Search for the Strangler

by Casey Sherman

  It was several weeks before Michael felt comfortable enough to do the interview. He had discovered sobriety, and he was very proud of the fact that he had not had a drink in several months. Still, I was hesitant about putting him in front of the camera. I was not sure he was up to it emotionally. But he felt it was his duty to dispel the myths about his father. Michael voiced his own reservations, however. “I’m coming out in the public, but what if no one listens to what I have to say? The people will just see my face and say, ‘There’s the son of the strangler.’ What do I do then? You gotta promise me that won’t happen,” he said, grabbing my leather jacket. “Michael, you’ve done nothing wrong here,” I replied. “People will sympathize with your cause. You’ve got to trust me on this.”

  “Can I trust you? Can I really trust you?” he asked.

  “I know the pain you’re going through. I know it better than any other journalist you’ll ever meet. You lost your father, and I lost my aunt. My mother lost her sister. Yes, Michael, you can trust me,” I assured him.

  I had given it my best shot. If he said no to the interview now, I was ready to walk away. I was not going to encourage him to do something he did not want to do.

  My colleague Ted Wayman, a WBZ reporter, conducted the interview in October 1999, and I produced it. Michael was biting his fingernails and fidgeting before the cameras rolled. However, when the lights went on and the photographer signaled that the videotape was rolling. Michael pleaded his case to the camera exceptionally well. “I will go to any length to clear my dad’s name,” Michael said emphatically. Michael said he would be willing to give his own blood for DNA testing in hopes of exonerating his father. “My dad did some bad things, but he was no serial killer.” Wayman and I both agreed that the interview was a smashing success. Michael DeSalvo pointed the finger of guilt at his father’s former attorney, F. Lee Bailey.

  Our next step was to take Michael back to his father’s grave site, where he had gone in a drunken rage many years before. We drove to the Puritan Lawn Cemetery in Peabody. It was a beautiful autumn day, with multicolored leaves falling from the trees. A big problem for us was that Albert DeSalvo’s grave did not have a headstone but it was instead marked by a small plaque that was tucked away along a row of other markers. We spent the better part of an afternoon kicking up the leaves, searching for Albert DeSalvo’s grave. When at last we found the marker, Michael stood silently for several moments before he spoke. “I want to walk around with my head held high. I want to help the families of the victims,” he said, choking back tears.

  WBZ ran Michael DeSalvo’s interview on our 11:00 P.M. newscast on November 7, 1999. The Globe and its tabloid competitor, the Herald, ran stories about Michael’s interview in their morning editions on November 8. The other local TV stations clamored for interviews with Michael. When I called Michael to congratulate him, no one answered. “He probably needs some time to himself,” I figured, but knowing how fragile Michael was at the time, I could not help worrying. My colleague the reporter Charlie Austin caught up with Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly on November 9 and asked him about the possibility of reopening the Boston Strangler case. Reilly pointed out that his office had never charged DeSalvo with any of the strangler murders. What he seemed to forget was that his predecessor Edward Brooke had sold the public on DeSalvo’s guilt. Reilly added that he would be willing to meet with the strangler victims’ families to discuss their concerns.

  A few hours after this interview, the attorney general telephoned me in the newsroom and asked me to state my case. Tom Reilly, I knew, was politically astute, but he had not been getting the attention he yearned for. I told him my Aunt Mary was said to have been the final victim in the Boston Strangler case. I also explained why I had serious doubts regarding the guilt of Albert DeSalvo. The soft-spoken Reilly said he was not familiar with the history of the case, but he offered to look at the Boston Strangler files and see if there was sufficient cause for a reinvestigation. “I’ll put my top guy on it, and he’ll get back to you,” Reilly told me.

  Several days after the story on Michael DeSalvo ran, I still hadn’t heard from Michael, though I had left a number of messages on his answering machine. I had given him a private screening of our story before it aired, and he said he liked it, so he couldn’t be angry at me, I thought. Finally, I received a call from a nurse at a local psychiatric hospital. Michael DeSalvo was back in rehab. “He claims he’s the son of Albert DeSalvo,” the nurse informed me. “He’s not delusional,” I told her. “He’s exactly who he says he is. Can I speak with him?”

  Michael got on the phone. “Hey, buddy,” he mumbled.

  “Michael, what’s going on . . . what happened?” I asked.

  “It happened,” he replied. “I was walking down my street the day after the show aired and this little kid pointed at me and said, ‘There’s the Boston Strangler!’” Michael was crying now. “I just walked past him and straight to the package store, and now here I am. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, Michael, I’m sorry,” I replied. “I made you a promise, and I let you down.” I told Michael not to worry about the case and that his only concern was getting well. After I hung up, I slammed my knuckles down hard on the desk. I had known he was vulnerable. I should have done more to protect him. I vowed never to place Michael DeSalvo in that position again.

  Now that WBZ-TV had revived it, reporters all over the city were competing for a fresh angle on the Boston Strangler story. With Michael in hiding now, they were forced to call upon people associated with the case to get their point of view. The Herald quoted Dr. Ames Robey as saying he was in favor of exhuming Albert DeSalvo’s body for DNA testing. The paper also interviewed Jim Mellon. I had read about Mellon several times in connection with my aunt’s case, but I had never been able to track him down. I thought Mellon had died, but according to the Herald the seventy-five-year-old retired police officer was living in Marshfield, which, coincidentally, was F. Lee Bailey’s hometown. While I was driving along Route 3 caught in heavy traffic heading into the city, I dialed 411 on my cell phone on the off chance that Mellon’s number was listed. It was. When I reached him at his house, I could tell by the sound of his weary voice that he’d already been flooded with interview requests.

  I said, “Mr. Mellon, I would love to send a reporter to your home to do a follow-up on our story, but more important, I’d like to meet you myself.”

  “Why all the interest in this case, young man?” he asked.

  “Sir, my aunt was Mary Sullivan. My mother has lived for nearly forty years with the belief that her sister’s killer was never caught. I happen to believe she’s right.”

  Mellon paused a moment. “Oh, yes, Mary Sullivan . . . that poor girl. I was one of the first officers to arrive at her apartment that night. Awful—it was just awful.”

  I asked him if he had any idea who may have killed Mary. “Well, I don’t think these murders were all done by the same guy,” Mellon answered. “But in her case, I’m positive it was a boyfriend of one of her roommates.”

  I offered up the name Joseph Preston Moss. “That’s your guy,” Mellon said. “You find him, you’ll find her killer.”

  I kept Jim Mellon on the phone that morning for a full hour. He told me he had remained on the police force for twenty years after my aunt’s murder, with much of his career spent walking the beat in some of Boston’s toughest neighborhoods. “I was passed over when it came to promotions, and it was all because I wouldn’t play ball on the strangler case,” Mellon told me. Since his retirement from the Boston Police Department in 1985, he and his wife had lived comfortably on his pension in their home just a few yards from the ocean.

  “My kids get a kick out of the fact their old man was involved in something like that,” he said, referring to the Boston Strangler case. But then he brought the conversation back to the victims, the way he always did. “Those poor girls,” he said. “What happened to them was horrible. And what happened afterwards was just as b
ad.” Mellon’s voice trailed off. At first, I thought I was having problems with my cell phone. But then I realized the investigator had traveled back nearly forty years in his mind. Mellon was picturing himself inside my aunt’s apartment. He saw the broomstick on gruesome display. He saw the Happy New Year card next to Mary’s foot.

  “As I said, young man, you find Preston Moss, and you’ll find the real killer!” Mellon finally said.

  “Can I call on you for help?” I asked.

  “Sure, son, I’ll be right here.”

  13 : The Ghost from Christmas Past

  I t was time to find Preston Moss. I knew he had grown up in the Boston suburb of Arlington and attended Boston University for one year. Mellon told me he had last had contact with Moss in December 1964. After authorities focused on Albert DeSalvo, Preston Moss dropped out of college and out of sight.

  My first course of action was to visit my friends on the I-Team, the investigative arm of WBZ-4 news. Tucked away in their tiny, cluttered office, team members reporter Joe Bergantino and producer Paul Toomey are Boston’s version of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The I-Team has alerted the public to priest abuse in the Catholic Church and uncovered cost overruns in the Big Dig project, the largest highway construction project in history. The team has all sorts of investigative tools at their fingertips. Using one of these, a computer program called Auto-Tracker, you can type in a person’s name, and if that person has ever applied for a driver’s license, his full name, the town he lives in, and his phone number pop up on the screen. There could be only one Joseph Preston Moss out there, and an Auto-Tracker search for him was certainly worth a shot. Paul Toomey typed in Moss’s name, and the program produced a result in seconds. There on the computer screen was the name Joseph Preston Moss. He was still living in New England.

  Jotting down Moss’s phone number and current address, I walked back to my desk, picked up the phone, and started dialing the number. I was about to speak with the man who may have murdered my aunt. What would I say? I let the telephone ring a couple of times and then abruptly hung up. Clearly, I was not prepared for this conversation. I told myself I’d call him when I got home.

  In my kitchen that evening, I stared at the tiny piece of paper with the phone number on it, rolling it back and forth between my fingers. I still wasn’t ready to place the call. I stayed up late into the night, examining every piece of information I had on my aunt’s murder. Was Moss really the killer? I had thought for a long time that Nathan Ward, Mary’s former boyfriend, was the strongest suspect. Ward’s volatile relationship with Mary and their sudden breakup offered a motive. There were also discrepancies in his alibi.

  Jim Mellon thought Ward was a flake, but he didn’t believe he was responsible for Mary’s murder. Mellon thought Moss was a much more likely suspect. He believed Moss was sexually repressed and angry at Delmore for refusing to have sex with him. Was it because Delmore was seeing someone else, or was it because the apartment was too crowded for any chance of intimacy? Mellon thought Moss blamed Mary for this. What did I know about this Preston Moss character? The fact that he had failed two lie detector tests disturbed me. And why had Moss been so interested in the police investigation of Mary’s death?

  The next morning, I went about my routine as if nothing was bothering me. While I sipped my coffee and my wife, Laura, drank her Diet Coke, she asked me if I was doing anything interesting that day. I told her no. At this point, there was no need to worry her. I waited for her to leave for work before I picked up the telephone and made the call. “Here goes nothing.” I said to myself. The phone rang three times, and a woman answered. I introduced myself as a journalist from Boston and told her who I was looking for.

  “What’s this about?” the woman asked.

  “I’d just like to ask him some questions for a story I’m working on,” I replied. She barked Moss’s name, and a few seconds later, he picked up the telephone. Introducing myself as a Boston journalist but not mentioning my family connection to Mary, I said, “I’d like to ask you some questions about the Boston Strangler case, specifically about the murder of Mary Sullivan.” Moss gasped. Then for several seconds there was an awkward silence. It was as if the ghost from Christmas past had just appeared at his bedside.

  Moss finally broke the silence. “Didn’t they get the guy?” he asked nervously.

  “No, not yet,” I replied. “But the good thing about this case is that there’s no statute of limitations on murder. In fact, weren’t you once considered the prime suspect?” When Moss did not answer, I asked again. “Isn’t it true, Preston, that you failed two lie detector tests?”

  “Yes, but it was way back in the sixties. Those things aren’t scientific.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” I replied, doing my best Colombo imitation. “But I got to tell you. There are some people who are convinced you’re the guy. I know if I was being accused of a heinous crime, I’d do whatever it took to clear my name. Preston, would you be willing to take a DNA test to settle this matter?”

  “No!” Moss shot back, his voice getting louder. “I’m not gonna take any test unless there’s a court order.”

  “One may be coming for you some day, Preston, so I’d watch out if I were you,” I advised. Moss slammed the phone down.

  I ran through the conversation in my mind. He’s definitely concerned about something, I decided. I would let my words sink in a bit before trying to contact him again. I had worried him, and, I must admit, it felt good.

  When I got to work that day, there was a message for me to call Assistant Attorney General Gerry Leone. It was now late November 1999. I told Leone everything about the case that I thought was important, including my conversation with Moss. Leone promised to take a fresh look at the Boston Strangler files and then to meet with my family. I told him my mother had waited nearly forty years to get answers to the questions about her sister’s murder, and a few more months wouldn’t hurt us.

  Nonetheless, I knew that to get the full attention of the attorney general’s office, I needed help from the family of Albert DeSalvo. I also knew Michael was still struggling with personal problems and would be in no shape to meet with the state’s top law enforcement officials. It was time, then, to call Richard DeSalvo once more. My pitch to Richard took a more urgent tone this time around. I told him the state of Massachusetts was taking the Boston Strangler case seriously again, but that time was running out. “It’s now or never, Richard,” I warned. “We need to get this done while many of the key players are still alive.”

  This time, Richard DeSalvo was up to the challenge.

  “What the hell, Casey, let’s do it,” he said.

  14 : An Alliance Is Born

  R ichard DeSalvo and I formed a most unusual alliance: the family of an accused serial killer joining forces with the family of his last alleged victim in a search for the truth. Although we were now a team, we had different goals, however. I wanted to find my aunt’s killer; to do so I would have to exonerate Albert DeSalvo. Richard wanted to clear his family name, not so much for his brother’s sake but for his young grandchildren. He simply wanted the stigma removed from his family’s name.

  Back at the station, I got word that Edward Brooke was back in Boston and wanted to talk about the Boston Strangler case. Brooke was writing his autobiography and was trying to drum up attention. My colleagues and I thought it best that I not conduct the interview because my personal stake in the story could pose a conflict of interest. Again, I relied on my friend the veteran reporter Charlie Austin to be my voice.

  Austin caught up with the retired politician at his Boston office and asked him about the new developments in the case. “Do you think the case should be reopened?” Austin inquired.

  “If it would not bring more pain and suffering to victims’ families, I certainly would have no objection to it,” Brooke answered.

  Austin asked Brooke if he had gotten the right man.

  The answer was startling. “If you ask me if
I’m convinced that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler,” Brooke said, “I can’t tell them [the victims’ families]. I can’t give them a definitive answer.”

  This was coming from one of the staunchest proponents of DeSalvo’s guilt, the man who, along with F. Lee Bailey, had sold the public the idea that DeSalvo was the strangler. Now, forty years later, Brooke was saying he was not sure? “If you had doubts, you should’ve voiced them back then instead of leaving me with this big mess now!” I yelled at the television monitor when I first viewed the videotape of the interview.

  Still, I realized that my goal was not to point a finger at former public officials. What I wanted to do was work with the current administration to find my aunt’s killer. Over the next months, Assistant Attorney General Leone and I continued what I thought were positive conversations about the case. Not your stereotypical glad-handing, baby-kissing politician, Leone, a former marine, never seemed comfortable around other people. In me this quality engendered trust. I believed Leone and I were both committed to finding the answers to the decades-old murder mystery.

  The mounting pressures of the investigation were nothing compared to the pressures at home. Laura was pregnant with our first child. But our immediate joy turned to concern when an ultrasound test revealed that my wife had an ovarian tumor. Telling us that surgery was the only option, the gynecologist said he was confident our baby could survive the procedure, but he could offer no guarantee.

  In February 2000, Laura, two months pregnant, went in for surgery, and all my attention shifted from the Boston Strangler case to the health of my wife and our unborn child. While Laura was in the operating room, I prayed as I’d never prayed before, staring up to the heavens and imploring God to please keep Laura and the baby safe. Two hours after the procedure began, the surgeon met me in the waiting room and told me Laura’s tumor had been successfully removed and that she was doing fine. However, it was still too early to tell if our baby had survived. In the recovery room I held Laura’s hand while she slept. Tears filling my eyes, I leaned over my wife’s belly. “You have a brave mommy who loves you very much,” I whispered to my unborn child.