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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 BIZARRE DEATH OF THE TOXIC LADY — GLORIA RAMIREZ

At 8:15 pm on February 9, 1994 paramedics wheeled 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez—semi-conscious—into the Emergency Room at Riverside General Hospital in Moreno Valley, California. Forty-five minutes later, Ramirez was dead and 23 out of the 37 ER staff were ill after being exposed to toxic fumes radiating from Ramirez’s body. Some medical professionals were so sick they required hospitalization. Now, 27 years later, and despite one of the largest forensic investigations in history, no conclusive cause of her toxicity has been identified. Or has there?

The Toxic Lady case drew worldwide attention. No one in medical science had experienced this, nor had anyone heard of it. How could a dying woman radiate enough toxin to poison so many people yet leave no pathological trace?

The medical cause of Ramirez’s death was clear, though. She was in Stage 4 cervical cancer, had gone into renal failure, which led to cardiac arrest. Anatomically, the fumes had nothing to do with Gloria Ramirez’s death. But what caused the fumes?

“If the toxic emittance was not a death factor, then what in the world’s going on here?” was the question going on in so many minds—medico, legal, and layperson. To answer that, as best as is possible, it’s necessary to look at the Ramirez case facts both from what the eyewitnesses (and the overcome) said and what forensic science can tell us.

Gloria Ramirez, a wife and mother of two, was in terrible health when she arrived at Riverside Hospital. She’d rapidly deteriorated after being in palliative, home-based care with a diagnosed case of terminal cervical cancer. In the evening of February 9th, Ramirez developed Cheyne-Stokes breathing and went into cardiac arrhythmia or heart palpitations. Both are well-known signs of imminent death. Her home caregivers called an ambulance and had her rushed to the hospital as a last life-saving resort.

A terminal cancer patient, like Gloria Ramirez, was nothing new to the Riverside ER team. She was immediately triaged, and time-proven techniques were quickly applied. First, an IV of Ringer’s lactate solution was employed—a standard procedure for stabilizing possible blood and electrolyte deficiencies. Next, the trauma team sedated Ramirez with injections of diazepam, midazolam, and lorazepam. Thirdly, they began applying oxygen with an Amb-bag which forced purified air directly into Ramirez’s lungs rather than hooking up a regular, on-demand oxygen supply.

So far, Ramirez’s case was typical. It wasn’t until an RN, Susan Kane, installed a catheter in Ramirez’s arm to withdraw a syringe of blood that circumstances went from controlled to completely uncontrollable. Kane, a highly experienced RN, immediately noted an ammonia-like odor emanating from the syringe tip when she removed it from the catheter. Kane handed the syringe to Maureen Welch, a respiratory therapist, and then Kane leaned closer to Ramirez to try and trace the unusual odor source.

Welch also sniffed the syringe and later agreed with the ammonia-like smell. “It was like how rancid blood smells when people take chemotherapy treatment,” Welch would say. Welch turned the syringe over to Julie Gorchynski, a medical resident, who noticed manila-colored particles floating in the blood as well as confirming the ammonia odor. Dr. Humberto Ochoa, the ER in-charge, also observed the peculiar particles and gave a fourth opinion that the syringe smelled of ammonia.

Susan Kane stood up from Ramirez (who was still alive) and felt faint. Kane moved toward the door and promptly passed out—being caught in the nick of time before bouncing her head off the floor. Julie Gorchynski also succumbed. She was put on a gurney and removed just as Maureen Welch presented the same symptoms of being overcome by a noxious substance.

By now, everyone near the dying Gloria Ramirez was feeling the effects. Ochoa, himself now ill, ordered the ER evacuation and for everyone—staff and patients—to muster in the open parking lot where they stripped down to their underclothes and stuffed their outer garments into hazmat bags.

Ramirez remained on an ER stretcher. A secondary trauma team quickly donned hazmat PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) and went back to give Ramirez what little help was left. They did CPR until 8:50 pm when the supervising doctor declared Gloria Ramirez to be dead.

Taking utter precaution, the backup trauma team sealed Gloria Ramirez’s body in multi-layers of body shrouds, sealed it in an aluminum casket, and placed it in an isolated section of the morgue. Then they activated a specially-trained hazmat team to comb the ER for traces of whatever substance had been released and caused such baffling effects to so many people. They found nothing.

Meanwhile, Riverside hospital staff had to treat their own. Five workers were hospitalized including Susan Kane, Julie Gorchynski, and Maureen Welch. Gorchynski suffered the worst and spent two weeks detoxifying in the intensive care unit.

The Riverside pathologists faced a daunting and dangerous task—autopsying the body which they considered a canister of nerve gas harboring a fugitive pathogen or toxic chemical. In airtight moon suits, three pathologists performed what might have been the world’s fastest autopsy. Ninety minutes later, they exited a sealed and air-tight examining room with samples of Gloria Ramirez’s blood and tissues along with air from within the shrouds and the sealed aluminum casket.

The autopsy and subsequent toxicology testing found nothing—nothing remotely abnormal that would explain how a routine cancer patient could be so incredibly hostile. The cause of death, the pathologists agreed, was cardiac arrest antecedent (brought on by) to renal (kidney) failure antecedent to Stage 4 cervical cancer. The Riverside coroner concurred, and his mandate was fulfilled with no doubt left about why and how Gloria Ramirez died.

For the coroner, that should have been it. There was no evidence linking the mysterious fumes to the cause of death, and whatever by-product was in the ER air was not a contributor to the decedent’s demise. That problem should have been one for the hospital to figure out on their own. However, the Riverside coroner was under immense public pressure to identify the noxious substance for no other reason than preventing it from happening again.

The coroner worked with the hospital, the health department, the toxicology lab, and Gloria Ramirez’s family to come to some sort of reasonable conclusion. The Ramirez family had no clue—no suspicions whatsoever—of any foreign substance Ramirez had ingested or been exposed to that could trigger such a toxic effect. The toxicology lab was at a wit’s end. They’d never seen a case like this, let alone heard of one. And the health department went off on a tangent.

The county’s health department appointed a two-person team—a team of medical research professionals—to interview every person exposed to the ER and surrounding area on February 9, 1994. They profiled those people so closely that the two-expert team even cross-compared what everyone did, or didn’t, have for dinner that night. When that preeminent probe was over, and no closer to a smoking gun than the struck-out hazmat team failed to find on the night of the fright, the interviewers came to a conclusion—mass hysteria.

The team of two medical doctors, both research scientists, concluded there was no poisonous gas. In their view, in the absence of evidence, there was only one explanation and that was that 23 people simply imagined they were sick. Some, they concluded, had such vivid imaginations that they placed themselves into the intensive care unit.

This was the report the health department delivered to the coroner. While the coroner was now scrambling for damage control, some of the “imaginary” health care workers who could have died during exposure, launched a defamation lawsuit against the hospital, the health department, and the two investigators who concocted the mass hysteria conclusion.

Frustrated with futility, the coroner (who was way outside his jurisdictional boundaries) turned to outside help. He found it at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) near San Francisco.

Lawrence Livermore initially wasn’t in the medical or toxicological business. They were nuclear weapons makers with a busy mandate back in the cold war era. Now, by the 90s, their usefulness was waning, and so was their funding, so they decided to broaden their horizons by creating the Forensic Science Center at LLNL.

Brian Andresen, the center’s director, took on the Toxic Lady case. The coroner gave Andresen all the biological samples from Ramirez’s autopsy as well as the air-trapping containers. Andresen set about using gas-chromatograph-mass spectrometer (CG-MS) analysis which would have been the same process the Riverside County toxicologist would have used to come up with a “nothing to see here, folks” result.

But Andresen did find something new to see. He found traces dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) in Ramirez’s system. Not a lot—just traces—but clearly it was there. Andresen felt he was on to something.

Dimethyl sulfoxide, on its own, is stable and harmless. It’s an organic sulfur compound with the chemical formula (CH3)2S0, and is readily available as a degreasing agent used in automotive cleaning. It’s also commonly ingested and topically applied by a cult-like, self-medicating culture of cancer patients. At one time, there was a clinical trial approved by the FDA to use DMSO as a medicine for pain treatment, and it was dearly adopted by the athletic world as a miracle drug for sports injuries. The FDA abruptly dropped the DMSO program when they realized prolonged use could make people go blind.

Brian Andresen developed a theory—a theory adopted by many scientists who desperately wanted some sort of scientific straw to grasp in explaining the bizarre death of the Toxic Lady—Gloria Ramirez. Andresen’s theory went like this:

Gloria Ramirez had been self-medicating with DMSO. When she went into distress at home, the paramedics placed her in an ambulance and immediately applied oxygen. Ramirez received more oxygen at the ER which started a chemical reaction with the DMSO already in her body systems.

Note: Chemically, DMSO is (CH3)2SO which is one atom of carbon, three atoms of hydrogen, two atoms of sulfur, and one atom of oxygen—a stable and harmless mix.

However, according to the Andresen theory, when medical staff applied intense oxygen to Ramirez, the DMSO chemically changed by adding another oxygen atom to the formula—becoming (CH3)2SO2—dimethyl sulfone (DMSF).  DMSF, also, is harmless and it’s commonly found in plants and marketed as a dietary supplement. So far, so good.

It’s when four oxygen atoms are present that the stuff turns nasty. The compound (CH3)2SO4 is called dimethyl sulfate, and it emits terribly toxic gas-offs. This is what Andresen suspected was the smoking gun. The amplified oxygenation turned the self-medicating dimethyl sulfoxide Ramirez was taking into dimethyl sulfone which morphed into the noxious emission, dimethyl sulfate.

The coroner liked it. So did many leading scientists. The coroner released Andresen’s report as an addendum to his final report, even though all agreed that if dimethyl sulfate was gassed-off by Ramirez in the ER that made so many people sick, it had absolutely nothing to do with the Toxic Lady’s death. The coroner closed his file, and the finding went on to be published in the peer-reviewed publication Forensic Science International.

There were two problems with Andresen’s conclusion. One was more scientists were disagreeing with it than agreeing. Some of the dissenters were world-class toxicologists who said it was chemically impossible for hospital-administered oxygen to set off this reaction. Two was Ramirez’s family adamantly denied she was self-medicating with DMSO.

The Toxic Lady case interest was far from over. Many people knew DSMO would be present in minute amounts in most people’s bodies and called bullshit. It’s a common ingredient in processed food and metabolizes well with a quick pass-through rate in the urinary tract. In Ramirez’s case, she had a urinary tract blockage which triggered the renal failure which triggered the heart attack. If it wasn’t for the blockage, the DSMO probably wouldn’t have been detected.

On the sidelines, there were people—knowledgeable people—strongly saying another chemical would give the same ammonia-like, gassing-off toxins that ticked all the 23-person symptom boxes.

Methylamine.

Methylamine isn’t rare. It’s produced in huge quantities as a cleaning agent, often shipped in pressurized railroad cars, but it’s tightly controlled by the government. That’s because methylamine can be used for biological terrorism and for cooking meth.

Yes, methylamine is a highly sought-after precursor used in manufacturing methamphetamines. Remember Breaking Bad and the lengths Walt and Jesse go to steal methylamine? Remember the precautions they take in handling methylamine?

Well, back before Breaking Bad broke out, the New Times LA  ran a story giving an alternative theory of what happened to make the Toxic Lady toxic. Whether the Times got a tip, or some inside information, they didn’t say. What they did say was that Riverside County was one of the largest methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution points in America, and that Riverside hospital workers had been smuggling out methylamine to sell to the meth cookers. (Hospitals routinely use methylamine as a disinfectant in cleaning agents, including sterilizing surgical instruments.)

The Times report said Riverside hospital workers used IV bags to capture and store methylamine as the IV bags were sealed, safe to handle, and entirely inconspicuous. The story theorized that an IV bag loaded with about-to-be smuggled methylamine accidentally found its way into the ER and got plugged into Gloria Ramirez’s arm. Because methylamine turns to gas so quickly when exposed to oxygen, this would explain why no traces were found in the toxicology testing—it all went into the air and into the lungs of 23 people.

———

As a former coroner, I’d be skeptical of this methylamine theory except for personal knowledge of a similar case. My cross-shift attended a death where a meth cooker had methylamine get away from him in a clandestine lab. The victim made it outside yelling for help but shortly succumbed. The civilians, hearing his cries, rushed over and were immediately overpowered with the exact symptoms as the Riverside medical people experienced.

The first responders also succumbed to toxic fumes and had to back off. By the time my cross-shift arrived to view the body, many contaminated people were already at the hospital. My colleague made a wise decision. He signed-off the death as an accident, declined to autopsy, and sent the body straight to the crematorium—accompanied by guys in hazmat suits with the body sealed in a metal container and strapped to a flat deck truck.

Do I buy the Times methylamine theory? Well, I’m a big believer in Occam’s razor. You know, when you have two conflicting hypotheses for the same puzzle, the simpler answer is usually correct. Some one-in-a-billion, complex chemical reaction that world-leading toxicologists say can’t be done? Or some low-life, crooked hospital drone letting an IV bag full of stolen methylamine get away on them?

You know which one I’m going with to explain the bizarre death of the Toxic Lady — Gloria Ramirez.

WAS ALBERT DESALVO REALLY THE BOSTON STRANGLER?

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, sexually brutalized and killed inside their apartments. Apparently, they voluntarily let their killer in.

The slaying string suddenly stopped. No one was apprehended, charged or convicted. Today, the Boston Strangler serial murders remain officially unsolved. The files—whatever 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.

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, “Was Albert DeSalvo really the Boston Strangler?”

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: 23 November, 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.

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.

F. 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 middle man 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 prefer 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 biolgical 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 till 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.

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 reasonable doubt—that Albert DeSalvo really was the Boston Strangler.