The Boston Strangler (46 page)

And how explain the lack of evidence, in the autopsies of the Old Women, of sexual intercourse?

“Unless he's lying,” suggested Tuney. DeSalvo might use the term “sexual intercourse” to cover other acts which he was too embarrassed—at least, so far—to reveal.

They would check Army and Navy stores. Surely a clerk should recall a bare-chested man buying a shirt. They would seek out the “crazy sisters” in Nina Nichols' building. They should remember DeSalvo, perhaps even establish the exact hour they saw him continue up the stairs. DeSalvo said he had taken Anna Slesers' raincoat. They had an excellent check here. Mrs. Slesers' daughter Maija, two months before the murder, had bought two identical raincoats, one for herself, one for her mother. When her mother's effects were sent to her, the raincoat was missing. They would ask Maija, who lived in Maryland, to send hers to Boston: they would hang it on a rack with a dozen others, and challenge DeSalvo to pick out the one most resembling the one he had taken.

They would check, check, check. And Bottomly would have to hear more—much, much more.

At the next session, a few days later, Bottomly brought with him a folder of sixty photographs of women aged between forty-five and seventy-five. These were the faces of women derelicts, victims of other murders, alcoholics, taken from police files. Among these he had interspersed photographs of the eleven victims. All had appeared in the press with one exception—Nina Nichols. Her family had refused to release any photograph to the newspapers. Now, however, to assist Bottomly, they had given him one that he included in the album.

Would Albert go through these carefully and each time he recognized one of his victims, identify her?

Albert studied them, photograph by photograph. Yes, this was Anna Slesers. This was Sophie Clark. This was Mary Sullivan. This was Evelyn Corbett. (He always called her Corbett instead of Corbin.) He chose ten—correctly. Then he went through the album again.

“This one bothers me,” he said, tapping it with his finger. “I'm not sure, but it could be Nina Nichols.” Bottomly tensed. It was the Nina Nichols photograph. “She was frail, her hair was a lot grayer than it is here,” DeSalvo was saying. “Yeah, sure—this is her, okay, but she's a lot older.”

Bottomly placed the album on the floor beside him, saying nothing. The Nina Nichols likeness, her family had told him, had been taken five years before, but it was the most recent they had.
Well
, thought Bottomly,
I'll accept Albert for Nina Nichols
. Else how could he have recognized her? Yet she might have been pointed out to him before—he was forever in and out of those apartment houses. And Bottomly could not forget that Peter Hurkos, handling sealed manila envelopes, had accurately described the photographs inside them, and that Paul Gordon had pinpointed a pile of hidden cigarette butts and a nailed service door …

“All right, Albert,” he said aloud. “Whom do you want to talk about next?”

After a moment, Albert said, “Ida Irga.”

“When was that?” Bottomly asked.

Albert sat lost in thought. He began muttering under his breath. It was an astonishing scene to be repeated more than once: Albert sitting there, thinking half-aloud, running through the chronology of the murders he said he committed: “Slesers was June fourteenth, then Blake, Nichols … it had to be Saturday, the last Saturday in June, the thirtieth—that was Blake. July … Then two and a half weeks—around the twentieth—no, the twenty-first—it was hot weather, mid-August—no, the nineteenth, it's around the nineteenth.” He looked up. “It could possibly be a Monday,” he said. He fixed it as Monday, August 20.

He had been driving around aimlessly, he remembered, as always when this mood came upon him, and finding himself in a narrow street—it turned out to be Grove Street—he saw a place to park along the curb, and he did so.

“Did you know Ida Irga?”

“No, no, no. I didn't pick her out in advance. I didn't pick a building. If there was no parking place on Grove Street, if I'd parked on some other street, I'd never even've gotten to her. I just happened to walk into her building. I rang about four different bells—somebody buzzed the door, it opened, and I went up the stairs. Whoever came to the door first, that was it. She was the first to answer. When I get to the top of the stairs, she's on the landing, looking down over the iron railing, waiting for me. I told her I was going to do some work in the apartment but I could see she didn't trust me. So I said, ‘If you don't want to be bothered by me going in, I won't bother you.'

“‘But I don't know who you are,' she said. She spoke in a kind of accent—Jewish type. She was heavyset, about a hundred and sixty pounds, white-haired with streaks of black hair in it. She was wearing a black and white checked cotton housedress. We talked, and I said, ‘If you don't want it done, forget it. I'll just tell them you told me you don't want it done,' and I started to walk down. She says, ‘Well, never mind, come on,' and I walked in on her. We went into the bedroom to check the windows and when she turned around—I did it. My right arm around her neck, she went down—”

He paused. “She passed out fast. I saw purplish-dark blood, it came out of her right ear …” He stopped again. “… just enough for me to see.” His voice almost died away. “I saw it more clearly when I put the pillowcase around her neck, but I strangled her first with my arm, then the pillowcase.” He had intercourse with her—“I think I had intercourse …” He was not sure. Bottomly pressed him. Finally, reluctantly, “I would say yes.”

“You don't sound very positive to me,” Bottomly said.

“It's—to me—” DeSalvo mumbled. “To me it's sickening even to talk about this. It's so damn real—that blood coming out of her ear—”

Yet other details, he admitted, were blurred.

When Bailey had interrogated him, Bailey had remarked that Mrs. Irga, aged seventy-five, could not be thought of as sexually attractive. DeSalvo had bristled. “Attractiveness had nothing to do with it,” he had said. “She was a woman. When this certain time comes on me, it's a very immediate thing. When I get this feeling and instead of going to work I make an excuse to my boss, I start driving and I start in my mind building this image up, and that's why I find myself not knowing where I'm going.”

Now he told Bottomly how he looked through Mrs. Irga's apartment. He opened the drawers of a dark walnut dresser, “but there was nothing in them, nothing at all.” He recalled “putting her legs in a wide position, one leg in each chair. I got them from the dining room, they were dark straight-backed chairs; I moved them away from the table and put her legs on the chairs between the slats—”

“Were you thinking of anything?”

“No, I just did it.” He could give no further explanation.

Next was Jane Sullivan. It was two days later—Wednesday, August 22.

He drew a sketch of her building: “You have to step up, you walk inside, there's a little hallway, black and white tiles, with another step up. There's a buzzer—if they don't buzz the buzzer, I can open the electric lock downstairs—”

Albert stopped, as if waiting to be prompted.

“How?” asked Bottomly.

“All I need is a plastic toothpick. Why, my daughter once took her plastic ruler from school and slipped the lock of the door of our house. ‘I put this in and the door opened, Daddy,' she said.”

Jane Sullivan was a heavyset woman, about a hundred and fifty pounds, five feet seven, who spoke with a “from Ireland” accent. Her apartment was on the first floor.

“Albert, how did you talk your way in?”

“I did it fast,” said Albert. “She was in the midst of moving in. I saw all these cartons—things's weren't set up. Now, she's looking into a closet to show me something—that's where it happened. I'm behind her—”

Bottomly asked, “How did you get her to open the closet and show you something? What were you talking about? What kind of a line were you giving her?”

“As soon as I saw her, I had a quick look at the room”—he snapped his fingers—“I knew what I was there for. Whatever it came to, that was it. I said, ‘Have you got straightened out yet? I thought I'd drop in because I've got some other places to do. I'm going upstairs later this afternoon, I want to check a few things out to make sure they're in order.'”

Miss Sullivan wanted to know who sent him, but he talked fast, so she assumed he came from the movers or the landlord to check up on the job.

“I went through the place, seeing how things were. I looked into the parlor. ‘Boy, they didn't do a good job here,' I said. ‘No, they left a mess,' she said. Then she looked into that closet—and that was it. I was behind her, I put my right arm around her, we both fell back on the floor. She struggled and struggled, she was so big there was nothing to grip hold of—she finally stopped struggling. It took about a minute and a half—I put a scissors grip …” He was not sure whether he had intercourse with her. “She was an older woman, about fifty-five to sixty.”

Later Bottomly asked, “Why did you pick her up and put her in the tub?”

“The tub was filled with water,” Albert said slowly. “Maybe she was getting ready for a bath.” He thought for a moment. “There was nothing about Anna Slesers to interest any man—why did I do it? She was getting ready for a bath. Why didn't I put her in a tub when I put Mrs. Sullivan in a tub? Just like why did I leave a broom and a bottle? I don't understand it.” He sat, musing.

Wednesday, December 5. Sophie Clark, the Negro girl.

“Yeah, I remember that day. It was supposed to be a workday but December fifth is my wedding anniversary, so I took the day off.” He drove about, found himself on Huntington Avenue, parked his car, and walked into No. 315. “I was wearing green pants with a shirt and I talked to a woman in the building first—not Sophie.” He had knocked on the door, a woman opened it, he told her his name was Thompson.

“Can you describe the woman?” Bottomly asked, remembering Marcella Lulka's story of the man who entered her apartment that day, spoke about painting it, then frightened her by talking about her “form” and the money she might earn as a model.

“She was a colored woman, she wore glasses—this woman had a piano in the room,” said Albert. “I was trying to con her, telling her she was very pretty.” He left suddenly, just walked out—

“Why?” asked Bottomly. Albert thought. She had said something about her husband—“Now I know—she had a child, a boy, I think, maybe five or six years old.”

After Albert left Mrs. Lulka he walked into the other wing of the building, he said. In the lobby he noticed a bell under which were three names—Audri Todd, Sophie Clark, and a third he could not remember now. He wrote them on the back of his hand with a pencil, then mounted the stairs and sought out the apartment—4C. A tall, pretty, dark-skinned girl opened to his knock.

“She presented herself to me,” said DeSalvo. “A Negro girl, really beautiful, with beautiful long hair; her eyes were dark brown; she looked like a Hawaiian girl, she was so tall—” He seemed unable to get over the fact of her height. “About five ten—taller than me—at least a hundred and forty pounds. She was built solid. She had on a sexy whitish-type robe—she had black high heels on, I remember—it was very appealing, the way she was dressed.”

He told her that he was to do repair work in the apartment. “She didn't want to let me in because her roommates weren't there, but they would be home shortly. She said they were taking a course across the street in the YWCA and she was waiting for them.” He pretended that he knew them. Then, “I gave her fast talk. I told her I'd set her up in modeling”—it was the first time he had reverted to his Measuring Man technique—“I'd give her from twenty to thirty dollars an hour.” He talked himself into the apartment, and in the course of their conversation, said, “Turn around, let me see how you're built—” She turned around. “That was it. I grabbed her around the neck with my right arm, she was very tall, because she fell on top of me on the settee, my legs went around her legs—she didn't give me any struggle at all.”

She was unconscious. He had intercourse with her, he said, but she was coming to. “To keep her from screaming, I grabbed two nylons out of a drawer.” In doing so he knocked several packs of cigarettes to the floor. He was silent, and then, as so many times before, as if ashamed to hear his own words, said under his breath, “She was the one I had to tie really tight. She started to fight. I made it so tight, I couldn't see it …” He had put her on her back on the other side of a coffee table in the center of the room. “I ripped her clothes off her, ripped off her slip, and put it around her neck, then the stockings … Too deep …” He shook his head in dismay. “Whew!… So tight—”

Bottomly asked, “When was this?”

“My anniversary, my wedding anniversary,” DeSalvo said. “December fifth. I remember it very clearly.”

“What time of day was it? Do you remember that?”

“I do—around two thirty-five,” said DeSalvo.

“Why do you remember the time so clearly?”

“Because I'm right there now.” Then, as if he must explain: “If I sit back calm, and I'm not bothered, I can go way back and remember everything. I'm right there.”

“You talked to Sophie about modeling? Was she interested in becoming a model?”

DeSalvo looked into space. “It was too fast, too fast …”

“Then you struck her—”

DeSalvo, stung, interrupted him. “When you say ‘struck,' I don't like to hear that. She was very upset, number one, letting me in. She didn't let me in on that modeling bit. She wasn't a tramp; she was a good person. She let me in on the pretense of work. You got to look at her side, too. She didn't want to let me in, yet she did. She seemed
scared
. I'm seeing
her
feelings now too, you understand?” DeSalvo's voice sounded aggrieved, as if Bottomly, by his use of the word ‘struck,' impugned his humane sentiments. “We talked, maybe a minute—that's all. Then she turned her back …”