Crime & Safety

Boston Strangler Development Reopens Wounds, Provides Closure

Authorities brought a 49-year-old cold case back into the limelight with their announcement of a major breakthrough in the Boston Strangler murders of the 1960s.

Written by Bret Silverberg  

Five decades after a string of crimes committed by a seemingly nebulous entity called the “Boston Strangler,” there’s hardly been anything close to a break in one of the coldest cold cases in local criminal history.

That all changed July 11, when state officials announced a major evidentiary breakthrough involving Boston’s most notorious murderer.

Friday saw the story move to an otherwise quiet cemetery in Peabody, where throngs of reporters waited outside the gates while officials dug up the remains of Strangler suspect Albert DeSalvo. Media helicopters roared overhead as they shot live video of workers digging up the grave.

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On Thursday, Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley said at a press conference investigators had found with “99.9 percent” certainty a new DNA link to Albert DeSalvo, the man whose admission to the string of early 1960s killings from had been met with skepticism by some.

Officials pulled a saliva sample from a water bottle of Timothy DeSalvo, Albert DeSalvo’s nephew, and said the Y chromosome matched that of Albert DeSalvo’s. Investigators tailed Timothy DeSalvo to get the sample, a move that infuriated the DeSalvo family. According to the Boston Globe, the family felt the move violated Timothy's right and was more evidence that law enforcement will never respect the family.

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This evidence, once compared with seminal fluid pulled from the body of Mary Sullivan, whose body was found in her Charles Street apartment on Jan. 4, 1964, could prove to push Conley’s percentage to 100.

The major break in the case required that DeSalvo’s body be exhumed from its grave in Puritan Lawn Memorial Park in Peabody July 12, marking the second time the body would be exhumed. In 2001, investigators exhumed DeSalvo to attempt to match a DNA sample with his brother, Richard, but that attempt to match DNA failed.

The July 11 press conference was emotional for Casey Sherman, Sullivan’s nephew and author of “A Rose for Mary: The Hunt for the Real Boston Strangler.” Taking the podium, his voice cracking, Sherman said this development could be the closure he, his family and the families of the 10 other victims in the Boston Strangler murders have been after since the 1960s.

“It’s taken 49 years for police to say legitimately that they got their man, and they’ll probably be able to say that pretty soon,”he said.

Attention for the case was widespread during the time of the incidents. DeSalvo, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a series of rapes in 1967, was killed in prison in 1973, thus beginning a lengthy period of mystery surrounding a case with staggeringly local ties.

Prosecutor Donald L. Conn Sr. tried the case that led to the DeSalvo conviction. His son, Donald L. Conn Jr., a Peabody lawyer and alderman-at-large in Melrose, said the recent findings have proved his father’s longtime belief that DeSalvo was in fact the right suspect.

“I know [my father] always believed DeSalvo was the Strangler,” Conn said. “It looks like the outcome is trending this way. If that’s the case, his beliefs are going to be vindicated.”

The final puzzle piece has yet to be put in place, however – Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, says investigators will have the results of the most recent DeSalvo DNA sample in about a week – until then, historians, legal experts and those with close ties to the case will have to wait to complete this chapter of Boston history.

But, as Sherman said, it’s a chapter many people care to see written.

"I've lived with Mary's memory every day, my whole life, and I didn't know, nor did my mother know, that other people were living with her memory as well," he said. "It's amazing to me today to understand that people really did care about what happened to my aunt, a 19-year-old girl who was heinously murdered in 1964."

More Coverage of Boston Strangler Developments:


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