikely that she had been wearing the leotard found around her neck. DeSalvo claimed he had strangled her with the leotard and a single nylon stocking, but the autopsy report states that two nylon stockings were tied around her throat. DeSalvo, the man described by psychiatrists as having a photograph memory, could not even remember the month of Graff’s murder. He could remember only that it had occurred sometime after September 1963.

  5 : The Home Front

  I t had been more than a year since Mary Sullivan’s murder, and her sister Diane had lost all hope that police would find the killer. Diane had graduated from Barnstable High School, but instead of backpacking across Europe with her older sister as they had planned, she went to work as a hairdresser in her aunt’s beauty salon. Though she maintained a cheery outlook on life to her friends and coworkers, there was pain inside.

  She did find comfort with her boyfriend, Donny Sherman, an active-duty marine who had been introduced to her by Mary. In the months after the murder, Diane had felt a need to get on with her life and jumped at the chance to marry him soon after high school graduation. Following a small wedding, Donny went back to duty with the U.S. Marines, and Diane remained on Cape Cod, awaiting the birth of their first child and dreading the thought of the first anniversary of her sister’s murder. On January 4, 1965, when she was nine months pregnant, Diane once again drove to Sea Street Beach to talk to her sister. Despite a strong winter chill coming off the water, a warm feeling came over Diane as she walked the snow-covered sand. She held her growing stomach and asked her angel Mary to watch over her baby. Two weeks later, on January 19, 1965, Diane gave birth to a son, Todd Forrest Sherman.