Crimes have put Daniel Conley in limelight

Boston GlobeCrimes have put Daniel Conley in limelightBoston GlobeAs if there weren't enough crime news surfacing, Conley dug up one nearly 50 years old: He announced that investigators would exhume the body of DeSalvo and use DNA to confirm his jailhouse confession as the Boston Strangler, at least in the case of ...

DNA links Albert DeSalvo to 1964 'Strangler' slaying

Boston GlobeDNA links Albert DeSalvo to 1964 'Strangler' slayingBoston GlobeAny lingering doubts authorities may have had about who killed the last victim attributed to the Boston Strangler vanished Friday morning when police said DNA test results confirmed that Albert DeSalvo raped and strangled Mary Sullivan in January 1964 ...

Boston Strangler Identified After 50 Years: Police Believe They've Proven ...

First Posted: Jul 11, 2013 03:48 PM EDT

The Boston Strangler has long been the stuff of legend, as his litany of serial murders and obscured identity has led to much controversy and debate. Now, however, it appears that investigators have finally figured out just who the Boston Strangler was. Or have they?

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Back in the 1960's, a rash of serial killings against women in the Boston area occurred, putting the whole town on edge. A man, Albert DeSalvo, eventually came forward to take credit for the killings, but even then, he was never formally charged in the murders. Now it appears authorities may finally have the evidence they need to close the case.

"On Thursday, citing advances in DNA testing and their own sleuthing, officials in Massachusetts said they have finally linked the confessor to one of the women, a 19-year-old girl who was the Strangler's last victim," reports NBC News.Though he did admit to the Boston Strangler killings, there was never enough evidence against DeSalvo to build a sufficient case against him. Furthermore, while in jail, he retracted his admission of guilt, further purplexing those who thought for sure that he was the culprit. That being said, it was still widely believed that he had done it. DeSalvo's defense lawyer once characterized him as having "one of the most crushing sexual drives that psychiatric science has ever encountered. Thirteen acts of homicide by a completely uncontrollable vegetable walking around in a human body," he said in opening his defense, according to Boston Globe archives.Now, it appears that authorities have matched DNA found on the body of the Strangler's last victim, 19-year-old Mary Sullivan, and have concluded that the Y-chromosome in that evidence matches the Y-chromosome of DeSalvo's."This is good evidence, strong evidence and reliable evidence," Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in a statement. "But it is not sufficient to close the case with absolute certainty."Still, the evidence is not a guarantee of DeSalvo's guilt. Authorities will now have to exhume the his body to be 100% certain that the case is closed. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in prison while serving a life sentence for a slew of robberies and sexual assaults.

DNA tests prove self

Semen found on the body of Mary Sullivan, 19, who was thought to be the Boston Strangler's final victim in 1964, matched DNA from DeSalvo Authorities exhumed his body to prove beyond any doubt that his DNA matched the sample and he was guilty DeSalvo confessed to the killings but was never prosecuted Rapist was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, aged 42, while serving a life sentence for robbery and sexual assault Victims were strangled with nylon stockings then tied them in 'frog-like' positions so attacker could have 'relations' with their dead or unconscious bodies

By Helen Pow and Jessica Jerreat

PUBLISHED: 12:17 EST, 19 July 2013 | UPDATED: 15:43 EST, 19 July 2013

DNA has proved without doubt that Albert DeSalvo, the self-confessed Boston Strangler, was behind the murder of Mary Sullivan, a 19-year-old believed to be the last victim of a serial killer who terrorized the city from 1962 to 1964.

City authorities confirmed today that a sample taken from DeSalvo's body, which was exhumed on July 12, matched semen found on the woman believed to be the Boston Strangler's last victim.

'We now have an unprecedented level of certainty that Albert DeSalvo raped and murdered Mary Sullivan. We now have to look very closely at the possibility that he also committed at least some of the other sexual homicides to which he confessed,' district attorney Daniel Conley, said.

The odds that a while male other than DeSalvo was the source of the evidence were 1 in 220 billion, the Orchid Cellmark laboratory in Dallas found.

Fluid recovered at the crime scene was matched 'with scientific certainty' to DeSalvo, according to .

The factory worker and Army veteran had confessed to 11 murders but was never charged for them, and later recanted his confession.

'I hope this brings some measure of finality to Mary Sullivan's family,' Attorney General Martha Coakley said today in a joint statement with the Suffolk district attorney and Boston police.

'This leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan, and most likely that he was responsible for the horrific murders of the other women he confessed to killing.'

The DNA link is the first time the police could confirm DeSalvo's culpability in the murder. He had been convicted of unrelated rape charges and was serving life in prison when he was stabbed in 1973, at the age of 42.

'It's a great day. This is now full justice for my aunt, Mary Sullivan,' her nephew, Casey Sherman, said.

Mr Conley added: 'Questions that Mary's family asked for almost 50 years have finally been answered. They, and the families of all homicide victims, should know that we will never stop working to find justice, accountability, and closure on their behalf."

DeSalvo had recanted his confession to the murders shortly before his death.

After exhuming his body from Peabody cemetery, tissue and bone samples were sent for DNA testing.

A search warrant to exhume his body was issued because testing of DNA from the scene of Miss Sullivan's rape and murder had produced a match with DeSalvo that excluded 99.9 per cent of suspects.

Mr Sherman had struggled to hold back tears for his late aunt as he joined law enforcement officers earlier this month to talk about a case that gained public notoriety but always has been a source of private pain for his family.

The 19-year-old victim, who Mr Sherman called 'the joy of her Irish Catholic family,' left Cape Cod for the bustle of life in Boston in January 1964. A few days later she was dead.

She was raped and strangled in the apartment she had just moved into, and her death became linked to the work of a serial killer who murdered 10 other women during a homicidal rampage in the Boston area that lasted two years.

'I've lived with Mary's memory every day, my whole life. And I didn't know, nor did my mother know, that other people were living with her memory as well,' Mr Sherman said of the aunt who died before he was born. 'And it's amazing to me today to understand that people really did care about what happened to my aunt.'

The ability to finally make a definitive DNA match was made possible by recent scientific advances, and after police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

The match excluded 99.9 per cent of suspects. The district attorney stressed that the evidence applied to Miss Sullivan's case only and not the other 10 homicides.

'Even among experts and law enforcement officials, there is disagreement to this day about whether they were in fact committed by the same person,' Mr Conley said.

Eleven women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.

DeSalvo, who was married with children, confessed to the 11 murders, and two others, but he was never convicted.

Before the DNA match was made, an attorney for DeSalvo's family said they believe there was still reasonable doubt that he killed Miss Sullivan.

Elaine Sharp said previous private forensic testing of the victim's remains showed DNA, from what appeared to be semen, was present and did not match DeSalvo.

'Somebody else was there, we say,' Ms Sharp said. 'I don't think the evidence is 100 per cent solid.'

Donald Hayes, a forensic scientist who heads the Boston Police Department's crime laboratory, said investigators' samples were properly preserved, but the evidence used in private testing came from Sullivan's exhumed body and was 'very questionable.'

Mr Sherman, who has written a book on the case , said the DNA evidence against DeSalvo appeared to be overwhelming.

'I only go where the evidence leads,' he said, thanking police and praising them 'for their incredible persistence.'

The families of DeSalvo and Miss Sullivan had jointly sued the state for release of evidence while pursuing their own investigations. They had Miss Sullivan's body exhumed in 1999 for private DNA testing as part of the effort.

F. Lee Bailey, the attorney who helped to obtain the confession from DeSalvo, said the result could put to rest speculation about the Boston Strangler's identity.

Authorities said they would continue to comb through evidence files and hope to find samples that will allow them to perform DNA testing in connection with the other Strangler-linked killings.

After numerous failed attempts to make sense of the DNA samples found on Miss Sullivan in the past, scientists were finally able this year to implicate a suspect - a white male - through advancements in technology.

Detectives with the Boston Police Department then conducted undercover surveillance of DeSalvo's family members and retrieved a discarded water bottle from one of the man's nephews. They tested DNA from fingerprints and it proved a familial similarity to the DNA found on the victim.

Although DeSalvo cannot be charged the authorities hope the breakthrough would bring closure to at least the Sullivan family, some five decades after their loved one was senselessly murdered.

DeSalvo was never prosecuted for the crimes, according to , because of a deal negotiated with then-Attorney General Edward Brooke and DeSalvo's attorney, F. Lee Bailey.

Until now, DeSalvo's confession was the only evidence, allowing room for the community, and even some high up in the police department, to doubt whether he was responsible.

As recently as 2012, Mr Brooke cast doubt over whether DeSalvo was in fact the Boston Strangler.

'Even to this day, I can't say with certainty that the person who ultimately was designated as the Boston Strangler was the Boston Strangler,' Mr Brooke told the Globe last year.

Earlier attempts to perform DNA testing, which can destroy evidence, had been halted until advancements in technology were strong enough to get a result.

Those breakthroughs occurred last year and the cold case was reopened with two of six remaining semen samples sent to two different laboratories. Both came back with the same results. A sample from Sullivan's body showed the unique genetic profile of two people - the victim and a white male. A sample from a blanket showed DNA from the same white male.

Anna Slesers, a 55-year-old Latvian seamstress, was the Boston Strangler's first victim.

She was found dead in her Gainsborough Street apartment by her son on June 14, 1962. Miss Sullivan was the last .

DeSalvo was pinpointed as the killer when he confessed to the string of strangling deaths to his cellmate, George Nassar.

Nassar told DeSalvo's defense lawyer Mr Bailey, who struck a deal with Mr Brooke which outlined that DeSalvo would not be prosecuted if he admitted he was the Strangler.

At his robbery and sexual assault trial in 1967, Mr Bailey said DeSalvo was consumed by 'one of the most crushing sexual drives that psychiatric science has ever encountered.

'Thirteen acts of homicide by a completely uncontrollable vegetable walking around in a human body,' he said in opening his defense, according to The Boston Globe archives.

His psychiatrist, Dr. James A. Brussel, testified that he was suffering from 'schizophrenia of the paranoid type.'

He said each of DeSalvo's alleged slaying would be preceded by a night during which would be tormented 'with a burning up inside... Like little fires. Like little explosions.'

According to the article, Dr. Brussel testified that DeSalvo told him he killed his victims with nylon stockings.

'He tied the victims up usually with scarves or stockings, the stockings being the terminal means by which, though unconsciousness had of course, ensured, the terminal means by which life ended,' he said.

He added the victims were tied 'in a frog-like position,' and that DeSalvo had relations with the dead or unconscious body.

HOW DECADES-OLD DNA PROVED A KILLER: TIMELINE SHOWS EVENTS LEADING UP TO POLICE FINALLY IDENTIFYING 'THE BOSTON STRANGLER'

DNA test ties Albert DeSalvo to Boston Strangler victim

DNA tests definitively link Boston Strangler suspect Albert DeSalvo to the death of a 19-year-old woman who is believed to be the serial killer's last victim almost 50 years ago, official said Friday.

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, and Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis announced test results on the remains of DeSalvo, whose body was exhumed last week.

Conley said authorities now have an "unprecedented level of certainty" DeSalvo raped and strangled Mary Sullivan in her Charles Street apartment on a January afternoon in 1964.

MAP: Sites of the Boston Strangler's killings

DeSalvo initially admitted killing Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 in a series of slayings, but recanted in 1973 before dying at the age of 42 in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for other crimes.

"I hope this brings some measure of finality to Mary Sullivan's family," Coakley said. "This leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan, and most likely that he was responsible for the horrific murders of the other women he confessed to killing."

The Boston Strangler's victims ranged in age from 19 to 67 and lived in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Brighton, Dorchester, Fenway, the South End, Cambridge, Lawrence, Lynn, and Salem areas in an around Boston.

DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.

Authorities obtained a search warrant and dug up DeSalvo's remains after an initial test on seminal fluid found at the Sullivan murder site showed a "familial match" to DNA taken secretly from a DeSalvo relative.

Police had followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

That test implicated DeSalvo and excluded 99.9 per cent of suspects, but authorities wanted a 100% perfect in order to close the case and declare DeSalvo the killer.

The breakthrough happened after of scientific advances that authorities said became possible only recently.

Authorities said the investigation was funded in part by a federal grant intended to help local law enforcement solve older crimes using modern scientific techniques.

USA Today

Body of confessed Boston Strangler exhumed for DNA

July 12: Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, left, is driven from the cemetery after the body of Albert DeSalvo was exhumed from a grave site at the Puritan Lawn Memorial Park in Peabody, Mass.AP

FILE 1967: Self-confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo minutes after his capture in Boston.AP

Investigators have unearthed the remains of a man who once confessed to being the Boston Strangler in a bid to use forensic evidence to connect him to the death of a woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim.

A bevy of law enforcement officials surrounded Albert DeSalvo's grave on a grassy plot near a lake for Friday's exhumation, which lasted about an hour.

DeSalvo admitting killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 in a series of slayings that became known as the Boston Strangler case. But he recanted in 1973 before dying in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for other crimes.

Authorities said Friday that they would take DeSalvo's remains from Peabody to the medical examiner's office in nearby Boston, where they'd take tissue or bone samples for DNA testing.

Police and prosecutors said on Thursday that, for the first time, they had DNA evidence linking DeSalvo to Sullivan's death.

With a search warrant, authorities dug up DeSalvo's remains because testing of DNA from the scene of Sullivan's rape and murder had produced a match with him that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects. They are after a perfect match.

The breakthrough happened after scientific advances that authorities said became possible only recently. Police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

Sullivan grew up on Cape Cod before moving to Boston when she was 19. A few days later, she was dead -- raped and strangled in her new apartment.

Sullivan's nephew, Casey Sherman, spent part of his life believing in DeSalvo's innocence. But he said Thursday that the latest evidence points a different way.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said the new evidence applies only to Sullivan's homicide and not to the other Strangler-linked killings. He said some law enforcement officials still disagree about whether one person committed all 11 slayings.

On Friday, retired state trooper David Raymond and his friend Andy Brancato, whose late father knew DeSalvo and is buried in a nearby plot, watched the digging operation for about 15 minutes before authorities shooed them away.

"My father went to school with him," Brancato said of DeSalvo. "He always said he was a little crazy but innocent."

Raymond said seeing the digging brought him back to what he'd witnessed as a child, when he saw a crowd swarming in his neighborhood as police arrested DeSalvo.

"Coming from a police background, maybe we'll have a case solved," Raymond said.

DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.

His relatives were "very emotionally distressed" by Friday's exhumation, family attorney Elaine Sharp said.

"They didn't even tell us when they were going to do it," the attorney said. "They didn't even extend us the courtesy of an invitation."

Sharp has said that the family believes there still will be reasonable doubt that DeSalvo killed Sullivan, even if additional DNA tests show a 100 percent match. She has said private testing of Sullivan's remains showed other male DNA was present.

The attorney said Friday that DeSalvo's family also has doubts about how police handled the evidence they're relying on now. Police have called the evidence the family used in private testing "very questionable."

DNA links Boston Strangler suspect to last victim

BOSTON " DNA tests confirm that the man who once claimed to be the Boston Strangler did kill the woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim and was likely responsible for the deaths of the other victims, authorities said today.

Albert DeSalvo admitted to killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 but later recanted. He was later killed in prison.

The DNA finding "leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan" and it was "most likely" that he also was the Boston Strangler, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

Eleven Boston-area women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.

Authorities said recently that new technology allowed them to test semen left at the crime scene of Sullivan's death using DNA from a living relative of DeSalvo's. That produced a match with DeSalvo that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects, and was the first forensic evidence tying DeSalvo to the nearly 50-year-old case.

To confirm the match, investigators unearthed his remains a week ago and said today that the odds that the semen belonged to a male other than DeSalvo were 1 in 220 billion.

"It's a great day. This is now full justice for my aunt, Mary Sullivan," said her nephew, Casey Sherman.

A lawyer for DeSalvo's family, Elaine Sharp, said last week that even a perfect DNA match wouldn't mean he killed Sullivan and suggested that someone else was present at the slaying. She said previous private testing on Sullivan's remains showed the presence of DNA from what appeared to be semen that wasn't a match to DeSalvo.

Police responded last week by saying the evidence used in private testing from Sullivan's exhumed remains was "very questionable."

Sharp also said in a statement that DeSalvo's brother and his nephew - whom police secretly trailed to collect a family DNA sample from a discarded water bottle - won't comment on the new DNA result because it hasn't been proven to be relevant to the question of whether DeSalvo raped and strangled Sullivan.

"There is no level of 'unprecedented certainty' as now claimed by the government," Sharp said.

But the idea that the DNA match doesn't identify DeSalvo as Sullivan's killer is bizarre, responded Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley.

"It suggests that Mary Sullivan had consensual sex with Albert DeSalvo moments before another person who has never been identified sexually assaulted and strangled her to death, leaving no trace of his presence," Wark said. "Frankly, it defies everything we know about this case."

Sullivan was 19 when she died in January 1964, a few days after she moved from Cape Cod to Boston.

Law enforcement officials disagree about whether the same person killed all the women whose deaths became connected to the Strangler. DeSalvo went to prison for life for a series of armed robberies and sex assaults before someone fatally stabbed him in 1973.

F. Lee Bailey, a defense lawyer who once represented DeSalvo, said today that DeSalvo provided so many details that only the perpetrator would know that he became convinced that his client was the Boston Strangler.

He said it's fortunate that the DNA test was run because the failure to try DeSalvo for the 11 homicides led to speculation about the Strangler's identity.

Bailey said today's announcement shows that case detectives did good police work when they devised questions for DeSalvo that only the killer could answer correctly.

Sherman had once joined with the DeSalvo family in believing that Albert DeSalvo wasn't his aunt's killer, and even wrote a book on the case pointing to other possible suspects.

He said today that he thinks there will always be unanswered questions related to the Strangler case, but when it comes to his loved one's slaying, his family finally has a sense of closure.

"He's the killer of my aunt, which is all this has been about for me," Sherman said.

Associated Press writer David Sharp in Portland, Maine, contributed.

Body of confessed Boston Strangler exhumed for DNA

July 12: Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, left, is driven from the cemetery after the body of Albert DeSalvo was exhumed from a grave site at the Puritan Lawn Memorial Park in Peabody, Mass.AP

FILE 1967: Self-confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo minutes after his capture in Boston.AP

Investigators have unearthed the remains of a man who once confessed to being the Boston Strangler in a bid to use forensic evidence to connect him to the death of a woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim.

A bevy of law enforcement officials surrounded Albert DeSalvo's grave on a grassy plot near a lake for Friday's exhumation, which lasted about an hour.

DeSalvo admitting killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 in a series of slayings that became known as the Boston Strangler case. But he recanted in 1973 before dying in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for other crimes.

Authorities said Friday that they would take DeSalvo's remains from Peabody to the medical examiner's office in nearby Boston, where they'd take tissue or bone samples for DNA testing.

Police and prosecutors said on Thursday that, for the first time, they had DNA evidence linking DeSalvo to Sullivan's death.

With a search warrant, authorities dug up DeSalvo's remains because testing of DNA from the scene of Sullivan's rape and murder had produced a match with him that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects. They are after a perfect match.

The breakthrough happened after scientific advances that authorities said became possible only recently. Police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

Sullivan grew up on Cape Cod before moving to Boston when she was 19. A few days later, she was dead -- raped and strangled in her new apartment.

Sullivan's nephew, Casey Sherman, spent part of his life believing in DeSalvo's innocence. But he said Thursday that the latest evidence points a different way.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said the new evidence applies only to Sullivan's homicide and not to the other Strangler-linked killings. He said some law enforcement officials still disagree about whether one person committed all 11 slayings.

On Friday, retired state trooper David Raymond and his friend Andy Brancato, whose late father knew DeSalvo and is buried in a nearby plot, watched the digging operation for about 15 minutes before authorities shooed them away.

"My father went to school with him," Brancato said of DeSalvo. "He always said he was a little crazy but innocent."

Raymond said seeing the digging brought him back to what he'd witnessed as a child, when he saw a crowd swarming in his neighborhood as police arrested DeSalvo.

"Coming from a police background, maybe we'll have a case solved," Raymond said.

DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.

His relatives were "very emotionally distressed" by Friday's exhumation, family attorney Elaine Sharp said.

"They didn't even tell us when they were going to do it," the attorney said. "They didn't even extend us the courtesy of an invitation."

Sharp has said that the family believes there still will be reasonable doubt that DeSalvo killed Sullivan, even if additional DNA tests show a 100 percent match. She has said private testing of Sullivan's remains showed other male DNA was present.

The attorney said Friday that DeSalvo's family also has doubts about how police handled the evidence they're relying on now. Police have called the evidence the family used in private testing "very questionable."

Boston Strangler's DNA Matched to Crime Scene Evidence From Last Murder

After exhuming the body, officials matched the tissue to crime scene evidence from the sixties.

A week after the body of Albert DeSalvo, the man who claimed to be the Boston Strangler, was exhumed, police said the DNA extracted from the remains matched that of evidence from a crime scene of the suspect's last victim.

A nationally recognized laboratory has matched DNA recovered from the body of Mary Sullivan almost 50 years ago with that of her suspected killer, DeSalvo, according to Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley's office. Officials said the results show "scientific certainty" that the confessed Boston Strangler, who also admitted to raping and killing Sullivan in her Beacon Hill home in 1964, were the same, citing seminal fluid recovered at the scene.

Conley's announcement on the connection to the murder was made in conjunction with Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis.

Sullivan, 19, was sexually assaulted and strangled to death in her Charles Street apartment on the afternoon of January 4. DeSalvo later confessed to that crime and to the dozen other murders allegedly committed by the Strangler, although he was never convicted for those crimes, and police never made a connection aside from his confession. The latest development in Sullivan's case, however, marks the first time that law enforcement officials could confirm DeSalvo's connection to that specific homicide.

Police will use this latest lead to look into evidence that may be able to link DeSalvo to other homicides at the hands of the Strangler. "We now have an unprecedented level of certainty that Albert DeSalvo raped and murdered Mary Sullivan," Conley said in a statement. "We now have to look very closely at the possibility that he also committed at least some of the other sexual homicides to which he confessed. Questions that Mary's family asked for almost 50 years have finally been answered. They, and the families of all homicide victims, should know that we will never stop working to find justice, accountability, and closure on their behalf."

The exhumation of DeSalvo's body took place at the Puritan Memorial Park in Peabody last Friday afternoon, after officials obtained a court ordered warrant authorizing the procedure as officials used heavy machinery and shovels to dig into the dirt and remove DeSalvo's coffin.

Advances in DNA testing allowed officials to extract genetic profiles from samples that even a few years ago would have been too small, too old, or too degraded to be useful, they said. Using DNA from a water bottle recovered by DeSalvo's relative, police were able to make the connection. This process was possible because the comparison of Y chromosomes, which are passed down nearly unchanged from father to son. Male descendants of the same father share almost identical Y chromosomes, officials said, which can be compared through testing of biological material. "The bottle was sent for comparison to the crime scene DNA, and the result, obtained earlier this year, was a match that implicated DeSalvo and excluded 99.9 percent of the male population," according to a statement from Conley's office.

In December 2001, top investigators were adamant that DeSalvo, who died in prison in 1973, was in no way connected to the death of Sullivan, going as far as saying if they were sitting on a jury they would say he was "not guilty," according to a New York Times report. That notion was debunked by the latest developments, bringing closure to Sullivan's family after decades of questions. "I hope this brings some measure of finality to Mary Sullivan's family," Coakley said Friday. "This leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan, and most likely that he was responsible for the horrific murders of the other women he confessed to killing."

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Flemmi Describes His Girlfriend's Murder

DNA test links Boston Strangler suspect DeSalvo to last victim

BOSTON (AP) - DNA tests confirm that the man who once claimed to the Boston Strangler killed the woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim and was likely responsible for the deaths of the other victims, authorities said Friday.

Albert DeSalvo admitted to killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 but later recanted. He was later killed in prison.

The DNA finding "leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan" and it was "most likely" that he also was the Boston Strangler, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

Authorities said recently that new technology allowed them to test semen left at the crime scene of Sullivan's death using DNA from a living relative of DeSalvo's. That produced a match with DeSalvo that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects.

To confirm the match, investigators unearthed his remains a week ago and said Friday that the odds that the semen belonged to a male other than DeSalvo were 1 in 220 billion.

"It's a great day. This is now full justice for my aunt, Mary Sullivan," said her nephew, Casey Sherman.

A lawyer for DeSalvo's family has said even a perfect match wouldn't mean he killed Sullivan. She was 19 when she died in January 1964, a few days after she moved from Cape Cod to Boston.

Eleven Boston-area women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.

Law enforcement officials disagree about whether the same person killed all the women whose deaths were connected to the Strangler.

Sherman had once joined with the DeSalvo family in believing that Albert DeSalvo wasn't his aunt's killer.

DNA tests buffer belief that DeSalvo was Boston Strangler

DeSalvotobeexhumedtodayforDNAtesting.blogspot.com

BOSTON - DNA tests confirm that the man who once claimed to be the Boston Strangler did kill the woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim and was likely responsible for the deaths of the other victims, authorities said Friday.

This Feb. 25, 1967, file photo shows self-confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo minutes after his capture in Boston. DeSalvo confessed to the string of 1960s killings but was never convicted. He died in prison in the 1970s. Massachusetts officials said Thursday, July 11, 2013, that DNA technology led to a breakthrough, putting them in a position to formally charge the Boston Strangler with the murder of Mary Sullivan, last of the slayings attributed to the Boston Strangler. (AP Photo, File)

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, left, discusses an evidence chart that shows a likeness of homicide victim Mary Sullivan, top right, following a news conference at Boston Police headquarters, Thursday, July 11, 2013. Investigators helped by advances in DNA technology finally have forensic evidence linking longtime suspect Albert DeSalvo to Sullivan, the last of the 1960s slayings attributed to the Boston�Strangler. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

AP

Albert DeSalvo admitted to killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 but later recanted.

The DNA finding "leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan" and it was "most likely" that he also was the Boston Strangler, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

Eleven Boston-area women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.

Authorities said recently that new technology allowed them to test semen left at the crime scene of Sullivan's death using DNA from a living relative of DeSalvo's. That produced a match with DeSalvo that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects, and was the first forensic evidence tying DeSalvo to the nearly 50-year-old case.

To confirm the match, investigators unearthed his remains a week ago and said Friday that the odds that the semen belonged to a male other than DeSalvo were 1 in 220 billion.

An attorney for DeSalvo's family, Elaine Sharp, said last week that even a perfect DNA match wouldn't mean he killed Sullivan and suggested that someone else was present at the slaying. She said previous private testing on Sullivan's remains showed the presence of DNA from what appeared to be semen that wasn't a match to DeSalvo.

Police said the evidence used in private testing from Sullivan's exhumed remains was "very questionable."

Sharp also said that DeSalvo's brother and his nephew -- whom police secretly trailed to collect a family DNA sample from a discarded water bottle -- won't comment on the new DNA result because it hasn't been proven to be relevant to the question of whether DeSalvo raped and strangled Sullivan.

But the idea that the DNA match doesn't identify DeSalvo as Sullivan's killer is bizarre, responded Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley.

"It suggests that Mary Sullivan had consensual sex with Albert DeSalvo moments before another person who has never been identified sexually assaulted and strangled her to death, leaving no trace of his presence," Wark said.

F. Lee Bailey, a defense lawyer who once represented DeSalvo, said Friday that DeSalvo provided so many details that only the perpetrator would know that he became convinced that his client was the Boston Strangler.

Bailey said it's fortunate that the DNA test was run because the failure to try DeSalvo for the 11 homicides led to speculation about the Strangler's identity. He said Friday's announcement shows that case detectives did good police work when they devised questions for DeSalvo that only the killer could answer correctly.

AP

DNA tests link reputed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo to Strangler's last victim

BOSTON (AP) -- Authorities say DNA tests on the remains of a man who once claimed to be the Boston Strangler confirm he killed the woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim.

Albert DeSalvo admitted to killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 but later recanted. He was later killed in prison.

Authorities said recently that new technology allowed them to test DNA from the scene of Sullivan's death and get a match with DeSalvo that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects. Investigators unearthed his remains a week ago to confirm.

A lawyer for DeSalvo's family has said even a perfect match wouldn't mean he killed Sullivan.

Law enforcement officials disagree about whether the same person killed all the women whose deaths were connected to the Strangler.

DNA leaves 'no doubt' on one 'Boston Strangler' murder: Attorney General

BOSTON (Reuters) - The man who confessed to but was never convicted of the "Boston Strangler" murders that terrified this city 50 years ago did commit at least one of the attacks, Massachusetts prosecutors said on Friday, citing new DNA evidence.

A week after the body of Albert DeSalvo was exhumed for further DNA testing, the tests confirmed that he killed 19-year-old Mary Sullivan, in January 1964, the last of 11 victims attributed to the Boston Strangler.

"This leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan, and most likely that he was responsible for the horrific murders of the other women he confessed to killing," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said in a statement.

DeSalvo had confessed to the string of killings of single women around Boston in the early 1960s but later recanted. He was stabbed to death in prison by another inmate in 1973, while serving a sentence for armed robbery and sexual assault.

Authorities last week said the DNA from one of DeSalvo's nephews had a strong link to DNA taken from the scene of Sullivan's murder. Based on that link, authorities exhumed DeSalvo's body and found a match with DNA recovered from the scene where Sullivan was raped and murdered.

Advances in DNA testing allowed officials to confirm the match.

Officials have warned that they do not have similar DNA recovered from the scenes of other victims attributed to the Boston Strangler, which will make it impossible to confirm whether DeSalvo was responsible for all the killings.

Law enforcement experts have long disagreed over the Boston Strangler case, with some contending that all 11 murders may not have been committed by the same person.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by David Gregorio)

Albert DeSalvo Boston Strangler: Confirmed By DNA

Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler, according to DNA evidence. Testing has confirmed a link between DeSalvo and victim Mary Sullivan.

DeSalvo initially confessed to killing 11 women between 1962 and 1964 in Boston. He later stated that the confession was a fabrication. His identity as the Boston Strangler was never confirmed.

As reported by Syracuse.com, DeSalvo's remains were exhumed last week for extensive DNA testing. The results revealed that DNA found at the scene of Sullivan's murder matched DeSalvo.

The results are considered conclusive, as they exclude 99.9 percent of the population. There is now little doubt that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler.

As explained by TruTV.com, the murders of 13 women are attributed to the Boston Strangler. Eleven of those women remain "official" victims.

A majority of the victims were middle-aged or elderly. They all lived alone, and were killed inside their homes. Authorities never found evidence of forced entry.

The women were sexually assaulted, then strangled with their own clothing.

Although DeSalvo confessed to the killings, many have argued that his confession was an elaborate lie.

An initial DNA test, performed in 2001, reportedly cleared DeSalvo of Mary Sullivan's sexual assault. While authorities pointed out that the testing did not clear DeSalvo of her murder, others disagreed.

Sullivan's family, specifically her nephew Casey Sherman, insisted that Sullivan's killer was still at large.

Numerous theories and myths about the Boston Strangler, or Stranglers, have persisted throughout the years.

Despite popular opinion that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Stranger, he was never arrested or convicted of the killings.

The DNA tests have removed doubt, as DeSalvo's DNA was discovered at the scene of Sullivan's murder. Sullivan was the last known victim of the Boston strangler.

DeSalvo was killed in prison while serving a life term for a series of rapes. He had a history of bizarre sexually related crimes.

Authorities have identified Albert DeSalvo as the Boston Strangler through DNA. However, for conspiracy theorists, the mystery will never be solved.

[Image via Flickr]

Strangler hunt: Police exhume DeSalvo body

PEABODY — The remains of the man who confessed to being the Boston Strangler but later recanted were exhumed Friday in a bid to use forensic evidence to connect him to the death of the woman believed to be the serial killer's final victim.

Boston police confirmed Friday that they had dug up the grave of Albert DeSalvo, the suspect in the death of Mary Sullivan. Tissue or bone samples will be taken at the state medical examiner's office, a spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney's office said.

Authorities said Thursday that for the first time they have DNA evidence tying DeSalvo to Sullivan's death.

DeSalvo confessed to being the Strangler, who was believed to have killed 11 women over two years in the 1960s in a homicidal rampage that terrorized the Boston area. DeSalvo later took back his confession; he was stabbed to death in prison as he served a life sentence for other crimes.

Now, Sullivan's family could be just days away from getting answers about her slaying after decades of wondering if police pinned it on the right man.

Casey Sherman struggled to hold back tears for his late aunt as he joined law enforcement officers to talk about a case that gained public notoriety but always has been a source of private pain for his family.

Nineteen-year-old Sullivan, whom Sherman called "the joy of her Irish Catholic family," left the quiet of Cape Cod for the bustle of life in Boston in January 1964. A few days later she was dead — raped and strangled in the apartment into which she had just moved.

"I've lived with Mary's memory every day, my whole life. And I didn't know, nor did my mother know, that other people were living with her memory as well," Sherman said of the aunt who died before he was born.

"And it's amazing to me today to understand that people really did care about what happened to my aunt."

Authorities exhumed DeSalvo's remains because testing of DNA from the scene of Sullivan's rape and murder produced a "familial match" with him, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said. It happened after scientific advances that only became possible recently, and after police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

Conley said the match excludes 99.9 percent of suspects, and he expects investigators to find an exact match when the evidence is compared directly with DeSalvo's DNA.

The district attorney stressed that the evidence only applied to Sullivan's slaying and not the other 10 homicides.

"Even among experts and law enforcement officials, there is disagreement to this day about whether they were in fact committed by the same person," Conley said.

Eleven women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.

DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, confessed to the 11 Boston Strangler slayings and two others. But he was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.

He went to prison for a series of armed robberies and sexual assaults before his death in Massachusetts' maximum security prison in Walpole in 1973.

A lawyer for DeSalvo's family said Thursday they believe there's still reasonable doubt he killed Sullivan, even if additional DNA tests show a 100 percent match.

The lawyer, Elaine Sharp, said previous private forensic testing of Sullivan's remains showed other DNA from what appeared to be semen was present that did not match DeSalvo.

"Somebody else was there, we say," Sharp said of the killing. "I don't think the evidence is a hundred percent solid, as is being represented here today."

But Donald Hayes, a forensic scientist who heads the Boston Police Department's crime lab, said investigators' samples were properly preserved, while the evidence used in private testing came from Sullivan's exhumed body and was "very questionable."

Sharp also said Thursday that the family was outraged that police followed a DeSalvo relative to get the DNA they needed for comparison.

But Sherman, who previously wrote a book on the case pointing to other possible suspects, acknowledged the new findings point to the man he had defended.

Sherman said the DNA evidence against DeSalvo appeared to be overwhelming.

"I only go where the evidence leads," he said, thanking police and praising them "for their incredible persistence."

Sherman also expressed sympathy for the DeSalvo family, with whom he had joined in the past in a shared belief that DeSalvo didn't kill his aunt. That belief was based on DeSalvo's confession, which Sherman previously said was inconsistent with other evidence.

The families of DeSalvo and Sullivan had jointly sued the state for release of evidence while pursuing their own investigation.

They had Sullivan's body exhumed in 1999 for private DNA testing as part of the effort.

Authorities said they're continuing to comb through evidence files and still are hoping to find samples to do DNA testing in connection with the other Strangler-linked killings.

DNA tests prove self

Semen found on the body of Mary Sullivan, 19, who was thought to be the Boston Strangler's final victim in 1964, matched DNA from DeSalvo Authorities exhumed his body to prove beyond any doubt that his DNA matched the sample and he was guilty DeSalvo confessed to the killings but was never prosecuted Rapist was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, aged 42, while serving a life sentence for robbery and sexual assault Victims were strangled with nylon stockings then tied them in 'frog-like' positions so attacker could have 'relations' with their dead or unconscious bodies

By Helen Pow and Jessica Jerreat

PUBLISHED: 12:17 EST, 19 July 2013 | UPDATED: 15:43 EST, 19 July 2013

DNA has proved without doubt that Albert DeSalvo, the self-confessed Boston Strangler, was behind the murder of Mary Sullivan, a 19-year-old believed to be the last victim of a serial killer who terrorized the city from 1962 to 1964.

City authorities confirmed today that a sample taken from DeSalvo's body, which was exhumed on July 12, matched semen found on the woman believed to be the Boston Strangler's last victim.

'We now have an unprecedented level of certainty that Albert DeSalvo raped and murdered Mary Sullivan. We now have to look very closely at the possibility that he also committed at least some of the other sexual homicides to which he confessed,' district attorney Daniel Conley, said.

The odds that a while male other than DeSalvo was the source of the evidence were 1 in 220 billion, the Orchid Cellmark laboratory in Dallas found.

Fluid recovered at the crime scene was matched 'with scientific certainty' to DeSalvo, according to .

The factory worker and Army veteran had confessed to 11 murders but was never charged for them, and later recanted his confession.

'I hope this brings some measure of finality to Mary Sullivan's family,' Attorney General Martha Coakley said today in a joint statement with the Suffolk district attorney and Boston police.

'This leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan, and most likely that he was responsible for the horrific murders of the other women he confessed to killing.'

The DNA link is the first time the police could confirm DeSalvo's culpability in the murder. He had been convicted of unrelated rape charges and was serving life in prison when he was stabbed in 1973, at the age of 42.

'It's a great day. This is now full justice for my aunt, Mary Sullivan,' her nephew, Casey Sherman, said.

Mr Conley added: 'Questions that Mary's family asked for almost 50 years have finally been answered. They, and the families of all homicide victims, should know that we will never stop working to find justice, accountability, and closure on their behalf."

DeSalvo had recanted his confession to the murders shortly before his death.

After exhuming his body from Peabody cemetery, tissue and bone samples were sent for DNA testing.

A search warrant to exhume his body was issued because testing of DNA from the scene of Miss Sullivan's rape and murder had produced a match with DeSalvo that excluded 99.9 per cent of suspects.

Mr Sherman had struggled to hold back tears for his late aunt as he joined law enforcement officers earlier this month to talk about a case that gained public notoriety but always has been a source of private pain for his family.

The 19-year-old victim, who Mr Sherman called 'the joy of her Irish Catholic family,' left Cape Cod for the bustle of life in Boston in January 1964. A few days later she was dead.

She was raped and strangled in the apartment she had just moved into, and her death became linked to the work of a serial killer who murdered 10 other women during a homicidal rampage in the Boston area that lasted two years.

'I've lived with Mary's memory every day, my whole life. And I didn't know, nor did my mother know, that other people were living with her memory as well,' Mr Sherman said of the aunt who died before he was born. 'And it's amazing to me today to understand that people really did care about what happened to my aunt.'

The ability to finally make a definitive DNA match was made possible by recent scientific advances, and after police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

The match excluded 99.9 per cent of suspects. The district attorney stressed that the evidence applied to Miss Sullivan's case only and not the other 10 homicides.

'Even among experts and law enforcement officials, there is disagreement to this day about whether they were in fact committed by the same person,' Mr Conley said.

Eleven women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.

DeSalvo, who was married with children, confessed to the 11 murders, and two others, but he was never convicted.

Before the DNA match was made, an attorney for DeSalvo's family said they believe there was still reasonable doubt that he killed Miss Sullivan.

Elaine Sharp said previous private forensic testing of the victim's remains showed DNA, from what appeared to be semen, was present and did not match DeSalvo.

'Somebody else was there, we say,' Ms Sharp said. 'I don't think the evidence is 100 per cent solid.'

Donald Hayes, a forensic scientist who heads the Boston Police Department's crime laboratory, said investigators' samples were properly preserved, but the evidence used in private testing came from Sullivan's exhumed body and was 'very questionable.'

Mr Sherman, who has written a book on the case , said the DNA evidence against DeSalvo appeared to be overwhelming.

'I only go where the evidence leads,' he said, thanking police and praising them 'for their incredible persistence.'

The families of DeSalvo and Miss Sullivan had jointly sued the state for release of evidence while pursuing their own investigations. They had Miss Sullivan's body exhumed in 1999 for private DNA testing as part of the effort.

F. Lee Bailey, the attorney who helped to obtain the confession from DeSalvo, said the result could put to rest speculation about the Boston Strangler's identity.

Authorities said they would continue to comb through evidence files and hope to find samples that will allow them to perform DNA testing in connection with the other Strangler-linked killings.

After numerous failed attempts to make sense of the DNA samples found on Miss Sullivan in the past, scientists were finally able this year to implicate a suspect - a white male - through advancements in technology.

Detectives with the Boston Police Department then conducted undercover surveillance of DeSalvo's family members and retrieved a discarded water bottle from one of the man's nephews. They tested DNA from fingerprints and it proved a familial similarity to the DNA found on the victim.

Although DeSalvo cannot be charged the authorities hope the breakthrough would bring closure to at least the Sullivan family, some five decades after their loved one was senselessly murdered.

DeSalvo was never prosecuted for the crimes, according to , because of a deal negotiated with then-Attorney General Edward Brooke and DeSalvo's attorney, F. Lee Bailey.

Until now, DeSalvo's confession was the only evidence, allowing room for the community, and even some high up in the police department, to doubt whether he was responsible.

As recently as 2012, Mr Brooke cast doubt over whether DeSalvo was in fact the Boston Strangler.

'Even to this day, I can't say with certainty that the person who ultimately was designated as the Boston Strangler was the Boston Strangler,' Mr Brooke told the Globe last year.

Earlier attempts to perform DNA testing, which can destroy evidence, had been halted until advancements in technology were strong enough to get a result.

Those breakthroughs occurred last year and the cold case was reopened with two of six remaining semen samples sent to two different laboratories. Both came back with the same results. A sample from Sullivan's body showed the unique genetic profile of two people - the victim and a white male. A sample from a blanket showed DNA from the same white male.

Anna Slesers, a 55-year-old Latvian seamstress, was the Boston Strangler's first victim.

She was found dead in her Gainsborough Street apartment by her son on June 14, 1962. Miss Sullivan was the last .

DeSalvo was pinpointed as the killer when he confessed to the string of strangling deaths to his cellmate, George Nassar.

Nassar told DeSalvo's defense lawyer Mr Bailey, who struck a deal with Mr Brooke which outlined that DeSalvo would not be prosecuted if he admitted he was the Strangler.

At his robbery and sexual assault trial in 1967, Mr Bailey said DeSalvo was consumed by 'one of the most crushing sexual drives that psychiatric science has ever encountered.

'Thirteen acts of homicide by a completely uncontrollable vegetable walking around in a human body,' he said in opening his defense, according to The Boston Globe archives.

His psychiatrist, Dr. James A. Brussel, testified that he was suffering from 'schizophrenia of the paranoid type.'

He said each of DeSalvo's alleged slaying would be preceded by a night during which would be tormented 'with a burning up inside... Like little fires. Like little explosions.'

According to the article, Dr. Brussel testified that DeSalvo told him he killed his victims with nylon stockings.

'He tied the victims up usually with scarves or stockings, the stockings being the terminal means by which, though unconsciousness had of course, ensured, the terminal means by which life ended,' he said.

He added the victims were tied 'in a frog-like position,' and that DeSalvo had relations with the dead or unconscious body.

HOW DECADES-OLD DNA PROVED A KILLER: TIMELINE SHOWS EVENTS LEADING UP TO POLICE FINALLY IDENTIFYING 'THE BOSTON STRANGLER'

Albert DeSalvo

(CBS/AP) BOSTON - DNA evidence has definitively linked Albert DeSalvo to the death of Mary Sullivan, a woman believed to be the Boston Strangler's last victim, authorities announced Friday.

PICTURES: Famous Unsolved Crimes

"Specifically, DNA specialists calculated the odds that a white male other than DeSalvo contributed the crime scene evidence at one in 220 billion," Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley, Attorney General Martha Coakley, and Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said in a joint statement Friday.

Investigators exhumed DeSalvo's remains for DNA testing last Friday after new evidence surfaced in the case.

The breakthrough happened after scientific advances that authorities said only became possible recently. Police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

DeSalvo admitting killing Sullivan in January 1964 and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 in a series of slayings that became known as the Boston Strangler case. But he recanted in 1973 before dying in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for other crimes.

Sullivan grew up on Cape Cod before moving to Boston when she was 19. A few days later, she was dead -- raped and strangled in her new Beacon Hill apartment.

"We now have an unprecedented level of certainty that Albert DeSalvo raped and murdered Mary Sullivan," Conley said Friday.

"We now have to look very closely at the possibility that he also committed at least some of the other sexual homicides to which he confessed. Questions that Mary's family asked for almost 50 years have finally been answered. They, and the families of all homicide victims, should know that we will never stop working to find justice, accountability, and closure on their behalf."

Sullivan's nephew, Casey Sherman, spent much of his adult life searching for answers in the case and even wrote a book about it. Sherman had once joined with the DeSalvo family in believing that Albert DeSalvo wasn't his aunt's killer.

He said Friday that he thinks there will always be unanswered questions related to the Strangler case, but when it comes to his loved one's slaying, his family finally has a sense of closure.

"He's the killer of my aunt, which is all this has been about for me," Sherman said.

Conley has said the new evidence applies only to Sullivan's homicide and not to the other Strangler-linked killings.

He said some law enforcement officials still disagree about whether one person committed all 11 slayings.

DNA test ties Albert DeSalvo to Boston Strangler victim

DeSalvo confessed to the killings almost 50 years ago, but recanted before dying in prison.

This Feb. 25, 1967, file photo shows self-confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo minutes after his capture in Boston. (Photo: AP)

DNA tests definitively link Boston Strangler suspect Albert DeSalvo to the death of a 19-year-old woman who is believed to be the serial killer's last victim almost 50 years ago, official said Friday.

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, and Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis announced test results on material found at the scene of the 1964 strangulation murder of Mary Sullivan.

DeSalvo initially admitted killing Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 in a series of slayings, but recanted in 1973 before dying at the age of 42 in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for other crimes.

"I hope this brings some measure of finality to Mary Sullivan's family," Coakley said. "This leaves no doubt that Albert DeSalvo was responsible for the brutal murder of Mary Sullivan, and most likely that he was responsible for the horrific murders of the other women he confessed to killing."

DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.

Authorities obtained a search warrant and dug up DeSalvo's remains last week after an initial test on seminal fluid found at the Sullivan murder site showed a "familial match" to DNA from a DeSalvo relative.

Police had secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

That test excluded 99.9 percent of suspects, but authorities wanted a 100% perfect in order to close the case and declare DeSalvo the killer.

The breakthrough happened after of scientific advances that authorities said became possible only recently.

Alleged 'Boston Strangler' exhumed as cops work to connect infamous serial ...

PEABODY, Mass. - Investigators have unearthed the remains of a man who once confessed to being the Boston Strangler in a bid to use forensic evidence to connect him to the death of a woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim.

A bevy of law enforcement officials surrounded Albert DeSalvo's grave on a grassy plot near a lake for Friday's exhumation, which lasted about an hour.

DeSalvo admitting killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 in a series of slayings that became known as the Boston Strangler case. But he recanted in 1973 before dying in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for other crimes.

Authorities said Friday that they would take DeSalvo's remains from Peabody to the medical examiner's office in nearby Boston, where they'd take tissue or bone samples for DNA testing.

Police and prosecutors said on Thursday that, for the first time, they had DNA evidence linking DeSalvo to Sullivan's death.

With a search warrant, authorities dug up DeSalvo's remains because testing of DNA from the scene of Sullivan's rape and murder had produced a match with him that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects. They are after a perfect match.

The breakthrough happened after scientific advances that authorities said became possible only recently. Police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

Sullivan grew up on Cape Cod before moving to Boston when she was 19. A few days later, she was dead - raped and strangled in her new apartment.

Sullivan's nephew, Casey Sherman, spent part of his life believing in DeSalvo's innocence. But he said Thursday that the latest evidence points a different way.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said the new evidence applies only to Sullivan's homicide and not to the other Strangler-linked killings. He said some law enforcement officials still disagree about whether one person committed all 11 slayings.

On Friday, retired state trooper David Raymond and his friend Andy Brancato, whose late father knew DeSalvo and is buried in a nearby plot, watched the digging operation for about 15 minutes before authorities shooed them away.

"My father went to school with him," Brancato said of DeSalvo. "He always said he was a little crazy but innocent."

Raymond said seeing the digging brought him back to what he'd witnessed as a child, when he saw a crowd swarming in his neighborhood as police arrested DeSalvo.

"Coming from a police background, maybe we'll have a case solved," Raymond said.

DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.

His relatives were "very emotionally distressed" by Friday's exhumation, family attorney Elaine Sharp said.

"They didn't even tell us when they were going to do it," the attorney said. "They didn't even extend us the courtesy of an invitation."

Sharp has said that the family believes there still will be reasonable doubt that DeSalvo killed Sullivan, even if additional DNA tests show a 100 percent match. She has said private testing of Sullivan's remains showed other male DNA was present.

The attorney said Friday that DeSalvo's family also has doubts about how police handled the evidence they're relying on now. Police have called the evidence the family used in private testing "very questionable."

Boston Strangler suspect's body to be exhumed for DNA testing

Frank C. Curtin / AP

BOSTON - Investigators helped by advances in DNA technology finally have forensic evidence linking longtime suspect Albert DeSalvo to the last of the 1960s slayings attributed to the Boston Strangler, leading many of the case's players to hope that it can finally be put to rest.

DeSalvo's remains will be exhumed after authorities concluded that DNA from the scene of Mary Sullivan's rape and murder produced a "familial match" with him, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said. Conley said he expected investigators to find an exact match when the evidence is compared with his DNA.

Sullivan, 19, was found strangled in her Boston apartment in January 1964. Sullivan, who had moved from her Cape Cod home to Boston just three days before her death, had long been considered the strangler's last victim.

The announcement represented the most definitive evidence yet linking DeSalvo to the case. Eleven Boston-area women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and made national headlines.

DeSalvo, married with children, a blue collar worker and Army veteran, confessed to the 11 Boston Strangler murders, as well as two others. But he was never convicted of the Boston Strangler killings.

He had been sentenced to life in prison for a series of armed robberies and sexual assaults and was stabbed to death in the state's maximum security prison in Walpole in 1973 - but not before he recanted his confession.

Sullivan's nephew Casey Sherman has for years maintained that DeSalvo did not kill his aunt and even wrote a book on the case pointing to other possible suspects.

He said he accepted the new findings after concluding that the DNA evidence against DeSalvo appeared to be overwhelming.

"I only go where the evidence leads," he said. He thanked police and praised them "for their incredible persistence."

Attorney F. Lee Bailey, who helped to obtain the confession from DeSalvo, said the announcement will probably help put to rest speculation over the Boston Strangler's identity.

Bailey had been representing another inmate who informed the attorney that DeSalvo knew details of the crimes. Bailey went to police with the information, and he said DeSalvo, who was already in prison for other crimes, demonstrated that he knew details that only the killer would know.

Bailey would later represent DeSalvo.

"It was a very challenging case," said Bailey, who lives in Yarmouth, Maine. "My thought was if we can get through the legal thicket and get this guy examined by a team of the best specialists in the country, we might learn something about serial killers so we could spot them before others get killed."

Officials stressed that the DNA evidence links DeSalvo only to Sullivan's killing and that no DNA evidence is believed to exist for the other Boston Strangler slayings.

State Attorney General Martha Coakley, however, said investigators hoped that solving Sullivan's case might put to rest doubts about DeSalvo's guilt.

Conley said the "familial match" excludes 99.99 percent of suspects but isn't enough to close the case.

A woman who answered the phone at the home of DeSalvo's brother Richard said the family had no comment. She did not identify herself.

Associated Press writers David Sharp in Portland, Maine and Mark Pratt in Boston contributed to this report.

Albert DeSalvo's remains exhumed in Boston Strangler DNA probe

By BRIDGET MURPHY, Associated Press

Posted: 07/12/2013 03:04:22 PM EDT

PEABODY -- Investigators have unearthed the remains of a man who once confessed to being the Boston Strangler in a bid to use forensic evidence to connect him to the death of a woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim.

A bevy of law enforcement officials surrounded Albert DeSalvo's grave on a grassy plot near a lake for Friday's exhumation, which lasted about an hour.

DeSalvo admitted killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 in a series of slayings that became known as the Boston Strangler case. But he recanted in 1973 before dying in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for other crimes.

Authorities said Friday that they would take DeSalvo's remains from Peabody to the medical examiner's office in nearby Boston, where they'd take tissue or bone samples for DNA testing.

Police and prosecutors said on Thursday that, for the first time, they had DNA evidence linking DeSalvo to Sullivan's death.

With a search warrant, authorities dug up DeSalvo's remains because testing of DNA from the scene of Sullivan's rape and murder had produced a match with him that excluded 99.9 percent of suspects. They are after a perfect match.

The breakthrough happened after scientific advances that authorities said became possible only recently. Police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.

Sullivan grew up on Cape Cod before moving to Boston when she was 19. A few days later, she was dead -- raped and strangled in her new apartment.

Sullivan's nephew, Casey Sherman, spent part of his life believing in DeSalvo's innocence. But he said Thursday that the latest evidence points a different way.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said the new evidence applies only to Sullivan's homicide and not to the other Strangler-linked killings. He said some law enforcement officials still disagree about whether one person committed all 11 slayings.

On Friday, retired state trooper David Raymond and his friend Andy Brancato, whose late father knew DeSalvo and is buried in a nearby plot, watched the digging operation for about 15 minutes before authorities shooed them away.

"My father went to school with him," Brancato said of DeSalvo. "He always said he was a little crazy but innocent."

Raymond said seeing the digging brought him back to what he'd witnessed as a child, when he saw a crowd swarming in his neighborhood as police arrested DeSalvo.

"Coming from a police background, maybe we'll have a case solved," Raymond said.

DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.

His relatives were "very emotionally distressed" by Friday's exhumation, family attorney Elaine Sharp said.

"They didn't even tell us when they were going to do it," the attorney said. "They didn't even extend us the courtesy of an invitation."

Sharp has said that the family believes there still will be reasonable doubt that DeSalvo killed Sullivan, even if additional DNA tests show a 100 percent match. She has said private testing of Sullivan's remains showed other male DNA was present.

The attorney said Friday that DeSalvo's family also has doubts about how police handled the evidence they're relying on now. Police have called the evidence the family used in private testing "very questionable."

Exhumation of body of Albert DeSalvo underway

July 12, 2013, 2:18 pm

*Helicopter aerial footage from the scene. PEABODY, Mass. (AP) - Workers at a Massachusetts cemetery have begun digging up the remains of the man suspected of being the Boston Strangler.A backhoe opened the ground near Albert DeSalvo's grave, and then workers with shovels began digging out the casket Friday afternoon in Peabody.A spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney's office says DeSalvo's casket will be taken to the medical examiner, where tissue or bone samples will be taken.It's part of a process that Suffolk DA Dan Conley believes will tie DeSalvo to the death of Mary Sullivan, possibly the Strangler's last victim. Already, DNA from Sullivan has been matched to a member of DeSalvo's family.Eleven women were killed in the Boston Strangler slayings in the 1960s. DeSalvo confessed, but later recanted and was never convicted in the slayings.THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.The family of a woman who may have been the Boston Strangler's last victim could be just days away from getting answers about her slaying after decades of wondering whether police pinned it on the right man.Authorities arrived Friday afternoon at a Massachusetts cemetery where the remains of the suspect in her death, Albert DeSalvo, were buried. DeSalvo's casket was expected to be exhumed Friday afternoon and taken to the medical examiner, where tissue or bone samples will be taken, a spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney's office said.For the first time, authorities said Thursday that they have forensic evidence tying a suspect to Mary Sullivan's death. And DeSalvo's name was a familiar one. He was the man who first confessed to being the Boston Strangler, but later recanted before his stabbing death in prison as he served a life sentence for other crimes.Casey Sherman struggled to hold back tears for his late aunt as he joined law enforcement officers to talk about a case that gained public notoriety but always has been a source of private pain for his family.Nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan, whom Sherman called "the joy of her Irish Catholic family," left the quiet of Cape Cod for the bustle of life in Boston in January 1964. A few days later she was dead.Someone raped and strangled her in the apartment she'd just moved into, and her death became linked to what some believed was the work of a serial killer who also stole the lives of 10 other women during a homicidal rampage in the Boston area that lasted two years."I've lived with Mary's memory every day, my whole life. And I didn't know, nor did my mother know, that other people were living with her memory as well," Sherman said of the aunt who died before he was born. "And it's amazing to me today to understand that people really did care about what happened to my aunt."Authorities will exhume DeSalvo's remains because testing of DNA from the scene of Sullivan's rape and murder produced a "familial match" with him, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said. It happened after scientific advances that only became possible recently, and after police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.Conley said the match excludes 99.9 percent of suspects, and he expects investigators to find an exact match when the evidence is compared directly with DeSalvo's DNA.The district attorney stressed that the evidence only applied to Sullivan's slaying and not the other 10 homicides."Even among experts and law enforcement officials, there is disagreement to this day about whether they were in fact committed by the same person," Conley said.Eleven women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, confessed to the 11 Boston Strangler slayings and two others. But he was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.He went to prison for a series of armed robberies and sexual assaults before his death in Massachusetts' maximum security prison in Walpole in 1973.An attorney for DeSalvo's family said Thursday they believe there's still reasonable doubt he killed Sullivan, even if additional DNA tests show a 100 percent match.The lawyer, Elaine Sharp, said previous private forensic testing of Sullivan's remains showed other DNA from what appeared to be semen was present that didn't match DeSalvo."Somebody else was there, we say," Sharp said of the killing. "I don't think the evidence is a hundred percent solid, as is being represented here today."But Donald Hayes, a forensic scientist who heads the Boston Police Department's crime lab, said investigators' samples were properly preserved, while the evidence used in private testing came from Sullivan's exhumed body and was "very questionable."Sharp also said Thursday that the family was outraged that police followed a DeSalvo relative to get the DNA they needed for comparison.But Sherman, who previously wrote a book on the case pointing to other possible suspects, acknowledged the new findings point to the man he had defended. Sherman said the DNA evidence against DeSalvo appeared to be overwhelming."I only go where the evidence leads," he said, thanking police and praising them "for their incredible persistence."Sherman also expressed sympathy for the DeSalvo family, with whom he had joined in the past in a shared belief that DeSalvo didn't kill his aunt. That belief was based on DeSalvo's confession, which Sherman previously said was inconsistent with other evidence.The families of DeSalvo and Sullivan had jointly sued the state for release of evidence while pursuing their own investigation. They had Sullivan's body exhumed in 1999 for private DNA testing as part of the effort.F. Lee Bailey, the attorney who helped to obtain the confession from DeSalvo, said Thursday's announcement will probably help put to rest speculation about the Boston Strangler's identity.Authorities said they're continuing to comb through evidence files and still are hoping to find samples to do DNA testing in connection with the other Strangler-linked killings.Associated Press writers David Sharp in Portland, Maine, and Mark Pratt in Boston contributed to this report.(Copyright 2013 DeSalvotobeexhumedtodayforDNAtesting.blogspot.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

DeSalvo was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, aged 42, while serving a life ...

Albert DeSalvo confessed to the killings but was never prosecuted Semen found on the body of Mary Sullivan, 19, who was thought to be the Boston Strangler's final victim in 1964, was tested and showed DNA believed to belong to DeSalvo DeSalvo was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, aged 42, while serving a life sentence for robbery and sexual assault Authorities are digging up his body this week to prove beyond any doubt that his DNA matches the sample and is guilty in the slaying If proven guilty, it strongly suggests he was in fact the Boston Strangler, as per his confession Man strangled victims with nylon stockings then tied them in 'frog-like' positions and 'had relations' with their dead or unconscious bodies

By Helen Pow and Associated Press

PUBLISHED: 17:54 EST, 12 July 2013 | UPDATED: 04:59 EST, 13 July 2013

Investigators have unearthed the remains of a man who once confessed to being the Boston Strangler in a bid to use forensic evidence to connect him to the death of a woman believed to be the serial killer's last victim.

A bevy of law enforcement officials surrounded Albert DeSalvo's grave on a grassy plot near a lake for Friday's exhumation, which lasted about an hour. Those officials were looking to prove through DNA testing that DeSalvo was indeed guilty of murder after he recanted his confession.

DeSalvo admitting killing Mary Sullivan and 10 other women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964 in a series of slayings that became known as the Boston Strangler case.

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But he recanted in 1973 before dying in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for other crimes.

Authorities said Friday that they would take DeSalvo's remains from Peabody to the medical examiner's office in nearby Boston, where they'd take tissue or bone samples for DNA testing.

Police and prosecutors said on Thursday that, for the first time, they had DNA evidence linking DeSalvo to Sullivan's death.

With a search warrant, authorities dug up DeSalvo's remains because testing of DNA from the scene of Sullivan's rape and murder had produced a match with him that excluded 99.9 per cent of suspects. They are after a perfect match.

Authorities said Thursday that for the first time they have forensic evidence tying DeSalvo to Sullivan's death.

DeSalvo was the man who first confessed to being the Boston Strangler, but later recanted before his stabbing death in prison as he served a life sentence for other crimes.

Casey Sherman struggled to hold back tears for his late aunt as he joined law enforcement officers to talk about a case that gained public notoriety but always has been a source of private pain for his family.

Nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan, whom Sherman called 'the joy of her Irish Catholic family,' left the quiet of Cape Cod for the bustle of life in Boston in January 1964. A few days later she was dead.

Someone raped and strangled her in the apartment she'd just moved into, and her death became linked to what some believed was the work of a serial killer who also stole the lives of 10 other women during a homicidal rampage in the Boston area that lasted two years.

'I've lived with Mary's memory every day, my whole life. And I didn't know, nor did my mother know, that other people were living with her memory as well,' Sherman said of the aunt who died before he was born. 'And it's amazing to me today to understand that people really did care about what happened to my aunt.'

Authorities will exhume DeSalvo's remains because testing of DNA from the scene of Sullivan's rape and murder produced a 'familial match' with him, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said.

It happened after scientific advances that only became possible recently, and after police secretly followed DeSalvo's nephew to collect DNA from a discarded water bottle to help make the connection.Conley said the match excludes 99.9 per cent of suspects, and he expects investigators to find an exact match when the evidence is compared directly with DeSalvo's DNA.

The district attorney stressed that the evidence only applied to Sullivan's slaying and not the other 10 homicides.

'Even among experts and law enforcement officials, there is disagreement to this day about whether they were in fact committed by the same person,' Conley said.

Eleven women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and grabbed national headlines.

DeSalvo, a blue-collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, confessed to the 11 Boston Strangler slayings and two others. But he was never convicted of the Strangler slayings.

He went to prison for a series of armed robberies and sexual assaults before his death in Massachusetts' maximum security prison in Walpole in 1973.

An attorney for DeSalvo's family said Thursday they believe there's still reasonable doubt he killed Sullivan, even if additional DNA tests show a 100 per cent match.

The lawyer, Elaine Sharp, said previous private forensic testing of Sullivan's remains showed other DNA from what appeared to be semen was present that didn't match DeSalvo.

'Somebody else was there, we say,' Sharp said of the killing. 'I don't think the evidence is a hundred percent solid, as is being represented here today.'

But Donald Hayes, a forensic scientist who heads the Boston Police Department's crime lab, said investigators' samples were properly preserved, while the evidence used in private testing came from Sullivan's exhumed body and was 'very questionable.'

Sharp also said Thursday that the family was outraged that police followed a DeSalvo relative to get the DNA they needed for comparison.

But Sherman, who previously wrote a book on the case pointing to other possible suspects, acknowledged the new findings point to the man he had defended. Sherman said the DNA evidence against DeSalvo appeared to be overwhelming.

'I only go where the evidence leads,' he said, thanking police and praising them 'for their incredible persistence.'

Sherman also expressed sympathy for the DeSalvo family, with whom he had joined in the past in a shared belief that DeSalvo didn't kill his aunt. That belief was based on DeSalvo's confession, which Sherman previously said was inconsistent with other evidence.

The families of DeSalvo and Sullivan had jointly sued the state for release of evidence while pursuing their own investigation. They had Sullivan's body exhumed in 1999 for private DNA testing as part of the effort.

F. Lee Bailey, the attorney who helped to obtain the confession from DeSalvo, said Thursday's announcement will probably help put to rest speculation about the Boston Strangler's identity.

Authorities said they're continuing to comb through evidence files and still are hoping to find samples to do DNA testing in connection with the other Strangler-linked killings.

After numerous failed attempts to make sense of the DNA samples found on Sullivan in the past, scientists were finally able this year to implicate a suspect - a white male - through advancements in technology.

Detectives with the Boston Police Department then conducted undercover surveillance of DeSalvo's family members and retrieved a discarded water bottle from one of the man's nephews. They tested DNA from fingerprints and it proved a familial similarity to the DNA found on the victim.

DeSalvo's body, which has been buried for some 40 years, will be exhumed this week and his remains will be sent to the chief medical examiner's office where DNA samples will be collected and sent off for testing. Results should prove once and for all whether he murdered Sullivan.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis and Attorney General Martha Coakley announced the 'major development' at a press conference this morning and officials met with relatives of the women murdered by the Strangler today.

Davis said: 'The ability to provide closure to a family after fifty years is just a remarkable thing.'

DeSalvo cannot be charged but the authorities hoped the breakthrough would bring closure to at least the Sullivan family, some five decades after their loved one was senselessly murdered.

Before his death, DeSalvo, a blue collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children, admitted he was the Strangler who terrorized the greater Boston area in the 1960s, killing 11 women.

But he was never prosecuted for the heinous crimes, according to , because of a deal negotiated with then-Attorney General Edward Brooke and DeSalvo's attorney, F. Lee Bailey.

He was brutally murdered in prison, aged 42, while serving a life sentence for armed robbery and sexual assault in a separate series of 'non-fatal' attacks on women.

Authorities said today that no DNA evidence exists for any of the Strangler's 10 other victims. This means that a similar definitive link is unlikely in those cases. Until now, DeSalvo's confession was the only evidence in the fascinating case, allowing room for the community, and even some high up in the police department, to doubt whether he was in fact responsible.

As recently as 2012, Brooke cast doubt over whether DeSalvo was in fact the Boston Strangler.

'Even to this day, I can't say with certainty that the person who ultimately was designated as the Boston Strangler was the Boston Strangler,' Brooke told the Globe last year.

DeSalvo's surviving relatives and Casey Sherman, the nephew of Mary Sullivan, organized DNA testing a decade ago on Sullivan's remains but the technology at the time meant it was not possible to get a usable sample. At that point, authorities decided to halt testing, which destroys the evidence, until advancements in technology were strong enough to get a result.

Those breakthroughs occured last year and the cold case was reopened with two of six remaining semen samples sent to two difficent labs. Both came back with the same results. A sample from Sullivan's body showed the unique genetic profile of two people - the teen herself and a white male - while a sample from a blanket showed DNA of the same white male.

Police then searched high and low for anything that would still have DeSalvo's DNA on it. They attempted to get a sample from a pair of letters he wrote to the parole board but failed.

However, thanks to the new technology they knew they could use DNA from one of DeSalvo's male descendents instead as the Y chromosomes among men of the same family are as good as identical.

Anna Slesers, a 55-year-old Latvian seamstress, was the Boston Strangler's first victim.

She was found dead in her Gainsborough Street apartment by her son on June 14, 1962. Sullivan was the last . The teen had moved from her Cape Cod home to Boston just three days before her death .

DeSalvo was pinpointed as the killer when he confessed to the string of strangling deaths to his cellmate, George Nassar.

Nassar told DeSalvo's defense lawyer Bailey, who struck a deal with Brooke which outlined that DeSalvo wouldn't be prosecuted if he admitted he was the Strangler.

At his robbery and sexual assault trial in 1967, Bailey said DeSalvo was consumed by 'one of the most crushing sexual drives that psychiatric science has ever encountered.

'Thirteen acts of homicide by a completely uncontrollable vegetable walking around in a human body,' he said in opening his defense, according to The Boston Globe archives.

His psychiatrist, Dr. James A. Brussel, testified that he was suffering from 'schizophrenia of the paranoid type.'

He said each of DeSalvo's alleged slaying would be preceded by a night during which would be tormented 'with a burning up inside... Like little fires. Like little explosions.'

According to the article, Dr. Brussel testified that DeSalvo told him he killed his victims with nylon stockings.

'He tied the victims up usually with scarves or stockings, the stockings being the terminal means by which, though unconsciousness had of course, ensured, the terminal means by which life ended,' he said.

He added the victims were tied 'in a frog-like position,' and that DeSalvo had relations with the dead or unconscious body.

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