Tag Archives: Murders

THE REAL REASON BEHIND THE MANSON CULT MURDERS

When you read the words “cult” and “murders” in the same line, you’ll evoke evil images of Charles Manson motivating his deadly cult to commit Helter Skelter—an apocalyptic race war between blacks and whites. The picture of wild-eyed Manson with a swastika carved in his forehead, and the sight of his head-shaven girls occupying the courthouse steps, seared themselves into American criminal history. Charles Manson is gone, but his memory lives on in villainous infamy. However, Charles Manson’s true motive for his cult murders wasn’t Helter Skelter. That’s nonsense. But Manson’s real reason remained shrouded in secrecy—until now.

During the summer of 1969, Charles Manson’s family of social misfits and rebellious rejects went on a homicidal rampage in the greater Los Angeles area. At least ten innocent victims lost their lives. The high-profile Manson family mass-murders claimed actress Sharon Tate and her celebrity friends who were shot, strangled, and stabbed to death. Businesspeople Rosemary and Leno LaBianca fell as well to Manson-ordered, cult-wielding knives. Charles Manson was also directly responsible for three or more individual murders associated with Manson’s criminal enterprise.

Throughout the Manson Family murder trial, district attorney and prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi pleaded a case that Charles Manson masterminded the Tate and LaBianca murders, although Manson wasn’t hands-on during the killings. Bugliosi argued Manson exercised totalitarian mind control over his cult members and convinced them to commit murder on his behalf.

Manson’s motive, Bugliosi offered, was Charles Manson proclaimed he was the reincarnation of a Jesus-like messiah who’d rule the world following an inevitable race war between blacks and whites. Manson called this Helter Skelter. Bugliosi’s case rested on the motive theory that Manson organized the Tate and LaBianca murders to frame the Black Panther movement and start his imaginary race Armageddon.

Bugliosi claimed Manson’s convoluted motive was personal gain and control after Helter Skelter occurred. Helter Skelter was a term Charles Manson adopted from the Beatles White Album that Manson claimed described the race war and its fallout. There’s no doubt from the trial evidence that Manson preached Helter Skelter to his followers, and they took it hook, line, and sinker. The Helter Skelter motive theory was enough to convince a jury to convict Manson and six family members of first-degree murder, sending them to death row. Their capital sentences were eventually reduced to life in prison where some still remain.

Now, after fifty-five years, the theory of Charles Manson’s bizarre Helter Skelter motive no longer stands the sniff test. It’s bunk, and Manson knew it. As a clever and cunning con man, Manson didn’t believe his own BS. He had a much different motive for ordering his followers to carry out the Tate and LaBianca slayings. Charles Manson’s real reason for his cult murders was to cover up another crime.

Charles Manson’s Criminal Background

If ever there was someone born to be a career criminal, it was Charles Manson. His birth mother was a disturbed teenager from Cincinnati, Ohio. There’s doubt about who Manson’s biological father was, but he took the surname Manson from a man who married his mother while she was still pregnant. The name on his birth certificate was Charles Milles Maddox after his biological mother’s maiden name.

Manson’s mother spent his childhood years revolving in and out of jail. She was a destitute alcoholic, and Manson bounced between her relatives. He relocated to an aunt’s home in Charleston, West Virginia and then to another aunt’s place in Indianapolis. By age ten, Charles Manson was already incorrigible. He was caught breaking into a house and stealing a gun.

At twelve, Manson was incarcerated in a Terre Haute, Indiana juvenile delinquent home. He escaped and survived by living on the streets of Indianapolis. Now Manson graduated from break-ins to stealing cars. By his 14th birthday, Charles Manson was sentenced to five years in a Nebraska prison for armed robbery.

Manson had a rough go in the penitentiary. He was a little man with big little-man syndrome. Even as an adult, Charles Manson only stood 5’ 2” and weighed 125 lbs. Much larger prisoners repeatedly raped and sodomized tiny Manson. He developed a defense mechanism that would be a lifelong trademark. Charles Manson pretended to be crazy, and the act worked for him.

Manson got paroled in 1954 and moved to Ohio. Soon, he was back into stealing cars and took one for a ride to Los Angeles. He supported himself through thefts, break-ins and robberies but found time to get a girl pregnant and marry her. Manson also learned to make extra money by pimping-out his new wife.

In 1956, Charles Manson was back in the federal prison system for another five-year stint. This time he was psychologically evaluated and deemed to be aggressively antisocial. His prison IQ test scored 119 with the national average being 100. The shrinks said there was nothing crazy about Charles Manson. In fact, he was quite bright.

Manson conned his way into early parole. He was out by 1958 and practicing a new trade which he’d learned from the pros in prison. Charles Manson began assembling a harem and lived off the avails of prostitution. He’d realized it was easier and safer to get others to commit crimes for him.

But, like other criminal ventures Charles Manson tried, he got caught again when one of the girls turned on him. As well, Manson had been kiting bad checks which was a federal offense. Manson was back in the pen in 1959—this time for a ten-year sentence.

Manson’s Musical, Scientology, and Carnegie Influence

Charles Manson played the prison system well. He used the crazy act when convenient but also took some schooling. Another psychiatric assessment identified Manson’s “tremendous drive to call attention to himself”. By accident or design, Manson was cellmates with the infamous bank robber, Alvin Karpis. It was Karpis who taught Charles Manson to play the guitar.

Manson learned several more skills in prison. He became an astute student of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Manson also studied Scientology. Persuading people and gathering large groups became Charles Manson’s burning desire. His intent upon freedom was to use his musical aptitude, his charm, and his con-man conversion skills to gather a female following. Originally, Manson’s game was nothing more than a front for a profitable prostitution ring and a try at building a music audience.

In 1967, Manson made parole again. Now he was in Washington State where he’d been transferred within the federal system. The timing was right for strands of fate to align and begin building Charles Manson’s deadly hippie cult. He moved to San Francisco.

This was the “summer of love” and the peak of the California counterculture of hippies and freeloaders centered in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Many of the hippies were disenchanted girls from broken homes or strict families. The hippie lifestyle of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll was uber-attractive to these vulnerable kids. It was the perfect position for a perverted predator like Charles Manson to exploit.

Manson arrived in San Francisco at the height of the hippie movement. Now, he had two distinct and definite purposes. One was to start a prostitution ring. The other was to build a music career. Manson was smart enough to know he needed a following for both goals. He put his guitar, Carnegie, and Scientology skills to work and assembled his family.

The Manson Family Members

Today, most of the main Manson Family female members are household names. Everyone knows about Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford. And, of course, Susan “Sadie” Atkins is well known. So are Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, Linda Kasabian, Mary Bruner, and Diane Lake.

Although Manson’s intention was to build a female following, there were a few young men who joined the family. Noteworthy were Charles “Tex” Watson, Steve “Clem” Grogan, Bruce Davis, and a good-looking young guy by the name of Bobby Beausoleil. All four would eventually go down for murders orchestrated by Charles Manson.

Looking at the Manson Family objectively, it wasn’t Charles Manson’s original intention to build a cult. His big drive was to be famous through music, and he needed a built-in audience to attract a record label. Manson was fascinated by the Beatles’ success and their music. He intended to follow their path. The cult-thing was an accidental by-product of his grandiose delusion of stardom.

A cult can be either destructive or non-destructive. Generally, a cult is an organization of followers with a charismatic leader who preaches false information. Scientology is clearly a cult, but they don’t seem to go around killing people. The Charles Manson Family did. They were about as destructive a cult as you can find.

You’ve got to give Charles Manson some credit for both drive and balls. While in prison with Karpis, Manson got a lead on a Los Angeles record producer named Phil Kaufman who Karpis knew from the outside. Kaufman was business partners with the influential recording producer, Terry Melcher, who was Doris Day’s son. Melcher was also the producer for big names like the Beach Boys, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and the Mommas and Poppas.

Charles Manson amassed about 100 followers who he plied with psychedelic drugs and mesmerized their strung-out brains with messiah-like preaching about Beatle song interpretations. He gained his audience in San Francisco but knew the music action was in L.A. In 1969, Manson packed up the family and headed south. He tracked down Terry Melcher and talked his way into Melcher’s home at 10050 Cielo Drive in north Los Angeles. This was the home Sharon Tate was about to occupy.

Terry Melcher wasn’t impressed with Manson’s musical talent, but he took an interest in Manson’s personality. Melcher never outright turned Manson down for a record deal. He encouraged Manson to keep writing, practicing, and building an audience. Manson took Melcher’s advice to heart and did just that.

Manson and the Beach Boys

Charles Manson’s big musical break came by total fluke. Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys picked up two of Manson’s girls who were hitchhiking. Seeing them as an easy sexual mark, Wilson took the girls back to his Los Angeles mansion and had his way. Once the two returned to the family and told Manson about the encounter, Charles Manson saw a tremendous opportunity. He had the audacity to take 20 of his female followers and invade Wilson’s house.

Tempted by unlimited sex, Dennis Wilson let the Manson Family stay until they wore out their welcome a few months later. By then, Manson and his followers sponged tens of thousands of dollars off Wilson and his associates. The Wilson connection gave Manson access to big names like Neil Young who Manson had many jam-sessions with.

Dennis Wilson (Beach Boys) left – Charles Manson right

In the spring of 1969, Manson was going nowhere in his music world and his grip on his cult was loosening. People dropped off and recruiting was slow now that the counter-culture revolution had run its course. Manson wasn’t interested in retaining men, but he did everything to hang onto women. They were still his bread and butter. That continued to work as long as he supplied them with drugs and continued to make them feel valued.

One thing about running a cult is that it’s hard work. It takes a lot of supplies and energy to keep up the charade. Manson constantly needed to take his game to a higher step to retain control. He did this by preaching Helter Skelter, and it worked.

By now, Charles Manson had convinced his hard-core followers that he was a messiah—the “Son of Man”. He played on their fears and hopes where he predicted a race war between blacks and whites where the blacks would kill all the whites and then turn to the Manson Family for leadership. This was all nonsense, of course, and Manson knew it.

However, this Helter Skelter nonsense acted as glue for the family, and they bought it. To buy time while he pursued other music leads, Charles Manson upped his preaching game. He also upped his LSD and methamphetamine supply. For that, they needed money, and this got Manson in a pickle.

The Start of the Manson Family Murders

After Manson and the family left Dennis Wilson’s place, they couch surfed, leaching off whoever would tolerate them. One place was next door to 3301 Waverly Drive in north Los Angeles—the home of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. After that brief stay, Manson found an old movie set called the Spahn Ranch in the desert northwest of L.A.

Manson paid his rent to eighty-year-old George Spahn in sexual favors performed by his girls. With this new spot and its remote location, Manson now had more control over who was coming and going in the family. One of the newcomers was a 21-year-old wanna-be musician, Bobby Beausoleil.

Charles Manson was under constant pressure to fund his family. It took money to pay for drugs, food, and vehicles that the Manson Family required. Most of their money came from prostitution, drug trafficking and petty theft. From that, they barely scraped by. Charles Manson saw an opportunity and hatched a plan for a big money score.

One of Manson’s musical acquaintances was Gary Hinman who was a quiet and well-educated man. Hinman found Manson and his followers interesting but had no desire to join them. Manson heard a rumor that Hinman recently acquired a large inheritance, so Manson sent Bobby Beausoleil and Susan Atkins to check it out.

Gary Hinman knew Beausoleil and Atkins. He willingly let them in. Both Atkins and Beausoleil were drugged and unstable. When they approached Hinman to join their family, he again declined. The conversation turned to money, and Hinman put his foot down. It turned ugly. The Manson Family members took Hinman hostage and began torturing him.

Beausoleil phoned Manson back at the ranch and told him they weren’t getting anywhere with Hinman. They asked for Manson’s direction. Manson told Atkins and Beausoleil to keep Hinman tied up till he got there. Once Manson arrived, he took over, cutting Hinman’s ear off to set an example.

Hinman still refused to give in. In frustration, Manson took Atkins and left—telling Beausoleil, “You know what to do.” Manson also told Beausoleil to make the scene look like the Black Panthers were involved, reminding Beausoleil of the apocalyptic doom of Helter Skelter.

Bobby Beausoleil took that as a clear signal and authorization from his leader—Charles Manson—to kill Gary Hinman. With Manson gone, Bobby Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death while Hinman stayed tied to a chair. Beausoleil then wrote “Pig” on the front door in Hinman’s blood as well as leaving a bloody paw print which was the Black Panther symbol.

Beausoleil was drugged, fatigued, and not thinking straight. He stole Hinman’s car, hid the knife in the trunk and drove from the scene. Within hours, the police found Bobby Beausoleil asleep in Hinman’s stolen car. His clothes were bloody and so was the murder weapon that was still in the trunk. The police backtracked, found Hinman’s body, and charged Bobby Beausoleil with first-degree murder.

Charles Manson Plans the Tate & LaBianca Murders

Beausoleil’s arrest worried Charles Manson. He was concerned—really concerned—that Bobby Beausoleil would crack, squeal, and implicate Charles Manson as a murder accomplice. That got the wheels turning in Manson’s head, and his convoluted logic kicked in.

Charles Manson calculated that if similar murders occurred with a modus operandi (MO) like what Beausoleil did to Hinman, then the police would have to conclude the real killers were still out there. Therefore, they’d have to drop the charges, release Bobby Beausoleil, and the heat would be off Charles Manson.

Manson figured he’d put his other family members to work by casing out locations and finding suitable murder victims. He knew he could convince his most-trusted lieutenants who accepted his Helter Skelter prophesies. Manson gathered them and said it was now time to start Helter Skelter. He said nothing about covering up the botched Gary Hinman murder.

The first place Manson targeted was 10050 Cielo Drive. Manson knew Terry Melcher moved out. In fact, Manson came face-to-face with Sharon Tate when he went looking for Melcher one day. Manson picked Tate’s residence for two reasons. One was he knew that celebrity murders would get a lot of attention. Secondly, Manson was familiar with the layout.

On the night of August 8, 1969, Charles Manson instructed Tex Watson to take Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian and kill everyone inside 10050 Ceilo Drive. Manson also directed them to make the scene look like a Black Panther attack by writing bloody messages on the walls. He implicitly said this was the start of Helter Skelter and it was their privilege to carry it out.

The drug-fueled cult members bought every word of it. Without going into graphic details, the Manson Family members cold-bloodedly killed Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abagail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and an innocent visitor named Steve Parent.

One mass killing wasn’t good enough for Charles Manson. The next night, Manson accompanied the same murderous group to the Leno and Rosemary LaBianca house on Waverly Drive. This time he took along Leslie Van Houten and Clem Grogan. Again, Manson didn’t get his hands bloody. He picked the LaBianca home simply because he knew the layout and that they were wealthy. Once Manson located the home, he left and the Manson Family cult members went in for the kill.

Bit by bit, Manson’s grip on his cult slipped away. It took a while for the police to connect the Tate and LaBianca murders and find evidence linking the Manson cult to the crimes. Even when the police raided the Spahn Ranch and arrested Manson and his remaining followers on car theft suspicion, they failed to make any connection to the August murder spree. It wasn’t until Susan Atkins opened her mouth in jail that the cat came out of the bag.

Many of the Manson Family members testified at the Tate and LaBianca murder trials. Each one attributed the motive to Charles Manson’s Helter Skelter vision. One can’t blame them for revealing this as the motive because that’s what they honestly believed. Only Charles Manson knew his real motive for his cult killings. That’s a secret Manson took to the grave with him.

*   *   *

I’m not making up this theory about Charles Manson’s real motive for his cult murders. Vincent Bugliosi is on the record for purporting the Gary Hinman murder connection as the real reason why Manson ordered the Tate and LiBianca “copy-cat” killings. It makes sense when you think about it. And if you think about it, Bugliosi ran with the Helter Skelter motive because he knew he could sell it to the jury—not so with the Hinman coverup.

Charles Manson was a psychopath, but he wasn’t psychotic. He was a shrewd little con-man and a calculating criminal. His entire MO was using people to commit criminal acts, and his cult following—which was supposed to be a Beatles-like fan club—got carried away into one of the most notorious murder cases in history. It was all about covering up a crime gone bad.

If you’re interested in a fascinating look at how Charles Manson built and controlled his cult, I suggest reading a 2015 undergraduate honors thesis by Robin Altman of the University of Colorado, Boulder. It’s titled Sympathy for the Devil: Charles Manson’s Exploitation of California’s 1960 Counter-Culture. The thesis also concludes Manson’s real motive for the Tate & LaBianca murders was to cover up Bobby Beausoleil’s blotched job and to protect/divert suspicion from Charles Manson.

THE BOSTON STRANGLER—WAS IT REALLY ALBERT DESALVO?

The Boston Strangler was America’s first modern serial killer case. From June 1962 until January 1964, someone terrorized the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts with thirteen sexually motivated murders. Single women of all ages were raped, sadistically brutalized, and strangled to death inside their apartments. Apparently, they voluntarily let their killer in.

The slaying string suddenly stopped. No one was apprehended, charged, or convicted. For years, the Boston Strangler serial murders remained unsolved. The files—whatever was left of them—sat shelved with other cold cases. Day-by-day, the trail got icier. That’s until modern forensic science revisited the evidence using cutting-edge, DNA genotyping.

Authorities long debated whether Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. He was a serial sexual predator and certainly capable of strangling women while raping them. In fact, Albert DeSalvo admitted being the Strangler and claimed responsibility for the thirteen cases, plus other homicides. But, DeSalvo also recanted his confession, blamed others and many pieces implicating him didn’t fit.

Boston area detectives didn’t have Albert DeSalvo on their radar during the early investigation. It wasn’t until late 1965 that DeSalvo surfaced after making a jail-house confession to a cellmate who happened to be represented by high-profile lawyer F. Lee Bailey. Bailey took on DeSalvo’s case and tried to broker a deal with Boston Police and the D.A. It was having Albert DeSalvo ruled criminally insane so he could move from the harsh penitentiary to a comfortable hospital.

The police were very cautious about credibility in DeSalvo’s confession. There was absolutely no physical evidence—at the time—to connect Albert DeSalvo to any of the Strangler scenes. DeSalvo was well known for exaggerating and fabricating stories. Further, DeSalvo seemed wrong about some Strangler scene key facts such as times, mechanisms of death and various evidence points. It seemed to investigators that DeSalvo could have got his information from the news, made some up, or possibly heard it in jail from the real killer.

Albert DeSalvo was written off as a braggart and a pathological attention seeker. He was never charged for the Boston Strangler murders and died in prison in 1973 after being shanked by fellow inmates. The Strangler case sat dormant until 2013 when the Boston PD got special cold case funding from the National Justice Institute. With it, they assembled a team and applied DNA analysis from questioned male biological evidence retrieved at one Strangler death scene and compared it with known DNA extracted from DeSalvo’s exhumed body. The results finally settled the question, “The Boston Strangler—Was it really Albert DeSalvo?”

Boston Strangler Case History

The killings associated with the Boston Strangler serial murder case happened over a 19-month period from the summer of 1962 until the winter of 1964. All victims were females alone in apartments who were killed by manual or ligature strangulation. Some were also stabbed. All were sexually violated in some manner, and most had their nylon stockings cinched around their necks. However, there were marked differences in modus operandi (MO) between the killings. There was also a huge age range. The youngest Strangler-attributed victim was 19. The oldest was 85. Initially, the Strangler case was called the “Silk Stocking Murders”. This label changed when the Boston Sunday Herald ran the July 8, 1962, headline “Mad Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston” after the fourth victim was found. Then, a panic surge swept Boston causing women to arm themselves, buy guard dogs, and rig alarms in their homes.

The print, radio, and TV media industry didn’t help calm peoples’ fears. They sensationalized the Boston Strangler case as Boston’s crime of the century. Interest intensified as the Strangler’s body count grew. Through good investigative journalism and helpful leaks from police officers, much of the Strangler key-fact evidence got published.

Normally, this critical information—only known to the true killer and the principal investigators—would be held back in strictest confidence. Not so with many of the individual Strangler murders. Descriptions of exact ligatures, body posings in lurid sexual positions, and notes allegedly left by the killer appeared in newspapers and on the air.

Another challenge was the multi-jurisdictional overlap in the Greater Boston police departments. Strangler victims surfaced in Cambridge, Salem, Lynn, and Lawrence as well as central Boston. This was the sixties and way before modern communication links in law enforcement. The media had better information channels than the cops and were making case links that seasoned detectives doubted.

The sixties weren’t sophisticated times as forensics and informatics go. But the Boston detectives were no strangers to murders and were well-equipped with gut sense. The wide gap in victim ages, race, social class, crime scene modus operandi and event spacing puzzled the initial investigators. There were so many different patterns that it was hard to believe that, behaviorally, the crimes were committed by one person.

Many officers still believe that today. They feel that more than one killer was at work in the Boston area during that period and to seasoned officers, that makes sense. However, there was one obvious common denominator in all thirteen murders. Not a single scene had any sign of forced entry. Somehow, the killer had to have been let in.

The Boston Strangler Victims

Initially, the Boston Strangler victim list held fifteen names. After a time, two cases were solved and found to be independent perpetrators. The police also proved these assailants were not connected to the unsolved cases they cautiously suspected were the Strangler’s work. Here is the list of victims historically associated with the Boston Strangler.

  1. Anna Slesers – age 56. Found: June 14, 1962, at 77 Gainsborough St., Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with unspecified foreign object. Non-fatally strangled with a belt then fatally strangled with bathrobe cord tied in a bow around neck.
  2. Mary Mullen – age 85. Found: June 28, 1962, at 1435 Commonwealth Ave., Boston MA. MO: Sexual assault in progress but died of heart attack during strangulation attempt.
  3. Nina Nichols – age 68. Found: June 30, 1962, at 1940 Commonwealth Ave., Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with a wine bottle. Fatal ligature strangulation with one nylon stocking. Two more postmortem nylon stockings tied around neck in a bow.
  4. Helen Blake – age 65. Found: June 30, 1962, at 73 Newhall St., Lynn MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Another nylon and bra tied around neck postmortem.
  5. Ida Irga – age 75. Found: August 19, 1962, at 7 Grove St., Beacon Hill, Boston MA. MO: Raped and manually strangled. Pillowcase around neck postmortem.
  6. Jane Sullivan – age 67. Found: August 21, 1962, at 435 Columbia Rd., Dorchester, South Boston, MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings.
  7. Sophie Clark – age 20. Found: December 5, 1962, at 315 Huntington Ave., Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Petticoat wrapped around neck postmortem.
  8. Patricia Bissette – age 23. Found: December 31, 1962, at 515 Park Drive, Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with interwoven nylon stockings. Blouse also tied around neck postmortem.
  9. Mary Brown – age 69. Found: March 6, 1963, at 319 Park Ave., Lawrence MA. MO: Raped, bludgeoned with a pipe, stabbed in breasts with fork, and manually strangled. No ligature involved.
  10. Beverly Samans – age 23. Found: May 6, 1963, at 4 University Rd., Cambridge MA. MO: Raped, stabbed four times in neck, twenty-two times in torso. Two scarves and one nylon stocking tied around neck postmortem.
  11. Evelyn Corben – age 58. Found: September 6, 1963, at 224 Lafayette St., Salem MA. MO: Raped, forced to perform oral sex and fatally strangled with two nylon stockings.
  12. Joann Graff – age 23. Found: November 23, 1963, at 54 Essex St., Lawrence MA. MO: Raped, beaten and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Black leotard wrapped around neck postmortem.
  13. Mary Sullivan – age 19. Found January 4, 1964, at 44-A Charles St., Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with broom handle, forced to perform oral sex, fatally strangled with nylon stocking. Two scarves tied around neck postmortem. Posed on bed with back against wall, legs spread, and hand-written sign placed at feet reading “Happy New Year”.

How Albert DeSalvo Surfaced

Hindsight is a marvelous thing. Many police and forensic investigators wish they were issued it when they started their careers. Hindsight may be 20/20, but that’s not the real world in active, fluid police and forensic worlds.

Analyzing modus operandi, or method of operation, is also a marvelous thing. In hindsight, the Boston Strangler’s MOs appear glaringly obvious. But it’s just not that clear for field investigators on the ground. These professionals had to do the best with what they had at the time. Usually that’s a name and they didn’t have Albert DeSalvo’s as a murder suspect.

Looking back, Albert DeSalvo was proficiently active across the crime spectrum. DeSalvo was a con-man duping people on scams. He boosted cars and broke into businesses. DeSalvo dealt drugs and fenced goods. But what Albert DeSalvo was really good at was scamming innocent people into letting him enter their homes.

Before the Boston Strangler case started, Boston police were baffled by sexual predators called the “Measuring Man” and the “Green Man”. They appeared to be two different entities because of two different MOs. Both behaviors were far from how the Boston Strangler operated.

The Measuring Man started his Boston business in 1960. He was a clean, well-dressed and cheery man who randomly appeared at single ladies apartment doors, confidently portraying himself as a modeling agency rep. The ruse was the lady had been recommended by her anonymous friend to be a model. The Measuring Man was asked in, took critical bust, waist and hip sizes and was never seen again.

The Green Man was more aggressive. He appeared at single women’s apartments dressed in green work clothes. His ruse was repairs, and he was let in to do his job. That turned out to be raping women but leaving them alive. Most gave a very good description, and one victim later led the police to Albert DeSalvo.

Boston police arrested Albert DeSalvo for the Green Man rapes on October 27, 1964. This was eight months after the last Boston Strangler murder. Based on DeSalvos description and distinct Green Man MO, they charged him with multiple counts of rape and related sexual assaults. DeSalvo was held in custody and remanded for a psychiatric assessment. It was the same place and time holding George Nassar.

Albert DeSalvo Meets George Nassar

George Nassar was a violent Boston area criminal. Nassar was also in psychiatric remand for cold-bloodedly killing a gas station attendant during a robbery. He was already convicted of a previous murder. They wrote the penal code for guys like George Nassar, and he’d already checked off most of the boxes.

Somehow, Albert DeSalvo and George Nassar were cell mates. No one except Nassar knows how the conversation started. He’s still alive, but not talking. However, back then, the increasingly high-profile American defense attorney F. Lee Bailey represented George Nassar. Though Nassar and Bailey—Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler.

F Lee Bailey (front)

This toxic mix of masterful manipulators gave Boston police investigators the willies. Nassar was known as a cruel murderer with sexual deviancy. Bailey was an up-and-coming publicity hound. And Albert DeSalvo had absolutely no priors for anything indicating murder.

Lee Bailey (later famous for clients like Sam Sheppard, Patty Hearst, and OJ Simpson) recorded 50 hours of interviews with DeSalvo producing 20,000 transcript pages. Bailey remained the middleman, and the police never talked to DeSalvo directly.

Boston and other PD detectives carefully analyzed Albert DeSalvo’s statements. They concluded that DeSalvo got may details wrong about the crime scenes, particularly times of death that contradicted autopsy evidence. They also concluded details DeSalvo got right—certain key fact information—could well have come from another capable criminal like George Nassar.

DeSalvo suddenly recanted his confession. Police suspected a ruse between Nassar and DeSalvo to split a reward and get preferred incarceration facilities. DeSalvo was already facing life imprisonment, and Nassar had an appeal shot. Police also mistrusted F. Lee Baily and for a good reason, given Bailey’s track record. Eventually, Bailey goes home. DeSalvo dies. Nassar does life. And the Boston Strangler serial killings go unsolved.

Mary Sullivan and Albert DeSalvo’s Families Join Forces

This might sound like an unlikely joint venture, but the families of Mary Sullivan—13th on the Strangler list—and Albert DeSalvo joined forces to exonerate him. Both families had agendas. DeSalvo’s family wanted his name cleared as the Boston Strangler and Sullivan’s family long suspected a copycat—an associate of Mary Sullivan’s roommate.

The Sullivans and DeSalvos did a private investigation in 2000. The Boston police and other law enforcement agencies weren’t involved. Because both families had next-of-kin and executor powers, they convinced the medical examiner to exhume Mary Sullivan and Albert DeSalvo’s bodies for DNA examination.

Their goal was to isolate the killer’s DNA profile on Mary Sullivan’s remains and a known DNA profile from DeSalvo’s remains. Theoretically, this would link or exonerate the two. This was despite Mary Sullivan decomposing for 36 years and Albert DeSalvo rotting for 27.

They exhumed Mary Sullivan on October 13/14, 2000, from her grave in Hyannis MA. The forensic report of her disinterment and forensic examination is fascinating for the forensically inclined. Foreign DNA signatures developed on what was left of Sullivan’s underwear, pubic hair and head hair. They produced two separate donor profiles through degraded mitochondrial DNA profiling. The question was, “Were they contributed by Albert DeSalvo?”

The DeSalvo family authorized the Medical Examiner to exhume Albert’s body. The private team isolated suitable material and developed a unique DNA profile for Albert DeSalvo. When compared, the foreign DNA on Mary Sullivan clearly wasn’t contributed by Albert DeSalvo. Albert DeSalvo seemed innocent.

For the next 13 years, both families and many others were convinced Albert DeSalvo didn’t murder Mary Sullivan. That wasn’t so with the Boston police who still held the original semen swabs and slides from Mary Sullivan’s autopsy. They were waiting for forensic science to catch up so degraded DNA could be positively processed.

Boston Police Examine Strangler DNA in 2013

Boston and other police departments had no involvement in the 2000 private exhumations and DNA analysis. Neither did the Medical Examiner’s office or District Attorney. They let a privately-funded—and expensive—venture play out and let the private conclusions stand for what they were worth.

The authorities are no fools. They analyzed the private process flaws and waited till technology advanced. By 2013, forensic DNA analysis had three decades under its belt and was far more precise on old, degraded serology swabs and slides like those still retained from Mary Sullivan’s autopsy in 1964.

Two forensic labs worked tandemly to profile mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the foreign, or questioned, semen samples taken at Sullivan’s postmortem. They produced a clear biological picture of her killer. Now, the forensic team needed a known sample from suspects.

For years, Albert DeSalvo was the leading Boston Strangler suspect. Certainly, individual investigators had their personal opinions. But the preponderance of evidence pointed to DeSalvo and the overall modus operandi pointed to all thirteen murders being related.

Now the Boston police and the forensic team needed a known sample from their prime suspect—Albert DeSalvo. The problem was, DeSalvo was dead. Unlike the NOK/family loop that allowed exhumation, the cops had to convince a judge to issue a search warrant.

Again, the authorities are no fools. They needed a live link to the dead for an indicative DNA donor. That lay in a living male relative of Albert DeSalvo and, by now, the cooperative ones had dropped off. The closest living DeSalvo was a nephew. He wasn’t cooperating.

So, the Boston PD did a sting where they surveilled the nephew until he discarded a plastic water bottle. From that, the forensics team developed a Y-Chromosome DNA profile that showed that someone from the DeSalvo male lineage was 99.9% likely to be Sullivan’s foreign sperm donor. This powerful biological indicator provided grounds for a second Albert DeSalvo exhumation, authorized by a court warrant. Direct nuclear DNA from Albert DeSalvo was crucial to precisely proving or disproving the connection.

On July 10, 2013, Boston police and their forensic team once again dug up Albert DeSalvo and extracted DNA from his femur and three teeth. Nine days later, the Boston PD chief, the local DA and the Massachusetts Attorney General jointly announced that Albert DeSalvo’s DNA matched Mary Sullivan’s sperm donor with odds of one in 220 billion of being wrong.

It follows that if Albert DeSalvo’s semen DNA match conclusively links him as Sulivan’s killer, then the intricate MO—the nylon stocking nexus—connects DeSalvo to all thirteen killings. That evidence combination is the holy grail in a serial killer investigation, and there is no doubt—no doubt whatsoever—that the Boston Strangler really was Albert DeSalvo.

THE CIRCUS TRIAL OF THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY — THE HALL-MILLS MURDERS

On September 14, 1922, illicit lovers Edward Wheeler Hall and Eleanor Reinhardt Mills were murdered near New Brunswick, New Jersey. Hall, age 43, was a married Episcopalian minister. Mills, age 34 and married to a different man, was a soprano in his church choir. Three people—Hall’s legal wife and her two brothers—were charged with the crimes but acquitted. One hundred years later, few alive today have heard of the Hall-Mills murder trial but, back then, it was a media circus on par with the 1990s O.J. Simpson fiasco.

Normally, I write original material for the Dyingwords blog. Today, however, I’m going to plagiarize a bit because this description from The Yale Review says more about the sensational Hall-Mills side show than I can do justice to:

This steaming porridge of lust, murder, and scandal proved irresistible to the tabloids. As one eminent chronicler of the period outs it: “The Hall-Mills case had all the elements needed to satisfy an exacting public taste for the sensational. It was grisly, it was dramatic (the bodies being laid side to side as if to emphasize an unhallowed union), it involved wealth and respectability, it had just the right amount of sex interest–and in addition, it took place close to New York City, the great metropolitan nerve-center of the American press.”

The frenzied coverage turned the old Phillips farm, where the bodies were found, into a major tourist attraction. On weekends, the crime scene became a virtual carnival with vendors hawking popcorn, peanuts, soft drinks, and balloons to the hordes of the morbidly curious who arrived “at the rate of a thousand cars a day.” Within a few weeks, the crabapple tree, under which the bodies were lying, had been completely stripped of every branch and bit of bark by ghoulish souvenir hunters, while one enterprising individual peddled samples of the dirt surrounding the now-infamous tree for twenty-five cents a bag.

Back to the story of what happened, who probably did it, and why. Let’s start with the case facts.

The Reverend Ed Wheeler was born in Brooklyn and received his theology degree in Manhattan. He moved to New Jersey in 1909 and was tenured at the Evangelist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick. Here he met Frances Noel Stevens who was eight years his senior and filthy rich, being an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. They married in 1911 and had no children.

Eleanor Mills did have children. She was married to James E. Mills who was a sexton in Hall’s church and a rather n’er-do-well. Eleanor was an attractive and vivacious lady with an exceptional voice. She was a core member of the church and became Hall’s mistress.

It was no secret in New Brunswick’s society that Mills and Hall were having an affair. In fact, they were quite open about it. Many in the congregation gossiped and disapproved—not just of a clergy-parishioner relationship but the societal misalignment. Hall’s wife and family were upper class while Mills belonged with the working poor.

On September 16, 1922 (two days after Hall and Mills disappeared) a young couple walking through an orchard happened upon the bodies. Mills and Hall were lying side-by-side on their backs with their feet facing a crabapple tree. Hall was to Mill’s left with his arm touching hers while Mill’s arm was stretched, touching his. Hall’s Panama hat covered his face while Mills’ scarf wrapped her neck. Between the two were ripped-up love letters that Mills and Hall had previously passed back and forth. Notably, Reverend Hall’s calling card was set at his feet.

Autopsies showed both had been shot with a .32 caliber handgun. Hall received one gunshot wound to the head with the bullet entering above his right ear and travelling downward, exiting the left rear of his neck. Mills had three gunshot wounds. One was in the center of her forehead two inches above the nose. A second plowed through her right cheek. A third pierced her right temple.

There were minor bruises on Hall but couldn’t be conclusively linked to a struggle. Mills, on the other hand, had her throat slit from ear to ear, practically decapitating her. Her tongue had been extracted and was missing.

The initial investigation was How Not to Process a Crime Scene 101. The police failed to secure the area and a mass of onlookers had access not only to view the bodies but in handling evidence like the love letters and the calling card. The story quickly spread and became the frenzied craze described in the Yale Review excerpt.

From the onset, Hall’s wife—Frances Stevens Hall—was the prime suspect in setting up the murders. Not committing them, though, as that suspicion fell on her two brothers, Henry Hewgill Stevens and William “Willie” Carpender Stevens. The district attorney quickly took the case before a grand jury theorizing that Frances was the jealous mastermind while Henry and Willie were the obliging gunmen.

The grand jury didn’t buy it due to a lack of evidence. They rejected an indictment and the case went dormant for four years. In the legal system, that is.

In the news system, the Hall-Mills murder case was far from forgotten. The early 1920s was a vibrant time. Americans were recovering from a war and a pandemic. They wanted a release. The media gave it to them with the birth of American-style tabloids which rejected the stiff-collar, upper-crust reporting style of the New York Times.

William Randolph Hearst began publishing British-like papers targeting sensationalism. Hearst’s New York Daily Mirror competed with the already established tabloids New York Daily News and the New York Graphic. Hearst, being the cunning entrepreneur he was, looked to one-up the competition. He found one story that had it all—love & sex, money, and murder. Throw in a philandering clergyman and he had what Americans of the Roaring Twenties wanted to read.

The NY Daily Mirror resurrected the Hall-Mills murder case in 1925. Investigating reporters dug up “new evidence” which was so publicized that the New Jersey officials couldn’t ignore it. There were a few overlooked items from the 1922 investigation that showed up on the tabloid covers.

One was that Willie Stevens owned a .32 caliber pistol. Two was that Willie Stevens’s fingerprint was on the calling card found at the dead feet of Ed Hall. Three was the “Pig Woman” who claimed to have seen the murders go down.

This time, the New Brunswick grand jury indicted the three original suspects. The trial started on November 3, 1926 in neighboring Somerset, New Jersey. And if the original crime scene was a media gong show, that held nothing compared to the trial. At least three hundred news reporters covered the 33-day debacle.

The Pig Woman was the star prosecution witness. Now, there’s a story behind this pig lady. Her name was Jane Gibson or Jane Easton or Jane Upson, depending on what she wanted for the day. Jane got her pig woman name from being a farmer who kept hogs on the property next door to the orchard where the Hall and Hills bodies were found.

The Pig Woman never surfaced in the 1922 investigation, but she miraculously appeared when the tabloid coverage began. Jane stated that on the evening of September 14, 1922, her dog began barking and indicating toward the orchard. Being curious, Jane rode her mule over to the site and witnessed the three accused Stevens siblings there with the victims. As she was leaving, she heard gunshots, then went back to see Mrs. Frances Hall weeping over her dead husband’s body.

Now credibility is an important issue in witness testimony. It doesn’t help a jury’s impression when the witness’s mother (Jane’s own mom) kept yelling from the back of the courtroom while her daughter was testifying, “She’s a liar. A liar. A liar.” Nor does it create a reassuring picture when the star witness, who’s being called a liar, testifies from a hospital bed that had to be wheeled into the packed-to-over-capacity courtroom.

The three accused, Frances Stevens Hall, Henry Stevens, and Willie Stevens, all took the stand and testified on their own behalf. Frances, the stoic, denied any motivation, means, and opportunity. Henry’s defense was “Prove it. I have nothing to hide”. Willie was a special case. He was known as “Nutty Willie” in the community and probably had high-functioning autism. Apparently, he played the prosecutor like a hooked fish.

To use the cliché “in the end”, the jury acquitted Frances, Henry, and Willie. Their dream team defense counsel turned the trial into a class war where Ed Hall stooped to be with a common cheating wife like Eleanor Mills and they deserved what they got. Here’s a quote from a Rutgers pdf paper titled The Hall-Mills Murder Case: The Most Fascinating Unsolved Murder in America:

Frances Hall was presented as a paragon, along with her two brothers. “Have they been thugs?”, her lawyer asked the jury. ”Have they criminal records? Are they thieves? No. They are refined, genteel, law-abiding people, the very highest type of character, churchgoing Christians, who up to this time enjoyed the perfect admiration and respect of their friends and neighbors.”

When the jury acquitted Frances, Henry, and Willie the media manic trial was over, but the tabloids milked it until another sensational case came about. In 1932, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby was abducted and murdered. The tabloids finally closed the Hall-Mills case.

Over the last century, there’ve been numerous books written and articles submitted that looked at the Hall-Mills murders. There’s a guy named Julius Bolyog who came out 47 years after the murders stating he was a middle-man between the Frances and Willie connection and the hired killers. I seriously question his credibility. His account doesn’t pass the smell test, but you can listen to a 9-part recording produced in 1970 documenting Bolyog’s claim.

Then there’s the exhaustive work by Gerald Tomlinson titled Fatal Tryst: Who Killed the Minister and the Choir Singer? This author somehow concludes the Ku Klux Klan did it. Whatever.

So, what do I think? What an old murder cop thinks? Someone who’s been there, done that in murders?

The first thing to mind is the body positions. This was ritualistic. Hall and Mills were placed on their backs, touching each other, facing the crabapple tree with their torn love letters between them for a reason. These murders were all about infidelity.

I don’t think they were killed at this site. Rather, they were shot elsewhere and transported to the orchard knowing full well they’d be found, and the statement made. The killers wanted their victims publicly presented and a message sent.

I say killers (plural) because I don’t believe Hall and Mills were done at the dump site. It’d take two people to load, transport, and display the bodies. Handling a limp dead body by yourself is a tough go. Believe me. I was a coroner, and I know about the challenges in handling dead bodies.

I find the gunshot wounds telling. Ed Hall was shot from above and downward. From his upper right to his lower left. Eleanor Mills was shot three times, and it seems to me the shooter had to work on her. I’d say the first shot caught her struggling and zipped through her cheek. The second was more controlled and went through her temple. The third was a finish-off through the forehead after she was face-first controlled.

Control. This crime speaks to a planned control. The killers and plotter had to find the two—Ed Hall and Eleanor Mills—together and take control so they would initially cooperate. This might have been in a vehicle as it’s had to quickly get out of a vehicle when things go deadly fast.

I speculate the killers sucked Hall and Mills into the back seat of a car. Hall was on the rear driver’s side. Mills was on the rear passenger’s side.

By sucking in, I mean blackmailing. Somehow, the killers got Hall and Mills attention to get them controlled. Blackmailing will do that.

The gunshot patterns are telling. I speculate the shooter was in the passenger front position. The other killer was behind the wheel. The shooter first pulled the trigger on Hall which explains the downward, right-to-left trajectory.

I speculate Mills immediately turned left toward Hall when he was shot, exposing the right side of her face to the gunman. The shooter turned the pistol on her and got the first bullet through her cheek as she was moving to her left. The second shot to Mills got her in the right temple which would be a natural trajectory. The third shot was a fate-de-complete in her forehead. Probably this was post mortem in the orchard because the exhibit list records one .32 casing found at the death site.

The throat slit? I speculate this was also symbolic, but I don’t speculate this was done in the car. Too hard to do and too messy—too much blood. I’d say this was done post-mortem, in the orchard after the bodies were placed. The throat-slit and de-tonguing symbolism? Something about a message not to talk, I’d guess.

Who do I speculate were the mastermind, shooter, and wheelman?

I use two homicide investigation principles I’ve known for years. One is Occam’s razor—where when presented with two opposing hypotheses, the simplest answer is usually the correct answer. The Ku Klux Klan? Or within the family?

Two is the time-tested principle that the stranger the case, the closer the answer is to home. The Ku Klux Klan or the family?

So who, in my old murder cop opinion, planned it, carried it out, and why?

Frances Stevens Hall ordered it to send a message to New Brunswick’s society. She’d had enough of her cheating husband embarrassing her with a low-class floozie. She needed to send a strong social statement to maintain her wealth and power status.

I’d say Henry pulled the trigger while Willie was behind the wheel. It’s just a guess. But I’d say Willie, with his autistic creativity, staged the dump scene.

Then, again, who am I to speculate 100 years after the fact.