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

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Worthington Wasn't First: 1921 The Yankee Lynch Mob

The mob arrived at the Barnstable County Jail and House of Corrections at 2:30 the morning of the Aug. 19, 1921. The jail's log for that night reports the crowd numbered 150. Only six men stood guard outside the jail, but they were ready.

Inside were three men : John Dias, Benjamin Gomes and Joseph Andrews. Wareham police had arrested them the night before in their home town of Onset, a small resort village in the town of Wareham, and charged them with kidnapping at gunpoint a man and woman.  According to police, the three men had abducted the couple late at night during a stroll on a Buzzards Bay street, and taken them to a secluded spot near the Cape Cod Canal. While holding the boyfriend at gunpoint, the three men repeatedly raped the woman.

The mob gathered in front of the brick jail in Barnstable Village. Witnesses later identified the rabble as workingmen and women from the Upper Cape, along with a sprinkling of summer visitors. Many in the crowd carried ropes and firearms. Their intention was to take the three men back to the remote section of Bourne where the alleged rape had occurred and hang them. As they walked up to the jail, the air was punctuated with shouts of "Let's get them!"

The only thing standing between the mob and the three men inside the jail was the chief warden, James Boland, and his five men. The officers fired riot guns over the mob's head, halting its progress. Boland ordered the mob to disperse or they "would be shot down like rats!"

For 90 minutes, the rabble milled about outside, but the chief warden's threat had cooled its bloodthirst. No further attempt was made to storm the jail.

Cape Cod had survived its first lynch mob, and thankfully, no one was hurt.

How could this have happened on Cape Cod? The reasons are complex, but indefensible. There was a perception by some white Cape Codders that the court system was corrupt, that it favored people of color. Dias and Gomes were Cape Verdean, as was Andrews' stepfather. A few weeks before the lynch mob, a Brockton judge had made national headlines by finding an African American man not guilty of a crime on the grounds that his people had suffered enough. Two years before, a Cape Verdean man from Onset had been tried for manslaughter after he killed a white man in a fight. In a plea bargain, the judge fined the defendant $200, then gave the money to the dead man's father. To people from Wareham and Bourne, it didn't matter that the dead man had provoked the Cape Verdean man and that the victim had died after being punched only once.

Even more significantly, all of Massachusetts was changing. It is no coincidence that this event occurred exactly halfway between the Emancipation Proclamation (which Lincoln attributed to Massachusetts Abolitionists) in 1863 and the desegregation of Boston's schools in the 1970s. Massachusetts had once been known as "The Negroes Paradise;" by the 1970s, it became known as the most racist state in the nation. Neither description was completely true, but both were true enough. And thanks to the New York Times and other national newspapers which printed stories about the lynch mob, the world now knew that Massachusetts was no longer a paradise for African Americans. And if Massachusetts, home of the Abolitionists, had fallen to racism, what hope was there for the rest of America.

The case against Dias, Gomes and Andrews was a significant turning point in Massachusetts jurisprudence. When the three men were arraigned in Barnstable Superior Court later that summer, the defense motioned to move the trial off Cape Cod. Never before had a judge granted a change of venue. Superior Court Judge Henry Lummus (later a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court) granted the motion, and for the first time in the history of Massachusetts a criminal trial was moved because of prejudice.

Joseph Andrews was 15 when the crime occurred. His lawyer attempted to get him tried as a juvenile, but Judge Lummus ruled that he was to stand trial with Gomes and Dias, both of whom were in their early 20s.

The trial of Dias, Gomes and Andrews was a sensation. Newspapers across New England blared every detail daily on their front pages. The first week appeared to go well for the defendants. The victim kept fainting on the stand (more than 30 times), and much of her testimony consisted of her saying "I don't know," or "I don't remember." Her escort testified that he had not been bound head and foot during the rape as had been reported in the newspapers. In truth, he testified he had been smoking cigarettes he had bummed from his captors.

 That first week the district attorney revealed he had conclusive proof that linked the three defendants to the stolen car that had been used in the abduction. A hat left in the abandoned car supposedly belonged to one of the defendants. In a scene eerily reminiscent of the O.J. Simpson trial three-quarters of a century later, the district attorney put the hat on Ben Gomes. Later, it turned out the hat belonged to the car's owner, a white man from Sagamore and the hat was withdrawn from evidence.

When the trial broke for the weekend, the prosecution had presented no evidence beyond the testimony of the witnesses that linked the three men to the crime. That all changed when court reopened Monday. The district attorney announced a surprise witness. George Snell, a Wareham man, who testified that he had seen the three men steal the car in Onset. Snell had not been scheduled to testify, and told the court that he had only told his story to the district attorney for the first time the day before. Try as they could, the defense lawyers could not shake Snell's testimony. The trial continued through the rest of the week, but the damage had been done. On Saturday the verdict came in -- guilty.

Dias, Gomes and Andrews were sentenced to 20-25 years. It was only because of their youth that they did not get a more severe sentence, the judge said.

One of the lawyers for the three men, William Lewis, believed with all his heart that the men were innocent. There was too much about the case against them that did not add up. He believed the alleged victims were lying to protect themselves. He fought for more than a decade for no compensation to free them.

In 1933, the governor pardoned the three men even though they had served slightly more than half the minimum sentence. What probably prompted the governor to grant them their freedom was a letter written by the judge who had sentenced the men. They had received a fair trial, Judge Henry Lummus wrote. "Upon the evidence the conviction in these cases was proper ... Yet I cannot say that my mind is free from doubt as to whether the true story has ever been revealed." To this day, it has not.

© 2008 Mystery Lane Press

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The Cape Cod Man Who Owned a Wonder of the World

Frequently I'm asked, "So what have you been up to lately?" My answer? The ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza in Mexico. For the past three years I've been working on a book about it.

Why Chichen Itza? Well, anyone who knows me knows there has to be a Cape Cod connection, and his name is Edward Herbert Thompson (right, pictured with a Maya "guide"). Here's his story, in brief (to  read a longer version, head over to my other site, American Egypt):

Every year more than a million visitors tear themselves away from the sand and surf of Cancun and other resorts along the shore of the Yucatan region of Mexico to visit Chichen Itza, the restored city of the ancient Maya. In July a worldwide poll named Chichen Itza one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. Tourists from all over the globe come to admire "El Castillo," the giant limestone pyramid; "The Great Ball Court," the largest sports facility of its type in the Mayan world; and the mysterious freshwater pool, the "Sacred Cenote." The lure of Chichen Itza as a tourist attraction is owed, in great part, to a Cape Cod man, Edward Herbert Thompson.

"I am an enthusiast by nature and so completely did I give myself to my work in the Yucatan that some of my contemporaries spoke of me as impractical," he wrote in his 1932 memoir, People of the Serpent. "I have squandered my substance in riotous explorations and I am altogether satisfied."

Thompson was born in 1857, and grew up in Worcester. He spent his summers on Cape Cod in Falmouth, Mass., where, as local legend has it, his father, Josiah, built one of the first vacation cottages. Josiah was in the brick trade and later moved the family s summer residence to West Falmouth, lured by the rich clay deposits he found there. He built a brick kiln and a lofty house.

During one of his summers on the Cape, Thompson fell in love with a ship captain s daughter, Henrietta T. Hamblin. The couple married in 1883 and settled in Falmouth.

In 1885, Stephen Salisbury Jr., a Worcester resident and son of one of the richest men in the United States, asked Thompson to join him for dinner. Salisbury had read a magazine article by Thompson in which he theorized that the Mayan ruins were the remains of the civilization that sprang from the lost continent of Atlantis. After the meal, Salisbury made Thompson a startling offer: Would the West Falmouth man be willing to move to the Yucatan to seek out ancient Maya sites and artifacts and conduct archaeological digs on his behalf? Senator George Frisbie Hoar, who was also at the dinner, promised Thompson a job as American Consul to the Yucatan. A few weeks later, Thompson, Henrietta, and their newborn daughter boarded a ship for the Yucatan, beginning what would become a 40-year adventure, one that would take him to the magical city known as Chichen Itza.

Thompson devised an ingenious method to get unlimited access to Chichen Itza for his archaeological investiations: He bought it. In 1894, he purchased for no more than $500 a nearby abandoned plantation that included, as part of the deal, the ruins of Chichen Itza.

The hacienda, like the ancient city, was in ruins. Thompson restored the main casa, and five years later he was the overseer of 45 servants and their respective families (to whom he became known as "Don Eduardo"), 300 cattle, 30 mules, and fields of sugar cane and fruit trees. In his spare time he excavated the ruins of Chichen Itza and made several significant discoveries.

In 1903 Thompson came up with his most audacious archaeological project. The ancient Maya had built Chichen Itza next to a large sink hole filled with water called a cenote. The cenote was believed sacred, a portal to the gods, and according to one early Catholic cleric, Maya from all over Mesoamerica would visit it to throw tributes and human sacrifices. Thompson persuaded Charles Bowditch of Peabody Museum at Harvard and Stephen Salisbury to finance an exploration of the Sacred Cenote.

The Sacred Cenote proved a difficult challenge to explore. This sunken pool was some 80 feet below ground level, and surrounded by steep cliffs. There was no easy way to reach the water's surface, and if one made it there, no way to investigate its depths. Thompson was undeterred. He imported a sturdy crane that supported a cable with a large dredging bucket. Over the course of six years he brought up thousands of artifacts, including many made of gold, copper and jade. The dredge also recovered several skeletons, which in his mind confirmed that the well had been the scene of human sacrifice.

Exposed!

In 1923 Don Eduardo revealed his dredging project to a correspondent from the New York Times. The reporter called it  "the most important find of archaeological objects ever made in the Americas." Three years later the Mexican government charged Thompson with theft of the artifacts, seized the hacienda, including Chichen Itza, and filed suit against Thompson  for 1.3 million pesos.

Thompson by that time was almost 70 years old, in poor health, and living full-time in West Falmouth. The lawsuit dragged on for years, and Thompson never returned to Yucatan. He died on May 18, 1935. In 1944 the Mexican Supreme Court ruled in favor of his heirs, who promptly sold Chichen Itza to a Yucatecan tourism operator.

The Peabody Museum eventually returned to Mexico much of the best  gold and  jade artifacts recovered from the Sacred Cenote. Some of the items are current exhibited in the museum. The legend of Don Eduardo has faded over the decades. The only "memorial" to Thompson can be found at Chichen Itza next to the washrooms. That's where the Mexican government put the bucket he used to dredge the Sacred Cenote.

Thompson is buried in Falmouth, but the only trace of the man who once owned Chichen Itza is Brick Kiln Road, named after the business he abandoned to roam the ruins of Mexico.

A longer version of this article originally appeared in Cape Cod Life magazine.

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Of Blogs and Wampanoags

Walter Brooks, who pays the bills for this joint, has been after me for years to write a blog. The Blogfather, as he is known, is very persistent.

He has no qualms about playing the guilt card. For years he has hosted my Web site, Cape Cod Confidential. He has always plugged my book by the same name. And like any organized crime boss, he remembers every favor he has ever done for you.

A few months ago, I asked him about setting up a blog for me, but on a topic that has little to do with Cape Cod. Walter wasn't interested. He is, if anything, single-minded and that has been the secret of his success. So behind his back, I created a new Web site and started blogging.

Thing is, I started to feel guilty. Walter had asked me to blog first.  And he's always been supportive of the stuff I write. When you add to the mix that I really like the old bastard (but not in a "wide stance" sort of way--not that there's anything wrong with that) I came to the realization I had to do something for him. We all have to do our part to help him make his next million.

I e-mailed Walter and asked him to set up this blog. For the first "issue," he threw up an article on the Tony Costa murders that I had written a few years ago. What you are reading now  is my first true blog entry. For as long as I can continue to do it, I'll post an article about crime and scandal from Cape Cod's past or present a historical perspective to current events on the Cape. Everything has happened before and nothing is new.

Take for example the current turmoil in the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. Peter Kenney  has done a yeoman's job exposing the machinations within the tribe behind the proposed casino in Middleborough. But there have always been factions fighting within the tribe. Hopefully you all read Jack Sheedy's post about William Apess. When Apess arrived in 1833, the Mashpee tribe was in turmoil. Many had abandoned the traditional meetinghouse, which was controlled by a white Congregationalist minister named Phineas Fish, and instead were following a lay preacher named "Blind" Joe Amos. Head on over to Jack's article to find out what happened. Go ahead. I'll be here when you get back.

(While you're out you might want to pick up a copy of Jack's latest book co-written with Jim Coogan, Cape Cod Harvest.  Or better, click on the book link which will take you to Amazon. Please note I get a cut of the sale. I have to make money around here somehow.)

Welcome back. A few years ago I arrived in Mashpee as a reporter. I was excited about the opportunity, because the town was home to the Wampanoags. I had grown up in Oregon next to the Warm Springs Indian reservation. A third of my school were members of one of the three tribes--Warm Springs, Paiute, and Wasco--that had been relocated to Central Oregon. I had immersed myself in their culture and their folklore, and was eager to do the same in Mashpee. But the first Wampanoags I met didn't seem very "Indian" to me. At least not the type of Indians I had known growing up. I began to wonder if these Wampanoags were like the kid I went to school with who would brag he knew all about being Indian because his great-grandfather was Cherokee. The kids from the Reservation would just look at him and shake their heads.

Then I attended a Mashpee selectman's meeting in May 1992. On the agenda was a nonchalant little item, "Shellfish Aboriginal Rights Discussion." Selectmen moved the meeting to the big room, so many people showed up. The audience was filled with Wampanoags. While they did speak of shellfish, most of the time they talked of being Indian in Mashpee. They talked of concerns over the inability to hunt, the effect of pollution on the rivers, and the blocking of ancient ways. After it was over, I was breathless. The same spirit that possessed those I had known in Warm Springs was also present that night. I felt ashamed that I had doubted them.

Little did I know that the events of that night would serve as a catalyst that today has resulted in the campaign to build a casino. But that is another story. And in the world of blogs, there will be plenty of time for stories.

 To read my 1992 article, click HERE for page 1, and HERE for page 2.

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The Tony Costa Cape Cod murders

The "other" Truro murders nearly 40 years ago
And it may have a new ending soon

FEBRUARY 1969 -- About seventy-five men were gathered at nine-thirty at the same place where the VW was last seen, some woods not far from the Old Truro cemetery. From there the search party would fan out into the cold, snow-dusted woods crossed by slippery trails and leaf-packed hollows.

[Truro Police Chief Harold] Berrio led half of the searchers to one side of the dirt road; [state police detective Lt. John] Dunn took the other side. An hour later, Berrio announced, "My side's clear" and prepared to leave.

Around eleven-thirty, on an embankment twenty feet from Old Proprietor's Road, two members of the Truro Rescue Squad came upon a depression some four feet long and two feet wide which had sunk eight inches below the surrounding ground; a piece of olive green cloth was protruding from the bottom of the hollow.

[State police Trooper Edgar] Gunnery used a pick to break open the crust of frost to a depth where the soil softened, turning sandy. When Dunn pulled the cloth free, he discovered it was the strap of a standard army duffel bag, with the initials "U.S." stamped on one side. An odor emanated from the empty bag and the broken ground at Dunn's feet -- "like something rotten," Gunnery observed, noticing a red spot on a hook connected to one end of the duffel bag's strap.

Gunnery dug deeper into the ground. At a depth of twelve inches, he uncovered a white object with the appearance of bone, which he suspected could be the portion of a deer buried in the woods by a hunter. Loosening the damp, clinging soil, Gunnery pried the bone free. Connected to its terminus was a human foot.

-- From In His Garden by Leo Damore

The saga of Tony Costa 

There was a time when, if you mentioned the words "Truro" and "murder," the first thing that came to mind was not Christa Worthington. No, in the decades before that tragedy, the first thing that would pop into your mind if you were a Cape Codder was "Tony Costa."

 Susan Perry's body was the first one found

The first body, Susan Perry, was discovered on Feb. 8 when police were looking for the bodies of two other women, Patricia Walsh and Mary Anne Wysocki. Perry had disappeared the previous Labor Day. Her body, which had been cut into eight pieces, was considerably decomposed. A month later police found the head and torso of Wysocki in a large hole not far from a cleared plot that had once grown marijuana. Not long after that, the rest of Wysocki's body and the corpse of Walsh were discovered. These bodies also had been mutilated with a knife, although they had apparently died from gunshot wounds. Underneath them was the dismembered, decomposed corpse of Sidney Monzon.

The four women had known, in varying degrees, Antone Charles "Tony" Costa of Provincetown. Costa, authorities learned, was intimately familiar with the area where the bodies had been found. It had been Costa who had been cultivating marijuana in the area. He also used the woods as a hiding place for his drugs.

What had led authorities to the woods in the first place had been the discovery of an abandoned Volkswagen van that belong to Walsh. Not far from the van police found a torn cover of Volkswagen van owner manual. Police laboratory tests identified Costa's fingerprints on the cover.

While the discovery of the bodies caused a sensation, it was apparently the district attorney, Edmund Dinis, who turned the case into a media firestorm. "The hearts of each girl had been removed from the bodies and were not in the graves, nor were they found," Dinis announced at a press conference. "A razor like device was found near the graves. Each body was cut into as many parts as there are joints." Dinis also said that teeth marks had been found on the bodies.

Was he the "Cape Cod Vampire"? 

"The press is bad, but the tourists are even worse."When a reporter asked if this was the work of a "Cape Cod vampire," Dinis nodded. And with that, the media furor had suddenly been whipped into a frenzy.

While Dinis' comments made for great copy, they were all completely untrue. The hearts had not been removed, although some organs were missing from at least one of the bodies. No cutting device had been found, and the remark about as many body parts as joints was wild hyperbole, if not physically impossible.

Dinis managed to transform the murders into an international story. Press from all over the nation descended on Cape Cod. "The press is bad," Provincetown Police Chief Berrio said, "but the tourists are even worse."

Dead in his cell at 29 - suicide or murder? 

His lawyer attempted to paint him as psychotic, but Costa would have none of that...Antone Costa's "garden" had become a tourist trap (something that reportedly continues to this day). Curiosity seekers flocked to the Truro woods, hoping to find the graves or worse, one of the victim's joints that had been overlooked by police. Rumors of satanic worship, which persist to this day, began to shroud the case.

Costa was tried and convicted of two of the murders in May 1970. His lawyer attempted to paint him as psychotic, but Costa would have none of that. At the conclusion of his trial the alleged murderer gave a rational, intelligent speech to the jury that must have convinced them he was not only a killer, but also terribly sane. The judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his life at Walpole prison.

-- In His Garden

Costa never confessed to the killings, unless you happen to subscribe to Daniel Webster's belief that "suicide is confession." The closest he came to admitting his involvement in the deaths of the four women was in Resurrection, a "factual novel" about the killings that he wrote while in prison. According to Resurrection, Costa did not commit the murders; responsibility for their deaths fell to "Carl," a pseudonym that Costa used for a friend. Carl allegedly shot Mary Anne Wysocki and Patricia Walsh in the Truro woods. Susan Perry and Sydney Monzon supposedly died of a drug overdoses, one in the woods and the other in Carl's apartment. Both were dismembered after their deaths, Costa claimed, and buried later. In the case of the latter two women, Costa's novel claimed he had no involvement in their deaths other than the knowledge that they had happened.

Costa is buried in Provincetown in an unmarked grave next to his mother. There are those today who remember him. Some believe he was innocent, and that the real killer has never been captured.

Most of the information for this column came from Leo Damore's (on right) In His Garden, a true-crime book published in 1981 and currently out of print. In His Garden reprinted several sections from Resurrection, Antone Costa's unpublished "factual novel" of the murders. A small excerpt can found here.

[EDITOR's NOTE] Many Cape Codders very close to the Tony Costa case are still alive, some only in their mid-fifties, and new tales are now emerging which may turn Tony Costa into more of an "undertaker" than a serial murderer.

 Still others say Costa killed and additional two dozen women on the West Coast before the Truro murders.

For other stories of crime and scandal, visit Cape Cod Confidential ... 

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