Search for the Strangler

by Casey Sherman

  This detail intrigued me. Mary had also worked at Filene’s. I had never been able to make a connection between Nassar and my aunt until now. I had to locate the convicted killer George Nassar.

  I knew that Nassar had always shied away from reporters when it came to the Boston Strangler case. It was a long shot, but I wrote him a letter requesting a meeting at his current residence, the state prison at Walpole. I was surprised to receive a reply a few days later. I was even more surprised that Nassar wanted to see me. When I went back to the newsroom and told Ted Wayman that Nassar was willing to sit down with me, the veteran reporter John Henning overheard our conversation.

  “Be careful,” warned Henning, who had covered DeSalvo’s Green Man trial in 1967. “George Nassar is a cold son of a bitch. He’s a pathological liar, and he’d kill you just as soon as look at you.”

  Laura and my mother were also worried. “Don’t give him any personal information,” Laura advised. She was now seven months pregnant. I lied and said that as a journalist I dealt with dangerous characters all the time. Deep inside, I felt frightened, but I needed to look into Nassar’s eyes and ask him if he had murdered Mary. I had heard that Nassar was suffering from terminal cancer. Maybe Nassar was ready to give me a deathbed confession.

  Elaine Sharp advised me not to tackle Nassar head-on but to elicit any information I could in a more roundabout way. “Why would Nassar agree to do an interview?” she wondered. “There has to be something in it for him. Guards go through all the mail, and maybe your letter piqued some interest. Maybe word has gotten back to Tom Reilly about what you’re doing.” She took a moment and laughed off her last comment, adding, “It’s possible that one day we’ll benefit from my paranoia.”

  On the day of the interview I awoke early to prepare myself, allowing a few bites of a bagel to float around with the butterflies in my stomach. Then, pouring a hot cup of black coffee to go, I hopped into my car and began the hour-long drive to Walpole. Again, I called on Mary to give me the strength I needed to get through this.

  Arriving in Walpole, I couldn’t find the prison. There were no signs pointing the way to it, either. Apparently, residents didn’t want to remind themselves or inform others that they had the worst criminals in Massachusetts for neighbors. Even when I asked for directions, the townsfolk gave me little help.

  Eventually, atop a steep hill I noticed a small sign for the state penitentiary. Dark clouds took shape as I made my way up the long stretch of road to the prison. The unsettled weather gave the ominous structure an even more sinister appearance.

  Inside the prison, I filled out the customary visitor form, which asked for my name and address, and whether the visit was personal or for business. I checked off business, but for me it was really both. After I turned in my completed form, a guard told me I could not take my notepad or pen with me into the visiting area. All personal belongings, including my watch, had to stay on the outside.

  At 9:50 A.M., I was called out of the visitors’ waiting room and told to walk through a large steel door. Once through it, I was ordered to take off my shoes and belt, empty my pockets, and then walk through a metal detector. Past the metal detector, my anxiety building, I proceeded through another steel door and into a small and barren courtyard. I was now inside the most frightening place in New England. I was also just moments away from meeting a man whom I knew only from a thirty-five-year-old photograph, a man with the cold eyes of a cobra.

  “You here to see Nassar?” a muscular guard asked. “Room five!” he barked before I had time to answer.

  Room five wasn’t a room at all but a small cubicle with two metal chairs and two phones on either side of a dirty reinforced glass partition. I stared through the glass and watched as the door on the other side opened electronically. In walked a tall, thin man with salt-and-pepper hair. Nassar’s cheeks were hollow, his once-olive skin now a dull gray. His eyes, however, were exactly as I’d remembered them from the photograph: lifeless.

  Nassar slowly walked toward his side of the cubicle, sat down, and picked up the phone. Neither one of us said anything at first. We just sat there. The cobra was trying to hypnotize its prey. My gaze left his and I focused on his hands. They were bony yet powerful-looking.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he hissed. “You think you’re looking at Hannibal Lecter, don’t you?” Nassar was referring to the fictional serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs.

  “No . . . I’m just looking at a tired old man who’s gonna die in prison!” I replied. I don’t know where the line came from, but it sounded tough.

  Nassar cracked a smile. It was a collage of decaying teeth, the result of decades of neglect. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Sherman?”

  “You know why I’m here. I want to talk about the Boston Strangler case.” I took a deep breath. “Are you the Boston Strangler, and did you kill my aunt?”

  “I never killed anybody. Anybody!” Nassar shouted.

  I was starting to see the wisdom of Elaine’s advice about getting information in a roundabout way. I’d have to come back to that question. I asked Nassar about his relationship with Albert DeSalvo.

  “We met at Bridgewater,” he said, “after a friend of mine told me about him. He said DeSalvo was saying crazy things about killing women.”

  “Did he discuss the murders with you?” I asked.

  “He tried to, especially about the Samans murder. But I have a weak stomach for that kind of stuff. I don’t like to talk about the macabre,” replied Nassar, a man who had gunned down a gas station attendant in cold blood while the victim pleaded for his life.

  “You know, there are a lot of people out there who say that you really killed those women,” I said, trying to bait him.

  Nassar looked me right in the eyes. “What do you think?”

  “Well, I’ve heard the confession tape, and I know it wasn’t DeSalvo,” I said. “I spoke with Andy Tuney, and he told me that you were working at Filene’s at the time of the murders. Is that true?”

  Nassar shook his head. “I was working at Raymond’s Department Store, near Jordan Marsh.”

  My hope that I was confronting Mary’s killer was starting to fade. Raymond’s Department Store had been near Filene’s, and Nassar and Mary could have crossed paths, but the connection would have been much stronger if the two had been coworkers.

  “Did you ever spend time on Beacon Hill?” I asked.

  “No, I was working most of the time. Beacon Hill wasn’t exactly my crowd,” he answered matter-of-factly.

  Switching gears, I started quizzing him about the fatal stabbing of Albert DeSalvo. I asked Nassar if he knew DeSalvo was planning to tell what he called “the real story” of the Boston Strangler.

  “Al told me the week before that he was going to call Ames Robey, but I advised against it,” Nassar said. “Al always liked to play games with Robey, and I didn’t know what Robey’s take on this whole thing was.”

  “Why was DeSalvo killed?” I asked.

  “Al was killed over a petty argument with another inmate. I think it was over a slab of bacon. Al was getting high a lot, too.”

  “So you didn’t kill him or have him killed because he was going to pin the murders on you?”

  “I didn’t have a hand in that, no. Al’s mouth always got him in trouble.”

  I could sense Nassar was lying about his possible role in DeSalvo’s murder. If he had committed any of the stranglings, Nassar would have much to lose by DeSalvo’s revelation that he was not the Boston Strangler. Yes, Nassar was serving a life sentence for murder, but he had attempted several times to get a new trial. George Nassar had not given up on freedom. I was able to get out of him the facts that he knew of DeSalvo’s plan to expose the truth and that Nassar had been close friends with Vinny “The Bear” Flemmi, the underworld hit man some believe committed the murder. Would prison guards have looked the other way if DeSalvo was killed over a slab of bacon? Nassar ended by telling me that his cancer was in remission
. “Gee, George, that’s too bad,” I said to him as I called the guard to let me out.

  18 : Twists and Turns

  W as George Nassar a cold-blooded killer? Absolutely. Did he kill Mary Sullivan? A good journalist follows the evidence wherever it leads, and there was no tangible evidence to point to Nassar’s guilt in the murder of my aunt. The list of possible suspects was getting smaller. Meanwhile, Massachusetts authorities were insisting that despite an exhaustive search, they could not find any physical evidence from Mary’s murder. My mother and I had hoped things would never get to the point where we would really have to think about exhuming Mary’s body. We thought that the attorney general eventually would give us the evidence we needed to pursue the case. But by late summer 2000, there was no movement by Tom Reilly or anyone else in law enforcement. Reilly was calling our bluff.

  We could continue to beg for the evidence the state claimed did not exist or we could attempt to solve Mary’s murder on our own. And to do it on our own, we would have to exhume Mary’s remains. It was a painful decision for Mom, a devout Catholic who did not want to go against her religion by desecrating her sister’s grave. Mom was also feeling pressure from within her own family. Her brother and sisters were not eager to see the case reopened. Mom felt Mary’s presence strongly as she agonized over a decision. She believed that Mary wanted us to pursue the case and that Mary would lead us to her killer. Professor Starrs made another trip north to take soil samples from St. Francis Xavier Cemetery, where Mary was buried. Starrs paid his own way to Cape Cod and back, never asking for any money from my mother or me. “This project must be pro bono,” he insisted. “I do not want anyone to think my forensic team is beholden to the families in any way. The results of our investigation will not be compromised.”

  Elaine and Dan Sharp were also offering their help free of charge, working countless hours preparing legal briefs for what appeared to be the long court battle ahead. If we had had to pay for it, this reinvestigation of Mary’s murder would have cost us a half million dollars.

  Meanwhile, however, people were talking about the Boston Strangler case for the first time in nearly forty years. Because I was spearheading the reinvestigation, much of the attention focused on me. I had always worked behind the scenes in television news, so for me this was daunting. Not only were we getting requests for television interviews, but I also started to receive strange phone calls at home. The first came late at night. Laura now was only weeks away from delivery, and she’d been going to sleep much earlier than usual. I would spend those nights sitting on the living room couch with my furry companion, Bailey, contemplating fatherhood and thinking about the case.

  One of these nights, the telephone rang. I thought it was probably my brother calling from California. Todd had been living on the West Coast for ten years but still hadn’t quite grasped the three-hour time difference. I reached for the phone and said, “Hello?” I got no response. “Who is this?” I asked, but again nothing. Finally, I heard a voice: “You’re causing a lot of problems. This isn’t ancient history. There’s a lot of people who could get hurt by you digging around in the past.”

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “Leave it alone,” the voice said. Then the line went dead.

  I immediately punched in *69, hoping to trace the call, but all I got was a recorded message telling me the call had originated from a number that was out of the area or unpublished. I then called my best friend, Toby, who liked to play practical jokes, but his answering machine said he was out of town on business. Next, I went around the house, making sure every door was locked. I grabbed a hammer from the closet, held it tightly in my hand, and waited for an intruder. In time, Bailey and I fell asleep on the couch.

  I didn’t tell Laura what had happened. The doctor had just put her on bed rest for the last two weeks of her pregnancy, and I didn’t want to add to her stress. I made plans to change our phone number, but before I could do that, I received another call. This time, the caller wasn’t a deep-voiced man, however; she was a soft-spoken older woman. “I just wanted to let you know that what you’re doing is wonderful,” she told me. “You see, my aunt was also killed by the Boston Strangler, and my family never believed DeSalvo was the real murderer.” The caller was the niece of the second Boston Strangler victim, Nina Nichols. I thanked her for her kind words and asked if she would be willing to join us in our quest for the truth.

  “If I were a bit younger,” she replied. “But my husband and I are old, and we’re tired. We’ve seen the problems you’ve faced. We can’t go through that. But I do wish you the best of luck for your aunt’s sake, and for mine.”

  Though this caller did not join our team, she inspired me to push on. I had abandoned trying to contact the relatives of other Boston Strangler victims. Most of the victims had been elderly, and the younger victims often were college students transplanted from other parts of the country. But my caller reminded me that there were other relatives out there who did not believe the official version of the Boston Strangler case and were watching our struggle closely.

  A few days later, I tracked down the son of a Boston Strangler victim whom, for reasons of privacy, I will not identify here. I called him at his office and asked if he knew about the reinvestigation into the Boston Strangler case. He told me he had read something about it in the Boston Globe.

  I didn’t want to dredge up painful feelings for him, but I felt I had to let him know what was going on. I said, “I don’t know how much you know about your mother’s murder, but my family believes that Albert DeSalvo was not the killer and that the real killers are still out there. I would appreciate any support you could give me in finding the truth about what happened.”

  “Well, Mr. Sherman, I do believe they got the right fellow, and I do believe that justice was done,” he replied.

  I could have debated the merits of the case with him, but it appeared to me that this guy’s mind was made up. After the conversation, I called Jim Mellon.

  “Jim, I’m kinda surprised, but the son is convinced that DeSalvo was the guy. He really believes it.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Mellon replied matter-of-factly.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because we always believed he killed his mother.” Mellon told me that investigators had been suspicious of the son from the beginning. The young man had been undergoing psychiatric treatment, and Mellon interviewed his therapist. “What took you so long?” the psychiatrist asked Mellon. “Do I think he did it?” the shrink asked rhetorically. “Yup! Will I testify to it? No fucking way.”

  Mellon knew he had the killer, but he also knew he didn’t have a case without the therapist’s testimony. But the shrink vowed never to break the confidentiality agreement between doctor and patient.

  In late July 2000, my wife gave birth to our daughter, Isabella. With late-night feedings, I was getting little sleep. While I took up the role of first-time dad, Jim Starrs was selecting his exhumation team, and the Sharps were hard at work drafting papers for the lawsuits. Their Marblehead office, now the unofficial headquarters for the strangler reinvestigation, had very little space to walk around; piles of files seemed to be everywhere. The case, which Elaine Sharp had dubbed the Mary and Albert Project, was expanding in size and scope. The Sharps were filing five suits, one against each of the bureaus involved in the original investigation. The attorneys were preparing to argue that items belonging to Mary and to Albert DeSalvo should be returned to their rightful heirs, an argument used successfully in Native Americans’ legal battles over tribal land taken from their ancestors. Dan Sharp was cautiously optimistic that the case could be won. “It all depends on the judge,” Dan said. “The government is the worst possible opponent to go after because they can bury you in paperwork, and they have endless funds to boot. But with the right judge, one who won’t kiss the government’s ass, anything is possible.”

  We decided to hold a second news conference, this time to announce the lawsuits. The m
edia had been our most effective weapon against the government thus far. On September 14, 2000, reporters and television trucks gathered early at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge. This time, the story would receive national coverage from CBS Evening News. Again, my mother and I stood side by side with the DeSalvo family at the podium. Elaine Sharp began by laying the blame at the feet of Attorney General Tom Reilly. “He said publicly that he would grant the family access to the case files,” Sharp argued, “but privately he slammed the door in our faces. We are not looking for money; we are looking for the truth.” After she was finished, the DeSalvos and my mother spoke about their need for closure. But the day’s most startling words came not from the lawyers or the families but from Albert DeSalvo himself. It was time to release DeSalvo’s confession tape to the world. The reporters made a small circle around a television monitor in the corner of the conference room. Nick Eldredge had finally allowed me to make a copy of DeSalvo’s taped confession to my aunt’s murder. To enhance the sound quality, I had transferred my tiny audiocassette to video the night before. Elaine Sharp handed out copies of Mary’s autopsy report for the media to compare with DeSalvo’s taped words. Reporters started pushing and shoving, some using their microphones as weapons to get the best possible spot by the television screen. “This is the tape that the government doesn’t want you to hear,” I said. Then I pressed the Play button.

  For the first time, reporters heard DeSalvo’s description of Mary Sullivan’s murder. And for the first time, they were given undeniable proof that Albert DeSalvo was fabricating his story. They heard DeSalvo say he had choked Mary by pressing his thumbs against her Adam’s apple. The reporters leafed through the autopsy report and saw that Mary had not been manually strangled. They also heard DeSalvo say he ejaculated inside my aunt’s body. Elaine and I pointed out the paragraph in the autopsy report that stated that no trace of semen had been found in Mary’s vagina. Reporters began to smile and nod. They knew there was more to this story than they had first believed.