The Boston Stranglers (28 page)

The friend described to Davenport Burton's problems growing up:

Burton felt rejected by a lot of people, the friend continued.

Burton remained incarcerated in Bridgewater for the spring, summer, and fall of 1964. He was given to periodic outbursts of violence that could be contained only by massive doses of tranquilizers. Robey was angry that Westborough had so badly misdiagnosed the young man in its judgment that he was suffering from a mere “personality disturbance.” That he had behaved sufficiently calmly to be released from Westborough was the result of Thorazine rather than therapy. The drug had simply masked his worst symptoms.

In October of 1964, Burton's lawyer requested that he be transferred from Bridgewater to the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, where he might receive more specialized treatment. The attorney wrote Robey that he had “been in receipt of numerous telephone communications from responsible persons at Harvard University who are concerned about Mr. Burton.” He had also gotten a similarly anxious letter from the young man's father.

Robey wrote to Judge Viola that he would have no objection to Burton's transfer out of Bridgewater to an institution where he might be accorded more individual care. But Robey emphasized to the judge that security at Massachusetts Mental Health was less stringent than that at Bridgewater and that Burton in his opinion still “represent[ed] a very severe danger to the community.” His drug-dealing had been investigated by the Secret Service and his psychosis, far from being cured, could not even be controlled. “It would fill me with a great deal of unhappiness,” Robey wrote, “if he were to be released, to then hear of more stranglings, either in this part of the country or in New York or California, the other two places to which he would be likely to go.”

Ultimately Burton did not go to Massachusetts Mental Health. His constitutional right to a trial prevailed and he was returned to East Cambridge jail to await a hearing before Judge Viola on December 14, 1964. Robey was not especially happy with this decision, but there was nothing he could do to circumvent it. He later heard that Burton had gone back to New York State and enrolled in a small college near Albany.

Burton's stay at Bridgewater had overlapped with that of Albert DeSalvo by five weeks. And, in an ironic turn of events, Burton had been represented by Paul Smith, the attorney for George Nassar before F. Lee Bailey had taken over Nassar's case. Smith would also counsel Bailey when Edward Brooke enjoined the latter from visiting Nassar or Albert DeSalvo at Bridgewater in March 1965.

In late June 1967, Robey became director of the Center for Forensic Psychiatry for the state of Michigan. Throughout the summer he commuted back and forth between Ann Arbor and Wellesley, Massachusetts, where he and his wife and daughters made their home. Shortly after Robey's arrival in Michigan, young women in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti area began dying in various hideous ways. Over a period of two years seven of them, aged thirteen to twenty-three, would be sexually mutilated and shot, beaten, or strangled to death. One of the victims would have the branch of a tree shoved eight inches into her vagina; police fervently hoped that she had been dead, or at least unconscious, when this atrocity had been inflicted on her.

Robey's family had joined him in Michigan in October 1967. The murders of young local women continued. One day in early April 1969, shortly after the discovery of yet another violated female corpse, Robey picked up a copy of the
Ann Arbor News.
In it he saw a story about a rent strike being led by a University of Michigan student who happened to be named Peter Burton. “It was indeed the same Peter Burton,” Robey says. “Of all the screwy luck and circumstances to suddenly land up going out to the University of Michigan, where I was also working. So I reported to the Ann Arbor police detectives that I had no idea, that it might only be utter coincidence, but that Peter Burton was the one who at one time had been at least suspected, but then had had his charges dismissed and had vanished, for the first four or five of the Boston stranglings. The police—I thought it was very interesting—asked ‘By the way, when did you start out here?' I said, ‘In June.' They said, ‘That's when the murders started.' [It was actually early July.] Fortunately for me, all the murders had been committed on weekends [when the Boston murders of the older women had been] and I was going out to Ann Arbor on a Monday morning and coming back to Massachusetts on a Thursday night plane. And I had a practice here, which I was winding down, jammed into Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.”

Robey continues: “Nothing came of this. Peter immediately vanished [right after he spotted Robey walking across the university campus]. He was next noted to be out in Los Angeles just at the time the Hillside Stranglings started. Interestingly enough, they subsequently got somebody on one of the Ann Arbor killings. And while I don't think this guy confessed to the rest, it was sort of assumed because the modus operandi was so similar that he had committed the rest of them. And as you know they got two people out in L.A. for the Hillside Stranglings. But one wonders.” ****

Burton was reported to have bragged to university acquaintances that he had been a suspect in the Boston stranglings. And even before Robey had gone to the Ann Arbor detectives, he had come under police scrutiny. His drug activities and involvement with the local underground had brought him to their attention.

What has stayed with Robey all these years is the name of a street that ran through the county in which the Michigan murders were committed.

It was called Burton Road.

 

 

Another truly terrifying principal suspect in the deaths of Anna Slesers, Nina Nichols, Helen Blake, Ida Irga, and Jane Sullivan was a jug-eared, mentally defective grotesque by the name of Arthur W. Barrows (sometimes spelled Barrow), who once tried to kill his mother by throwing her down a flight of stairs. Barrows's mother survived the fall but did ultimately die in the hospital of a heart attack induced by suffocation. This occurred immediately after her son had paid her a visit. To quote from the police report, “she was found semi-conscious on the floor. At this time she was being fed and medicated intravenously. The hospital had taken normal precautions of putting sides on her bed to prevent her falling out. She was never able to tell the circumstances which caused her to fall because she died shortly thereafter. Some of the hospital personnel believe that her son threw her from the bed just before he left.” With calculated brutality, the intravenous equipment had been yanked from Mrs. Barrows and left to dangle uselessly.

This was in April of 1961. Convicted once before for assaulting his mother, whom he regularly punched and kicked, Barrows had two other convictions on the same charge. In these instances, the victims were his sisters.

Barrows had once been employed as a door-to-door Bible salesman.

He was a large, shambling creature who, despite his gangly frame and awkward gait, was possessed of great physical strength. When the occasion demanded, he could move quickly and quietly in the sneakers he constantly wore. He was probably not nearly as stupid as his I.Q. tests indicated. He was profoundly psychotic.

To look at mug shots of Barrows taken during one of his various incarcerations in mental institutions (Boston State Hospital in Mattapan; Bridgewater) is to look at a face that in some subtle way seems almost extraterrestrial. None of the features quite appear to fit the attenuated bony face and Dumbo ears. The eyes are unevenly set, the Cupid's bow mouth far too small for the enormous chin it surmounts and the long gaunt cheeks that frame it. He is less human than humanoid, as if hastily assembled from a kit by a child in another galaxy.

While wandering around New York City one time he had been picked up by the police and sent to Bellevue for a brief period of observation and treatment. His family finally committed him to Boston State Hospital, where he was a patient in 1962.

He was not kept locked up at Boston State, nor were his movements rigorously supervised. Ground privileges had been accorded him, which enabled Barrows to leave the hospital premises whenever he chose. He would disappear for days at a time, often breaking into the basements of apartment buildings at night to sleep behind furnaces or coal bins. On other occasions he'd take refuge in alleyways. Filthy and disheveled, he was a memorable sight on the streets—except when he chose to conceal himself. A police report comments that Barrows “was very adept at appearing and disappearing with great speed and stealth.”
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While AWOL from Boston State, Barrows would haunt various churches looking for food. Clergymen would give him meal tickets he could cash at coffeeshops and other inexpensive restaurants. He was a regular customer at some of these establishments, although, given his horrific appearance, probably not an especially welcome one.

A little before 10:00
P.M.
on April 9, 1963, a young modeling student, returning from a church service, was walking down Gainsborough Street. She passed the apartment where Anna Slesers had lived. Seeking a shortcut back to her dormitory, she entered an alley that led to Hemenway Street. And a nightmare vision rose up from the pavement before her.

The tall, cadaverous figure who had sprung so quickly out of the darkness grabbed the scarf the young woman was wearing and began to twist it, choking her. She kicked out at him twice and managed to scream despite the fact that her throat was closing. A young man, a student at one of the local colleges, heard her cries. He arrived at the scene to find the young woman lying unconscious in the alley. His approach frightened her attacker, who fled. Police took the victim to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was treated for bruises on her neck and throat.

On nearby Edgerly Road another young woman, a former patient at Boston State, was attacked. A grubby tall man confronted her, saying “You're the cause of all my trouble.” He grabbed her by the throat. She screamed and fought him, apparently hard enough to discourage him, for he released her and ran off down the street.

Both young women positively identified Barrows as their attacker.

Barrows was missing from Boston State on June 14, June 30, July 11, August 19, and August 21—the days Anna Slesers, Nina Nichols, Helen Blake, Margaret Davis, Ida Irga, and Jane Sullivan had been strangled to death. All these women were old enough to be the twenty-seven-year-old Barrows's mother, for whom he had borne an untrammeled hatred. It was noted that some of the elder strangling victims possessed a distinct facial resemblance to Mrs. Barrows. (Jane Sullivan and Ida Irga looked enough alike so that Ida's son Joseph nearly mistook a photo of one for the other.)

Barrows had worked in various menial jobs in local medical schools and hospitals—which put him in an environment that Anna, Nina, Helen, Ida, Jane, and Margaret also frequented.

The church on Gainsborough Street just a few doors down from Anna's apartment was one that Barrows visited frequently in his quest for meal tickets—up until June 14, 1962.

In December 1961 Barrows was briefly employed as a dishwasher in one of the dining halls of the Boston College campus. He was fired for making suggestive remarks to the female students. This dining hall was half a mile from Nina's apartment. The weekend of her death, a witness observed a man whose description greatly resembled Barrows furtively entering her building.

A number of the cellars in which Barrows spent his nights were in Ida Irga's neighborhood. A witness saw him in the area near the time of the murder—and many times prior to it.

One of the reasons Jane Sullivan had moved to Columbia Road in Dorchester was that she thought it would be safe. She had previously lived on a dark street, and had feared being attacked.

Barrows had once lived near Jane's building. And, on his forays from Boston State, he returned to the neighborhood quite often, seeking financial handouts at a church just two blocks from the murder scene.

He was a constant presence in the South End, where the only survivor of a Strangler attack, Erika Wilsing, had lived, and where he himself squatted in basements.

In 1962, Barrows's sister Claire was a resident of the House of the Good Shepherd on South Huntington Avenue in Jamaica Plain. Barrows would come to the home at night and repeatedly ring the doorbell. The person who answered it, Margaret Davis, would be murdered that July.

Barrows also reportedly told Claire that he was the Boston Strangler. His other sister later denied to investigators that he had said any such thing.