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. AND - the killings attributed to the Strangler definitely did not continue once he was behind bars.

Whether he killed the other victims or not, he WAS the man deemed guilty of the Boston Strangler murders in the court of public opinion, and the public did rest easier after his arrest.

And since he is, by far, the man most commonly thought to be the Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo is the man whose life we’ll be Sucking in today’s Timesuck Timeline.

And towards the end of the Timeline, for you true crime aficionados already familiar with this case, we will definitely explore the possibility that he wasn’t the strangler.

Now let’s SUCK.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

III.Timesuck Timeline

SerialKillerCalendar.com https://murderpedia.org/male.D/d/desalvo-albert.htm https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/albert-de-salvo https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/07/11/timeline-main-events-in-the-case- of-the-boston-strangler https://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/07/11/timeline-the-case-of-the-boston- strangler/ https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/boston-strangler/ timeline

1. September 3, 1931: On September 3rd, 1931, Albert DeSalvo is born in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

The city of Chelsea is located in Suffolk County, directly across the Mystic River from the city of Boston. By the way - what a bad ass name for a river! Mystic River. I remember watching the 2003 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name - GREAT MOVIE - and I just thought the term Mystic River was made up for that movie.

Nope. Real river. A short little river. Only seven miles long, flowing into Boston Harbor out of Lower Mystic Lake.

Unfortunately, the name Mystic has nothing to do with being “mystical.” It wasn’t given it’s cool sounding name because spirits were once witnessed coming out of the water, or going into the lake, or because the lake was once thought to be a portal to some other world or plane with demons or monsters or something on the other side.

It comes from the Algonquian [ al-gong-kee-uhn] word missi-tuk, which just means “large estuary.”

Damn it! Why couldn’t it mean, “Watery Monster Stream,” or, “Liquid Demon Tube,” or “Moving Lake of Mayhem.” Something, anything cooler then “large estuary.”

Oh well.

Enough about the once-very-full-of-fish-especially-herring-but- then-very-polluted-but-now-not-so-polluted river that divides Chelsea from Boston and has NOTHING to do with today’s tale!

As of the 2010 census, Chelsea had a population of 35,177 and a total area of just 2.2 square miles, making it the smallest city in Massachusetts, area-wise, the 26th most densely populated incorporated place in the country, and the second most densely populated city in the state behind Somerville. https://www.chelseama.gov/about-our-city

Back in 1919 Chelsea was even more densely populated - super crowded in fact - there were 52,662 living in that area of just over two square miles.

And about half of them were recent immigrants. Foreign-born residents comprised 46 percent of the population.

Chelsea STILL has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents of any city in Massachusetts. As recently as 2010, 38% of Chelsea residents had been born outside of the US.

All those foreign people were living there because that’s were a lot of blue collar jobs were. In the first two decades of the 20th century, Chelsea had transformed from a quiet suburb to an industrial city, with shipbuilding, lumberyards, metalworks, paint companies, and more lining Marginal Street.

Albert’s parents, Frank and Charlotte, had five other children in addition to him: Charlotte Irene DeSalvo born three years before Albert in 1928, Joseph Frank DeSalvo born two years ahead of Albert in 1929, Dorothy May DeSalvo, born three years later in 1934, Richard Edward DeSalvo born five years after Albert in 1936, and then the baby of the family, Frank DeSalvo Jr., seven years younger than Albert, born in 1938.

Albert was basically the middle child.

Albert’s mother, Charlotte Irene DeSalvo - born Charlotte Irene Roberts - was a local born to other locals. She was of Irish descent - SHOCKING! An Irish person born in or across the river from BOSTON? What are the odds!?! Super high if you know anything about Boston. Boston has the highest concentration of people of primarily Irish descent of any city in the United States at roughly 23% as of 2017. Most of the immigrants who poured into Boston in the 19th century were Irish.

And I fucking love Boston, by the way. Both Lynze and I do. Easily one of my favorite American cities. Great city, great accent. https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/the-irish-in-boston

Charlotte’s ancestors were amongst those Irish immigrants.

And then Charlotte was born in Chelsea in August of 1910. Her listed occupation on the 1940 census is “housewife.” Her listed level of education is “none.” Her family had lived in Massachusetts for several generations before her, working as shoemakers, laborers, factory workers - that sort of thing.

Albert’s father, Frank DeSalvo, was not Irish. He was 100% piece of shit. And also 100% Italian.

Born in Boston in May of 1908, Frank was the son of two Italian immigrants who’d come to Massachusetts together in 1892. His occupation on the 1940 census says “laborer.” And his listed completed level of education is 7th grade.

And Frank has been described in interviews with Albert’s younger brother Richard, Susan Kelly - an Albert DeSalvo biographer, and others, as basically being, truly - a colossal piece of shit. He’s described as being an incredibly violent, abusive man who regularly and horrifically beat his wife and children.

At one point, Frank allegedly knocked out all his wife's teeth and bent her fingers back - one by one as a psychopath does - until they broke, right in front of their children.

FATHER OF THE YEAR! FATHER OF THE YEAR!

Richard remembers another fight where he and Albert’s dad knocked their mom to the ground, and then, when Albert got in between them, his dad grabbed him by the neck and lifted him off the ground and “shook him like a rag doll.”

Money problems apparently were a real issue in the DeSalvo household adding to tensions that would be used as an excuse for physical abuse.

During the Great Depression, when Albert was born, the factory town of Chelsea was the poorest town in ALL of Massachusetts, and arguably just as rough as any of the worst neighborhoods in all of Boston, or maybe even rougher.

And Frank DeSalvo was particularly rough.

Albert’s dad wasn’t just physically abusive. He also liked to sexually humiliate his wife in front of the family.

He did things almost guaranteed to fuck his kids up for life.

Frank would allegedly bring prostitutes home, and have sex with them in FRONT of his wife and children. According to one source - that biographer Susan Kelly - Frank would force his family to watch.

DOC SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=bLk7_4yLsHc 2.STEFF COXSCURVY:

Albert’s childhood doesn’t feel real.

It feels like one of Timesuck resident dark true crime comic Steff CoxScurvy’s routines.

(Steff) “If your DADDY, MADE yew and yer brothers and yer sisters WATCH him have SEX? … with a prostitute??… in FRONT of his wife who was your MOTHER???………. you might be a killer.”

If you’re DADDY, SNAPPED your MOMMA’S fingers one by one like a couple pieces of dry kindlin’ in front of yew, when yew was just a little boy???……… yew MIGHT be a killer!”

If you’re confused right now - well, WELCOME TO TIMESUCK new listener! Get out now if you can’t take some serious WEIRD.

Some of the psychiatrists who later met with Albert after his arrest would say that Albert carried the trauma of watching his father have sex with prostitutes for the rest of his life - and that he’d express it in the sexual nature of his crimes.

Albert, not surprisingly, would grow up to have a very skewed view of what sex should be and how he should interact with women.

What a childhood home!

Raised by one barely educated parent - and one not educated at all parent - barely scraping by in the 1930s, witnessing violent domestic abuse while also being given an incredibly crude, demeaning, and dysfunctional introduction to sexuality.

Sounds like a good recipe to bake up a sexually deviant psychopath.

Not surprisingly, while specific details are not given, several sources state that young Albert, like many serial killers, seemed to enjoy torturing small animals.

He and dad probably tortured them together.

Speculating here. No source says that Albert and Frank tag- teamed on any animal cruelty. But it would not shock me in the least to learn that they had.

Frank did teach his kids how to shoplift. Seriously.

Albert would get in trouble for petty theft and burglaries numerous times throughout his life - and so would many of his siblings. Of course they did! Their dad Frank had taught them to steal.

I told you Frank Desalvo was an epic piece of shit.

So many of the killers we’ve covered - and I’m not saying this excuses anything they did - but their dads were either not around, or, they had a SUPER shitty dad.

In another incident of dark DeSalvo Family lore, Albert’s older brother Joe was thrown down the stairs by their dad when he was nine, and then young Albert, only seven, smashed his dad in the head with a glass vase, shattering it.

If you’re a fan of Shameless on Showtime - the DeSalvos were like an even more dysfunctional Gallagher family.

https://crim12-1.weebly.com/early-years-psych.html

3. 1940: In 1940, when Albert was nine, according again to that US Census, the DeSalvo family lived on Arlington Street in Chelsea, a short street a few blocks from the waterfront and near a railroad.

This year, Albert’s dad Frank abandoned the family, but don’t think that means he he was done abusing them! No, no. He was WAY TOO much of a piece of shit to let them just live in peace.

He’d show up randomly and go on drunken rampages and “tear up the house,” beat his sons, rip their clothes to shreds, hit his wife, and just do weird, hateful shit like destroy the family’s furniture by drilling holes in it. He’d also smash some glasses, break some dishes, and bash in some cupboards.

And I’m sure he only nice, respectful compliments to toss around at the family while he was doing all of this.

If you wrote this motherfucker into some Lifetime or Oxygen made-for-cable melodrama - the movie would get horrible reviews for the abusive husband character not being believable. He’s so over the top.

But also - so much fun, right? I mean - maybe not the BEST guy, but… pretty fun.

Did I mention that most people in the neighborhood knew Frank as “Fun Frank”?

Such a good time. People would be like, “Hey, have you seen Fun Frank recently?”

And they’d be like, “Yeah, he stopped by my house about two nights ago. He kicked our front door in, then knocked out two of my teeth, and then he kept squeezing my wife’s breasts while she screamed for him to get off of her and then he ripped off her dress, and then he threw one of our dining room chairs through a window and, right before stealing some money we had stuffed in a cookie jar, he took a shit on our dining room table.”

“Yep! That’s Fun Frank, alright! CLASSIC FUN FRANK! My wife’s pregnant with his kid right now. And I’m still trying to get a lot of my blood out of the carpet. SO MUCH FUN!”

Everyone knows I’m kidding about the fun Frank stuff, right? I’m kidding. Let’s move on.

Source: The Boston Strangler by Gerold Frank 4. November 1943: By the time he was twelve, in 1943, Frank’s son Albert was already a budding delinquent, having been arrested numerous times for various petty theft crimes and also more than once on assault and battery charges.

Throughout his adolescence, Albert went through periods of very good behavior and then lapses into criminality.

5. December 1943: In December of 1943, the local police had had enough of dealing with Albert’s shit, and he was sent to the Lyman School for Boys along with his older brother Joe. The police were probably sick of the entire Gallagher - I mean, DeSalvo - clan.

The Lyman School for Boys was opened on the site of the State Reform School for Boys, which had opened back in 1848, and is believed to have been the first publicly funded reform school ever opened in the US.

The Lyman school, no longer in operation as of 1971, was located just over 35 miles West of Chelsea in Westborough [west-bur-oh]

It was situated on roughly a thousand acres near Lake Chauncy.

About five hundred acres was prime farmland, maintained by the 400 students living there.

Students were subject to strict discipline and lived in so-called cottages - large brick buildings providing shelter for about 100 boys in each.

Corporal punishment was used to keep kids in line at Lyman. And some kids may have gotten more than just a beating.

Various sources referenced rumor of runaways who were never caught nor heard from again. Local folklore says that the missing runaways were not runaways at all, but children killed by abusive staff, whose bodies were buried in the swamps behind the hill.

And even if that was true - living there was probably STILL a step up for Albert and Joe then living back home and having dad always swinging by.

http://www.abominablefirebug.com/lyman.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_School_for_Boys

6.Early 1944: In early 1944, while Albert was in Lymanan his mom, Charlotte, finally filed for divorce from Fun Frank, and the divorce was finalized on July 1st.

Frank was ordered to pay child support, and according to social worker reports, he never paid what he was supposed to.

Instead, he’d send his ex-wife threatening and demeaning letters, telling her she was ugly and diseased, and a disgusting, neglectful mother. I’m sure the spelling and grammar in these letters was PERFECT.

He’d tell her if she needed more money, she should go whore herself out.

SO FUN! That’s Fun Frank for ya. ALL CLASS. Just an all around great guy.

7. October 1944: In October of 1944, at the age of thirteen, Albert was paroled from Lyman, returned home, and started working as a delivery boy in Chelsea.

Just a few months later, things in the already rough town of Chelsea got even worse.

8. 1945: In late 1945, after World War II, a long, slow and steady population decline hit Chelsea - it would lose 38 percent of its population between 1940 and 1980.

This was due, in part, to the construction of an elevated expressway, which destroyed hundreds of homes, and the resulting out-migration took with it many local businesses.

9. August 1946: In August of 1946, at the age of fourteen, Albert returned to the Lyman School for a second round of rehabilitation, this time for stealing a car.

10. 1948: He’d finish with his second term in 1948. And then he briefly enrolled in middle school at the Williams School, a weathered brick building at 180 Walnut Street in Chelsea - a junior high that’s still there.

Albert graduated from 8th grade in 1948.

In the 60’s, when author Gerold Frank wrote a book about DeSalvo, he said that Albert’s 1948 class picture still hung on the wall at Williams. Albert stood a head taller than the rest of his classmates, because he was two years older than the rest of them, having been held back twice.

After graduating from junior high, sixteen year-old Albert decided to join the army.

I usually think, when I read about guys under the age of eighteen joining the army decades ago - what a culture shock that must have been.

But in Albert’s case, it was probably such a relief to get away from his poor, dysfunctional family. Fun Frank wouldn’t be allowed on base!

And - taking orders wasn’t gonna be anything new for him - considering he’d spent roughly three years of his childhood between the ages of twelve and seventeen in a reform school where you’d get beaten by staff if you got out of line.

From 1948 until 1956, Albert served in the army as a Military Police Sergeant with the 2nd Squadron, 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Fairly ironic, considering his past and future life of crime.

For a time, Albert was stationed in Germany, and was honorably discharged after his first tour of duty. And he then quickly re- enlisted.

He took up boxing and while in Germany and actually became the European middle weight Army champion.

Fun Frank’s son knows how to use his fists?? Only good can come from this. This can only add joy to the world, right?

Too bad he couldn’t have just stayed with boxing and took all that Fun Frank rage out on punching bags and opponents in the ring. Instead, he’d later use his hands to overpower women he’d then rape and murder.

During his second tour in Germany, in 1952, Albert met his wife, nineteen year-old Irmgard Beck, an attractive woman from a local supposedly respectable German family who hasn’t had much written about her in secondary sources.

She would later change her first name to Sonya and her last name to Anderson to make it harder for people to track her down and ask her questions about being married to the Boston Strangler.

She’d move to Oklahoma where she would live until the age of 79, and then die there in 2012.

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll? viewrecord=1&r=an&db=USCemFuneral&indiv=try&h=174335804

Albert and Irmgard lived modestly in Germany off of his military money.

Albert was promoted to Specialist E-5, but later was demoted back down to private for failing to obey an order. He’d still receive an honorable discharge at the end of his second tour.

11. April 1954: In April of 1954, the young maybe happy couple moved to New Jersey after Albert was transferred to Fort Dix, in New Jersey, located about 16 miles southeast of Trenton.

12. January 3rd, 1955: And while at Fort Dix, it seems that Albert’s sexual crimes begin. It’s at least where we have the first record of an accusation that ended up involving law enforcement.

On January 3rd, 1955, a distraught New Jersey mother living near Fort Dix called the police.

That afternoon she’d been preparing a roast for dinner.

It was about two o’clock in the afternoon.

She had to hurry out briefly to shop for a few ingredients and she left behind her nine-year-old daughter Lucy and her two younger children, Billy, eight, and one-year-old Allan, who was asleep in the bedroom.

When she returned forty-five minutes later, Lucy told her they had had a visitor - a soldier “who said he was here for the rent.”

And this made ZERO sense, because this woman and her husband owned their house.

Questioning her daughter, Lucy ended up saying, “And, Mommy, I don’t like that man. He touched me here and here.”

Lucy indicated her chest and between her legs.

Lucy said that after the man touched her, her brother Billy came into the room and the guy took off running.

Her mom called the police, and Billy and Lucy told them the same story. And then they described what the man looked like.

The description reminded the officers of the description of another man a woman reported the week before.

This other woman had said she was reading in her bungalow at about nine in the evening when she heard a knock on her door. A young man stood there, dark-haired, dark-eyed, wearing a sport jacket and blue slacks. He asked, “Ma’am, did you see a prowler looking through your window?” No, she said with some alarm. “Is your husband home so he can look for him?” her visitor asked. When she shook her head no, he went on, “Well, do you mind if I look around?”

She said okay and he wandered around her yard and then returned to her front door a few minutes later. Then, when he asked when her her husband would return home, she became suspicious and said goodbye and shut and locked her door.

And she then peeked out her window and watched the man walk over to his car that was parked in front of her home and sit in it without turning it on for about ten minutes like a creep before driving away.

She wrote down his license plate numbers - nice work, anonymous lady! Fuck yeah and Hail Nimrod!

And then she called the police and reported the incident. And the plates ended up belonging to a car registered to one Albert DeSalvo.

Of course they did.

The officer speaking with Lucy and her mom had questioned Albert about the incident and the woman’s description matched the kids’ description. So, going with his guy, the officer brought Albert in, and Lucy and her brother Billy immediately identified him as the man who’d molested her.

The next day, Albert was indicted on a charge of Carnal Abuse by the Burlington County, New Jersey, Grand Jury.

But Lucy’s mother, fearful of publicity, refused to press the complaint and the charges were dropped.

Damn it!

The dirtbag got away with it.

And - I have to wonder - how many times had he done something similar? How many other houses had he weaseled his way into? Had he been pulling similar shit back in Germany? Was he molesting girls over there? Raping women?

I think there’s a decent chance he was.

While Albert was out trying to rape and molest in New Jersey, his wife is pregnant.

Just like his dad - Fun Frank’s son is ALL CLASS. Gentleman and a scholar.

In the Spring of 1955, Albert’s first child is born, Judy.

No exact date is given.

I couldn’t find the exact date in Ancestry dot com or any of the sources.

It seems like Judy’s mom really worked hard to stay out of the public spotlight and make it hard for reporters to find out any information about her or her kids after Albert’s later arrest for rape and then for murder.

Good for her!

While we don’t know Judy’s birthdate, we do know that Judy was born with some congenital genital abnormalities, though we don’t know exactly what those were.

Congenital genital abnormalities refers to a variety of structural disorders of the reproductive tract that occur while the child is growing in the womb. https://www.columbiadoctors.org/condition/congenital- abnormalities-reproductive-tract- pediatric#:~:text=This%20term%20refers%20to%20a,The%20Exter nal%20Genitals.

Apparently, Judy’s abnormalities were evident enough to draw the attention of her parents, and this would not work out well for Albert.

After Judy’s birth, Irmgard became terrified that she would have another child with a physical handicap and she allegedly did everything she could do to avoid having sex.

And this was extremely frustrating for Albert, who psychiatrists would later determine had an abnormally voracious sexual appetite - like off the charts sexual appetite, masturbating five or six times a day - and he wanted to have sex constantly.

And does it officially make me old to read five or six times a day and think, “MAN. Six times a DAY? That sounds like a LOT of work. Is the sixth time actually fun for anyone?”

If you just answered “Yes,” good for you. You’re one of Lucifina’s sexual warriors and you have the stamina of a wild, horny stallion.

But seriously. SIX TIMES A DAY? And we’re not talking a few times a year on some type of sex vacation. We’re talking every day. Every few hours, this preposterously horny son of a bitch would be fucking or beating off.

His dick must have looked like a snake someone had run over on the highway. So mangled and abused.

13. Early 1956: Early in 1956, twenty-four year-old Albert and his twenty-three year-old wife, Irmgard, move to Chelsea.

The prodigal son returns! Or something like that.

14.1956-1960: Between 1956 and 1960, back in Chelsea, Albert would be arrested several times for breaking and entering.

Wonder if he was arrested by some of the same officers who’d busted him when he was a kid? Or who’d busted his brothers or dad? “Hey Al - nice to see you back home. Just busted your brother Joe last week. How’s your dad, Fun Frank?”

Each time he was arrested during these years, he’d only receive a suspended sentence.

And I have to think, each time, he wasn’t just looking to steal stuff - he was looking to also molest or rape.

I also wonder - did his dad ever stop by after he returned home? Maybe show up and try and rough up Albert or Irmgard or throw little Judy around? Maybe break some of their shit?

(Irmgard - German) “Albert. Your fah-zer showed up today and punched our baby girl in the nose and call me a slut and took a piss on ze couch!”

(Albert) “Yep! That’s my pops alright. Fun Frank! Spreading some mirth and merriment.”

No word on whether or not Frank did stop by or not.

15. 1960: In 1960, Albert’s second child with Irmgard, a son named Michael is born. He doesn’t have any physical handicaps, much to his parents’ relief.

Clearly, Albert and Irmgaard were still having sex after Judy’s birth.

And it sounds like, based on what we’ll learn much later, the sex frequency kicked up after the birth of Michael. Poor Irmgaard.

Albert was chasing her around six times a day. It’s like that dude was half-rabbit.

Despite semi-frequent brushes with the law, Albert remained employed in the late 50’s and early 60’s.

He worked as a press operator at American Biltrite Rubber, and then he got a job in a shipyard and then was employed as a construction maintenance worker after that.

And, based on several interviews, it seems that most of his coworkers seemed to like him.

One of his bosses characterized him as a good, decent, family man and a good worker. Others thought of as a very devoted family man and someone who treated his wife with love and tenderness.

Others saw him as being totally full of shit. And those people were correct. Dude was 100% a dirtbag.

He apparently was quite the storyteller. He’s described as being the classic one-upper - he liked to have the best story, be seen as the coolest dude in the room. Loved attention. Loved to be thought as the cool guy.

Former Boston Police Commissioner Edmund McNamara would say: "DeSalvo's a blowhard."

By 1960, although no one at the time knew it was him, Albert was gaining his first pervy criminal nickname - “The Measuring Man.”

He was definitely not a cool dude.

a) MEASURING MAN:

A couple of years before the strangling murders began, kicking off somewhere around 1960, a series of strange sexual offenses were being committed in the Cambridge area.

Cambridge is less than two miles from Chelsea. You cross the Tobin Bridge, formerly known as the Mystic River Bridge, to get from Chelsea to Boston, and then you keep driving about two miles and you’re in Cambridge.

An in Cambridge in 1960, women started reporting a dude in his late twenties knocking on the doors of their apartments and, when these young woman answered, he’d introduce himself, saing: "My name is Johnson and I work for a modeling agency. Your name was given to us by someone who thought you would make a good model."

And this dude was, of course, Albert DeSalvo.

Albert would then go out of his way to assure these women that the modeling would not be in the nude, just evening gowns and swimsuits. And he’d tell them the pay was $40 an hour.

He’d then let them know he’d been sent to get their measurements and other information if she was interested.

If you don’t already know, modeling agents - legit ones - don’t just come knocking on your door asking for your measurements.

Tell that guy you need to talk things over with your husband first - whether or married or not - whether you’re into dudes or not - and then calmly shut the door, lock it, and call the fucking police immediately.

And if you have a giant, scary looking dude for a neighbor, preferably a dude with gun handy, maybe call him to come over and let this motherfucker know he needs to leave the property immediately if he’d prefer not to add some additional holes to his head.

A number of women told Albert they were interested and invited him in.

He seemed like a nice enough person with his charming, boyish smile.

When he was finished taking their measurements, he told them that Mrs. Lewis from the agency would be contacting them if the measurements were suitable.

Albert would also later claim some of these women invited him into their beds. And maybe they did. Or maybe he’s full of shit.

He was definitely full of shit about the modeling.

There was never any call from Mrs. Lewis because neither she nor the modeling agency existed.

Eventually, some of the women, when they’d realized they’d been scammed, they contacted the police.

16.March 17, 1961: Roughly a year after these reports started to come in, on March 17th, 1961, Cambridge police caught a man trying to break into a woman’s house.

Once they had him, not only did he confess to breaking and entering, but he also confessed to being the “measuring man.”

This man was, of course, Albert DeSalvo.

When asked why he perpetrated his modeling agency charade, he responded: "I'm not good-looking, I'm not educated, but I was able to put something over on high-class people. They were all college kids and I never had anything in my life and I outsmarted them."

Interesting rationalization.

He saw himself as the good guy - the SMART guy - in this situation for lying to women and tricking them into letting him grope them under the guise of getting modeling measurements.

Also - he didn’t need to confess to being the Measuring Man. He wasn’t a prime suspect in that crime, and had he not confessed, it doesn’t seem as if he would’ve been caught for those crimes.

But he wanted to let the police know what he’d gotten away with. He loved to brag. Loved to let them know what he’d been able to pull off.

Important to note that he wanted people to know he was a smart guy capable of tricking people. But a guy dumb enough to confess.

Some think his desire to be seen as a clever criminal would later lead him to confess the Boston Strangler murders he may not have committed.

The judge, ultimately sympathetic to DeSalvo's role as the father of two and the only bread-earner in his home, have him a light sentence for these crimes - 18 months in prison.

17. April 1962: In April of 1962, DeSalvo was released after serving only 11 months for having good behavior.

If authorities only could’ve known what was going to happen in the following months, they’d have tried to keep him locked up forever.

Also - what kind of crazy arguments did he and Irmgard have after he came back home.

(Irmgaard) “Albert can you watch the kids, tonight?”

(Albert) “Aw, come on. You know I can’t. I’m going out with the boys.”

(Irmgard) “Are you, Albert? Or are you going out to measure some ladies!!”

(Albert) “I did my time for that! Stop throwing stones, Irmgard! You’re not perfect! Yeah, so I talked a lot of ladies into letting me measure their breasts and hips and stuff, but you, you….. sometimes you burn the casserole!”

Ugh.

18. June 14, 1962: Just two months after he was released, the killings attributed to the Boston Strangler began.

Suspicious timing.

June 14th, 1962 started out for most Bostonians like any other Thursday.

NBC was preparing for Johnny Carson’s late-night television debut. At Fenway, a box seat was only $3. The Red Sox were in ninth place.

And Anna E. Slesers, fifty-five, was doing what she normally did: working for her church, enjoying some classical music, and keeping to herself.

Anna was a petite divorcee who “looked years younger than her age.”

More than a decade earlier, she had fled Latvia with her son and daughter after the Soviet Union occupied it in 1944, and she’d settled in her small apartment in a quiet old-fashioned neighborhood in the Back Bay area of Boston.

Her address was 77 Gainsborough Street, one of many brick town houses that had been subdivided into small apartments to meet the needs of people with limited incomes, both students and retired people.

Anna, a seamstress making $60 a week, lived on the third floor.

That evening, she’d just finished dinner and was taking a quick bath before her son Juris arrived to pick her up for a Latvian memorial service at her church that evening. In her robe, Anna went into the bathroom and turned on the water, listening to the inspiring strains of an opera record.

Just before seven o'clock, Juris knocks at his mother's door. No answer. He tries the door - it’s locked. He’s annoyed.

He hadn’t wanted to take his mother to the service in the first place, and now she’s not even coming to the door.

Now he pounds on the door. Still no answer.

Juris begins to worry. Was his mom sick? Was she lying helpless on the floor inside?

He throws his weight into the door and smashes it open on the second try.

And he storms in and sees something far worse than anything he could’ve expected.

He sees his mother Anna laying in the bathroom with the cord from her robe wrapped tightly around her neck.

Juris calls the police and then, he also calls his sister in Maryland, telling her about their mother’s tragic “suicide.”

The police would quickly figure out that this suicide was in fact a homicide.

Gerold Frank in his book The Boston Strangler describes how Homicide Detectives James Mellon and John Driscoll found her:

“She lay outstretched, a fragile-appearing woman with brown bobbed hair and thin mouth, lying on her back on a gray runner.

She wore a blue taffeta housecoat with a red lining, but it had been spread completely apart in front, so that from shoulders down she was nude.

She lay grotesquely, her head a few feet from the open bathroom door, her left leg stretched straight toward him, the other flung wide, almost at right angles, and bent at the knee so that she was grossly exposed. The blue cloth cord of her housecoat had been knotted tightly about her neck, its ends turned up so that it might have been a bow, tied little-girl fashion under her chin.”

The apartment had been ransacked - or rather, made to look that way as if it was a burglary.

Anna's purse was lying open with its contents partially strewn on the floor. A wastebasket in the kitchen had been rummaged through and trash was scattered across the floor. Drawers had been rifled through, drawers had been left open in the bedroom dresser, and a case of color slides had been carefully placed— not dropped— on the bedroom floor.

https://murderpedia.org/male.D/d/desalvo-albert.htm

BUT - a gold watch and other pieces of jewelry were easily visible and left untouched.

AND - Anna hadn’t hanged herself - she’d been strangled with the cord of her robe. Something she could not have done herself.

No semen was found inside of her, but her vagina showed evidence of sexual assault with an unknown object, perhaps a soda bottle.

Police assumed that the crime had, or may have had - started out as a burglary. They theorized that the burglar then saw Anna in her robe and was overcome by the urge to sexually assault her. And that he then killed her afterwards to avoid being recognized and caught.

That theory still didn’t answer why the jewelry remained. Maybe after raping and killing her, the burglar panicked and fled.

19. June 28, 1962: Only two weeks later - there would be another murder.

June 28th, 1962 was a Thursday.

On Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay, an elderly woman, Mary Mullen, 85, is found dead on the sofa in her apartment. And her apartment had been broken into.

Years later, DeSalvo would tell investigators that he was in her apartment, that he did not strangle her, and that she simply died in his arms.

The death certificate confirms the cause of death was a heart attack. Police speculated that Albert had broken in to assault Mary and Mary had died of fright.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/07/11/victims-boston- strangler/CwbsZlSNcfwmhSetpqNlhL/story.html

Her story wouldn’t be linked to the Boston Strangler until much later.

The next two murders would occur on the same day and, due to the way the women were killed, they would soon be linked to the murder of Anna Slesers, but not immediately.

20. June 30, 1962: June 30th, 1962, was a Saturday.

Nina Nichols, sixty-eight, is found murdered in her apartment at 1940 Commonwealth Avenue in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston.

Nina Nichols is found with her legs spread, her housecoat and slip pulled up to her waist. Tied tightly around her neck were two of her own nylon stockings with the ends tied, again - in a bow. She had also been sexually assaulted, she’d been bitten, and the time of death was estimated to be around 5PM.

While no semen was found in her vagina - its thought a wine bottle had been used to penetrate her, and some light traces of what they thought might have been semen was found on her thigh.

Book Source: The Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence by Colin Wilson, Donald Seaman.

Her apartment looked like it had been burglarized: every drawer had been pulled open, possessions lay scattered around wildly on the floor.

And, oddly enough, one open drawer revealed a set of sterling silver that had been untouched, as were the few dollars in her purse, her expensive camera and the watch on her wrist.

Another shitty fake-burglary.

Police determined that nothing had actually been taken, though the killer had gone through her address book and mail.

Like Anna Slesers, Nina Nichols had led a quiet life. A retired physiotherapist, she had been widowed for two decades and had no male friends except for her brother-in-law.

And she wasn’t the only woman in the Boston area to be strangled that day.

Earlier on the 30th, some fifteen miles north of Boston in the suburb of Lynn, Helen Blake was strangled with her own nylon stockings sometime between 8 and 10 A.M.

The sixty-five-year-old divorcee’s brassiere had been looped around her neck over the stockings and yet again - tied in a bow.

Like Nina, she’d been bitten. Both her vagina and anus had been lacerated. She was found lying face down nude on her bed with her legs spread apart. And again - traces of what appeared to be semen was found on her thigh, and none inside of her.

Her apartment been thoroughly ransacked. And this time, some items had actually been stolen.

The two diamond rings that Helen wore had been pulled from her fingers and taken. The killer had tried unsuccessfully to open a metal strongbox and a footlocker.

Police are alarmed, and Boston Police Commissioner Edmund McNamara orders that a warning be sent out to women in the Boston area to lock their doors and be wary of strangers.

McNamara cancels all police vacations and transfers all detectives to the homicide department.

Despite the similarity in these crimes - all the women were also sexually violated AFTER they’d been murdered - the police still didn’t think the murders were the work of a single person.

A thorough investigation of all known sex offenders and violent former mental patients begins. Police theorize that the killer attacked older women out of hatred for his own mother. McNamara, who had formerly worked for the FBI, called Bureau to ask them to hold a seminar for his fifty best detectives on sex crimes.

The press is now alerted. People all around Boston are told to lock their doors - the three strangulation murders hadn’t shown any signs of forced entry.

Even with the warning out, the murders continued.

21. August 21st 1962: Less than two months later, Police find the body of Ida Irga, a seventy-five year old widow, in her apartment at 7 Grove Avenue in Boston West End on August 21st.

She’d died from manual strangulation two days before, on August 19th.

Police Sergeant James McDonald described how he found her:

“Upon entering the apartment the officers observed the body of Ida Irga lying on her back on the living room floor wearing a light brown nightdress which was torn, completely exposing her body. There was a white pillowcase knotted tightly around her neck. Her legs were spread approximately four to five feet from heel to heel and her feet were propped up on individual chairs and a standard bed pillow, less the cover, was placed under her buttocks."

It was an alarming parody of an obstetrical [uhb-ste-tri-kuhl ] position. Ida’s body faced the front door of the apartment and was the first thing anyone saw when coming through the entrance.

These last few details were withheld from the press.

Dried blood covered her head, mouth and ears. She, too, had been sexually assaulted after death, and just like with the first strangulation murder, there was no sperm present. Or, at least none was found.

Later, DeSalvo would describe to investigators how his attack on Ida had gone down.

He said knocked on her door and told her that he was there to do some work on her apartment.

She told him straight up that she didn’t trust him and that didn’t want anyone she didn’t know in her apartment. Rather than just pushing his way in, DeSalvo told her not to worry - that he’d come back tomorrow.

As he walked down the stairs, she changed her mind. Decided that he must not be too bad after all if he was willing to walk away, and she said, “Well, come on in.”

If only she would’ve trusted her first, gut instinct.

She walked Albert to her bedroom, where he was supposed to look at a leak, and when she turned her back to him, he put his arms around her back and began to strangle her.

Later, an investigator would ask him why he’d chosen such an old woman to attack.

DeSalvo told him that "attractiveness had nothing to do with it. She was a woman. That was enough.”

What an odd, chilling statement to make. My god.

NOW - the police thought they had a sexually motivated serial killer on the loose in Boston. And a lot of people in the Boston area were now starting to get freaked out.

In just over two months time, four Boston area women have been strangled and sexually assaulted. And the police have no suspects.

The local newspapers published advice to women living by themselves, including tips from Commissioner McNamara himself:

(1) Make sure all doors are locked and if possible have a safety lock put on doors. Check all windows to ascertain they are safely locked.

(2) Have a superintendent or janitor in building make sure entrance door is securely locked.

(3) Let no one into an apartment until positive identification is established.

(4) Keep a handgun loaded if you have one. Buy and load one if you don’t. If any solicitors or supposed servicemen show up for any unscheduled appointments, shoot on sight, and shoot to kill.

(5) Notify Police Department immediately if you see anyone in the neighborhood acting suspiciously.

(6) Remember the Police Department wants all information which may have a connection to any of those crimes.

Thousands of women in Boston adopted these policies immediately.

But sadly, thousands of others did not.

https://murderpedia.org/male.D/d/desalvo-albert.htm

Within just twenty-four hours of Ida Irga's murder, the Strangler struck again.

Oh, and before we move forward - I made up number four.

Newspapers can’t publish shoot to kill orders put out on shady-seeming repairmen. They’d probably get in a little bit of trouble if anyone took them up on that.

22. August 20, 1962: The day before Ida’s body was found, on August 20th, a Monday, Boston newspapers that morning referred to the Strangler as "the deranged killer who has brought chilling terror to the home of every Boston woman who lives alone.”

Jane Sullivan, a sixty-seven year old nurse, is killed in her apartment that day at 435 Columbia Road in Dorchester, across town from where Ida lived.

But the police won’t find her body until August 30th.

Police found her on her knees in her bathtub with her feet up over the back of the tub and head underneath the faucet.

She, too, had been strangled by her own nylons, probably in the kitchen, bedroom or hall, where blood was found on the floors.

She may have been sexually assaulted, but the corpse was so badly decomposed that it could not be properly determined.

However, there were bloodstains on the handle of a broom.

There was no sign of forcible entry, nor was the apartment ransacked, even though Jane's purse was found open.

Panic now truly grips Boston, but then - after Sullivan’s murder, there are no attacks for three months, and the fear lessens a bit.

During those three months, police look at hundreds of possible suspects, but nothing comes of their investigation except for a long list of people with solid alibis.

Albert DeSalvo, the “Measuring Man,” isn’t even remotely on their radar.

23. MIDROLL BREAK

(PAUSE)

Before the murder spree continues, it feels like now is as good a time as any to take a sponsor break!

(PAUSE)

Thank you for continuing to listen! I hope one or all of those deals appealed to you. Back to 1962.

(PAUSE)

24. December 5, 1962: December 5th, 1962, is a Wednesday, and this day, fear of the Boston Strangler would be rekindled and greatly increased.

The dead body of Sophie Clark, just twenty years old, is found by her two roommates.

Police determine she was murdered at approximately 2:30 PM.

The apartment Sophie the three women shared was located at 315 Huntington Avenue in the Back Bay area, just a couple of blocks away from Anna Slesers's apartment.

Later, DeSalvo would also describe how the attack went down.

He said he knocked on the yellow door of her apartment, and that when Sophie answered the door, she didn’t want to let him in at first.

She said her roommates weren’t in at the time.

Then DeSalvo promised to set up modeling and photography work for her - nothing nude - and he told her he’d pay her anywhere from twenty dollars to thirty-five dollars an hour.

Apparently, she let him in, and then he seduced her.

Sure he did. That was his story and I don’t buy all of it.

He said when he tried to have sex with her, he noticed she was menstruating, and that he then removed her “sanitary napkin” and looked through her bureau to find a something to strangle her with.

Or she had no interest in him and he overpowered her for the beginning. Or that.

When investigators found her, Sophie lay nude with her legs spread wide apart in the living room, strangled by three of her own nylon stockings which had been knotted and tied very tightly around her neck. Her half-slip had also been tied around her neck. There was evidence of sexual assault and this time, some semen was found on the rug near her body.

Like with the other murders, the killer had sex with her after she was dead. And - he left no semen inside her.

Also - once again - just like all the other strangulation murders thus far, there was no sign of forced entry.

Her roommates were shocked by this because they knew Sophie to be cautious. She’d actually previously insisted on having a second lock on the apartment door.

She was so cautious that she’d even questioned friends that came to the door before she let them in, yet her killer had somehow convinced her to allow him entry.

Maybe this dude really was a world class smooth talker and bullshit.

The new murder baffled investigators.

There had been a gap of three months between this Boston Strangler attack and the last, and there were some interesting differences.

While all the other victims had been white, Sophie was Black. Also - and I find this far more interesting - all the previous victims had been significantly older - while the youngest previous victim was fifty-five, Sophie was, again, only twenty. Thirty-five years younger. She was fifty-five years younger than Ida Irga.

She also didn’t live alone, as the previous victims had.

Was this the work of the same killer?

Very odd for a sexually motivated killer, but not unprecedented, to have such a wide range of victims.

Maybe Albert wasn’t lying when he later told investigators, "attractiveness had nothing to do with it. She was a woman. That was enough.”

When police questioned the neighbors, Mrs. Marcella Lulka, roughly thirty years old, mentioned that around 2:30 that afternoon a man had knocked on her door and said that the super had sent him to see her about painting her apartment. He then told her that he'd have to fix her bathroom ceiling and complimented her on her figure.

"Have you ever thought of modeling?" he asked her. Lulka put her finger to her lips and told him, “My husband is sleeping in the next room.” The man then became angry, said he had the wrong apartment, and left in a hurry.

Lulka described him as between 25 and 30 years old, of average height and with honey-colored hair, wearing a dark jacket and dark green trousers.

Albert had just turned 31 a few months before, looked young for his age, was described as being of average height and weight.

BUT - his hair looks a lot darker than honey colored to me.

Just three weeks later, the Strangler would strike again.

25. December 31, 1962: December 31st, 1962. New Years Eve. That year, it fell on a Monday, and it was the coldest New Years Eve in over forty years, at just four degrees below zero.

Twenty-three-year-old Patricia Bissette’s body is discovered.

She was a secretary for a Boston engineering firm and her boss, who hadn’t seen her for a few days, was getting really worried about her.

He drover her apartment to check on her and drive her work that morning, and she doesn’t answer the door.

She doesn’t show up at work that day, so her boss returns to her apartment at 515 Park Drive in the Back Bay area, a few blocks from where Anna Slesers and Sophie Clark had been killed.

Her apartment is locked, but with the help of the custodian, her boss manages to climb through a window and into the apartment.

And he finds Patricia laying face up in bed with the covers drawn up to her chin, looking like she’s taking a nap. Underneath the covers, however, Patricia lay with several stockings knotted and interwoven with a blouse tied tightly around her neck.

She was naked from the breasts down and, while no semen was found, there was evidence of recent sexual intercourse and later, investigators find that Patricia was also in the early stages of pregnancy.

Her rectum was also damaged.

The medical examiner, Dr. Michael Luongo, thought it was odd that Patricia was not only covered, bu her arms had also been placed neatly along her sides, and her legs placed together, almost as if her killer had tenderly arranged her body and as tenderly drawn up the covers to hide her nakedness.

Dr. Luongo, who at forty-six had conducted several thousand autopsies, had seen this type of “compassionate” murder setting before.

He usually came upon it when a man had killed his wife or mistress and, already remorseful a moment after this act, he painstakingly rearranges her clothes, and cleans up the room before turning himself in to the police.

The police wondered if she was killed by a lover too.

Patricia, they learned, had been having an affair. This might explain the signs of recent intercourse and the fact that she was one month pregnant.

Could her lover have killed her?

But - she WAS also strangled.

The police wondered, could the Strangler have been hiding in the closet while Patricia and her lover were together, waiting for the lover to leave before carrying out his insane compulsion?

It seemed like a stretch.

Whatever the exact details - they basics facts were that a twenty- three-year-old woman had been strangled and sexually assaulted, decorated in the Strangler’s fashion, her body found in her locked apartment - no signs of a break in - and it had happened in the Strangler’s area, at the Strangler’s time.

And - just like with the other murders, the killer had searched her apartment.

It sure seemed like the work of the Strangler. Even if it wasn’t - if it was the work of the copy cat - would that make it any less scary? Absolutely not. Women are still being raped and strangled in Boston. And the police still have no idea who’s doing it.

Boston is beyond freaked out at this point.

And then again, the attacks stop for over two months.

Just like before, the police use this murder sabbatical to backtrack and look for any clues they might’ve missed, anyone all the victims would have known, any place they might have all visited or shopped at.

Various creeps, nuts and perverts are all checked again, but with no significant results. https://murderpedia.org/male.D/d/desalvo-albert.htm

And that’s exactly how it’s written in one of the sources,

“Creeps, nuts, and perverts were checked again.”

I like to picture these people as three distinct groups. Brought in one after another for witness lineups. Have that neighbor who talked to the dude pretending to work for a modeling agency, Mrs. Lulka, brought in to look at them.

(Lieutenant - JFK accent) “Alright, boys! Bring in those CREEPS!

Mrs. Lulka - take a good look at these creeps. Do you recognize number one - the guy with the really greasy skin, wispy, peach- fuzz mustache and a combover? The guy wearing the loose, dirty sweat pants. The guy with his hand clearly pushed through a hole in the bottom of his pocket, obviously masturbating. Is it him?

No?

Okay. What about the guy with his hair pulled back into a pony tail it looks like his hair’s about rip his scalp off. The guy whose yellow teeth aren’t just wearing sweaters, they’re wearing winter parkas. The guy wearing a trench coat sticking his tongue through two of his fingers in some type of cunnilingus imitation. Is it that creep?

No?

Any of the others? Alright.

Okay, boys, release the creeps! Bring in those NUTS now!

Is it the guy spinning around on roller skates while barking like a dog wearing a hat made out of tinfoil while waving an American flag?

No?

What about the guy wearing about ten different pairs of SOCKS!?! Cotton socks, nylon socks, wool socks, suede socks, velvet socks, velvet Elvis socks - SO MANY SOCKS!

No?

Get those nuts out of here!

Bring in the perverts.

Is it the older Russian guy in the track suit aggressively waving his limp penis around?

(CHIKATILO) “What is big deal? So I have limp, shame cock! So I show up in police lineup in wrong country sixteen year before I start kill spree! I DO IT! I Boston Strangle GUY! That is why no semen find inside. I jerk in corner. I bother no one.”

‘Bout time Chikatilo made a cameo. Been too long since that creep stopped by.

Okay, I know that was a long deviation.

We’d left off after the December 31st, 1962, following the discovery of twenty-three-year-old Patricia Bissette’s murdered body.

And then there was a period of over two months when no one was strangled in Boston.

26. March 9, 1963: Then, on March 9th, 1963, another murder victim is found.

Twenty-five miles north of Boston in Lawrence, sixty-eight-year-old Mary Brown is found on the floor of her apartment. She had been raped, strangled, beaten about the head, and her breasts had been stabbed with a kitchen fork that was left in her chest.

And, of course, she’d been strangled.

When he later confessed, DeSalvo, to persuade authorities of his guilt, would provide details about her kitchen faucet, which was brass, and her kitchen radio.

He also got some key details wrong, though.

When an investigator said: "That sheet you covered her with must have been bloody.”

DeSalvo replied, "Oh, was it, my God!"

But - there was no bloody sheet. No sheet of any kind had anything to do with the crime scene.

Did he just forget? Did he just cave to some social pressure and agree without really think about what he was agreeing to? Or did someone else kill Mary?

For the next murder, the Boston Strangler moved back to Boston.

27. May 6, 1963: A little under two months later, on May 6th, 1963, Beverly Samans, a pretty twenty-three-year-old graduate student, misses choir practice at the Second Unitarian Church in Back Bay.

A friend, worried, goes to her apartment to check on her, opening it with the key she’d given him.

When he opened the door, he saw her immediately.

She was lying directly in front of him on a sofa bed, her legs spread apart.

Her hands had been tied behind her with one of her scarves. A nylon stocking and two handkerchiefs tied together were knotted around her neck. There was a cloth over the bottom half of her face, and under it, a second cloth had been stuffed IN to her mouth.

It appeared, obviously, that Beverly had been strangled to death.

But when the medical examiner inspected her body, it was discovered that that was not the case.

She had, in fact, been killed by four stab wounds to her throat.

She’d actually been stabbed twenty-two times.

Eighteen of those stab wounds formed a bull's eye design on her left breast.

The ligature around her neck was deemed “decorative" - and it hadn’t been tied tightly enough to strangle her. The bloody knife was found in her kitchen sink.

Also - she hadn’t been raped.

It was estimated that she had been dead for approximately 48-72 hours and had probably been killed between late Sunday evening or Monday morning.

Beverly was studying to be an opera singer and had planned to try out for the Met in New York that year.

Police speculated that because of her singing she had developed very strong throat muscles that may have made strangulation more difficult and resulted in her stabbing.

Interesting that her murder would be blamed on DeSalvo, when the crime feels so different.

If he did it, why was she stabbed so many times when other victims weren’t? Why wasn’t she sexually violated like other victims? Why try and make it look like a strangulation when it wasn’t?

It feels like someone trying to pin a murder on the strangler from the perspective of this armchair investigator who’s never ever worked in law enforcement in any capacity, let alone been a homicide detective.

a) HELP FROM A PSYCHIC:

The police were now growing desperate to catch a killer.

Public pressure to solve the crimes was immense.

And, since desperate times call for desperate measures, they took a chance on a psychic.

Someone had put them in touch with an ad copywriter named Paul Gordon who supposedly had special ESP powers. He claimed that he knew who the Strangler was and what he looked like.

Paul began his description of the man who killed Anna Slesers. This background feels so fitting to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sAKjX9lnZ8 (PLAY FROM BEGINNING)

“I picture him as fairly tall, bony hands, pale white skin, red, bony knuckles, his eyes hollow-set. I was particularly struck by his eyes. His hair disturbed me a little because he has a habit of pushing back a little curl of hair that falls on his forehead. He's got a tooth missing in the upper right front of his mouth. He's in a hospital...or some kind of home. He's not confined, I know that, because I see him walking across a wide expanse of lawn. He can walk about, and he does a lot of sitting on a bench on the grounds.

He has many problems. He used to beat up his mother cruelly - she was an idiotic, domineering woman-and his two sisters live unhappy lives. The family comes from Maine or Vermont. He's terribly lonely - when he's in the city I see him sleeping in cellars, but he likes to wander about the street watching women, wanting to get as close as possible to them. You see, the poor fellow is in a continual search for his mother, but he can't find her because she's dead.”

STOP MUSIC

What the FUCK was he talking about?

The Strangler lived in a hospital… or SOME kind of home?? Not helpful. That described just about everyone in Boston. Bony hands and pale white skin? In a city full of poor, Irish people? Again - doesn’t narrow it down much.

Sleeping in random cellars? Like some kind of cartoonish ghoul? Get out of here.

Continually searching for his dead mom?

He’s a total maniac sleeping in cellars and looking for his dead mom but the police can’t catch him? They had to have been so pissed they took a chance on this clown.

If this guy really was a psychic - if he really did have important information regarding Anna Slesers, why didn’t HE contact the police? Why did he wait for them to contact him?

Actually, if he REALLY had ESP powers, how would he not already be working full time for law enforcement as their highest-paid employee - BY FAR - continually solving difficult and important cases with his superhuman abilities?

Finally - if he REALLY was a psychic, why the fuck was he working as an ad copywriter?

(Maria) “Hello. Is this Paul Gordon?”

(Paul) “Speaking.”

“Paul! My name is Maria Anderson and you have to help me! My daughter - she’s gone missing! Oh God! You have to tell the police where she is before it’s too late!”

(Paul) “I’m on it, Maria. Call me back a few minutes after 5PM and I’ll figure it all out. Right now, I have to finish a new radio jingle for Crane’s Potato Chips.

Actually, if you don’t mind - what do you think of what I have so far?

(Jingle) “Your stomach is ACHING! Your hands they are SHAKING! You feel like a drip, you’ve really taken a dip - sounds like you need the world’s tastiest CHIP!

Cranes for your cravings!

Cranes for your savings!

Just a nickel a bag, eat your way out of a drag!

Cranes Chips!

Cranes Chips! Everyone flips, for Cranes - the tastiest CHIPS!”

Maria? Maria it sounds like your crying. Are you crying because of your missing kid? Or because you hate the new jingle?

Look - the sooner I nail this, the sooner my boss lets me save your daughter.”

One of the detectives brought Paul a number of photos of men who had been caught mugging or breaking and entering into buildings in the Back Bay area. Gordon identified one of them, an Arnold Wallace, as the Strangler, a man who kind of matched the description that Gordon had given earlier.

Wallace was a 26-year-old mental patient at Boston State Hospital with an IQ somewhere around 60. A few days earlier he had wandered away - AND - he was sleeping in the basement of apartment houses.

The police determined that Gordon had been to the hospital where Arnold Wallace lived before he had talked to the police. Weird that he would perfectly describe a dude he’d just seen.

It’s almost like the whole thing was a hoax.

Wallace didn’t do it. He was never charged.

Gordon then switched to the murder of Sophie Clark, and apparently he correctly described her apartment with impressive detail.

The killer, Gordon said, was a large, husky black man who Sophie knew. Lewis Barnett, who fit Gordon's description, was a suspect in Sophie's murder. He had dated her once and it was possible that she would have let him in her apartment.

But he was never charged.

Gordon said that the Strangler would identify himself soon and confess.

That was kind of true.

Gordon would ultimately prove, of course, to not help investigators AT ALL when it came to catching the Strangler.

And they’d move on.

28. September 8, 1963:

The summer of 1963 passed quietly and another wouldn’t be found for four months.

On September 8th, 1963, in Salem, fifteen miles up the coast from Boston - Evelyn Corbin, a pretty fifty-eight-year-old divorcee, who often passed herself off as more than a decade younger, is found murdered.

Like ten other before her, she’d been strangled with two of her nylon stockings.

She lay across the bed face up and nude.

Her underpants had been stuffed into her mouth as a gag. Around the bed were lipstick-marked tissues that had traces of semen on them.

Sperm was found this time in her mouth, but not in her vagina.

Her locked apartment had been searched, but apparently - like with almost the victims - nothing was stolen. A tray of jewelry had been put on the floor and her purse had been emptied onto the sofa.

There was something at the apartment that police hadn’t seen before at the other crime scenes.

Outside her window on the fire escape was a fresh doughnut, which was not deposited or thrown there by anyone in the building.

Did the killer leave it?

Sadly, once again, no leads would come from another murder, and the rest of September, all of October, and most of November would pass without any new killings.

29. November 23, 1963:

Then, on November 23rd, 1963, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, while so many American were glued to their television sets, especially in the Boston area where Kennedy was from - Joann Graff was being raped and murdered in her ransacked Lawrence apartment, thirty miles northwest of the city.

The conservative and religious twenty-three-year-old industrial designer would be found by police two days later, on November 25th.

Neighbors say she was a quiet girl. She was a Sunday school teacher and an artist who lived alone and kept to herself.

She was found with two nylon stockings and a leotard tied in an elaborate bow around her neck. Her blouse was pushed up to her armpits and there were teeth marks on her left breast. The outside of her vagina was bloody and lacerated.

Once again - no sign of forced entry into her apartment.

Reports came in from neighbors about strange occurrences in the apartment building. The morning before Joann's death, in the apartment down the hall, a woman heard someone outside her door. Then she watched as a piece of paper slipped under her door, wiggling back and forth. Then, suddenly, the paper vanished and she heard footsteps.

Not creepy at all.

Also - what was the point of that paper? Did the Strangler write a note?

“Please let me in. For sure not the Strangler. Just a nice guy hoping to make new friends.”

At 3:25 P.M. on November 23rd, the day of Joann Graff’s murder, a Northeastern University engineering student that lived above her heard footsteps in the hall.

The student’s wife had been concerned that someone had been sneaking around in the hallways, so he went to the door and listened. When he heard a knock on the door of the apartment opposite his, the student opened his door to find a man of about twenty-seven with pomaded hair, dressed in dark green slacks and a dark shirt and jacket.

"Does Joan Graff live here?" the man asked, mispronouncing Joann's name.

The student told him that Joann lived on the floor below. Moments later, he heard the door open and shut on the floor beneath him and assumed that Joann had let the man in her apartment.

Poor bastard.

Wonder if he felt bad about that later? Not his fault that something happened to her, but still - I’d probably feel terrible if I told a dude who turned out to be a murderer where one of my neighbors he lived who he then proceeded to kill.

Ten minutes later, a friend telephoned Joann, but there was no answer.

A little over a month later came the thirteenth victim that DeSalvo would later “confess” to murdering.

30. January 4, 1964: On January 24th, 2964, a Saturday, two young women come home after work to their apartment on Charles Street in the Beacon Hill section of Boston. They are stunned to find their new roommate, nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan, murdered.

She had also been strangled to death: first with a dark stocking, then, over the stocking, a pink silk scarf tied with a huge bow under her chin; and over that, another pink and white flowered scarf.

Curiously - a bright ‘Happy New Year’ card had been placed against her feet.

She was found in a sitting position on the bed, with her back against the headboard. Thick liquid that looked like semen was dripping from her mouth onto her exposed breasts.

And a broomstick handle had been rammed three and a half inches into her vagina.

After news broke of Mary Sullivan’s murder, panic over the strangler in Boston was at an all time high. The police still had no suspects.

It was clear that women were continuing to let the killer- or killers - into their apartments. Forced entry wasn’t part of the killer’s M.O.

The police and media outlets urged women to not let anyone they didn’t know into their homes. To keep their doors locked at all times.

31. January 17, 1964: A couple of weeks after the murder of Mary Sullivan, Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke took the investigation over.

Brooke was no ordinary law enforcement type nor was he an ordinary politician. He was a handsome, intelligent and polished professional who was also the only African-American attorney general in the country at the time.

He was also a Republican in a solidly Democratic state.

And he was taking a big political risk by jumping into the Strangler investigation- if the Strangler OR Stranglers continued to kill and not be captured, he’d now take the blame… but Brooke had a plan.

The case spanned five police jurisdictions, making it difficult for police to coordinate their investigations. The group Brooke put together fixed that. Permanent staff members were assigned to the Strangler case and no information between the area's police departments was withheld because of petty jealousies or local feuds.

Furthermore, Brooke's task force aimed to shut the newspapers up, which had only scared people and made them lose faith in the police in the months since the first attacks.

Two reporters, Jean Cole and Loretta McLaughlin, wrote in the Record-American for months about the Boston Police Department's mistakes, charging them with extreme inefficiency.

To head up this task force, which was formally called the Special Division of Crime Research and Detection, Brooke selected a close friend, the Assistant Attorney General John S. Bottomly.

Bottomly was a controversial choice because of his lack of experience in criminal law.

However, as Bottomly's supporters pointed out, he was exceptionally honest and enthusiastic. It was a "nontraditional case" and Bottomly was a man of nontraditional methods.

Bottomly's team consisted of Boston Police Department's Detective Phillip DiNatale; Special Officer James Mellon; Metropolitan Police Officer Stephen Delaney; and State Police Detective Lieutenant Andrew Tuney. Dr. Donald Kenefick led the medical-psychiatric advisory committee.

Governor Peabody offered a $10,000 reward to any person furnishing information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who had committed the murders of the eleven official victims now attributed to the Strangler.

The Strangler Bureau, as the task force became known, had a lot to do. They had to collect, organize and assimilate over thirty-seven thousand pages of material from the various police departments that had been involved in the case.

The medical committee worked on developing a profile of the killer.

There was an important difference, they thought, between the murders of the older women and those of the younger women.

For that reason, they thought it was unlikely that one person was responsible for all of the killings. In other words, there were copycats.

Focusing on the killer who murdered the older women, Dr. Kenefick reported that the killer “was at least 30 years old, a probably a good deal older. He is neat, orderly, and punctual. He either works with his hands, or has a hobby involving handiwork. He most probably is single, separated or divorced. He would not impress the average observer as crazy... He has no close friends of either sex.”

Eight years before the FBI establishes the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, a Massachusetts psychiatrist is putting together a profile.

At Bottomly's suggestion, Brooke consented to a risky move: consulting the second psychic of our story, Peter Hurkos.

On boy.

a) Peter Hurkos: Peter Hurkos, a Dutchman, was known as a “psychic detective” or “the telepathic detective” who had supposedly “helped” officers search for clues in several famous cases, including the Manson Family case.

Born in Dordrecht [ dawr-drekht ], Holland, in 1911, he immigrated to the United States in 1956 and lived in the Los Angeles area for 25 years.

Hurkos claimed that he became psychic in 1941 after tumbling four stories off a ladder and landing on his head.

Huh.

Some of us get dumber when we suffer a massive head injury. Some of us are left with lingering headaches or blurry vision. A lot us die from landing on our head after falling FOUR STORIES. I’d say almost everyone dies from something like that. And almost everyone who doesn’t ends up paralyzed.

But this dude became a superhero? Huh.

I don’t believe he ever fell four stories and landed on his head. Right out the gate, I think this guy was full of shit.

Upon regaining consciousness four days after his fall - again if that ever happened - Hurkos said he possessed the ability to see into the future, to exercise artistic and musical talents he had never exhibited before, and to trace missing persons by “psychometrizing,” or tuning into their psychic vibrations by touching clothing and other personal possessions.

He couldn’t do any of that shit. He’d never helped solve the Manson case.

But the Strangler Bureau was just desperate.

Two private groups paid for Hurkos' services and expenses. Hurkos identified a suspect. The suspect was a shoe salesman with a history of mental illness whom the Strangler Bureau had already investigated. There was no evidence whatsoever to link the shoe salesman with the murders.

The Strangler Bureau's credibility suffered on account of Hurkos, who would go on to get in trouble for impersonating an FBI agent.

The dirtbag would find some commercial success, however, appearing on Johnny Carson and writing several books.

He’d agreed back in 1960, on an episode of a TV show called One Step Beyond, to have his psychic abilities tested. Parapsychologist Charles Tart of the University of California, Davis did test him - and the tests came back negative.

Skeptic and investigator and professional fucking wackadoodle hunter, the legendary James Randi - modern day Houdini when it comes to debunking bullshitters and one of Canada’s national treasures, calleed Hurkos out to be tested again and Hurkos refused.

He was just another grief vampire.

A cold reader like John Edwards and all those other medium hacks.

Fuck I hate these charlatans. You think you can maybe, kind of see the future. That you might know things? Fine. Offer your services for free just to help. And if it’s proven time and time again that you really can know things that you shouldn’t? If you can PROVE psychic powers? Awesome! Make some money! I would love for that to be true. I would love that proof of powers science doesn’t understand.

But thus far, literally no one has ever done that.

We go over the claims of these types almost every week on the Patreon counterpart to Timesuck, the Secret Suck. We’ve covered about a hundred nuts so far, and they just never come off credible.

But a lot of them have made a lot of money, and continue to make a lot of money, because people who can’t think critically or choose not to keep giving them money.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-02-mn-5822- story.html

32. October 27, 1964:

Alright.

Been awhile since we checked in with Fun Frank’s favorite son, Albert DeSalvo.

What’s the at looney tune been up to?

On October 27th, 1964 he impersonated a motorist with car trouble and he attempted to enter a home in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Bridgewater is thirty miles south of Boston, near the Rhode Island border.

The owner of the home, future Brockton Police Chief Richard Sproles, becomes suspicious and ultimately fires a shotgun at him.

Nice!

Fuck yeah, he did. I got a nice Mossberg pump action tactical twelve gauge sitting in my gun cabinet at home, just waiting to shred any creep who wants to roll the dice and enter my house.

Probably don’t even need it. I also have two VISCOUS - just under thirty pound Australian labradoodles that may or may not like to be held like babies and ask to be picked up and consoled whenever they play too rough with each other.

Penny and Ginger Belle would FOR SURE tear an intruder apart.

OR - at LEAST bark from a safe distance away for a little while before running to basement and hiding.

Sadly, Sproles doesn’t hit Albert and he escapes.

And then later that same day, a newly married woman lies in bed dozing just after her husband left for work. She hears a noise and opens her eyes to find a man in her room, who then puts a knife to her throat and tells her, “Not a sound, or I’ll kill you.”

He stuffs her underwear in her mouth and ties her in a spread eagle position to the bedposts with her clothes. He kisses her and fondles her, and then he asks her how to get out of the apartment. "You be quiet for ten minutes,” he tells her.

Then he apologizes and flees.

He APOLOGIZES!?! So fucking ridiculous.

This guy doesn’t understand that you can’t make certain things you’ve done okay with an “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry I raped you.” Doesn’t quite cut it.

During this assault, the woman got a REAL good look at his face. A better look than I’m guessing she ever wanted.

But her description of DeSalvo would be the break in the Strangler case that the police had been waiting for.

The police sketch looks familiar to investigators - the guy looks just like sketches of “the measuring man” from years ago.

33.November 3, 1964: On November 3rd, Police bring DeSalvo to the station where the woman who was raped was able to observe him through a one-way mirror.

She IMMEDIATELY identified him. There was no doubt about it. She knew for certain that he was the man who’d raped her.

DeSalvo was charged and then released on $8,000 bail.

Still denying it, he pleaded innocent to charges of Breaking and Entering, Assault and Battery, Confining and Putting in Fear, and Engaging in an Unnatural and Lascivious Act. He was released on $8,000 bail for hearing two weeks later.

As a matter of routine, DeSalvo’s photograph went over a six-state teletype network.

Within thirty-six hours it brought detectives from Connecticut where similar sexual assaults had taken place through the summer and autumn—in every instance, a man tying up women on their beds.

He’d become known as the “Green Man” - Albert’s second criminal nickname - because he almost always wore green work pants.

Sometimes he wore the uniform of a building maintenance worker.

And he was an EXTREMELY active rapist.

If the records were correct, on one day - May 6th, 1964 -between 9 AM and midday, he’d bound and assaulted four women in four towns - Hamden, CT - two hours from Boston. Meriden, CT - less than twenty minutes from Hamden on the way back to Boston.

New Haven, Connecticut - thirty minutes south of Meriden. And Hartford, forty minutes back towards Boston from New Haven.

Four rapes in four separate towns in ONE DAY.

34.November 5th, 1964:

Acting on this new information, Boston Police on November 5th descend on DeSalvo’s home, a modest, neatly kept one-family house at the end of a dead-end street in Malden, less than four miles from where he grew up in Chelsea.

He wasn’t home so they waited.

When DeSalvo drove up, he saw the police cars and attempted to reverse his car and drive off, but was trapped and seized.

He was brought again to Cambridge Police Headquarters where several victims from Connecticut were on hand to identify him.

he begged to speak to his wife before he confessed.

Irmgard and Albert’s sister Irene came to the station.

And for nearly an hour he talked to them in the presence of three detectives.

He broke down in tears. “Please,” he pleaded with his wife, “please, Irm, let me be a man just this once. I’ve done some very bad things with women—I’ve broken into houses, I’ve used a gun but it was a toy gun, I used a knife but I never killed anybody—I’m tired of running, I want to get it off my chest, I need help, I want help. When they had me before I didn’t know how to ask for it.”

His wife, who suspected he’d been “doing something,” was not surprised at his sexual assaults on women.

She would later tell police that Albert was insatiable.

He wanted her in the morning; he wanted her again when he came home for lunch; then in the early evening after supper, and again before they fell asleep at night.

On weekends, when he was home from the job he now had as an outside maintenance man, for a construction company, he needed her five and six times each day.

And that STILL wasn’t enough.

When they’d go out together, he’d make suggestive remarks, even in her presence, to attractive women.

Even Lucifina thinks this dude was WAY to horny. He was clearly addicted to sex.

It was impossible to satisfy him.

She told Albert to tell the police everything. And he did.

I wonder if she felt so relived when he was arrested? If she was happy to be rid of him. To be rid of that horndog trying to fuck her six times a day.

In the following police interrogation, Albert admits to breaking into four hundred apartments and committing almost as many rapes.

He tells the police he’s assaulted some 300 women in a four-state area. "If you knew the whole story you wouldn't believe it," he told one of the cops. "It'll all come out. You'll find out."

DeSalvo will later earn the reputation of being a HUGE exaggerator, so, was it REALLY that many victims? Maybe, maybe not.

There definitely hadn’t been that many reports of a rapist fitting his description committing all those crimes, but, that doesn’t mean he didn’t do that. Many instances of rape go unreported.

According to Washington DC-based nonprofit, Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, only 23% of rapes are reported.

And that’s based on a Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted in 2017, analyzing numbers from 2010 to 2016.

Back in 1964, I think you can make an argument that even MORE rapes went unreported since there was more social stigma associated with it. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice- system#:~:text=The%20Majority%20of%20Sexual%20Assaults,o ut%20of%204%20go%20unreported.&text=Members%20of%20 the%20military%3A%2043,10%25%20of%20male%20victims%2 0reported.

The first rape crisis centers in America wouldn’t be established until the 1970s. https://mainweb-v.musc.edu/vawprevention/research/sa.shtml

DeSalvo, after his confession, was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital, thirty miles south of Boston, for observation.

The Police still didn’t think they had the Strangler, since his confession didn’t include murder - but they wanted a psychiatrist to examine him to see if any other crimes came up.

Shortly after DeSalvo arrived at Bridgewater, another dirtbag named George Nassar became an inmate.

He’ll play an interesting role in the Boston Strangler story.

He’d been charged with a vicious execution-style murder of a gas station attendant and was serving a life-sentence.

Nassar was no ordinary thug.

His IQ approached genius level and his ability to manipulate people was remarkable and noted by authorities.

While in prison for an earlier murder, he studied Russian and other subjects.

Nassar had gone to prison that first time for shooting a shop owner to death during a robbery when he was a sophomore in high school back in 1948. He became a model prisoner, claimed to have found god through his friendship with a chaplain - Unitarian minister William Moors, and through the efforts of Moors, he was paroled in thirteen years into his sentence in early 1961. And the Boston Strangler slayings began, of course, the following year.

Nassar was put in the same ward as DeSalvo and soon became his confidant.

And Nassar later claimed that DeSalvo told him that he was the Boston Strangler. However, he also said that DeSalvo desperately wanted to be famous. So, WAS he the Strangler? Or did he just want the notoriety?

Nasar will play a huge role in the rest of the Strangler’s story.

As will his attorney, F. Lee Bailey.

a) F LEE BAILEY:

Francis Lee Bailey, born in 1933 in Waltham, Massachusetts, would become one of America’s most famous criminal defenders.

He got his start defending George Elderly, a physician charged with murdering his wife. The doctor was acquitted. Soon thereafter, Bailey won a reversal of the conviction of another doctor, Samuel H. Sheppard, who was also accused of murdering his wife.

Bailey would go on to become involved in a number of high- profile cases, and this is actually the third of his cases that have showed up in the Suck-verse.

He was part of O.J. Simpson’s defense team, and he defended Patty Hearst.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/historians- miscellaneous-biographies/f-lee-bailey 35. March 1965: And in March of 1965, DeSalvo’s wife Irmgard, who has already left town and is staying with her sister in Denver, gets a call from F. Lee Bailey, who says he’s now Albert's attorney.

He tells her to assume a different name, leave the area with her children and go into hiding. “Something big is going to blow up about Albert,” he says. “It will be on the front pages of every newspaper in 24 hours. I'm flying out to see you tomorrow so I can help you myself.”

The next day, Irmgard is told by authorities that Albert had confessed to being the Strangler. Disbelieving, she hangs up the phone.

She was NOT surprised that her husband was a rapist, but she didn’t think that there was any way he could be the Strangler; he had a voracious appetite for sex, but she didn’t think he was capable of that level of brutality.

Had she met Fun Frank?

She thought his confession was another one of Albert's attempts to make himself seem important. She wondered if some newspaper was offering him money.

And she may have been right.

Albert DeSalvo had been thinking about money for a while.

Some months earlier, just before Albert was sent to Bridgewater following his rapes arrest, he met with his former lawyer, Jon Asgiersson.

And Albert had asked him, “What would you do if someone gave you the biggest story of the century?”"

“Do you mean the Boston Strangler?”

Albert said yes.

“Are you mixed up in all of them, Albert? Did you do some of them?”

“All of them,” Albert admitted.

Asgiersson wasn't quite sure what to do with this information and seriously considered the possibility that Albert was insane.

He began a quiet inquiry.

Meanwhile, Albert became more and more sure that the story of him being the Strangler would bring in a lot of money.

At Bridgewater, Albert and George Nasser discussed the reward money for information leading to the conviction of the Boston Strangler.

For some reason, Nassar and DeSalvo mistakenly assumed that $10,000 would be paid for each victim of the Strangler or a total of $110,000 for the eleven official victims.

This wasn’t true. The reward was $10,000 for any information that would lead to the arrest of the guy who’d raped and killed any of those women. You didn’t get to name the same guy eleven times.

Maybe Nassar wasn’t almost a genius. Maybe he cheated on his IQ test or something.

They thought, if Nassar turned him in and DeSalvo confessed, they could work out a deal to split the money.

DeSalvo thought there was a good chance that he could convince the shrinks that he was insane and could spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital instead of a prison.

Riding out life in a cushy mental hospital while simultaneously providing for his family seemed like a good deal to him. He assumed that even if he didn’t confess to any murders, he might spend the rest of his life in prison anyway due to the sheer volume of rapes he’d confessed to.

36. March 6, 1965: On March 6th, 1965, F. Lee Bailey goes to visit Albert. Not only does Albert confess to the murders of the eleven official Strangler victims, but he also admits to killing two other women, Mary Brown and Mary Mullen, which is how the Strangler body count grew to thirteen if you were confused for a moment there.

Bailey asked DeSalvo what he wanted Bailey to do. DeSalvo replied, “I know I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life locked up somewhere. I just hope it's a hospital, and not a hole like this. But if I could tell my story to somebody who could write it, maybe I could make some money for my family.”

Bailey thought that there must be some way to allow him to confess without setting him up for execution.

But before that, Bailey wanted to determine if his client really was guilty without putting DeSalvo in jeopardy.

Bailey called Lieutenant John Donovan, Boston’s Chief of Homicide, and suggested that he might have a suspect for him.

But first - he wanted Donovan to provide him with some questions to ask the suspect that would help determine if he was for real.

Bailey then went to visit DeSalvo a second time.

And DeSalvo mentioned that Detective DiNatale from the Attorney General's Strangler Bureau had taken a sudden interest in him and had come to take his palm print the day before.

Bailey had to work fast if he was going to be able to protect his client.

At that interview, Bailey becomes certain that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler.

Why?

Because DeSalvo remembered an extraordinary number of details regarding numerous Strangler cases.

Bailey called Lieutenant Donovan and his colleague Lieutenant Sherry to his office and they listen to a recording of Bailey’s interview with DeSalvo, with Bailey changing the recording’s speed to disguise DeSalvo’s voice.

When DeSalvo described the murder of Sophie Clark, he named a brand of cigarettes that he’d knocked to the floor when he went through Sophie’s drawers.

Hearing this, Detective Sherry grabbed his briefcase and pulled out a photo that showed the cigarettes, exactly as DeSalvo had described them.

Boston’s Strangler Bureau was suddenly very hopeful. Had they just finally found their man?

Detectives began to interview Desalvo and take his confessions.

37. September 29, 1965: Months later, on September 29th, 1965, DeSalvo’s interrogation was completed.

More than fifty hours of tapes and 2,000 pages of transcription later - detectives were positive that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler.

Details piled upon details as DeSalvo recalled the career of the Strangler, murder by murder.

He knew there was a notebook under the bed of victim number eight, Beverly Samans.

He knew that Christmas bells were attached to Patricia Bissette's door.

He drew accurate floor plans of the victims' apartments.

He said he'd taken a raincoat from Anna Slesers's apartment to wear over his T-shirt because he had taken off his bloodstained shirt and jacket. Detectives found that Mrs. Slesers had bought two identical coats and had given one to a relative. They showed the duplicate to DeSalvo, along with fourteen other raincoats tailored in different styles.

And DeSalvo quickly picked the right one.

He even described additional attacks that hadn’t resulted in murders.

He had talked his way into a Danish girl’s apartment and had his arm around her neck when he suddenly looked in a large wall mirror. Seeing himself about to kill, he was horrified. He relaxed the pressure and started crying. He was sorry, he said, he begged her not to call the police. If his mother found out, he lied, she’d cut off his allowance, and he wouldn't be able to finish college.

And the young woman never reported the incident.

But then after this confession, detectives found her.

And she remembered the incident vividly and confirmed DeSalvo’s story. Everything he’d said was true.

There was no doubt now in the minds of homicide investigators - Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler.

And yet - he would never actually be charged with ANY of the murders.

He’d instead go to trial for “the Green Man” armed robbery and sexual assaults.

Why?

Lack of evidence outside of his confessions. a) DOUBTS - THE EVIDENCE:

There actually wasn’t one shred of physical evidence that connected DeSalvo to any of the Strangler crime scenes. At least not any evidence accessible at the time since DNA evidence wasn’t a thing yet.

Plus, there was evidence left at the crime scenes that didn’t match what investigators knew about DeSalvo, like the Salem brand cigarette buts that were found on an ashtray near Mary Sullivan’s bed and in Sophie Clark’s toilet bowl.

Those cigarettes weren’t believed to have belonged to the victims, and Albert didn’t smoke. b) WITNESSES DOUBTS:

To add even more doubt, no eyewitnesses could place him at or near the crime scenes.

Albert had a relatively memorable face, particularly because of his prominent, beak-like nose, and the Strangler or Stranglers were seen by a number of eyewitnesses.

One of the eyewitnesses was Kenneth Rowe, the Northeastern University engineering student who lived on the floor above Joann Graff's apartment.

He spoke to the stranger who was looking for her apartment just before she was killed. When Rowe was shown a photo of Albert DeSalvo, he did NOT recognize him as the man looking for Joann.

Also, Jules Vens, who ran Martin's Tavern near Joann Graff's apartment in Lawrence, did not identify DeSalvo as the man who, dressed identically to the man Rowe had seen, had come into the tavern nervous and agitated, as though someone were following him.

Eileen O'Neil saw a man standing in victim Mary Sullivan's bathroom window around the time of her death - and that man wasn’t Albert.

Marcella Lulka, who lived in the same apartment building as Sophie Clark, had an encounter with a man who called himself “Mr. Thompson”, who’d lied and said he’d come to paint her apartment.

When she sketched a portrait for the police, it showed a delicately featured young man with a long, narrow face, a very thin nose, a point chin, and large, almond-shaped eyes.

The picture looked nothing like DeSalvo.

When Albert began confessing to the stranglings, Assistant Attorney General John Bottomly rounded up Mrs. Lulka and Gertrude Gruen, a woman who’d survived an encounter with the Strangler, so that they could secretly view Albert in prison.

Neither woman identified Albert DeSalvo.

Both women DID identify George Nassar.

Lulka was convinced Nassar was ‘Mr. Thompson.’ He resembled the man in every way but one - the color of his hair

‘Mr. Thompson’ had honey-colored hair, as she’d previously told detectives. Nassar’s hair was black.

Had he dyed it?

He certainly didn’t admit to dying it. He still had a chance to maybe get out of prison again someday.

The big question investigators now faced was, if witnesses didn’t think Albert was the strangler, how did DeSalvo, a man of average or less than average intelligence, convincingly absorb so many details about the victims and their apartments if he was not the Strangler? c) THE CONFESSION:

Maybe because he had an exceptional memory.

Dr. Ames Robey of Stoneham, a forensic psychiatrist, would testify that Albert had "absolute, complete, one hundred per percent total photographic recall."

Robey ran several tests on Albert’s memory.

For one test, he invited him into a staff meeting of eight people at Bridgewater. A

Albert walked in, looked around, and walked out.

The next day, Robey brought him back in, and the eight staffers were wearing different clothes and sitting in different positions.

Robey asked Albert to describe how the group appeared the day before. He did so perfectly.

Impressive.

On a lot of days, I couldn’t accurately tell you what I had for lunch the day before.

But a good memory doesn’t answer the question of how Albert was able to first learn about some many of the crimes details if he wasn’t the Strangler.

So where did he get those details?

Possibly - from newspaper reports.

(1) The newspaper accounts were extraordinarily detailed. The Record American, for example, had printed a chart, along with the victims' photos, called "The Facts: On Reporters' Strangle Worksheet."

This chart was a summary of all the important details of each crime, what the victims were wearing, their hobbies, affiliations, and more.

In his confession, DeSalvo mentioned the few bits of inaccurate information that the chart had contained that the police had intentionally fed journalists, as well as the accurate information.

Pretty fishy.

(2) Also, there were a couple of leaks that could have made their way to Albert.

Leaks by law enforcement agencies, particularly the Strangler Bureau, which was criticized for being lax with its accumulated material, and the Suffolk County Medical Examiner, who allegedly held a number of unauthorized press conferences in which he freely distributed information about the victim autopsies, circulated Boston, making the story more tantalizing and providing more details someone like DeSalvo could read and memorize.

(3) AND - Albert for SURE was a burglar. And he’d broken into many of the apartment buildings in which Strangler victims were murdered.

It’s possible he could have visited some of the units where women were killed after their murders.

(4) AND - it appears, due to police being so eager to wrap up the investigation and call it a success, that DeSalvo had been frequently fed information, both deliberately and accidentally, to help make his confessions that much more convincing.

(5) And finally - there’s George Nassar.

He could have been another source of information.

Some still think that George Nassar committed some of the Boston Strangler murders.

Nassar is apparently still alive at the age of eighty-eight despite suffering from terminal cancer for a few years, and he’s incarcerated at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Shirley, a medium security prison.

And some think HE fed DeSalve crime details that DeSalvo memorized.

Most experts never saw the stranglings as the work of one individual.

The Modus operandi was not identical and the victims as a group were quite dissimilar.

Anyone who looked at the victims could see the difference between the relatively delicate killing of Patricia Bissette, whose murderer tucked her into bed, and the ghastly homicidal violation inflicted on Mary Sullivan, whose killer's intent was not just to degrade his victim by shoving a broom handle into her vagina but to taunt the discoverer of her corpse by placing a greeting card against her foot.

Some were stabbed, some were sexually assaulted, some were posed, some were not.

Serial killers, as we’ve learned here covering so many of them, tend to tend to stick with a particular kind of victim and MO.

38. January 10, 1967: On January 10th, 1967, Albert DeSalvo is tried in court on the Green Man charges. His trial will only last just over a week.

And his attorney, Bailey tries to use the Strangler killings to get him off.

He tries to use DeSalvo’s confession to the Boston Strangler murders to show how insane DeSalvo was.

But it wouldn’t work - there were too many Green Man victims who’d identified DeSalvo as the rapist in addition to his confession.

On January 18, 1967, thirty-five year-old Albert DeSalvo is found sane and guilty by an all male jury on ten counts of sexual assault and burglary and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

https://law.jrank.org/pages/3152/Albert-Henry-DeSalvo- Trial-1967-Final-Arguments.html

39. February 24, 1967:

Less than a month later - right when most in Boston thought the could rest easy regarding the Strangler Killings whether or not DeSalvo was officially charged - killings that had stopped since his arrest - on February 25th, 1964, Albert escapes from Bridgewater with two fellow inmates, triggering a full-scale manhunt.

Holy shit. What a colossal fuck up! A fuck up on par with Ted Bundy’s 1977 escape in Colorado.

On par with the much more recent Jeffrey Epstein committing “suicide” while waiting for his trial.

The man THOUGHT to be the most notorious Boston serial killer of the 20th century - and he fucking escapes after being incarcerated for life.

Some people got a serious ass chewing that day and I’m guessing a few jobs were lost.

40.TIME TRAVELING KAREN: Time Traveling Karen from the Alexander the Great Suck a few weeks ago would be PISSED.

(KAREN) “Are you serious? Oh… my….GAWD. Fucking… what?? I am SO SICK OF locking my door and living in fear! I can’t even go buy any mace or pepper spray because it’s 1967 and no one’s even selling that shit yet you stupid assholes. I hate 1967.

I want the badge number of whoever let that rapist OUT! And I want it NOW.

I want to talk the police chief, and the mayor, and the governor - ALL OF ‘EM - RIGHT… FUCKING… NOW!

I’ll have all their jobs. I want to talk to the President. Get your hands off of me! Stop touching me - perv! Gonna ask to measure ME you skeevy fuck?? You probably let Albert out on purpose because it’s 1967 and ALL YOU MEN are probably rapists in this misogynistic cess pool of an era. UGH!

Sources don’t say who screwed up to let this clown escape.

A note was found on DeSalvo’s bunk after he escaped, addressed to the superintendent. In it, DeSalvo stated he had escaped to focus attention on the conditions in the hospital and his own situation.

And then three days after his escape - the maniac called his lawyer to turn himself in. His lawyer then sent the police to re-arrest him in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Dude escaped a life sentence and then never left Massachusetts! Fun Frank must have been so disappointed. He thought he’d raised better criminals than that.

Following his escape, DeSalvo was transferred to the maximum security MCI-Walpole State Prison, now known as the Massachusetts Correctional Institution—Cedar Junction. https://www.antiquesnavigator.com/d-965488/1410117wq-boston- strangler-february-27-1967-albert-desalvo-caught-newspaper.html

And then he recants his earlier confession of being the Boston Strangler.

But then after that - he writes a creepy poem where he does seem to confess to being the killer. Or - does he confess to knowing who the Strangler was?

Here’s that poem, set to some music that I feel gives it the appropriate emotional weight:

PLAY: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=tDL5yuiHMFM&list=PLtl8pKIDwuYlYHnAnIRbLBSstWPgQUbh b&index=4

Here is the story of the Strangler, yet untold, The man who claims he murdered thirteen women, young and old. The elusive Strangler, there he goes, Where his wanderlust sends him, no one knows He struck within the light of day, Leaving not one clue astray. Young and old, their lips are sealed, Their secret of death never revealed. Even though he is sick in mind, He's much too clever for the police to find. To reveal his secret will bring him fame, But burden his family with unwanted shame. Today he sits in a prison cell, Deep inside only a secret he can tell. People everywhere are still in doubt, Is the Strangler in prison or roaming about?

STOP MUSIC.

First, obviously that music was NOT the right choice to add to the emotional weight of the poem. I just wanted to give you a nice little, “What the fuck his happening?” moment.

Also - who writes a poem about a series of rapes and murders everyone thinks they’ve committed???

41. November 25, 1973: Just over six years later, on November 25th, 1973, now forty-two year-old DeSalvo telephones Dr. Ames Robey and asks him to meet with him urgently.

DeSalvo sounds frightened, and Robey promises to meet with him the next morning.

About a week before, DeSalvo had asked to be placed in the infirmary under special watch. He told Robey that he was going to tell him who the Boston Strangler really was and what the whole thing was about.

42. November 26, 1973: But the following morning, hours before he was set to meet with Robey, Albert is stabbed to death in his cell in the infirmary at Walpole State Prison by another inmate, Robert Wilson.

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/11/27/archives/desalvo- confessed-boston-strangler-found-stabbed-to-death-in- prison.html

Wilson, associated with the Winter Hill Gang, a structured confederation of Boston area organized crime figures predominantly of Irish and Italian descent led by famous organized crime figure Whitey Bulger portrayed by Johnny Depp in that fantastic movie Black Mass - was tried for DeSalvo's murder.

The trial ended in a hung jury.

F. Lee Bailey later claimed that DeSalvo was killed NOT because he was about to rat on the REAL Strangler, but because he’d been selling amphetamines in the prison for less than the inmate-enforced syndicate price. He’d apparently been warned once before and didn’t listen.

Prison officials believed it was drug related as well,

We’ll never know if DeSalvo ACTUALLY had new information about the Strangler Case to give to Dr. Robey or if was just trying to figure out how to keep from being killed by some organized crime guys who wanted him dead.

DeSalvo died without having ever been charged or found guilty of the strangulation murders of eleven women, plus the two additional murders he confessed to.

43. July 11, 2013: BUT THEN - on July 11th, 2013, after over a decade of multiple DNA examination, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley says that advances in DNA technology have allowed investigators to link DeSalvo to Sullivan's killing.

Conley says the DNA produced a "familial match" with DeSalvo, and he expects an exact match once DeSalvo's remains are re-exhumed.

And then eight days later, on July 19th, 2013, Suffolk County DA Daniel F. Conley, Attorney General Martha Coakley and Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis announce that DNA test results prove DeSalvo was the source of seminal fluid recovered at the scene of Sullivan's 1964 murder.

So he definitely strangled and killed at least one of those women.

As for the rest?

It seems as if not enough semen - or in some cases, no semen - was recovered and kept from the other strangler crime scenes so, we’ll probably never know for sure how many other victims he was responsible for.

At THAT takes us out of this week’s Timesuck Timeline.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/dna-confirms-albert- desalvo-link-boston-strangler-killing-mary-sullivan-authorities- article-1.1403536 https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/07/11/timeline-main-events-in- the-case-of-the-boston-strangler

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

IV.Recap:

The period beginning with the death of Anna Slesers in 1962 and ending with that of Mary Sullivan in 1964 was NOT a great time for the Boston Police Department and its brand-new commissioner, Edmund McNamara.

Despite the best efforts of McNamara and his detectives, not a single one of the nine homicides committed within their jurisdiction could be solved.

It would take eleven women, killed between June 14, 1962 and July 1964, to lead investigators to Albert DeSalvo. The number would increase to 13 when DeSalvo confessed to two more.

Each of the original eleven victims were raped and strangled and one victim was stabbed.

Six of the victims were between the ages of 55 and 75. Two possible additional victims were 85 and 69 years of age. The remaining five victims were considerably younger, ranging in age from 19 to 23.

Ultimately it’s very likely that there were several killers, and only ONE of them ended up definitely being sent to prison where he himself would be murdered.

If DeSalvo wasn’t the Boston Strangler, why did he claim he was?

First - maybe because his famous attorney, F Lee Bailey, in whom he had complete faith, affirmed DeSalvo’s belief that he wouldn’t get the death penalty. Bailey and DeSalvo believed that DeSalvo would be declared insane and allowed to ride out life in a mental hospital.

That didn’t happen - but they thought it would.

Second, DeSalvo was convinced that the sale of his life story and confession would make him a great deal of money, which could be given to his wife and children since he could no longer take care of them.

And he hatched a poorly thought out plot with George Nassar - who may have been one of the other killers - to get the reward money and split it.

Third, in branding himself a serial killer, Albert would become world- famous, something he seemed to desire.

Fun Frank’s son wanted to be famous!

Even if it was for the absolute worst reasons.

Reminds me of a lot of reality TV stars. People who aren’t rapists and murderers, but, are arguably pretty shitty meat sacks who gain huge online followings and whose shows score massive ratings.

People who are our modern “celebrities.”

I think of the entire cast of the Jersey Shore. Many of the Kardashians. Paris Hilton and Mama June from Honey Boo Boo.

These people are or have been famous - but not because they’re noble, inspirational people I’d like my kids to strive to be. Nope - because they’re willing to be trashy as fuck and preposterously ignorant on camera.

Awesome.

I don’t get it. I’m always looking for new podcast listeners, new people to find my standup, but not because I give a fuck about “Fame.”

I just want people to enjoy what I think is my art. Makes me happy to put smiles on stranger’s faces. To hear - I like what you did there. That was good.

Fun to try and grow my business. I feel like I have more in common with the dude or dudette who runs the pizza shop down the street than I do with someone who wants to be “famous.”

Fuck fame. Seems like a big hassle.

And to be famous for rape and murder? How disgusting. No shame in living a good, decent life and dying in obscurity. Just because the world doesn’t know your story - that it doesn’t mean it isn’t a fucking awesome.

I’ve met famous people I’d never want to have a drink with, and a lot of non-famous I’ve loved grabbing drinks with.

And fuck Albert DeSalvo.

He may not have committed all of the Boston Strangler murders, but he DID commit at least one and he raped many, many others.

He was a huge piece of shit and I’m glad someone killed him in prison.

DeSalvo’s killer, Robert Wilson may have been a huge piece of shit too - I couldn’t locate his arrest record - but he did at least one thing right in my book.

Now let’s take one more look at the Boston Strangler and Albert DeSalvo in today’s top five takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

V. Top Five Takeaways

1.Number One: Number one! Albert DeSalvo’s confession to being the Boston Strangler - even if he ultimately only killed one of the victims - was a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel for Boston’s law enforcement, who’d been searching for the killer for years.

But he may not have committed all those murders.

The Strangler Bureau, as it was known, may have been so desperate to have the public believe the Strangler was behind bars that they let slip— accidentally or on purpose— details about the case that Albert could and would use in his confession.

2.Number Two: Number two!

The strangler murders were gruesome shook many in Boston to their cores.

The newspapers reporting on the vulgar poses the women’s bodies were found in, how they’d been sexually assaulted, how their own clothing was used to kill them, and how they’d been killed in their own homes freaked people out across the Boston area. The wide range of victim ages left no woman feeling safe.

3.Number Three: Number three! DeSalvo hoped he could make a lot of money off the notoriety that would come with being the Boston Strangler. And he may have been the Strangler. Just like we don’t know for sure he committed the other killings, we don’t know for sure he didn’t.

We do know he never got that money. He died broke and in prison, convicted of ten rapes. His wife and kids never got any money. But they did escape the scrutiny that came with being associated with a dirt bag by quickly changing their names and leaving the area.

4.Number Four: Number four! While DeSalvo MAY not have been the Boston Strangler. He did for sure earn two other horrible nicknames in terrible ways.

He was the rapist known as “the Green Man” and the creepy perv “the Measuring Man” before that. He was a dude who graduated from going door-to-door pretending to be a talent scout for a modeling agency and taking women’s measurements to a guy who broke into women’s homes, binding them and raping them.

5.Number Five: Number five! New info!

In 1971, Texan politician Tom Moore Jr. referenced the Boston Strangler in a way, I gotta say, I find darkly hilarious.

Tom was serving as a member of the Texas House of Representatives when he decided to put together a practical joke for April Fool’s Day.

He’d claimed that most of his fellow representatives didn’t bother to even read much of the legislation that they were voting on, so he decided to embarrass them by sneaking in some legislation commending the Boston Strangler, and asking for Texas to recognize his outstanding contributions to society.

An excerpt reads: “This compassionate gentleman's dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future.

He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology.”

It passed unanimously.

Haha! The Boston Strangler - champion of population control!

Moore withdrew the legislation once he’d made his point.

Moore died on April 16th, 2017, at the age of 98, after living what was a long, and I’m guessing - hilarious - life.

https://www.therichest.com/shocking/15-chilling-facts-about-the- boston-strangler/

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

VI.Final Announcements

A.Episode has been sucked!: The Boston Strangler has been SUCKED! Glad he and I have very, very little in common. Even on my worst days, I can still think, “I’m WAY better than Albert DeSalvo was.” Hope you can think that too.

B.Thank you to Timesuck Team:

Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions Team for all the help in making Timesuck! Queen of Bad Magic Lynze Cummins, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley, the Script Keeper Zaq Flannary, Sophie “Fact Sorceress” Evans, Bit Elixir, Logan and Kate Keith - the Art Warlock and Bad Magic Baroness running BadMagicMerch.com and the socials!

Thanks to all of those who’ve joined the Cult of the Curious private Facebook group - over 20,000 members who continue to make Timesuck more than a podcast, they make it a community. Hail Nimrod!

Thanks Liz Hernandez and her All Seeing Eyes running the Cult of the Curious Facebook page.

Thanks to all the wonderful weirdos having fun on our Discord Channel as well.

And thanks to all of your Space Lizards playing Timesuck Trivia on the app: Cgallagher3 currently leading round three with 7062 points as of this recording. Round three ends a few hours after this episode comes out, and round four begins.

C.Next Episode Preview:

Next week on Timesuck, we get really, really weird, and I’m really looking forward to it.

We unpack a treasure chest of a topic filled with a variety of fringe conspiracies to answer once and for all, a question most of us already knew the answer too since around kindergarten: is the Earth hollow?

Are we living on the hard candy shell of our mysterious world, unaware of the creamy nougat of strange live that exists within?

There are multiple versions of the “hollow earth theory”, and holy shit biscuits on fire are there a lot of different ideas as to what, or whom might dwell within.

We touched on this topic way back in episode eight - “A President, Mole People, and Hollow Earth Theory,” but we didn’t dig deep enough.

Pun intended.

Some hollow Earth truthers believe there are magical cities, and advanced beings with unbelievable technologies living beneath us.

Others think there are sasquatches, giants and/or hermaphroditic dwarves all conspiring against us with a species of aliens who want to destroy us.

Almost all the depictions of a hollow earth have inner oceans, continents, unique flora and fauna and even a subterranean sun.

Sweet! We have another sun INSIDE the Earth in case our sun fizzles out earlier than expected.

No big whoops! We all just head inside.

Over the years, a lot of people have given credence to the hollow earth hypothesis - and they haven’t all seemed crazy - famous scientific thinkers, authors and political leaders to self-taught lecturers, hardcore explorers, a famous military pilot and at least a couple snake-oil peddling grifters have all touted the importance of looking inward.

If all roads lead to the Denver Airport, then the Denver airport must be hiding an entrance to the secret catacombs of our hollow earth.

Don’t miss next week’s illuminating episode on the real truth your geology teacher was too afraid to teach you.

Am I making my sarcasm clear enough? I hope so.

D.Segue to Timesucker Updates: And now let’s head on over to this week’s Timesucker Updates!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

VII.Timesucker Updates

1.First Update comes from Meatsack Supreme Wes Hibben, who shares a little name and now social media connection with a member of last week’s cult. Wes writes:

Hi Timesuck team,

First off, love the show! I've been listening weekly for about 3 years or so and yours is the first podcast I ever mention when talking about podcasts to anyone. So thanks to you all for the hard work, laughs, and weird knowledge that really isn't all that helpful.

Anyways, my name is Wes Hibben. I have no relation to the Hibben family in this week's Suck. As my name isn't very common, a number of years ago I searched for my name on Facebook and lo and behold there was another Wes Hibben living out in Alaska.

And this dude was the shit, he's out there making the baddest facking swords and knives I've ever seen, and he's a black belt in karate.

So of course I sent him a friend request. We never really had much interaction, as he's a good 20 or more years older than me, but we've sent each other a "like" here and there. I fully intend to purchase a custom blade from him sometime, just GOTTA GET THAT SWORD MONEY first.

I also interacted with Gil Hibben on one occasion, who invited me to their ranch in...I want to say Kansas? - I can't remember exactly where, and I haven't finished the episode yet so not sure if it's mentioned - to take a week or so long class on how to make your own custom knives. I guess he and another of his sons, or something, put on - or used to - on a yearly knife making class.

Sadly I didn't accept the invitation, but in a better life, perhaps I could have gone and become a member of their cult. Anyways, I was just super excited to have this weird little connection to this week's topic.

KEEP ON SUCKIN!

Thank you, Wes. Yeah man - you misses out on that invite! Could have gotten some interesting cult tales from Gil.

Or maybe not. I doubt he talks a lot about his day’s in Immanuel’s cult, thinking that sock loving maniac and false prophet Bruce Longo was god.

Save up that sword money and get you a blade! I’ve seen their work and it’s pretty damn impressive.

2. Now for another connection to last week’s Immanuel David Cult suck, coming in from HARD SUCKER Jared Dickson.

Jared sent in an eye-catching email subject for sure, writing: “I am the reincarnated satanic gay son of Immanuel David.”

And then he wrote:

Greetings Sir Suck A Lot the glorious of Nimrod’s holiness. I first started listening to Scared To Death, then like the gateway drug it is lead me to Timesucking dick for crack.

Now I am a full fledged Space Lizard junkie. My story is great because it kind pertains to both podcasts.

I live in Salt Lake City and happen to work at the restaurant where Rachel David and 6 of her 7 children came crashing to their deaths.

Guess what...it’s haunted AF!!!

I can already her Lindsay saying “Get The Fuck Out” but most of the experiences I’ve had and have heard from my boss are playful and mischievous, which lead me to believe it’s the spirits of the children.

The first experience I had I was working at slow night shift and was taking some dirty dishes back to the dish area when in my right ear clear as the many crystals that are in every corner of my house, I hear a little girl laugh. I feel a cold chill come over me and the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up and I get goosebumps.

At that time there were no children or even a single lady ween in the restaurant. The next time was a little more frightening. Everyone had left for the night except me. On my way to the office I walked passed some shelves that had some empty cardboard boxes on them. I was about 3 to 4 feet away from them when I was struck in the back by 1 of them. I almost shit myself but being the brave meat sack I am I locked myself in the office turned my headphones on full blast and texted my husband who was coming to get me to hurry the fuck up.

My boss who also loves some STD has come in the morning after locking up the night before to find all of the TVs which she herself had turned off playing cartoons. Another time a large ice scoop flew off the ice machine when it hit the ground it spun like a top for a minute.

All the time things I know I’ve turned off or locked up the night before will be on or unlocked the next day. I actually take video of myself when I do a walk through before I lock up because I’ve been blamed in the past.

So that’s my story. I almost forgot why do I think I am the reincarnated satanic gay son of Immanuel David? Well I was born August 3rd 1982!!! The same day they died!!! 4 years later but I don’t know how reincarnation works but I am terribly afraid of heights and growing up watched every single Steven Seagal movie. You do the math.

Bojangles’s Dirty Little Secret,

Jared Dick Sucker Dickson

Jared! You seem like a nut. And that, from this nut, is meant as a compliment. And I’m guessing you are gay and not writing that out of any kind of homophobia.

You seem like ten pounds of fun in a five pound bag, my friend.

That haunting story is fucking crazy. That would really creep me out, but, like you say, you never feel threatened or anything. How strange for you to hear that episode working where you work.

Not that you didn’t already know a lot of those details.

Thanks for the message and Hail Lucifina you Satanic sucker.

3. And now - Sweet Sack Brian Williams has been Cummins Law’d. Let’s hear about it. Brian writes:

I've been Cummins Lawed so hard. So I'm listening to Timesuck in the car and I'm on Suck 127 Pedophile Island.

You were in the middle of saying how it’s funny your sponsors don't know the content or subject of each suck ahead of time and this episodes sponsor happens to be a mattress company and an E.D. pill and that’s when my wife calls me.

I'm walking into Walmart talking to her about the list of things to, just get the usual "milk, eggs, whips, chains, ball gag, Oreos, and bread" then we get off the phone so I put it in my pocket.

At that moment I hear full volume "Pedophiles need erections too guys."

There are people around me and they are horrified and I'm frozen as you're laughing at yourself in the back ground...... Dan, I live in the Bible belt of America there are old ladies staring at me and that when I realize I'm still wearing my work shirt that says information redacted Auto Company of nowhere Oklahoma.

Thank you for all the laughs and embarrassment.

Thank you for the kind words and the message, Brian! Hope none of those ladies went down to the Auto Company and told your boss they might be employing a horny pedophile.

Enjoy those Oreos. Damn I love Oreos. So addictively delicious. 4.Next up - Super Super Sucker Joseph Morris, who answered my call to share more resources for figuring out what US presidential candidate you line up with. Joseph wrote:

Politic website for all the meatsacks

Hey master sucker of many podcast!

Not going to apologize for the length of this e-mail because I wrote it slowly for your mush mouth. So you're welcome. Anyway, you mentioned political websites and I have one I use a lot. Isidewith.com

You fill out a quiz on all the politic issues and using answers submitted by candidates or other users or even you're own. If you don't know how you feel about the question you can skip it, read history on it, read the argument in it, or read about what it is. Once you are finished it aligns you with all the candidates and tells you how much or little you agree with them based on their voting records and answers to the same questions. It doesn't seem bias to me and has a lot of interesting information on the site. You can also set up a username and save your quiz answers, change answers and get more questions.

HAIL Nimrod!

Thanks, Joseph! The Queen of the Suck and I both took it, and really liked how it gives you a percentage on how well you match up with not one candidate, but with all the candidate.

I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t technically know that there were five candidates, not four. Sorry Brian Carroll. I didn’t even know you existed. I didn’t know the American Solidarity Party existed. Whoops!

Now I do. I learned something. Very interesting to see how much I lined up - or didn’t - with all the candidates. Very cool website.

If there was bias or spin - I didn’t notice it either. None of the questions seemed to be framed in what I felt to be a conservative or liberal way.

Yay more knowledge. Yay internet for making things WAY fucking easier than they used to be with these kind of things. I didn’t have to read the paper every day for months or watch hours of the nightly news to figure this out. Hail Nimrod!

5. And finally, we’ll end today’s updates with a sweet message about siblings bonded by dark comedy. Kick ass sack Amanda Craft writes another funny subject line:

If you don't shout this out I will slap you with Chikatela's limp shamecock like the fuckhead you are

And then she writes:

Dear Suck Master on High and Master of the Space Lizards,

Glory be to you and your suckerey of the most intenseness. Praise Bojangles and Praise Lucifina! However, Michael Motherfuckin McDonald can go to hell.

I have to write to you and ask you to give a shout out to my little brother Tommy. He introduced me to Scared to Death at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic and all the fuckery that went along with it. We are total creeps and I love listening to you and Queen Lynze every week (I listen with my fellow creeper- my 13-year- old son Myles). We found the Suck through Scared to Death. But this email isn't about Scared to Death (insert semicolon- a nod to Get Outta Here Devil) it's about the fucking awesome Suck and you...you beautiful bastard.

Recently, Tommy and I were together with our families for a game night. My husband and Tommy's wife are not and they would be appalled at the content and they just couldn't handle the suckiness. I'm pretty sure if they read this email, they would be horrified and my husband would consider divorce. Tommy and I however have the most dark sense of humor anybody could have. Anyways....game night was filled with inside jokes that only members of the Cult of the Curious would get. The funniest of all was when my 2 year old nephew asked for a peanut butter sandwich and my brother and I both looked up and said in unison "peanutbuttbutter- show bizz!" in the hilarious accent that you would have gained the ultimate approval of the most high Suckmaster. Our spouses quickly glanced at each other with a "what the fuck" look on their faces. I believe that this is the bond that will always tie us together. How fucked up is that?

But seriously, my brother is the most incredible person I know and I'm so proud of him. Seriously, if I could be like anyone, I would aspire to be like him. A successful military career as a Military Police Officer in the Army. (doing 2 tours in the Middle East), now has a cush job at the Chamber of Commerce where he rubs elbows with the major of our town and the most amazing dad to his 2 boys and a girl on the way. He is the dad that I wish our dad would've been. He is all around the best meat sack I know and I'm proud to be his sister.

LOVE the Suck, 3 outta 5 stars. You better keep sucking or I'll hunt you down and slap you with Chikatela's limp shamecock like the fuckhead you are (I really like that saying). Hail Nimrod!

-Amanda Craft

Thank you Amanda! And thank you Tommy for your service and for being an awesome brother and incredible dad and husband and just a damn fine meatsack.

Sounds like the two of you share a whole lot of laughs - how beautiful is that?

Love how much fun the two of you seem to have. And that you both seem to be terrific people. With dark as fuck senses of humor. My favorite kind of meatsacks.

Hail Nimrod to you both! (Albert Fish) “That’s How They Do It In Hollywood!”

And that’s all for today.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

VIII.Goodbye!

A.Goodbye!:

1.That’s all for this week, meatsacks. Thank you for continuing to rate and review this show! The barrage of 3 out of 5 reviews fucking kills me. I love how that has spread to all the stuff I’m a part of. And if you look at various review threads, it is confusing the shit out of new listeners. Haha!

More Scared to Death Tuesday night, more Is We Dumb on Wednesday, and more Incredible Feats Monday - Friday.

Be a better dad than Fun Frank this week and don’t knock on any stranger’s doors hoping to measure anyone or worse - and keep on sucking!

PRIMARY SOURCES:

Books: The Boston Strangler by Gerold Frank and The Boston Stranglers by Susan Kelly https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/07/11/timeline-main-events-in-the-case- of-the-boston-strangler

SerialKillerCalendar.com https://murderpedia.org/male.D/d/desalvo-albert.htm https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/the-future-of-the-city/archive/ 2010/05/the-mad-strangler-of-boston/57108/ https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/albert-de-salvo https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/07/11/victims-boston- strangler/CwbsZlSNcfwmhSetpqNlhL/story.html https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/07/11/timeline-main-events-in-the-case- of-the-boston-strangler https://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/07/11/timeline-the-case-of-the-boston- strangler/ https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/boston-strangler/ timeline https://www.huffpost.com/entry/who-was-the-boston-strang_b_10130720 https://web.archive.org/web/20071011225435/http:/foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/ desalvo.htm https://www.citethisforme.com/topic-ideas/other/ Boston%20Strangler-9703749 https://killer.cloud/serial-killers/show/85/boston-strangler https://www.geni.com/people/Albert-DeSalvo/6000000058334578144 http://welcometo1964.weebly.com/boston-strangler.html