- 2 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:03tonight a series of shocking murders terrorizes the city of boston each victim is found as
00:10strangled to death in their home with a telltale bow around their neck all of these victims are
00:17women they live alone almost immediately the suspect in this case was named the boston
00:22strangler law enforcement is under enormous pressure to find and stop this predator this
00:29is one of the biggest manhunts in history 13 victims over nearly two years he seems to be
00:36killing for sport it almost seems like the boston strangler is taunting law enforcement and the people
00:42of boston now we uncover the top theories surrounding one of history's most notorious serial killers
00:49they're looking at the usual suspects of mental patients people arrested for sex offenses the
00:55boston police have made zero headway in this case boston goes from being scared to being angry
01:02ultimately strangler is still out there potentially ready to terrorize and murder more women who is
01:28on a june evening in 1962 in boston's back bay neighborhood a young man named urris
01:36sleshers shows up at his mother's apartment anna slesters is a 55 year old divorcee on this sunday as
01:44usual her son swings by to pick her up for church but he stays at the door for 45 minutes
01:49knocking and
01:50waiting and she doesn't come out she's someone who rarely misses church she is also someone though
01:56that does suffer from bouts of depression so urus decides to finally knock the door down to go inside
02:03inside the house urus is met with a site that no child ever wants to see of their parent his
02:10mom is
02:11lying there on the floor by the bathroom with the belt of her bathrobe wrapped around her neck
02:15she's ice cold he calls the cops and he says my mother hanged herself he assumed that she had committed
02:22suicide because she'd been struggling with depression but police immediately felt like something was off
02:29the fresh baked muffins on the table there's a kettle on the stove this does not look like the scene
02:35of
02:35a suicide something else is going on anna has been sexually assaulted and the cord from the robe tied
02:45around her neck is tied in a bow this is not the work of a suicide this is a murder
02:51the crime scene
02:53yields no evidence there are no fingerprints and the neighbors didn't see or hear anything suspicious
03:00more than two weeks go by without any advances in the case but the killer is just getting started
03:09boston is sweltering retired psychotherapist nina nichols needs to escape the heat from her apartment so
03:16she decides to spend the afternoon shopping she comes back to her apartment at 5 p.m and she starts
03:23getting ready to go to dinner at her sister's house by 7 30 p.m nina still has not shown
03:28up to her sister's
03:29home for dinner the sister begins wandering and goes to the apartment and starts knocking on the door but
03:35gets no answer so she gets a janitor from the building to open up the apartment with a master key
03:40the janitor is shocked at what he finds nina's in her bedroom half on half off the bed with a
03:48nylon
03:48stocking wrapped around her neck her apartment has been ransacked but nothing valuable seems to have
03:55been taken nina nichols cash is still there it doesn't look like this is a matter of a robbery
04:01and there's no sign of forced entry so either it's somebody that the victim knew or someone who talked her
04:09into letting him in detectives note the similarities between this strangulation killing and the murder
04:16of anna sleshers that same day 15 miles north of boston in the quiet suburb of lynn yet another older
04:25woman is brutally killed police are called to the crime scene of helen blake a divorcee who's also been
04:34strangled she too was found with a nylon tightly wrapped around her neck and tied in a bow they also
04:41discovered that the apartment door wasn't damaged again indicating that there had been access to the
04:46apartment without force three murders two in one day same mo for all of them once you have a pattern
04:56like this there's going to be an immense amount of pressure on the boston police department there's kind
05:01of a hysteria that's building up about this media even goes one step further by dubbing the killer
05:08the boston strangler the police are at a total loss they have no sign of connection between any of these
05:17victims this is random crime that can happen at any time now the public was concerned that they had a
05:25serial killer on their hands and boston police weren't moving fast enough to figure out who this
05:31man was boston police commissioner edmund mcnamara is a veteran officer but he's new in the top job
05:42mcnamara has to take drastic action the city is in a panic on july 2nd he takes the extraordinary
05:49action of assigning every single detective on the boston police department to the boston strangler case
05:57thousands of women are taking up judo and ywca branches throughout the city are increasing their
06:03classes to deal with the new demand people all over boston start taking steps to protect themselves
06:08more dogs are adopted at that time for added protection the sale of deadbolts and extra locks
06:14on the doors go up significantly people are afraid the boston police department established a hotline
06:21where people could call and offer tips and leads and in addition to that they offered a five thousand
06:26dollar reward to anyone that could give information that might lead to the capture of this boston strangler
06:34but the hotline doesn't yield any promising leads july goes by without any additional murders
06:42then in august a pair of grisly discoveries reminds the people of boston that the strangler is still
06:50among them the fourth victim a 75 year old woman named ida erga is also discovered dead she's lying on
06:59the floor still in her pajamas with a pillowcase wrapped around her neck the next victim has a 67 year
07:05old nurse named jane sullivan she's found in her bathtub with her head underwater jane sullivan not
07:12only had been strangled but it took about a week for them to discover her body now that the death
07:18toll
07:18has reached five fear is turning to anger these are all older ladies living alone who have been killed
07:26by some fiend and the people of boston want to know why haven't the boston police department found anyone
07:35it is not until the end of 1962 that police finally focus on their first viable suspect
07:43the police will spend the next six months rounding up any known sex offenders in the area one of those
07:51is a man by the name of arnold wallace who's caught breaking into a tea shop in the back bay
07:56neighborhood
07:56in boston arnold wallace is not the real name of this 26 year old mental patient who had recently escaped
08:05from bridgewater state hospital for the criminally insane he has escaped five times in the last six
08:13months and all of the murders have taken place during times when he was out of the hospital
08:24records show that he once physically assaulted his mother and he obsessively talks about sex
08:31he readily confesses that he finds older women extremely attractive and one of his favorite pastimes is
08:38hugging them more wallace talks the more that leads investigators to think that he might be the boston strangler
08:46not everyone thinks it's as simple as that for one thing he's clearly not all there mentally
08:54he seems more goofy than menacing is he the kind of person that someone's going to open their door
09:02and let in is he the kind of criminal mastermind who's going to be able to not leave any clues
09:09behind at any of the places where these murders have taken place it seems kind of unlikely
09:16many at city hall push commissioner mcnamara to arrest wallace for the strangler killings
09:23but before he does a call comes in from boston's roxbury neighborhood
09:29there's a 20 year old student at the carnegie institute of medical technology named sophie clark
09:34who is also found dead by strangulation there are nylons that are used to strangle her around her neck
09:42and then they're tied into that distinctive bow that's become sort of the trademark of the boston
09:46strangler however while the other victims are older white women sophie clark is a 20 year old
09:53and she's black so investigators are confused she doesn't fit the bill and these kind of serial
10:00killers rarely deviate from their particular ideal kind of victim the idea that a serial killer is going
10:07to go after five victims in their 50s or older and then suddenly switch to a 20 year old it
10:14seems
10:14unlikely but at this point the police are kind of desperate over the boston strangler
10:22december 1962 police believe they finally have the boston strangler under lock and key
10:28a mental patient known by the pseudonym arnold wallace but while wallace is in custody
10:34there's yet another killing patricia beset is a 23 year old secretary who is going to get a ride
10:41to work from her boss her boss shows up doesn't get an answer at the door beset's boss goes back
10:49to
10:49work but when beset doesn't show up at the office he returns to her apartment he contacts the janitor
10:56asking for a stepladder to climb into the window he crawls into her apartment window and discovers her
11:03sprawled out on her bed but the covers are pulled up to her neck and when the covers are pulled
11:08down
11:09she has been strangled with four pieces of clothing you now have seven women who have been murdered in
11:16less than a year and still investigators do not have any real leads in this case the residents of
11:25boston are no longer sure if there's just one boston strangler out there or if there's a copycat killer
11:30that's not just targeting older women but younger ones as well
11:36in an effort to calm the city chief mcnamara promises to explore every possible tip or lead
11:44but that promise is tested when a man named paul gordon calls the hotline paul gordon is a local
11:51copywriter slash clairvoyant slash psychic he comes to the police saying he's got important evidence that
11:58he knows who committed this crime he says that he has these visions of the killing and what the
12:05killer looks like they bring him into the station and other officers recognize him because he's come
12:13into the station before saying he has information about various other cases they never took him
12:18seriously but right now they're taking him very seriously because he starts describing the killer as
12:26somebody with bony knuckles and he has this one curl that comes down his forehead and they're shocked
12:33because this matches arnold wallace's description he is describing arnold wallace to a t so they show him
12:42some photographs and he picks wallace out of the photographs gordon is taken to bridgewater state
12:48hospital to id wallace and not only does he say well that's the guy there but arnold wallace ids him
12:55says hey how you doing buddy they met before which is crazy detectives learned that paul gordon has
13:02actually gone to the hospital to visit arnold wallace in march long before gordon got involved in this case
13:11some of the department begin to suspect that gordon's trying to pin the murders on this innocent mentally challenged
13:18man because he's the murderer
13:24as the police continue to question gordon their suspicion grows he just knows so many details about these murders
13:32he starts giving descriptions of entryways and doorways and furnishings and colors of fixtures
13:39some of these things haven't been reported on some of these things haven't even been marked down in police reports
13:49there's a growing belief that gordon's psychic visions are actually the confessions of a killer begging to be caught
13:57when investigators look into gordon's background they don't find anything suspicious except for the times
14:03that he's come to the police station in an attempt to try to aid police officers who are working on
14:07cases
14:08that doesn't mean gordon's innocent police are eager to learn if he knows more details that might give him
14:15away as the strangler police decided that they were going to interrogate gordon under a use of a drug that
14:24they were using back in those days called sodium pentothal or the truth serum for six and a half
14:30hours investigators question gordon all the while psychologists are watching gordon to determine if
14:36he's actually telling the truth or not gordon stands by his story the entire time he says that he has
14:41nothing to do with the murders at all psychiatrists believe that gordon is telling the truth that he's not
14:47the boston strangler gordon has no real history of violence he doesn't really seem to be the
14:53perpetrator maybe he really believes he's a psychic but in the end the police decide that he doesn't
14:59seem to be the boston strangler it's been six months since the first murder every single lead every single
15:06suspect that the police get are dead ends they are no closer to solving this than they were after the
15:13first
15:13murder no woman is safe in the city of boston everyone is furious and terrified at the same time
15:25by the spring of 1963 there have been seven victims in the boston strangler case on may 6th a discovery
15:34just
15:35a few blocks from harvard square raises the death toll to eight when a 23 year old graduate student is
15:42found
15:42dead in her apartment beverly sammons is another victim of the boston strangler also sexually assaulted
15:49but she's one of the few that is a victim of violence beyond strangulation she stabbed 22 times
15:58four days later in new york city 200 miles from the boston strangler's home turf
16:03a wealthy divorcee meets a violent end in a times square hotel
16:10a woman in her 60s zanoria clegg who's described as very frail and thin who wears a scarf around her
16:18neck to hide cancer scars is seen at a hotel bar hanging out with a guy who's super tall and
16:24about
16:24half her age because they're such an odd couple everyone notices them this unlikely duo spends the
16:32afternoon getting drunk at the bar and then they go up to her room her body is discovered in the
16:38room
16:39two days later she's been beaten she's been sexually assaulted and she's had a scarf tied around her neck
16:46and she's been strangled to death the officer who arrives to investigate is new york police department
16:52detective thomas cavanaugh smooth talking and intelligent cavanaugh is the inspiration for the tv detective
17:01kojak cavanaugh as he's going through the evidence immediately concludes this is really really similar
17:10to the modus operandi of the boston strangler cavanaugh questions witnesses who saw the odd couple
17:17at the hotel bar turns out that the man that was with zanoria clegg that night was actually a regular
17:23at that bar in the hotel he's a 34 year old new york native by the name of charles edward
17:28terry
17:29seven days after the murder terry is tracked to a bar in greenwich village and cavanaugh has him
17:36taken in for questioning terry almost immediately confesses to the murder of zanoria clegg he met
17:43clegg at the bar they went upstairs for a sexual encounter he said that clegg then humiliated him
17:50and in a rage he strangles her with her own scarf turns out terry has his own share of run
17:58-ins with the
17:58law he was in prison for rape in maine and in december 1962 police look at him as a
18:06possible suspect in the strangling of a stewardess in new orleans louisiana so detective cavanaugh
18:13contacts the boston police department and he's like hey we got a guy here for strangling murder
18:17we think he could be the guy that you're looking for
18:25detectives come down in new york they talk to him and they do kind of a half-assed job terry
18:30denies he
18:31was ever in boston and the boston police reject him as a suspect critics contend they feared being
18:38shown up by cavanaugh it would look kind of bad for the boston police department if this case that
18:46they've been working on for months now is immediately cracked open by some slick new york police detective
18:55charles edward terry is arrested for the killing of zanoria clegg but just because the boston police don't
19:01want to pursue him doesn't mean he's not the boston strangler cavanaugh is not going to let this slide
19:06so easily cavanaugh assembles a crew of veteran detectives who go to boston and conduct their own
19:14investigation they find out that at one point in time terry stayed at two rooming houses in boston
19:22very nearby two of the stranglings they start talking to witnesses until the boston pd gets wind of what
19:30cavanaugh is up to and they tell him to go back to new york city cavanaugh considers going to the
19:36press and bad-mouthing the boston police department but while terry is awaiting sentencing in prison for
19:43the times square killing the boston strangler strikes again september 8th 1963 it's a sunday morning in
19:52salem massachusetts 58 year old evelyn corbin has just come home from church with plans to join her
19:59neighbor down the hallway for breakfast evelyn corbin never shows up to her friend's apartment for
20:06breakfast so the friend goes down uses a spare key to open the door and evelyn is found lying on
20:12her back
20:13face up with two stockings tied around her neck this is well over a year since the first murder
20:23the public is outraged boston residents once again are on edge because the strangler is still out there
20:34november 1963 it's been a year and a half since the boston strangler first struck
20:41nine women have been savagely murdered in their homes and investigators are still at a loss
20:47police don't know how the strangler gets into his victims homes they don't know if there are copycat
20:52killers at work all they know is that they're being outsmarted boston pd still has no solutions they go
21:01ahead and they double the reward money it's ten thousand dollars now per victim one million dollars in
21:07today's dollar value it's a huge sum of money and with huge sums of money come huge unintended
21:15consequences the plan to double the reward backfires on the boston pd they were bombarded with all this
21:24information people calling into police station alleging friends and neighbors and family ex-wives
21:31implicating their ex-husbands just bogged down the investigation and just further confused who is
21:36really a viable suspect here the hotline and the increased reward money get a lot of media attention
21:44but do nothing to stop the killer from striking again
21:48in late november 1963 23 year old designer and sunday school teacher joanne graff is found strangled to
21:57death in her home just 30 miles north of boston a little more than a month later the strangler kills
22:04again in the heart of the city mary sullivan 19 year old her first day living in boston she doesn't
22:13make it to day two she's found the day after she moved in strangled to death like all the others
22:20the
22:21same signature knot the strangler's knot is around her neck fashioned into a bow in between mary sullivan's
22:28toes is a new year's card as if the murderer is being cheeky with the police department like you
22:36can't catch me happy new year two weeks after mary sullivan's murder massachusetts attorney general
22:43edward brooke takes over the case from boston's floundering police chief
22:48it's difficult it's not impossible to say just when and if strangulation cases will be solved
22:57now we have the attorney general inserting himself from a state level into a city jurisdiction to bring
23:02this situation to a close he's an african-american attorney general in a mostly caucasian environment
23:08that being boston but the bigger conversation was not just the ag coming in but who he brought in with
23:14him brooke assigns the case to his good friend from law school assistant u.s attorney john bottomley
23:23bombley's first act is to collect all pieces of evidence every police report and he starts to
23:30collate them into a new machine he's bringing computer science into policing for maybe the first time ever
23:38this allows everyone working on the strangler case to share all the available information and evidence
23:46well bottomley's doing that brooke sets about assembling a task force it's experts in psychiatry
23:52in forensics in police work and it's people from outside of boston and you can imagine how the boston
23:59police department might have felt about that this is very unpopular among the police to them it really
24:05looks like a slap in the face while we have this fight going on between the special task force and
24:11the boston pd a smaller task force is looking into a rash of rapes in the boston area in which
24:19the
24:20victims are not killed victims report that a man came to their door dressed in green work clothes
24:26claiming to be a handyman sent by the landlord in the most recent attack a woman lets in a man
24:34who says
24:34he's there to fix a leaky pipe he sexually assaults the woman and then flees a few days later this
24:42same
24:43man apparently knocks on the door of this apartment but the woman refuses to let him in he eventually
24:49storms off but over the course of this he is seen by about a half dozen different witnesses
24:55the man is quickly identified as 33 year old albert de salvo police arrest him and take him to the
25:02station for questions he's first sent to bridgewater state hospital for a psychiatric evaluation the more
25:09the police look into him the more it looks like he could be the killer mr de salvo was found
25:17to have
25:17a very very long rap sheet hundreds of crimes from a very young age that all centered on sexual deviancy
25:29he was viciously assaulted by his father multiple times he claims he saw his father break his mother's
25:37fingers he claims his father would frequently bring home prostitutes and have sex with them in front of
25:44him this is a traumatized man and to the psychiatrist to the investigators this could be a person who could
25:52mature into a serial killer in some ways de salvo feels like a perfect fit to be the boston strangler
25:59but what they can't figure out is why a serial killer would all of a sudden start leaving his
26:03victims alive bottom lee conducts a series of interviews with de salvo who admits to hundreds
26:10of break-ins and sexual assaults but denies killing anyone nothing that he says and nothing that the
26:18detectives find actually links him conclusively to the boston stranglers crimes but curiously while he
26:25is in custody no other women are strangled in march of 1966 bottomly gets a surprise phone call from a
26:34lawyer claiming to represent albert de salvo the man on the other end of the line is f lee bailey
26:41who gains
26:42notoriety from defending a man by the name of sam shepherd who was wrongfully accused of murdering
26:48his wife the sam shepherd case was very famous it inspired a tv series in 1963 called the fugitive
26:56and a movie version of it that came out in the 1990s bailey tells bottomley that his client is
27:03prepared to confess to the boston strangler murders de salvo is willing to do this on one condition
27:10that none of these confessions can be admitted to trial the salvo is not going to be convicted for
27:16any of the boston stranglings while bailey never overtly explains why de salvo would confess to being
27:25the boston strangler massachusetts at this time does not have a death penalty for sexual assault but does
27:32have a death penalty for murder prosecutors conclude they have more than enough evidence to send albert
27:39de salvo to prison for life so they end up taking the agreement i think there's a lot of people
27:45who
27:45can sleep better tonight especially women the prosecutors know that they can close those cases
27:52and they can announce to the public we took a bad man off the streets for life
27:58in the summer of 1966 de salvo confesses not only to the 11 known boston strangler murders
28:05but also two more unsolved killings not previously linked to the strangler that of 80 year old mary
28:12mullen in june of 1962 and 69 year old mary brown in march of 63 in all de salvo confesses
28:23to murdering 13 women
28:25bottomley officially announces to the press that the boston strangler has finally been caught
28:30and the city itself celebrates the long nightmare is finally over de salvo's confession makes bottomley
28:39a hero but some come to doubt the authenticity of that confession later researchers obtain copies of
28:48bottomley's interrogations and they find he's not the most seasoned interrogator there are parts of the
28:56interview it seems like bottomley showing him photographs of the crime scene it's done with a
29:00bunch of leading questions when de salvo gets answers wrong he's asked the question over again
29:06to change his answer relatively quickly there are some people who doubt that de salvo is the guy
29:13ames robey a doctor who worked with de salvo at bridgewater state hospital just has his doubts he
29:19doesn't think de salvo fits the profile he thinks that de salvo just desperately wanted to be someone
29:24famous someone remembered after nearly five years and 13 murders authorities believe they finally have
29:35the boston strangler behind bars the fact that albert de salvo was arrested for a separate series of
29:42assaults doesn't matter as long as he's off the street that's good enough for boston's police force
29:47and its citizens there were two women who say they actually saw the face of the boston strangler those
29:56women were brought into the police headquarters to take part in a lineup of potential suspects
30:03in that group of suspects was de salvo one of them marcella loca was a neighbor of victim number six
30:13sophie clark marcella claims that she had an encounter with a man on the same day that sophie
30:19clark is found dead marcella loca said that that day someone knocked at her door she went and answered
30:26it and he says the super sent me here to paint the apartment marcella doesn't have a good feeling
30:31about this guy and she's like you can't come in now my husband is asleep in the other room and
30:36he
30:36flees the scene the other woman who joins to look at the lineup is a woman named gertrude gruen who
30:42says that a man broke into her house and attempted to attack her but she fought him off and he
30:47ran away
30:47interestingly the women failed to pick the salvo out of the group of men but they did both
30:53independently point at one person as the boston strangler and that person was george nassar
31:01when the police dig into nassar's past they find a checkered history of violent crimes
31:11george nassar is a career criminal starting with his first murder at the age of 15. he went to do
31:19a
31:19robbery at a store and he shot the store clerk four times in the chest he then is sentenced to
31:2520 years
31:26in prison and he's let out for good behavior at the third king in 1964 he goes to a gas
31:33station
31:33he puts the gas station attendant to his knees and shoots him execution style then he realizes that
31:40there's two witnesses a young mother and her teenage daughter are at the gas pumps he then goes toward
31:46them he fires a couple of shots at their car then runs out of bullets and he ends up taking
31:52off in his
31:52own car the testimony of the mother and daughter puts nassar behind bars and to add to the mystery
32:01police when they look into nassar's background find out that he actually was free and on the streets
32:06out of prison during the time of the boston stranglings which made him again a really interesting
32:13suspect after marcella lulka and gertrude drew and identify nassar as their assailant he's questioned
32:20about the boston strangler killings he was very clear that he knew nothing about the boston stranglings
32:27it was only until later when he was speaking with dr roby that he revealed the fact that he had
32:33heard
32:33about the boston stranglings from albert de salvo dr ames roby knew both nassar and de salvo from their
32:41time at bridgewater hospital for the criminally insane initially when de salvo is a suspect dr roby he
32:49didn't agree he's like he's not a murderer he doesn't have it in him but he did think that nasser
32:54could be the boston strangler he noticed that on several occasions that nasser and de salvo were
33:01talking in hushed tones by themselves it seemed like nasser was coaching him to say certain things
33:06in a certain way giving him information roby believes along with others that nasser shared intimate
33:14details of the strangler crimes so that de salvo would claim that he did it looking for glory and
33:22fame in being the boston strangler the theory goes that nasser would turn de salvo in for the reward
33:31and split it with de salvo to give to his wife and children the two incorrectly assume that they are
33:37eligible for that reward money but because they're convicted felons they are not but there are other ways
33:43to make money off these notorious crimes de salvo also knew that there would be books and movies
33:49written about this and that he wanted a cut of it it's nasser who connected de salvo to his defense
33:55attorney f lee bailey up until bailey came on the scene de salvo had been vehemently denying that he had
34:02anything to do with the boston strangler murders then all of a sudden nasser connects him with this new
34:07lawyer and suddenly he's claiming that he committed all of them it just seems a little odd when confronted
34:13nasser denies any involvement with the boston strangler crimes he says all the information
34:18i have came from my distraught fellow inmate de salvo who gave me all the gory details
34:26nasser is hoping for a retrial of his murder conviction he knows he's not going to get that
34:32if he confesses to more murders police finally decide that the case against de salvo is much stronger
34:38than the case against nasser and they kind of let it go both of them are locked up neither one
34:44of them
34:44are going to see the light of day again and in boston the crime stopped
34:52in 1967 albert de salvo is two years into a life sentence for sexual assault and even though police
35:00can't pin the murders on de salvo the boston stranglers killing spree appears to be over but not
35:08for long in july 1967 a 19 year old eastern michigan university student is found strangled to death in
35:19her apartment she was sexually assaulted and she was strangled with her own clothing this bears striking
35:26resemblance to the boston strangler murders over the next two years six more young women are raped and
35:33murdered in and around ipsalanti michigan all but one have clothing tied around their necks
35:41dr ames robey who was in charge of bridgewater state mental institute in massachusetts where does he live
35:49now he lives in ipsalanti michigan and he's the chief forensic psychiatrist for ipsalanti state
35:55hospital he is disturbed and unsettled at how closely these murders mimic the boston strangler murders
36:05there are fears that the boston strangler may have moved to michigan to resume his serial killing
36:12one day dr robey sees an article about a student protest and in that article is a photograph of these
36:19students protesting and he recognizes somebody robey recognizes a man known by his pseudonym david parker
36:27one of his former mental patients at bridgewater state hospital dr robey is like this is one of the
36:34people that i actually thought was the boston strangler he starts to think now parker's in michigan
36:40he's been a student at the university for the last couple of years could he not only have been
36:46responsible for the boston strangler murders but also these michigan murders
36:56parker planned to build and detonate a bomb in boston in 1961 and his erratic behavior sends him
37:04to bridgewater where he's put under the care of dr robey he's then arrested for beating his pregnant
37:11wife in harvard square she says she appeared for her life he was beating her regularly that at one
37:17time after strangling her he stops and says i choose to let you live parker also expresses a deep hatred
37:24and a deep distrust of women and for a while because of that robey believed that parker could have been
37:32the boston strangler up until de salvo's arrest but now dr robey realizes that once again parker
37:40is in the same vicinity where there are now a string of strangulations dr robey calls investigators
37:46and tells them that parker is here in michigan and he fears he may be the boston strangler and is
37:53killing again police interview parker who denies any role in the killings he's dismissed as a suspect but
38:02the cops soon get a promising new lead in the case an eyewitness comes forward to say that
38:08she saw one of the victims getting on a motorcycle that a man was driving a blue motorcycle a police
38:16officer who's on campus notices a young man fitting that description he actually knows this person john
38:23collins was in his fraternity and he was thrown out of the fraternity for theft this officer sees collins
38:29sitting on the back of his motorcycle trying to talk to young pretty girls walking through campus
38:35and that's how he's brought in a suspect they start interviewing people in his past and they see he's
38:40got a history of sexual violence past girlfriends said that he was abusive that he would choke them
38:46strangle them he was not a nice person at all police considered collins a prime suspect in these
38:52terrifying serial killings though there's only enough evidence to convict him for the last of the seven
38:59michigan murders some researchers find it hard to believe that collins is responsible for all seven
39:06murders that take place in michigan it has been suggested that perhaps he might have had an accomplice
39:11and that accomplice is david parker though the michigan murders may have nothing to do with the boston
39:17killings they keep alive the theory that albert de salvo may be innocent after all
39:26in 1973 de salvo puts in a call to roby he says i'm not the boston strangler and i'm ready
39:33to reveal
39:33to you exactly who is come meet me in prison he wants to speak to him face to face roby
39:40says he'll
39:40be there as soon as possible and that night de salvo is stabbed in his cell he's murdered the prison
39:50officials say it was a drug deal gone wrong but roby's not so sure was he silenced for what he
39:58was
39:58about to say about the strangler murders in 2013 investigators employ new technology in order to
40:06solve the murder of the boston strangler's last victim mary sullivan the police department reanalyzes
40:13the evidence that they have from mary sullivan they have semen samples from her crime scene
40:19de salvo is exhumed they get dna from his bones and from his teeth and now they have a definitive
40:25match his semen is on mary sullivan he is the killer of mary sullivan for many this is conclusive
40:33evidence that albert de salvo was the boston strangler but can we really tie him to all of those murders
40:39many others believe that this isn't a case that should be closed in fact it should continue to
40:45remain wide open to this day there's no hard evidence connecting de salvo to the other 12 boston
40:56strangler murders all of which remain officially unsolved many experts remain convinced that there
41:02wasn't a single boston strangler that there were probably multiple killers copying each other more than
41:09six decades later the boston strangler case still fascinates not only for what we know but for the
41:16mysteries that linger i'm lawrence fishburne thank you for watching history's greatest mysteries
Comments