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Thread: Albert H. DeSalvo: "The Boston Strangler"?

  1. #1
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Albert H. DeSalvo: "The Boston Strangler"?



    Authorities to exhume body of confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo

    Albert H. DeSalvo’s body will be exhumed to allow for new forensic testing that may conclusively prove DeSalvo murdered Mary Sullivan in her Boston apartment in 1964, the last killing attributed to the Boston Strangler who terrorized Greater Boston for two years in the early 1960s.

    Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said that a DNA match has been made between DeSalvo, the self-confessed Boston Strangler, and the murder of 19-year-old Sullivan, who was raped and murdered and “her body desecrated” in her Charles Street home on Jan. 4, 1964.

    Conley said the DNA testing showed a “familial match” between forensic evidence in Sullivan’s killing, leading prosecutors to ask for a Suffolk Superior Court judge to order the exhumation of DeSalvo’s remains to prove “once and for all” that DeSalvo murdered Sullivan.

    Conley noted that a total of 11 murders have been attributed to the Boston Strangler and DeSalvo, and that there is widespread disagreement among law enforcement and researchers who have investigated the killings whether DeSalvo did in fact kill all of the women as he confessed to have done.

    “At this point in time, 50 years removed from those deaths and without the biological evidence that we have in the Sullivan case, that is a question that we cannot answer,’’ Conley said. “But these developments give us a glimmer of hope that there can be one day finality, if not accountability, for the families of the ten other women murdered so cruelly in Boston, Cambridge, Lawrence, Lynn and Salem.’’

    Casey Sherman, the nephew of Mary Sullivan, who wrote a 2003 a book that concluded DeSalvo’s confession did not match the other evidence in Sullivan’s murder, attended the press conference where officials laid out the DNA connection.

    Sherman welcomed the developments, but also said he was still trying to absorb the scientific evidence connecting DeSalvo to Sullivan’s murder.

    “We are not there yet,’’ Sherman said of himself, and his mother. “Once the exhumation is done and there is a definitive answer, yes or no. But we are getting there...It’s taken 49 years for police to say they legitimately got their man.’’

    Davis said that detectives followed DeSalvo relatives around, waiting for the chance to grab something that could provide a DNA sample for comparative purposes. When a relative discarded a plastic bottle, an officer picked it up and it was submitted for DNA testing.

    “The ability to provide closure to a family after 50 years is just a remarkable thing,’’ Davis said.

    Conley defended the use of surreptitious means to get the DNA profile from the DeSalvo family as “fair and legal and ethical’’ and also allowed the investigation to proceed without disrupting the DeSalvo family.

    Conley said the DNA sample from one of DeSalvo’s nephews helped build the “familial match’’ between DeSalvo and Sullivan’s murder.

    “This is good evidence,’’ Conley said, in explaining why they want to directly test DeSalvo’s remains. “It is not sufficient enough to close the case.”

    Attorney General Martha Coakley said that resolution in the haunting serial killing case may finally be in the offing.

    “We may have just solved one of the nation’s most notorious serial killings,’’ Coakley said.

    But Coakley also said the only biological evidence that survived the decades since the murders involved the murder of Mary Sullivan. Authorities said the evidence involved seminal fluid on a blanket taken from the crime scene where Sullivan was slain.

    Coakley said an exhaustive search of the records reached the conclusion that there is no DNA evidence remaining from the 10 other killings.

    Boston Police Commissioner Edward M. Davis said he instructed detectives to follow relatives of DeSalvo around so police could seize physical evidence that could be used to build a DeSalvo family DNA profile.

    DeSalvo confessed to being the “Boston Strangler,’’ but was never prosecuted for the crimes under a deal negotiated with then-Attorney General Edward Brooke and DeSalvo’s attorney, F. Lee Bailey. But many people, including Brooke, have questioned whether DeSalvo did kill all of the women whose deaths have been attributed to the Strangler.

    “Even to this day, I can’t say with certainty that the person who ultimately was designated as the Boston Strangler was the Boston Strangler,” Brooke told the Globe in 2012.

    DeSalvo, who was then imprisoned on other charges, was linked to the killings when he confessed to the crimes to his cellmate, George Nassar. Nassar told Bailey, who negotiated a deal where DeSalvo admitted he was the Strangler, but was never prosecuted for them.

    DeSalvo was stabbed to death in Walpole state prison in Nov. 25, 1973. He was 42 years old.

    http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...7AI/story.html
    Last edited by JimKay; 07-11-2013 at 02:21 PM. Reason: add photo

  2. #2
    Senior Member Member Johnya's Avatar
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    Thanks for this post, JimKay. Like many others, I was left wanting more evidence of his guilt after reading Gerold Frank and others. I've never felt the same killer was responsible for all of the killings. It will be interesting to see how the Sullivan case turns out.

  3. #3
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Family of Albert DeSalvo angry that police secretly obtained DNA sample from relative

    The family of confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo is furious that Boston police secretly followed one of his nephews so investigators could get a DNA family profile - because the DeSalvo clan would have provided the sample without hesitation if they had been asked, their attorney said today.

    Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said today he assigned a police detective to follow a DeSalvo nephew -- identified by family attorney as Timothy DeSalvo - so they could collect something to retrieve a DNA sample from. Davis said police retrieved the DNA sample from a plastic water bottle that was discarded by the DeSalvo relative.

    Law enforcement officials announced today that a DNA match had been made between DeSalvo and the murder of 19-year-old Mary Sullivan who had been raped and murdered in her home on Charles Street on Jan, 4, 1964.

    DeSalvo famly attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp told the Globe in a telephone interview that the DNA revelation was deeply upsetting to the DeSalvo family, and it also reinforced their belief that law enforcement will never treat them with respect, even though the DeSalvo family has tried to cooperate in the past.

    “Obviously, he was shocked, disgusted, angry and offended,’’ Whitfield Sharp said of Timothy DeSalvo, the son of Richard DeSalvo, Albert’s brother. “The family is not happy with this secret surveillance of Tim DeSalvo. It was unnecessary, creepy.’’

    She said the family is resigned to seeing their relative exhumed for the second time from his grave in Peabody this week.

    She said that if law enforcement had asked, they would have provided DNA.

    The goal was to work in secret, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case said Thursday.

    That official was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and asked for anonymity. There had been tension between the DeSalvo family and authorities over evidence and officials did not want to tip off the DeSalvo family to what they were doing for fear that there could be leaks to the press, the official said. If it turned out that the profile did not belong to DeSalvo, the unknown suspect would learn from the media he was wanted and would flee, the official said.

    Whitfield Sharp said, DNA samples of Albert DeSalvo are still in the possession of the DeSalvo family and forensic investigators who exhumed DeSalvo’s body in the early 2000s. They would have happily turned over those DNA samples, too, she said.

    Whitfield Sharp said that when Sullivan’s body was exhumed in 2001, mitochondrial DNA of a man was found on Sullivan’s body near her groin – and that DNA profile did not match Albert DeSalvo. If the new round of testing does confirm a DeSalvo connection, she said it suggests that two men may have played a role in Sullivan’s death.

    At the same time, a DeSalvo DNA match would show only that DeSalvo and Sullivan were intimate shortly before her death, not that he killed her, the family attorney said.

    “It does not prove he killed any of the other women,’’ Whitfield Sharp said. “It does not resolve the case once and for all as to whether Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler.’’

    Jake Wark, spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, said the new round of testing is on biological evidence that was preserved by Boston police, not on the result of an exhumation of a murder victim decades after she was autopsied, embalmed and buried by her family.

    http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...pyH/story.html

  4. #4
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JimKay View Post

    “Obviously, he was shocked, disgusted, angry and offended,’’ Whitfield Sharp said of Timothy DeSalvo, the son of Richard DeSalvo, Albert’s brother. “The family is not happy with this secret surveillance of Tim DeSalvo. It was unnecessary, creepy.’’
    Well, they'll just have to get over it then. Strangling women is a heck of a lot creepier than surreptitiously collecting DNA samples.

  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Moh View Post
    Well, they'll just have to get over it then. Strangling women is a heck of a lot creepier than surreptitiously collecting DNA samples.
    If I could get my DNA into the system for free without being arrested, I would. I spend many a morning in the Florida backwoods, surrounded by alligators, panthers, bears, coyotes and rampaging armadillos (they're the worst). As those jaws clamped down it would be comforting to know what was left of me could be IDed through DNA. I don't get the paranoia about DNA.

    But that reminds me. I had a friend in Connecticut who was a state corrections officer. She wanted a concealed carry permit and I was an NRA-certified instructor, so I could teach/certify her as competent, which you needed to apply. When I told her she'd need to be fingerprinted she balked. "Never been fingerprinted in my life." Yes, she was a CO but they never fingerprinted her before hiring. This was about 1986-87 so things may be different now.

  6. #6
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Crews are exhuming remains of Albert DeSalvo

    A gravedigger with a shovel and an operator with a backhoe today reopened the Puritan Memorial Park grave of confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo as authorities try to conclusively link him to the 1964 murder of Mary Sullivan in Boston.

    A blue tent has been set up next to the gravesite where officials expect to try and recover DNA material from the remains of DeSalvo, who confessed to murdering 11 women in the Greater Boston area during 19 months between 1962 and 1964.

    In a car by the entrance to the cemetery, a woman who identified herself as Ann Plastino said she came to the exhumation because she knew DeSalvo about 50 years ago. She told a group of reporters that he used to drive her to work in Chelsea in the summertime and seemed “friendly” and “kind.”

    “When I saw on TV that he was the Boston Strangler, I dropped my coffee,” she said. “To think I spent so much time in a car with him, it makes me shake.”

    She said she still cannot fully believe he was the Strangler, describing him as a gentleman and family man.

    But, she added, she is glad new forensic evidence has been unveiled.

    “This is just unreal,” she said. “I hope this can bring some closure.”

    The exhumation was ordered by a Superior Court judge at the request of Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, Attorney General Martha Coakley and Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis after investigators made a potential DNA match between DeSalvo and forensic evidence recovered at Sullivan’s 1964 murder scene in her apartment on Beacon Hill.

    Conley outlined the new link on Thursday, but said investigators based their testing on the DNA profile of DeSalvo’s nephew, Timothy, and that they need to collect a biological sample from DeSalvo himself to confirm the accuracy of the 21st century scientific test.

    Authorities expect to need an hour to unearth DeSalvo’s remains, collect the sample, and then re-inter him. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in the Walpole state prison in 1973.

    Police said they expect to extract the sample from DeSalvo’s bone marrow.

    DeSalvo’s family disinterred him more than a decade ago as they joined with forensic scientists making their own independent inquiry into whether DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler as his family has long hoped.

    Elaine Whitfield Sharp, the DeSalvo family attorney, said Thursday that they were upset with the way Boston police collected Timothy DeSalvo’s genetic information — they followed him and then grabbed a plastic bottle he threw away — and that they would have willingly cooperated if only they had been asked by law enforcement.

    Sullivan’s body was found in her Beacon Hill apartment in January 1964, the last of 11 killings DeSalvo confessed to committing during a 19-month murder spree in the greater Boston area. she She was raped and killed, authorities said.

    Sullivan’s nephew, Casey Sherman, who once expressed serious doubts that DeSalvo killed his aunt and even identified a New Hampshire man as the more likely suspect, expressed gratitude for persistence by law enforcement.

    The murders of 11 women between 1962 and early 1964, a crime spree that stretched from Boston and Cambridge to Lawrence, Lynn, and Salem. The women were between 19 and 75 years old. Most of them were raped and strangled with their stockings or cords.

    Many of DeSalvo’s family members have maintained his innocence, in part because his confession contained inconsistent details about the crimes.

    http://boston.com/metrodesk/2013/07/...ITO/story.html

  7. #7
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    DNA links Boston Strangler suspect to last victim



    DNA tests confirm that the man who once claimed to be the Boston Strangler did kill the woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim and was likely responsible for the deaths of the other victims, authorities said Friday.

    Albert DeSalvo admitted to killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 but later recanted. He was later killed in prison.

    The DNA finding "leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan" and it was "most likely" that he also was the Boston Strangler, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

    Authorities said recently that new technology allowed them to test semen left at the crime scene of Sullivan's death using DNA from a living relative of DeSalvo's. That produced a match with DeSalvo that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects.

    To confirm the match, investigators unearthed his remains a week ago and said Friday that the odds that the semen belonged to a male other than DeSalvo were 1 in 220 billion.

    "It's a great day. This is now full justice for my aunt, Mary Sullivan," said her nephew, Casey Sherman.

    A lawyer for DeSalvo's family has said even a perfect match wouldn't mean he killed Sullivan. She was 19 when she died in January 1964, a few days after she moved from Cape Cod to Boston.

    Eleven Boston-area women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.

    Law enforcement officials disagree about whether the same person killed all the women whose deaths were connected to the Strangler.

    Sherman had once joined with the DeSalvo family in believing that Albert DeSalvo wasn't his aunt's killer.

    He said Friday that he thinks there will always be unanswered questions related to the Strangler case, but when it comes to his loved one's slaying, his family finally has a sense of closure.

    "He's the killer of my aunt, which is all this has been about for me," Sherman said.

    http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dna-l...ct-last-victim

  8. #8
    Senior Member Member Johnya's Avatar
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    Thanks for posting this update. I too have often thought that the same killer wasn't responsible for all of the victims attributed to the "Boston Strangler". I suppose a great deal of this skepticism comes from the drastic change in victims (from elderly women to young women). If it was the same killer the only thing I can think of is perhaps he gained confidence from his earlier killings and in response his victim-type changed. We'll never know for sure.

    More importantly, I am so very happy that this young man (Sherman) and his family have the answers they have needed for so long. Hopefully they will also find peace and some type of closure.

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