GIVE CREDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sAKjX9lnZ8 Carnival of the Damned by Jonathan Segev https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWL-sKW6m7Srb4bk6al5AmA Cold Open: The Boston Strangler! The mid-1960’s were a turbulent time for a lot of people in America. The burgeoning civil rights movement, the counter culture sexual revolution of the “hippie” movement was kicking off, and tensions from the Cold War meant that a lot of people were carrying around a decent amount of anxiety about the future every single day. And the residents of Boston, from June 14th, 1962 through July of 1964 - they had even more to worry about: a man the newspapers dubbed “the Boston Strangler” was somehow seemingly tricking one area women after another into being let into their homes where he’d then proceed to strangle and rape them. The papers were printing graphic crime scene details and criticizing the police for not being able to catch the killer - or even come up with a lead suspect - pushing many residents to the brink of near hysteria. Police in five different jurisdictions scrambled to question every known pervert, petty criminal, and person with a history of mental illness and violence who could maybe be connected to the heinous crimes in some way. In any way. And then the police found Albert DeSalvo… a man brought in on seemingly unrelated charges - who then confessed to everything! The Boston Strangler was behind bars. Case closed! …or maybe not. Irregularities in the crimes, gaps in DeSalvo’s story, and the pressure on authorities to solve the case have led some to believe that DeSalvo was responsible for maybe one or two of the Strangler’s murders, but not for the rest. And he was never charged with ANY of the murders. Actually, no one was EVER officially charged with the Boston Strangler murders. Many years later, evidence would reveal that DeSalvo was responsible for at least one of them. But what about the others? Today we’ll dig into the strange case of the Boston Strangler, and into the life of the man who would confess to being the Strangler - a man who for sure committed other disgusting violent crimes - Albert DeSalvo. We’ll follow the Boston Police Department as they struggle to find the perpetrator of these crimes and eventually form what was colloquially known as the “Strangler Bureau,” a team dedicated to finding one killer. All of this and more on another true crime, “bet you’re gonna lock your doors now if you weren’t already,” edition of Timesuck. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I.Welcome! A.Happy Monday Happy Monday and welcome back to the Cult of the Curious, Meatsacks! I’m Dan Cummins, Immanuel David’s sock designer, Time Traveling Karen historian, the Suck Master - the Master Sucker - and you are listening to Timesuck. Nimrod, Lucifina, Bojangles, and Triple M - hail to all of you. Thank you for giving us something interesting to suck once more. B.Merch: Vintage Timesuck Hoodie in the shop at Bad Magic Merch dot com today. So soft. So warm. So much suck-y snuggliness. Is that a word? Even if it isn’t - love it, wouldn’t change a thing - 3 out of 5 stars. C.Charity: Recorded this episode before knowing how much we made via Patreon this month - so I will wait until next week to announce the charity and how much we’ll be able to donate. And that’s it for announcements! D.Segue to Topic: Time to head back to the 1960s and over to the area of Massachusetts and meet some dirty birds. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE II.Intro/Establish Premiss: Today we meet a man who may or may not have been the Boston Strangler, but, was certainly a killer, a rapist, and an all around dirtbag. His name was Albert DeSalvo, and he would be given a few different nicknames for the perverse life of sexual crimes he led, including the “Measuring Man”, the “Green Man, ” and the “Master Sucker.” Wait, what? That last one is me. OH GOD! I’m the STRANGLER! No. I wasn’t even born yet. Those first two nicknames were true. Most of DeSalvo’s major crimes involved molestation and rape, and then they would allegedly evolve into potentially thirteen murders of women ranging tremendously in age - from nineteen to eighty-five. Two additional murders were initially reported by Boston Papers as belonging to the Strangler, but were later definitively attributed to other killers. The murders, whomever committed them, scared the shit out of the women in Boston. And they terrified most of the men as well, who were worried that their wife, or sister, or mother, or daughter, or - because of the wide range in victim ages - that even their grandmother could be the Strangler’s next victim. Most of the bodies were sexually violated in a number of ways, and when the papers printed details of the sexual depravity, the crimes shook many Bostonians to their core. In the early 60’s, the still very Catholic city - and much of America - was extremely sexually conservative. The Counter Culture revolution still hadn’t quite kicked off. The age of Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best - of Malt Shops and Sock Hops being the places most teenagers rebelled, was still where American dwelled. Unmarried, casual sex was definitely happening - but it was still very frowned upon in mainstream, polite society. Widespread use of the birth control pill, which had been approved by the FDA in 1960 and would quickly lead to increased pre-marital promiscuity, was still in its very beginnings. People were a long ways from casually and frequently accessing hardcore porn on free sites like Pornhub and Youporn on their cell phones. People were a long ways from even HAVING cell phones! Adult movie theaters had just popped up in Los Angeles for the first time in 1960, making it to New York City soon after, they still hadn’t made it to Boston. Kink- shaming - thought not a term yet - was not only alive and well - it was accepted and expected! Moms weren’t walking in on their sons masturbating to bookaki or ATM videos yet. Or finding butt plugs under their daughters beds. Or under their son’s beds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_movie_theater#United_States Hardcore magazines like Hustler and Penthouse still wouldn’t casually be sold at gas stations and book stores for many years - and no one was prepared to reckon with a serious sexual sadist - a perverted killer who targeted women from young coeds to old widows. When the killings began in 1962, people in Boston, like people elsewhere in America - were still watching Bonanza, the Andy Griffith Show, the Flintstones, and the Beverly Hillbillies. Shows where “Oh my HECK!” was about the most profane thing you’d ever gosh dang hear. The most sexual activity you might see on your Boob Tube would be a light, quick peck on the lips. Most TV couples still slept in separate beds, and some top-heavy TV mom wearing a tight sweater was about the most sexual thing you’d see. Lucifina was super sad and felt super sexually stifled in 1962. She was not being Hailed. She was being put in an ill-fitting blouse and told to sit up straight and watch her language. The most provocative film released in 1962 - by far - was Stanley Kubrick’s “Lolita” - which strongly insinuated age-inappropriate sexual attraction and tension, but didn’t have any nude or sex scenes. And when it came to crime? Perry Mason was about as hardcore as TV got. Today, with all of the uncensored true crime podcasts out there, like this one, with documentaries featuring crime scene photos of murder victims, with sexuality and nudity depicted regularly in both film and television, it’s hard to imagine how shocking newspaper accounts of sexual barbarism must have felt to 1962 readers. Descriptions of anal lacerations and of random objects left inside vaginas for investigators to find - these descriptions must have blown people’s 1962 minds. Many of them had truly never read anything like it. Boston’s media outlets caused a great deal of hysteria with their sensationalized accounts of the killings. The fear the people of Boston felt about the Boston Strangler was very, very real. I actually can’t think of a modern equivalent. At least not in recent years. MAYBE the 2002 DC Sniper attacks in terms of no one feeling safe. But those attacks were far more detached and not sexually violent. The fear Bostonians felt seems to be similar to the fear New York City’s residents felt over the Son of Sam killings during the summer of 1976. Or the fear the Zodiac Killer put into the hearts of people in the Bay Area in 1969 and 1970. It was probably even more intense than those examples because there were more victims and the killings were sexualized. And the killings occurred in a much smaller span of time than the Zodiac killings. Fifteen women were originally reported to be Boston Strangler victims - and they were all murdered in an eighteenth month period that began on June 14th, 1962, and ended on January 4th, 1964. And then, almost eleven months later, Albert DeSalvo was arrested for rape and ended up confessing to the murders and Bostonians breathed a collective sigh of relief. But was he really the Boston Strangler? Maybe! Maybe not. He DEFINITELY killed at least one of the women. And a lot of people around the original investigation who are still alive seem to feel pretty confident that he was responsible for all the killings.