The Boston Strangler (16 page)

Soshnick, with an embarrassed grin, picked up the set and turned over the photographs. He had included as a control a set of photographs of a solved murder case—a woman who had been strangled by her husband.

Peter looked at him fiercely for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Ah, you think, This Hurkos a faker. I show him up, eh?” He turned back to his work. His hand circled again, hovered over one stack, then came down hard on it. “This one, this top one, show dead woman, legs apart—I see her, one hand up, one down, funny way—Here, I show you.” He got on the floor, rolled on his back, spread his legs, crooked one knee, put one arm up, one down, turned his head sideways with a slight grimace on his face. “That woman like this!”

Soshnick had marked the pile by placing a cigarette on it. Now he turned the top photograph right side up. It was of Anna Slesers photographed as she had been found. There were at least twenty photographs in the stack: only three were of the victim, the other seventeen showing apartment scenes, entrances and exits, the building's exterior. But the top one was, as Peter said it would be, that of a woman precisely in the position he described.

Peter scrambled triumphantly to his feet. Again he brought his hand down on a stack: again he demonstrated the posture … once more the photograph was that of a victim—this time, Beverly Samans as she was found on her bed in Cambridge, one leg extended, the other hanging over the edge—exactly as Peter now lay.

Repeatedly Peter did the same thing.

“O.K., give me stockings,” he said. He moved them—the stockings, scarves, brassieres, and blouses—through his hands slowly, rubbing the cloth as though gauging the quality of a fabric. “I feel man who killed!” he cried. “I see him … he is not too big, five feet seven, eight—” he stopped long enough to whip out a pencil and make a mark on the wall “—he weigh a hundred and thirty or forty pounds.” He had a “spitzy nose”—a sharp nose, Jim Crane interpreted, in a whisper—a scar on his left arm where he had been hurt by machinery. Peter thought he had worked with some kind of diesel engine. “Something wrong with thumb—no feeling, bad skin, something—” Peter spoke swiftly, in spurts. “I see pictures like television,” he had said earlier. “They go by, I tell you as they go by.” He paused. “I see girl, she love to dance, not old, young girl …” Then, in excitement, “I see man—he come from hospital, then down basement—he with stick, he use stick first to switch around room and break curtains, then put stick in vagina, and he masturbate. I not sure she dead yet. I see very bad damage inside. Maybe she unconscious from strangling? I not sure she dead …”

“Did he personally assault her?” a detective asked quietly.

“No, no, I see masturbation, sperm on blanket, on body. Man wild …”

No one spoke. Peter's eyes were focused on the far wall, his thumb and two fingers of his right hand testing the cloth as his left slowly drew it through his hand. There was no doubt of it. He was describing, as though he had been there when she was found, nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan's body, with details known only to a handful of detectives. “One thing I not sure,” Peter was saying. “He come in back or front door? But he know way. I see bandages … He have pain in head, he hear things, he put bandages on head for pain … It hurts, he put stocking on head, it hurts, it hurts, he is screaming out …” Peter almost shouted: “Give me towel, I show you—”

A detective dashed into the bathroom and returned with a bath towel. Peter seized it, tied it tightly about his forehead and down across his ears. “This is what he do!” He threw himself on the floor and thrashed about, flailing his arms, crying in a piercing voice, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” He got to his feet. “This is what I see so clear.” Then, sharply, “What I don't see, I don't tell.”

There was no sound save the hum of the tape recorder and Peter's heavy breathing after his exertion. Still looking into space, he ran his fingertips over a blouse. “This man—he not sleep in bed,” he said. “No mattress, nothing. He sleep flat on floor.” “Why?” someone asked. “God,” Peter replied cryptically. “You mean to punish himself?” “I don't know, I don't know,” said Peter. “What's his complexion?” he was asked. “Not a colored man. White,” he said quickly. “But … he make it colored.” A pause. “He love shoes. He love shoes.” Why did he love shoes? “I don't know,” said Peter. “Maybe he masturbate in shoes. Something wrong with this man. He look in suitcase not for money but for shoes. The body walk on shoes. God don't walk on shoes. This is how man's mind works …” His words came swiftly. “When he kill her, she must have shoes on. But he must be clean to God. God walks barefoot, so he take off shoes, then kill her … He wash hands in toilet, never take bath, always wash in toilets, not sleep on bed, sleep on floor, after killing he sleep like God sleep, on iron, on steel, on pins—”

He stopped. “I need map.”

Soshnick grabbed a Boston telephone directory and tore out the folded city map bound in back. Peter drew a small circle. “I see man live here … Yes, he is priest—” There was a gasp from the detectives. “I see priest … no, he is not priest, he doctor from hospital, no, no—not doctor, not priest, he look like priest, he dress like priest, I see him with many priests.” He was speaking jerkily now, “I see him in white building, many windows—” The tip of his index finger moved again and again over the Newton-Boston area, in which were located Boston College, a Jesuit institution, the residence of Cardinal Cushing, and St. John's Seminary. “This man, he get soup, free soup, he no pay,” came Peter's voice. “He speak French, English—I heard French accent—he talk like girl, like this—” Peter's voice became a falsetto. Suddenly his face changed. He began to curse. “God damn, this no good son of a bitch, he a pervert!” Peter's wrists went limp, and he imitated an obvious homosexual.

He tossed the map on the bed. “I stop now.” He seemed utterly exhausted. Soshnick noted with surprise that though the room was not warm, Peter was soaked with perspiration. Now he slumped into a chair. Jim Crane produced a big Dutch cigar, and solicitously lit it for him. Someone else replenished his drink. Peter rested.

Soshnick had watched the man's remarkable exhibition with great interest. Having undergone twelve years of psychoanalysis, he felt qualified to face up to any type of human behavior. Now he thought, Careful. Don't be carried away. Don't attempt any value judgments. This man obviously has some type of sensitivity. Question: how far does it go? He knew nothing of Peter's feat the night before—describing him so accurately, sight unseen—because Bottomly had kept this to himself lest it influence Soshnick's objectivity.

At this point—it was now late afternoon—a detective arrived, apologetic for being late. His car had broken down on the way from Boston, he said. Peter perked up. He rose from his chair, cigar in hand, walked up to the newcomer, and pointed a deliberate finger at him. His voice was strong again. “You not late because of car; you late because you get fucked!”

The detective's jaw dropped.

“You think I kid you, eh?” Peter addressed himself to the entire room. “I tell you what happened, you laugh. His boss tell him two, three hour ago, ‘You go to Lexington, work with this fellow, this nut, this Hurkos.' He say, ‘Gee, boss, I got date, I don't want to work.' Boss say, ‘You got to work.' So, what you do?” He stared accusingly at the detective. “You call girl friend and say, ‘Honey, I got to work tonight, I can't see you,' and she say, ‘Aw, why you not come over on way to work?' so you go to her house, she very pretty girl, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, she divorce her husband, he give her house, you say, ‘I got to work with that mind reader, that faker, that Hurkos guy.' Right? Right?”

The other's mouth hung open.

“She say, ‘Before you leave, honey, you have cup of coffee.' You go into kitchen with her, she bend down to get coffeepot in cabinet, you grab her, you push her on kitchen table and you fuck her. Then you come here. That why you late. Right?”

There was absolute silence. Every man in the room seemed frozen in his place, all staring at the detective. If only he would laugh in Peter's face and walk away, so that all things would be as they were before. But he was like a man in shock. His eyes widened, and continued to widen until the whites showed all around, as if someone had placed toothpicks between his lids. He managed to close his mouth, then open it again to utter a choked “Ahhhhh … Ahhhhhh.”

Peter looked at him. “That girl pretty damn good, eh? You see, I no faker,” and walked back to his chair.

It was almost half an hour before the detective could recover. He sat in one corner, surrounded by fellow detectives, repeating to every question dazedly, “That's right! That's right!” He would not—or could not—say more.

Friday morning Soshnick and the detectives drove Peter into Boston to discuss with Bottomly what was to be done now. On the way, Peter, talking animatedly in the back seat, leaped up as though he had been stung. “Terrible, awful terrible thing happen here! Murder!” Soshnick brought the car to a screeching stop. They were on Commonwealth Avenue. Davis jumped out, inspected the number of the apartment house they had just passed, and returned. It was No. 1940—1940 Commonwealth Avenue. Nina Nichols had been strangled in this building.

The men drove the rest of the way in silence.

Bottomly, who had arranged to see them in his own law office, away from the State House, had not yet arrived and while they waited for him, Sergeant Leo Martin came in. “Peter, what do you make of this?” He handed him a letter.

Instead of reading it, Peter crumpled it in his fist, his eyes closed in concentration. Suddenly he sat bolt upright in his chair, and perspiration began to pour down his face. “By God, son of a bitch, he do it! This the one—he the murderer!”

Soshnick grabbed the crumpled letter and spread it flat. Everyone read over his shoulder. Printed in pencil and signed “Thomas P. O'Brien” (which is not his real name), it was addressed to the Boston College School of Nursing and dated a few days before. The sender's address, in the upper right-hand corner, was in the very area Peter Hurkos' finger had gone over again and again on the map.

It read:

Boston College School of Nursing

Boston College

Chestnut Hill

Newton 67, Mass.

c/o Nurse Director

Dear Madam:

I have a difficulty (please pardon this pencil script) perhaps you'll smile when you read about it; but I'm coming to you because I think you can help me.

I'm a BC grad, and when I look at the years I've been out of school, “I stroke my longish beard”; I've tried selling, off and on, for quite some time, and now I'm still in the selling field; I even made a do or die try to become a newspaper comic strip artist, only to fail, and before the year is out I hope to have another try at it: drawing a comic strip for kids, and such a comic strip that even grown-ups will like it.

My reason for writing now, is to say that I am a bachelor and for some long time I've wanted to meet a good Catholic nurse who might have graduated from nursing school about 1950; even an undergrad about that time would be O.K.; one who is working in or near Boston.

I've even had the idea of doing an article on this class, interviewing as many as possible, to learn their opinions and experiences, in training and in the field since graduation; then offering some nursing publication such an article.

Perhaps while interviewing, I might see a nurse who might like me as much as I'd like her, and if so, we could begin a friendship that might lead to the altar.

Chances maybe, however, that very few nurses of the year 1950 (grads) are eligible, or might even consider me eligible. O.K. If there are such, maybe there is a better way to meet them than the way I have suggested above.

I'd be glad to call at the office to see you about this, if you wish; at any rate, may I hear from you? If you'd like to, you could call Dr. Richard H. Wright, of 1190 Beacon St., Brook-line; he has known me for many years.

With every best wish,

I am,

Sincerely,

Thomas P. O'Brien

“Yes!” cried Peter. “He the man!”

The letter had come to Boston College, Sergeant Martin said, and they had turned it over to Boston police who had sent it to Homicide that very morning. Sergeant Martin had picked it up on his way over.

In the midst of the excitement, Bottomly, who only now had been able to get from under the mass of material pouring in on him at the State House, arrived. He immediately telephoned Dr. Wright, who was Cardinal Cushing's own physician. Yes, he knew O'Brien; he was a man in his fifties, with a history of mental illness; he had many problems. Bottomly put several men on the phones. The state police produced a record on O'Brien: as far back as 1962 someone had sent in an anonymous tip on him. A brother had attempted to persuade him to commit himself for treatment. O'Brien had briefly been in a monastic order—he had lived with the Trappist Monks at St. John's Seminary, but the discipline was too much for him. It was a French order; many spoke with a French accent; its members dressed like priests, they were fed bread and soup … Yes, he had worked as a salesman, a door-to-door salesman, of ladies' shoes. More specifically, nurses' shoes.

As each of these facts was elicited—mental illness, the French accent, the men like priests, the soup—those in the room grew more and more tense. Now Bottomly and Soshnick looked at each other in an uneasy silence. Door-to-door—this gave access to apartments. Nurses' shoes—was this the long-sought hospital link? Would not the older victims at one time or another have worn nurses' shoes?

Both Bottomly and Soshnick are fast-triggered men, and it was a question now which was the more excited. Soshnick grabbed Bottomly's arm, “Jack, we may have something—” Now half a dozen men were on the telephones. Soshnick was pacing back and forth, muttering, “We've got to find some way to pick him up, to have Peter see him—”