Sylvester Stalom
HOLDING the skull of the monster accused of murdering his aunt and 12 others, Casey Sherman felt his blood boil with anger.
The journalist-turned-sleuth was re-investigating the case of the Boston Strangler, who raped and suffocated 13 women in Massachusetts during the Sixties.
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His work led to the remains of Albert DeSalvo, the man widely accepted as the serial killer, being exhumed to run DNA matches with his aunt Mary Sullivan.
She was the last and youngest victim during the Strangler’s two-year spree until 1964, targeting Boston’s female population indiscriminate of age, race and background.
The DNA test matched semen discovered on a blanket inside Mary’s Beacon Hill apartment, an area considered “one of the safest” in Boston and where she had moved just days before her death.
Casey, now 54, is still on the quest for truth 36 years on from first looking into the case and speaks out ahead of the new Disney+ film Boston Strangler, which is released on Friday.
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He told The Sun: “Anything that creates a conversation about the Boston Strangler case is a good thing.
“The victims here came from all walks of life.
“They were young, they were old, they were black, they were white. The youngest was my 19-year-old aunt Mary Sullivan.”
Casey wasn’t consulted for Disney’s retelling of the case – but hopes they “show respect for the victims” including Mary, who he describes as being “frozen in time at 19 years old”.
Instead, the film focuses on Loretta McLaughlin, a journalist at the Boston American Record, whose reports are believed to have helped to nail the Boston Strangler.
Portrayed by Keira Knightley, she’s credited with having discovered the murderer’s calling card – tying bows around victims with the dressing gown cords and stockings used to kill them.
While widely accepted as the serial killer, DeSalvo was never sentenced for crimes related to the Boston Strangler case.
In 1967, he was handed life imprisonment for unrelated robbery and sexual offences because there was no physical evidence that substantiated he was the serial killer.
DeSalvo became implicated after confessing that he was the Strangler to inmate George Nassar and later when probed by police admitted to the crimes.
‘Multiple killers’
But Casey paints another picture, claiming to “know for a fact” that there “was not one Boston Strangler but multiple” and believes DeSalvo sought to profit from his confession.
He told us: “DeSalvo was in jail without any means to support his family, he was a bad guy, he was a sexual predator, a conman and a thief.
“Killers and criminals could profit from their crimes and that’s exactly what DeSalvo did, he managed to secure a book and a film deal.”
The confession came before the Son Of Sam law, which was first introduced in New York in 1977 to prevent criminals from making money from their crimes.
One letter obtained by Casey, allegedly written by DeSalvo in 1972, discussed demanding “over $100,000 or no deal” for his book rights.
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In another, a year later, he spoke of his frustration at seeing little financial gain and promised “to clear my name” with a mystery disclosure he described as “a bomb”.
“In time you’ll understand what I am saying or trying to say, as it will happen in about a month or so…I’m going to drop a bomb!!” DeSalvo wrote.
“I’m sick and tired of people using me….they have did me wrong, and I haven’t gotten a penny from any of it.”
Mysterious death
Two weeks later, DeSalvo was found stabbed to death in Walpole prison infirmary, which raised questions for Casey.
He told us: “I interviewed guards that were on duty the night that DeSalvo was murdered. They told me point-blank that a well-known Boston underworld hitman stabbed him 19 times in the heart.
“He was able to get through security, six checkpoints, to get to DeSalvo’s wing in the prison infirmary, where DeSalvo thought he was protected and safe.
“He stabbed him 19 times in the heart and got out covered in blood and nobody saw a thing. Prison guards turned their back on the murder and were paid off to do so.”
Inmate Robert Wilson, who was linked to the Winter Hill Gang – famed for members including mobster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, was tried for DeSalvo’s murder but the jury was hung.
DeSalvo’s lawyer F Lee Bailey believed the supposed Strangler was killed for selling amphetamines and undercutting rivals.
‘Holy grail’ evidence
Casey’s doubts about DeSalvo intensified after discovering his “long-lost confession tape” in the later 1990s, which he branded “the holy grail”.
He claims there were numerous inconsistencies between DeSalvo’s account and the truth of the case, including claiming he strangled Mary with his bare hands.
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Casey said: “A re-autopsy performed on her body in 2000 revealed that her hyoid bone, a very fragile neck bone fractured in the majority of manual strangulations, was still intact in her body.
“My aunt was strangled with three ligatures – two scarves and a nylon stocking. He also claimed to have ejaculated inside Mary while raping her. His DNA was not found in her remains.
“DeSalvo claimed to have murdered my aunt in the late afternoon, but the re-autopsy showed that she was murdered in the morning, given the lack of food and liquid in her stomach.”
Casey’s investigation into his aunt’s death, which was turned into his 2003 book A Rose For Mary, led to DeSalvo’s remains being exhumed by police.
In 2013, Boston Police announced semen found on a blanket inside Mary’s apartment was a DNA match for DeSalvo.
Casey recalled: “The discovery of DeSalvo’s seminal fluid quite frankly was a big surprise. But I know he was somebody who gained access to the victims’ apartments after the crimes were committed.
Reporter who ‘nailed the Boston Strangler’
AS a young reporter Loretta McLaughlin was expected to cover fashion, cookery and women’s features.
Instead, she helped nail one of the world’s most infamous serial killers – the Boston Strangler.
She was the first to link Albert DeSalvo’s slayings of 13 women after following a hunch and discovering a pattern between the crimes
Without her investigations, police might never have connected the murders, which were initially written off as random acts of violence.
Now Loretta is to be immortalised by Brit actress Keira Knightley in a new movie about the intrepid reporter.
Loretta’s family met Keira and director Matt Ruskin on set near Boston and son Neil reckons she portrays his late mum perfectly.
Neil, 63, an attorney, said: “We met Keira during filming not far from Boston and she was wonderful, very gracious.
“Mum had a lot of determination. She was very smart and ambitious, hard-working and a lot of fun to be around.
“I knew from being reasonably young that mum and Jean covered this Strangler case and it was a very big deal, a very big story but mum very much kept work and home life separate and she never really talked about it to any extent until I was in high school.”
Oscar-nominated Keira was last week seen in the first trailer for the movie alongside American Ghostbusters actress Carrie Coon who plays Jean Cole.
Loretta, who died in 2018 aged 90, challenged sexism in 1960s newsrooms at a time when women were pigeonholed into writing pieces on cookery and clothes.
Assigned to the lifestyle desk, she became curious about the murders of four women in Boston in the summer of 1962 and begged her editor for time to investigate them.
Loretta discovered that many of the victims had been strangled by dressing gown cords and stockings which were then tied in elaborate bows – the murderer’s calling card.
By the time DeSalvo claimed his last victim in January 1964, Loretta and Jean had proved the cases were linked and piled pressure on a beleaguered police department to find the serial killer.
In 2013, DNA testing proved that DeSalvo had killed his last victim, teenager Mary Sullivan.
However, theories still circulate about whether he was responsible for all 13 killings.
But Loretta was always convinced cops had the right man.
In a TV interview, she said: “He had a super energy, he had a sexual drive that most psychiatrists said they’d never seen the likes of.”
Her son Neil said his mother was “ahead of her time” in forging a career that later saw her join the Boston Globe where she reported on the AIDS epidemic at its height.
He said: “People like my mother and Jean broke ground, along with the female journalists before then. They came into a situation they knew was going to be challenging and rose to that challenge.
“The sexism was real, although less so as she got older and rose in stature.
“She had a fantastic work ethic, was a wonderful person and a terrific mother and we’re hugely proud that her story is now being told.”
Boston Strangler is set to hit Disney Plus on 17 March
“The crime scenes were unsecured by Boston police – it took days for investigators to pull the 200 pieces of evidence out of the apartment.”
He claims Dr Ames Robey, a psychiatrist who studied DeSalvo in a state hospital and testified against him being the killer in court, revealed those details to him.
The now-deceased medical professional diagnosed him as a schizophrenic and said he was “a very clever, very smooth, compulsive confessor who desperately needs to be recognised”.
Casey added: “Ames Robery confided to me that DeSalvo had told him that he had been fascinated by the case and often visited the crime scenes while they were still being investigated.
“These crime scenes were open, reporters could come and go from the apartments and members of the public could too, even as all the evidence was being pulled out.
“DeSalvo was fascinated by the Boston Strangler case, so is it possible that he would have left his so-called ‘human stain’ at a crime scene while it was unsecured by police? That’s possible?”
‘I held DeSalvo’s skull’
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During the original investigation, DNA testing was unheard of but decades later, after samples were taken from the exhumed bodies, there was not a DNA match for DeSalvo on Mary’s body.
Casey was present for an initial exhumation in 2000 and recalled: “I held Albert DeSalvo’s skull in my hands, that’s how close you get to those cases.
“It was a surreal moment, it’s Shakespearean actually, and you know it got me angry… I was angry that DeSalvo’s lies had perpetrated the myth that he was the Boston Strangler.
“Because of his lies, he was able to manipulate others into believing he was the murderer and then the real killers of these women were left on the street.”
Casey suspects there were multiple murderers behind the Boston Strangler attacks
“There were several men committing these murders of these women, whether or not DeSalvo was part of that group that’s still to be determined,” he said.
“But I do know for a fact that there wasn’t one Boston Strangler, there were multiple, which makes this an even more terrifying case in my eyes.”
Casey’s quest to get truth and justice for Mary continues, but he says he’s “at peace because she is at peace” – in-part thanks to his discoveries.
Boston Police Department did not respond to The Sun’s request for comment.
Casey Sherman is a New York Times Bestselling author. You can find his book Rose For Mary: The Search For The Real Boston Strangler available to buy here and other works here.
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