All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Mysteries.S07E08.Who.Is.the.Boston.Strangler.1080p.HULU.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Tonight, a series
of shocking murders

terrorizes the city of Boston.

Each victim is found strangled
to death in their home

with a telltale bow
around their neck.

All of these
victims are women.

They live alone.

Almost immediately,
the suspect in this case

was named the Boston Strangler.

Law enforcement is
under enormous pressure

to find and stop this predator.

This is one of the
biggest manhunts in history.

13 victims over
nearly two years,

he seems to be
killing for sport.

It almost seems like
the Boston Strangler

is taunting law enforcement
and the people of Boston.

Now, we uncover
the top theories

surrounding one of history's
most notorious serial killers.

They're looking at the usual
suspects of mental patients,

people arrested
for sex offenses.

The Boston police have made
zero headway in this case.

Boston goes from being
scared to being angry.

Ultimately, the Strangler
is still out there,

potentially ready to terrorize
and murder more women.

Who is the Boston Strangler?

On a
June evening in 1962,

in Boston's Back
Bay neighborhood,

a young man named Juris Slesers

shows up at his
mother's apartment.

Anna Slesers is a
55-year-old divorcee.

On this Sunday, as usual,

her son swings by to
pick her up for church.

But he stays at the
door for 45 minutes,

knocking and waiting,
and she doesn't come out.

She's someone who
rarely misses church.

She is also someone
though that does suffer

from bouts of depression,

so Juris decides to
finally knock the door down

to go inside.

Inside the house, Juris
is met with a sight

that no child ever wants
to see of their parent.

His
mom is lying there

on the floor by the bathroom

with the belt of her bathrobe
wrapped around her neck.

She's ice cold.

He calls the cops and he says,
"My mother hanged herself."

He assumed that she
had committed suicide

because she'd been
struggling with depression,

but police immediately felt
like something was off.

There are fresh
baked muffins on the table.

There's a kettle on the stove.

This does not look like
the scene of a suicide.

Something else is going on.

Anna has been
sexually assaulted,

and the cord from the
robe tied around her neck

is tied in a bow.

This is not the
work of a suicide.

This is a murder.

The crime
scene yields no evidence.

There are no fingerprints

and the neighbors didn't see
or hear anything suspicious.

More than two weeks go by

without any advances
in the case,

but the killer is
just getting started.

Boston is sweltering.

Retired psychotherapist
Nina Nichols

needs to escape the
heat from her apartment,

so she decides to spend
the afternoon shopping.

She comes back to
her apartment at 5:00 PM

and she starts getting
ready to go to dinner

at her sister's house.

By 7:30 PM, Nina
still has not shown up

to her sister's home for dinner.

The sister begins wondering,
and goes to the apartment,

and starts knocking on the
door but gets no answer.

So she gets a janitor
from the building

to open up the apartment
with a master key.

The janitor is shocked
at what he finds.

Nina's in her bedroom,
half on/half off the bed,

with a nylon stocking
wrapped around her neck.

Her apartment
has been ransacked,

but nothing valuable
seems to have been taken.

Nina Nichols' cash
is still there.

It doesn't look like this
is a matter of a robbery

and there's no sign
of forced entry.

So either it's somebody
that the victim knew

or someone who talked
her into letting him in.

Detectives
note the similarities

between this
strangulation killing

and the murder of Anna Slesers.

That same day, 15
miles north of Boston,

in the quiet suburb of Lynn,

yet another older woman
is brutally killed.

Police are called to the
crime scene of Helen Blake,

a divorcee who's
also been strangled.

She too was
found with a nylon

tightly wrapped around her
neck and tied in a bow.

They also discovered

that the apartment door wasn't
damaged, again indicating

that there had been access to
the apartment without force.

Three murders, two in one day,

same MO for all of 'em.

Once you have
a pattern like this,

there's going to be an
immense amount of pressure

on the Boston Police Department.

There's kind of a hysteria
that's building up about this.

Media even goes
one step further

by dubbing the killer
the Boston Strangler.

The police are
at a total loss.

They have no sign of connection
between any of these victims.

This is random crime that
can happen at any time.

Now the public was concerned

that they had a serial
killer on their hands

and Boston police weren't
moving fast enough

to figure out who this man was.

Boston Police
Commissioner Edmund McNamara

is a veteran officer, but
he's new in the top job.

McNamara has
to take drastic action.

The city is in a panic.

On July 2nd, he takes
the extraordinary action

of assigning every
single detective

on the Boston Police Department

to the Boston Strangler case.

Thousands of
women are taking up judo

and YWCA branches
throughout the city

are increasing their classes
to deal with the new demand.

People all over
Boston start taking steps

to protect themselves.

More dogs are adopted at that
time for added protection.

The sale of deadbolts and
extra locks on the doors

go up significantly.

People are afraid.

The Boston Police
Department established a hotline

where people could call
and offer tips and leads.

And in addition to that,
they offered a $5,000 reward

to anyone that could
give information

that might lead to the capture
of this Boston Strangler.

But the
hotline doesn't yield

any promising leads.

July goes by without
any additional murders.

Then in August, a pair
of grisly discoveries

reminds the people of Boston

that the Strangler
is still among them.

The fourth victim,

a 75-year-old woman
named Ida Irga,

is also discovered dead.

She's lying on the floor,
still in her pajamas,

with a pillowcase
wrapped around her neck.

The next victim is a 67-year-old
nurse named Jane Sullivan.

She's found in her bathtub
with her head underwater.

Jane Sullivan not
only had been strangled,

but it took about a week for
them to discover her body.

Now that the death
toll has reached five,

fear is turning to anger.

These are all older
ladies living alone

who have been killed
by some fiend,

and the people of
Boston wanna know,

why haven't the Boston Police
Department found anyone?

It is not
until the end of 1962

that police finally focus on
their first viable suspect.

The police will
spend the next six months

rounding up any known sex
offenders in the area.

One of those is a man by
the name of Arnold Wallace,

who's caught breaking
into a tea shop

in the Back Bay
neighborhood in Boston.

Arnold Wallace
is not the real name

of this 26-year-old
mental patient

who had recently escaped

from Bridgewater State Hospital
for the Criminally Insane.

He has escaped five times
in the last six months, and

all of the murders
have taken place

during times when he
was out of the hospital.

Records
show that he once

physically assaulted his mother

and he obsessively
talks about sex.

He readily confesses

that he finds older women
extremely attractive,

and one of his favorite
pastimes is hugging them.

The more Wallace talks, the
more that leads investigators

to think that he might
be the Boston Strangler.

Not everyone thinks
it's as simple as that.

For one thing, he's clearly
not all there mentally.

He seems more goofy
than menacing.

Is he the kind of person

that someone's gonna open
their door and let in?

Is he the kind of
criminal mastermind

who's going to be able to
not leave any clues behind

at any of the places where
these murders have taken place?

It seems kind of unlikely.

Many at City Hall

push Commissioner
McNamara to arrest Wallace

for the Strangler killings,

but before he does,
a call comes in

from Boston's Roxbury
neighborhood.

There's a
20-year-old student

at the Carnegie Institute
of Medical Technology

named Sophie Clark, who is also
found dead by strangulation.

There are nylons that are used

to strangle her around her
neck, and then they're tied

into that distinctive
bow that's become

sort of the trademark of
the Boston Strangler.

However, while the other
victims are older white women,

Sophie Clark is a
20-year-old and she's Black.

So investigators are confused.

She doesn't fit the bill, and
these kind of serial killers

rarely deviate from their
particular ideal kind of victim.

The idea
that a serial killer

is going to go
after five victims

in their 50s or older,

and then suddenly
switch to a 20-year-old,

it seems unlikely.

But at this point, the
police are kind of desperate

over the Boston Strangler.

December 1962, police
believe they finally have

the Boston Strangler
under lock and key,

a mental patient known by
the pseudonym Arnold Wallace.

But while Wallace is in custody,

there's yet another killing.

Patricia Bissette is
a 23-year-old secretary

who was gonna get a ride
to work from her boss.

Her boss shows up, doesn't
get an answer at the door.

Bissette's
boss goes back to work.

But when Bissette doesn't
show up at the office,

he returns to her apartment.

He
contacts the janitor,

asking for a stepladder
to climb into the window.

He crawls into
her apartment window

and discovers her
sprawled out on her bed,

but the covers are
pulled up to her neck.

And when the covers
are pulled down,

she has been strangled with
four pieces of clothing.

You now have seven women

who have been murdered
in less than a year,

and still, investigators
do not have

any real leads in this case.

The residents of Boston
are no longer sure

if there's just one
Boston Strangler out there

or if there's a copycat killer

that's not just
targeting older women

but younger ones as well.

In an
effort to calm the city,

Chief McNamara
promises to explore

every possible tip or lead.

But that promise is tested

when a man named Paul
Gordon calls the hotline.

Paul Gordon is a local
copywriter/clairvoyant/psychic.

He comes to the police saying
he's got important evidence

that he knows who
committed these crimes.

He says that he
has these visions of the killing

and what the killer looks like.

They bring him into the station,

and other officers recognize him

because he's come into
the station before

saying he has information
about various other cases.

They never took him seriously.

But right now, they're
taking him very seriously

because he starts
describing the killer

as somebody with bony knuckles,

and he has this one curl
that comes down his forehead.

And they're shocked

because this matches Arnold
Wallace's description.

He is describing
Arnold Wallace to a T.

So they show him
some photographs

and he picks Wallace
out of the photographs.

Gordon is taken
to Bridgewater State Hospital

to ID Wallace.

And not only does he say,
"Well, that's the guy there,"

but Arnold Wallace IDs him.

He says, "Hey, how
you doing, buddy?"

They met before, which is crazy.

Detectives learn
that Paul Gordon

has actually gone
to the hospital

to visit Arnold
Wallace in March,

long before Gordon got
involved in this case.

Some in the department
begin to suspect

that Gordon's trying
to pin the murders

on this innocent,
mentally challenged man

because he's the murderer.

As the police continue
to question Gordon,

their suspicion grows.

He just knows so many
details about these murders.

He starts giving descriptions
of entryways, and doorways,

and furnishings, and
colors of fixtures.

Some of these things
haven't been reported on.

Some of these things haven't
even been marked down

in police reports.

There's
a growing belief

that Gordon's psychic visions

are actually the
confessions of a killer

begging to be caught.

When investigators looked
into Gordon's background,

they don't find
anything suspicious,

except for the times that he's
come to the police station

in an attempt to try
to aid police officers

who are working on cases.

That doesn't
mean Gordon's innocent.

Police are eager to learn
if he knows more details

that might give him
away as the Strangler.

Police decided that they
were gonna interrogate Gordon

under a use of a drug

that they were using
back in those days

called sodium pentothal,
or the truth serum.

For six and a half hours,
investigators questioned Gordon.

All the while, psychologists
are watching Gordon

to determine if he's actually
telling the truth or not.

Gordon stands by his
story the entire time.

He says that he has nothing
to do with the murders at all.

Psychiatrists believe that
Gordon is telling the truth,

that he's not the
Boston Strangler.

Gordon has no real
history of violence.

He doesn't really seem
to be the perpetrator.

Maybe he really
believes he's a psychic,

but in the end,
the police decide

that he doesn't seem to
be the Boston Strangler.

It's been six months
since the first murder.

Every single lead, every single
suspect that the police get

are dead ends.

They're no closer
to solving this

than they were after
the first murder.

No woman is safe in
the city of Boston.

Everyone is furious and
terrified at the same time.

By the
spring of 1963,

there have been seven victims
in the Boston Strangler case.

On May 6th,

a discovery just a few
blocks from Harvard Square

raises the death toll to eight

when a 23-year-old graduate
student is found dead

in her apartment.

Beverly Samans is another
victim of the Boston Strangler,

also sexually assaulted,
but she's one of the few

that is a victim of violence
beyond strangulation.

She's stabbed 22 times.

Four days
later in New York City,

200 miles from the Boston
Strangler's home turf,

a wealthy divorcee
meets a violent end

in a Times Square hotel.

A woman in her
60s, Zenoria Clegg,

who's described as
very frail and thin,

who wears a scarf around her
neck to hide cancer scars,

is seen at a hotel bar
hanging out with a guy

who's super tall and
about half her age.

Because they're such an odd
couple, everyone notices them.

This unlikely duo
spends the afternoon

getting drunk at the bar and
then they go up to her room.

Her body is discovered in
the room two days later.

She's been beaten, she's
been sexually assaulted,

and she's had a scarf
tied around her neck,

and she's been
strangled to death.

The officer who
arrives to investigate

is New York Police Department
Detective Thomas Cavanagh.

Smooth
talking and intelligent,

Cavanagh is the inspiration
for the TV detective "Kojak."

Cavanagh, as he's going
through the evidence,

immediately concludes this
is really, really similar

to the modus operandi
of the Boston Strangler.

Cavanagh
questions witnesses

who saw the odd couple
at the hotel bar.

It turns out that the man

that was with Zenoria
Clegg that night

was actually a regular
at that bar in the hotel.

He's a 34-year-old
New York native

by the name of
Charles Edward Terry.

Seven days
after the murder,

Terry is tracked to a
bar in Greenwich Village,

and Cavanagh has him
taken in for questioning.

Terry almost
immediately confesses

to the murder of Zenoria Clegg.

He met Clegg at the bar.

They went upstairs for
a sexual encounter.

He said that Clegg
then humiliated him,

and in a rage, he strangles
her with her own scarf.

It turns out Terry

has his own share of
run-ins with the law.

He was in prison
for rape in Maine.

And in December 1962,
police look at him

as a possible suspect in the
strangling of a stewardess

in New Orleans, Louisiana.

So Detective Cavanagh

contacts the Boston Police
Department, and he's like,

"Hey, we got a guy here
for strangling murder.

We think he could be the
guy that you're looking for."

Detectives come down to
New York, they talk to him,

and they do kind
of a half-ass job.

Terry denies
he was ever in Boston

and the Boston police
reject him as a suspect.

Critics contend they feared
being shown up by Cavanagh.

It would look kind of bad for
the Boston Police Department

if this case that they've
been working on for months now

is immediately cracked open

by some slick New York
police detective.

Charles
Edward Terry is arrested

for the killing
of Zenoria Clegg.

But just 'cause
the Boston police

don't wanna pursue him

doesn't mean he's not
the Boston Strangler.

Cavanagh is not gonna
let this slide so easily.

Cavanagh assembles
a crew of veteran detectives

who go to Boston and conduct
their own investigation.

They find out that
at one point in time,

Terry stayed at two
rooming houses in Boston,

very nearby two of
the stranglings.

They start talking
to witnesses,

until the Boston PD gets wind
of what Cavanagh's up to,

and they tell him to go
back to New York City.

Cavanagh
considers going to the press

and badmouthing the
Boston Police Department.

But while Terry is awaiting
sentencing in prison

for the Times Square killing,

the Boston Strangler
strikes again.

September 8th, 1963,

it's a Sunday morning
in Salem, Massachusetts.

58-year-old Evelyn Corbin has
just come home from church,

with plans to join her neighbor

down the hallway for breakfast.

Evelyn Corbin never shows up

to her friend's
apartment for breakfast,

so the friend goes down, uses
a spare key to open the door.

And Evelyn is found lying
on her back, face up,

with two stockings
tied around her neck.

This is well over a year
since the first murder.

The public is outraged.

Boston residents
once again are on edge

because the Strangler
is still out there.

November 1963, it's
been a year and a half

since the Boston
Strangler first struck.

Nine women have been savagely
murdered in their homes,

and investigators
are still at a loss.

Police don't know
how the Strangler

gets into his victim's homes.

They don't know if there
are copycat killers at work.

All they know is that
they're being outsmarted.

Boston PD still
has no solutions.

They go ahead and they
double the reward money.

It's $10,000 now per victim,

$1 million in today's
dollar value.

It's a huge sum of money.

And with huge sums of money

come huge, unintended
consequences.

The plan to double the reward
backfires on the Boston PD.

They were bombarded
with all this information,

people calling into
the police station

alleging friends, and
neighbors, and family,

ex-wives implicating
their ex-husbands.

It just bogged down
the investigation

and just further confused

who is really a
viable suspect here.

The hotline and
the increased reward money

get a lot of media attention,

but do nothing to stop the
killer from striking again.

In late November 1963,
23-year-old designer

and Sunday school
teacher Joann Graff

is found strangled
to death in her home

just 30 miles north of Boston.

A little more than
a month later,

the Strangler kills again
in the heart of the city.

Mary Sullivan, 19-year-old,

her first day living in Boston.

She doesn't make it to day two.

She's found the day after she
moved in strangled to death.

Like all the others,

the same signature knot,
the Strangler's knot,

is around her neck,
fashioned into a bow.

In between Mary Sullivan's
toes is a New Year's card,

as if the murderer
is being cheeky

with the police department,

like, "You can't catch
me. Happy New Year."

Two weeks after
Mary Sullivan's murder,

Massachusetts Attorney
General Edward Brooke

takes over the case

from Boston's floundering
police chief.

Now we have the attorney
general inserting himself

from a state level into
a city jurisdiction

to bring this
situation to a close.

He's an African-American
attorney general

in a mostly Caucasian
environment, that being Boston.

But the bigger conversation
was not just the AG coming in,

but who he brought in with him.

Brooke
assigns the case

to his good friend
from law school,

Assistant US Attorney
John Bottomly.

Bottomly's first act is to
collect all pieces of evidence,

every police report, and
he starts to collate them

into a new machine.

He's bringing computer
science into policing

for maybe the first time ever.

This allows
everyone working on

the Strangler case to
share all the available

information and evidence.

While Bottomly's doing that,

Brooke sets about
assembling a task force.

It's experts in psychiatry,
in forensics, in police work,

and it's people from
outside of Boston.

And you can imagine how the
Boston Police Department

might have felt about that.

This is very unpopular
among the police.

To them, it really looks
like a slap in the face.

While we have this
fight going on

between the special task
force and the Boston PD,

a smaller task force is
looking into a rash of rapes

in the Boston area in which
the victims are not killed.

Victims report
that a man came to their door

dressed in green work clothes,

claiming to be a handyman
sent by the landlord.

In the most recent attack,
a woman lets in a man

who says he's there
to fix a leaky pipe.

He sexually assaults the
woman and then flees.

A few days later, this
same man apparently

knocks on the door
of this apartment,

but the woman refuses
to let him in.

He eventually storms off,

but over the course of this,

he is seen by about a half
dozen different witnesses.

The man is
quickly identified

as 33-year-old Albert DeSalvo.

Police arrest him

and take him to the
station for questioning.

He's first sent to
Bridgewater State Hospital

for a psychiatric evaluation.

The more the police
look into him,

the more it looks like
he could be the killer.

Mr. DeSalvo
was found to have

a very, very long rap sheet,

hundreds of crimes
from a very young age

that all centered
on sexual deviancy.

He was viciously assaulted
by his father multiple times.

He claims he saw his father
break his mother's fingers.

He claims his father would

frequently bring
home prostitutes

and have sex with
them in front of him.

This is a traumatized man.

And to the psychiatrist,
to the investigators,

this could be a person
who could mature

into a serial killer.

In some ways,
DeSalvo feels like a perfect fit

to be the Boston Strangler,

but what they can't figure
out is why a serial killer

would all of a sudden start
leaving his victims alive.

Bottomly conducts
a series of interviews

with DeSalvo, who admits
to hundreds of break-ins

and sexual assaults, but
denies killing anyone.

Nothing that he says and
nothing that the detectives find

actually links him conclusively

to the Boston
Strangler's crimes.

But curiously,
while he's in custody,

no other women are strangled.

In March of 1966,

Bottomly gets a surprise
phone call from a lawyer

claiming to represent
Albert DeSalvo.

The man on the other end
of the line is F. Lee Bailey,

who gains notoriety
from defending a man

by the name of Sam Sheppard,

who was wrongfully accused
of murdering his wife.

The Sam Sheppard
case was very famous.

It inspired a TV series in
1963 called "The Fugitive"

and a movie version of it
that came out in the 1990s.

Bailey tells Bottomly
that his client

is prepared to confess to
the Boston Strangler murders.

DeSalvo is willing to do
this on one condition,

that none of these confessions
can be admitted to trial.

DeSalvo is not going
to be convicted

for any of the
Boston stranglings.

While Bailey
never overtly explains

why DeSalvo would confess to
being the Boston Strangler,

Massachusetts at this time

does not have a death
penalty for sexual assault

but does have a death
penalty for murder.

Prosecutors
conclude they have

more than enough evidence

to send Albert DeSalvo
to prison for life,

so they end up
taking the agreement.

I think there's
a lot of people

that are gonna sleep better
tonight, especially women.

The prosecutors know that
they can close those cases

and they could
announce to the public,

"We took a bad man off
the streets for life."

In
the summer of 1966,

DeSalvo confesses not only

to the 11 known Boston
Strangler murders,

but also two more
unsolved killings

not previously linked
to the Strangler;

that of 80-year-old Mary
Mullen in June of 1962

and 69-year-old Mary
Brown in March of '63.

In all, DeSalvo confesses
to murdering 13 women.

Bottomly officially
announces to the press

that the Boston Strangler
has finally been caught

and the city itself celebrates.

The long nightmare
is finally over.

DeSalvo's confession

makes Bottomly a hero,

but some come to doubt the
authenticity of that confession.

Later researchers
obtain copies

of Bottomly's interrogations,

and they find he's not the
most seasoned interrogator.

There are parts
of the interview,

it seems like Bottomly
is showing him

photographs of the crime scene.

It's done with a bunch
of leading questions.

When DeSalvo gets answers wrong,

he's asked a question over
again to change his answer.

Relatively quickly, there
are some people who doubt

that DeSalvo is the guy.

Ames Robey, a doctor
who worked with DeSalvo

at Bridgewater State Hospital,
just has his doubts.

He doesn't think DeSalvo
fits the profile.

He thinks that DeSalvo
just desperately wanted

to be someone famous,
someone remembered.

After nearly
five years and 13 murders,

authorities believe they finally
have the Boston Strangler

behind bars.

The fact that Albert
DeSalvo was arrested

for a separate series of
assaults doesn't matter.

As long as he's off the street,

that's good enough for
Boston's police force

and its citizens.

There were two women
who say they actually saw

the face of the
Boston Strangler.

Those women were brought
into the police headquarters

to take part in a lineup
of potential suspects.

In that group of
suspects was DeSalvo.

One of 'em, Marcella Lulka,

was a neighbor of victim
number six, Sophie Clark.

Marcella claims that
she had an encounter

with a man on the same day that
Sophie Clark is found dead.

Marcella Lulka
said that that day,

someone knocked at her door.

She went and answered it.

And he says,

"The super sent me here
to paint the apartment."

Marcella doesn't have a
good feeling about this guy,

and she's like, "You
can't come in now.

My husband is asleep
in the other room."

And he flees the scene.

The other woman who
joins to look at the lineup

is a woman named Gertrude Gruen,

who says that a man
broke into her house

and attempted to attack her,

but she fought him
off and he ran away.

Interestingly, the
women failed to pick DeSalvo

out of the group of men,

but they did both independently
point at one person

as the Boston Strangler, and
that person was George Nassar.

When the police dig
into Nassar's past,

they find a checkered
history of violent crimes.

George Nassar
is a career criminal,

starting with his first
murder at the age of 15.

He went to do a
robbery at a store

and he shot the store clerk
four times in the chest.

He then is sentenced
to 20 years in prison

and he's let out for
good behavior after 13.

In 1964, he goes
to a gas station,

he puts the gas station
attendant to his knees,

and shoots him execution style.

Then he realizes that
there's two witnesses;

a young mother and
her teenage daughter

were at the gas pumps.

He then goes toward them,

he fires a couple of
shots at their car,

then runs out of bullets.

And he ends up taking
off in his own car.

The testimony
of the mother and daughter

puts Nassar behind bars.

And to add to the mystery,

police, when they look
into Nassar's background,

find out that he actually
was free and on the streets,

out of prison, during the time
of the Boston stranglings,

which made him again a
really interesting suspect.

After Marcella
Lulka and Gertrude Gruen

identified Nassar
as their assailant,

he's questioned about the
Boston Strangler killings.

He was very clear
that he knew nothing

about the Boston stranglings.

It was only until later,

when he was speaking
with Dr. Robey,

that he revealed the fact

that he had heard about
the Boston stranglings

from Albert DeSalvo.

Dr. Ames
Robey knew both Nassar

and DeSalvo from their time

at Bridgewater Hospital
for the Criminally Insane.

Initially,
when DeSalvo is a suspect,

Dr. Robey, he didn't agree.

He's like, "He's not a murderer.
He doesn't have it in him."

But he did think that Nassar
could be the Boston Strangler.

He noticed that on
several occasions,

that Nassar and
DeSalvo were talking,

in hushed tones, by themselves.

It seemed like Nassar
was coaching him

to say certain things
in a certain way,

giving him information.

Robey believes,
along with others,

that Nassar shared intimate
details of the Strangler crimes

so that DeSalvo would
claim that he did it,

looking for glory and fame in
being the Boston Strangler.

The
theory goes that Nassar

would turn DeSalvo
in for the reward

and split it with DeSalvo to
give to his wife and children.

The two incorrectly assume

that they are eligible
for that reward money,

but because they're convicted
felons, they are not.

But
there are other ways

to make money off
these notorious crimes.

DeSalvo also knew
that there'd be books

and movies written about this,

and that he wanted a cut of it.

It's Nassar
who connected DeSalvo

to his defense
attorney, F. Lee Bailey.

Up until
Bailey came on the scene,

DeSalvo had been
vehemently denying

that he had anything to do

with the Boston
Strangler murders.

Then all of a sudden,

Nassar connects him
with this new lawyer

and suddenly he's claiming
that he committed all of them?

It just seems a little odd.

When confronted,
Nassar denies any involvement

with the Boston
Strangler crimes.

He says, "All the
information I have

came from my distraught
fellow inmate, DeSalvo,

who gave me all
the gory details."

Nassar is hoping for a retrial
of his murder conviction.

He knows he's not gonna get that

if he confesses to more murders.

Police finally decide that
the case against DeSalvo

is much stronger than
the case against Nassar,

and they kind of let it go.

Both of them are locked up.

Neither one of them

are gonna see the light
of day again in Boston,

and the crime stopped.

In 1967,
Albert DeSalvo is two years

into a life sentence
for sexual assault.

And even though police can't
pin the murders on DeSalvo,

the Boston Strangler's killing
spree appears to be over.

But not for long.

In July 1967,

a 19-year-old Eastern
Michigan University student

is found strangled to
death in her apartment.

She was sexually assaulted

and she was strangled
with her own clothing.

This bears striking resemblance

to the Boston Strangler murders.

Over
the next two years,

six more young women
are raped and murdered

in and around
Ypsilanti, Michigan.

All but one have clothing
tied around their necks.

Dr. Ames Robey,
who was in charge

of Bridgewater State Mental
Institute in Massachusetts,

where does he live now?

He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan,

and he's the chief
forensic psychiatrist

for Ypsilanti State Hospital.

He is disturbed and unsettled

at how closely these murders

mimic the Boston
Strangler murders.

There are fears
that the Boston Strangler

may have moved to Michigan
to resume his serial killing.

One day, Dr.
Robey sees an article

about a student protest.

And in that article
is a photograph

of these students protesting,

and he recognizes somebody.

Robey
recognizes a man

known by his pseudonym,
David Parker,

one of his former
mental patients

at Bridgewater State Hospital.

Dr. Robey, he's like,
"This is one of the people

that I actually thought
was the Boston Strangler."

He starts to
think, now Parker's in Michigan,

he's been a student
at the university

for the last couple of years.

Could he not only
have been responsible

for the Boston
Strangler murders,

but also these Michigan murders?

Parker
planned to build

and detonate a bomb
in Boston in 1961,

and his erratic behavior
sends him to Bridgewater,

where he's put under
the care of Dr. Robey.

He's then arrested

for beating his pregnant
wife in Harvard Square.

She says she feared
for her life.

He was beating her regularly

that at one time,
after strangling her,

he stops and says, "I
choose to let you live."

Parker also
expresses a deep hatred

and a deep distrust of women.

And for a while,
because of that,

Robey believed that Parker

could have been the
Boston Strangler

up until DeSalvo's arrest.

But now, Dr.
Robey realizes that once again,

Parker is in the same vicinity

where there are now a
string of strangulations.

Dr. Robey calls investigators

and tells them that
Parker is here in Michigan

and he fears he may be
the Boston Strangler

and is killing again.

Police
interview Parker,

who denies any role
in the killings.

He's dismissed as a suspect.

But the cops soon get a
promising new lead in the case.

An eyewitness comes forward

to say that she saw
one of the victims

getting on a motorcycle
that a man was driving,

a blue motorcycle.

A police officer
who's on campus

notices a young man
fitting that description.

He actually knows this person.

John Collins was
in his fraternity,

and he was thrown out of
the fraternity for theft.

This officer sees Collins

sitting on the back
of his motorcycle,

trying to talk to
young, pretty girls

walking through campus.

And that's how he's
brought in as a suspect.

They start interviewing
people in his past

and they see he's got a
history of sexual violence.

Past girlfriend said
that he was abusive,

that he would choke
them, strangle them.

He was not a nice person at all.

Police
consider Collins

a prime suspect in these
terrifying serial killings,

though there's only enough
evidence to convict him

for the last of the
seven Michigan murders.

Some researchers
find it hard to believe

that Collins is responsible
for all seven murders

that take place in Michigan.

It has been suggested
that perhaps

he might have had an accomplice.

And that accomplice
is David Parker.

Though
the Michigan murders

may have nothing to do
with the Boston killings,

they keep alive the theory

that Albert DeSalvo may
be innocent after all.

In 1973, DeSalvo puts
in a call to Robey.

He says, "I'm not
the Boston Strangler

and I'm ready to reveal
to you exactly who is.

Come meet me in prison."

He wants to speak
to him face to face.

Robey says he'll be there
as soon as possible.

And that night, DeSalvo
is stabbed in his cell.

He's murdered.

The prison officials say it
was a drug deal gone wrong,

but Robey's not so sure.

Was he silenced for
what he was about to say

about the Strangler murders?

In 2013,
investigators employ

new technology in order
to solve the murder

of the Boston Strangler's
last victim, Mary Sullivan.

The police
department reanalyzes

the evidence that they
have from Mary Sullivan.

They have semen samples
from her crime scene.

DeSalvo is exhumed.

They get DNA from his
bones and from his teeth,

and now they have
a definitive match.

His semen is on Mary Sullivan.

He is the killer
of Mary Sullivan.

For many, this
is conclusive evidence

that Albert DeSalvo was
the Boston Strangler,

but can we really tie him
to all of those murders?

Many others believe
that this isn't a case

that should be closed.

In fact, it should continue
to remain wide open.

To this day, there's no hard
evidence connecting DeSalvo

to the other 12 Boston
Strangler murders,

all of which remain
officially unsolved.

Many experts remain convinced

that there wasn't a
single Boston Strangler,

that there were probably
multiple killers

copying each other.

More than six decades later,

the Boston Strangler
case still fascinates,

not only for what we know,

but for the mysteries
that linger.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching
History's Greatest Mysteries.