The Boston Strangler (23 page)

“Well, of course you psychiatrists relate everything to sex—”

“Did he try anything sexual?” Dr. Alexander asked imperturbably.

“Not the way you think,” Gordon replied.

“Well, what way?”

“Oh, the poor guy …” Gordon moaned.

“Why do you feel so sorry for him, Mr. Gordon?”

“Because he does things but they're not backed by reason, they're backed by ideas instilled in his mind by his mother—”

“How did he get into the Nina Nichols apartment?”

“It was a very nice apartment, a very neat woman, too neat. I'd be uncomfortable there.”

Dr. Brancale noted how difficult it was to get direct answers from Gordon. In the brief opportunity he'd had to talk with him before he was put under drugs, Gordon had been condescending. “You fellows can't expect me to conjure up psychic images in response to your questions,” he had said impatiently. “I get these flashes, but I can't push a button and make them pop up: they have to come by themselves.”

Now, the man on the couch was saying, “At one point in the apartment he took off his clothes.… He wants to be a little boy.” His voice became the singsong voice of a boy of five or six, crooning to himself, “To be a lit-tel boy again, to start all-ll-lll over again, a lit-tel boy …”

Dr. Alexander leaned forward. “How can you start all over to be a little boy?”

“You can't, but that was his hope.” The singsong came back. “To be a lit-tel boy, and free, so free-eee …”

Dr. Alexander was speaking almost into Gordon's ear. “Did he have an impulse to do something to the lower part of a woman's body? What was his interest there?”

“Well, this is where things start. He didn't try to do anything. He reads books and he knows—we're all married men here—this is the way he's born. He knows it. Nothing's come out right for him in his life, he wants to be reborn again, to start all over again …”

“Did he try to manipulate that part in any way?”

Gordon's words came very slowly. “Yes. He played and experimented. But he knew it wouldn't work. He was thinking, How could I be born from such a thing? It just doesn't seem reasonable because it's close … tight … narrow … confined. To-be-reborn-I-must-enlarge-this-thing. He'd do it with whatever was necessary, whatever was handy, broomstick, whatever …”

Was that the rationale for the molestation? The Strangler, in his strange sickness became as a small boy, thus, being innocent, having no guilt in his experimentation, and hoping, as a small child, to re-enter the womb and be reborn? Among Dr. Alexander's colleagues there were those who thought it possible.

“What color was the bottle?” one of the detectives suddenly asked. A bottle, as the newspaper had reported, had been found on the floor next to Nina Nichols' body.

“You ask the Goddamnedest questions!” Gordon was indignant. “Who cares what color. Green. I see green.” He was right. “A liquor bottle? I don't know.”

“Was there any ransacking of Miss Nichols' apartment?”

“Yes … I see a bureau. He's looking for something in it. It's a doll. And he thinks, If I can find the doll, I'll find the checks.”

What checks? he was asked. Was Gordon saying that Arnold, identifying his victim as his own mother, was hunting in her bureau drawers for the welfare checks he used to steal from her?

Gordon made no answer.

“Where was Mary Sullivan killed?” a detective asked without preface.

“In the bedroom,” said Gordon.

“Was anything left on her bed?” his questioner asked. Would Gordon say, Yes, a knife, a New Year's greeting card—facts he should not know?

He was silent.

“Are we coming through to you, Paul?” Mellon asked. “Do you hear us?”

“I'm thinking,” came Paul's voice, annoyed. “No, nothing on the bed.”

So it went, hour after hour. Among those who came to observe, and sometimes to question, were Bottomly, Donovon, and associates of Dr. Alexander. At one point Gordon spoke of a framed photograph of a small girl in a ballerina costume, hanging on the wall of Ida Irga's apartment. No one in the room could recall any reference to a ballerina photograph in the press. The little girl, said Gordon, reminded Arnold, when he saw it, of a doll his sister once had, years ago, and he took the photograph off the wall fondly. “Oh, he loved that doll,” said Gordon. “Arnold should have been a woman.” In those early years he mothered the doll, fed it, gave it a spanking, put it to bed—he'd cradle it in his arms, Gordon went on dreamily. But his mother always snatched it away, scolding him. “That's not yours, Arnold, it doesn't belong to you; it belongs to your sister.” Now, in Ida Irga's apartment, Gordon said, Arnold danced about the room with the photograph, hugged it to him, crying, “Oh, I love you, I love you”—then, remembering it was his sister's, not his, cast it on the floor, shouting, “I hate you, you're not mine!”

“Why was Arnold so angry at the ballerina?” Dr. Alexander asked.

“Because she wasn't real. He wanted to dance with it, wanted to make it do what he tried to make the women do—but pictures can't come to life.”

“Was that the doll he was looking for?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want to do with the doll? Put it in her vagina? So it could be born again?”

“You don't understand,” said Gordon with some agitation.

Dr. Alexander's experience with so-called ESP was that such phenomena were comparable to intuitive dreams in which nonessential details are never clear. Gordon's anger because the ballerina was not real—that was not the material dreams are made of, it was the material recollection was made of. Was Gordon, then, not acting as a medium but as himself; not tuning in, as it were, on Arnold's mind but simply remembering what he saw, and what he felt?

Dr. Alexander played a hunch. “Mr. Gordon, don't you think the man who has done all this wants to be caught, so he can be relieved of this terrible burden he carries—”

“No,” said Gordon.

“—and show how wonderful he is, and be relieved of this terrible burden he carries?” Dr. Alexander repeated.

“I want to throw up,” Gordon said.

“Think how wonderful it would be, Mr. Gordon, he'd be relieved of everything, he could be cured—” Dr. Alexander went on relentlessly.

Gordon began to choke. “Now hold on,” he said thickly. Then: “Can I throw up?”

“There's a bucket over there, Paul,” said Mellon. Dr. Alexander led the others out of the room so Gordon could be sick in privacy. To whom had his question struck home so sharply that it produced nausea? To Paul Gordon reliving the role of Arnold or to Paul Gordon as Paul Gordon? There was a real Arnold, but was the Strangler that Arnold—or was he “Arnold,” the other personality of this strange man now retching in the other room?

Later, they had coffee and sandwiches, all save Gordon, who slept. Then he was roused by an injection of Methedrine, which acted as a stimulant, and the questioning resumed. Now Gordon appeared to go into a mild automatic state in which he became the strangler of Sophie Clark, and actually carried on a soliloquy with his terrified victim before him; then he became the victim herself, all but paralyzed before her murderer, trying to speak in a gasping whisper …

That was set off when DiNatale asked how the killer got into Sophie's apartment.

“He was there all day, Phil,” said Gordon. “He had a fight with another girl the night before … This stuff is beginning to wear off. I want to reach another level, Dr. Alexander. We're really getting somewhere!”

The dose was adjusted; Gordon smiled, and lying on his back, waved his hands gently to and fro as one dreamily conducting a symphony.

“How did you know about the Chesterfield butts behind the door in the cellar?” Phil asked.

“I saw them in my mind.”

“What made Sophie come to the door and open it?”

“Ohhh … He's knocking on the wrong door. It doesn't open. She goes back into the living room, tense, nervous. She says to herself, ‘I wonder if I should have answered it.'
Bang, bang, bang! God damn it, open the door!
” Gordon writhed on the couch, he spoke sharply, dramatically. “He didn't say this but this is what went through her mind and this was the way she felt. Pom! Pom! Boom! Boom! Boom! He rapped, she opened the door, she can't close it because he has his foot in the doorway. As soon as she let him in she knew it was wrong … He's moving from one chair to another.” Now, in a girl's terrified whisper: “Oh, they won't be home for a while yet, what'll I do, where'll I go, I'm scared … What'll I make for him?… Well, anyway, she thinks, I haven't eaten yet, I got to eat. She starts to fiddle around in the kitchen, mainly banging dishes to make him think she's busy. Meanwhile he's sitting out there, not planning, just thinking, God damn it, she's a nice girl. Her hips impressed him—”

Phil realized that Gordon was now telling in dramatic detail what he had told him when they first met, months before.

“Then what happened?”

“The phone rang. She couldn't answer it—he grabbed her …” Gordon's voice became Sophie's anguished voice again: “I want to jab him but I don't dare, elbow him out of the way so I can get to the phone … Oh, if I could only get to it, tell them to come home early because I'm scared … If he'd only relax. He's not unattractive … But all he thinks about is himself, about sex …” Barnett, thought Phil, Lew Barnett, the Negro Don Juan … Gordon's voice was strong: now he was relating the story again. “He hit her on the jaw, under the ear, the broad part of the jaw, a sharp, quick jab, a lot of weight behind it.”

“How did he stop her from screaming?”

“He had something in his hand, a rolled-up cloth, it's dirty, he put it into her mouth …”

Sophie Clark had been gagged, but this fact had appeared in the papers. Now Gordon, as the murderer, was whispering to Sophie: “I don't want any noise to come out of this, understand? I've got you right now and you can do any God damn thing you want to but I don't have to listen to it. You're captured. I've captured you.” He giggled. “I fixed you. See what it's like to be imprisoned? You're like me. You can't get out. Hahahahaha! Like to suffer? See, I'll come back. You just go ahead and sit there. Think it over for a while. Go through what I went through for a while.”

During these surrealistic hours, Gordon appeared to undergo another metamorphosis: he was Arnold Wallace's mother, crooning endearments to her son; then, as Gordon himself, he engaged in a sharp dialogue with Arnold; then he became Arnold following his mother secretly one day to see where she went, only to discover to his horror that she was a prostitute, and in his fury, seek to kill her …

His voice came, a woman's voice, warm, caressing, motherly: “No, you don't want a girl like that, Arnold, you want a girl like old Mama, someone that really understands you. Mother knows. Sure, she knows …” Suddenly, sternly, in his own voice: “You shouldn't say that! You shouldn't say such things about your mother! No, that's not right, Arnold, you can't talk that way about your mother … Oh …”—sigh—“What will I do with that boy?” Now he had become Arnold's mother again. “They just don't understand that boy at all. You see how beautifully he does things … look at his beautiful hands. Ohhh, and he can be sweet. Arnold is
such
a good boy …” Suddenly: “Oh, Arnold, don't tell me that. Oh, don't tell me that, I'll cry, Arnold, don't do that”; Sharply, angrily: “Don't you do that, Arnold, don't do that!” He groaned. “Ahhhh … Ahhhh, no …”

“What's Arnold doing, Paul?” Jim Mellon asked.

“Oh, why did he do that to me! He shouldn't have! Oh, no!”—groan—“No, well they should have kept him there. Oh, poor boy—”

“What did he do, Paul? Did he do something bad?”

“Oh, God!” Still in a woman's voice, Gordon began to cry, chokingly, with tremendous emotion, almost seeming to break apart. Then unexpectedly, a piercing cry of anguish that almost brought everyone in the room to his feet. “It hurts!” He groaned, as one suffering excruciating pain.

Dr. Alexander asked gently, “What hurts, Paul?”

Had Arnold at this moment flung the word “Whore!” at his mother? Did this explain the Strangler's violent hatred of women, his desire to punish them—this awful vengeance he took against women brought on by this dreadful early experience of observing his mother as a prostitute?

But who was actually speaking? Arnold? Gordon interpreting Arnold? Gordon fantasizing how the Strangler might feel, and creating in his fantasy the scene between the mother and the son?

Again Dr. Alexander asked, “Paul, what hurts?”

Gordon's answer, out of nowhere, only added confusion to confusion. “You people are so mixed up … Take it easy. Don't get carried away. Did you ever die?” Then, “Wherever I was, she died … Arnold, that poor kid …”

“She died …” Did this mean that Arnold was killing his mother? Had the piercing cry of anguish been the cry Arnold's mother gave before she expired on the floor of her hospital room where the nurses found her? Or was this the cry out of Gordon's fantasies, stimulated by the drug?

One's mind swam.

At this point Gordon, who was woozy now, was helped to the bathroom, leaving the others pondering.

Dr. Alexander rose and went to the telephone. He had suddenly thought of someone who might be able to help them. He had himself been treating a girl believed to have been the only victim to have been attacked by the Strangler and escaped with her life. This was a twenty-nine-year-old German-born waitress who worked nights, and who will be called Gertrude Gruen. Shortly after noon on February 18, 1963, during a long period when the Strangler had not struck, a man knocked on the door of her apartment on Melrose Street. Gertrude, who had been ill with a virus, was in bed; she had taken a sleeping pill, and she rose, still not quite fully awake, threw a coat over her nightgown, and opened the door. The man, wearing a waist-length dark jacket and green slacks, said he had to fix a bathroom leak. She let him in: he would have to wait a few minutes, he said, until fellow workmen on the roof signaled him to turn off the water. Gertrude paid little attention to him, listening and answering him almost automatically; she turned her back, he suddenly leaped on her, caught her throat in the crook of his arm, and tripped her to the floor. A strong, husky girl, she fought wildly for her life, kicking, biting, trying to disable him. She sank her teeth so deeply into his finger that he loosened his hold for a moment. She screamed, the workmen appeared at the edge of the roof, looking about, and he fled. She was too distraught to recall his appearance except vaguely: a dark face, black hair, about thirty to thirty-five, five feet nine or ten, weighing about 175 pounds. The experience had been so harrowing that Dr. Alexander had been seeing her. On the telephone he asked her to come down immediately and see if she could identify Gordon as her assailant.