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Authors: Susan Kelly

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Goldberger's findings indicated that no drugs or alcohol were present in Mary Sullivan's system when she died. Baden outlined the discrepancies in DeSalvo's confession. Foran's test results showed the presence of two different DNA samples—one taken from Mary Sullivan's pubic area, the other from the underwear put on the body at the funeral home. Neither sample matched the DNA of Albert DeSalvo.
Since 1928, the Times Square ticker has kept New Yorkers informed of all major news—the end of World War II, the death of John F. Kennedy, the moon landing, etc. On December 7, 2001, the 369-foot moving sign carried a message that surely startled many viewers. It read
ALBERT DESALVO NOT THE BOSTON STRANGLER
.
The old showman would have loved seeing his name in lights.
Update: 2013
June 14, 2012, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of Anna Slesers. Her death was the first in a series of homicides that would come to be attributed in the press, and in popular imagination, to the “Boston Strangler.”
Since this book was last updated in 2002, after the exhumation of Albert DeSalvo in October 2001 to be autopsied again and for DNA testing, a number of events important to the case have occurred. Not one of these events remotely suggests that DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. In fact, most of them strongly indicate that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was charged and convicted only in the court of public opinion.
First, though, I have to note the passing of some of the principal actors in the Strangler drama, which has played out over five decades and still continues to run.
Ames Robey, the forensic psychiatrist who first met Albert DeSalvo when the latter was held at Bridgewater State Hospital after his November 1964 arrest, died on September 23, 2004. Dr. Robey, who was one of the last people—if not the last person—to speak with DeSalvo before DeSalvo's death, maintained to the end of his own life that the Malden, Massachusetts, handyman who had gained worldwide notoriety by confessing to the stranglings never committed a single murder. The doctor always recalled that DeSalvo, who had called Robey from prison, sounded terribly frightened about something. There was good reason, given that he was stabbed to death several hours later.
Jon A. Asgeirsson, who became DeSalvo's lawyer in November 1964, died on December 9, 2009. To my knowledge, Asgeirsson declined to speak publicly about the Strangler case after I interviewed him in December 1991. Whatever his private thoughts were about his client's guilt or innocence, he took them to his grave. He and his most famous client are buried in the same cemetery—though not in proximity.
Daniel Sharp, who with his wife and law partner, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, spent a substantial part of the last ten years of his life trying to establish in the courts the facts of the Boston Strangler case, died on February 13, 2010. Elaine Sharp continues to work on behalf of the DeSalvo family.
The Honorable Francis C. Newton Jr., DeSalvo's last lawyer, died on February 6, 2012. After a thirty-year career in the United States Army, the Massachusetts Army National Guard, and the U.S. Army Reserve, he retired as a colonel. In 2011, he retired from the legal field as an administrative law judge in the Social Security Administration. Judge Newton was always firm in stating his belief that Albert DeSalvo was innocent of committing any murders.
 
 
On July 25, 2012, I spoke with former FBI agent Mark Safarik. After twenty-three years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Safarik retired in 2007 as a senior member of the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). He was also a supervisory special agent at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) at the FBI Academy. At present, he is a partner with Robert Ressler in Forensic Behavioral Services, a consulting firm in Virginia.
In the course of his career, Safarik has researched the rape-murders of over five hundred elderly women. He has published several scholarly papers on the subject in the
Journal of Forensic Sciences,
the
Journal of Forensic Nursing, Homicide Studies: An Interdisciplinary & International Journal,
and elsewhere.
The first four women to be murdered in the summer of 1962, whose deaths came to be attributed to a putative Boston Strangler, ranged in age from fifty-five to seventy-five. Safarik has established a profile of the kind of man who sexually assaults and kills older women.
“Despite age, race, and culture, the offenders who sexually assault and murder older women—the mean age of these offenders is twenty-seven,” Safarik said. “After the age of thirty, they really drop off sharply. The most violent offenders are fifteen to twenty-four years of age. They likely have a substance abuse problem. Most of their previous crimes are misdemeanor crimes—burglary, drug possession, larceny, public disturbance, and prowling. They generally live close to the crime scene, so that they can stay in their neighborhoods, their comfort zones. Eighty-one percent of them come to the crime scene on foot, and they leave on foot.”
Safarik continued: “Ninety-three percent are unskilled. Seventy percent are unemployed. Seventy percent were never married. They don't have wives and girlfriends. They rarely engage in postmortem activity with the victim that would be described as ritual in nature, posing her, adding clothing items to her. These offenders generally leave the woman in whatever position they last interacted with them, usually when they finish interacting with them sexually. Socially, they're not competent. Sexually, they're not competent, with investigators finding semen at the crime scene less than fifty percent of the time. They often live with a mother or grandmother, and they resent that loss of control that comes from being dependent on an older woman for shelter, food, and money.”
Did Albert DeSalvo match this profile? According to Safarik, “DeSalvo does not fit the template. If he was the Boston Strangler, he would be an extreme outlier for this type of offender.”
Indeed, he would be. DeSalvo was married, had children, had no substance abuse problems, was generally employed or seeking work, and lived with his family miles from any of the crime scenes. And, by 1962, he had aged well out of the cohort most responsible for the rapes and murders of elderly women.
Safarik pointed out another fact that undermines the belief that the Boston stranglings were serial killings committed by the same person. “White offenders offend almost exclusively against white females. They don't cross the racial barrier. Black females who are killed are—again, almost exclusively—killed by black men.”
Sophie Clark, the sixth strangling victim, was a student. She was very young, she was beautiful, and she was of African ancestry. The possibility that she was murdered by the man or men responsible for the stranglings of the four older white women who preceded her in death is virtually nonexistent.
 
 
George Nassar, who first met Albert DeSalvo while the two were held at Bridgewater State Hospital, and remained a strong and influential presence in DeSalvo's life thereafter, continues to serve his sentence on the first-degree murder charge of which he was convicted in 1967. His appeals for a new trial have been turned down by the courts.
 
 
As I noted in the first update to this book, F. Lee Bailey was disbarred in Florida in 2001. In June 2002, the Supreme Court of the United States issued the following opinion:
F. Lee Bailey, having been suspended from the practice of law in this Court by order of March 18, 2002; and a rule having been issued and served upon him requiring him to show cause why he should not be disbarred; and the time to file a response having expired; It is ordered that F. Lee Bailey is disbarred from the practice of law in this Court. (IN THE MATTER OF DISBARMENT OF F. LEE BAILEY, D-2291, SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, 536 U.S. 936, 122 S. Ct. 2650; 153 L. Ed. 2d 827; 2002 U.S. LEXIS 4674. Judges: Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer.)
On December 3, 2001, a petition for reciprocal discipline regarding Bailey was filed in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts for Suffolk County. One justice of the Massachusetts SJC judged that Bailey be disbarred in Massachusetts. On April 11, 2003, the SJC affirmed this judgment, pointing out:
[T]he fact that Bailey had committed such grave misconduct despite his vast experience as a seasoned litigator only serves to heighten the seriousness of his offenses.
Among the instances of what the Florida court termed Bailey's “egregious and cumulative misconduct” were the following: offering false testimony, violating a client's confidences, violating two federal court orders, engaging in ex parte communications, and trust account violations. The latter entailed the commingling and misappropriation of funds. The Florida court also concluded that such offenses, in “the absence of any mitigating factors,” necessitated disbarment. Said the Massachusetts court: “We agree.” (
IN THE MATTER OF F. LEE BAILEY, SJG-08764,
SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS, 439 Mass. 134; 786 N.E.2d 337; 2003 Mass. LEXIS 268.)
Bailey requested of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts an evidentiary hearing on this matter. On November 5, 2005, his request was denied, and he was disbarred. On June 9, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed this judgment:
The court held that, even assuming that the attorney could prove that the stock was not transferred to him in trust, such proof would not adequately undermine the states' rationale for disbarment. because the disbarment. hinged on a finding that the attorney appropriated the funds without prior court approval. (IN RE: F. LEE BAILEY, Appellant. No. 05-2779,
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FRIST CIRCUIT, 450 F.3d 71; 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 14189.)
In February 2009, Bailey was invited to speak on the topic of ethics and the law at Wellesley College. At present, he lives in Maine, where he and his girlfriend, Debbie Elliott, a former cosmetologist, operate a consulting firm. Bailey & Elliott Consulting offers a variety of services, including expert advice on financial matters.
 
 
Edward Brooke, attorney general of Massachusetts during the Boston Strangler case, and later United States senator from Massachusetts, lives in Virginia with Anne, his second wife. A breast cancer survivor, he has advocated for awareness of the disease in men.
On June 20, 2000, the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse in Boston, a Massachusetts trial court, was dedicated. A Boston charter school was founded in his name in 2002. In 2004, Brooke was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. In 2006, the Massachusetts Republican Party instituted the Edward Brooke Award for distinguished service. Its first recipient was Andrew Card, the former White House chief of staff for the forty-third president. In 2009, Brooke received the Congressional Gold Medal.
In an article published in the
Boston Globe
on June 14, 2012—fifty years to the day since Anna Slesers was murdered—reporter Martine Powers quoted Brooke as saying:
“Even to this day, I can't say with certainty that the person who ultimately was designate as the Boston Strangler was the Boston Strangler.”
He added,
“I'll probably go to my grave not knowing for sure. ”
 
 
In June 2012, several news agencies reported that 139 Blue Hill Avenue in Roxbury—the house in which sixty-year-old Margaret Davis, a purported Strangler victim, had been murdered and found dead—was due for demolition. These press reports were inaccurate on two counts.
According to the initial police reports and follow-up investigative reports on the case, Margaret Davis died in room 7 of the Hotel Roosevelt on Washington Street in Boston. She had checked into the hotel on July 10, 1962. She and her male companion had used the names “Mr. and Mrs. Byron Spinney.” Chambermaid Eva Day found Davis's body the following day. Byron Spinney, who had given a false name and a false address to the hotel clerk, was nowhere to be found. Davis herself had a number of pseudonyms or street names, among them “Anne Cunningham,” “Annie Oakley,” “Winnie Hughes,” and “Tobey.” An itinerant, she may have spent some time at the house on Blue Hill Avenue, but she certainly didn't die there.
In some ways, the second issue is an even larger one. Was Davis even a Strangler victim? The police working on her case didn't think she was. An August 18, 1964, progress report by the Strangler Task Force, working out of Edward Brooke's office, noted that Davis most likely died as a result of a fight with her companion, Byron Spinney. Spinney himself had vanished back into whatever netherworld from which he'd briefly emerged on July 10, 1962.
Again, the Davis case was another illustration of the way in which any unsolved murder of a woman in the Boston area during the early and mid-1960s would come, in the public mind, to be attributed to a single killer—and later to Albert DeSalvo.
 
 
During an autopsy, the internal organs are removed from the body, examined for visible disease, defect, or injury, and weighed. Samples may be taken for microscopic analysis or other tests. The organs are then placed in a plastic bag and returned to the body cavity, or bagged and placed in the coffin. By law, the body of the decedent and all its parts belong to the survivors.
Albert DeSalvo's first autopsy took place after his November 1973 murder in the infirmary of what was then known as Walpole State Prison (now Massachusetts Correctional Institution—Cedar Junction). At his second autopsy, in York, Pennsylvania, in October 2001, it was discovered that all of DeSalvo's internal organs—but for the bladder—were missing. So was his brain.
On December 18, 2001, Elaine and Daniel Sharp, lawyers for Richard DeSalvo, Albert's brother, sent a letter to Thomas Reilly, attorney general of Massachusetts:
The tort claims we are presenting on behalf of our clients, Richard DeSalvo and the Estate of Albert DeSalvo, include but are not limited to the grossly negligent loss of Albert DeSalvo's internal organs upon autopsy by state agencies, including but not limited to the Office of the Attorney General, the Massachusetts State Police, and the Office of the Medical Examiner.... The relatives of Albert DeSalvo had no idea whatsoever that his internal organs (including the heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, and spleen) had been removed from the body and never replaced for burial by one of the above-named agencies until Albert DeSalvo was exhumed on October 26, 2001. We are also claiming that the above-named state agencies negligently failed to return the personal property of Albert DeSalvo to his representative, Richard DeSalvo, upon both his written and oral request.... If, in the course of your investigation, you determine that individuals other than public employees—or government entities other than the state agencies described—have caused or contributed to the claimants' injuries, we would appreciate it if you would so advise us, and provide the identity of such individuals or entities.
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