Blood on the Cobblestones PT 1

On today’s episode, Kate and Paul head to Boston, Massachusetts in 1962 for the first part of a two-parter. Our hosts begin to survey the evidence as a series of women have been found… strangled.

Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4buCoMc 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
True crimes, and I weigh in using modern forensic techniques
to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones. Hey, Paul, how are you?

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Hey, Kate, I'm doing good. What's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Well, you know how much I love history. I'm surrounded
by it here in the cottage. It's everywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Oh really, I never would have guessed, But.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
What I like the most is personal history. And so
there's some photos in the background. One is of my
mother's grandmothers, so my great grandmother and the girls great
great grandmother. And I love that I have the photo.
I found it, you know, stashed away somewhere, and I
framed it and it's really it's sweet. The older I get,

(01:35):
the more I care about reconnecting with people that come
from my past. And I think you and I have
talked about, have you. You've done some digging, a little
bit of digging right on your background, on the holes background.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, well, both sides, both my dad's lineage as well
as my mom's lineage. You know, it's fascinating and part
of that learning your personal history is fascinating. But for me,
part of the reason I did that was to learn, well,
how do you build family trees, you know, for the
genealogy aspect, and how it's used in cases.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
I don't remember I'm not going to say which genealogy
site did this, but there was some great commercial and
it was a young woman who was sort of seeing
through records her grandmother, her great grandmother, who was really
influential and sort of creating a revolution, of political revolution,
and sort of she sees shades of that in her

(02:31):
own life. And I thought, okay, well that's the connection.
And we took about these kinds of historical connections all
the time. But my stepfather, Jack, who I've posted about before,
so his dad was a corrections officer at a prison
near where they lived. In Rosenberg, Texas, and Jack adored
his father, and his dad drove a nineteen sixty nine

(02:54):
I'm going to make it up and say Chevrolet, but
it was some old truck, but I know it was
nineteen sixty nine, okay, and it was baby blue. And
it has been, I believe, since Jack's father's death, sitting
in a field at jackson nephew's property, not covered, rusting everywhere.
And so now my lovely stepfather is getting all of

(03:16):
the papers together and he's going to have it hold
to my parents' house in Austin, and he's going to
work on it in the garage to try to restore it.
And I think he's been thinking about it for a
long time. He really wanted a nineteen something, nineteen sixty
something Mustang fast Back. I've been hearing him talk about
that forever. But this truck is so meaningful and it's

(03:38):
I guess I never really thought about objects as connecting
us so much to the past. But he could get,
you know, a car that is not a personal connection
to him, but he wants his daddy's truck. And I thought,
that's so sweet. I love that idea.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
No, that's well, that's very cool.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I watch shows on restoring vehicles. Sometimes I'll watch YouTube
these barn finds. You know, a vehicle has been parked
in a barn for decades, it turns out it's a
very valuable vehicle, and now you have people, these experts
that can come in appraise the vehicle and then of
course restore it in a way to preserve its value.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, and so you and I are so different because
you know, he does the same thing. He looks at
cars and how people restore them, and I look at
like I was just getting ready to watch a show
about an American couple who inherited a five hundred year
old French mansion castle actually I think they called it
Thick Castle, and how they are going to plan to
remodel it to save it from falling apart. And that's

(04:38):
a little bit of my dream. So but it is
still taking the past. I just I absolutely love history,
and I love history where you can smell it, touch it,
cook things you know that were from the past, even
if they're disgusting. I like doing that kind of stuff.
I guess that's just a getting older kind of thing,
but I think it's sweet. I'm so proud of him.

(04:59):
For one of to do that, and he said you
can help me winch it, in which I said, I
don't know. I might be really busy that day during
winching day.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Oh come on, Kate, that's a valuable life skill.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
I know.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Have you ever worked on old cars? Like I actually
worked on an.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Old car before, well, I in high school.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
The second vehicle that I got was a nineteen seventy
seven Mustang Cobra. And this was not like the really fancy,
expensive Shelby Cobras. This is sort of the no. It
was sort of a down era in Ford Mustangs, you know,
but it had this whole Cobra package on it. And

(05:42):
I spent a lot of time wrenching, working on the engine,
installing my own radio, doing all the mechanical work on it.
And I learned so much doing that, and I enjoyed it,
you know. And like I have my cheap which is
a two thousand and eight Wrangler JK. And I do
a lot of the work on the jeep myself.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
And that satisfies you in some way. I mean, I
think it's like earning your own money versus somebody giving
you money. I mean, giving money is great, but earning
it it's just so different. It's a different feeling.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
There is a yeah, there's a type of satisfaction, but
there's also a lot of frustration.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Things don't go right.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
You're kind of stuck. Well, I can't even drive anywhere
because my jeep is up in the air and I
can't figure this out.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, where would I live while this five hundred year
old French castle is being remodeled? Was the first thing
I thought of my pitching a tent on the two
hundred acre property. I don't know what's sure. Well, I
find relics or remnants or whatever it is connected to things,
especially personally in my past. You won't be able to
see it. But there's a pair of eyeglasses on the

(06:49):
shelf behind me, and it's my mom's father's eyeglasses. Now,
I've never met him. He died when she was very young.
But I don't know why. I just I really want
to see that kind of stuff up in this space
in my cottage.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, you can't see it in the image view that
I've got, But over here to my left is a
set of shelves, and that's sort of similar to what
you've got. I've got what's been passed down through the generations.
The cedar little Hope chest that I keep sentimental knickknacks inside. Oh,

(07:24):
I have, you know, a hat that my dad used
to wear, as well as other gifts from my parents
over the years.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
I've even got this.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Old AMFM radio that my dad bought way back. I
think it was a wedding gift something like that, and
it was just something growing up I remember seeing in
the house, you know, And when they finally moved out
of California to Hawaii, that was one thing I was like, Nope,
I got to keep that. It's an object, right, But

(07:54):
there's a sentimental attachment to it.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah, And I definitely I think everybody feels like this.
There's certain dishes, trigger things for you that you can smell,
and certain breezes in the air and on. But anyway,
let's stop waxing poetic about it. The items that are
probably not useful right now, like my clay pipes, which
I adore. My daughter bought me a set of clay
pipes from the eighteenth century, where you know, men would

(08:19):
dig up men would take these pipes, these clay pipes
and smoke them in a restaurant and the restaurant would
keep them there and would return them to the man
every time he came to smoke. And so my daughter
bought me these pipes. So anyway, I could go on,
and I will over the course of our episodes, I
will talk about these individual things. One of the reasons
I bring this up is because we are going back

(08:40):
in time here with this story, not as far back
as we normally do. But before we get into it,
Buried Bones will be on board Virgin Voyages True Crime
Voyage this October. So I'm wondering, Paul. There's an event
called Scarlet Night, and to me, it sounds a little
bit more like a case file less of a big party.

(09:02):
Tell me about it. Do you know anything about this?

Speaker 2 (09:05):
You know, I've seen my share of blood pools at
our scarlet in color, but that's not what this refers to.
Virgin Voyages has a Scarlet Night, which is it sounds
like it's a shipwide party. But the theme is is
you have to wear red, So pack red and whatever
you're bringing.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Okay, I got to think about that. What would you
wear that's red? I don't think I've ever seen you
in red before.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
No, you know, I might have just like a red
T shirt.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
I'll get you a sash. Maybe I'll bring a sash
on board and it could be like a sash crime
true crime host.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
Oh, one of those. I was thinking of something totally different.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
I love a big party, so I'll be excited to
do that with you.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, it'll be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Reserve your spot now at virgin voyages dot com slash
true crime. Okay, for this story, We're not in the Caribbean.
We are in Boston, and I think we've done a
couple of Boston stories. Well one was the man at
Harvard who was murdered. Do you remember that? So technically Cambridge,
but I think we've had a couple of other Boston stories.

(10:05):
But this is I think the Boston story, at least
for the twentieth century. This was a really, really big story,
and I've mentioned it to you before. But I hope
that you forgot. Did you forget what we're doing today?

Speaker 3 (10:21):
No? I know what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Oh dang it. Okay, Okay, well we're in Boston. I'll
give everybody a big hit. We're in Boston and it's
a serial killer and he strangled people. So if our
smart and smart audience can't put that together, then that's
what we're talking about. And I don't, actually I didn't
before reading all of this, know a ton about this case.

(10:44):
I feel like that about the Hillside Stranglers. Also, there
are just some cases that I've just never really looked at,
and this is one of those cases. So did this
pop up in any of your education or anything, the
Boston Strangler.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, In fact, I have a book on my shelf
on the Boston Strangler. Now, it's been decades since I've
read good about the Boston Strangler. So in terms of
the details there, I wouldn't even say they're fuzzy. You know,
it's I think you're going to remind me a lot
as we go along. And it's funny because, like Hillside Strangler,
I actually paid a lot of attention to that one

(11:16):
because one of the serial killers I was going after
he had a newspaper article on the Hillside Strangler in
his residence. He's following other serial killers and what they're doing.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, okay, well let's get to Boston, one of my
favorite places. Let's go ahead and set the scene. There
are things that I since we're talking about the Boston Strangler,
and this is not a mystery. There is an update
that I think a lot of people probably haven't heard yet,
as well as you. You haven't heard this update, I'm sure.

(11:47):
But what I'm interested in is a couple of different aspects.
You know, we talk about why these guys do things
like Richard Cottingham. We talked about the Times Square serial
killer with that story. So there are a couple aspects
of this that I really want to hear your insights on,
Like I don't know if it's posing or and we'll

(12:07):
talk about that in a little bit, but body positioning,
where all these people are, how they're connected, doesn't make
a difference. It's sort of the why is he doing this?
Or are we overthinking? Did you feel like that with
Golden State Killer? Did you feel like every tiny little
thing had to be crucially important and this is what's
going to break the case. And I don't mean DNA,

(12:28):
I just mean, oh, this person knew this person and
you know their brother was the next victim or something.
Did you just get ever get hung up on that
kind of stuff very much?

Speaker 2 (12:38):
So with such a large series of cases, it is
paying attention to those small details, and often I would
find myself marching down this rabbit hole only to see
a dead end over and over and over again. But
that's just part of any you know, real who done
it type investigation.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, and we know also, you know, there's I don't
know if this is profiling, but there's only so far
that's going to take you until you get the really
hard evidence. But in this case, just like with Cottingham,
where we were where we kind of figured out that
he was murdering women who would just be like quote
unquote standard people in society, and then when he got

(13:21):
a divorce, he seemed to switch to sex workers and
what that means there are some pretty obvious things, but
you know some of this is supposition, I know.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, well, but that's also looking for patterns in a
series can provide insight into the offender, who the offender
might be, or what the offender's experiencing in their personal life.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
You're right, And let's start out by saying that I
have a two tier trigger warning here. One is the
sexual assault aspect of these cases. But then Ali, our researcher,
put in another note which I really appreciate about kind
of a particularly gruesome section. So I'll do you know
this trigger warning now and then I'll just flag people

(14:06):
that this next section. If you're very, very sensitive to this,
go ahead and thirty second your way through it. Okay,
this is a classic case. People still talk about big case.
So let's get going. Let's see if you can solve it. Paul,
no pressure. It's a two parter. I mean, nobody's surprised
by that. This is a massive story, Okay. Boston, nineteen
sixty two, Back Bay neighborhood. So I went to school

(14:29):
at Boston University undergrad and so I lived in this
area and it was very nice. Back Bay was purposely
built by filling in a part of the Bay Back
Bay to add more luxury housing. So it's always been
a nice area. I loved that area. I think of it.
I don't know if it's dramatically changed now, but quintessential.

(14:49):
I lived in a red brick building, you know, one
of these really like a brown stone. And when I
moved to Boston, besides the history, that was one of
the things that look the ivy and the red brick,
you know, it's so different than what I had in Texas,
and you've been to Boston, I'm pretty sure, right.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
Only passing through.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, So it's a city that I would like to explore.
One because it seems like a beautiful, cool city, but
second because of the.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
History and everywhere. It's like being when I go to London,
everywhere feels like historic. I know that's not the case,
but I just love Fanuel Hall and the countryside. And
so I'm gonna fangirl over Boston. Okay, you know, and
anybody who's fangirled over a city surely you must.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
That's first time I've ever heard that fangirling over city.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
I have a city crush on Boston and a university
crush on Boston University and on Cornell Randomly, I didn't
research at Cornell Universe. I love Cornell. So anyway, now
you know more about me. So this is where we are,
nineteen sixty two, and this is happening in the evening.
So with these cases, you know, like with the Cottingham case,

(16:04):
I will sometimes say, who do we think in her
inner circle? Blah blah, But there are so many people
here we don't really have time for inner circles, and
we know that they're all connected. So this is more
of like Wezza's guy thinking Thursday, June fifteenth, nineteen sixty two,
there is a twenty one year old man named Juris
Slesser's and he comes home to see his mother. His

(16:26):
mother's name is Anna, and she has an apartment in
the back bay. He wants to take her to church.
This would be kind of a normal routine. So Anna
is divorced and she's only been in this apartment for
two weeks. Up until then, she and Juras had been
in the same apartment in Summerville and he has a
job at MIT, so he had just gotten his own

(16:47):
place in Lexington. So they sort of split up, and
she is now in Boston proper. She's fifty six. She
is our victim, and she had just gotten home from
her job. It was a seamstress at five point thirty
that evening. Juris comes two hours later, so seven thirty
he comes and he sees Anna lying on the kitchen floor.

(17:11):
She's wearing a housecoat which has been ripped open, and
the fabric belt of the housecoat is found around her
neck and it appears she's been strangled by the cord
and there's a laceration at the back of her skull
and blood in her right ear, and I see this,
there's blood in the ear with a couple of people slash.

(17:32):
Blood in the mouth. Does that come with strangulation, because
you know, I know that she has a bash in
the back of her head. But I think ultimately they
rule this death by strangulation.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Well, the blood in the ear, that's very common. It's
very common when you have significant blows to the head.
So now you have potentially the base of the skull
underneath the brain could be fractured. You can get bleeding
that will come out the nose, out the ear, even
out the mouth, because it's all connected. So with strangulation,

(18:05):
generally you're not going to see significant bleeding out of
the mouth. And so if this is a significant amount
of blood, I would say she's got a fractured skull
in all likelihood.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
So let me tell you kind of as we move
forward what people say. So when they do an examination
on her, it is positive that she was sexually assaulted,
likely with an object, though the press doesn't know about
this at the time, they must see trauma.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Even though during sexual assault you can see vaginal trauma
as a result of just the male anatomy, oftentimes you
don't so it would be unusual to see some significant
trauma if it's just the male anatomy, and so they
must be seeing probably some pretty significant injuries and eternally thinking, Okay,

(19:01):
we've got what we call for an object insertion, and
it's a relatively common act that offenders do during sexual assault.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Okay, Well, as we move forward, I'm going to ask
you about circling back to Anna, just comparing her, which
we're saying is the beginning of this series. But as
you and I have said, who knows, We don't know,
but this is officially the beginning of it. It looks
like they're looking kind of in her apartment and appears
like the drawers in the apartment have been rifled through,

(19:34):
but they don't know if anything's been taken, because Anna
is the only one who really knows what's in this apartment,
because she's only been there a couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Well, I would ask if any of these drawers contain
the women's Anna's underwear or lingerie.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
I don't have a note about that. As far as
somebody taking it right as a souvenir or something, Yep, Okay,
they find fingerprints around the apartment that don't belong to
Anna or her son. Is the benefit of being in
a base brand new apartment that they, in theory, would
have cleaned it, cleaned off fingerprints before she moves in.

(20:06):
When they do quote unquote they're cleaning, I'm not sure
if they ever did that. Is that at least somewhat
helpful for the police to be able to.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Know when you fingerprint any space, you're likely going to
find fingerprints or you know, ridge detail from you know,
palms or whatever, even in the most clean types of apartments.
I would say it depends on, well, what surfaces did
they find fingerprints on, or these surfaces that are frequently cleaned,

(20:35):
you know, let's say a kitchen counter. Now you have
sort of a compressed period of time in which those
fingerprints were left, it raises the likelihood that they could
belong to the offender. However, even though fingerprints are very
fragile evidence, they can stay for years unprotected surfaces. I've

(20:56):
got a homicide case in which it turns out the
captain of the investigating agency his prints were found low
down on a closet door, and of course, why is
his princes in this homicide scene? He'd never responded with
law enforcement. Well, it turns out as a teenage boy
he lived in that house.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
And now you're talking decades later, his prints were still present.
So you're always going to find fingerprints. And you fingerprint
an apartment, you fingerprint a house, you're going to find
fingerprints that you can't identify to anybody that lives there.
And of course you go, well, maybe it's the offender.
You hope it is, But oftentimes these prints are to
just innocent people that had some point in the past

(21:38):
come in contact with whatever surfaces are being printed.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
The court that she was strangled with would have his
DNA right if he didn't wear gloves.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Very possibly, Yes, And you mentioned I guess it was
a jacket belt was wrapped around her neck.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, it says, so she's wearing a house coat and
the housecoat had been ripped open, and then the fat
gabric belt of the house coat is found around her neck. Okay,
appears she had been strangled by the cord. So maybe
the belt in the cord are kind of the same thing.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, So, you know, evaluating where you can find DNA,
you take a look at how the jacket is ripped open.
You know, where would the offender grab that jacket in
order to do that, that would be those are hot
spots for his contact DNA. Of course, the ligature the
belt would be where is he likely touching in order
to do the strangulation and he and you know, whether

(22:30):
he's tying a not or if he's.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Holding you know, this cord. You know, he's really.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Having to pull on that that belt in order to
for a period of time. So in this day and age,
you know, this is a DNA case just off of that,
but she also is sexually assaulted. You haven't said if
there was any semen detected there is a foreign object inserted?
Did they did he leave the foreign object behind?

Speaker 1 (22:56):
It doesn't sound like it. They can't identify it, and
it doesn't sound like they're a semen in this case.
There will be in future cases. Okay, Yeah, I was
thinking about that that the housecoat might have some DNA
on it. I mean, who knows, And I'll probably ask
you about that now. Actually, let me ask you kind
of a practical question about DNA. Let's say we call

(23:19):
Boston Police and say, hey, we've got a gazillion dollars
and we're going to run DNA everywhere and they say,
here uses housecoat belt that was around her neck and
we're looking for his DNA. How does that work with
a company that like your company that you work for.
Are you guessing on a tiny little section or do
are they able to swab or do whatever they do

(23:42):
on the whole belt? What are you spending your money on?

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Well, this is really the toughest part of the DNA
process is finding the DNA. A lot of money has
gone into improving the DNA testing technology, but there hasn't
been major improvements on how how to find the sources
of DNA that are probative. So when you're dealing with
something like the jacket or the belt, initially it's a

(24:08):
visual examination. Are there any stains? Do I see a
crusty stain on the jacket? Of course you're going to
need to do further testing. Is that semen? Is it saliva?
Does it contain DNA? Another visual examination is using an
alternate light source, so now you can find fluorescent material
that would stand out under different wavelengths of light in

(24:31):
the event of something like the belt where maybe there
isn't any visible stains. Now you can start swabbing areas
that you think the offender likely grabbed in order to
do the strangulation with the belt, and so there probably
multiple swabs would be taken across the length of the
belt itself. But this is one of the things that

(24:54):
people often overlook is that the analyst is not able
to test one hundred percent surface of this belt. So
if it comes back negative with whatever swabs are collected,
you can also go back to the belt and take
more swabs in different areas.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
And too many times an investigator will get a DNA
report saying no DNA found and they go, oh, I
guess not going to be able to move forward with
this case. And I was like, oh, hold on, I
need to see the DNA analyst notes, because the analyst
notes are going to show where he or she actually swabbed.
And I go, well, maybe let's take a swabbing or

(25:34):
a cutting from this untested area on the belt and
keep our fingers crossed that it actually has a fender DNA.
You can always do more when you have, you know,
physical evidence such as clothing.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Okay, well, let's keep an eye on DNA and physical evidence.
Let's talk about access for Anna's apartment. So the police
say that the building was being worked on, so they're
scaffolding all over this building. It's a small, four floor
apartment building, so anybody who hopped on this scaffolding would
have had access to her apartment. So the police interview

(26:10):
all of the workers who have been working on the building.
No new leads, and they interview a total of about
one hundred people just within those first few days in
Anna's death. Nothing so I would say that this case
went cold, except in two weeks something else happens and
then all of the stuff gets tied together. So let's
just say that Anna's investigation is paused until, you know,

(26:33):
we move on to these next two cases. So anything
that we need to talk about with Anna before we wrap.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Up, nope, I think I've got a pretty good handle
on what happened to Anna.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Okay, so yeah, let's move on.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
So we have two bodies that have been discovered now
in two different locations, two weeks after Anna's body is
discovered by her son within forty eight hours. So let
me start with this one because the police immediately link
these together, which was different than what happened with Richard
Cottingham and Times Square. The women in that case, they

(27:06):
were kind of all over, you know, there was some
in Long Island. There were a couple in Jersey and
then in the city. But they immediately say these are connected. Okay,
So both women are in their sixties. There's a woman
named Nina Nichols. She's sixty eight and she lives in Boston.
Helen Blake, So Nina and then Helen. Helen Blake is

(27:28):
sixty five. She lives in nearby Lynn, Massachusetts, which is
right outside of Boston. So Nina was a physical therapist
and Helen was a nurse. And this becomes sort of
important moving forward. So firstly, I'm going to tell you
what happened, but this is a little bit of a
rinse repeat from what happened with Anna. Anna was fifty six.

(27:52):
One of these women is sixty five and the other
one is sixty eight. Does age tell us anything at
this point or do we need to see victims of
this same relative age continue on in order to pick
up on some kind of something with a series.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Age is a factor, for sure. However, with just age,
I can't really draw any conclusions, you know, because I
need to take a look at the totality of the victimology.
With what we can discern to try to see, well,
why is the offender purposely choosing women that are mid
fifties are older. There could be a sexual interest in

(28:32):
older women that this offender has. This may be something
where the offender recognizes that these women are more easily
overpowered oftentimes. Well, actually, I just talked about this on
my other podcasts now retired FBI profiler Mark Sepharic. You know,

(28:54):
he's an expert on the sexual assault of the elderly
in his studies, he's even published on this. Is that
when you see the very elderly being sexually assaulted and
or killed, oftentimes you're looking for a teenage boy that
lives in the area. And it's because this boy doesn't
have the self confidence to be able to overpower a

(29:17):
younger but adult woman, and so we'll go and attack
this elderly person. Not because that's their primary sexual interest,
it's because of almost the practicality to that offender.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
I've never heard that before. That's fascinating. And you know,
I've heard a lot of different cases really focused in
on the elderly, not always involving sexual assault, but that
makes sense. It's interesting. Okay, so both women both Nina
and Helen have been strangled with one of their own
silk stockings. So we're used to the silk stockings or

(29:52):
the stalkings of today for women pantyhose that are connected.
These were individual So when I say stockings, that's what
I mean. I might say one stocking, I may say
two stockings, but they're individual stockings. They're not connected. Okay,
So strangled with their own silk stockings which were left
around their necks. So Helen Blake's braw was also found

(30:14):
around her neck as well as the stocking, so her
downstairs neighbor heard noises from above, like furniture being moved
in the afternoon on the day that Helen had been killed.
Both women were found with blood in and around both ears.
Both appear to have been violently sexually assaulted, also seemingly

(30:35):
with objects, And again they don't share this with the press.
I don't know if this is something where the police
are withholding or it's nineteen sixty two and that would
traumatize readers too much. I don't know what the answer
would be.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
It could be a hold back, for sure.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
This is where if you have somebody who's wanting some
sort of notoriety for confessing to this crime, but is
not responsible that person provide the details that law enforcement
knows about the case. And it's easy to assume, well,
there's a sexual assault when you're dealing with female victims,
but well, what happened during the sexual assault? Give me

(31:13):
the details that I can corroborate with the physical evidence.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Allie wanted us to note, and I think is important.
There was a writer named Susan Kelly who wrote a
book in ninety six called The Boston Stranglers, and she
was able to access police records. I don't think anybody
else had access before. So some of these details, like
the blood in the ears comes specifically from Susan's book,
but most of that comes from the police records. So

(31:42):
I think that's so far going to be one of
the most important sources that we have at this point.
The police think that these two murders are linked. So
these are both murders that are while one is in
Lynn and one is in Boston proper it seems like
kind of the same mom and it's within forty eight
hours of each other and within two weeks of Anna,

(32:04):
so they think everything is linked. All three of these
which seemed kind of quick to me. But I mean,
what do you think, so you know the things in common,
does it seem irrefutable that these three are linked.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
I wouldn't say it's irrefutable. However, it's best to proceed
with the investigation with the consideration that they are potentially linked.
Now you may find that they actually aren't. And so
in many ways, it's you're kind of having to investigate
these cases as standalone cases in addition to looking at

(32:37):
them as part of a series, and typically law enforcement,
particularly from this era, probably would not consider these cases linked.
So this tells me that these investigators are familiar with
the types of crimes that are occurring in this Boston
area and that these cases stand out. It's not like

(32:57):
they're having women strangled on a consistent basis over the
course of the last ten years by a variety of
different offenders. And you may think, well, that's kind of
well obvious. Well no, in the Bay Area, that's what
we were dealing with in the nineteen seventies is all
sorts of different serial offenders were committing almost like the

(33:18):
same type of crime at the same time.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
Well, a little bit of a note, there's a movie
about the Boston Strangler, and it stars Kiera Knightley and
Carrie Coon, which I've heard is a great movie. So
the real reporters were named Loretta McLachlin and Gene Cole,
so they get a lot of credit for linking these
cases together, but it seems like the police were already
on that track to begin with, just like you had

(33:41):
mentioned sort of the circumstances. But these two women were
the ones who coined the phrase Boston Strangler, just like
Michelle McNamara came up with the name. The press always
has I think the best names, right, she came up
with Golden State Killer, right.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Because you know, people think law enforcement develops these monikers themselves, generally,
don't you know, So it's the press that will come
up with Easteria rapist, Vicelia Ransacker. And then Michelle of
course was like, well what does that mean? And let's
come up with Golden State Killer. And you know there's

(34:15):
some you know, professional friends of mine really abhor the
use of monikers because it seems like it glamorizes the
bad guy. But the reality is that there's a practical
aspect if you've got multiple serial killers like Sacramento had
multiple rapists in the nineteen seventies committing attacks at the
same time, it's so much easier to say, well, these

(34:37):
cases are associated with easter A rapists, these cases are
with the wooly rapist, et cetera, versus well, you know,
case number eight over here is a different guy, you know,
So it's just an easy way to check the box going, Hey,
this group of cases is associated with this particular offender
who goes by this moniker.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Well, and I think also from the precess standpoint, having
that phrase Boston strangler in a headline, you're going to
get so much attention because people recognize it. You don't
have to tell the story maybe over and over again
because they've been keeping up with this one particular series
of murders. And yes, it's the salacious part of it,
but more eyes on a story like this when they're

(35:18):
pursuing someone I assume would be better. So these two
women came up with Boston strangler. So now we have
Paul three victims right now. Okay, so we've got Helen,
and then we've got Anna. Then we've got Nina and
we have Helen. So they've made this connection. And here's
some more information that we have about Helen and about Nina.

(35:38):
In both cases, the police think that the women must
have known their attacker or believed him to be like
some kind of service provider. I don't know who that
would be, maintenance person. Because there was no sign of
forced entry in either apartment. We've talked about this over
and over again again. Will not show a sign of
forced entry. You can scare somebody and they'll go right
back into the apartment. But you know, it seems significant

(36:01):
there's no sign of forced entreat. Both women were sexually assaulted,
and you know, both apartments have been ransacked. So is
the ransacking kind of secondary? I'm assuming the primary has
to be the sexual assault.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
No, for sure, you know, and offenders like like I
speculate with with Anna, you know, it's possible that this
offender is looking for her underwear drawer, you know, to
take something with him, and you may have the same
thing happening with Nina and Helen. But offenders will if
they're committing you know, let's say these sexual homicides, they

(36:37):
also will steal valuables for financial gain. You know, they're
doing both, you know, so it really is going to
be depended upon Okay, where is the offender targeting to
do this ransacking, if you will. If it's areas where
the victims likely would have kept let's say, their jewelry,
then maybe he's financially motivated. But if he's going through

(37:01):
the drawers and it's clothing stuff, then that sounds more
of what we would call a fetish burglar, even though
in this case he's a serial killer.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Well, now we're moving on to potentially a fourth victim,
and now you're going to have to tell me what
you think because the police have their doubts. Less than
two weeks after that. So this is July eleventh, so
this is about four weeks from the beginning of the
series with Anna. There's a Roxbury woman which is in
Boston named Margaret Davis, and she's found strangled and killed

(37:31):
in a hotel in the South end of Boston. At
the time, her death is reported as connected to the others,
but ultimately the police don't really buy into that. She
checked in to a hotel that night with a man.
They both used fake names. I don't know much about
Margaret's background. Most people think that the man who checked
in with her killed her, and I don't know if

(37:54):
they've ever tracked down this man. But the police feel
like this doesn't fit in very well with the other ones,
even though she is strangled, So not every strangling is
connected to the Boston strangler. It sounds like just the.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Act of strangulation, whether it be manual or ligature, strangulation,
is a very very common way to kill somebody, particularly
if the offender is a more powerful human than the victim.
In terms of trying to connect Margaret to the other three,
just based on the fact that she was strangled, that's

(38:27):
just not enough data points for me to be able
to say, yeah, this must be connected. I think it's
evaluating more about Margaret and ultimately, you know, if she's
checking in under a pseudonym and this male is checking
in under a pseudonym, well they're going to the hotel
to have sex, and so there's a chance that there

(38:51):
is DNA evidence that today, of course, we might be
able to use to see is Margaret truly connected to
the other three.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Well, we're going to take Margaret out of this, and
now we're back to three about a month later, on
August twenty first, So we started with June fifteenth, so
you know, a little more than two months later, they
discover a body of a seventy five year old woman.
Her name is Ida Irga, and she's found lying between

(39:20):
two chairs in her apartment. And this is what I
meant by positioning. So she is found lying between two
chairs with one foot propped up on each chair. This
is withheld from the press. It's reported that this has happened,
you know, in her fifth floor apartment. She has been
sexually assaulted and she's also been strangled in this case

(39:43):
with a pillowcase. And then we can talk about some
blood because there's a little bit more blood in this
case than what we've experienced. So lying between two chairs
with one foot propped up on each chair, what does
that mean?

Speaker 2 (39:56):
The immediate thought is this could be a form of posing,
you know, where the offender has taken the time in
order to put her feet up on these chairs. And
this may have a significance to the offender. This may
be something that he you know, what I would call

(40:17):
is trying to do a taunt, you know, in terms
of putting this victim's body in an unusual position to
where now he's trying to convey a message to the
people who either find the victim or to law enforcement
themselves right now, Like I can think of a case
in which the offender put the woman's legs up onto

(40:39):
a sofa after he cut her throat, and the reason
the offender did that was to aid in her bleeding out.
Doesn't sound like that's the scenario here, So right now,
I'm going to say that this appears that it's a
type of posing. Can't say exactly what the offender is
thinking by doing this.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
So and then I want to talk about objects as
far as what you're choosing, what he's choosing to use
on these different victims, because you know, we have panty hose,
I mean they're found objects. It's panty hose. In Anna's case,
it was the belt around her house coat. Then we've
got panty hose in Helen and Nina's case. And now

(41:19):
we're talking about a pillow case. So let me tell
you about blood. First. There's dry blood under her body
and blood covering her face, her mouth, and her ears.
There is a trail of blood leading from her bedroom
where it looks like the attack originated, to where she
is found in the living room. Does that mean she

(41:40):
was carried and placed Do we think I don't have
photos of that before you ask about.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
No, that's where I would need to see the blood patterns,
the blood flows on her. I mean, she gets a
bleeding injury, and right now I don't know what that
bleeding injury is. But let's say you have let's say,
a laceration to your scalp, and now you go upright,
you stand up, or you're seated, that blood is going
to flow with gravity. If you see blood flows that
are flowing let's say from her forehead backwards, then that

(42:10):
sounds like if she's bleeding in the bedroom, sounds like, well,
she is in a face up position during the time
which she is moved from the bedroom to the final position.
So that's part of the evaluation of the blood patterns
to try to reconstruct, well, what exactly is going on

(42:30):
with Ida and the movement of her body.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Okay, well, let's see. I wish we had some photos
of that. I was searching around for that too, but
it doesn't seem like we do. Police do question a suspect,
but we don't know what this person's name is. He
had been in Boston at the time of the earlier
murders also, but had since gone home to Rye, New York,
which is an affluent suburb, and was not in Boston

(42:54):
during Ida's murder. He's reported to be from a prominent family,
but you know, after Ida's murder, police cross them off
the list. So he was looked in for the first
few murders, and then when Ida's murder came and he
wasn't here, they assumed that he shouldn't be questioned any
further on the other three murders. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, it depends on how strong of a suspect he
was for the other three, you know. And then this
is also going can you truly link Ida's homicide to
the first three? You know, right now it's say he's
at least a suspect. They have tabled him. I would
say he's not eliminated from the first three based off

(43:36):
the fact that he did not. I mean, they can
alibi him out for for Ida's case. But one of
the things that you know, you brought up the ligatures
that this offender is using, and I do want to
kind of address that. It is very, very common for
these serial predators to utilize women's clothing articles to strangle
them with. That is a frequent finding when you have

(43:59):
strangul homicides of females, and oftentimes it is pantyhose or bras.
And part of this is the practicality you have in
essence of cordage, you know, that can be fashioned out
of these these women's clothing articles and used as a ligature.
But there's also an aspect that this is part of

(44:20):
the offender's fantasies. You know, if you ever pay attention
to the imagery in those old true detective magazines, you
frequently see women who are strangled and bound with pantyhose.
This is the type of imagery that these offenders look
at and they develop fantasies about. And so with two

(44:43):
of the women, Nina and Helen, you know, they're both
strangled with their stockings, and then Helen had the bra
also around her neck. However, with Anna, the first one,
she had the jacket belt and then Ida had a
pillow case. Well, those objects seem to be more chosen

(45:04):
for the practical aspect there within reach, and the offender
knew he would be able to use them as ligatures.
So at this point I'm kind of leaning towards even
with the women that are strangled with the stockings that
may not be purposely chosen for sexual fantasy aspects. It
may be the practical aspect of this is something that

(45:27):
is well within reach while he's interacting with those victims.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
You know, my first book was about the serial killer
John Reginald Christy, who was in nineteen fifty two nineteen
fifty three London, and he strangled the majority of his
victims with pantyhose, and when asked later on about it,
he had always felt very physically weak. I remember him
saying panty hose made it easier than using his hands,

(45:53):
which I thought was interesting. I mean, is that the
case there's such a small area with panty hose, you
can really cut off the air quickly, right.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Pantyhose are extremely effective ligatures, and they're easy to tie
into a tight knot in many ways. Yes, I agree
that for Christy, you know, sounds like he recognized, probably
through practical experience, that it was very hard for him
to manually strangle a victim. And I've actually heard other

(46:23):
offenders or read other offenders who have come to that
same conclusion. They're going, it's a lot harder than what
I thought, including the Happy Face killer.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
I think Jess.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Person, huge, huge man, and he in his if you
want to call it a biography, you know he's talking
about Yeah, I was surprised at how hard it was
to strangle. And this is where offenders may initially manually strangle,
but then they will grab the pantyhose and basically since

(46:54):
that onto the net to be sure that the victim
is going to die.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
And you've talked about that when we hear that phrase overkill,
where sometimes it's not overkilled with stabbing where you're so
mad at the person that you want to stab them.
As many times it's that you're so freaked out that
you haven't killed them that you're doing everything you can
to figure it out, right.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, well it's how many of these killers are expert killers,
you know. So I want to make sure this person
is dead. It's we see this all the time in
gang bang shootings. They will shoot their rival fifteen times
in the head, and part of that is to send
a message, but part of it is just their inexperience.
They just want to make sure that the you know,

(47:37):
the rival is dead. So that's where like I've got
a case where I have a father and son who
are executed and each was just shot a single time
in the back of the head. I'm going, that's not
a gang banger, you know, That's not that this person
had confidence that these bullets were going to do the job.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
When you were talking about the young boys or teenagers
attacking older women because they don't have that confidence, you know,
to overpower a woman in her twenties or thirties, I
was thinking also of Christie. So Christie, I think knew
his physical limitations, and his method from the very beginning
was to get women. This is starting with right after

(48:17):
writ in the middle of World War two, to get
women to come back and say, you have a bad
cough from smog. That's the other half of my book,
is a smog, you have a bad cough. I have
a certificate in first aid. And he would bring a
woman back and he would say, breathe this in. I've
made this concoction. Breathe it in. And it was like
a glass bowl almost that had kind of a mental

(48:38):
smell and it was vapors and they would breathe in.
But they didn't clearly see or understand that there was
a tube going also from the bowl to the back
of his stove. So that he could open the tap
and knock him out like that, and between that and
the hoes that he was able to do some pretty
horrific things. But it was interesting to think about that

(48:59):
sort of understanding what his limitation was.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
I don't know if we're diverging a little too far,
but you think about some of these serial killers who
target men, and what is a common process They are
now dealing with somebody that is physically equal or maybe
even more capable than them. How do they overpower these
male victims? Well, they drug him, right, Randy Kraft. You know,

(49:25):
he's picking up young marines are much more powerful than
he is as a male, and he's drugging them. They
have no idea what he's about to do to them.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Well, the reason that I say that is we are
continuing on with older women. So we've got, you know,
these women who are all older, and the youngest one
is fifty six, and Ida is seventy five. She's the
oldest one we have so far. Now we're going to
talk about Jane Sullivan and she's sixty seven. Do you
want to talk about age first? I mean this is

(49:56):
now number five.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
I believe, Yeah, Well, there there's a definite pattern, you know.
And and part of this is does the offender really
know these victims true age or is he just judging,
you know, certain criteria that he associates with an older
victim and that's why he's choosing these women. So with
Anna being fifty six, significantly younger than the other three,

(50:20):
she made to his eyes may have looked older and
he may have thought she was older. Don't know, but
there's a pattern here. And now why is he choosing
women that are, you know, basically sixty years and older. Well,
he may have a sexual preference for older women, or
these women represent somebody in his life that he is

(50:44):
trying to get back at by proxy. He's like an
anger retaliatory victim. As an example, maybe he has a
mommy issue and these women, these older women are representative
of his mother, and so instead of attacking and killing
and sexually assaulting mom, he's doing it to these women.
That's just you know, speculation, but that's a real scenario.

(51:07):
That's like Ed Kemper.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, So I'm just gonna say Ed Kemper, he had
a terrible childhood, he says, with his mother, and of
course kills her and does some pretty horrific things. But
and then he says that it's like over and over again.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Right, So that's where right now can't draw a conclusion,
but there is a pattern.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
He is going after women that are sixty years or older.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Well, I didn't think you needed victims pictures, but I'm
gonna go ahead and email them to you right now,
just because I want you to see what he saw.
So if you when the email gets there, if you
look and open that up, let me know when you
get it. So I'm looking at newspaper clipping.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
I think newspaper clipping showing Anna, Helen Ida and the
next victim, Jane.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
They look older. Anna doesn't, but everybody looks older to me.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Oh, I will tell I think Anna looks older than fifty. Yeah,
you know, and part of it may be hairstyle. You know,
I couldn't tell you what what you would call this
these hairstyles. But all of these women have a shorter
hair style that you typically see women adopt as they
get older. I mean, all of them do look elderly

(52:18):
to my eyes.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Yeah, I agree. Now we'll talk about Jane. How many
we have? Now, this is number six.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Jane is six and Anina Helen Ida, and Jane is
number five.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
We've talked six, but we were not counting Margaret.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Okay, so Jane is number five. So I'm gonna put
you in charge of keeping track of all of these people. Okay,
here we go. She is sixty seven and this is
happening on August thirtieth, So we were at mid June before.
Now we're at August thirtieth, and this is victim number five.
She's discovered in the bathtub, so this is different. She's
discovered in the bathtub of her apartment. They actually use

(52:54):
the word post here. She's found naked, imposed on her
knees in the tub, with her feet eat up over
the back of the tub, and her face is on
the bottom of the tub, underneath the faucet, partially submerged
in about six inches of water. She's found with a
housecoat draped over her.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Oh that's interesting, Okay.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
And they said she's been dead ten days. She had
lived by herself and no one came to check on her. Yeah,
so she was badly decomposed. But they're saying strangulation, but
he doesn't say with what to the press. So the
police say, we're back to Stockings two stockings, her stockings.
It appears like she was not sexually assaulted. But I mean,
you know, we know the caveat to that there is

(53:36):
matted blood on the side of her scalp.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
Is there pooled blood somewhere else in the house.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
So the newspaper reports are there are no signs of
a struggle. So now you know, they're thinking that somebody
talked their way in. But police reports show there is
blood in multiple rooms of the house. It doesn't say
where they think it starts or stops, and it doesn't
say huge pools of blood. Sure her purse is found open,
there's no other sign of robbery. And they say the

(54:02):
outer door of Jane's apartment building was often left unlocked,
so anybody could come into the apartment building off the street.
But somebody would have talked their way in. I guess.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Okay, So the matted blood. The way I'm visualizing that
and I've seen this is it sounds like she may
have laid at a location with her hair in a
pool of blood, if you will, for a period of time.
Then the offender has moved her, but the blood has
started to dry in her hair. The offender is moving
her into the bathtub. Now, the positioning of her on

(54:34):
her knees with her face down by the faucet, the
way you're describing that position, it almost sounds like he
was I don't know if it's true posing, or he
was actually placing her in the bathtub in order to
potentially drown her, you know, put her in a body
of water. Regardless, he's manipulating the body, probably after death

(54:59):
and moving her into the for some reason. But the
covering with the house coat is significant when an offender
takes the time to cover, Oftentimes that offender is not
wanting to see what he's done to the victim. Sometimes
this suggests that the offender and the victim had some

(55:20):
sort of knowledge of each other, like being a friend
or were in a relationship, and the offender is now
not wanting to be reminded of what he has done.
So the covering of the body does have some behavioral
significance that could limit the suspect pool Now, not necessarily.
You know, he may be covering her. He may be

(55:40):
an absolute stranger to Jane and he's just taking the
time to cover her for one reason or another. But
I pay attention to that type of action and it's like, Okay,
why is the offender covering Jane.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Well, now there's even more detail that I think complicates things.
Police are feel like they're on a little bit of
a track because I know I kind of screwed over this.
But we have three victims now who are all in healthcare.
There were at different hospitals, but Nina was a physical
therapist at one hospital, Helen was a nurse at another hospital,

(56:15):
and Jane was a nurse at a different hospital. We
also have Anna, who was unaffiliated with a hospital. She
was a seamstress. I didn't I mean, she was retired.
I don't think she had anything happening. She was seventy five.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
And I think it's important, you know, to look for
those types of patterns in the victimology and go, oh,
there seems to be a bump in terms of this
medical connection that the victims had. However, you also have
to take into consideration, well, this is a pretty common
profession for women, especially in nineteen sixties, right, the nursing aspect.

(56:50):
So just by chance are you going to have during
a series, are you going to have multiple women that
are all nurses? I would say, yeah, there's a likelihood
you know, But after all, consider is he choosing these
women based off of their occupation? Is he at a
medical facility, following them home or whatever? That's always a possibility.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Well, here we go. The police commissioner now says older
women need to keep their doors locked securely, not to
open the door for anyone they don't personally know. So
now they're trying to alert older women that this guy
might be targeting them. So I don't know if he
reads the news poll, but there's a break in the

(57:30):
strangling for several months, so he doesn't do anything for
several months that we know of. So we went from
August thirtieth now until December fifth, and now we're going
in the totally opposite direction because our next victim is
a nineteen year old college student. And you know that happens,
of course a couple months later. But that is with

(57:52):
the last victim is when the police commissioner said, if
you're older, you better watch out, And now we're at
a nineteen year old. Do you think that's a coincidence?

Speaker 2 (58:00):
You know, I think the offender is following the news
and is now shifting, But there also may be a
evolution of the offender A natural evolution of the offender.
It's sort of like talking about when you have the
very elderly victim, you're looking potentially at a non confident
teenage boy or somebody who doesn't have the confidence to

(58:24):
take on a more robust victim. You may have an
offender in this series who has now killed five women
and now has the confidence of being able to commit
these types of crimes and is now shifting to a
younger victim. But I'm very curious to find out about

(58:44):
what happened to this nineteen year old.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Well, and this is also another deviation because all of
the victims before, the five women before, were white, and
this woman, Sophie Clark, is black. Okay, let me tell
you about Sophie, and then let me tell you about
a case in between Jane the seventy five year old
and Sophie the nineteen year old, and whether or not
that fits in between, because there's a lot of debate

(59:07):
about another woman who happens in between, but we just
aren't sure. So December fifth, I'm sure it's cold, it's Boston.
There's a nineteen year old college student, Sophie Clark, as
I said, she's found naked by her roommate in the
entry way of her apartment, and she's been strangled with
three silk stockings, and her half slip is also found

(59:30):
around her head and her neck. There's a handkerchief in
her mouth. There's evidence she's been sexually assaulted, and I
think for the first time there is seamen found. It's
on a rug near her. So that's Sophie. But then
I can tell you, you know, of course, about the one
in between and the debate. They're in back Bay by
the way, which is where Anna lived, our first victim.

(59:53):
The buildings are actually only about one hundred yards apart
in this case.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
You know, I think one of the things that stands
out about Sophie case. You know, she of course is
being strangled with the stockings, just like we see with
some of the prior victims. The handkerchief in the mouth,
and I'm assuming this this handkerchief is something that was
Sophie's or present within her room or something, and is
not the offender's.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Handkerchief, not that we know of.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
You're right, okay, so you know that might be an
act the offender is doing in order to gag her,
you know'll just prevent her from being able to scream
out while he's attacking her, the semen being found on
the rug, I would not be shocked if there was
semen nearby. With these other cases, this guy's masturbating after

(01:00:41):
he's killed these victims or while he's you know, holding
them down, and they just didn't look for it and
didn't see it as easily as the semen stain was
apparent in Sophie's case.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Well, let me take let me finish up with Sophie
and then I'll tell you about the woman who came
in between. There's a neighbor in the building that tells
the police that the same day that Sophie was murdered,
a man had gotten her to open up her apartment
door to him, claiming to be a house painter. But
the neighbor says she could hear him using crude language

(01:01:12):
with Sophie, and basically Sophie said, you know, you've got
to go. My husband's coming home. She wasn't married, but
that's how he left. They have not been able to
find this guy. It sounds like they've questioned people, the
men throughout the building and got nowhere with this, So
that could be how this guy has gotten into everybody

(01:01:34):
else's house before. He said, I'm a house painter.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
So if I understand right, a witness actually hears somebody
posing as a house painter and interacting with Sophie prior
to the date of the homicide.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
It looks like earlier in the day.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Earlier in the day, and then he comes back at
some point after that. Is that how I'm interpreting things?

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
I don't know that. The neighbor says. This guy shows
up early. He says, I'm a painter. Sophie's kind of
talking to him, and then he starts saying some obscene
things with crude language, and she says, my husband's coming.
You better get out of here, and she shuts the door,
and then she's dead hours later.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
All right, So we don't know exactly how this man,
if he is the killer, how he's getting back into her.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Apartment exactly, But again no signs of forced entrgue with
Sophie's apartment. She is studying to be a nurse. We
do not know if she had done any work in
a hospital setting by this point. That's not something that
the reporting came up with. But again the nurse, So
now they're going to be warning people in healthcare between
the ages of nineteen and seventy five. I'm assuming, you know,

(01:02:42):
they're trying to figure out who is this guy targeting
at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
You know, Sophie obviously stands out because of her race
and her age. However, it is not uncommon to see
in a series victims of a variety of races, of
a variety of ages, even though she's a young black female.
Most certainly this seems to be consistent with the same

(01:03:08):
offender as with the older women.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
And we saw that with Cottingham too. In that case,
there was a variety of different types of people. So
the case in between Jane at the end of August
and Sophie in December, there was a woman named Modeste Freeman,
thirty seven, also black. She was killed and her body
was found in the street in Boston. She was strangled,

(01:03:34):
but she was also very badly beaten, and ultimately the
police don't think this is part of the series, even
though she was younger and black. So there are some
people who believe that she was the first in his
deviation away from elderly white women, but the police aren't
buying into it. It's a little different in the street
and severely beaten. We haven't had that with any of

(01:03:56):
the other victims. But I also know there could be
escalation and all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Oh, sure, there's so many dynamics that can occur during
the commission of a crime. You know, she fought back harder,
He's having to amp up the violence to keep her
under control. This is just where there isn't enough information. Yeah,
and this is where it's very very hard to do
linkage based off of circumstances because most certainly this offender

(01:04:20):
could attack a woman out there on the street. It
sounds like it's such a significant deviation that it must
be a different offender.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
It's like, no, it could be.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
But you also have other crimes occurring that are unrelated
to the series. So this is where in this particular case,
you still have to consider it as maybe part of
the series, but you also have to consider it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
As stand alone.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
And nowadays is where he goes, I hope there's DNA.
Can I associate this case with the others or do
I have offender DNA? It's showing that it is not
part of the series. It's really tough to draw conclusion
just based off of this type of information.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Well, who is considered officially Victim Number seven is a
woman named Patricia Bessett. She's twenty three. She's found in
her apartment, which is also in Back Bay, just like
Sophie Clark's apartment and Anna's apartment. Police believe that she
had been killed the night before, so her body's discovered

(01:05:21):
on New Year's Eve, but they think it happened on
December thirtieth, so this would have been a few weeks
three weeks or so after Sophie's murder. She's in bed,
covers are pulled up to her chin. She's been strangled
with several stockings tied together with a shirt. There's evidence
that she This is what I was confused about. Okay,

(01:05:43):
there's evidence that she had had sex shortly before her death,
but it's not clear that she was sexually assaulted. She
has a boyfriend who is cleared. What does that mean?
Why would they think that there's evidence that she had sex.
They don't say condom or anything like that. I don't know.
I was confused.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
My thought is is that, you know, it's possible that
they're seeing some sort of drainage, vaginal drainage. Okay, why
they don't think that it's related.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Not enough trauma, probably see.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
And that's that's just such a misconception, you know, that
that a sexual assault, the act of rape is going
to just completely traumatize injure if you will, vaginally, erectly,
And that's that just doesn't happen that frequently. Sometimes you
see it, oftentimes you don't.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
And just to be clear, now Patricia is another woman
who is white. So you know, we had Sophie Clark
and now Patricia is back to well, I mean she's
young too, twenty three now.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
But this is just part of any series, you know,
as you start to see the different victims that the
offender is going after, why is he choosing these victims?
Sometimes it is opportunity that overrides everything else, you know.
And so maybe he saw an opportunity with Sophie, and
even though she doesn't fit in from a race standpoint
with the other victims, he's just now, I've got an

(01:07:06):
opportunity here, I'm going to go after her. With Patricia,
i mean, she's attacked in her bed, she strangles, talkings
that he's put the sheet up over her, he's covering
her up. I would say he's almost leaving her to
make it look like she's asleep.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
But there's that again, that behavior of covering the body
that might be similar to what he did with Jane,
covering her with the coat in the bathtub. He may
psychologically be doing that to these particular victims for some reason.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Yeah, because he didn't do that with a He posed
the woman with one foot up and you know, on
one chair and one on the other. It seems so different.
The police wonder if he knows her because there's two
cups of coffee, one black and one with cream, and
so they're thinking, oh, maybe she knew them. I'm not
really buying that, but who knows. Maybe you know, he

(01:08:00):
pretended to be a painter and she came in, and
you know, we don't really know she is one month pregnant, Okay,
so she wouldn't have even known that she was. Most likely,
I'm assuming rights.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
That's probably it likely if she's just one month pregnant.
Maybe she's starting to, you know, suspect that she's pregnant.
But like the two cups of coffee, this is where
like interviewing the boyfriend would be important. You know, Yeah,
were you over earlier or the night before, something that
you guys have coffee, you know, does she have friends
that have come over and you know she's made them coffee.

(01:08:31):
But it's also possible, you see these nice, nice individuals,
somebody posing as a house painter knocks on the door. Hey,
come on in, I'll let you take a look at
the apartment to see what your job is going to
be like, can I make you a cup of coffee?

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
It turns out he's a killer.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
Yeah, I think that's Those are all possibilities. So now
we have these seven victims, and we have a sprawling
case crossing over you know, different ages, different races, different
areas of the city, but all either in Boston or
very close to Boston. We're trying to figure out. There
doesn't seem to be forced entry. They all seem to

(01:09:08):
have been sexually assaulted in one way. Patricia is a
big question mark. I'm not quite sure you know what
they're thinking they're But we still have more people to
go and we have a hit capacity for part one
of this episode. So you can wrap up if you want,
or you can save it all all that energy for
the second episode because there's a lot more happening.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
Well, I think we should save it for the next
episode and open up with a summary, just so we
can get everybody caught up as to where where things
are at.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
We're on the same page, pole Holes as usual as.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
Always, all right, Kate Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Okay, so I will see you next week and percolate
in your little mind what you want about the Boston Strangler.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
All right, sounds good.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
This has been an exactly right production for.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
Our sources and show notes go to exactly rightemedia dot
com slash Buried Bones sources.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Baried Bones Pod.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now.