The Naked City | Jan 14 2010 |
Here’s a January 1965 True Detective with a report on the Boston stranglings that had occurred from June 1962 to January 1964. At the time of this issue, a suspect had not yet been taken into custody, and the Boston area was still in a state of shock. But two months later, police would arrest Albert De Salvo and charge him with the crimes. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life, but was killed in prison by another inmate. All along, many had doubts he was responsible for all the murders. The Boston victims ranged in age from 85 to 18—an unusually wide span. And the modi operandi were different in some of the killings. With the eventual advent of genetic analysis, finding the answers to lingering questions seemed possible, so in 2001, De Salvo and one of his victims were exhumed and subjected to DNA tests. The results revealed that foreign DNA found on the victim did not match De Salvo. Which means the Boston Strangler—or at least a man to whom some of the Strangler’s crimes were attributed—was very likely never caught.