The Boston Stranglers (27 page)

Read The Boston Stranglers Online

Authors: Susan Kelly

BOOK: The Boston Stranglers
11.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Lindahl attended his twenty-fifth Harvard reunion in 1980. The occasion plunged him into an acute depression, which he may have tried to alleviate with heavy drinking. He died a few months later, and was buried in a Lutheran cemetery in Worcester next to the mother he never really knew.
Peter Howard Burton, another former Harvard student and Cambridge resident, was as vociferous and vocal as Lindahl in his hatred of women. A young man with a genius-level I.Q. and, according to Ames Robey, “the eyes of a real paranoid,” Burton was finally sent to Bridgewater in early 1964, where Robey interviewed him extensively. The doctor's diagnosis: “a genuine, certifiable nut.”
A psychiatrist whose findings agreed with those of Robey was William Shelton, director of the Cambridge Court Clinic. In early December 1963, Shelton observed Burton and wrote the following report: “This young man was seen in the Detention Center of the East Cambridge Jail. He appeared grossly disturbed, walking back and forth. He acted odd and peculiar with a glased [sic] look in his eyes. He showd [sic] many of the characteristics of an acute hebephrenic schizophrenic with a silly laugh and answering inappropriately. For instance when I asked him his age he stated ‘the last time I measured it, it was twenty-two.' ” Shelton advised immediate hospitalization.
Burton, the son of a doctor and a nurse, was born in Brooklyn on April 5, 1941, the oldest of four children. The family moved to Troy, New York, and there he was educated at local schools, graduating from high school in 1958. Burton claimed to have won a congressional appointment to West Point; he attended the military academy for sixteen months before being dismissed in October 1959 for being a “nonconformist.” Thereafter he matriculated at Harvard. He also maintained that he had studied for six months at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. While he was at Woods Hole, he told police, he had set up a drug manufacturing business. The enterprise was abruptly curtailed when the makeshift pharmaceutical lab blew up.
He was first arrested a little before three in the morning on April 19, 1961, in Newton, Massachusetts, along with four other Harvard students. The charge was possession of high explosives. (Burton apparently had an affinity for things that went boom in the night.) Burton had built a bomb out of gunpowder taken from seven high-velocity twelve-gauge shotgun shells, a flashlight bulb, a cast-iron pipe, a battery, and some wires. The five pranksters had planned to detonate the gadget somewhere along Route 128 but were balked by a mechanical failure.
That June, Burton either voluntarily withdrew from or was asked to leave Harvard for a year. He later boasted that he had been “thrown out” of the college because of the bomb episode. He spent that summer and fall in Los Angeles, returning to Cambridge and renting an apartment on Irving Street in early December. In February and March of 1962 he traveled in Europe. In early April he was back home in Troy, working for the Rand Joint Company. And he would travel on weekends to Cambridge to visit his girlfriend Carolyn, a nurse's aide.
Burton's sexual preferences were unsettled; two of his closest friends at Harvard were certain that he had had homosexual experiences (perhaps the reason for his dismissal from West Point). At any rate, they claimed Burton had spoken to them of making love to men. The proclivity was clearly one that frightened and angered Burton; once while cruising around the East Side of New York, he viciously attacked a gay man. The victim had apparently done nothing to provoke the assault. Burton later boasted of having “beaten up a faggot.”
He was a heavy user of drugs, particularly mescaline and LSD—which in the early 1960s were substances unknown to the general public. He told people that he made the drugs himself and sold them to students in the Harvard Square area. He ingested the LSD and mescaline in triple doses.
He resumed his studies at the college for the 1962-63 academic year. Thereafter he took another leave of absence. This time it was forever.
Burton was next arrested in Cambridge on December 5, 1963—the first anniversary of the murder of Sophie Clark. The charge this time was disturbing the peace.
A little after five o'clock that morning, two residents of Reservoir Street called the police to complain that someone was wandering through their backyards, running about and singing loudly. It was Burton, and his antics managed to rouse the entire neighborhood. When the police arrived to take him into custody, he explained that he was looking for the home of a friend. Unfortunately, he not only didn't know where the friend lived but what the friend's name was. He was trying to locate the house by peering into cellar windows. If he saw a motorcycle stored in a basement, then he'd know he'd found the right place.
Another thing he couldn't remember was where he himself was staying in Cambridge.
At his arraignment that day he demonstrated his song-and-dance routine (apparently he performed country and western numbers) in the courtroom. The judge, finding these capers less entertaining than demented, ordered Burton to be examined by Cambridge Court Clinic Psychiatrist William Shelton and, on Shelton's recommendation, ordered the troubadour to Westborough State Hospital for observation.
Burton was returned to court on December 28. The hospital had diagnosed him as suffering from “Personality Trait Disturbance” and an “Emotionally Unstable Personality,” which description seemed a trifle understated given his manic courtroom shenanigans.
On January 4, 1964, Burton was in Troy getting married. The Presbyterian ceremony took place in his parents' home. The bride wasn't his former girlfriend Carolyn but a young Californian named Penelope Dowler whom he had met in July 1963. Up until November 27, when they returned to Cambridge, they had lived on a farm in New Hampshire. Penelope was eight months pregnant at the time of the marriage; there was some confusion about the expected child's paternity. At one point Burton claimed that the best man at the wedding was the father. At another point he told a friend, “God, how neat it will be when I've got my own kid.”
From its inception the marriage was a disaster. Penelope later told authorities that her new husband physically abused her; the black eye she had when she made the complaint gave her statement an undeniable substance. And he abused her emotionally as well, accusing her of sleeping with other men, including the supposed father of the child—with whom Burton nonetheless carried on an amicable relationship. (The accusations of promiscuity were “a complete lie,” one of Burton's friends would later tell police.) Tenants at the rooming house on Harvard Street where the couple lived off and on during December and January said that they were continually being woken up at two, three, or four o'clock in the morning by the couple's loud and protracted fights.
On January 8, Burton went back to court on the charge of disturbing the peace that had been filed against him in early December. The judge dismissed the case. He felt that Burton had been sufficiently punished for his misdeeds by the stay in Westborough.
A little over two weeks later, Burton was taken into police custody again, this time in Harvard Square. Officer James Roscoe wrote the following report:
In regard to Peter H. Burton, the subject was arrested by me noontime on 1-22-64. I was driving down Mass. Avenue and noticed the defendant pulling a girl (later identified as his wife) towards a vehicle; she was yelling and trying to pull loose. I approached the defendant and told him to take his hands off the girl; he then yelled that she was his wife and would go with him when he wanted her. His eyes were dilated and he had a wild appearance about him. He opened his coat and I saw a hunting knife stuck inside his pants belt. I pushed him away with my left hand and drew my service revolver, ordering him up against the wall. At this time a crowd gathered and he started to dance and yell that he was going to Hollywood with a dance group. His wife Penelope later stated that she was afraid of him and that he was acting strange for quite a while. Judge Viola ordered a dangerous weapon complaint and assault and battery on [Burton's] wife; I had arrested him for a disturbance charge.
Taken to Cambridge police headquarters, Burton was handed over to Sergeant Leo Davenport for questioning. Davenport and Burton had been acquainted for two years. The sergeant wrote an account of this most recent meeting to Captain John Grainger:
Subject Burton was brought into the Detective Bureau and seated in the vicinity of my desk. I glanced at Burton and recognizing him, I said: “Peter, what the hell is the matter with you?” He asked why. I said: “You give a perfect resemblance to Othello.” ... He gave a broad smile and said: “That's right, I'm living the part of Othello.” I said: “That's fine, except for one thing, Peter. I notice you have the curly hair and you have your beard grown and clipped with the scissors so that it is a short beard, and I notice that your right ear is pierced with an earring in it. Of course, you are wearing the sandals. You fit the picture of Othello with the exception of one thing—” He said: “I know. I don't use much Man-Tan on my face to resemble [the] Moor.”
I asked him why he was going around dressed in this manner. He told me that at the present time he had a dancing and singing troupe of his own which performed in Wellesley on different occasions, and he was getting ready to take his troupe to Hollywood. They were going to put on a film about why people should like policemen. I said: “Peter, you don't have to go to Hollywood, you better go to a psychiatrist.” He said: “I just did. I was arrested last month and I went away to Westboro [sic] and they said I was sane.”
I asked him why he had the knife in his possession, stuck in such a manner in his belt so as to be concealed. He stated that it was actually a stage prop which he carried with him at all times so that when he gave a display of his talents, he would have a prop.
I then asked him why he was involved in an altercation with his wife in Harvard Square. He stated that he had just purchased some champagne and cheese and had rented a car from Avis Rental Service and that he wanted to take his wife on a picnic. I stated it was rather cold to have a picnic on the outside and he said: “It's never too cold to have fun. But my wife didn't want to come, and I was trying to get her to go in the car.”
Burton was arraigned the day he was arrested. His courtroom behavior was as peculiar on this occasion as it had been the previous December. He laughed uproariously for reasons known only to him, and burst into song. He was openly hostile to his wife. Spotting a young black man also awaiting arraignment, Burton asked the court to give him custody of the teenager. The youth could join his dance company and get a good headstart on a career, Burton said.
Judge Edward Viola vetoed this generous offer. Instead, he ordered Burton to be sent to Bridgewater for observation. He was at the institution by nightfall. Three days later Penelope moved out of the rooming house on Harvard Street, paid the rent in full, and went back to California.
Burton's enormous hatred of women was revealed in his conversations with Ames Robey at Bridgewater. Women couldn't be trusted, Burton told Robey. He particularly resented what he saw as a female usurpation of male prerogatives. “They are receiving the justice of my anger because they wear the pants and they shouldn't wear them.”
Burton told Robey that he was going to create an invention of some sort and sell it. With the profit he'd buy an island off the coast of Australia and fence it with barbed wire. No women would be allowed to set foot on this private preserve.
Listening to this venomous diatribe, Robey began to wonder.
What had Burton meant when he spoke of women receiving the “justice” of his anger?
The implications were frightening.
Back in Cambridge, Leo Davenport was beginning to wonder, too—about the possible meaning of Burton's identification with Othello. Shakespeare's Moor had killed his wife because he believed her guilty of infidelity. Burton had been obsessed by his belief in Penelope's faithlessness. Davenport outlined his thoughts in a memo to Captain Grainger.
Back at Bridgewater, Robey began, very carefully, to question Burton. He elicited the information that the young man had been in the Boston area on June 14, June 30, August 19, and August 21. Those were the deaths of Anna, Nina, Helen, Ida, and Jane.
Two of those women had been in nursing; a third had been a physiotherapist. The remaining two were regular hospital patients and visitors.
Burton, a doctor's son, had a consuming hatred for nurses, which not only his mother but his girlfriend Carolyn had been. And his relationship with the latter had been far from idyllic. Some weekends—and on those of the deaths of the older women—he'd travel all the way from Troy to Cambridge to see Carolyn and she'd have nothing to do with him. Overwhelmed by fury and frustration, Burton told Robey, he'd roam the streets of Boston and Cambridge in search of a woman, any woman.
What did he have in mind for this woman once he'd found her? Robey asked.
Oh, Burton, replied, he was looking for one “to destroy.”
Robey notified the attorney general's office and the Cambridge police of his suspicions. He also mentioned them to Donald Kenefick, the head of the Medical-Psychiatric Committee that had profiled the Strangler for the Task Force. Kenefick interviewed Burton himself to confirm Robey's findings. In the course of the session Kenefick asked the patient to demonstrate for him what kind of a knot he'd tie if he were going to strangle someone. Burton, sensing where further questions would lead, refused to do so—and demanded a lawyer.
Leo Davenport spoke to some of Burton's close friends, who gave vivid testimonial to his burgeoning mental illness. Said one, on February 11, 1964:
He came up once [to the friend's rooms in one of the Harvard houses], apparently within a very short time when he was arrested. And at this time he was in a very strange way. He came at night first and talked to us. I don't really know what he was talking about because he seemed to be a little bit out of his head at the time. And he came back the next morning. I was getting ready to do something and I walked out of the corridor and saw him then. And he was looking quite ferocious, and he went through a very strange interchange—. I will relate this—. There was a ring on the bell because our rooms are partitioned off and you have to ring the outside bell to get in the rooms where we live, and I went to the door and opened it and Peter was there at the time and he looked very thin to me and sort of sickly. He had a beard and his eyes were almost of one color. You really couldn't distinguish the pupil from the whites of the eyes. And I asked him to come in, or something of that nature, and I asked him how he was, and he stared sort of defiantly and he did not answer. I asked him again: “Peter, how are you?” And he said: “John, HOW ARE YOU,” like that. I said that I was okay, so he responded immediately: “You are not okay, you are not all right!” I decided to leave it at that because I really didn't know what to do. And after that he didn't speak much. I think the night before he came into our room, and he was just wandering around hitting himself on the head and pacing the floor, obviously thinking ill of himself. You couldn't really talk to him or anything.

Other books

The Beach Cafe by Lucy Diamond
Lost and Fondue by Aames, Avery
The Sentinel by Jeffrey Konvitz
The Tiger's Lady by Skye, Christina
Cosmopolitan Girls by Charlotte Burley
Slightly Imperfect by Tomlinson, Dar
A Place of Secrets by Rachel Hore
Whisper Falls by Elizabeth Langston