By Magdalena Hernandez

A Rose for Mary:
The Hunt for the Real Boston Strangler
by Casey Sherman (Northeastern University Press; Boston; 2003; 220 pages; $24.95)

Nobel Prize-winning writer and erstwhile law student Gabriel García Márquez once wrote, “Justice . . . limps along, but it gets there all the same.” In the case of the Boston Strangler, justice took forty years to arrive.

That it’s here at all, we can in part thank Casey Sherman, WBZ-TV producer and contributing writer at Boston magazine, whose fascinating A Rose for Mary: The Hunt for the Real Boston Strangler recounts his ten-year odyssey to find his aunt’s true killer.

First, the facts. Eleven Boston-area women were murdered between June 1962 and January 1964. Because the murders all appeared to be strangulations, fears of a single “Boston Strangler” ran rampant.

Newspapers of the day seized the story, sensationalizing the sex-crime angle. Panicked citizens demanded that the Boston Police Department and then state attorney general Edward Brooke (later a U.S. senator) capture the Strangler before he struck again.

As it happened, the final victim was also the youngest, nineteen-year-old Beacon Hill resident Mary Sullivan, Sherman’s aunt. Sullivan’s wholesome good looks brought a particular urgency to the public outcry.

Curiously, the Strangler had selected a diverse choice of victims, ranging in age, attractiveness, and race. Gender was their only common denominator. Most serial killers tend to stick to one victim type: Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, for instance, chiefly preyed on prostitutes; Jeffrey Dahmer chose young boys. In addition, contrary to the day’s newspaper accounts, only some of the Boston attacks had shown signs of sexual assault.

At the time, at least one Boston Police investigator assigned to the case was skeptical of the unifying theory behind the Strangler. The author describes Jim Mellon’s thinking as he reviews evidence after Sullivan’s murder: “Yes, the women all had been strangled, and most of the victims were found with multiple ligatures wrapped tightly around their necks. But the killer or killers of the later victims could have taken this cue from the city’s two major newspapers . . . which had recounted the crimes in graphic detail. If you hated a woman and wanted her dead, you could strangle her, and the blame would be pinned on the perpetrator of the earlier killings.”

In 1965, handyman Albert DeSalvo, already behind bars on unrelated sexual assault charges, confessed to the murders. Law enforcement authorities were happy to let the public believe the menace was finally over. Yet DeSalvo was never charged or tried for the crimes. No physical evidence linked him to the murders. And he had filled his confessions with details of the murders that—down to some of the errors—were consistent with what the newspapers had reported.

Why did DeSalvo confess? As an inmate, he had little to lose. By copping to the strangulations, he may have been angling to trade jail time for a cushier sojourn in a psychiatric hospital. He also clearly saw an opportunity to make money for his family. The would-be wheeler-dealer signed over the rights to his life story to Gerold Frank, who, with assistance from DeSalvo attorney F. Lee Bailey, wrote The Boston Strangler. Conveniently, sales of the book would assure that Bailey’s legal fees were paid.

Most outrageous among DeSalvo’s money-making schemes: He sold a record he’d made, a song entitled “Strangler in the Night.” He also operated a small business from Walpole State Prison’s gift shop, peddling choker necklaces with his name on them.

DeSalvo was murdered at Walpole in 1973, shortly after telling his brother he was going to “blow the lid off this whole thing.” Fearing for his life, he had placed himself in what was supposed to be the prison’s most secure area, the infirmary. He was stabbed to death there, by an assailant who managed to get through six checkpoints. The trials of three inmates charged with DeSalvo’s murder each ended in a hung jury.

The second half of A Rose for Mary fast-forwards to the 1980s. Diane Sullivan Sherman, the author’s mother and Mary Sullivan’s sister, does not believe her sister’s killer has been caught. With his family still haunted by unresolved grief, Sherman decides to pursue a career in journalism, as a means of searching for the truth.

In 1991, while a Boston University undergraduate, Sherman developed a class project around the Strangler case. His research uncovered numerous inaccuracies in contemporary newspapers. More startlingly, Tom Troy, the lawyer DeSalvo hired after Bailey, told Sherman that DeSalvo had told him he was not the Boston Strangler. In addition, DeSalvo’s psychiatrist suggested that modern DNA testing might prove the means to settling the case.

Later, as a WBZ-TV producer, Sherman brought his professional skills—and his station’s support and resources—to investigating the story further. His efforts involved not only the Sherman family, but DeSalvo’s relatives, who were eager to absolve him of the Boston Strangler crimes.

Sherman revisited the police investigations, the prime suspects, and DeSalvo’s taped confessions. He butted up against what he calls “the blue wall of silence,” the reluctance of the Boston Police to release all the information and evidence they had gathered during their investigations.

He unearthed other hidden agendas as well: The politics behind the Boston Strangler Task Force. F. Lee Bailey’s penchant for self-promotion. The reasons for Attorney General Tom Reilly’s resistance to reopening the case.

In 2001, after Mary Sullivan’s body was exhumed, and new forensic and DNA evidence collected, Sherman was finally able to prove DeSalvo’s innocence in his aunt’s murder. He then assembled more information and evidence that pointed to the guilt of another man, still walking the streets.

Sherman’s journalism background stands him in good stead as an author. The book is thoroughly documented, and its clear, direct prose reads effortlessly. But it’s the step-by-step account of a determined struggle toward truth that makes for riveting reading.

A Rose for Mary contributes significantly to our understanding of one of the most infamous crime waves in American history. Sherman not only sets the record of his aunt’s murder straight, he rights some societal wrongs as well. Because the Boston Strangler didn’t exist. We had to invent him.

Magdalena Hernandez is a senior editor.

Bless Me, Father
by John A. Curry; 1st Books Library; 2003

A serial killer roams at large in Boston. His target? Allegedly abusive priests.

In his fourth novel, Northeastern president emeritus John Curry, LA’56, MEd’60, H’96—who has already penned two books about a fictitious Boston mob family—revisits the Hub to spin a yarn inspired by the Catholic Church scandal. His latest thriller makes us privy to the psyches of the killer and his hunters. Along the way, we learn about the crises of faith that have befallen many of the characters.

Curry’s storytelling skills are as sharp as ever. His fast-paced narrative and a colorful array of characters keep the reader intrigued.

How Women Can Beat Terrorism
by Curt Weeden; Quadrafoil Press; 2003

Terrorism and conflict could kill more than a hundred million people by 2030, unless the gap between the haves and have-nots of the world is narrowed. Or so predicts Curt Weeden, LA’65.

How Women Can Beat Terrorism argues that impoverished regions can become breeding grounds for terrorists—even if the terrorists themselves are not poor. Weeden therefore issues a call to arms against hopelessness and poverty as a means of fighting terrorism. The book proposes that women in industrialized countries serve as a catalyst for change, by supporting policies that empower women in developing nations.

Combining economics, sociology, and education, the book presents thought-provoking ways to combat one of the most urgent problems of our times.