The Boston Strangler (45 page)

Bending over the note pad, his forehead furrowed, he industriously sketched the apartment, complete to mantelpiece, TV set, sofas, tables. His straight lines were wavering, almost like a James Thurber cartoon. “This door is on the left, it's the bedroom at the end of the hall, right? On the back was some articles of clothing hanging. Over here a closet, then a little table, underneath the bed was a chest or something … So I'm in the living room, talking about painting the ceiling, working my way toward the bedroom.”

In the bedroom, Helen Blake pointed to one window. He was behind her. “While she was pointing I grabbed my hand right behind her neck; she was a heavyset, big-breasted woman—”

“Did you have to bend over to grab her?” Bottomly asked.

DeSalvo shook his head. “No … we were standing near the bed. She went down right away—she fainted, passed right out—”

“You hardly touched her, and she fainted?”

Yes, said DeSalvo. “I noticed she was wearing glasses, and plus I grabbed her and I held her very tightly, right?” He spoke animatedly. “I noticed a little trickle of blood come out of her nose, so I took off her glasses with one hand and laid them down, I didn't want to break them, I put them on the floor. Maybe it was on the dresser. She just slumped, went down on her knees, halfway against the bed, and just a trickle of blood coming down her nose …”

Was it light or dark in the bedroom, Bottomly asked? When Helen Blake's body was found all the blinds had been drawn.

“It was light because the shades were up,” said DeSalvo. “Later they were down, I can't explain it, I guess I done it, I pulled them down … So I picked her up—”

Since Miss Blake was a heavy woman, wasn't that difficult?

“Not for me,” said DeSalvo promptly, with the same note of braggadocio that must have grated on his fellow inmates. “I picked her up, took off her pajamas—the buttons popped—I took everything clean off. She was unconscious. I got on top, I had intercourse …” He paused.

Think carefully, he was told. He was to try to recall everything he did. Bottomly did not tell him that no evidence of sexual intercourse had been found by Dr. Luongo during Helen Blake's autopsy.

“Here's what I'm trying to say to you, sir,” DeSalvo said, half-eager, half-annoyed. “I do remember biting on her bust, possibly other parts of her body, too, her stomach, maybe, right?… I'm trying to see if I had intercourse with her … It's possible. I think I put a bra around her neck, if I'm not mistaken. A nylon stocking, too … I got it out of the right dresser drawer, right here.” He pointed to his sketch. “I went to the bathroom, wiped the sweat off my face …” He paused. “That stocking bothers me. Maybe it came from the bathroom. I'm not sure. But where
did
I get it?” He shook his head. “There's no use guessing here, I just want to tell you the facts.”

Then, “I went into the kitchen, got a long carbon steel knife—maybe twelve inches of blade—and tried to pry open the chest under the bed.” He stopped. “Wait a minute!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “This is it!” His voice became softer with emphasis. “I tell you, this—is—it!” He rapped on the table. “That bra and that stocking were right there, on top of her dresser. That's where I grabbed them from—” He stopped to sigh. “I've been in so many apartments, and won't lie to you, Mr. Bottomly, I'm having a very difficult time because I've been in over thousands—that's not exaggerating—and I am doing my utmost to give you the clearest picture I can without giving you false details which will hurt me rather than help me.”

As he attempted to pry open the chest, the knife broke in it. “I just dropped the handle then and took off,” he said. “I left her about ten-twenty
A.M.
What happened between then and four-thirty that afternoon, when I went to Nina Nichols'—” His voice lowered almost dreamily. “Well, I was just riding around, like in the middle of the world.” Somehow, then, he found himself no longer in Lynn, but in Boston, driving down Commonwealth Avenue, turning into the parking lot adjacent to No. 1940. He left his car and walked into the front entrance. “When you open the door there are bells to the right. I pressed two bells. First button was number thirty-something, on the third floor. I rang the bell, right? Nothing happens. I ring another one—I see the name Nina Nichols over it. Then the buzzer sounds. I guess she must have been the one that hit the buzzer. It rang twice.”

There was an elevator in the center of a circular staircase. He was going to take it but saw it descending with a woman passenger. He kept out of sight until she left, then he went up the stairs to the fourth floor. “On the way I saw two crazy sisters, two floors below Nichols—I guess on the second floor. I knocked on their door. I remember I'd rung their bell first downstairs. When I hit their floor the door was open—I met the first sister—she was batty as all hell.”

What did he mean, batty as all hell?

“Oh, she was talking real ragtime; I could see right away I wasn't making any sense to her. Behind her I saw the other sister—I guess it was her sister—back further in the apartment. So I kept on going up the stairs, and I heard, ‘Who is it?' I was high up, I saw when I looked out the window. I bore to the right. Nichols' door was to the right. She was standing at the door wearing a housecoat—something pinkish. She was wearing glasses.” He remembered “there was something funny about what she had on her feet.” Then it came to him. “Something different … like tennis shoes.”

“‘What do you want?' she asked.

“I explained I come up to check the windows for leaks.” The night before it had been raining.

“She said, ‘Who sent you here? Did the superintendent, Mr. Burke,
*
send you?'

“I said yes.

“She said, ‘Well, I don't know anything about it.'

“I said, ‘Look, you can call him up—'

“She said, ‘Oh, all right, go ahead—but make it fast, because I'm leaving—I'm on my way out.'

“I felt funny. I didn't want to go in there in the first place. I just didn't want it to happen. But I went in and I proceeded from one room to another. When we got to the bedroom I looked at the windows. She said, ‘What's wrong?' I said, ‘I don't want to wrinkle your curtains—will you check that window?' Then I told her, check this one'—and as she checked this one, she was turned away—that's when it happened. Because I grabbed her and she fell back with me on the bed, on top of me. I was in this position, my feet around the bottom of her legs—”

“You really had her pinned, then?” said Bottomly, in an attempt to maintain a man-to-man approach.

DeSalvo said, embarrassed, “I don't like to talk about this.”

“You've got to talk about it,” said Bottomly.

“I'd almost swear that it was here she took her fingernails and dug into the back of my hand—it didn't bleed, she did pull the skin—and then she stopped. You must have found skin under her fingernails.”

How did he know she got skin under her fingernails?

“Because it was off of me,” said DeSalvo. “She kept doing it until she … went.”

Then he slid out from under her, picked her up and put her on the floor—

“Was she alive at this point?”

There was a silence. Then DeSalvo replied in a suddenly hushed, suddenly humble voice of a small boy who has been rebuked, “I don't know.”

But he had told Bailey that Nina Nichols was still unconscious, that he had placed her on a rug there and had intercourse with her, then he had grabbed a belt, put it around her neck, and tried to strangle her, but the belt broke, near the buckle.

Had he left anything around her neck?

A silk stocking, he said, which he knotted three times.

Would he demonstrate the kinds of knots he tied?

Obediently DeSalvo bent over, untied his shoelaces, and tied them again. Bottomly noted it for the record: “He just tied his shoe by taking one strand and putting it twice over the second strand before pulling it tight and then tied a second knot on top of that to make it secure.” It was the Strangler's knot.

Now DeSalvo described the room, the furniture in it, the camera equipment all about—

“You searched the apartment,” Bottomly said. “What were you looking for?”

DeSalvo said hesitantly, “I didn't know at that time—probably anything.”

Money? “Possibly,” said DeSalvo.

“Checks? Ever pick up checks?” No, he did not, he said. Jewelry?

“To be honest with you, I never took anything from that apartment—from any of the apartments.” He corrected himself. He had taken that twenty-dollar bill from Anna Slesers' apartment.

Bottomly asked, “How come you didn't take any of those cameras? They're pretty negotiable.”

“I wasn't up there for money, for stealing.”

“But you ransacked the place.”

“That's right,” said DeSalvo.

“Well, what did you do that for?”

DeSalvo gave an embarrassed half-giggle. “That's what I'm trying to find out myself. I done these things, I know, I went through them—”

“Now, Albert,” Bottomly said, reasonably. “You're a professional B and E man, you've been in and out of a thousand places, you've got it down to a fine science, a work of art. If you hadn't got mixed up in this sex thing you'd probably still be doing it. Now, you went into Nina Nichols' apartment, you know how to go through a place, you knew what you were looking for, and you knew what you could sell.”

DeSalvo nodded.

“All right,” went on Bottomly. “You see a lot of valuable cameras—why didn't you take one?”

“Because to be honest with you, I just didn't want to take them.”

“Doesn't that sound strange to you?”

“Yes,” said DeSalvo. “It also sounds strange to me why I went into the apartment in the first place.”

“It doesn't sound strange to me,” Bottomly retorted. “This looked like an apartment which might have some valuable property in it—”

“Yes—why didn't I take it?” DeSalvo demanded. “That's what I'd like to know, too. I understand she had a diamond, too. Why didn't I take that?” He thought for a moment. Yes, he always ransacked the apartments after his attack. “I don't think I was actually looking for anything to steal. After this here thing happened, I think in my own mind I might have searched to make it look that way—that something was being taken. But I didn't have in my mind the idea of taking anything.”

He sketched the rooms, the position of the body. There were a number of liquor bottles an arm's length away. He picked up one bottle—“For what reason I don't know, I stuck the bottle in her.” He thought he left it in her—a wine bottle that might have had wine in it.

Questioned again to go over what he had done, DeSalvo squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. “These things, I'm ashamed of what I done. I know I inserted the bottle, but I don't want to talk about it now.”

“Why are you so reluctant about this?” Bottomly asked. “Because you don't understand it?”

That was part of it, DeSalvo admitted. “And because it's so unbelievable to me that it was really done by me. Why I done it I don't really understand, but I know at this moment that to do it—” He ended up lamely. “Well, I wouldn't.”

“You do now understand why you searched these places and mixed things up?”

Well, he knew he had said a moment ago it was to create the impression of burglary, but he only assumed this—he did not know the real reason.

“Do you remember ransacking the apartment, as you remember grabbing her?”

“No, I remember going through things but as to how I did it I don't recall. I know I done it.”

Bottomly thought for a moment. “Albert, tell me what happened to you when you grabbed Nina Nichols. What was going on in your mind?”

“You mean the feeling I had? Well … as her back was turned to me and I saw the back of her head, and—I was all hot, just like you're going to blow your head off—like pressure right on you, right away—I—”

“You just had to do something?” Bottomly prompted him.

DeSalvo all but stuttered. “I—I—to—to explain it or to express it, as soon as I saw the back of her head, right?—not her face, seeing nothing but the back of her head, right?—everything built up inside of me. Before you know it I had put my arm around her and that was it. And from whatever happened through that time, I can remember doing these things. As for the reason why I did them, I at this time can give you no answer.” He remembered doing what he did, he remembered biting her breast—

“Did you draw blood?”

“Oh, no—” almost shocked. “Nothing like that.”

After everything had been done, the telephone rang. “I was sweating like anything and when it rang I just took off. It was still ringing when I went down the stairs. I stopped on the stairs for a minute when I saw a woman getting into the elevator—”

Once outside the building, he walked to his car. Two elderly women, carrying packages, were coming from the parking lot. He passed them, he looked at them, they looked at him. He got into his car and drove home. “It was coming close to six o'clock then.”

That was Saturday, June 30? Yes. In his shamed, small boy's voice: “It was the same day I was in Lynn the morning Mrs. Blake died.”

The first session was over.

Bottomly and McGrath, driving back to Boston with Detectives Tuney and DiNatale, who had been forced to remain outside in an anteroom because of the legal technicalities, were impressed. Still, everything Albert had said
could
have been read in the newspapers or learned from some unofficial source.

Details of the murders—some unprintable—were in the very air; over the months they had been told, whispered, confided to friends, family, colleagues by any number of persons: the janitors, the police, the technicians on the scene: photographers, stenographers, chemists, artists. Anna Slesers' bath, her hi-fi partly turned off in the living room; Helen Blake's rugs hanging out her windows, the knife blade broken in her footlocker; Nina Nichols' cameras, her haste to leave that afternoon, the telephone call that had frightened DeSalvo—all. To be sure, his sketches were accurate. By his own admission, however, he knew the apartments in these neighborhoods: he had been breaking into them for the past seven years. Nothing he had said so far proved he had been in each apartment at the time of each murder.