javascript:void(0)
In November 1973, DeSalvo asked to see his doctor and a reporter urgently. He had something important to tell them about the still-unsolved Boston Strangler cases. A night before their scheduled meeting, his body was found stabbed to death in the prison infirmary.
Since the security in the penitentiary was high, police suspected that the plan to kill DeSalvo must've been a result of cooperation between guards and inmates. Robert Wilson ? a member of the Boston mob confederation, the Winter Hill Gang ? was tried for murdering Albert, but his trial ended in a hung jury. According to Bailey, DeSalvo was killed for selling amphetamine under the mob's enforced price. His murderer had never been identified.
The Doubters
After his confession, anyone who knew Albert ? family, friends, employers, even his prison therapist ? couldn't believe he was the Boston Strangler. They thought of him as a decent, gentle family man who just happened to be a petty thief. Plus, there wasn't a single shred of evidence that linked him to the murders.
His psychiatrist, Ames Robey, and his last known victim's (Mary Sullivan) nephew, Casey Sherman, believed for years that Albert fabricated the confessions after talking to Nassar. They thought the two worked out an agreement to secure book and movie deals, which could generate money for their families.
In 1995, journalist Susan Kelly published a book about the killings and the wrongful conviction of Albert DeSalvo. In it, she makes a convincing argument of his innocence, pointing out the lack of physical evidence and other inconsistencies. Her most intriguing point involves two eyewitnesses who secretly went to view Albert behind bars.
Marcella Lulka and Gertrude Gruen ? the latter known as the only woman who survived an encounter with the Boston Strangler ? thought they were coming to identify one killer They had no idea police arranged a viewing to show them two: DeSalvo and Nassar.
Nassar entered the room first. When he spotted Gruen, he darted a sharp glance at her. She thought there was something frighteningly familiar about this man. Later she said, ?I realized how shocked I was when I saw him. His eyes, his hair, his hands, the whole expression of him was? upsetting.? When DeSalvo stepped into the room, Gruen felt confident ruling him out as her attacker.
Before her visit, Lulka had been shown a photo of DeSalvo but couldn't recognize him as the man she saw at one of the victims' apartment. As soon as she met him in person, though, she knew it wasn't him However, seeing the prisoner who walked into the room before Albert, her heart jumped. His furrowed face, dark eyes, and speculative gaze terrified her. She felt positive that Nassar was the mysterious stranger she saw before ? with one difference: his hair was a different color. She'd told the detectives that the man she'd seen had honey-colored hair, but Nassar's was black. He must have dyed it, she thought.
But, how could Albert recall the tiniest details in several murders? Well, according to his doctor, he had a photographic memory. In her book, Kelly emphasizes that DeSalvo memorized specific newspaper reports and regurgitated not only the accurate data but the misinformation written in them, too. Plus, his immense experience of burglarizing hundreds of apartments helped him describe the locations in great detail. If he combined that with what Nassar might have told him about the murders, his testimony must've sounded pretty convincing to the detectives.
DNA Testing Decades Later
DeSalvo's last victim, nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan, had been strangled and sexually assaulted with a broom handle. According to Massachusetts law enforcement officials, seminal fluids had been found and preserved on scene by a lead forensic scientist, Robert Hayes. Those samples were the only DNA evidence left behind in the Boston Strangler investigation.
In 2001, DeSalvo's body was exhumed for DNA, and tests were taken against the samples collected in '64. There was no match. This proved that Albert hadn't raped the victim but didn't rule out his involvement in her death.
In 2013, DeSalvo's body needed to be exhumed again for re-evaluation using new and advanced forensic testing. In order to do this, the police had to make sure the Y-chromosomes in the DNA samples were a familial match to DeSalvo. To convince a judge to reopen the grave, they sent a surveillance expert to track down DeSalvo's nephew, Tim. They followed him to his worksite and retrieved a DNA sample, which was tested against the seminal fluids found in '64. The sample was a match excluding 99.9 percent of the male population from suspicion in Mary Sullivan's murder.
After the results have been announced, Sullivan's nephew said he's grateful that this evidence can finally bring him closure in her aunt's death.
The DeSalvo family's lawyer, Elaine Sharpe, thought otherwise. She claimed that Albert hasn't been legitimately identified as the Boston Strangler. His nephew had inadvertently provided the evidence for the search warrant that allowed the police to exhume the body thirty years after it was buried. However, Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Attorney General, dismissed her assertion.
Having the Last Word
In a 2018 interview with CBS, Nassar ? at 86 years of age battling terminal cancer ? denied every allegation that speculated he might've been the real Boston Strangler. He said that if he had known DeSalvo outside of prison and found out he was murdering innocent women, he would've given him a quick and painless death.
Today, Nassar is likely the last person alive who might know if DeSalvo really was the serial killer he claimed to be. Despite his abusive and traumatic childhood, the conclusive DNA evidence in Mary Sullivan's murder, and his own terrifyingly accurate confessions, doubt remains whether he was responsible for all the Strangler-homicides that happened in Boston in the 1960s.
One thing is for sure, though: he was a monster stuck in a human body.
Holly Palmer was just 23 years old, but she was well on her way to accomplishing her dreams of becoming a successful businesswoman. She had recently acquired the Greyhound and Continental bus line agencies in Granbury, Texas, and was in the process of renovating the small bus station in the fall of 1988. She planned to transform part of the station into living quarters for herself, and was also planning to open a T-shirt shop. She spent all of her free time on the renovation project, usually working late into the night.
The bus station was open during renovations, and Holly spent part of Saturday, November 26, 1988, busy with clerical duties. After buses stopped arriving for the day that afternoon, Holly locked the station and started working in the room she planned to turn into a T-shirt shop. Her boyfriend, Arturo Avalos, stopped by to check on her around 1:40 am on Sunday after he had been unable to reach her by phone. He walked into a bloodbath.
Holly had been born in Indio, California but had been living in Granbury for 11 years at the time of her murder. She had graduated from Granbury High School in 1983; while there, she had participated in band, drama, choir, and the speech club. She had also been a member of the National Honor Society. With her friendly and outgoing personality, Holly had been easy to like and made friends wherever she went. Before acquiring the bus station, she had worked as a waitress at a Granbury diner and was well-liked by everyone in the small town.
Holly had no known enemies, and the tight-knit community was horrified by her murder. Although Granbury had its share of property crimes, the bus station was located less than 100 yards from the county's law enforcement center. Holly would have felt perfectly safe working there late at night.
Investigators told reporters that they had been unable to determine the motive behind Holly's murder. Although they would later announce that there was some money missing from the bus station's cash box, it was unclear if it had been taken at the same time that Holly was killed. There were no signs of forced entry into the bus station, nor were there any indications that Holly had been sexually assaulted.
0 Responses to Tired Of The A/C Not Blowing Cold? Try The All New Portable A/C Unit With Freezer Cold Temperatures