Boston Strangler Part One by Mountain Murders

[00:00:00] Listener discretion is advised. Hello and welcome to true crime. The podcast that helps you find new,

[00:00:06] emerging, and undiscovered true crime podcasts. I'm Greg, the host, and curator of true crime.

[00:00:12] Today's episode is from Mountain Murders. Mountain Murders is an Appalachian true crime podcast.

[00:00:20] If you liked today's episode, make sure to check out the episode description for links to subscribe.

[00:00:25] Alright, let's get this show started. Begin. Some content may not be suitable for all listeners.

[00:00:31] Listener discretion is advised. We say fuck Allah. Hey y'all, welcome back to Mountain Murders.

[00:00:37] I'm Heather, and I'm Dylan. Hey Dylan. Hey girl. How you doing? I'm doing wonderful. Oh, man,

[00:00:44] we dropped a couple of episodes this weekend. I'm feeling very good. We're in the podcast studio,

[00:00:50] which is our happy place. Yes, our happy empty place now. Yeah, we started packing.

[00:00:55] So if it sounds a little teeny, that is why, because there's nothing left in this room, but our

[00:01:00] equipment. Well, that's true. Dylan, it was a gorgeous weekend here in Western North Carolina.

[00:01:06] No, we have listeners all over the world. The fall leaves. Well, they've slowly disappeared.

[00:01:14] The leaves don't left. Yep, so the color is gone. But we had a beautiful sunny day. I was able to get

[00:01:21] out earlier and take roofists on a nice, long lock, and it could be in just the best mood.

[00:01:27] Yeah, it's amazing. What that old son in that bottom and deal do for it. It's true. And of course,

[00:01:31] we also get a dose of vitamin D every time you open your mouth. It's true. Yeah, probably not the

[00:01:37] same, but it makes us all happy, Dylan. Yeah, I'll give my wife a dose of vitamin D. No,

[00:01:44] I would like to give a shout out to our two patrons, Karen and Elizabeth, who have re-uped their

[00:01:49] sponsorship. Thank you so much. They are responsible for today's episode. Dylan, we really don't

[00:01:55] have a lot of time to Dilly Dally. This episode is a lengthy one, and there's so much information,

[00:02:02] and I wanted to make sure I told our listeners the best, most factual version of this case,

[00:02:08] because there's a great deal of misinformation that has been circulated on the internet,

[00:02:14] and I've even listened to a few other podcasts and their facts are not the same facts that I have.

[00:02:20] And we've even watched a couple of really crappy movies.

[00:02:23] Oh, we have. So I just want to make sure we give a very detailed factual case. We're breaking

[00:02:28] up into two parts. We're bringing you part one, and I'm assuming if you're listening to the

[00:02:34] episode, you saw the title. We're going to be talking about the Boston strangler today. Man,

[00:02:38] I cannot wait because I've always heard of this case, but I've never dug into the details.

[00:02:43] And the whole time Heather's been researching this. She's like, oh my gosh, she's learning

[00:02:49] a lot as well. And so yeah, let's just stop straight in again. This is a case I'm not super familiar

[00:02:55] with, but through my research, have managed to learn a great deal. And it's very interesting.

[00:03:01] I feel like this case sets some precedences for how serial killer investigations are now even

[00:03:09] now conducted in modern times and how this case really changed. I think a lot here in the United

[00:03:16] States as far as crime and investigation, task force, the FBI's involvement in creating the, you

[00:03:23] know, behavioral unit. What is that? The BAU behavior analysis unit? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're

[00:03:31] ready? Let's go. Yeah. See y'all buckled up over there. I'm ready to learn the Boston Strangler remains

[00:03:37] one of the most notorious and enigmatic figures in the Annals of American crime operating during

[00:03:43] the 1960s, the serial killer terrorized the city of Boston leaving a trail of fear and uncertainty

[00:03:50] in his wake, a unique blend of brutality, mystery and public intrigue marks the case of the Boston

[00:03:56] Strangler. 55 year old divorcee and a slusters, by the way, I feel like before we get started,

[00:04:03] I do need to offer up a trigger warning. There are some pretty graphic depictions of sexual

[00:04:10] violence. In this case, I have tried to limit the, I guess, amount of gross information that is

[00:04:18] available, but I do have to discuss some things that are going to be hard to hear. They're hard,

[00:04:23] going to be hard for me to talk about. And I know some folks will have difficulty hearing this

[00:04:28] episode. And if that kind of thing is, is not for you, I understand we don't hate you for it.

[00:04:34] We'll see you next time. We ain't mad at you, but just wanted to let people know. And again,

[00:04:39] I try to give a complete picture, but I will omit some of the more graphic details,

[00:04:44] because this is a horrific case. Yeah. I did not actually realize there was some of this

[00:04:50] brutality that you've already described me, but I think you do have to talk about some of it,

[00:04:56] because it really, it really sets the stage for the entirety of the story, honestly.

[00:05:01] Well, absolutely. And getting into the, the psychology, which we will probably dabble more

[00:05:07] into that subject matter when we get to part two, but I think it's really important to

[00:05:11] get a clear picture of exactly how awful these crimes were. All right, back to it.

[00:05:18] One, 55 year old divorcee Anna Slessers had only lived at 77 Gainesboro Street for two weeks.

[00:05:26] Slessers had grown up in Latvia, where she was married with two kids. During World War two,

[00:05:33] she was divorced from her husband and fled the country to a German refugee camp, eventually Anna

[00:05:39] and her two children, she has a son and a daughter. They could immigrate to the United States

[00:05:44] where they were able to live with family in Michigan. Anna earned a degree in Latvia where she had

[00:05:50] worked as a bookkeeper. Yet, she took on media work in the United States to make a living.

[00:05:56] Anna paid for her son, Juris, to attend the University of Maryland. Her daughter,

[00:06:01] Meijia, was married, remaining in Maryland. Juris, who worked as a research engineer at MIT's

[00:06:09] Lincoln Laboratories, had wanted to get an apartment for himself. Up until that point, he and his mother

[00:06:17] had stayed in Boston together. We're living together. But now he's 25 years old, and he is seeking

[00:06:25] independence from his mother. So Anna, a seamstress who earned about $62 a week, moved into a small

[00:06:33] apartment in an area known as the back bay. Yeah, you see this sometimes. You'll have someone

[00:06:38] who has a degree in other countries, and then they come here, I'm not sure if it's because the

[00:06:43] documentation or the degrees don't translate or not recognize in America, but a lot of times,

[00:06:49] they end up doing these menial jobs, which I would think would be tough if you're someone who's

[00:06:55] educated. You're right, Dylan. It is kind of an unusual, I'm not sure what the translation

[00:07:02] if the degree or the education doesn't translate here. Or it's not recognized, if you will.

[00:07:08] why that is, but you're absolutely right. I mean, I've heard of foreign nationals who have

[00:07:14] medical degrees. Physicist. But can't find work in the United States, or they're not accredited

[00:07:20] to work in hospitals here. I mean, it's unusual. And maybe one of our listeners knows a bit more

[00:07:25] about that and couldn't lighten us, because I'm not really sure why that is. Right. Now, the back bay

[00:07:31] area, I, through my research discovered Dylan, at the time during the 1960s, the back bay was

[00:07:38] considered maybe not like the nicest neighborhood, but it wasn't the worst neighborhood, either, if that

[00:07:45] makes sense. The rent was cheap. I think some of the buildings may have at some point might have been a

[00:07:51] little nicer, but they were more rundown at this point. They offered cheap rent. There were a lot of

[00:07:57] young people who lived in this area on a college students, listening to a few other podcasts on the

[00:08:03] subject matter. One in particular that I will go ahead and mention was one of my resources. Well, I kind

[00:08:09] of went back and listened to it after I wrote the episode just to see what it was about and learned a

[00:08:14] great deal more is called Stranglers. Yeah, you said that was a good one. It's a great series that

[00:08:20] dives into the Boston Strangler case, but they have interviews with a lot of people who were living in

[00:08:25] Boston at this time, the early 60s. And they were saying, you know, this was an area just kind of full of

[00:08:30] young people, a lot of college students, you could walk down the street and there were lots of young

[00:08:35] college students drinking and partying in the bars and kind of hooting and hollering. Some of the

[00:08:40] young women who lived in the area at the time said they would see flashers. Oh, wow. And there

[00:08:47] were peeping times and that kind of thing, but yet it didn't make you feel super unsafe.

[00:08:53] Probably just it was more almost comical to, you know, like just like what's going on here, but it

[00:08:58] wasn't like a neighborhood where people felt truly unsafe. It was more just like there are a lot

[00:09:03] of drunk young college frat parties happening and people exposing themselves, but maybe not in

[00:09:10] like a nefarious way. I don't know. I cordially, I suppose, my gender distance. Well, I mean

[00:09:16] nobody wants to be flashed or let's be honest. No, but they were a little bit more dismissive of it

[00:09:21] as like, well, it didn't really seem like it was this deviant actor,

[00:09:26] but it wasn't an uncommon thing on a Saturday night to walk down the street and there would

[00:09:31] be a flasher. Well, it is more like it's shenanigans than it is like actually dangerous stuff.

[00:09:37] Perhaps. So the day before Anna had been sent home early by her employer at decorator fabrics

[00:09:44] incorporated and told not to return until Monday, which gave the woman a long weekend. And I'm not

[00:09:50] sure why they gave her this extended weekend. Maybe they'd just were kind of closing up shop or

[00:09:54] whatever. So she had asked her son, Jerris, if he would drive her to the Latvian Lutheran Church

[00:10:02] in Roxbury, see, June 14th was considered a national day of morning for Latvians to remember those

[00:10:09] that were lost during the Russian invasion, which happened in World War II. Jerris reluctantly agreed

[00:10:17] to pick his mother up at 7 p.m. for the church service. He was uninterested in attending,

[00:10:22] but he also felt guilty for telling his mother no. So he, he didn't want to go, but he didn't

[00:10:28] want to tell his mom, I'm not into it. Right. He doesn't want to tell her I'm not going to

[00:10:33] come give you a ride. He's like, OK, I mean, and we all know how some mothers have a certain way

[00:10:40] of guilt tripping you, right? Well, I mean, you just don't want to disappoint them or let them down.

[00:10:46] Earlier Anna had baked muffins for Jerris leaving them out to cool. And at some point,

[00:10:52] she had also written out some checks for utility bills. These were lying on the table

[00:10:58] as if she had just, you know, signed these checks. Around 7 p.m. Jerris parked and climbed the stairs

[00:11:05] to her third floor apartment. There was no answer when he knocked. Assuming his mother was

[00:11:12] using the bathroom, Jerris returned downstairs and waited for Anna after nearly half an hour of

[00:11:18] waiting on his mother. He grew agitated and returned to the front door knocking louder. He tried

[00:11:23] the door, but it was locked. Around 7.45 p.m. after receiving no indication that his mother was

[00:11:28] joining him, Jerris decided to ram the door open with his shoulder. So now it sounds like he's

[00:11:34] getting worried about what's going, what's happened to his mother. Well, yeah, at this point, he's

[00:11:38] thinking, well, did she have some kind of medical emergency? Is she sick? Right. His imagination's

[00:11:45] probably running while. Yes. Now the apartment was quiet. He knocked on the door of the bathroom,

[00:11:51] but he heard nothing. When Jerris pushed the door open, he made a startling discovery.

[00:11:56] His mother, Anna, was hanging by her bathrobes belt over the door. Oh, my God.

[00:12:03] Jerris immediately called for the police. Though she was wearing a bathrobe, it was open in front

[00:12:09] exposing her nude body. The bathtub was about a third full of water. At first Boston police

[00:12:17] believed it was a suicide. And her son thought this as well because she had been having

[00:12:22] a bit, I wouldn't say she was in like a full on depression, but he did say she had been

[00:12:28] troubled or had been having some issues. Just having a tough time, maybe worried about who knows

[00:12:35] what, but so he's went from reluctantly going to get his mom and take her to this thing to finding

[00:12:44] her dead. I mean, I just don't even know how you process that. No. When a detective named

[00:12:50] Melon showed up, he challenged that assertion. From the evidence, it was clear to him that

[00:12:55] Missess Lesser was a victim of homicide. She had suffered head injuries and strangulation.

[00:13:01] There was no sign of rape, but she had been sexually assaulted. I don't have a great deal of

[00:13:07] details about this, but I will say that in several of these cases, which we will, you know,

[00:13:14] we'll get into discussing this more, there were objects used for the sexual assault.

[00:13:21] Yeah, and I'll tell you, that always strikes me as very, very weird. And that top of the

[00:13:28] deviance, I don't know how you realize that that's something you want to do.

[00:13:34] It's very violent and deranged and humiliating. Yes. Yeah, there definitely seems to be more of

[00:13:41] a sadistic quality to to that type of sexual assault, right? Some drawers appeared to be

[00:13:51] ransacked though nothing of value is missing. It struck Melon as odd as if the burglary was staged.

[00:13:59] A gold watch sat on a shelf above the bathtub untouched and a few other valuables were

[00:14:05] left behind at the apartment. The otherwise tidy apartment had a kitchen way spasket with

[00:14:11] trash strewn across the floor. When questioned, neighbors didn't know the woman who'd only

[00:14:17] briefly lived in the building, so they didn't have a lot of information to offer up. The

[00:14:21] neighbor who resided in the apartment below had returned from work at 6pm that evening and laid

[00:14:27] down for a nap. Around 6pm he recalled hearing a series of loud thighs, but nothing more.

[00:14:36] I mean, this guy even thought he didn't really know much about this new tenant, but he thought

[00:14:42] immediately like, oh no, I've got a very loud person living upstairs. Is this person

[00:14:47] a dancer? Yeah, I'm going to have to deal with this now. Yeah. Upon investigation,

[00:14:53] Boston Police learned that Mrs. Lester lived a relatively quiet life. She didn't have much of a

[00:14:59] social life, Dylan. She went to work in church. She had no male friends at work. It was learned

[00:15:07] she didn't associate with the other employees. She didn't have much of a social life at all.

[00:15:12] Her former husband whom she had divorced for — they've been divorced 20 years at this point —

[00:15:17] was remarried in living in Canada. So they ruled out the possibility that it was an

[00:15:23] Expert. Yeah, because he's already moved on with his life and he's a very long ways away.

[00:15:29] With little to go on, Boston Police were not hopeful the case would be solved. Although 90% of

[00:15:36] murders were cleared, experience had proven that if the killer wasn't caught within two weeks,

[00:15:41] it usually became a cold case. That's how the Boston PD viewed this. On a Saturday afternoon,

[00:15:48] June 30, Nina Nichols, a 68-year-old woman, arrived at her apartment at 1940 Commonwealth Avenue.

[00:15:56] She had been out of town for several days with friends,

[00:15:59] but was due for dinner and an overnight visit with her sister. It was after 5pm,

[00:16:05] so she knew she would have to rush to Wellesley Hills where her sister lived.

[00:16:11] Mrs. Nichols took time to open the windows. It was a very hot day. It was like 90 degrees outside.

[00:16:19] So she immediately opened the windows to her apartments, trying to air it out while she's,

[00:16:24] I guess, packing a bag and trying to quit, ready herself to go to the sister's house, right?

[00:16:30] Yeah, a lot of times I forget, even though that's so far north, Boston, New York, it gets very,

[00:16:35] very hot there. It does get very hot there. I often times forget. Like, oh, yeah,

[00:16:39] I didn't even know it gets hot like that. Yes, wettering heat. Absolutely.

[00:16:44] So she opened the windows and changed into a thin house dress before calling her sister

[00:16:50] Marguerite Steadman to confirm that she would arrive around 6pm. During the call,

[00:16:56] Nina was interrupted. Nina said, "Excuse me, Marguerite. There's my buzzer. I'll call you right back."

[00:17:02] And that would be the last time that Marguerite would speak to her sister.

[00:17:07] When Nina didn't return the call, Marguerite asked her husband,

[00:17:11] Chester Steadman, who is an attorney, to ring Nina. There was no answer.

[00:17:18] He told his wife to wait longer because she might be stuck in traffic.

[00:17:22] By 7.30pm, Nina had not shown up at the Steadman home. Chester Steadman phoned 65-year-old

[00:17:30] Thomas Bruce, the building superintendent. Steadman asked Bruce to check on Nina.

[00:17:37] Nina's car was still on the parking lot behind the building, so Mr. Bruce looks out. He says,

[00:17:41] "Well, her car is still here." At that point, Mr. Bruce goes to Nina's apartment where he uses

[00:17:47] a master key to unlock the apartment door. From where the janitor stood at the doorway,

[00:17:54] he could see that Nina's apartment appeared burglarized. He could see the drawers were pulled open,

[00:18:00] belongings were lying all over the place. He could see Nina's naked body lying on the bedroom

[00:18:06] floor. Her pink house coat and slip were pulled up above the woman's neck and knots twisted

[00:18:13] together almost like a rope. So tightly, that they cut into her flesh. Oh my god.

[00:18:20] Two nylon stockings were also tied around her chin.

[00:18:25] You're listening to an episode of Mountain Murders on True Crime By Indie Drop-In Network.

[00:18:31] We're going to take a quick break. And now back to you, this episode of Mountain Murders.

[00:18:38] Nina had worked as a chief physiotherapist at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital

[00:18:43] until retiring three years before. She was widowed for 20 years with her brother-in-law,

[00:18:49] being the only man she had any kind of relationship with. She spent weekends with friends,

[00:18:55] sometimes summering at their homes in Florida and Maine. The woman had no known enemies.

[00:19:01] She kept no cash in her apartment, paying every bill by check. And it appeared nothing in her

[00:19:07] apartment of value had been taken. Nina wasn't avid photographer Dylan and she had a $300 camera,

[00:19:14] which was considered a very expensive item at that time. But it was, and likely was the

[00:19:22] easiest item to be pawned, but it remained in the apartment. There were no signs of

[00:19:29] forcible injury. However, Nina was reportedly sexually assaulted with a wine bottle.

[00:19:34] See, see here you are talking to your sister and you never know. You're just having a run of the

[00:19:41] memory. A very normal conversation. And you never know. And that would drop me crazy

[00:19:46] if this happened to me. You never know what that's going to be the last time you ever speak to them.

[00:19:52] Let alone that you're going to find out that they've been brutalized and murdered. But I would

[00:19:58] never be able to stop thinking about what I should have said or maybe wish I'd said the last time

[00:20:03] I talked to them. But you always imagine that you get to talk to them again. You have no idea

[00:20:09] that's going to be the last time. That would drop me crazy. It would be very difficult. I guess

[00:20:15] that's why they say you need to make sure the people that you love know how you feel about them.

[00:20:21] Yeah, and try to always end on a positive note. Yes, not this is a good buy itself, see you later.

[00:20:28] Boston police were examining the details. 16 days apart, but only five of only a five mile

[00:20:38] like square area. You have two older women who've been strangled and sexually assaulted.

[00:20:43] Their apartment's ransacked. Police Commissioner Edmund McNamara called a conference for department heads.

[00:20:51] He's saying that this is a problem. Well, yeah, yeah, it's a very strange crime. They've been

[00:20:57] assaulted with foreign objects. I mean, yeah, 65 year old Helen Blake, a retired practical nurse.

[00:21:06] See, and this is going to be something that a lot of people point to is several of these women

[00:21:11] had medical backgrounds. They were nurses. They worked at various hospitals.

[00:21:16] We'll see that as the story goes on. And I didn't mention this earlier, but Anna Sleser had

[00:21:23] been a very big music fan. She loved opera and symphony. And many of these women attended the Boston

[00:21:32] symphony. Oh, wow, interesting. Yeah. So 65 year old Helen Blake, a retired practical nurse,

[00:21:38] resided in an apartment. Um, number nine at 73 Newhall Street. She had a friendly,

[00:21:45] closed relationship with her neighbors, two other women, Annie, Winshaw and Margaret Hamilton.

[00:21:51] Now, the women were in the habit of picking up their mail, which would be dropped off at their

[00:21:55] doors. They would usually stand in their dressing gowns, check in the mail, kind of standing at

[00:22:02] the doors, gossiping and checking in with each other for the day. Right. And I think maybe when

[00:22:08] you get older you fall into these routines. Well, it's habits. But I'm like, but I'm a creature of

[00:22:14] habit. And maybe I'm an older woman trapped in my middle age body. We look forward to the mail

[00:22:20] running now. You rush to the mailbox and we go through it and see if there's any huge checks,

[00:22:26] never is. And, uh, but no, I think it's just, uh, you fall into these routines, these daily routines.

[00:22:33] And it's, uh, the older folks like to stay up on their bills, keep everything even, you know,

[00:22:39] and then they like to know what's going on around them. And hey, I would have no problem

[00:22:43] standing at the door and, and, and gossiping about them. Well, you have these three older women

[00:22:49] they live along. I'm sure they're lonely. Um, and they've got companionship in each other.

[00:22:56] And it's a good idea. You go every day at the same time, you check your mail, you are able to kind of

[00:23:01] check in with each other, make sure everybody's doing okay. Right. Kind of hang out. They're your friends.

[00:23:07] So yeah, I think that'd be fun. Right. Helen was noticeably absent on Monday when

[00:23:14] Annie, Margaret, fetched the mail. Come to think of it, they agreed. The last time anyone had seen

[00:23:20] Helen was Saturday after consulting with some other neighbors. They found out no one had seen

[00:23:26] Helen. Um, the last time they'd heard from her was Saturday but not since by five PM, the two

[00:23:34] women, it could no longer contain themselves. They borrowed a master key from the superintendent

[00:23:39] and entered into Helen's apartment. Helen, who was very tidy, had an apartment in disarray.

[00:23:47] So that's the first thing they recognize is out of the ordinary. Well, yeah, nobody just throws

[00:23:53] their stuff on the floor and rips drawers out of dressers and stuff like that. You're going to,

[00:23:58] you're going to find it's a striking striking scene. Well, I do that but it's only if I can't find

[00:24:04] a obsessively search for an article of clothing. Well, you typically put it back together.

[00:24:10] Well, eventually. Well, I do have this issue though, if I look for something and cannot find it,

[00:24:17] I will obsess over a pair of tights, a certain shirt, a body suit, something that I want to wear.

[00:24:25] Even if I pick another outfit, I will obsess over where it is. And I will go through everything

[00:24:32] until I find it. Yeah. I've taken out everything from the closet and gone through every single

[00:24:37] hanger until I find what I'm looking for because I can't stand not knowing where my things are

[00:24:43] because I like to feel like I'm kind of organized in where my things are. I've noticed this happened

[00:24:49] before and I'll be like, look, we were just going to have a little barbecue and you've tried

[00:24:53] 19 outfits on. What is happening right now? But I can't find the shirt I want. It's important.

[00:24:58] I know I'm neurotic I can't help it.

[00:25:00] They've got this apartment in this array. No one every drawer is open and emptied onto the floor.

[00:25:07] Too scared to enter. They lock the apartment and call for police. That was a good move.

[00:25:12] You think so? Well, yeah, you're a scene integrity. Well, exactly. I was going to say that

[00:25:16] preserving the crime scene and it's also for all you know whoever's done this could still be in there.

[00:25:21] Yes. You're very smart. I think you might survive in a, you know, horror movie.

[00:25:26] Oh, no, but like, I'll hell not. And I just pull a door to call the Popo.

[00:25:30] When Lynn police arrived because by the way, they live in Lynn, Massachusetts,

[00:25:35] which is just right outside of Boston. When Lynn police arrived, they found Helen Blake

[00:25:41] dead inside the apartment, she lay face down on her bed, legs spread wide apart nude safe for the top

[00:25:49] of her pajamas, which had been pushed kind of up above her shoulders. A nylon stocking had been

[00:25:55] used to strangle the woman. It was tied tightly and nodded at her neck. A bra, a bra also connected

[00:26:02] to socks, sort of formed a bow under her chin.

[00:26:07] What in the world? Yeah. We're going to see this more than once, this crude bow tie. It's,

[00:26:16] it's very weird and disturbing. She had been sexually assaulted. Again, not to go into great detail,

[00:26:25] but what I gather is with a foreign object, with a, with a possible object.

[00:26:34] She didn't have much money, but Helen owned two diamond rings, and they were missing.

[00:26:41] There was also discussion that she was set to inherit about $45,000, which might explain why

[00:26:47] metal lock box under her bed had been nearly pride open. The apartment door had a chain,

[00:26:54] a bolt, and a firm, Yale lock. Quality lock. I don't know what a Yale lock is now.

[00:27:00] It's a brand of lock. It is. And you're saying it's a very good lock.

[00:27:03] Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. Okay, well, that's good to note. I know I kept your run for a reason.

[00:27:08] Hey, I'm making sense today. You would contribute something to this episode.

[00:27:12] There was no sign of force entry. Therefore, Helen Blake must have allowed her attacker to enter,

[00:27:20] yet with so many neighbors, and let's be honest, they sound like maybe nosy, busy body neighbors.

[00:27:26] Yeah, they know everything that's happening, the comings and goings of the building, and I always

[00:27:30] say, you know, maybe the door just happened to be unlocked. They always assume that you possibly knew

[00:27:37] your, your,

[00:27:39] shit, I'm sorry, the person who assaulted you or something just because there's no signs of

[00:27:44] force entry. But I think people getting the habit of in the cities or anywhere near the cities

[00:27:49] of locking their doors every time they come in and out. So I think that's a fair something.

[00:27:54] But it is possible that, you know, during this time, I mean, this is at early 60s,

[00:27:58] right? Maybe, and Helen, maybe had been in this building for a while and felt comfortable. Maybe

[00:28:03] she hadn't locked her door when she had returned from getting the mail. Who knows? But regardless,

[00:28:09] none of these busy body neighbors had heard a single sound of a struggle. According to friends

[00:28:16] and neighbors, Helen was also not the kind of woman who would have gone down without a fight.

[00:28:21] Yet everyone who knew Helen thought it was ludicrous to imagine the woman wearing only

[00:28:25] pajamas allowing a strange man to enter her apartment. She had been strangled in the kitchen,

[00:28:31] then carried to the bedroom where the assault had taken place. At least that's what

[00:28:36] police theorized. Police determined the assailant must be a strong man because Helen weighed around

[00:28:42] 165 pounds. Now it's interesting to me, Dylan, that at this time, 165 pounds, they consider that to

[00:28:51] be a bigger, hefty woman. That sounds like that. That's not that much. No, but I will say 165 pound person

[00:29:03] mail or female is it would be hard to boot. So certainly it's not a really small...

[00:29:10] Right. So maybe we're just saying that she was a stout woman. She had a build that would

[00:29:17] suggest that perhaps she could be stout. We'll say that. She was killed sometime between 8.15 a.m.

[00:29:25] and 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 30th. So in that short window of time.

[00:29:30] Yeah, it's funny. This whole apartment has been torn apart and all this and assault in one room

[00:29:38] and then carried into another room and the fact that no one heard anything. That's kind of weird.

[00:29:44] Now Nina Nichols was also sexually assaulted and strangled to death in Boston less than an hour

[00:29:50] by trolley from a Lynn between 5 and 6 p.m. the same day. Oh really? So two women murdered in the

[00:29:59] same day. Similar circumstances. Wow. That's that's pretty wild. You, you seldom hear of something

[00:30:06] like that. Police commissioner McNamero was wrapping up his conference on Anna Slesers

[00:30:13] and Nina Nichols when told the news about Helen Blake's murder. His words were, quote,

[00:30:18] "Oh God, we've got a madman on the loose!" Three strangulation homicides in a two-week period

[00:30:24] was just the beginning. Boston would become a town besieged by terror as an elusive killer managed

[00:30:31] to interlock departments and leave behind no clues. McNamero jumped into action. He canceled

[00:30:39] all leave for officers. Every detective was assigned to homicide. A roundup of all sex offenders was

[00:30:46] ordered, a check of males between 18 to 45 who had been released from mental hospitals in the past

[00:30:53] two years were questioned. See, back then there was no, "Oh, it's okay. There's this politically

[00:31:00] correct." He's kind of jumping into action there. He's almost putting his own task force together,

[00:31:05] you know, bringing all the manpower in. And yeah, I mean, what can you do? One order read,

[00:31:13] quote, special attention should be paid to persons suffering from paranoia of mother hate.

[00:31:19] Okay. Because at this point, police are beginning to theorize the attacker targeting these women

[00:31:29] who are like older, middle-aged women, I wouldn't call them elderly. I mean, they're ranging from like

[00:31:34] 55, you know, into their 70s. That's the victim profile at this point. I mean, these are not

[00:31:41] like elderly women. These are like older, middle-aged women. So the police are theorizing this has

[00:31:47] to be someone who hates his mother. I think that's a pretty good theory. And some of them were

[00:31:53] pointing to the film's psycho and saying like we have a normal bait on our hands. We have a man

[00:31:58] who's like obsessed with his mother and hates his mother terrorizing these women.

[00:32:04] Well, I think that's a fair assumption. You know, and they're just trying to wrap their head around

[00:32:08] this because you know, they're finding these women in these very shocking states, you know,

[00:32:16] imposes and stuff. So you know, that's got to be shaking the police to their core, you know.

[00:32:22] Right. So police ran with this theory that it was a younger man who paid it all older women because

[00:32:26] he hated his mother, attacking the women who symbolized his mother. And it is a solid theory. And this

[00:32:32] is actually something we've heard time and time again when it comes to many of these serial killers,

[00:32:37] especially ones who do target older females. Law enforcement officials appealed to women. Keep

[00:32:45] doors locked, allowed no strangers to enter your residence, report all prowlers or unknown persons.

[00:32:52] An emergency number was set up and it was DE dash 81212. Nice phone number, huh? Yeah. To be called

[00:33:02] day or night to report any suspicious activity. So they're not set up the hotline.

[00:33:08] They're not really showing the sometimes prevalent, you know, when they don't want to admit

[00:33:16] that crimes are connected or you have someone going around doing this over and over,

[00:33:20] they seem to be moving pretty fast. They do. But we'll get into this here in a few minutes. They

[00:33:26] still don't want to come out and admit. This is the work of one person. Oh, okay. Right. They're just,

[00:33:33] they're trying to be vigilant, but they still haven't made official statements.

[00:33:37] Official connection, okay, right, okay, which maybe they, they know it, they just don't want to say it.

[00:33:44] Well, this is all happening in a very small window in my opinion. And we'll get into it more,

[00:33:50] but we also have to think about the time period. I mean, this is the very early 60s.

[00:33:54] We didn't have a term for serial killer yet. No, no, it's true. Or they didn't even think like that.

[00:34:01] You know, they didn't think that there's someone out here hunting people. Right.

[00:34:06] Evidence was collected from the three apartments, including rugs, runners, linens, blankets,

[00:34:13] and floor sweepings. And they were all sent to the forensic lab tested were minute items, like a

[00:34:21] thread from a man's suit to a single human hair. After all, it had been a piece of wood that

[00:34:27] had helped solve the Lindbergh, maybe kidnapping. So at least they are taking evidence.

[00:34:33] No matter how minuscule seriously. I'm actually rather surprised that they're doing things

[00:34:39] like sweepings and, you know, nowadays they're going to a vacuum and get all the fibers, but it

[00:34:44] sounds like even if it's in the most basic state or method, they're actually trying to analyze

[00:34:51] fibers and hairs. So I'm really surprised they were even thinking like that in the 60s.

[00:34:56] Right. And that's why I sound like this case really kind of set a precedent for future investigations.

[00:35:04] It was on July 11th around 10 am when a chambermaid entered a cheap motel room to clean up.

[00:35:10] Moments later, she departed the room screaming. Inside a nude woman lay across the bed. She had

[00:35:17] gray hair and her clothes were draped over a chair, but all identification had been removed.

[00:35:23] The woman had been strangled with bare hands and autopsy would reveal. She and a man,

[00:35:28] appearing to be intoxicated, had signed in under the name Mr. and Mrs. Byron Spaney, listing a

[00:35:36] Catholic convent as their home address. The victim would be identified as Mrs. Margaret Davis,

[00:35:43] a 60-year-old widow from Roxbury. She'd actually known the nuns at the convent as they had been

[00:35:49] trying to help her with alcohol addiction, which had plagued her life. There was no clothing item

[00:35:54] used this time and no prominent positioning of the body, so police were unsure if the murder was

[00:36:00] connected to the others. Boston at the time was considered quite conservative. Left over ideals

[00:36:08] from the Puritans were still in existence. And though the murders were shocking, it seemed to be

[00:36:13] the sexual aspect that profoundly disturbed the community. Violent death might be expected in places

[00:36:21] like New York City and Chicago. But Bostonians preferred to keep those details quiet. Most murders

[00:36:27] were relegated to the Bowery area like the South End. So for this to be happening,

[00:36:34] all over in neighborhoods to just regular women was astonishing. So it was happening outside

[00:36:44] it. At the time, Boston had seen it decline during the post-war boom years. People just didn't seem to want

[00:36:56] to settle there, but in the early 1960s, industry was showing up again, including

[00:37:02] Prudential Insurance Company, which had made a $200 million investment in the city. National

[00:37:09] aeronautics and space administered.

[00:37:11] administration installations were growing around the city. It was a new Boston in the making, not to mention President Kennedy was in the White House. So they've got their own like local golden boy in the White House. So it's kind of bringing this new renewed image to Boston.

[00:37:31] Perhaps the residents didn't want to ruin a good thing. The crimes would show a completely different picture of the city and shock the world. So while they're trying to build a new image in brands and attract businesses, attract new residents, the presidents from this area, it's a great place to be. They don't really want to publish eyes. We've got brutal murders happening.

[00:37:54] Regular just working women. Not only brutal, just almost taboo in nature with the sexual deviant see, with the posing and the assault assault with foreign objects. Yeah, these are types of things that people just don't want to discuss.

[00:38:12] Well, you don't want to think about it happening. No, you almost can't imagine that it's really happening. Exactly.

[00:38:19] I know what I mean. You want to be like, oh, maybe they were mistaken or maybe it's not really that. And these are people again who are very conservative. You have a large Irish Catholic population in the city.

[00:38:32] And they don't want to imagine there's some sex-themed out there doing these horrific unimaginable things to people.

[00:38:42] You're listening to an episode of mountain murders on true crime by indie drop in network. We're going to take a quick break.

[00:38:51] And now back to you, this episode of Mountain Murders I did not know was of course strangling is a very brutal up close and personal. I think you got to be a certain type of monster to do that.

[00:39:04] But I did not realize all this other stuff was mixed in with the victims as far as the posing and the assault.

[00:39:12] You're welcome, darling. Thanks.

[00:39:14] So I'm here to educate, I appreciate it. McNamara the commissioner reached out to the FBI and asked for a specialist in sex crimes to conduct a seminar as soon as possible with the Boston Police Department.

[00:39:27] I mean, this guy's very forward thinking, yeah, it really is. He would send 50 chosen detectives to the training after they had completed the course McNamara plan to assign them to these strangulation cases.

[00:39:42] In the hours after Margaret Davis's discovery, police arrested a man who was seen leaving the Roosevelt hotel with scratches on his face.

[00:39:50] It seemed that her murder stood on its own and was not connected to the others.

[00:39:57] So we will see there are some cases of murder with similar MO but that might not be that maybe shouldn't be grouped into this.

[00:40:08] And when we get into part two, we have a lot of theories, we'll talk about some of the cases that very, well, I would say people who a lot more knowledge than myself don't believe are actually part of this or think there may have been multiple criminals, multiple killers.

[00:40:27] Well, yeah, you get that and you have, you know, it's not like no one ever gets strangled. So I mean, it does happen.

[00:40:34] And you also get the sicko copycats that, you know, when you have to.

[00:40:39] And again, part two, we are going, it's going to be a big discussion. We have a lot more to discuss in part two.

[00:40:45] Yet Boston Police were still not sure about connecting the first three murders.

[00:40:50] Boston had a large concentration of single women and women living alone.

[00:40:54] Public image aside, the idea of a homicidal maniac on the loose could utterly demoralize a city like Boston.

[00:41:02] Several tips were called into the hotline, an older woman who was Nina Nichols neighbor reported seeing a man maybe around 40 years old sitting in a grace sedan on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the weekend that Nina was killed described him as sitting parked below their apartment building just staring up.

[00:41:23] Okay.

[00:41:24] Yeah, that's troubling.

[00:41:26] That's a little odd. That's not okay.

[00:41:28] A 22 year old woman who lived not far from Annas Lesser's apartment was followed home by a man who tried to strangle her with a wire, but she managed to escape.

[00:41:39] Police located a four foot telephone wire on the ground near her apartment.

[00:41:44] A man was found lurking nearby, but denied being involved in the assault.

[00:41:49] A 45 year old woman met a young Marine at the Golden Nugget in Boston. Now I'm not sure if that's a bar.

[00:41:58] Well, if it is a bar, I would go there and have a drink because you know, the only golden nugget I'm aware of is in Vegas.

[00:42:04] Now, after drinking heavily, they went back to his apartment where he forced her into the basement.

[00:42:10] After grabbing her throat, he raped the woman and whispered, quote, "I like to choke older women."

[00:42:17] Oh my god. So she reported that to the police.

[00:42:20] The FBI sex crime seminar got underway in early August. Many seasoned detectives were shaken after the lecture.

[00:42:28] They learned about 50 different types of sexual perversion, deep compulsions, different sex categories, and symptoms of these like sex related illnesses, if you will.

[00:42:42] They discovered a great deal more about how some sex crimes escalate, like for example, a man who might expose himself to children might later need more stimulation, then rapes and murders could follow.

[00:42:55] Yes, almost like their practicing.

[00:42:57] Because at this point, I mean today, this seems kind of common knowledge, especially for those of us who are true crime enthusiasts or have this interest in true crime.

[00:43:09] Like we kind of know this, but you have to think about in the 60s, most everyday people didn't have this information, even law enforcement, didn't know a lot about sex crimes and this kind of deviancy and the psychology behind and how these crimes might escalate.

[00:43:26] Right, at first, it may be some, I mean, like you said, the woman wants to be flash, but they don't realize this person couldn't go home to murder, rape.

[00:43:34] With their newfound knowledge, the detectives were sent back out to work the cases again.

[00:43:40] They interviewed more suspects, persons of interest, because now they're armed with this new information and they kind of have a whole new way of looking at these cases and the questions they should be asking and what might stick at a details that might stick out.

[00:43:57] Yeah, something they may have paid no attention or very little attention to before now could be a red flag.

[00:44:04] So again, I think that's McNamara guy. He's pretty on top of his game.

[00:44:09] Well, seems like he's trying to get out in front of it and trying to just, which is very fortunate because just warning even to a small degree warning the public to be on the lookout reporting these strange people, things like that.

[00:44:25] I think that is what when when they do believe they're connected, but they're reluctant to tell the population, I think that's what they're missing out on warning people to be a hop or vigilant and maybe, you know, you never know you might catch the guy because he's, you know, casing somebody's house or something.

[00:44:45] You're right, Dawn. On August 21st, Eda Erga, a 75 year old woman was found strangled in her locked apartment.

[00:44:54] She lived on the top floor at seven Grove Street, a five story brick apartment building in Boston's West End.

[00:45:01] It had once been a very lovely area, but at that time was kind of run down and people refer to it as the wrong side of Beacon Hill.

[00:45:10] Mrs. Erga had been a widow for 30 years. She rarely left her apartment after dark and was known to do like small amounts of shopping.

[00:45:21] The way it's been described about Mrs. Erga is that she was precautious. She liked to go out after dark.

[00:45:30] She rarely. She tried to do small amounts of shopping, you know, kind of here and there. She wasn't really one to go out very often.

[00:45:39] She had been dead for two days when discovered, though a pillowcase had been tightly tied around her neck, it was manual strangulation with hands that killed her.

[00:45:50] She had been sexually assaulted too. Her purse containing cash was visible in this three bedroom apartment untouched along with several pieces of gold jewelry.

[00:46:01] She had been seen two days before on Sunday when she had met a friend at the Boston Common where they had sat in the sun together.

[00:46:08] She left telling her friend quote, "I want to get home before dark." Around 1 p.m., she found her sister to say she had half a cooked chicken that she was willing to give her.

[00:46:19] It's too hot to cook. Let me give you half this chicken.

[00:46:23] I think the reason possibly he's picking these victims in this age range and all that is because it's an easier victim if you will as far as strength wise, the rotor and the likelihood that they live alone.

[00:46:38] Which gives him time to do whatever crazy, six stuff he wants to do. So maybe I think in my mind frozen investigator.

[00:46:45] I'd be wondering if that's why he's picking these particular women to assault.

[00:46:49] Well, you know, Dylan that has been mentioned. There are investigators and folks tied to this case who think that's

[00:46:56] one of the main motives for attacking women of this certain age. Right. Yeah.

[00:47:02] Yeah, her sister didn't hear from her again after she called and said, "Hey, I have this chicken."

[00:47:08] She never called back. Two days later, her sister called the building manager on Tuesday evening to see if he would check on Eda.

[00:47:15] The woman was found lying on her back on the living room floor wearing only a night dress. It was torn exposing her body.

[00:47:23] A pillowcase was discovered around her neck. Now Dylan, this is a very descriptive, brutal thing I'm about to discuss.

[00:47:35] So again, if you're listening, these types of things affect you. You might want to skip ahead a couple of minutes.

[00:47:42] Okay.

[00:47:45] This woman, I mean, it was a very intentional posing. Okay.

[00:47:48] The woman's body had been propped up with a pillow under the buttocks and her legs were spread wide open.

[00:47:56] And they were placed on chairs, as if in an intentional obstetrical position.

[00:48:05] So you can imagine when ladies go to the guano and we put our feet up in stirrups. I mean, you know what that looks like. Right?

[00:48:13] You can imagine. So this poor woman has been propped up and her legs spread and legs placed in these chairs.

[00:48:23] Almost like putting her feet in the rugs of the chairs to keep it there, oh my God, and one bit of research I found

[00:48:31] described it as her legs were spread about five feet apart. So there she's played. I mean, she's almost to the full width that

[00:48:40] she could possibly be spread apart. The killer had placed this poor woman in an awful position so that one could not escape seeing it when they opened the door.

[00:48:51] That is just sick. It's very sick. Fuck insect. So you not only are they humiliating their victim after even postmortem, they're also I think they're getting off on the idea of someone discovering them like this and the shock.

[00:49:09] Now, my main resource, which I will give later is a book, Boston Strangler. And it did not provide me with this information.

[00:49:18] But one of the buttons again, there's some misinformation out there. So I'm not sure, but I thought I would mention it is that the

[00:49:25] building superintendent had actually sent his 13 year old son to check on this woman, and it was a 13 year old who found her, but I have not been able to verify if that was accurate, but just imagine anyone finding this

[00:49:44] It's horrible, but yes, a young boy to see this terrible would haunt you for the rest of your life. Yeah, right. Yeah. Even like even the most seasoned copper detective would be this would leave a mark on him. Now, these details, this information was kept from the press.

[00:50:04] I mean, one, they're likely not going to want to publish something like this. It was a different time. This is a very conservative area. But also police did not want to get this information out there because they were hoping that a suspect my accidentally dropped these details later.

[00:50:22] Well, yeah, they're keeping this kind of close to the sleeve, which is smart. Yeah, this is a top of information only the killer would know if they were there. Right. So now, the police have a fourth murder on their hands.

[00:50:34] But rumors began to take hold of the vicious attacks, sexually obscene positioning and the nature of the attacks started to leak people speculated the killer had superhuman strength and could possibly scale tall buildings and enter through the windows.

[00:50:53] Come on, people. Well, the doors are locked. Well, I know, but I mean, that just shows you how the public's imagination can run wild with something like this. It's like Superman, or I'm sorry, Spider-Man.

[00:51:04] Right, just scaling the wall entering into the apartment, women all but barricaded themselves into their homes. They are gripped and fear, Dylan.

[00:51:14] Well, how could you not be?

[00:51:15] There were demands for locksmiths to rekey doors and add extra security dogs were cleaned out from the animal shelters. People looking for a security dog, elderly widows asked their children to phone them three to five times a day to

[00:51:34] check up on them to make sure they were okay. Women began reporting of seen phone calls. One woman reported that a prouder had left a doll in her mail with a nylon stocking around its neck and a note that said, quote, the police can't watch you forever.

[00:51:49] Oh, my God.

[00:51:50] A woman who lived near Nina Nichols apartment reported a man dressed in women's clothing wearing makeup, writing the service elevator up and down the apartment building.

[00:52:04] I just seemed odd to her.

[00:52:05] Well, I think most people would find that odd, especially back in the 60s, that's something that you wouldn't expect to see.

[00:52:12] Right. I mean, today, I don't think that would really stand out for people to be like, "Oh, that's, that's the criminal."

[00:52:18] Today, you used to be like, "That's my barista. Let me get my latte, bud."

[00:52:22] Yes.

[00:52:23] They, the number of giving my latte, exactly.

[00:52:26] Well, it's fine. I'm getting latte.

[00:52:27] That was a different time. One woman began taking meticulous notes about her neighbor's activities, documenting his comings and goings in a notebook.

[00:52:36] She took a keen interest in this neighbor who happened to be a doctor and began almost stalking his movements.

[00:52:41] And later she's going to try to turn all of this over to police.

[00:52:44] And say, I've been, I think I've found the killer.

[00:52:47] Yes. Wow.

[00:52:48] But that's the kind of vigilance people were taking on these very vigilant activities to try to help.

[00:52:57] Because everyone is scared?

[00:52:58] Chitless.

[00:52:59] When some people might make them feel more safe and secure if they're being proactive and the way they see it, they're being proactive.

[00:53:07] Trying to do something about it.

[00:53:08] The Boston Herald published an editorial entitled, "His Stereous Solves Nothing," which quoted the statistical improbability of becoming a murder victim, yet people were terrified.

[00:53:19] The opinion piece did little to a swage fears. Not only had these women been victimized, but the entire city was being victimized.

[00:53:28] Single women of all ages were living in fear. They were on edge. Many couldn't sleep at night.

[00:53:34] Petrified women were refusing to leave their apartments. It was just unfathomable.

[00:53:40] I mean, you have to consider, again, the time frame. The word "Siro Killer," as we mentioned, has not yet been coined.

[00:53:46] The idea of one person committing these atrocities was shocking. I think of school shootings.

[00:53:53] How before Columbine, we would have never thought it was possible.

[00:53:58] And we didn't even have the term "school shootings," or "massive shooters."

[00:54:03] We were just like, "Yeah, that would have made no sense to me in 1990."

[00:54:07] But in 1998, I knew exactly what that meant. Because of Columbine.

[00:54:13] So, I mean, now it's commonplace for us to talk about.

[00:54:17] But at this time, it just wasn't, and people were looking at their neighbors, their pharmacists, their milk man, and thinking,

[00:54:25] "You could be the killer. It could be anyone."

[00:54:28] See, this is terrorism. This is domestic terrorism. I mean, this criminal, this monster, is achieving

[00:54:37] What terrorist cells and groups would love to do this effectively, getting people to change their daily routines to live in fear 24/7.

[00:54:48] I mean, this is what they dream of, and this guy's achieving it.

[00:54:52] And I think they should actually saddle people like this with a terrorism torch.

[00:54:58] I'm sorry, because this whole area, whole metropolitan area, is living in fear every day.

[00:55:04] I listened to an interview with someone who was residing in and around the area at the time of the Boston strangler.

[00:55:10] And this woman, who wished to remain anonymous, who was an interview, was saying how she was 15/16 when these happened,

[00:55:20] and that up until she was in her 30s, that she had this extreme anxiety and paranoia,

[00:55:26] and it caused her to have insomnia, and that she spent decades living in fear thinking she would become a murder victim.

[00:55:34] And that someone was going to break in her house and kill her while she was sleeping.

[00:55:37] And you lived in an area around D.C. when the D.C. snopper thing was happening.

[00:55:41] Oh, yeah.

[00:55:42] And so you can attest to the fact that people are just, you could see people, you've told me, of running through the park, and a lot, like zig zagging to go in and pay for them, gas and come back out,

[00:55:51] people looking over their shoulder, people just, you know.

[00:55:54] I remember opening car, like the front door of my car, and the back door of my car.

[00:55:59] And so it created a little, wow.

[00:56:02] Like a little square for me, and pumping my gas, and like hiding down between the two doors, waiting on the, like, ducking down and waiting for the pump to finish.

[00:56:11] Geez, the scary.

[00:56:13] And we have a friend from Kerry O'Karaoke, for Enth, right?

[00:56:17] And he's from Maryland, and he lived there at the time and was actually working in news, and covered was like a cameraman and covered these crimes.

[00:56:28] And the first murder that was in Kensington, a kamau from my house. Wow.

[00:56:33] And he was there at the same, I mean, we've had a very, you know, interesting discussion about what it was like living there, and it was terror.

[00:56:41] It really was.

[00:56:42] And these people are being terrorized, as you mentioned.

[00:56:46] I mean, this is true terror, to not know who the killer is, and just attacking at random.

[00:56:55] And it's very scary, and I would be, I have no doubt that people who lived through this carry it with them, and PTSD.

[00:57:02] And with this serial killer, you know, you have some that they'll have a lag.

[00:57:06] They have a murder that pops up every couple of years of victim, but these are so close.

[00:57:13] Yes.

[00:57:13] You have two in the same day.

[00:57:15] He's very, very active, and that makes it even scarier, honestly.

[00:57:20] Six days after Eda Arga's murder, 67-year-old nurse Jane Sullivan was found strangled in her first floor apartment at 435 Columbia Road.

[00:57:33] The apartment was in Dorchester on the other side of Boston from Eda, Arga.

[00:57:38] So the exact opposite, you know, side of the city.

[00:57:42] She worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift at the long wood hospital, where she was known as reserved and efficient.

[00:57:50] So again, another victim with ties to the medical community and a hospital.

[00:57:57] So does that pan out?

[00:58:01] Is any kind of a reason or are they connected like this, or is this just a happenstance?

[00:58:05] Well, it seems to be a happenstance, but it's just a very strange coincidence, right?

[00:58:10] And I don't know if it's just because maybe women at this time.

[00:58:13] That's one of the predominant, sort of, one of the predominant fields that women worked in as nurses and

[00:58:19] nurse's aids and that kind of thing, but it's a very strange coincidence, right?

[00:58:25] You're listening to an episode of Mountain Murders on True Crime by indie drop in network.

[00:58:31] We're going to take a quick break.

[00:58:33] And now back to you, this episode of Mountain Murders.

[00:58:38] She never associated with men.

[00:58:40] She had recently moved into the apartment after hearing about the murders because of a long walk from the bus stop to her previous building.

[00:58:49] So she's trying to move into what she feels is a safer apartment.

[00:58:53] Yes.

[00:58:54] When she was found, Sullivan had been more, um, she'd been dead for more than a week.

[00:58:59] She was face down, submerged in bathwater with her buttocks intentionally exposed.

[00:59:06] So almost like draped over the bathtub, the more bit irony in the fact that she moved into this other apartment to feel safer, but in actuality, it put her in the

[00:59:16] sides of the killer or just, you know, it just, it just happened.

[00:59:19] That's, that's really kind of messed up.

[00:59:23] Did you think about it?

[00:59:24] It is.

[00:59:25] And, and we have another victim, um, with a similar situation that we're going to discuss and it's pretty fucked up to milling.

[00:59:34] She had been strangled with two nylon stockings.

[00:59:37] Evidence showed the women had been murdered in another room or that this woman had been murdered in another room and then carry to the bathroom and, and posed in the bathtub.

[00:59:46] So again, this is another victim who was murdered in one room and positioned in another.

[00:59:51] Yeah.

[00:59:52] She was found dead on Thursday, August 30th.

[00:59:57] Her estimated time of death meant she had been strangled, uh, probably around 10 days earlier.

[01:00:02] They said a week to 10 days, but they're thinking more like 10 days within a 24 hour period from when Eda had been killed.

[01:00:09] Eda Ergusson, Joseph noted how similar Sullivan resembled his mother at first glance when he saw a photo of Jane Sullivan.

[01:00:20] He actually thought it was his mother while they looked so much alike.

[01:00:26] Then three months passed with nothing, no murder, no bodies, yet the city is still gripped with fear.

[01:00:33] A Brockton housewife reportedly failed dead from a heart attack when she opened the door to find a strange man standing there.

[01:00:41] Turns out the scout was Schitzen encyclopedia salesman, but that gives you an example of how women were feeling at this time.

[01:00:52] Working women hurried home before dark careful to lock the doors behind them, headlines took over the newspapers with

[01:00:59] salacious names like the mad strangler, phantom strangler, and the sunset killer, particular articles compared the Boston Strangler to Jack the Ripper.

[01:01:11] In trying to find a connection among the victims, law enforcement looked at the neighborhoods.

[01:01:17] Two of the victims had been nurses and one, a physiotherapist.

[01:01:22] Two victims had received outpatient care before their murders, so was the killer associated with the hospitals.

[01:01:29] The killer had more in gloves when searching the apartments, it appeared.

[01:01:33] They weren't finding fingerprints.

[01:01:36] I mean, the really long person is really looking at this like the perfect crime scene or the perfect murder because there's really not much being left behind us for his evidence.

[01:01:49] No, and there's been multiple, you know, it's not like it just happened one time, and they got, you know, they did good that time.

[01:01:54] This person is almost, it's very adept at getting in and out of these places without being seen.

[01:01:59] They're not sure how he's making entry into them because they're assuming that most of them have been locked doors and leaving not very much evidence at all behind.

[01:02:10] But at the same time, taking time that comfort level has got to be disconcerting the investigators as well.

[01:02:18] It's like he knows he's not going to be disturbed.

[01:02:20] And he's taking the time to do these things like with the assaults, with a foreign object and the posing of the victims.

[01:02:27] That's stuff that you have to be very calm and collected after you just did this to this person to still take all this time.

[01:02:35] It lets me know, Dylan, that this killer, these were not random attacks, I truly think the

[01:02:42] assailant was stalking these women and had to know their schedule.

[01:02:49] And that they lived alone and that if he entered into the apartment and committed this crime that he would have ample opportunity to

[01:02:56] ransack, position, pose these women because he knew he would not be interrupted.

[01:03:02] Right, I agree completely. I don't think there's any way that he just keeps

[01:03:06] happened to pick even that if you see an older woman, you don't know that she lives alone.

[01:03:12] That you know, she could have a roommate, she could have as a some family member or a grand kid or anything, she could have a husband for all, you know.

[01:03:19] So I think I think I definitely believe he has stalked his victims.

[01:03:23] Well, the fact that he's ransacking the apartments, but not really taking anything and wearing gloves.

[01:03:28] The police wondered if there was like an item in particular that the killer was searching for.

[01:03:33] psychiatrist tried to analyze the strangler to well known doctors agreed the killer likely worked a regular nine to five job and blended into a crowd.

[01:03:43] They speculated he committed the crimes on his way home from work.

[01:03:46] So as not to be absent from a day job or be away from home at night, this would explain his phantom quality.

[01:03:54] He was invisible because he could shift in and out with everyone kind of moving around him, bringing no second glance.

[01:04:02] And look at this person who was just going to blend right in, right and not stand out.

[01:04:07] He doesn't look like a crazy mean guy or anything.

[01:04:10] He's just looked, he's normal, seeming or in appearance.

[01:04:14] And if someone did happen to catch a glance, he just looks like every other joke, right.

[01:04:18] So if you saw him walking down the hall, the apartment, building, you're probably, he's not going to draw attention.

[01:04:23] Right.

[01:04:23] But he's probably just going to look like any regular person walking around perhaps a maintenance man, right.

[01:04:33] The knots used by the strangler I wanted to mention were a couple of different knots, by the way.

[01:04:40] One was a granny knot, a square knot, and then several victims have a double half hitch.

[01:04:47] So the police wondered if the murderer had an occupation associated with being a sailor, a surgeon, a warehouse packer, maybe a newspaper wrapper, or even a shoe salesman.

[01:05:00] So these ideas were all checked against suspects but brought little results.

[01:05:04] And I do know, I'm not going to say I'm an expert on knot tying and I'll be honest, I'm terrible at it.

[01:05:11] But I did have to go through like seamanship courses when I was in the Navy and they teach you that, plus I had taken like a water activities, a class with kayaking and we learned a lot about knot tying and ropes.

[01:05:24] So I just thought I would share what a double half hitch knot is for those who may not have been Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or in the Navy.

[01:05:31] It's not something you do by accident, is that right?

[01:05:34] No. So a half hitch knot is often used in mooring like a boat to appear, that kind of thing.

[01:05:41] It is a nautical knot and some people might even compare it to a clothes hitch.

[01:05:45] They do have similar qualities.

[01:05:49] There's only a slight difference between the two.

[01:05:51] And if you see a double half hitch knot, it has a pretzel appearance.

[01:05:56] The hitch does. It might be used to secure an animal or like an item to a ring, a pole, a bar, or some kind of post.

[01:06:07] And it's not a secure knot necessarily, but it's a good knot for like a strangler.

[01:06:14] Because you can sort of easily, it's almost like a grott like you could easily kind of work it, if that makes sense.

[01:06:23] Yeah, that does make sense.

[01:06:27] So again, they're curious about these knots.

[01:06:30] Suspects were pouring in all the time.

[01:06:32] Some were sent, tips were sent in anonymously.

[01:06:35] Others were individuals brought in by police for loitering, being peeping tombs.

[01:06:41] One man reportedly stole women's undergarments in this particular neighborhood, so he was arrested and brought in.

[01:06:48] Some alcoholics turned themselves in for fear they had carried out the murders while blocked out.

[01:06:53] Oh my gosh, dude, you need to turn yourself into AA if you're worried.

[01:06:57] He's like, I don't know. I'm not sure. I need to bar grab that.

[01:07:01] I'm maybe I didn't. I've been drunk since Thursday.

[01:07:06] You do that pretty well.

[01:07:08] Well, I am accessing my spirit animal, which is actually Otis.

[01:07:14] Is it like an old hobo?

[01:07:15] No, it's Otis from Andy Griffith Show.

[01:07:18] Oh, okay. Yeah, that's my spirit animal.

[01:07:20] The like, lovable town drunk.

[01:07:22] Yeah, I'm just, I'm not dangerous.

[01:07:23] You know, I'm just, you know, I'm just.

[01:07:25] Affable. You just need, like a warm bench to sleep on.

[01:07:29] Yeah, just let me sleep at all.

[01:07:30] Yeah.

[01:07:31] But Andy never charged them with anything.

[01:07:33] So Otis is record screen.

[01:07:34] Well, unfortunately, you were in your wife's jail,

[01:07:37] Ah, things are different.

[01:07:39] And I'm not a nice jail.

[01:07:40] Holy shit.

[01:07:42] On Wednesday, December 5th of 1962,

[01:07:45] Sophie Clark left the Carnegie Institute for medical technology around 12, 30 PM for her apartments.

[01:07:53] The apartment was shared with two female roommates.

[01:07:56] It was located on the fourth floor of 315 Huntington Avenue near back bay,

[01:08:02] only two blocks from where Anna Slessler lived.

[01:08:05] She needed to return to school at 2 PM for a class photograph.

[01:08:10] So people were not quite sure why she would have left.

[01:08:13] Taking this hour and a half to go back home.

[01:08:17] She wrote an incomplete letter to her fiance during the break.

[01:08:21] And it was discovered at the crime scene.

[01:08:23] So the law enforcement speculated she was writing this letter when she was interrupted.

[01:08:28] At 5.30 PM, her roommate found Sophie line dead on the living room.

[01:08:33] Rugged.

[01:08:34] She had been strangled with a pair of nylon stockings twisted.

[01:08:37] So tightly into her neck that they were nearly lost and embedded,

[01:08:42] like in the flesh.

[01:08:44] My goodness.

[01:08:44] Her white slip and white elastic belt were also found around her neck.

[01:08:51] She was nude, had a bathrobe opened, and she wore black stockings and garter belts.

[01:08:58] Her bra was torn off, her glass is broken.

[01:09:01] The woman was still wearing penny loafers.

[01:09:05] She had been sexually assaulted.

[01:09:07] There was evidence of a struggle.

[01:09:09] The apartment again totally wrecked.

[01:09:13] The roommate had to enter through a double locked door.

[01:09:17] Sophie had insisted they install a second locked after reports of the phantom circulated.

[01:09:25] Sophie refused entry to people unless she knew exactly who they were.

[01:09:29] There was no sign of forced entry.

[01:09:32] So police again theorized that Sophie must have allowed the attacker inside the apartment.

[01:09:37] Now some things about Sophie's murder stood out to detectives.

[01:09:41] First of all Dylan, she's only 20 years old.

[01:09:45] Oh wow.

[01:09:46] So quite an age difference from the previous victims.

[01:09:49] Secondly, Sophie was African American, while the other women had all been older white women.

[01:09:58] And this time, the killer had left something behind.

[01:10:01] Seminole stains were discovered on the rug next to Sophie's body.

[01:10:05] The strangler had not left behind such solid physical evidence before.

[01:10:11] I mean even though it would be decades before DNA could assist

[01:10:15] with solving, you know, the seminal fluid, the identity of the ejaculator.

[01:10:25] First some, and we're diving into theories in part two,

[01:10:28] the Clark murder represented either a copycat killer or a complete 180 from what the strangler had

[01:10:35] been doing.

[01:10:36] Now, Dylan in most cases, serial killers, they're really change up their M.O.

[01:10:42] Right?

[01:10:43] Like if they have a type like the older middle-aged women between 55 to 75, it's pretty rare for

[01:10:51] a killer to go in a different direction, like go for a younger victim, especially one of a

[01:10:58] differing rice.

[01:10:59] Right.

[01:11:00] Now with some serial killers like Samuel Little.

[01:11:03] He didn't care.

[01:11:04] He didn't care.

[01:11:05] He was a killer of opportunity.

[01:11:06] Exactly.

[01:11:07] So again, I'm not so sure that's a good argument to say, "Well, we don't think this could be

[01:11:13] coupled in with these murders."

[01:11:15] Because I think a serial, you know, you can't predict what they're going to do.

[01:11:21] These are deranged people.

[01:11:22] Well, they're, they're not reasonable people.

[01:11:24] So you're, you're trying to, you know, apply logic and reason to everything they do.

[01:11:29] I mean, just the, one of these crimes should let you know that they're, they're off their rocker

[01:11:33] and they're not, you know, totally viewing things the way you do.

[01:11:37] I mean, a lot of the investigators and profilers and folks who are, you know, studied in the

[01:11:44] Boston strangler point two like Ted Bundy and his victim profiles.

[01:11:48] I mean, he liked, you know, women in their 20s with long brown hair that parted in the middle.

[01:11:54] And they all kind of had a very similar look.

[01:11:55] Right.

[01:11:56] But I just don't think that's true.

[01:12:00] And though many former FBI agents and psychiatrists have pointed this out to explain Sophie

[01:12:05] Clark's murder as not the work of the same killer.

[01:12:08] I mean, again, I think we're discussing these deranged psychopaths and anything as possible.

[01:12:13] And this really could be, he could be a killer of opportunity.

[01:12:17] Yeah.

[01:12:17] Or as you mentioned, he was practicing on these older women thinking their weaker,

[01:12:23] their, their easier to overpower physically more vulnerable.

[01:12:28] And then now he's moving on to, to, to new something new.

[01:12:32] Or he just saw his chance.

[01:12:34] And he told you right.

[01:12:35] Also, it has been reported that Sophie was afraid of living in Boston.

[01:12:40] She had asked her mother months before if she might be able to transfer to a different

[01:12:45] college in New York.

[01:12:46] Sophie's roommate recalled promising the woman's mother that she would, quote,

[01:12:50] "take care of her."

[01:12:51] After Sophie's mother, the roommate didn't know how she would find the strength to tell

[01:12:55] Sophie's mother what had happened.

[01:12:57] Oh my God.

[01:12:58] That's terrible.

[01:13:00] And this woman I listen to an interview with her and she felt immense guilt

[01:13:05] about what had happened to her roommate.

[01:13:09] I understand that.

[01:13:10] And, but I mean, it's not her fault, obviously.

[01:13:14] And I'm sure maybe there's a survivor guilt to a degree.

[01:13:17] Because that could have easily been her there instead of her roommate.

[01:13:20] But yeah, that's terrible.

[01:13:23] Because she's like, oh, don't worry, mom, I'll, I'll look after her.

[01:13:26] You know, it's, it's going to be okay.

[01:13:27] And then boom, she falls victim to a horrible crime.

[01:13:31] A neighbor told investigators that around 2.20 p.m. on the day of Sophie's murder,

[01:13:37] a man knocked on the door, claiming he'd been sent by the superintendent to do some painting,

[01:13:42] feeling uncomfortable.

[01:13:43] The woman immediately told him she wasn't due for a painting, but he pushed by her anyway.

[01:13:49] Just walked into her apartment.

[01:13:51] After he made some strange remarks about her figure and asked if she'd done any modeling.

[01:13:57] This woman quickly told him my husband is asleep in the next room, so you probably need to leave.

[01:14:03] The man left the apartment quickly saying, quote, perhaps I have the wrong apartment.

[01:14:07] And Dylan, remember this modeling detail?

[01:14:12] It's going to be a crucial part of our second episode.

[01:14:17] It will get more into discussing this modeling aspect.

[01:14:22] going to come up. Sophie, police discovered was a girl of regular habits. She had a long-term

[01:14:28] boyfriend who lived in New Jersey. She had school every day until 1 p.m. She returned to the

[01:14:33] apartment nearly every afternoon to study and do schoolwork. Around 4 p.m. she prepared supper

[01:14:40] for herself and two roommates. And the female roommates moved immediately and did not reveal the

[01:14:45] location of their new housing after this murder. They were terrified. You can't blame them back.

[01:14:52] I should also know that Sophie's murder felt different. Unlike the previous murders,

[01:14:57] the killer had been extremely careful not to leave behind evidence. They were, again,

[01:15:02] considered perfect crime scenes, especially in the decades before forensic technology.

[01:15:07] But this one seemed almost frenzied. He's leaving behind evidence.

[01:15:13] He's not as careful.

[01:15:19] Completely different victim age, race. So I mean, I don't blame investigators for

[01:15:26] wondering if this is honestly the same killer. I mean, there's a lot of differences here.

[01:15:31] Three weeks after Sophie Clarke's murder, on Monday, December 31st, 23-year-old Patricia Bessette was

[01:15:38] found dead in her locked apartment located at 515 Park Drive. It was the same back bay area where

[01:15:46] anisles her and Clarke had resided. So same neighborhood. Patricia was a secretary at

[01:15:53] engineering systems. Patricia was found in her bed with a white blanket or comfort her kind of

[01:16:00] pulled up to her chin as if she had been tucked into bed. A very different crime scene, right?

[01:16:07] She had been strangled with three nylon stockings, not at around her neck. She was naked from the

[01:16:15] waist down. Her leopard print pajama top pushed up to expose her breasts. There was no sign of

[01:16:22] sexual intercourse or as if she had been sexually assaulted anyway, though they did speculate that

[01:16:29] she had been sexually active probably within 48 hours of the murder. Oh, good. But I did not feel

[01:16:36] like it was rape or an assault. There was no sign of organistry. She had last been seen doing

[01:16:42] laundry in the community laundry area of the building around 330 on Saturday afternoon.

[01:16:47] By four 30 p.m. the neighbor who had seen her doing laundry noted that Bessette's clothing had been

[01:16:52] removed from the dryer. So she had obviously finished her laundry and had gone back to her apartment.

[01:16:57] During autopsy, it was discovered that Patricia was one month pregnant. She had also been having

[01:17:04] an affair. Police theorize maybe she left her door unlocked when she'd gone to do laundry,

[01:17:10] or maybe the killer had waited in the closet while Patricia had kind of done the laundry and

[01:17:15] gone to a better business and then maybe hijacked her when she came back in. Okay, so let's discuss

[01:17:22] Patricia's murder for a month longer Dylan. Patricia, as I mentioned, was having an affair

[01:17:28] with her married boss and named Jules Rothman who had two kids. Patricia was pregnant and had

[01:17:36] apparently told him this some weeks before, or you know, in the week before or something like that.

[01:17:43] Rothman had even spoken to a friend about trying to arrange an illegal abortion for Patricia.

[01:17:49] Rothman had been the one to discover Patricia and immediately said to law enforcement,

[01:17:57] "Oh my god, she's been strangled." Yet at first glance, as she's covered up in the bed,

[01:18:03] there was no way of knowing she'd been strangled, at least not visually.

[01:18:06] Now, are they going to take a hard look at him as possibly being the perpetrator?

[01:18:11] Well, if you'll let me get through my...

[01:18:13] Oh my gosh.

[01:18:14] Police had really believed Rothman was the prime suspect in Patricia's murder and that she was

[01:18:21] not a victim of the strangler. Yet in part two, I will share with you a story provided by a woman

[01:18:29] who was the previous tenant in Patricia's apartment and had only recently moved out.

[01:18:35] Oh, okay.

[01:18:37] Okay. So we're going to talk about that in part two. You're going to want to hear part two of this.

[01:18:40] You're listening to an episode of Mountain Murders on True Crime by Indie Drop in Network.

[01:18:47] We're going to take a quick break.

[01:18:48] And now back to you, this episode of Mountain Murders.

[01:18:53] Like Sophie Clark, Bessette may or may not be a true victim of the strangler as we've been told.

[01:19:00] Again, part two is going to be very important. You're going to want to tune in for that.

[01:19:05] Now, it seemed the killer no longer focused on women of a certain age,

[01:19:09] meaning these older, middle-aged women. Now, career girls were being killed.

[01:19:14] After six similar murders had been committed around the City of Boston,

[01:19:18] police were no closer to a suspect. There was no evidence left behind really and all that could

[01:19:24] be said by the end of 1962 was that no woman in Boston was safe.

[01:19:31] So we've had four older women and two, two young, young girls. Yes. Okay.

[01:19:36] Now, Dylan, this is where the story in my opinion takes another twisty turn that's kind of interesting.

[01:19:43] And if you've seen the Hulu movie Boston strainer starring Kira Knightley,

[01:19:48] it is kind of based on what I'm about to tell you.

[01:19:51] Let's get into it, Don. On the morning after Patricia's murder,

[01:19:55] Jack McLean, city editor of the Boston Record American, called in two reporters.

[01:20:00] And these are two female reporters. Gene Cole and Loretta McLaughlin.

[01:20:05] Both were married women in their 30s who had young children.

[01:20:08] And though it was not entirely common to have women journalists or women reporters,

[01:20:16] some papers did but these women were usually like relegated to very fluff pieces.

[01:20:26] Right. Like a kitten getting stuck in a tree.

[01:20:28] Yes. Just kind of these bullsh*t or the new fart hails opening down in the neighborhood.

[01:20:33] Right. Edna's prize goose won a blue ribbon in the county fair.

[01:20:37] So not hard hitting investigative journalism.

[01:20:40] No, but these women were very talented writers and they're really good at what they do.

[01:20:45] Both had earned recognition as journalists and frequently worked on medical stories.

[01:20:50] Gene, for example, had recently gone undercover to expose issues in Massachusetts nursing homes.

[01:20:56] Like she dressed as a nurse, got jobs at these places, and went in and exposed horrific conditions

[01:21:04] that they were understaffed abusing patients that these people were not receiving care.

[01:21:09] So these are serious journalists.

[01:21:12] That takes guts to do something like that.

[01:21:15] Loretta had already approached McLain about working on a strangler's story

[01:21:20] because the murder of Eda Erga had deeply troubled the woman.

[01:21:24] Now, McLain felt the women, these victims, were, quote, "nobodies."

[01:21:30] And who would want to read articles about these nobodies?

[01:21:34] Okay. Loretta said, quote, "That's just it. Why should four nobodies be murdered?

[01:21:40] Every woman in the city can identify with a woman and how they're in no way set apart from the other."

[01:21:47] I couldn't identify with them if they were celebrities, but if they're just like the rest of us,

[01:21:52] their sisters under the skin to every woman who reads the paper.

[01:21:58] That statement along proves that she's not playing around.

[01:22:01] No.

[01:22:02] So, Gina and Loretta were assigned to go out and do some old-fashioned newspaper work

[01:22:07] and see what they could dig up.

[01:22:09] Governor Peabody had announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension

[01:22:16] of the murder suspect, murder or murder nurse.

[01:22:21] Once any councilman declared the police commissioner might be fired if the crimes weren't solved.

[01:22:26] Commissioner McNamara insisted everything was being done.

[01:22:29] Every man on his force, which was the eighth largest in the United States, the Boston PD,

[01:22:35] was working around the clock to find the strangler.

[01:22:38] Yet McNamara was still reticent who publicly announced the murders were connected

[01:22:43] and insisted on saying the person's responsible.

[01:22:45] See, he's done a good job. I mean, he's been pretty proactive on this forward thinking in

[01:22:52] many things, but that's a mistake. I think that's a mistake.

[01:22:56] During a city council meeting, he made comments that there were too many dissimilarities to make

[01:23:02] one man responsible.

[01:23:03] And he's completely excluding the Clark and Besetmer from these four older women.

[01:23:11] So, in his mind, when he's talking about that case, he's talking about the four older women.

[01:23:17] Yes. Because again, I think deep down,

[01:23:21] he knows, but he just doesn't want to be the one to say it.

[01:23:24] The reporters decided printing the facts would show if the murders fit a pattern and perhaps

[01:23:30] point to the killer.

[01:23:31] The women returned to the crime scenes. They interviewed neighbors and tried to figure out

[01:23:35] how it all happened. The women whose pictures were usually published next to their

[01:23:40] bylines began receiving crank letters and obscene phone calls until they both had to request

[01:23:45] unlisted phone numbers.

[01:23:47] They started being targeted and harassed.

[01:23:49] I never understood the obscene phone caller, honestly. I mean, really?

[01:23:53] No, it's so weird.

[01:23:55] What do you want?

[01:23:58] Is that macaroni you're eating?

[01:24:00] Let me come on, man. I've never gotten it.

[01:24:03] I don't know.

[01:24:04] What you gotta do is you just gotta embrace it. And I, like, hey, you're here for this.

[01:24:08] Like, I can't be waiting for you to call. You know, just weird them out.

[01:24:11] I've started breathing.

[01:24:12] I'm going to start giving it back to him. Yes. Yes. That's like if I see somebody in their car,

[01:24:17] wanking it and they're trying to be shocking or do some sort of sexual deviancy thing,

[01:24:23] I like to point and laugh at them.

[01:24:26] There, there you go.

[01:24:27] Like, you see, you see a hater point amount? I see a whacker a point amount.

[01:24:31] And I'm like, Hey, everybody, look, guys jerking off in his car.

[01:24:34] Look, you remember doing that one time? My friend's mum's like, Oh, my god, don't do that.

[01:24:38] He's pulling on his tummy pose.

[01:24:40] And I'm like, there's like 40 people around. Everybody needs to look at this guy, look at him.

[01:24:45] Everybody look at this guy over here.

[01:24:46] Fucking weirdly.

[01:24:47] Obviously, he wants attention. Yeah.

[01:24:49] Throughout Topsy reports, the women were able to piece together more information, stuff that

[01:24:53] hadn't been released to the public. The unpublished details were a sore spot for law enforcement

[01:24:59] who considered it sabotage. Whether it was a good journalism or not, reporters meddling in

[01:25:04] police work that was just not acceptable according to law enforcement.

[01:25:09] And I'm going to have to say it, the fact that it's two women probably sticks in their crawls as well.

[01:25:14] Oh, it did. By February, the women's daily articles were cut and the reporters felt it was

[01:25:21] in part police pressure, but their conclusions were clear. They're had been a clear

[01:25:27] linking of the stranglings. There was a pattern of victims and a pattern in the crimes.

[01:25:34] However, none of this information brought anyone closer to uncovering the identity of the

[01:25:38] strangler. 23-year-old Beverly Sammons wanted an operatic career. She had graduated from

[01:25:47] a music conservatory three years earlier and worked as a music therapist. When she failed to show

[01:25:54] up for choir practice or rehearsals, an organist left a note for her fiancee. Beverly was

[01:26:00] to appear in a production of cozy fantutti later in the month. So I guess an opera.

[01:26:07] Oliver Chamberlain, her fiance went to the apartment at four university road in Cambridge,

[01:26:15] using a key he unlocked the door. There he found Beverly dead, sprawled nude on a convertible

[01:26:21] sofa bed. Her legs spread wide apart. Her wrists were bound with a sequin scarf.

[01:26:27] Two nylon stockings and two handkerchiefs were tied using that double that half double hitch knot

[01:26:35] around her neck. There was blood on her neck and chest. Although it appeared she had been

[01:26:41] strangled, there were also multiple stab wounds. Wow, so this is different. Quite different.

[01:26:47] 22 times the woman had been stabbed. Four in the neck, 18 in the left breast.

[01:26:54] A bloody knife with a four and a half inch blade was found in the kitchen sink.

[01:26:59] She had been dead for somewhere between 48 to 72 hours. A newspaper dated Sunday, May 5

[01:27:06] was on the chair. Sunday had been the last day anyone had seen Beverly alive.

[01:27:11] Beverly was to receive her master's degree in rehabilitation counseling in June.

[01:27:17] Then she wanted to move to New York City and try out for the Metropolitan Opera. Some detectives

[01:27:24] theorized that Beverly had developed some strong throat muscles singing and perhaps the

[01:27:29] strangler was unable to kill her that way. Oh wow, that's um, that's makes sense, honestly.

[01:27:37] Her thesis was in the typewriter but none of her notes were found. So they wondered if the

[01:27:43] strangler had stolen her notes for her thesis, which is odd. The thesis was entitled

[01:27:52] factors pertaining to the ideology of male homosexuality. Wow.

[01:27:58] During the investigation, two psychics got involved with the task force in Charged the Case.

[01:28:05] The first named Paul Gordon was an ad copy writer said to have ESP powers. He made a description

[01:28:13] of the killer of Annat E. Slessers, which fit Arnold Wallace, not his real name. That's a name

[01:28:19] that people have been using for years to describe this alleged perpetrator, that the psychic

[01:28:26] knows about, right? We all know how police psychics work. Well, yeah.

[01:28:31] So this quote, Arnold Wallace was a mental patient held at Boston State Hospital who had escaped

[01:28:40] on several occasions, most of which did coincide with the strangler murders.

[01:28:46] When he was consulted about the seventh strangler murder that of Sophie Clark, he surprisingly

[01:28:51] displayed detailed knowledge of her apartment and made a description that fit a guy named Louis

[01:28:58] Barnand who was an initial suspect in that murder. Though I did not find any information on this

[01:29:03] Louis Barnand, but I guess there had been a suspect and the psychic had a description of the suspect

[01:29:12] And it pointed to this Louis Barnand. Now, from what I could find on Barnand,

[01:29:17] again, not a lot of information, I did find a little piece that he might have dated her

[01:29:23] at some point, or that they might have gone at least to a movie together, but she had a boyfriend

[01:29:28] and wasn't really interested in him, but that he may have been allowed into her apartment.

[01:29:33] Oh, okay. At some point, nothing concrete came out of Gordon's suggestions.

[01:29:40] The second psychic, his name was Peter Hercos. He was a well-known career psychic.

[01:29:45] He claimed to have assisted in the investigation and is confirmed to have been in Boston at the time

[01:29:51] of the investigation and to have spent some time with Boston police. But a few days later,

[01:29:56] he was arrested for impersonating a police officer in order to gather some information

[01:30:01] and would later be convicted of it. So he's been pretty much dismissed.

[01:30:06] And we all know none of these psychics really ever make a difference in cases.

[01:30:11] No, typically not. As a summer of 1963, war on Bostonians,

[01:30:16] Brie, the Decide Relief, with every passing week without a murder. Other headlines were making

[01:30:22] their way into the newspapers. Pope John's death was a big headline. The Civil Rights March on

[01:30:28] Washington, D.C., which happened in August, was a big story. And also, the Soviets sending a

[01:30:35] woman into space. So these are kind of helping to alleviate some of the tension that was being felt.

[01:30:41] On Sunday, September 8th in Salem, Massachusetts, a 58-year-old Evelyn Corbin paid a visit to her

[01:30:48] friend 66-year-old Flora Manchester. Now, Evelyn dated Flora's son Bob, and the three were almost

[01:30:56] considered a family unit. So these women were neighbors. And they were in the habit of taking

[01:31:01] Sunday breakfast together. Mrs. Corbin then would attend mass at 1130 nearby at St. Theresa's

[01:31:09] Chapel. Each Sunday, on her way out of the apartment building, she would tap on Mrs. Manchester's

[01:31:14] door to signal she was leaving, and then she would tap again once she returned. The woman had

[01:31:20] breakfast as usual. Mrs. Manchester had thought she heard someone trying to unlock her door

[01:31:26] before the breakfast, and even called Evelyn about it. However, they brushed it off and went on,

[01:31:32] they had their breakfast. Then it was around 1030am that Evelyn walked down the hall a few yards

[01:31:37] to her apartment to get dressed for church. Around 11.10am, Mrs. Manchester expected to hear a

[01:31:44] double knock on the door, but she didn't. Around 11.15, she found Evelyn to say, "You'll be late.

[01:31:50] Like you need to get a move on." She didn't pick up the phone. At 12.30pm, after not

[01:31:56] hearing the departing knock or the arrival knock, the return knock, Mrs. Manchester phoned the drug

[01:32:03] store across the street from their apartment building to ask if Evelyn had come by to pick up her

[01:32:08] Sunday newspaper. The clerk had not seen her. Around 1pm, Mrs. Manchester asked another neighbor

[01:32:14] to accompany her to Evelyn's apartment. She happened to have a key. They thought Evelyn

[01:32:20] may be had fallen ill, yet when they entered Evelyn's apartment, there was no denying what

[01:32:26] it happened. Evelyn Corbin was sprawled across the bed still wearing her night gown and robe

[01:32:32] from their breakfast. She had been strangled with two nylon stockings, knotted at the throat with

[01:32:37] an extra half, that extra half double knot hitch. Her house coat had been torn open with such

[01:32:45] force, three buttons had popped off. She was grossly exposed in such a pose that extended her legs

[01:32:52] across the bed. Another stocking was tied around her left ankle with the same double half hitch,

[01:33:01] which police knew to be the strangling. Her underwear had been stuffed into her mouth as a gag.

[01:33:06] She was sexually assaulted in a manner newspapers couldn't describe, only that quote,

[01:33:13] "the killer had satisfied an unnatural sexual appetite in the commission of his crime."

[01:33:20] "I guess it's about as far as I could go with it. I mean, saying what they were trying to say in the

[01:33:27] papers." The apartment had been locked according to police. Two bureaus were half open as if the

[01:33:33] killer had dumped some searching through Evelyn's belongings. Out on the fire escape by Mrs.

[01:33:39] Corbin's apartment, they found a fresh donut, yet no donuts were found inside the apartment.

[01:33:47] So they thought perhaps the killer waited on on the fire escape and had been eating donuts

[01:33:52] before murdering her. "Well, weird." "Well, again, he's stalking. He's trying to pick his

[01:34:00] problem opportunity." After nearly a year's hiatus of killing women of a certain age,

[01:34:06] the strangle seemed to be turning his attention away from the younger victims again, right?

[01:34:12] He was killing the elderly women, then he killed these two younger women, and now he's back to

[01:34:18] killing older women. On Friday, November 22nd, 1963, Americans heard the news that President

[01:34:26] John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. A distraught Boston essentially shut down, and for what I

[01:34:32] gather, Dylan, it seemed like the entire United States shut down when this happened.

[01:34:37] Yeah, this was a flash bulb moment for that generation. Everyone remembers where they were

[01:34:42] when they heard the news.

[01:34:44] Yeah, businesses closed. The shops closed.

[01:34:46] They were mourning. Everybody just stopped what they were doing and went home or mourned.

[01:34:52] They were candlelight vigils everywhere. It was a big deal.

[01:34:57] Very, very public assassination. That's a lady in Boston. This is Kennedy's

[01:35:03] Stopping around. And people were just way more patriotic and more trusting of the government and

[01:35:10] they were more connected to their leaders than anything we had.

[01:35:13] And who loved presidents?

[01:35:15] I mean, I think people really saw him as this, I don't know, example of the American dream.

[01:35:22] Or maybe like a family man.

[01:35:26] Breath of fresh air. Maybe like he was like a bridge to the next generation for many people.

[01:35:31] And people were in mourning. Many glued to their television sets, all across the United States,

[01:35:38] and especially in Boston.

[01:35:39] Sometime between 12 30 and 3 30 PM, Bostonians and many Americans watched

[01:35:45] Lyndon B. Johnson attend St. John's Cathedral for a memorial service,

[01:35:51] cameras flashed images of the White House, where mourners were gathered on the lawn and all

[01:35:57] in front of the White House. 23 year old Joanne Graff was raped and strangled inside her

[01:36:03] lock department in Lawrence, which was nearly an hour away from Boston. She was strangled with two

[01:36:09] nylon stockings with that extra half hitch knot. The stockings were tied in a grotesque knot under her

[01:36:17] chin, which resembled a bow. She was nude, except for pink blouse, which was bunched up under her

[01:36:24] shoulders, her legs wide apart. And she had teeth marks on her breast, which was a new,

[01:36:30] something new. He had normally hadn't been biting the victims.

[01:36:34] The one room apartment had been ransacked yet untouched on the table was an envelope with cash,

[01:36:41] enough money to pay her gas bill plus several extra dollars. There was no sign of forced entry.

[01:36:48] It was learned that Joanne had few friends. She had only moved from Chicago five months earlier

[01:36:55] after graduating from the Chicago Art Institute. She taught six-grade Sunday school at a Lutheran

[01:37:01] church in Lawrence. She worked full-time as a designer for a firm that created fabrics.

[01:37:08] Described as ultra conservative, Joanne wouldn't even wear printed dresses because she thought it

[01:37:14] was too flashy. There's been multiple victims that have just recently moved. One was two weeks,

[01:37:21] one was even maybe less than that. And now here you're, "Damn, that's kind of bald.

[01:37:27] We're going to have another one come up inside."

[01:37:30] Okay. Oh my god, this guy's a mover. Let's talk about Joanne.

[01:37:35] Well, she also attended a Lutheran church, which is a slesser attended a Lutheran church.

[01:37:40] I mean there are some coincidences with some of the victims, the music aspect, the medical field,

[01:37:47] the religious, their denomination. I mean, okay. So she wouldn't even wear printed dresses because

[01:37:55] she thought it was just too flashy. She's very conservative. Her landlord described Joanne as being

[01:38:00] extra cautious, having asked many questions about safety and the neighborhood before a green

[01:38:06] to move there. When he came by to collect the weekly rent, she would not allow him to enter

[01:38:11] her apartment. She always met him at the door. Her apartment was kept in meticulous condition

[01:38:17] from what he could see. Again, he was never allowed in, but just, you know, eyeballing when he

[01:38:22] would talk to her, he said her apartment seemed immaculate, just pristine. On the morning of her murder,

[01:38:28] the landlord had looked in behind her as she was paying rent and noticed that her breakfast dishes

[01:38:35] were already washed and tidied up. I mean, and he was impressed by this because she's a young woman,

[01:38:41] living alone, you know, and he's like, I'm most of my young tenants are like messy college kids

[01:38:46] and stuff. And then she's not at all. She's very responsible. She was often found scrubbing the

[01:38:53] floors on her hands and knees when he would go knock on the door. So again, I mean, she's just

[01:38:59] kind of a certain type of person around 330 that afternoon. A woman named Mrs. Johnson, who attended

[01:39:05] church with her, had begun calling Joanne in 15 minute intervals to remind her that they would be there

[01:39:11] to pick her up. She her husband was going to be there like 4 30 to pick up Joanne. They had made an

[01:39:18] agreement to give her a ride to church. So around 4 40 PM, Mr. Johnson finally drove to the

[01:39:23] apartment building and knocked on the door. He and his wife were supposed to be picking her up at

[01:39:28] 430 and they hadn't been able to reach her. So they thought, well, we'll just go over and, you know,

[01:39:32] maybe she got called up or there's a problem with the phone line or something. So in neighbor,

[01:39:38] 22-year-old engineering student, Kenneth Rho, had heard his wife complain recently that someone

[01:39:44] had been snooping around the halls at night. So when he heard footsteps outside the hall that day,

[01:39:50] he decided to tip toe to the door and listen. He heard a man knock on the door. And he described

[01:39:57] the man as being around 27 years old with shiny, palm-made hair that resembled Elvis Presley.

[01:40:04] So I'm assuming a popendore. So he's listening. He hears this guy knock on his door. Kenneth opens up

[01:40:14] the door and this stranger asks if Joan Graff lives there. Kenneth knew it was pronounced Joanne.

[01:40:23] Well, he explained that Graff actually lived downstairs on the floor below, like the floor beneath,

[01:40:28] and it was the apartment directly below him. Kenneth then heard the guy leave. He hears him

[01:40:34] go down the stairs and he hears a knock on the door and assumes that Joanne has let this visitor

[01:40:39] inside. But again, the visitor is calling her Joan. So obviously the guy doesn't know her.

[01:40:46] Not well anyway. So then shortly. So she's found dead. The Johnson spine, her it's very similar to

[01:40:53] the Strangler murders. But Lawrence police don't want to believe it's connected because they're

[01:40:58] like, well, we're an hour outside of Boston. Right. And it seems that Lawrence police that they

[01:41:03] were not really sinking up with a Boston police to help in the investigation. They were basically

[01:41:09] telling Boston police, this is our case, but out. Well, and in my mind, the reason the killer may

[01:41:14] be coming that far outside of the city is because the heat, people were in the city or hypervigilant

[01:41:20] looking over their shoulder, people are well aware of what's been happening. So maybe he's traveled

[01:41:26] outside the city so he can do what he wants without so much attention. Well, it's really weird because

[01:41:32] here you've got Joanne, people are saying, she's very conservative, she'd never let anybody in

[01:41:38] her apartment. She didn't have men coming over her. So for her to let in the stranger.

[01:41:43] Right. Is like, okay, well, did she know this person or was there some reason why she allowed him

[01:41:50] into her apartment or is he as extremely charismatic or, you know, able to, you know, put people at

[01:41:56] ease. You know, that could be some talent of his then shortly after New Year's Day 1964, 19

[01:42:04] year old Mary Sullivan moved into an apartment at 44 a trial street with two roommates.

[01:42:10] She had just moved to Boston from high-end us. On January 4th, which was a Saturday, the two roommates

[01:42:17] named Patricia and Pam returned to the apartment from work. They worked at a business called

[01:42:24] Filings, which is a clothing store. And I'm thinking it might be Filings Basement, which was a

[01:42:30] store in DC, where I used to shop, and they have like almost like close out from high-end, like

[01:42:36] Nemes, Neiman Marcus style, you know, clothing designer and that kind of thing, but they get it

[01:42:43] kind of overstock or discounted if that makes sense. It's like a ritzy Ross.

[01:42:47] Yeah. I mean, Filings is a pretty well-known store. So I'm assuming it's probably similar to

[01:42:52] Filings Basement. And they find Mary dead. She had been strangled and posed in a horrific way.

[01:42:59] So this is a young woman who's just moved here and she's in the process of moving in the apartment

[01:43:04] when she's killed. Again. Yes. So I was like, you ain't seen nothing yet, Dylan. This woman's moving

[01:43:10] in and she's murdered. She had been strangled and posed in a horrific way. Now I'm not going to go into

[01:43:15] details because it is incredibly degrading what the strangled did to this woman. I will say she was

[01:43:22] assaulted with a foreign object. A charcoal-colored stocking and a pink silk scarf were tied

[01:43:29] with a bow under the chin. A happy new year card was propped up against the toes of her left foot.

[01:43:36] So weird and grows. It's like, it's like the killer sends a humor coming out or something. I mean,

[01:43:46] it's just, I don't know, so strange. Inside Mary's apartment was a tiny sliver of foil like

[01:43:52] the kind used to rap film. It suggested to police that the strangler had carefully

[01:43:58] possibly photographed the scene. So, I was shaking a moment. Yes. Now the public uproar could not be

[01:44:09] contained. The attorney general's office of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the highest law enforcement

[01:44:15] agency in the state, would be taking over the strangler case. Mary Sullivan's murder impacted the city

[01:44:21] because she represented so many young women. She was Irish Catholic from modest means, young,

[01:44:28] the youngest of victims, full of life and moving to Boston to seek a job. You know, this was the

[01:44:34] kind of young woman that they see every day all over the city. The kind who moves here to get a job

[01:44:40] is later going to get married, raise a family. It was not only the shock of horror, but the shock

[01:44:46] recognition, in this case, because she was like every young woman in the city. And these detectives,

[01:44:53] they have daughters this age. Right. They're sending their daughters out on their own.

[01:44:58] And, you know, I listened to a podcast again. I mentioned stranglers,

[01:45:02] where they interviewed her nephew and people who went to high school with her and they described

[01:45:07] her as being just this very like reserved, kind of young woman. She didn't have a whole lot of

[01:45:12] friends, and she'd really looked forward to moving to Boston to kind of just change her life.

[01:45:18] Right. Gene Cole wrote a piece for the Boston Record American regarding the failures of the

[01:45:25] different police departments on working together. How they didn't share information and they were

[01:45:30] not coordinating. She suggested a clearing house, we set up, where everyone could focus on the

[01:45:36] details of the case. And she wasn't wrong. There were six different police departments working

[01:45:42] the strangler murders. Some didn't recognize the murders were the work of a single killer.

[01:45:47] Therefore, they didn't feel they needed to share details with the other agencies. Some denied

[01:45:52] altogether that the murders in their town had anything to do with the strangler murders.

[01:45:57] It's just a big clusterfuck. No, no, I understood that.

[01:46:00] You got tips pouring in, but you don't have these agencies coordinating to investigate

[01:46:06] them. And we're going to get to one of those cases in part two, a case that could have potentially

[01:46:12] solved the crime early on and prevented some of these murders if someone had just taken the tip

[01:46:18] seriously. Well, that's why I don't understand. Even if you don't think yours is connected.

[01:46:22] Sharing the information can't harm anything. You know what I mean? It may even just give the

[01:46:28] other investigators another idea or another viewpoint or a way to, or you could have somebody in

[01:46:34] your department who has a knack for, you know, looking at this, you know, top of information and

[01:46:38] coming up with a pattern or something. So I just don't, I've never understood the pissing contest

[01:46:43] between agencies. One fact stood out. All but two of the murders had taken place on the weekends,

[01:46:50] and a slusor's murder took place on a Thursday, June 14th. But that was also flag day observed as

[01:46:57] a holiday in some states. So again, I mean, it's pointed to the fact that like the one psychiatrist

[01:47:06] theorizes this is a person who works like a regular job and they don't want to be missing from work

[01:47:10] right or draw attention to their absence. But on a flag day, they might be off. Exactly. So that's

[01:47:17] an interesting point that Jean Cole had mentioned in her article. So if you Clark had been

[01:47:24] killed on a Wednesday. So you have two of the murders during a weekday, but the rest are all on

[01:47:29] weekends. A check show that nearly 500 sex offenders had been released in Massachusetts the

[01:47:36] previous year. Yeah, it's a lot. Thousands more freed from other states, police were operating

[01:47:43] under the theory that criminals stick to what they know. A pickpocket isn't interested in forgery,

[01:47:48] a home burglar isn't interested in stealing cars. So they needed to focus on suspects who had

[01:47:54] committed similar sex crimes. And I think that's smart. Yeah, that's reasonable. This is where

[01:48:00] we leave part one of the Boston strangler. Oh, my gosh. I gotta go process all this information.

[01:48:06] So join us next week for the conclusion. We're going to be discussing more cases. We're going to

[01:48:12] talk about the arrest, the trial, and theory surrounding the crimes. We'll also be discussing some cases

[01:48:21] in other states, but with a very similar. Emma, Boston strangler and suspect who was arrested in New York

[01:48:33] that could have been the Boston strangler, the person who's been charged is really the killer.

[01:48:43] And their theories there could have been multiple killers. So we have a lot to talk about next

[01:48:48] episode. I hope everybody is doing well and didn't fall asleep during that. I know it was very lengthy.

[01:48:57] No, no, I think it was engaging. And we still have, we still have so much to discuss still on.

[01:49:02] Yeah, and I would like to thank the sponsors of today's show and all our patrons who so generously

[01:49:07] donate over there at www.patreon.com/mount Turns podcast podcast. And you can get all kinds of extra

[01:49:14] content. You can help support us directly, which we really, really appreciate during these hard,

[01:49:19] tough, trying times. And there's ton of content. And we have a lot of fun over there. We're a

[01:49:24] little bit different, a little bit even a loose ear and goose ear. I imagine that topic was available.

[01:49:28] We have Ed free episodes. Our top tiers have access to our other podcasts dancing with myself,

[01:49:35] which is my eighties podcast. I have several new episodes. So if you're into eighties pop culture,

[01:49:42] music, movies, fashion, you're an eighties kid like myself, it'll be very nostalgic for you.

[01:49:48] Check that out. Again, that's called dancing with myself. And we have a movie podcast cult of sleaze

[01:49:53] Dillon. We have to record a new episode for you. We have to. We watch bad movies. So you don't have to.

[01:50:00] Yes. But you may be enticed to watch the bad movie after you hear our review.

[01:50:05] Actually, we'll put some great ones. We have a lot of fun with all that. And so yeah, we hope everyone

[01:50:09] likes to take a look on that. Took a look at that if you can or want extra content. There it is,

[01:50:15] waiting on you. Yeah, thanks so much. We'll be back on Wednesday with a brand new midweek episode.

[01:50:21] And then we will have part two next weekend. All right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Heather,

[01:50:26] and look over your shoulder. Yeah, it's true. Keep your head on this with a little bit.

[01:50:31] It's true. Bye. Bye.

[01:50:33] To continue listening to this story head to the Mountain Murders podcast using the link in the

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[01:50:44] would like to nominate a true crime podcast to be featured, just send me a tweet @indydropin.

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[01:50:55] indie drop-in survives off ad revenue and listener donations. If you would like to contribute,

[01:51:01] please consider buying me a coffee. You can go to buy me a coffee dot com forward slash indie drop-in.

[01:51:07] If you look at the very bottom of the episode description, I put a link in there to make it really easy.

[01:51:12] indie drop in has many other shows that you also might like. Just go to indiedropin.com.

[01:51:19] All right. See you next week.

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