The Boston Strangler (39 page)

Meanwhile, Bailey, having learned about DeSalvo from Nassar, talked to DeSalvo himself on Thursday, March 4. On Saturday, March 6, armed with a Dictaphone, he questioned DeSalvo in detail. The man, Bailey said later, confessed not only to murdering the eleven women attributed to the Strangler, but to killing two more: Mary Brown, sixty-nine, brutally beaten and stabbed in her Lawrence apartment at 319 Park Avenue on Saturday, March 9, 1963; and a Boston woman, about eighty, whose name DeSalvo could not remember. Nor could he recall the date. He thought it was in 1962. She had died, he said, of a heart attack in his arms.

Had the police said he sexually assaulted three hundred women? They underestimated him, declared DeSalvo. The figure was closer to eight hundred or a thousand, in recent years. His lifetime total, including those in Germany, he said, might well reach two thousand.

And no one could charge that he was imagining all this and cite, as proof, the hallucinations which had sent him to Bridgewater the second time. He had faked them, he declared, in order to fool Dr. Robey and the other doctors, because he had been told that by so doing he'd escape trial, be sent to Bridgewater, and after a few years, released. When he learned that wasn't so, he determined to tell the truth.

Lee Bailey, despite his youth—he had yet to celebrate his thirty-second birthday—was an attorney who had already made a considerable mark in Boston. A stocky, handsome man constantly in movement, he was born in Waltham, attended Harvard (entering at sixteen) and Boston University Law School, then served several years as a Marine fighter pilot. Enormously resourceful, charming or belligerent as the need might be, he was a dramatic performer in court, and nearly always the subject of controversy. Because of his love of electronic gadgets and his courtroom technique, one admiring Boston writer described him as “The Perry Mason of New England.” He lived with his wife and small son in Marshfield, thirty-five miles from Boston, in a fourteen-room ranch house which contained eleven telephones and an elaborate intercom system, and to which he commuted by car or private plane, depending on his mood. The legend on one door of his offices in downtown Boston read
INVESTIGATIVE ASSOCIATES
. He maintained his own staff of private detectives—each of whom was a lawyer—and communicated with them (and his plane, cars, and home) by two-way telephone and a shortwave radio system operated from his office.
*
The Dr. Sheppard case in Cleveland had challenged him and he had thrown himself into it, reportedly without a fee. Against all expectations he won Dr. Sheppard's release from the Ohio Penitentiary in July 1964 on an appeal claiming that he had not had a fair trial because of adverse newspaper publicity. Now, nearly a year later, pending final disposition of the appeal, Dr. Sheppard was still out of jail, living the fife of a free citizen, married to a German-born divorcée who had been his pen pal while he was in prison. Bailey had taken George Nassar's case, too, because it challenged him. Funds for Nassar's defense had been raised by Boston's “Committee for Reasonable Justice,” a group of citizens interested in rehabilitating criminals. Some of its members had originally helped Nassar win his parole. In defending Nassar, Bailey was once more fighting what seemed a hopeless case—an admitted killer charged with a second murder, before eyewitnesses. Now, through Nassar, Bailey found himself involved in perhaps the most sensational multiple murder case of the century.

Three weeks earlier, Bailey had told Detective Lieutenant Donovan that he had an informant who knew the identity of the Strangler. He would not reveal his informant, but asked Donovan to give him questions to ask the man so he could determine if it was a hoax. Donovan did so; Bailey returned a day or so later with what Donovan felt were “good answers”—answers suggesting that the man knew far more than he should. Donovan felt disturbed. He thought that even a man who had studied the stranglings could not so readily have answers to these questions.

Bailey revealed nothing. But Lieutenant Donovan learned that during this period, Bailey had visited his client George Nassar, at Bridgewater. When he returned he had the answers to Donovan's questions. Could Nassar be his informant? Was the Strangler, then, someone Nassar knew? Perhaps even a fellow mental patient?

As coincidence would have it, on Friday, March 5—the day after Bailey first spoke to DeSalvo—Detective Phil DiNatale, doggedly pursuing one lead after another, found himself checking one Albert DeSalvo, the Green Man. Tips had come to him from two sources. A neighbor of Patricia Bissette had reported a man in a green uniform prowling about the building the day Pat was murdered. Earlier, Andrew Palermo, Security Officer at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Phil of an anonymous telephone call from a girl complaining that she had been tied and sexually abused by an Albert DeSalvo, who lived in Malden. Phil talked to Cambridge police; he had read their inch-thick dossier on an Albert DeSalvo of Malden, ranging from a January, 1955, New Jersey indictment accusing him of carnal abuse of a nine-year-old girl (which had been nol-prossed when the mother refused to press charges) through his metamorphoses as the Measuring Man and the Green Man. What struck Phil, in addition to the M.O.—sexual assault plus use of nylon stockings as ligatures—was the discovery that DeSalvo's jobs were such that he was either off from work, or on a shift that put him on the street and so free to commit the murders at the day and on the hour
that every one of the eleven deaths occurred
. Why had DeSalvo escaped Commissioner McNamara's roundup of sex offenders in the early months of the search, and why had his name not been produced by Bottomly's computers? Because the official records identified Albert DeSalvo as a B and E man—not as a sex offender. Phil learned that an Albert DeSalvo of Malden was now at Bridgewater. Bottomly, interested in DeSalvo's dossier, sent Phil to Bridgewater with it Friday afternoon, March 5, to brief authorities there on the Attorney General's latest suspect. Phil wanted to ask DeSalvo where he had been the day of Patricia's murder, and also wanted to check the man's palm print against one found above the doorway in Ida Irga's apartment. Not much had been done with this because, unlike fingerprints, palm prints are not unique.

At Bridgewater Phil received a copy of DeSalvo's print. Did he wish to speak to the man? “Does he have a lawyer?” Phil asked. Yes, as of yesterday, his lawyer was F. Lee Bailey. Phil, knowing that as a result of a recent Supreme Court ruling, he should not question a suspect without his lawyer present, refused to talk to him. Even were the man to confess, the confession could be thrown out of court later. Instead he reported back to Bottomly.

It was the next day that Bailey recorded his interrogation of DeSalvo at Bridgewater. That night Bailey telephoned Lieutenant Donovan. “This is it!” the lawyer exclaimed. Could Donovan come down to his office and hear the story from the mouth of the Strangler himself?

Late that night Lieutenant Donovan, with Commissioner McNamara and Lieutenant Sherry, sat in Bailey's office until long after midnight, listening to the voice of a man whom Bailey identified as the Strangler. So that the police officials would not be able to identify the voice, and so be unable to testify against the man, Bailey varied the speed of the playback. But the voice was calm, authoritative, matter-of-fact, punctuated by the snap of fingers as the man would correct himself: “Now, wait a minute, no—I'm wrong. I took the pillow from the left side of Nina Nichols' bed, not the right … Yeah, there was a picture of Helen Blake's niece, I guess, on top of her radio. When you stand in her hallway, the bedroom's on your right, you look straight into the bathroom.…”

Not only this, said Bailey, but the man drew sketches in detail of each of the thirteen apartments!

What else did DeSalvo say?

He said the door leading into Patricia Bissette's apartment opened outward. That was true. He said she had a black jewelry box on the bureau, and Christmas packages on the bed. True.

He said he had a cup of instant coffee with her. A cup half full of coffee had been found in her living room—a fact that had not been published anywhere.

He said he killed Sophie Clark just after 2:30
P.M.
He remembered the day—December 5, 1962—because it was his wedding anniversary, and he had taken the afternoon off. A check showed he had reported working three hours that day—8
A.M.
to 11
A.M.

He said he had gagged Mary Sullivan, placed a sweater over her face, and raped her. He said that as an afterthought he inserted the end of a broom two or three inches into her vagina “to make it look different.” He had left a knife on the bed—he drew a sketch of it. The handle was accurately drawn but not the blade. He remembered the design of the headboard against which he propped her body, he said, and sketched it. It was accurate.

He said Anna Slesers lived on the top floor. Here he was wrong. Her apartment was one floor below. He got in, he said, by telling her he had been sent by the superintendent to repair a leak, and when she led the way into the bathroom, he struck her on the head from behind with a piece of lead pipe he had brought with him. He recalled a highly polished floor, either wood or linoleum, and a painters' scaffolding outside the window. When he entered, a portable record player was playing “long hair” music. He turned the knobs in front and the music stopped, but he did not think he'd turned it off completely. He got blood on his clothes so he grabbed a raincoat he found in the apartment and wore that when he left. Later he bought another shirt in an Army and Navy store. He also said he raped her. Anna Slessers' autopsy, however, was negative as to rape.

He said he first tried to strangle Nina Nichols with a belt, but it ripped in his hands near the buckle. A ripped belt
had
been found near Nina Nichols' body, but that fact had appeared in the newspapers. He said he pushed the neck of a wine bottle into her vagina. The color of the bottle, as he described it, was incorrect. The papers had printed that a bottle had been found next to her body.

He said he strangled both Jane Sullivan and Ida Irga but could not remember which he had done first. Jane Sullivan, he said, was a big, strong woman—“She almost got away from me”—who talked with a “from Ireland” accent. He described the position he said he left her in, in the tub, but tub and sink were incorrectly described.

Ida Irga, he said, was afraid to let him into her apartment because of the publicity about the Strangler. He said he told her, “All right, it doesn't matter to me—I'll come back tomorrow,” and began to go down the stairs, when she said, “Well, never mind, come in.” Actually, detectives pointed out, there was comparatively little publicity about the Strangler until
after
Ida Irga's body had been found. Then the panic really set in.

He said he had not planned any of his attacks. He had no idea who the victims were. He had usually pressed buzzers downstairs—whichever woman opened her door first, that was the one he chose.

As to the knot, the Strangler's knot—he had not attempted to “decorate” anyone. It was the kind of knot he always tied. He had used it when he tied the removable casts on Judy's crippled hip. He tied them with a big bow because she was a little girl and a big bow somehow made it more gay, more playful.

In all his years on the force, nothing in his experience had caused Lieutenant Donovan as much anguish and frustration as the stranglings. In May 1962, when Edmund McNamara had been appointed Police Commissioner, Donovan could say to his new superior, “We've had twenty-five homicides since the first of the year, and twenty-five homicides have been solved.” Then came June 14, 1962—and Anna Slesers. To Lieutenant Donovan, Chief of Homicide, each of the stranglings since had been like a personal assault upon him and his men, and he had lost nearly forty pounds since that date, literally spending his days and nights on the cases. Until this moment the most likely police suspect—however doubtful, however unsatisfying—had been Arnold Wallace, and Donovan took little solace from the knowledge.

Now, however … He and Sherry had heard the Dictaphone recording Saturday night. Next morning they hurried with Bailey to Bridgewater to see DeSalvo in person. The two detectives were impressed when they saw him. Since they were police officials and anything the man might say could be used against him, they exchanged no more than a hello with him. Albert's eyes were sharp; he shook hands with a firm handclasp. To meet Albert even for a moment was to realize how impossible it was to consider Arnold Wallace with any seriousness. Donovan, particularly, felt a surge of hope. “This man is the best so far,” he said to Sherry as they left. At home, he telephoned Bottomly and related what had happened.

Bottomly phoned Bridgewater and gave two orders: that DeSalvo and Nassar be placed in separate wards immediately and that DeSalvo have no visitors without the Attorney General's permission. Bottomly was upset. Donovan's phone call came just as he was about to call Donovan to tell him about their latest suspect, DeSalvo, and what DiNatale had learned. Now, Lee Bailey, who was not DeSalvo's attorney of record, who had not had anything to do with the strangling investigations, had gone to Bridgewater and without authorization recorded a “confession.” Bottomly was particularly vexed because his office had had an eye on DeSalvo months before, when he was first committed, and had asked Bridgewater then to give him special attention as a possible strangling suspect, as the hospital authorities had done with David Parker, and others.

Next morning Bailey learned of the order forbidding visitors to DeSalvo, and of an order from Attorney General Brooke that he—Bailey—was not to see Nassar.

Bailey, angered at being denied access to his client Nassar, who was soon to go on trial for murder, and to DeSalvo, who had asked him to be his counsel, moved into action on several fronts. He telephoned Irmgard for the second time, enlisting Charles Zimmerman, the polygraph expert, to speak to her in German, and then sent the following telegram to DeSalvo in Bridgewater: