Boston Strangler

American serial killer who murdered at least 11 women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. His crimes were the subject of numerous books and a film, though the exact number of victims—as well as his identity—remains a matter of controversy.

The Boston Strangler’s first victim, a 55-year-old woman, was sexually assaulted and strangled in her ransacked apartment on June 14, 1962. During the following months, several other women, ranging in age from 65 to 85 years, were murdered in similar circumstances, news of which engulfed the city in panic. The Boston police chief transferred nearly all his department’s resources to the search for the so-called “mother killer.” Then, in December, a young woman was killed, and three weeks later a 23-year-old woman was found strangled. Subsequent victims included women of a range of ages. By January 1964, 13 women were dead, and the Massachusetts attorney general had taken charge of the investigation personally.

In 1965 Albert DeSalvo, an inmate at a state mental hospital who had a history of burglary dating from the 1950s, confessed to the murders. Although never actually charged with the killings (there was no physical evidence linking him to the murder scenes), DeSalvo was convicted on charges of sexual assault and sentenced to life imprisonment. The case and DeSalvo’s life were portrayed in the 1968 film The Boston Strangler. DeSalvo was murdered in Walpole State Prison in 1973.

DeSalvo was viewed as a textbook case of a sexually motivated serial murderer, a seemingly ordinary man who was nevertheless capable of outbursts of savage violence. Yet DeSalvo’s guilt was controversial at the time and has remained so in the decades after his death. His original confessions, for example, demonstrated ignorance of many aspects of the crimes. Although he would later describe details that only the actual killer could have known, his testimony, according to some observers, could have been based on information provided to him by police. Furthermore, several victims who survived did not believe he was their attacker. In 2001, DNA tests confirmed that DeSalvo could not have been guilty of the last of the murders commonly attributed to the Boston Strangler, though this was one of the crimes to which he had confessed.