Albert DeSalvo - Controversy

Controversy

Lingering doubts remain as to whether DeSalvo was indeed the Boston Strangler. At the time he confessed, people who knew him personally did not believe him capable of the crimes. It was also noted the women allegedly killed by "The Strangler" were of widely varying ages, social strata and ethnicities, and that there were different modi operandi.

Susan Kelly, an author who has had access to the files of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' "Strangler Bureau", argues the murders were the work of several killers rather than a single individual. Another author, former FBI profiler Robert Ressler, said "You're putting together so many different patterns that it's inconceivable behaviorally that all these could fit one individual."

In 2000, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, an attorney specializing in forensic cases based in Marblehead, Massachusetts, represented the DeSalvo family and the family of Mary A. Sullivan. Sullivan was publicized as being the final victim in 1964, although other murders occurred after that date. Former print journalist Whitfield Sharp assisted the families in their media campaign to clear DeSalvo's name, to assist in organizing and arranging the exhumations of Mary A. Sullivan and Albert H. DeSalvo, in filing various lawsuits in attempts to obtain information and trace evidence (e.g., DNA) from the government, and to work with various producers to create documentaries to explain the facts to the public. Sharp pointed out various inconsistencies between DeSalvo's confessions and the crime scene information (which she obtained). For example, Sharp observed, contrary to DeSalvo's confession to Sullivan's murder, there was no semen in her vagina and she was not strangled manually, but by ligature. Forensic pathologist Michael Baden observed DeSalvo also got the time of death wrong — a common inconsistency with several of the murders pointed out by Susan Kelly. Sharp continues to work on the case for the DeSalvo family.

In the case of Mary Sullivan, murdered January 4, 1964 at age 19, DNA and other forensic evidence — and leads from Kelly's book — were used by the victim's nephew Casey Sherman to try to determine her killer's identity. Sherman wrote about this in his book A Rose for Mary (2003) and stated DeSalvo was not responsible for her death. For example, DeSalvo confessed to sexually penetrating Sullivan, yet the forensic investigation revealed no evidence of sexual activity.

The results of a 2001 forensic investigation has cast doubts over whether DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. The investigation raised the possibility the real murderer could still be at large. The investigation revealed DNA evidence found on Sullivan does not match DeSalvo. James Starrs, professor of forensic science at George Washington University, told a news conference DNA evidence could not associate DeSalvo with the murder. Sullivan's and DeSalvo's bodies were exhumed as part of the efforts by both their families to find out who was responsible for the murders. Starrs said an examination of a semen-like substance on her body did not match DeSalvo's DNA.

George Nassar, the inmate DeSalvo reportedly confessed to, is among the suspects in the case. He is currently serving a life sentence for the 1967 shooting death of an Andover, Massachusetts gas station attendant. In 2008 and again in 2009, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied Nassar's appeals of his 1967 conviction. In 2006, Nassar argued in court filings he could not make his case in a previous appeal because he was in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas in the 1980s and therefore did not have access to Massachusetts legal materials. The court noted that Nassar returned to Massachusetts in 1983, yet did not inquire about the case for more than two decades. Nassar also filed a motion for a new trial in Essex County, which was denied, as was his 2011 petition to the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari.

Ames Robey, a former prison psychologist who analyzed both DeSalvo and Nassar, has said Nassar was a misogynistic, psychopathic killer, and was a far more likely suspect than DeSalvo. Some followers of the case said Nassar was the real strangler and fed DeSalvo details of the murders so DeSalvo could confess and gain notoriety or through Nassar get the reward money to help support DeSalvo's wife and two children. In a 1999 interview with The Boston Globe, Nassar denied involvement in the murders, but said the speculation killed any chance he had for parole. "I had nothing to do with it," he said. "I'm convicted under the table, behind the scenes."

Nassar had previously been convicted of the May 1948 murder of a shop owner. Nassar was sentenced to life in prison in that case, but through his friendship with a Unitarian minister he was paroled in early 1961, less than a year before the Boston Strangler murders were believed to have begun.