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Authors: Susan Kelly

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The letter ends with a request for maps of the Boston area.
The Strangler Bureau also received tart complaints about the inefficiency of the Boston Police Department. One addressed to Bottomly stated that it was about time the assistant attorney general had stepped in to oversee the investigation. Why, the woman asked, was the Boston force so helpless to catch the killer?
In an effort to shield her identity, the writer signed herself “A Fellow Trinity Church Member.” But the effort to preserve her anonymity was sabotaged by the fact that she typed the letter on notepaper engraved with her full name.
And so it went. The only consolation for the Task Force was that while as of mid-August 1964 it hadn't solved any of the murders, at least no new ones had been committed.
The police departments of Boston, Cambridge, Lawrence, Lynn, and Salem continued with their own investigations.
4
Psychiatrists and Psychics
A prime directive of the Medical-Psychiatric Committee headed by Donald Kenefick was to draw up a profile of the kind of individual who might be responsible for the stranglings.
Not that anybody on the Task Force believed that a single person had committed all fourteen of the murders. (This was probably its sole area of accord with the outside law enforcement agencies.) A progress report issued by Brooke's office on August 18, 1964, makes that much clear:
At an early stage of the coordinated deliberations it was concluded that certain homicides bore little relationship to the so-called “Stranglings” or to each other. Among other things the conclusions were based on the manner in which the victims met their deaths, the condition of the area where the victims' bodies were found and the habits of the victims ... Margaret Davis' ... death appears to be the result of a fight with her male companion. Modeste Freeman, whose body was found in a vacant lot off Columbus Avenue, was also subjected to a vicious beating. Mary Brown was another unfortunate victim of a savage beating in her home probably by a sneak thief who ransacked her apartment ... There remain eleven homicides which are the object of continued police investigations and intensive study by medical doctors, psychiatrists, a medical anthropologist, chemists, and a graphologist using to the fullest possible extent the most modern techniques and equipment available ... Beginning with the death of Sophie Clark on December 5, 1962, almost four months after the murder of Jane Sullivan, subsequent murders are dissimilar in important respects to the homicides of the older women in the summer of 1962. Considered in this latter group of homicides are the murders of Sophie Clark, Patricia Bissette, Beverly Samens [sic], Evelyn Corbin, Joanne [sic] Graff and on January 4, 1964, Mary A. Sullivan. With one exception these victims were between the ages of 19 and 26 at the time of their deaths ... The backgrounds and personal habits of the victims beginning with the murder on December 5, 1962, are so different from those of the earlier and older victims that the strong probability is the psycopathic [sic] killer of the older women would not have considered the younger victims suitable objects for the release of his hate and frustrations. For the reasons set forth below it is also probable that the homicides on and after December 5, 1962 were not committed by one person.
As noted above all of the older victims lived alone. Miss Clark had two roommates. The physical evidence at the scene of the crime and on the body of the victim indicate that this homicide has many of the characteristics of a rape which may have unintentionally become murder ... In some respects it appears that the murderer of Patricia Bissette was guided in his arrangement of the scene and the manner of his crime by what had been printed in the newspapers about Sophie Clark just 26 days before. There is a strong possibility in this case that the murderer was known to the victim and his presence in her apartment was readily accepted by her ... Of all the victims still classified in the “Stranglings” [Beverly Samans] was the only one who was stabbed ... The ligatures in this case apparently were applied for “decorative” purposes and undoubtedly in an attempt to imitate the “Stranglings” which had received considerable publicity as such by May 8, 1963. The strong possibilities in this case are that it is a homicide quite separate from the others being considered in this report ... details of the murder of [Evelyn Corbin] and the scene of the crime suggest the strong possibility that the imitation factor was again dominant in the mind of the murderer. However, his knowledge of the details of earlier crimes was sufficiently incomplete to frustrate the total success of his plan. [Mary Sullivan's] death was caused by strangulation. In many ways it was by far the most elaborate of all the murders considered in this report. For that and other significant reasons it appears to have no probable relationship to its predecessors ... The details of this murder indicate that the criminal was strongly influenced by the desire to imitate previous “Stranglings” as he understood them from newspaper accounts.
What kind of man would commit such atrocities? Donald Kenefick and his team of consultants thought it might be an individual “at least 30, and probably a good deal older. He is neat, orderly, and punctual. He either works with his hands, or has a hobby involving handiwork. He most probably is single, separated or divorced. He would not impress the average observer as crazy ... He has no close friends of either sex (and this includes a wife, if he had one.) ... What kind of a mother would he have?' A sweet, orderly, neat, compulsive, seductive, punitive, overwhelming woman. She might go about half exposed in their apartment but punish him severely for any sexual curiousity [sic], and so on. What kind of father would he have? I am afraid none. No mere male would be good enough for such a woman, anyhow, and once he had fulfilled his biological functions, the mother would dispose of him. I would imagine that [the murderer] was an only child, or one with at most one sibling (probably an older sister).”
Kenefick referred to this hypothetical sexual sadist and killer as “Mr. S.” He too was fairly positive there had to be more than one of them operating. He ended his report to the Task Force by wishing them “Good hunting! ”
Not only did the Medical-Psychiatric Committee attempt to probe the mind-set of a pathological killer, it also set out to probe the psyches of his victims. Carola Blume, the resident graphologist, analyzed the handwriting of the murdered women in the hope that some character trait revealed by it might provide the explanation for the victims' dreadful fates.
Would any of this help solve the killings? The Task Force could only hope so. With every passing day the trail of Mr. S. was growing colder and colder.
 
 
Brooke had vowed “to leave no stone unturned” in the search for the killers. It was for this reason, he said, that he ultimately consented to do what so many letters and phone calls to the attorney general's office had been urging: bring in a psychic.
According to Gerold Frank, Bottomly was the prime mover behind this decision “because he had long been intrigued by telepathic experiments conducted by friends in the National Aeronautic and Space Administration Laboratories in Cambridge.”
6
Ames Robey has a slightly different perspective on the situation: “Bottomly's mother was fascinated by ESP and psychic phenomena. And she kept bugging him to get a seer, get a seer, it's the only way you'll ever catch the Strangler. He finally said yes just to shut her up.”
Edmund McNamara reacted to the proposal with outraged disgust: “I said, ‘Fine. Why don't I just fire all my detectives and hire a bunch of gypsies with crystal balls to solve crimes?' ” He forbade his two principal investigators, John Donovan and Edward Sherry, to have anything to do with any seers the Strangler Bureau might retain.
Brooke left it to Bottomly to choose a suitable psychic, and the one Bottomly chose was Peter Hurkos, whose biography Bottomly had read in Jess Stearn's book about the paranormal,
Door to the Future.
Hurkos was a Dutch housepainter who, at the age of thirty-five, had fractured his skull and emerged from the resultant coma a telepath. The Task Force coordinator put out the word to his assistants: Find me this man. They did, in Hollywood, where he was prepping actor Glenn Ford to play him in a movie.
Hurkos accepted Bottomly's offer and arrangements were made to bring him to Boston. Under cover of night, he flew into the Providence, Rhode Island, airport rather than to Logan International. He had insisted on that condition in order to minimize the chance of a Boston reporter spotting him and spreading the word that the famed “psychic detective” was in town. Such publicity would, Hurkos maintained, interfere with his concentration. Accompanying the incognito seer was a six-foot-eight-inch-tall armed bodyguard in full cowboy regalia who left a trail of bug-eyed and slack-jawed airport personnel in the wake of his John Wayne swagger.
To give Hurkos his due, he did actually seem to have some kind of telepathic ability. And to give Bottomly
his
due, the taxpayers of Massachusetts didn't have to foot the bill for Hurkos's services, either. “It didn't cost the Commonwealth anything,” says Roger Woodworth, adding that Hurkos's fee was paid by two private citizens' groups.
Brooke was as eager to avoid publicity as was Hurkos. To this end, he requested from the press—and got—a voluntary embargo on news coverage of the Dutch seer's trip to Boston. “This unselfish action,” Brooke later wrote, “was an extraordinary example of cooperation in a most highly competitive industry.” It must have been a relief to Attorney General Brooke as well.
Hurkos was not the world's easiest guest. He was put up for a while—a
short
while—at the Commander Hotel in Cambridge, and a city detective was assigned to babysit him for the duration. The cop had his work cut out for him. In the middle of the night the detective was roused from sleep by a frantic phone call from Hurkos, who demanded to be removed from the hotel immediately. He was unable to rest, the psychic claimed, because the ghosts in the Revolutionary War cemetery near the Commander were screaming at him. Mindful of his duty, the detective climbed out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and drove to the hotel to pick up Hurkos. Not knowing what else to do, he then brought Hurkos back to his own home. Once inside the cop's house, however, Hurkos refused to stay. It was the presence of the detective's children that disturbed him. Their innocent aura would prevent him from picking up the evil vibrations of the Strangler.
It says a great deal about the Cambridge detective's powers of self-control that there wasn't a male strangling victim.
Less than forty-eight hours after the psychic hit town, the Boston police officers assigned by Bottomly to work with him were pleading to be let off the hook.
“Nobody particularly wanted to be with him,” comments former Inspector John Moran, in a classic understatement. Moran looks thoughtful. Then he remarks, “They should have taken him down to the track and let him pick the horses.”
Even Bottomly seems to have entertained second thoughts about Hurkos. Two days after the seer arrived in Boston, Bottomly received a confidential report that Hurkos was the defendant in a breach of contract suit in Wisconsin. He was also an adulterer. “That is conduct,” Bottomly wrote frostily, “of which I personally do not approve.”
Hurkos did identify a Strangler suspect, and it was one whom the Task Force had already seriously considered. This individual, a shoe salesman, was as innocuous in manner and appearance as Donald Kenefick had predicted (a loaded word, in this context) he might be. Six months later Brooke wrote that this suspect was “a lifetime celibate with a history of mental illness [who] inexplicably joined three marriage clubs.” The man's brothers had been trying to persuade him to seek professional help for some time before he came to the attention of the Task Force. Recent bizarre changes in his behavior had them worried. These changes had also worried the police in the town where the man lived.
Hurkos was convinced of this suspect's guilt. His mission in Boston complete, he left town assuring his hosts that in the person of the shoe salesman they had their man. They didn't; there was no physical evidence nor any eyewitness to connect the man to any of the murders. He ended up voluntarily committing himself to a mental institution.
Despite the departure of Hurkos, the Strangler Bureau hadn't concluded its dealings with him. As a parting gift, someone in the office had given him a card identifying the bearer as “a special honorary assistant attorney general,” a title as high-sounding as it was meaningless. That piece of paper and a nickel would buy Hurkos a cup of coffee, but he was an avid collector of law enforcement memorabilia and added the card to his considerable store of toy credentials and badges.
The gift would come back to haunt, so to speak, its giver.
All the while Hurkos had been in Boston sniffing out the psychic spoor of the Strangler, the FBI had been looking for him. Not because it wanted his help in solving a case; it wanted to arrest him. For impersonating one of its agents at a gas station in Milwaukee.
Hurkos was taken into custody in New York City.
On February 10, 1964, a story by Bill Norton and Bob Castricone entitled
HURKOS FRAMED—BROOKE AID
E appeared on page one of the
Globe.
In it the two reporters described Hurkos's arrest and arraignment and then went on to quote a “spokesman” for Attorney General Brooke as saying, “I think the charges [against Hurkos] are as phony as a $3 bill.” The speaker then went on to characterize the arrest as a deliberate attempt on the part of the FBI to discredit the Strangler Task Force. And, finally, the spokesman indulged in a bit of nose-thumbing: “It took us two hours to discover him [Hurkos] in an actor's home in California. Yet, it took the FBI almost two months to find their man.”
This spokesman, or at least the person whom the article purported to quote, was Bottomly.
On Valentine's Day the Task Force coordinator fired off a four-page, single-spaced typed letter to James Handley, special agent-in-charge of the Boston FBI office, denying that he had made the statements attributed him by Norton and Castricone—
except
for the jibe about the FBI's dragged-out pursuit of Hurkos. Bottomly should have left bad enough alone at that point. Instead, he went on to write: “As a result of our conversation on February 12, 1964, I am of the opinion that regardless of the exact words I used on February 10, 1964 you and those you represent consider it not only irresponsible for me ever to imply criticism of the FBI, but that it is wrong for me to criticize and I should not do it. In addition to correcting the record, this letter is written to inform you and those you represent that I disagree strongly with that position. I believe criticism has value. It is my hope and expectation that the FBI can survive criticism. In some cases, I would suggest that the FBI might be improved by listening to it rather than attempting to stifle or suppress it. Finally, I happen to be proud of the political society in which I live and the heritage of which we are beneficiaries, and I resent strongly any attempt by you or those you represent to restrict my voicing or writing my opinions freely ... In closing, I reiterate my sincere wish that the FBI in the future advise the Department of the Attorney General of any investigation or impending arrest of any consultant which this Department is planning to retain or has retained. I share with you the desire for cooperation. However, I value criticism and accept it in the spirit in which it is given in the hope that I may learn therefrom and improve myself thereby.”
BOOK: The Boston Stranglers
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