Search for the Strangler (10 page)

On August 11, 1965, Bottomly traveled to Bridgewater State Hospital to interview Albert DeSalvo. More seasoned members of
the task force opposed the move because Bottomly had no experience in interrogation. As for Bailey, he insisted on one stipulation:
any confession DeSalvo made would not be used against him in court. Bottomly readily agreed, a decision that would haunt the
case for decades to come.

Bottomly met DeSalvo in a small room at the hospital. Sitting next to DeSalvo was an attorney, George McGrath. A judge had
ruled that DeSalvo was not competent to handle his own affairs, and McGrath, a friend of Bailey’s, had been chosen as his
legal guardian. Bottomly had brought with him a few legal notepads and several pens as well as reels of audiotape for his
tape recorder. He also had a folder stuffed with crime scene photos. In standard police interrogations, suspects are never
allowed to look through pictures of the crime scene. Doing so would give the suspect added information about the murder. But
Bottomly said that showing the photos to DeSalvo would jog his memory. Laying some photos of the Anna Slesers murder scene
on the table, Bottomly hit the record button on his tape machine and began to interview the suspect. DeSalvo told Bottomly
the same things he had told Bailey about Slesers’s murder. They quickly moved to Nina Nichols, Boston Strangler victim number
two.

DeSalvo’s confession to the Nichols murder got off to a rocky start, however. DeSalvo told Bottomly her apartment was directly
across from a fire door leading from the stairway. A later visit to the building by investigators proved this to be inaccurate.
DeSalvo did tell Bottomly that Nichols had come to the door in her bathrobe, which was true. But this fact had been printed
in the newspaper. He also said the victim lived on the fourth floor, that she had been wearing tennis shoes, and that the
killer had left her lying on the floor of the apartment. But all these details had also been chronicled in the newspaper.
DeSalvo also stated that he had ejaculated inside Nichols’s vagina. But again, the fact that Nichols had been raped was highly
publicized, and there was no mention of sperm inside the vagina in Nichols’s autopsy report. DeSalvo also said, incorrectly,
that the victim had been wearing stockings at the time she was killed. In addition, DeSalvo said that Nichols had scratched
him and drawn blood with her fingernails. But the medical examiner had found no trace of skin or blood underneath her fingernails.

Bottomly next questioned DeSalvo about the death of Helen Blake, who had been murdered the same day as Nichols, a few miles
north of Boston in the city of Lynn. When asked to describe the exterior of Blake’s apartment building, DeSalvo said its front
was sided with hard oak. The outside of Blake’s apartment building, however, was not wood but concrete halfway up; above that
was brick. DeSalvo also told Bottomly that there was some kind of name on the front door, like The Manor. This statement also
proved false. Moreover, in describing the layout of Blake’s apartment, DeSalvo placed the bathroom to the left of the front
door, though it was actually on the right as you walked into the apartment.

When Bottomly asked DeSalvo how he had gained access to Blake’s apartment, DeSalvo said, “I told her I was going to do some
work for her on the ceilings. She was in the midst of shaking out some rugs when she opened her door. The rugs were on the
window in the room.

“She was bent facing the bed, and I put my arms around her neck, but she went into a dead faint. A little blood was dripping
from her nose, and she wore glasses,” DeSalvo said. He maintained that he had taken off Blake’s pajama bottoms and had sex
with her while she was unconscious. After raping Blake, DeSalvo claimed, he had grabbed a bra from her dresser and wrapped
it around her neck. DeSalvo also said he tied a nylon stocking in three loops around her neck.

Bottomly’s deficient interrogation skills are evident from his questions to DeSalvo about Helen Blake’s clothes.

BOTTOMLY
: Do you remember the material that the pajamas were made of?

DESALVO
: Yes, well no, it wasn’t . . . it was, uh, cotton.

BOTTOMLY
: You think it was striped?

DESALVO
: Yes.

BOTTOMLY
: White with a colored stripe?

DESALVO
: I’d almost swear it was stripes or some little design.

In this exchange Bottomly was obviously leading DeSalvo. There is no way of knowing whether DeSalvo could have accurately
described Blake’s striped pajamas because his interrogator was dropping hints about their design. And DeSalvo got many other
details wrong. Though he told Bottomly he’d raped the victim, vaginal and rectal swabs showed no traces of sperm. Though he
stated that he had bitten Blake hard on her breast, the autopsy report doesn’t mention any marks on the victim’s breasts.
Though he also claimed to have bitten Blake’s stomach in several places, the medical examiner had found no sign of this during
his autopsy, either.

The inaccuracies do not end there. DeSalvo told Bottomly, incorrectly, that windows in Blake’s apartment had been partially
open, with rugs hanging out of them. In fact all the windows in Blake’s apartment had been shut; two rugs were found folded
inside the front door of the apartment. When asked by Bottomly to describe Blake’s living room, DeSalvo spoke at great length
about a white mantelpiece with pictures on it. There was no mantelpiece in the apartment.

The answers to most of the questions he got right involved matters that had been widely publicized in the newspapers, such
as the fact that Blake’s killer had removed her pajama bottoms but left her top on. DeSalvo also flip-flopped on some of his
answers. Initially, he told Bottomly that he had left Helen Blake on her back on the bed. Weeks later, DeSalvo told Bottomly,
correctly, that Blake had been left on her stomach, with her feet hanging straight down off the bed. Did Albert DeSalvo, a
man with a photographic memory, forget how he had killed Helen Blake? Or was he being tutored throughout his confession to
provide the right answers?

Next on the list of victims was Ida Irga. DeSalvo told Bottomly, “I just picked her bell at random. I rang three other bells,
and whoever came to the door, that’s how it happened. She was the first to answer. She argued with me at first. I said I wanted
to do some work in the apartment, and she didn’t trust me because of the things that were going on, and she had a suspicion
of allowing anybody into the apartment without knowing definitely who they were. I talked to her very briefly and told her
not to worry. I said, ‘If you don’t trust me, I’ll just come back tomorrow.’ I started walking downstairs, and she said, ‘Well,
come on in.’ I walked in with her, and we went into the bathroom, where I was supposed to look at a leak there at the window.
When she turned, I put my arms around her neck and . . .”

DeSalvo went on to say that he had strangled Irga, had had intercourse with her limp body, and ejaculated inside her. There
are many discrepancies between his account of the Irga murder and details from the crime scene and autopsy. First, the autopsy
showed no trace of semen. Further, though DeSalvo claimed the victim had been wearing a black and white checkered bathrobe
the night she was killed, Irga’s housecoat was brown with white polka dots. When describing how he had killed the woman, DeSalvo
told Bottomly he had strangled her manually from behind. In reality, Irga’s killer had choked her to death with a pillowcase.
DeSalvo did accurately describe Irga’s apartment building and the general layout of the flat, but the psychiatrist Ames Robey
dismisses claims that DeSalvo committed the murders. “Just because he knew what the apartments looked like doesn’t mean he
was the strangler,” Robey argues. “Albert told me that he had visited several of the crime scenes because he was so fascinated
by the case. As a maintenance man, he had apartment keys to half the buildings in Boston.” What is more, task force records
indicate there was a newspaper story or crime scene photo to account for almost every correct answer DeSalvo gave to questions
about the Irga murder. But, though DeSalvo’s confession to the murder of Ida Irga was riddled with holes, Bottomly failed
or refused to see them.

The discrepancies in DeSalvo’s confession to the murder of the next victim are even more disturbing. When asked to provide
the date and time when he killed Jane Sullivan, DeSalvo could not answer. “I don’t know, see,” he said. “When this certain
time comes upon me, it’s a very immediate thing. When I get up in the morning and I get this feeling and . . . instead of
going to work, I might make an excuse to my boss and I’d start driving. I’d start in my mind . . . building this image up,
and that’s why I found myself not knowing where I was going.” Clearly, DeSalvo was a professional confessor. If he could not
answer a question, he would change the course of the conversation.

Granted, DeSalvo accurately described Sullivan’s apartment building on Columbia Road in Dorchester, but he admitted that he’d
been to the building several times over the years. Further, his description of the murder scene was inaccurate. DeSalvo claimed
that the floor in Sullivan’s apartment had been covered in a thick layer of white dust. The crime scene photos show that the
flat had been swept clean. DeSalvo said he had left the victim in the bathtub facing the wall. Sullivan had been discovered
in her bathtub, as reported in the newspaper, but she was not facing the wall. Rather, she had been placed face down in six
inches of water, her body in a crouching position.

DeSalvo also said he had tried to strangle Jane Sullivan manually, but then his hands got tired, and he grabbed a broom handle
and wedged it under her chin. According to DeSalvo the makeshift garrotte had had little effect on the victim, so he threw
it on the floor and left it there. The fact that Sullivan was attacked with a broomstick had appeared in several newspaper
accounts. However, the broomstick had not been left on the apartment floor. Whoever murdered Jane Sullivan had taken the time
to store the weapon neatly back in the broom closet.

Bottomly’s interrogation of DeSalvo would last another thirty hours over a number of days. The days spent sitting across from
Bottomly and his tape machine began to wear on DeSalvo; his mistakes became more glaring over time.

BOTTOMLY
: What was the next door you knocked at?

DESALVO
: Sophie Clark, and she was wearing a light, flimsy housecoat. And she was tall, well built, about 36-22-37. Very beautiful.

BOTTOMLY
: How old?

DESALVO
: To me she looked twenty, and she was, I think, twenty and . . .

BOTTOMLY
: Describe her apartment. What kind of door did it have?

DESALVO
: It was a yellowish door . . . and she was very, she didn’t want to let me in, period, because her roommates weren’t in there
at the time and they were going to be there very shortly. I said something about I would set her up in modeling and photography
work, and I would give her anywhere from twenty to thirty-five dollars an hour for this type of modeling. And she invited
me in to talk to her . . .

BOTTOMLY
: How long did you talk with her?

DESALVO
: Five minutes.

BOTTOMLY
: Where was she when you attacked her?

DESALVO
: [The] parlor.

BOTTOMLY
: In the parlor. The moment you walked in from the front door?

DESALVO
: Yes.

BOTTOMLY
: How did you do it?

DESALVO
: I gathered her around the back, and she was so tall that we fell back into this thing that was . . .

BOTTOMLY
: The settee [couch].

DESALVO
: Yes, where they had these . . .

BOTTOMLY
: Pillows?

DESALVO
: Pillows. And, for as strong as the girl was, she passed out right away.

BOTTOMLY
: Uh-huh. Did you scissors her?

DESALVO
: Yes, that’s what did it. And she was knocked out. I tied her up. . . .

This exchange draws particular criticism from law enforcement officers. After reading the transcript, Sergeant Conrad Prosnewski,
a long-serving veteran of the Salem, Massachusetts, Police Department, said it is clear that Bottomly had never conducted
an interrogation before. “You never give this kind of information to a suspect. [Bottomly] lets DeSalvo know there were pillows
on the couch, and he strongly indicates to his suspect that the victim was struck in the head with a pair of scissors,” Prosnewski
points out.

As the interrogation continued, DeSalvo said, “No, I’m wrong there. On Sophie Clark, this Negro girl, I did not have to tie
her at all. She’s the one who . . . was menstruating very lightly. I remember when I . . . she had the white thing on. I ripped
that off her and threw it behind a chair.”

BOTTOMLY
: How did you remove this thing?

DESALVO
: I just grabbed it.

BOTTOMLY
: What material was it made of?

DESALVO
: The same as any Kotex, that’s it.

BOTTOMLY
: After you took that off, where was she now?

DESALVO
: Lying on the floor.

BOTTOMLY
: Okay, what did you do then?

DESALVO
: There was a coffee table to the right, and I propped her legs up, and I had intercourse with her.

BOTTOMLY
: Did you get bloody?

DESALVO
: No.

BOTTOMLY
: She was very light. . . .

DESALVO
: Yes, and she started to come to.

BOTTOMLY
: She did?

DESALVO
: Yes.

BOTTOMLY
: And did you relieve yourself at any time with respect to the colored girl?