The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (10 page)

angst from the phallic shape of his pipe bombs. At the
See also
PARAPHILIA; WEAPONS

same time, sex was not the
sole
motive for Metesky’s bombings, as he clearly nursed a hunger for revenge against his past employers. There may also be a craving
BONIN, William George

See
“FREEWAY MURDERS”

for attention in such cases, demonstrated by Metesky’s (and Kaczynski’s) correspondence with the media.

Italian police have pursued a “Unabomber” of their

“BOSTON Strangler”

own since October 2000, when pipe bombs and explosive A decade before the term “serial killer” entered popular charges disguised as packaged food injured several vic-usage outside of Great Britain, Boston was terrorized by tims. One woman lost several fingers after a booby-an elusive killer who claimed at least 11 female victims trapped tube of tomato paste exploded in her hand. By between June 1962 and January 1964. In every case the November 21, 2000, the authorities blamed the unknown victims were raped—sometimes with foreign objects—

bomber(s) for planting 21 devices. Unlike the case of and their bodies laid out nude, as if on display for a Theodore Kaczynski, no communication with the media pornographic snapshot. Death was always caused by had been attempted as of April 2003, when a booby-strangulation, though the killer sometimes also used a trapped pen maimed a nine-year-old girl at San Biagio di knife. The ligature—a stocking, pillowcase, whatever—

Callalta. That marked the bomber’s last attack (as of was invariably left around the victim’s neck, tied with press time for this work), and the case remains unsolved.

an exaggerated ornamental bow.

Likewise, in Los Angeles, police have no suspects in Fifty-five-year-old Anna Slessers was the first to die, the May 2001 case of three traffic cones rigged with strangled with the cord of her bathrobe on June 14, gasoline bombs and left near local schools, set to 1962. A nylon stocking was used to kill 68-year-old explode if passersby removed plastic flowers from the Nina Nichols on June 30. Helen Blake, age 65, was apex of the cones. Authorities described the bombs as found the same day, with a stocking and bra knotted being meant for children, but none exploded and the around her neck. On August 19, 75-year-old Ida Irga unknown saboteur apparently tired of his twisted game.

was manually strangled in her home, “decorated” with Farther north, on San Francisco Bay, nine “low-pow-a knotted pillowcase. Jane Sullivan, age 67, had been ered bombs” exploded in Fremont, California, between dead a week when she was found on August 20, stran-May 18 and June 4, 2001. Three other unexploded gled with her own stockings, slumped over the edge of a bombs were found in the same vicinity, but the bomber bathtub with her face submerged.

eluded detection. Police sergeant Dennis Madsen told The killer seemed to break his pattern on December reporters, “I think whoever’s doing it is getting a lot of 5, 1962, when he murdered Sophie Clark, a 20-year-old notoriety. This guy’s sitting at home reading the papers and enjoying it.” (Another Fremont local, Rodney Blach, was arrested in October 1999 and convicted in December 2001 for a series of bombings in 1998. Those blasts, apparently intended to kill local officials, were unrelated to the explosions in 2001.)

Chinese bomber Jin Ruchao was a fugitive from

murder charges in Yunnan, where he allegedly murdered a woman on March 6, 2000. Ten days later, in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, Jin allegedly set explosive charges that demolished several buildings, killing 108

persons in a series of blasts. Arrested on March 31, he was tried and sentenced to death on April 18, 2001.

Amnesty International condemned the sentence as a product of hasty and incomplete investigation.

No such claim can be made for David Copeland,

the notorious “London Nailbomber” whose devices Albert DeSalvo in custody (Author’s collection)
25

“BOSTON Strangler”

African American. Another shift was seen with 23-year-tim, assaulted in February 1963, failed to pick DeSalvo old Patricia Bissette, strangled on her bed and covered from a lineup. Witnesses from the Graff and Sullivan with a blanket to her chin, in place of the usual graphic crime scenes likewise failed to recognize DeSalvo. Sev-display. With 23-year-old Beverly Samans, killed on eral detectives, meanwhile, had focused their aim on an May 6, the slayer used a knife for the first time, stab-alternate suspect, fingered by “psychic” Peter Hurkos, bing his victim 22 times before looping the traditional but their man had voluntarily committed himself to an stocking around her neck. Evelyn Corbin, age 58, asylum soon after the last murder. Finally, if DeSalvo seemed to restore the original pattern on September 8, was driven to kill by a mother fixation, as psychiatrists strangled and violated by an “unnatural” assault, but claimed, why had he chosen young women as five of his the killer went back to young victims on November 23, last seven victims?

strangling 23-year-old Joann Graff and leaving bite Legal maneuvers swept those problems under the rug marks on her breast. The final victim, 19-year-old Mary in 1967, when celebrity lawyer F. Lee Bailey negotiated Sullivan, was found on January 4, 1964, strangled with an unusual plea bargain for DeSalvo. In lieu of homi-a scarf.

cide charges, DeSalvo pled guilty to the Green Man Ten months later, on November 3, 1964, police

rapes and received a sentence of life in prison. A fellow arrested 33-year-old Albert Henry DeSalvo for question-inmate fatally stabbed him on November 26, 1973, and ing on rape charges. It was not his first brush with the while the murder silenced DeSalvo, it did not erase the law. While serving in the U.S. Army, in January 1955, doubts surrounding his confession.

DeSalvo was accused of molesting a nine-year-old girl, More than a quarter-century after DeSalvo’s last but the child’s mother declined to press charges and arrest, forensic scientists revisited the Boston Strangler DeSalvo had been honorably discharged in 1956. Four case in an effort to solve the nagging mystery.

years later, in March 1960, he confessed a series of DeSalvo’s corpse was exhumed in October 2001, for assaults committed by Boston’s “Measuring Man,” a extraction of DNA material to use in tests unknown to smooth-talking culprit who poses as a door-to-door pathologists in the 1960s. Two months later, on scout for a fictitious modeling agency, fondling scores of December 6, James Starrs—a professor of law and women while he took their “vital statistics” for future forensic science at George Washington University—

reference. The confession earned DeSalvo a two-year announced “blockbuster results” in the case. Specifi-prison term for assault and lewd conduct, but he was cally, DNA samples from two individuals were found paroled after 11 months, his obsession undiminished.

on the corpse of a victim, neither traceable to DeSalvo.

Next, DeSalvo told police, he became the “Green Starrs told the press, “It’s indicative, strongly indica-Man,” a home-invading rapist nicknamed for the green tive, of the fact that Albert DeSalvo was not the rape-work clothes he wore. Detectives suspected DeSalvo of murderer of Mary Sullivan. If I was a juror, I would 300 rapes, but he astonished them by confessing nearly acquit him with no questions asked.” Sullivan’s 2,000. In one hectic day, he raped six women in four nephew, Casey Sherman, had an even more emphatic different towns, with two of the attacks unreported message for reporters: “If he didn’t kill Mary Sullivan, prior to his confession. Those admissions sent DeSalvo yet he confessed to it in glaring detail, he didn’t kill any to Bridgewater State Hospital, confined for psychiatric of these women.”

evaluation. There, he befriended George Nassar, a con-Retired Massachusetts prosecutor Julian Soshnick victed murderer awaiting trial for his second robbery-disagreed, replying, “It doesn’t prove anything except slaying since 1948. Their private discussions were that they found another person’s DNA on a part of interspersed with visits from police, climaxed by Miss Sullivan’s body.” Seeming to ignore the import of DeSalvo’s claim that he was the “Boston Strangler.”

that evidence, Soshnick stood firm: “I believe that In his latest confession, DeSalvo added two “new” vic-Albert was the Boston Strangler.” Another retired inves-tims to the body count, both previously overlooked by tigator, former Boston homicide detective Jack Barry, homicide investigators. One, 85-year-old Mary Mullen, cited DeSalvo’s detailed confessions as proof of guilt.

was found dead in her home of apparent heart failure on

“He just knew so much,” Barry said, “things that were June 28, 1962. DeSalvo claimed that Mullen had col-never in the paper. He could describe the wallpaper in lapsed from shock when he invaded her apartment, their rooms.” Dr. Ames Robey, supervisor of Bridgewa-whereupon he left her body on the couch without pursu-ter State Hospital in the 1960s and the chief psychiatrist ing the traditional assault. Mary Brown, age 69, was who evaluated DeSalvo, found the confessions less per-stabbed and beaten in her home on March 9, 1963, again suasive. “He was a boaster,” Robey told reporters. “I without a showing of the famous “strangler’s knot.”

never believed it for a minute.”

It seemed like an open-and-shut case, but numerous In any case, the DNA discovery stopped short of problems remained. The strangler’s sole surviving vic-solving Boston’s most famous murder mystery. Profes-26

BRUDOS, Jerome Henry

sor Starrs believes that at least one of the DNA samples nant, trooping to the altar from a sense of obligation.

recovered from Sullivan’s body belongs to her killer, but By 1967, settled in the Portland suburb of Aloha, Bru-he admitted in December 2001, “We cannot tell you the dos began complaining of migraine headaches and $64,000 question as to whose it is.”

“blackouts,” relieving his symptoms with night-prowl-Some students of the case believe the answer may be ing raids to steal shoes and lacy underwear. On one found at Bridgewater, where killer George Nassar con-occasion, a woman awoke to find him ransacking her ferred with DeSalvo through long days and nights. It is closet and Brudos choked her unconscious, raping her possible, critics maintain, that Nassar may have been before he fled.

the strangler, briefing DeSalvo on the details of his On January 26, 1968, 19-year-old Linda Slawson crimes in hope of sending authorities off on a wild was selling encyclopedias door-to-door when she called goose chase. DeSalvo, already facing life imprisonment on Jerry Brudos. Bludgeoned and strangled to death in for countless rapes, admittedly struck a cash bargain his basement, she became the first of five known victims with Nassar, whereby Nassar would pocket part of the killed by Brudos in Oregon. The second, 16-year-old outstanding reward for turning in DeSalvo, afterward Stephanie Vikko, disappeared from Portland in July. A passing most of the money on to DeSalvo’s wife. As a third, student Jan Whitney, 23, vanished on November clincher, the strangler’s lone survivor favored Nassar as 26 during a two-hour drive from Eugene to McMin-a suspect, rather than DeSalvo. Other theories postulate nville, her car found abandoned north of Albany, Ore-the existence of two Boston Stranglers, one for the gon.

young and one for the elderly victims. Journalist Hank So far, authorities were working on a string of disap-Messick added a new twist in the early 1970s, quoting pearances, with no hard proof of homicide. That a Mafia hit man (now deceased) to the effect that changed on March 18, 1969, with the discovery of DeSalvo had been paid by members of organized crime Stephanie Vikko’s remains in a wooded area northwest to “take a fall” for the actual, still unidentified Boston of Forest Grove. Nine days later, 19-year-old Karen Strangler.

Sprinker vanished from a Salem parking garage, leaving her car behind. Two witnesses reported same-day sightings of a large man, dressed in women’s clothing, loiter-BRUDOS, Jerome Henry

ing in the garage.

Born in South Dakota during January 1939, Brudos As the police were searching for their suspect, Bru-moved to California with his family as a child. He grew dos faced a minor crisis in his own backyard. While up with a deep, abiding hatred for his domineering cleaning house, his wife had turned up photographs of mother and a strange, precocious fetish for women’s Jerry dressed in drag, and she had also found a “plas-shoes. Discovering a pair of high heels at the local tic” breast, described by Brudos as a paperweight. (In dump, he brought them home, where they were confis-fact, it was a hunting trophy, treated with preservative.) cated and burned by his mother. By the time he entered She missed the other photographs, depicting Brudos first grade, Brudos was stealing shoes from his sister; at with his victims, posing with their bodies, dressing them age 16, now living in Oregon, he branched out into in frilly underwear like life-sized dolls, but dark suspi-burglary, making off with shoes from neighboring cion had begun to fester, all the same.

homes, sometimes snatching women’s undergarments On April 23, 1969, Brudos claimed his final victim, from clotheslines.

picking off 22-year-old Linda Salee at a Portland shop-In 1956, at 17, Brudos beat up a girl who resisted his ping mall. Her body, weighted down with an auto crude advances on a date, winding up in juvenile court.

transmission, was pulled from the Long Tom River on Ordered to visit the state hospital in Salem as an outpa-May 10. Two days later and 50 feet downstream, a tient while continuing his high school education, Bru-team of divers turned up victim Karen Sprinker, dos apparently gained nothing from therapy. Joining weighted with an engine block. The second body wore the army in March 1959, he was troubled by dreams of a brassiere several sizes too large, padded with paper a woman creeping into his bed at night. A chat with an towels to conceal the fact that her breasts had been army psychiatrist led to Jerome’s discharge on October amputated.

15, 1959, and he went home to live with his parents in Interviews with local coeds yielded several stories of an Salem, moving into their toolshed.

aging, self-described “Vietnam veteran” who frequently Unknown to members of his family, Brudos had