Photo: Jodi Hilton / Getty Images
Mary Sullivan was raped and strangled to death in her apartment in Boston. The killer left a card that said “Happy New Year” propped up against her foot.
Sullivan would turn out to be the last woman killed by the so-called Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who terrorized the city between 1962 Y 1964, raping and killing 13 women.
DeSalvo’s serial killer career was formed at a young age. His father would bring prostitutes home and have sex with them in front of the family, before brutally beating his wife and children.
On one occasion, DeSalvo’s father knocked out his mother’s teeth and then broke her fingers one by one as she lay unconscious on the ground. DeSalvo himself was sold by his father to work as a farm laborer, along with two of his sisters.
At the end of the decade of 1950, as a young man, DeSalvo acquired the first of his criminal nicknames. He knocked on the doors of young women, claiming to represent a modeling agency. He told the women that he needed to take their measurements and proceeded to rudely fondle them while using his tape measure. His time as the “Measuring Man” came to an end with his arrest the 17 March 1960 and spent almost a year in prison.
When DeSalvo was released, his next string of crimes was much worse. For nearly two years, he broke into hundreds of New England apartments, tied up women and sexually assaulted them. He always wore handyman green clothes during his assaults and became known as the “Green Man”.
In 1964, DeSalvo started killing his victims. He strangled Anna Slesers with her own robe and tied the ends of it with a bow, which would become her trademark.
During the summer of 1962, DeSalvo raped and murdered elderly women in Boston. However, by winter he began to attack younger women, always leaving the rope or cord used to strangle the victim in a bow.
The police, who were hampered in their attempts to arrest the newly nicknamed “Boston Strangler”, even brought in a psychic to inspect the clothes of the victims. However, it was DeSalvo himself who allowed the police to close the case.
The 27 October 1950, after raping another young woman, he suddenly stopped short of killing her. When the victim called police and gave a description of her attacker, police arrested DeSalvo.
According to an agreement with prosecutors, DeSalvo was never charged or convicted of the Boston Strangler murders, but instead received life in prison for the Green Man rapes.
Even so, DeSalvo’s lifespan was short. He was stabbed to death by an unidentified fellow inmate at Walpole State Prison on 17 November 1973.
Keep reading:
- “The Yorkshire Ripper”: the British serial killer
Al Jazeera accuses Israel of murdering journalist “in cold blood” Death toll at the Saratoga hotel in Havana rises to 4351679423