The Boston Strangler (41 page)

But the man now talking to the social worker, the man who had turned his dark eyes on her so sharply—

Moments later, in Dr. Robey's office, surrounded by police and staff members, she said agitatedly, “I don't know what to say … I'm so upset—” She appeared on the verge of a breakdown. She was taken to another room and left alone to compose herself, but when Dr. Allen entered a few minutes later he found her sobbing. Finally, she was able to talk.

It was not Albert DeSalvo, she said. When she had been shown his photographs a week earlier, she'd thought she saw certain similarities. “Now, I know he is not the man,” she said. But the first man who entered—George Nassar—“I realize how shocked I was when I saw him. To see this man, his eyes, his hair, his hands, the whole expression of him …” He looked like the man who attacked her, walked, carried himself like him, his posture … from where she sat in the visitors' room she had been unable to hear Nassar's voice. His prison clothing and prison haircut had also thrown her off. She could only say, “My deep feelings are that he has very great similarities to the man who was in my apartment.”

But—she was not sure. She wept with frustration. She wanted so badly to identify this man.

And Marcella Lulka, who had also been brought to identify DeSalvo?

She had not been sure when shown his photographs a few days before. Now, she said, seeing him in person, she must definitely eliminate him. But the patient who preceded him—Nassar—when she saw him enter, her heart jumped. In every way but one—his eyes, his walk, his furrowed face, his dark, speculative gaze—he was her mysterious caller of that dreadful afternoon. Only his hair was different. “Mr. Thompson” had honey-colored hair, as she had told detectives. This man's hair was black.

Might it not have been dyed the day she saw him, the day of Sophie Clark's murder?

Confusion was added to confusion. After leaving the visitors' room, Albert DeSalvo walked up to William Lewis in their ward. He nudged him. “They had a couple of women here just now looking me over,” he said, Lewis reported later. “I know both of them.” One, he said, was “the colored girl in the Sophie Clark building—I was in her apartment.” The other “is a German girl—I was in her apartment, too.”

Bailey labored to prove that DeSalvo's story was true. That afternoon, Saturday, March 20, he arranged for Albert to be hypnotized by Dr. William J. Bryan, Jr., the Los Angeles hypnoanalyst
*
with whom Bailey himself had studied. Dr. Bryan was a huge man, weighing nearly three hundred pounds; blond-haired, blue-eyed, and bespectacled, a man capable of great enthusiasm. Not only did he conduct seminars in hypnosis and allied subjects for lawyers, but he was Executive Director of the American Institute of Hypnosis, whose address was the same as his offices on Sunset Boulevard, in Los Angeles. He was also author of a book,
Legal Aspects of Hypnosis
,
*
in which he described at length his hypnoanalysis of a twenty-nine-year-old man who had strangled three elderly women on the West Coast a few years before. Bailey had remembered the case and was excited by the apparent parallel.

DeSalvo's hypnoanalysis was held in a room off the dispensary at Bridgewater. The witnesses included Dr. Robert Ross Mezer, Dr. Samuel Allen, and other psychiatrists. Dr. Bryan, who had a habit of calming his patient by placing both hands heavily on his shoulders, used no drugs. DeSalvo sat at his ease in a chair while the hypnotist sat facing him, so close they were almost knee to knee. Speaking gently and persuasively, Dr. Bryan began slowly moving his right forefinger back and forth before DeSalvo's eyes, assuring him that he would not become unconscious but would at all times know everything that went on. It was not sleep, but a state more relaxing than sleep. In sleep one tossed and turned, but in hypnosis one was utterly at peace. As Dr. Bryan spoke, his finger slowly moving from one side to another like a pendulum, DeSalvo's eyes grew heavy. They closed.

Dr. Bryan's voice went on gently, smoothly, with relentless, insistent repetition: “I am going to raise your right arm and as I raise your right arm it becomes stiff and rigid as a steel bar, all the way to the fingertips, stiff and rigid, stiff and rigid as a steel bar, stiff and rigid as a steel bar, stiff and rigid as a steel bar all the way to the fingertips. As it becomes stiff and rigid as a steel bar, in your mind's eye, in your mind's eye, it becomes cold and numb. Cold and numb from the shoulder to the fingertips. Cold and numb. And you imagine in your mind's eye that a cake of ice is surrounding the arm. It is frozen in a cake of ice. Frozen, cold and numb, cold and numb.” His voice never ceased. “And you feel pressure, lots of pressure, but no pain. Pressure, lots of pressure, but no pain. Pressure, lots of pressure, but no pain. Pressure—”

Without changing the hypnotic rhythm of his words he slowly pushed a two-inch darning needle through the fleshy part of DeSalvo's upraised right arm. “Cold, cold and numb, cold and numb, and you sink deeper and deeper, way down, and you feel pressure, lots of pressure, but no pain. I'm going to count to two, and you'll remain deeply hypnotized.” The needle was all the way through now. “You remain deeply hypnotized, your arm will remain very stiff and rigid, but you'll open your eyes, your eyes will be wide open. Deeply hypnotized when I count to two.”

He stepped back. “One. Two. Open your eyes.”

DeSalvo's eyes opened.

“Look at your right arm.” DeSalvo did so. “There's a needle clear through it,” said the hypnotist. “That's all right, close your eyes. Sleep, sleep, deep, deep, relax. Deeper and deeper and deeper …”

In the same fashion, never ceasing his words, he told DeSalvo he would remove the needle, he would feel no pain, and “at the count of five your right arm will be normal and completely relaxed.” He counted one, two; DeSalvo opened his eyes; he saw Dr. Bryan slowly pull out the needle. At five, DeSalvo's right arm dropped to his side, as before.

DeSalvo's eyes closed again. “You see a calendar, a desk calendar, the top page shows the date March twentieth, 1965, today.” The hypnotist paused. “Now you tear off that sheet, and you see March nineteenth; you tear that off and you do it with each sheet, back, back farther and farther, back farther and farther, right back, deeper and deeper, all the way back.” He took him through the months, through the years, “to a page reading Sunday, September eighth, 1963”—the day Evelyn Corbin was strangled in Salem.

“Now, Al, you're right back there now. You see everything that's happening. You feel every feeling you felt then. You're right there, and right there will be Evelyn Corbin. Sunday, September eighth, 1963, and you're approaching her apartment door. Now tell me what's happening. You can talk, tell me what's happening—”

DeSalvo spoke slowly, his eyes closed. “… I walk into the apartment house through the front door … The buzzer rang and I opened the door and I walked down the corridor, all the way down to the left. I moved open the door. I talked to her …”

Dr. Bryan: “Now you're talking to her. You hear her voice. You hear your own voice. Right now, what are you saying?”

DeSalvo: “‘I came here to fix the bathroom connection that you were complaining about.' And then she said, ‘Who sent you?' I told her the superintendent sent me. There was something wrong with the bathroom. There was a leak in it and I walked in and she walked in with me …”

Dr. Bryan: “Relax. Relax, deep, deep, relax. I don't want you to
remember
, Albert.
I want you to be right there. Right there
. Who sent you?” (A pause.) “Who sent you?”

DeSalvo: “The superintendent.”

Dr. Bryan: “For what? For what?”

DeSalvo: “To fix the bathroom.” He stopped. Then, in a woman's voice: “What's wrong with it?” Then, his own again: “She walked in and when she went in she turned her back to me and I put a knife to her throat.”

Dr. Bryan: “Relax, now, one moment, relax. You're right back before then. You're right back before then.” He repeated the sentence many times. “I'm going to count to two and at the count of two I'm going to stand you up; you remain deeply hypnotized in every way.” He counted: “One, two—stand right up.”

DeSalvo rose, his eyes closed.

“You've got a knife in your hand. Is that the hand it's in?”

DeSalvo: “No.”

Dr. Bryan: “Which one? All right, all right, you're coming in the door—”

DeSalvo: “She says—” His voice became falsetto again, “‘Who sent you? Who sent you?' ‘The superintendent. There's something wrong with your bathroom. I've got to check it out.' ‘Oh, just a second now,' she said. ‘I'm going to church.' She took me into the bathroom to the right.”

Dr. Bryan: “All right, you're in the bathroom now, you're in the bathroom. She turns her back on you, she turns her back on you. Now what, now what?”

DeSalvo: “I took her over to the bed and I—”

Dr. Bryan: “All right, you take her over to the bed, now what, now what?”

DeSalvo: “She says she can't do nothing, the doctor told her no … She said, ‘Don't hurt me, please.' I told her I won't hurt her.”

Dr. Bryan: “All right, sit down.” DeSalvo sat in the chair again. “Now, deep, deeper, relax, relax. You don't want to hurt her. Why do you want her on the bed? In your mind's eye you see somebody on the bed. What do you want to do? Talk, talk, come on, talk.” DeSalvo had opened his mouth, but no words came. “Talk. What do you want to do? With her thighs, with her thighs, with her thighs, with her thighs. Get the feeling—” Dr. Bryan's voice rose. “Get it, come on,
get it!
With her thighs, come on, it's a good feeling. Go ahead, go ahead, what do you want to do? It's okay to have it. Go ahead, go ahead, what do you want to do?”

DeSalvo screamed—a piercing scream that shocked the spectators in the room.

Dr. Bryan worked swiftly: “Deep relax, deeper, deeper and deeper and deeper. Now you had that feeling for a moment, didn't you? You were doing something good. What was it? You won't hurt anybody, you were doing something good. Come on, what was it?”

DeSalvo spoke: “Judy!” It was like a groan.

Dr. Bryan: “Judy, yes. That's right, Judy. You were working on Judy with those thumbs, weren't you? That's what made her well, wasn't it? With your hands you made her well. Isn't that so?… Now, what about those people? What did you want to do with them? Did you want to hurt them? Well, what did you want to do?”

DeSalvo began to cry. The tears squeezed from under his closed lids. “I don't know.”

Dr. Bryan: “Yes, you do. Come on. What is it? What did you do with Judy?”

DeSalvo: “I massaged her.”

Dr. Bryan: “You massaged her, that's right, with your thumbs, and what happened?”

DeSalvo: “She got well.”

Dr. Bryan: “She got well, that's right.” He paused, and said slowly, “You had her legs up there, you massaged her right on the thighs. Now, isn't that what you did with every other victim, too? Yes, and you hadn't told anybody that, not a soul, but that's what you did, wasn't it? You wanted to make them well. All right, now why was it necessary to keep repeating that? Why? Tell me why? Why was it necessary to make them well?
She wasn't Judy enough
, eh?”

DeSalvo: “I don't know.”

Slowly, but with mounting excitement in his voice, the hypnotist led DeSalvo through it again: the massaging of his child's crippled limbs to restore them to use, the sound of Judy crying—“I think I'm hurting her, I don't mean to hurt her, I'm going to help her, she doesn't understand, she's a child, I'm trying to help her and I must hurt her to help her—”

Dr. Bryan (triumphantly): “
You want to help her and you've got to hurt her
. Isn't that the idea? All right, now, sleep … I am going to wake you in a minute or so, but I will give you one suggestion before you wake. Tonight while you are asleep, you will have a dream so vivid that it's going to wake you up in the middle of the night. And you're going to write down everything about this dream because it's going to tie this in together. And why these women represented beauty, how you helped them and how you hurt them—”

At this, DeSalvo uttered a loud, uncontrolled scream. For a moment, he seemed to be fighting to leap from his chair.

Dr. Bryan, bringing both hands down heavily on DeSalvo's shoulders, said authoritatively: “Sleep, sleep!” He put him in a deeper trance. “At the count of three, now, you'll be wide awake, clearheaded and refreshed. One, coming up now; two, almost awake; three—awaken!”

DeSalvo's eyes opened.

“How are you, Al? Okay? You okay, Al?” Dr. Bryan asked.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” he said. He yawned and was led back to his cell.

The next day, Sunday, March 21, sitting in the chair before the hypnoanalyst again, DeSalvo told about the dream he had.

“I went to bed about eight-thirty and fell asleep. About three o'clock I woke up in a sweat, my pillow was wet, and I was crying. I had a horrible dream with a person I had done something with. I got out of bed and walked back and forth. The guard walked by, shone a light in my cell, then kept going. I sat down on the edge of the bed where the light was and started writing. This morning I thought nothing about it—just a dream—and that was it until I got up out of bed and there was the pad on the floor with the piece of paper I dreamed I was writing on.”

Dr. Bryan took the pad and read aloud:

“Now, the dream you wrote is this, Al. You wrote: ‘I went in the apartment, rang a bell. It buzzed. I opened the door and walked down the hallway. E. C. was at the door. I said, “Hi.” She said, “Yes, can I help you?” I said, “The superintendent sent me to check the leak in the bathroom.” She and I went into the bathroom and then she said, “I don't see any leak.” Her back was turned to me. I put a knife to her neck and told her, “Don't scream, I won't hurt you.” She said, “Okay—” then she said, “You're not the Strangler, are you?” I said, “No, I just want to make love to you.” I took her into the bedroom. She said, “I can't have intercourse, I am not well.” I said, “Okay, will you blow me?” She said, “Yes, but please don't hurt me.” I said, “Okay.” I took a pillow from the bed, put her on her knees at the foot of the bed, I sat on the edge while she blew me. Before coming she reached over and got a white Kleenex tissue and finished it with her hand. After that she got up and I told her to lie on the bed and she did so I could tie her hands up in front of her. When I got on top of her and put my hands on her neck and pressed very firm and then I spread her legs apart and pre—'”