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'
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