Politics & Government

Cops Will Dig Up Suspected Strangler's Grave

By Bret Silverberg and Roberto Scalese

BOSTON -- Officials today cited a technological breakthrough allowing them to identify Albert DeSalvo as the killer of Mary Sullivan, the last murder in a string of 1960s killings by the "Boston Strangler."

Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley said at a Thursday press conference officials took a sample from a water bottle DeSalvo's nephew drank from and were able to match this with the DeSalvo Y chromosome. The sample from the bottle was matched with a sample of seminal fluid taken from blankets at the scene of Sullivan's murder.

This "familial match" allowed police to obtain a warrant to exhume DeSalvo's remains this week to further prove the case, Conley said.

Officials have tried since the 1960s to find a match to Sullivan's grisly murder Jan. 4, 1964, but were unable to prove a match until now.

"We are 99.9 percent" positive of the match to DeSalvo, Conley said.

Police collected seminal fluid from Sullivan's body off a blanket at the scene and stored the evidence in hopes technological advancements would allow the clue to lead to a suspect, Conley said.

"DNA evidence was undreamt of in the 1960s, but even then investigators believed the killer had left biological evidence at the crime scene," Conley said.

The developments bear only on Sullivan's murder, not the 10 other killings attributed to the "Boston Strangler," Conley said, adding that there is disagreement to this day on whether the string of murders were committed by the same person.

DeSalvo confessed to the killings while in prison, marking himself as the worst serial killer in city history.

The murders began in 1962, when Anna E. Slessers was found dead in her Gainsborough Street apartment. Police found a grotesque scene, with Slessers body posed lewdly on the bathroom floor. She had been sexually assaulted with an object and then strangled with her bathrobe’s belt. The belt had been tied in a bow.

Soon more murders followed, some with accompanying sexual assaults, some with the bodies placed in disgusting poses, and all with some sort of strangling. As the bodies mounted and some details made it to the press, Boston became aware it had a serial killer on its hands. The Boston Sunday Herald was the first to give him his name, calling the killer “the Mad Strangler of Boston.”

There were initially 11 cases connected to the Boston Strangler, and two more connected years later. The ages of the victims spanned from 19 to 85. While most of the killings occurred in Boston, others happened in Lynn, Salem and Lawrence.

DeSalvo himself was already in jail on an unrelated rape conviction when he confessed to the stranglings. His attorney, the famed F. Lee Bailey, had offered the confession on the condition it could not be used against him in court, according to the Boston Globe. 

Not everyone was convinced by that confession, however, and many have speculated it was DeSalvo’s cellmate, George Nassar, who did the actual killings and then fed DeSalvo the details. Police were initially impressed by DeSalvo’s knowledge of undisclosed details from the Strangler murders, but noted some discrepancies from his supposed memories and the facts on the ground. 

DeSalvo later recanted his confession while in Walpole Correctional. He was stabbed to death in prison in 1973.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, at the press conference said officials are close to closing a chilling chapter in Boston's history.

"Today's development may have solved one of the nation's most notorious serial killings," she said.


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