A few years later, after serving a brief prison sentence, he progressed from molestation to rape, assaulting hundreds of women throughout New England during a two-year span in the early 1960's. During this period, he was known as the "Green Man," so-called because of the green work clothes he favored while committing his crimes.
It was his third nickname, however, that ensured him enduring infamy. In 1962, DeSalvo became known as the "Boston Strangler," a smooth-talking sadist who savagely murdered thirteen women during an eighteen-month reign of terror.
The product of an insanely brutal upbringing, DeSalvo acquired an early taste for sadism. One of his favorite childhood pastimes was placing a starving cat in an orange crate with a puppy and watching the cat scratch the dog's eyes out. He got married while in the army and maintained a more-or-less normal facade as a husband and father, even while committing some of the most shocking crimes in American history. (Of course there were strains in the marriage. Among other things, DeSalvo was possessed of a demonic libido and demanded sex as often as six times a day.)
His earliest murder victims were elderly women. Each of them had willingly let her killer into her apartment. Posing as a building repairman, the glib, smooth-talking DeSalvo had no trouble gaining entrance. Besides raping and strangling the women, he enjoyed desecrating their corpses, sometimes by shoving bottles or broomsticks into their vaginas. After finishing with his victim, he would leave a grotesque signature, knotting his makeshift garrote (often a nylon stocking) into a big, ornamental bow beneath the dead woman's chin.
Toward the end of 1962, DeSalvo's MO suddenly changed. He began preying on much younger women. And his murders became even more vicious--and bizarre. In one instance, he stabbed his victim nearly two dozen times. He left another corpse propped against the headboard of her bed, a pink bow tied around her neck, a broomstick handle jutting from her vagina, and a Happy New Year''s card resting against her left foot.
Eventually, DeSalvo was arrested not for the "Boston Strangler" murders but for one of the "Green Man" rapes. During a stint at a state mental hospital, however, he began boasting of his strangling career to a fellow inmate. Only then did authorities discover that they had unwittingly nabbed the infamous killer.
In the end, DeSalvo, was never punished for the "Boston Strangler" killings. Through a deal struck by his lawyer--F. Lee Bailey--DeSalvo was spared the chair and given a life sentence for the "Green Man" rapes instead. Not that Bailey's efforts did DeSalvo much good in the end. He was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate in November of 1973.
Lately, however, DNA evidence has pointed away from DeSalvo. A number of studies suggests that there were even more than one strangler--possibly two. When DeSalvo was questioned and described the murders, he had several details mixed up--details that made it seem as if he were guessing. DeSalvo may have indeed just wanted to be noted as the infamous Boston Strangler. Perhaps in his mind he found it wildly exhilarating to be coined as one of the sickest sexual predators. He believed he would be spending the rest of his life in jail for the "Green Man" rapes, so why not go ahead and confess to the murders that were getting so much publicity?
The night before DeSalvo was stabbed, he called a couple people in fear and asked them to meet with him. One of these people was a reported. He stated that he was going to tell them who the real strangler was and what was going on. Before they could meet him the next morning, DeSalvo was stabbed and killed that night. No one knows what information DeSalvo was going to release to the men.
--Albert "Boston Strangler" DeSalvo