Boston breathed a sigh of relief in 1965 when Albert DeSalvo confessed to thirteen stranglings. The relief was never tested in a courtroom. No prosecutor in the three counties involved ever indicted him for any of the thirteen murders, and the confession that closed the case in the public imagination could not, by its own legal terms, have been used to convict him of a single one.
Between 1962 and 1964, at least eleven, and by some counts thirteen, women were sexually assaulted and strangled in and around Boston. In 1965, Albert DeSalvo, already held at Bridgewater State Hospital for unrelated sexual assault charges, confessed to all of them during a psychiatric evaluation, a context in which the confession legally could not be used against him. He was never charged with any of the stranglings. His account contained factual errors on time of death and strangulation method in multiple cases, and described sexually penetrating final victim Mary Sullivan, though the autopsy found she had instead been assaulted with a broom handle. He was convicted only of unrelated armed robberies and sexual assaults, and was murdered in prison in 1973 before any strangling case was tested at trial. In 2013, DNA testing linked him to Sullivan’s murder alone. The other twelve cases remain exactly as unresolved in court as they were in 1964.
At least eleven women, ages 19 to 85, were strangled in the Boston area between June 1962 and January 1964. Investigative reporters Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole first connected the murders and coined the “Boston Strangler” name.
Albert DeSalvo confessed to psychiatrist Dr. Robert Mezer during a 1965 evaluation tied to unrelated “Green Man” rape charges, a context that made the confession legally unusable against him in a strangling prosecution.
DeSalvo’s account contained specific factual errors, including wrong times of death, incorrect strangulation methods in several cases, and a claim of sexual penetration in Mary Sullivan’s case that her autopsy did not support.
FBI profilers Robert Ressler and John Douglas both concluded the varying victim profiles and methods suggested more than one offender, and that DeSalvo’s documented behavior did not match the sexually sadistic pattern of several of the murders.
DeSalvo was convicted only of unrelated armed robberies and sexual assaults, sentenced to life, and was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate in 1973, a murder that was itself never solved.
2013 DNA testing connected DeSalvo to Mary Sullivan’s murder specifically. Officials stated no comparable DNA evidence existed for the other twelve attributed killings.
No. He confessed to 13 stranglings but was never charged with or tried for any of them.
Not consistently. It contained errors on time of death and method in several cases, and described penetrating Mary Sullivan, which her autopsy contradicted.
No. 2013 testing linked him only to Mary Sullivan’s murder. No comparable evidence exists for the other twelve.
No. FBI profilers Robert Ressler and John Douglas both concluded the pattern suggested multiple offenders.
A public narrative crediting one man with thirteen murders was never tested in court for any of them, closed by confession and relief rather than trial.
Trace the case from the first murder through the confession that closed it, to the 2013 DNA testing that resolved only one victim’s case.
A Confession That Could Never Have Convicted Him.
This is the fact most retellings compress into a footnote: DeSalvo’s confession was given to Dr. Robert Mezer during a psychiatric evaluation connected to his unrelated Green Man rape charges. Confessions made in that clinical context are not admissible as courtroom evidence of guilt in a separate prosecution. Even setting aside every question about whether the confession was true, it could not, by its own legal terms, have been the basis for convicting DeSalvo of any of the thirteen stranglings.
A 1967 Boston Herald report captured the practical result plainly: with DeSalvo already sentenced to life on the unrelated charges and confined to a maximum-security psychiatric facility, prosecutors in the three counties involved, Suffolk, Middlesex, and Essex, were widely expected not to pursue indictments at all. That expectation held. No county ever charged him with a single strangling.
A case can be closed in the public imagination by a confession that was never legally usable to close it in a courtroom. Those are two different kinds of closure, and only one of them is supposed to determine guilt.
The Confession Didn’t Match the Crime Scenes Either.
Beyond the legal problem, the substance of DeSalvo’s confession does not hold up cleanly against the physical record. He got the time of death wrong in multiple cases. He described the wrong strangulation method, manual versus ligature, in others. In Mary Sullivan’s case specifically, he described sexually penetrating her; her autopsy found no semen and indicated she had instead been assaulted with a broom handle, a discrepancy on one of the case’s most basic physical facts.
Dr. Ames Robey, the psychiatrist who evaluated DeSalvo at Bridgewater, later said DeSalvo “wanted so badly to be the Strangler,” and multiple researchers, including Mary Sullivan’s own nephew, journalist Casey Sherman, have suggested a financial motive: DeSalvo reportedly hoped a strangler confession could generate book and film income for his family, even from behind bars.
Each button separates one distinct case-integrity issue from the case’s cultural closure.
Given during a psychiatric evaluation for unrelated charges, the confession could never have legally convicted DeSalvo of any strangling, regardless of its content.
Errors on time of death, strangulation method, and the specific physical facts of Mary Sullivan’s assault undercut the confession’s reliability on its own terms.
Two independent FBI profilers concluded the evidence pointed to multiple offenders rather than a single killer matching DeSalvo’s documented behavioral profile.
Three separate counties with jurisdiction over different murders each declined to file charges, a documented prosecutorial choice, not an evidentiary impossibility.
Grading the strength of the connection between DeSalvo and different parts of his own documented record.
Real convictions, real victim identifications, real evidence. DeSalvo was a documented violent predator independent of the strangling question entirely.
A confirmed 2013 DNA match, though officials stress it does not by itself resolve every disputed detail of that specific case.
No DNA, no physical evidence, no witness placement. The connection rests entirely on a legally inadmissible confession containing documented factual errors.
The Counterargument: DeSalvo Knew Details a Stranger Wouldn’t.
A fair account has to acknowledge that DeSalvo’s confession included details about several crime scenes that were never released to the public, a fact investigators at the time found genuinely persuasive, and the same category of detail that made confessions credible in other cases discussed in this series. His documented history of predatory sexual violence against women is also real and independently proven.
That combination is why so many investigators, then and since, believed he was involved in at least some of the murders. It does not resolve the specific, documented contradictions in his account, and it does not change the fact that no court ever tested any of it, because no prosecutor ever brought a strangling charge for a jury to weigh that evidence against.
Why This Case Matters
The Boston Strangler case matters because it shows how completely a public narrative can close around a name without the justice system ever formally testing it. Albert DeSalvo is remembered, in headlines and film titles, as the Boston Strangler. He was legally never any such thing, because no court ever convicted him of a single strangling, and the confession that built his reputation could not have been the basis for one if a prosecutor had tried.
Twelve families still have a case that was never tried. One family has a DNA match that resolves their specific question but not the broader one. The city that breathed a sigh of relief in 1965 closed a case its own legal system never actually closed.
Criminal Minds Wiki, The Boston Strangler, citing Ressler and Douglas profiler assessments.
Gerold Frank, The Boston Strangler, New American Library, 1966.
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