Cape Cod Confidential

Hollywood to Investigate Boston Strangler and Victim 11, Mary Sullivan of Hyannis

   Movie claims DeSalvo was not the only murderer

Hollywood is finally bringing Susan Kelly's carefully researched exposé into the Boston Strangler murders to the big screen.

Kelly's The Boston Stranglers: The Public Conviction of Albert DeSalvo and the True Story of Eleven Shocking Murders, first published in 1995, rewrote the Strangler legend.  Her meticulously researched book convincingly proves that the man once accused of the multiple slayings was guilty, in fact, of none. According to Kelly, there were actually several murderers who were responsible for the wave of terror that gripped Boston over 18 months in the mid 1960s, concluding with the murder of a Hyannis woman, Mary Sullivan.

The film will be directed by Brian De Palma, of “Dressed to Kill” fame. De Palma recently dipped into another murder case from the past with “The Black Dahlia” released two years ago, and was the director of the award-winning “The Untouchables” in the 1990s.

The movie will be written by Alan Rosen ("Head of the Class") from Kelly's book, and produced by Gale Ann Hurd.  This is the second Hollywood-produced movie based on the murders, the first being in 1968 with Tony Curtis as DeSalvo and Henry Fonda.

But according to Kelly, the movie was bunk. And one of the best examples of the multiple murder theory was the final victim, 19-year-old Mary Sullivan of Cape Cod.

Hyannis Woman Becomes Number 11
When Sullivan moved into a new apartment at 44A Charles Street in Boston on New Year's Day 1964, her biggest worry was finding a safe place to park her car so she could avoid getting a ticket. Four days later her roommates found her body, grotesquely positioned as if she was sitting against the headboard of a bed. Her clothing had been opened to expose her, and the end of a broom had been obscenely inserted into her. A greeting card with the legend "Happy New Year" had been conspicuously propped against one of her feet. Around her neck were two scarves and a nylon stocking - the calling card of the man that the newspapers called the "Boston Strangler."

Over the previous year and a half a mysterious phantom terrorized Boston, a fiend who passed through locked doors and windows to slay almost a dozen women. To this day no one has been brought to justice for any of the murders.

Police quit looking after Albert DeSalvo, a rubber factory worker from Malden who was being held on unrelated charges, confessed to killing Mary Sullivan and the other victims. Authorities never charged DeSalvo for the Strangler killings, but his confession apparently was enough to halt the multi-million dollar investigation into the murders.

More than 30 years after Sullivan's murder, Kelly reopened the Boston Strangler case in print. In The Boston Stranglers, Kelly deconstructs the notion that Albert DeSalvo committed even one of the strangulations. The author makes a convincing argument that the murders were actually committed by several men. She also identifies suspects for each killing.

The Real Mary Sullivan
Kelly's book also puts a face on each of the victims. Her examination into Mary Sullivan reveals her to be a complex figure in her own right. Unlike most of the other Strangler victims who were older woman, she was young and just starting out in life. She moved to Boston to escape her parents, and, according to Kelly, sampled life's pleasures freely and from that engendered a reputation of casual sexuality. And then she was dead.

"Hyannis Girl Strangled in Boston" roared the headline at the top of the Cape Cod Standard Times of Jan. 5, 1964. The newspaper described the condition of the victim, but did not contain mention of the broom or greeting card. Sullivan, the newspaper wrote, was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John T. Sullivan of 155 Sea Street in Hyannis, one of six children. She had been working in Boston for six months at Filenes and had recently changed jobs. She had just moved into the apartment at 44A Charles Street where her two new roommates found her body.

The article quoted the fiancé of one of Sullivan's roommates, who said the girls earlier had reported "someone had been on the fire escape outside the apartment." He added, "the girls were worried about a defective window in the kitchen of the apartment."

The fiancé would become the chief suspect in the slaying of Mary Sullivan. At least until Albert DeSalvo came forward and confessed to the killing.

The Real Murderer?
Several years after Kelly’s book was published, Sullivan’s nephew, Casey Sherman, wrote his own take on her murder, called A Rose for Mary. A Rose for Mary is really two books - a true crime narrative of the Boston Strangler murders and Albert DeSalvo, and a memoir of Sherman's efforts to reopen the investigation into his aunt's murder. He believed she had been killed by her roommate's fiancé, not Albert DeSalvo. In A Rose for Mary, Sherman describes how he sought out the fiancé and during the encounter told him that he suspected he was the murderer, that he had snuck into Mary Sullivan’s apartment to find evidence that his fiancée had been cheating on him. Mary caught him in the act, and for that he killed her.

Kelly’s book offers another explanation. She believes the fiancé knew of Mary's reputation as "easy." He approached her for sex, which he was not getting from his fiancé, and Mary turned him down. Enraged by her rejection, he killed her.

What the fiancé probably didn't know was that Mary was no longer interested in casual sex. She had spent the previous summer being highly promiscuous, but according to Kelly she was trying hard to change that reputation. She had rebuffed at least two men who before had engaged in sexual activity with her a few months earlier.

From the Perfect Storm to the Perfect Murder
Two years ago, Sebastian Junger, the author of The Perfect Storm, wrote his own memoir/investigation into the Strangler murders. In A Death in Belmont, Junger describes his own brush with the case. Albert De Salvo was working on his mother's house, and, he suggests, could very well have become his next victim. Instead, a woman named Bessie Goldberg was killed, but her murder was pinned on an African American man, not on Albert De Salvo.

Junger investigates the case and posits that it was actually De Salvo who committed the murder. His theory and his reporting have come under fire, especially by residents of Belmont who knew the vicim. Head over to Amazon and read the 11 pages of reviews to see for yourself.

The First Strangler Book
By far the best book on the Strangler murders is Gerold Frank's The Boston Strangler, published in 1966. This is the tome that introduced the world to Albert DeSalvo as the Strangler. Frank has been criticized for buying hook, line and sinker the supposed myth that DeSalvo committed the murders, but his book is more balanced and casts more doubt upon that theory than critics usually give him credit.

In 1967 it deservedly won the "Edgar Allan Poe" Award for best true crime book by the Mystery Writers Association of America (an honor won by Truman Capote the year before for In Cold Blood). Frank gives us a snapshot of Boston during the JFK years, when the city was undergoing a renaissance while at the same time under a siege of fear provoked by the Strangler killings. Frank was in Boston for much of this period, and he was lucky enough to document the wild twists and turns of the investigation. The Boston Strangler introduces the reader to more than a dozen suspects and an equal number of valid motives. There are also elements that border on the fantastic, including witnesses interrogated under truth serum, suspects hooked up to lie detectors, and two - count them, two -- psychics.

More importantly it is a book about Boston that captures the unique flavor of the city and of the state. For example, Frank recounts the over-the-top story of Peter Hurkos, a Dutch psychic who was engaged by the Boston Strangler task force. A few days after Hurkos completed his work in Boston (he identified a suspect -- not Albert DeSalvo), the FBI arrested him on unrelated charges of fraud. Most writers would have been content to leave the story at that, but author Frank points out that the timing of the fed's arrest prompted many in Massachusetts to believe that it was orchestrated as a smear against the lead politician in the Strangler investigation, Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke. Brooke was planning a run for the Senate, and according to Frank, one theory was that President John F. Kennedy and his family wanted their own man in the job but did not want to be put into the awkward position of running against Brooke, who was an African American.

The man Sherman accuses of the Sullivan murder appears in Frank's book. Frank spends a full chapter on the investigation into "Christopher Reid," Frank's pseudonym for the suspect. Frank never explains why the investigation into Reid was dropped, but he didn't have to -- Albert DeSalvo confessed to the murder and those in charge of the investigation believed him.

The Boston Strangler was published in 1966 and was an immediate best-seller, and the next year became a movie. The notion that DeSalvo was the Strangler remained the popular view, although according to Kelly, it was not a theory held by many in law enforcement, including those who investigated the Strangler killings. Now Kelly's book will be a movie in its own right.

(c) 2008 Mystery Lane Pre