The Boston Strangler (40 page)

Since I saw you last the thing that I warned you about has happened. Because I have chosen to deal for your protection with people I could trust in Boston Homicide, the Attorney General of this Commonwealth has seen fit to attempt to take over this case and announce to the public that he and his men have “solved” it. You are to be placed under tremendous persuasion to deal with the office of the Attorney General with his political ambitions. The reach of their power extends to the very institution in which you are confined. I suggest that you evaluate this matter on your own. Call for the help of your brothers if you wish to, and do not be bulldozed into doing anything which I have already told you might be to your own harm. Meanwhile please be assured that all you have asked me to do about the person for whom you personally care is being done, and at this moment a representative of my office is providing her with an opportunity to escape the deluge of publicity which could chase her if no move was made.… If you wish to see me of your own volition, and demand to see me, I will produce you in court forthwith through a writ of habeas corpus. This telegram is dictated in presence of your two brothers Joe and Frank, who are duly concerned for your welfare.

F. Lee Bailey

Then, after several vain attempts to meet with Brooke, Bailey fired off a telegram to him accusing him of planning to exploit the case and the resulting publicity for his own ends.

Behind the scenes were questions that puzzled observers. Apart from the breach between Police Commissioner McNamara and Attorney General Brooke which began when Brooke entered the investigations and had widened with Peter Hurkos's arrest in New York, how much was politics involved? If the Boston Police Department—and not the Attorney General's office—solved the stranglings, would this not constitute a tremendous boost for Democratic Mayor Collins, who had appointed McNamara and who was himself a possible candidate for Senator and perhaps Governor? By the same token, might a police triumph be a blow to Republican Brooke's political aspirations? Brooke had his eye on the United States Senate if Republican Senator Saltonstall, now seventy-two, retired.

If anything was clear, it was that a struggle was going on for possession of Albert DeSalvo and the story he seemed so willing to tell.

These maneuvers aside, it was striking that although Albert DeSalvo had spoken freely about his sexual escapades, his tying up of women, his numerous rapes, he had steadfastly denied until now that he was the Strangler. He had denied it vehemently to Cambridge detectives. He had denied it to Sergeant Davenport. He had denied it in the presence of his wife and sister. Once a Malden detective had asked him slyly, “Kid, are you the Strangler?” Albert had retorted angrily, scornfully, “Cut it out!”

And no one had pursued it.

*
Actually, the text of the reward offer stated that a ten-thousand dollar reward would be paid “for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murder of any one or all of the following persons,” and then were listed the names of the eleven victims. The reward would reach $110,000 only if each woman was found to have been murdered by a different man.

*
Prominent on one wall of his waiting room was a framed diploma certifying that F. Lee Bailey had “completed with honors” the “Comprehensive Fall Seminar,” held in Los Angeles in November 1961, “devoted to the Study of Hypnosis, Hypnoanalysis, Hypnoanesthesia, Hypnotherapy, Interrogation, Use of Polygraph, Memory Recall, Fact Retention, the Art of Persuasion, the General Study of Psychiatry, all these subjects employed to educate the trial lawyer in the accepted medical uses and practices relating to these subjects and to aid him in his never-ending search for truth, making him a more proficient advocate.” The seminar was given by William J. Bryan, Jr., M.D., a Los Angeles hypnoanalyst of whom more shall be heard later.

19

Damn it, thought Dr. Robey in his office at Bridgewater, DeSalvo doesn't fit. He can't be the Strangler. Because, in his opinion, DeSalvo did not fit, Dr. Robey had not reported back to John Bottomly as he had done, months before, in the case of David Parker. No, said Dr. Robey to himself, reason as one likes, let DeSalvo say what he wants, he still doesn't fit in my book. Which poses a fascinating question: if he does know more than he should about these crimes, from whom could he be learning what he knows?

Why, thought Dr. Robey, marveling at the simplicity of it, he could be learning it from his wardmate—from George Nassar.

Could Nassar be the Strangler?

The man fitted like a glove, thought Dr. Robey with mounting excitement. He possessed the required psychopathology to carry out such crimes. He was paranoid, schizophrenic, highly intelligent, and cunning. As he and the medical staff had noted from the day he arrived, George Nassar was an angry man, carrying a tremendous rage. And he was a killer.

Was it conceivable that Nassar had engineered a gigantic hoax? He might have sold the idea of confessing to DeSalvo, fed DeSalvo facts about the murders, announced to Bailey that he had discovered the Strangler, and then allowed matters to take their own course, depending upon Bailey's energy and resourcefulness to force the issue.

Why should DeSalvo buy the idea of confessing? For the money, of course. He knew he would never be free again. How far that money would go to help his wife and children …

Dr. Robey turned it over in his mind. Now, he thought, the gaps were filled. He had always considered David Parker a prime suspect, but he questioned whether David could also have strangled the women outside Boston—specifically, Evelyn Corbin in Salem and Joann Graff in Lawrence. These towns, however, were Nassar's home stamping ground: he had grown up in that area, and his mother still lived in Lawrence.

What, then, did this add up to? There must be
two
stranglers, as the Medical-Psychiatric Committee had speculated months ago: David Parker for the Old Women, because of his psychotic hostility toward the domineering mother-image; and Nassar for the Girls, the more psychosexually mature, the more heterosexual criminal.

Dr. Robey notified John Bottomly that he and his colleagues now were inclined to consider Nassar a more likely suspect than DeSalvo.

Nassar had never been questioned about the stranglings. Dr. Robey now proceeded to do so. Nassar appeared before him, quiet, poised, a man on guard. He said nothing, admitted nothing. To such questions as
Where were you on January 4, 1964? What beer do you drink?
Nassar replied with a stock sentence: “I will not answer any questions on advice of counsel.”

Was this really the situation? That the man who refused to admit he was the Strangler was the Strangler and the man who confessed he was the Strangler was not the Strangler? Dr. Robey thought, With every step I take it gets a little deeper, a little crazier, a little wilder. Where will it stop?

In his State House office, John Bottomly studied the information before him. He echoed Dr. Robey without knowing it: This, he thought, is the most fantastic caper of all. Was it DeSalvo? Was it Nassar? And what was Bailey's role? The Boston
Record-American
had already carried a copyrighted story asserting that a “mental patient” in a Massachusetts institution, a married man who was the father of two, had “allegedly confessed” that he was the Boston Strangler. Why was Bailey releasing such information?

Even as Bottomly pondered this, word came from Bridgewater that a TV camera crew was in the act of photographing the building in which DeSalvo was held. Superintendent Gaughan had succeeded in ordering them off the grounds, but this was obviously only the beginning. There were reports that other network reporters and cameramen had moved into the Hotel Lorraine and were waiting only for the moment when the entire case would explode. Bottomly consulted with Brooke, who went into Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court with a petition to prevent Bailey, Asgiersson, and others from releasing any details of the alleged confession, including the name of DeSalvo. Such publication might be detrimental to the prisoner and to “the due course of justice and the general interest of the Commonwealth.” It was interesting to remember that Bailey had won Dr. Sheppard's release in Ohio on the ground that publicity had prejudiced his case.

Associate Justice Arthur E. Wittemore dismissed the petition after Bailey and Asgiersson assured him they would not release the information, but the jurist asked for a report on DeSalvo's mental condition from “disinterested psychiatrists.”

On Wednesday, March 10, Lieutenant Tuney and Jim Mellon, armed with front and profile photographs of DeSalvo, showed them to Kenneth Rowe, the twenty-two-year-old engineering student who lived a floor above Joann Graff in Lawrence. Was this the man who rapped on his door the day Joann was murdered and wanted to know which was her apartment?

Rowe did not recognize DeSalvo as the man.

Lieutenant Tuney and Mellon showed the photographs next to Jules Vens, the bartender into whose tavern in Lawrence, down the street from Joann's building, a man had walked that afternoon and asked for “Lucky Beer.”

Vens failed to identify DeSalvo as his customer.

Next day they showed the photographs to Sims Murray, who saw a man help a girl carry record albums into 44A Charles Street either on January 1 or January 4, 1964, the day of Mary Sullivan's murder. Was this the man he saw?

Sims Murray did not identify DeSalvo as the man.

One of Albert DeSalvo's most recognizable features was his prominent beaklike nose, particularly in profile. The witnesses said, in effect: If this had been the man, we would have recognized him at once.

On Wednesday, March 17, in her hideout in suburban Denver, Mrs. Irmgard DeSalvo spoke on the telephone to her husband in Bridgewater. She was hysterical. If he did not stop claiming to be the Strangler, she would kill herself—she would turn the gas on herself and the two children. She was still weeping when she hung up.

The next day, at Bridgewater, a woman psychologist on the staff was preparing a routine test for DeSalvo. He was already seated at her table, when he suddenly refused to go through with it.

“I don't want to make you do anything you feel you shouldn't,” she said finally. “So if you want to go back to your ward now, you may.” But DeSalvo seemed in no hurry. What did everyone think “about all the excitement” that had been going on at Bridgewater, he asked her?

She told him she had no wish to discuss the stranglings or anything in which he might be involved with the courts or his attorney.

“I understand that,” said DeSalvo. “Besides, I never confessed to being the Strangler. My name's never been in the papers in connection with those things.” He looked at her calmly. He'd heard some patient had confessed, but he, Albert DeSalvo, knew nothing about it. He thought for a moment. But if the patient's story was true, he said, then all the people connected with the case—the doctors, the police, the district attorneys, the Attorney General—they'd all be ruined. That's why, he said, they were trying to disprove the patient's story and “bury the whole case.” Anyway, this patient who said he was the Strangler—“He should be studied, not buried,” DeSalvo said. He sighed. The poor always got punished, he said. That's the way the world was. Rich people could do all kinds of sex things and get away with it. They just bought their way out.

He rose and, brooding, left the room.

In an attempt to prove or disprove that DeSalvo was the Strangler, John Bottomly arranged to confront him with two more witnesses.

On Saturday morning, March 20, at 10
A.M.
, Detective DiNatale drove to Bridgewater accompanied by a woman. A few minutes later another car driven by one of Phil's colleagues, also with one woman passenger, followed.

One woman was Gertrude Gruen, the twenty-nine-year-old German waitress who on February 18, 1963, fought off an assailant who tried to strangle her after gaining entrance into her apartment on the pretext that he had to turn off the water in the bathroom. Months before, she had failed to identify Paul Gordon as he underwent a sodium pentothal interrogation in Dr. Alexander's office. She had since changed her name—her terror had never left her—and moved to another city. Now she had agreed to come to Bridgewater to see if she could identify DeSalvo.

The other was Mrs. Marcella Lulka, the housewife who lived in the building adjoining Sophie Clark's and who on the day of Sophie's murder was visited by a stranger with “honey-colored hair,” who had checked the painting in her apartment and then talked about hiring her as a model.

Was it DeSalvo? He had used this technique before.

Or was it Nassar?

Both women were to have a chance that morning to see DeSalvo. They did not know that George Nassar would also be on display. The idea was that DeSalvo would be brought down to the visitors' room to speak to Dr. Samuel Allen, Dr. Robey's associate. This chamber was a large room divided down the center by a wide table with benches on either side. Inmates sat on the inner side, their visitors opposite them on the other. The two women were to pose as relatives waiting for other inmates.

Neither DeSalvo nor Nassar would know the true reason for their appearance. While Dr. Allen spoke to DeSalvo, a social worker would talk with Nassar as if checking details of his history.

George Nassar was the first to enter the visitors' room, wearing a slight, sardonic smile on his face. Gertrude Gruen, waiting for the patient she was told would sit opposite Dr. Allen, glanced idly at Nassar as he walked in. The latter darted a sharp glance at her, and then a second. She thought, There's something upsetting, something frighteningly familiar about that man. Could he know her?

At that moment, DeSalvo entered and took his place across the table from Dr. Allen. Miss Gruen looked at him. No, he was not the man who talked with her, attempted to strangle her, the man with whom she fought, the man who fled when her screams brought workers on the roof peering into her windows.