Casey Sherman, the nephew of the youngest recognized sufferer of the Boston Strangler, doesn’t imagine that the person who confessed to the infamous murders was the best suspect.
“I actually don’t imagine Albert DeSalvo did it,” Sherman instructed Fox Information Digital. “I’m going again to the psychological profile developed by Albert DeSalvo’s personal psychologist, Dr. Ames Robey, who created the profiles of all of the potential suspects. He instructed me in an in depth interview that he didn’t assume DeSalvo was able to murder.”
“Albert DeSalvo was a sexual predator,” Sherman mentioned. “He was a con man. He was a thief. He was definitely benefiting from girls in a bodily manner by these sexual assaults. However DeSalvo by no means murdered these girls.”
The killings, which happened between 1962 and 1964 within the Boston space, are explored in a brand new Oxygen true-crime documentary, “The Boston Strangler: Unheard Confession.” It options never-before-heard audio made by DeSalvo, who was murdered in jail in 1973.
The particular is hosted by Sherman, an writer who beforehand wrote a ebook concerning the 1964 homicide of his aunt, Mary Sullivan.
Fox Information Digital reached out to the Boston Police Division for remark concerning the movie and Sherman’s claims.
“Rising up, I heard whispers about my aunt’s homicide,” Sherman mentioned. “Someday, I lastly approached my mom, who was 17 when her 19-year-old sister was killed. They have been finest buddies. They’d deliberate to dwell their lives collectively, elevate households collectively and develop previous as sisters collectively. All of that was stolen from my mom.”
“I noticed her get emotional for the primary time,” Sherman recalled. “I did what any little one would do — I hugged her. I mentioned, ‘Mother, not less than they bought the man.’ She checked out me and mentioned, ‘Casey, I don’t know in the event that they ever did.’
“My mom didn’t have any proof to help her perception — it was a sister’s instinct, a bond that might by no means be damaged.”
For many years, Sherman has investigated Sullivan’s homicide. In 2013, investigators introduced that DNA checks carried out on DeSalvo’s exhumed stays confirmed he killed Sullivan and was probably answerable for the opposite victims. Whereas Sherman initially supported the findings, over time he grew skeptical about how the DNA proof was offered and interpreted.
“Once I interviewed everybody related to the case, I started to discover a a lot totally different story,” Sherman mentioned. “I spoke with about 50 witnesses and individuals who labored on the Boston Strangler process drive. One unique member believed all through his complete profession that authorities pinned these murders on the mistaken man. There have been a number of different suspects.”
13 girls between the ages of 19 and 85 have been sexually assaulted and killed, crimes that terrified the area. All of the victims have been strangled with articles of their very own clothes; one was additionally stabbed repeatedly.
The Boston Strangler was dubbed “America’s Jack the Ripper” by the press. Just like the notorious killer of Victorian London, the serial killer terrorized a significant metropolis with a string of brutal murders that focused girls and left the nation gripped by worry.
DeSalvo, a blue-collar employee and Military veteran who was married with youngsters, confessed to the slayings. On the time, he was a affected person at Bridgewater State Hospital, which housed the criminally insane, The Related Press reported.
Police lacked proof to convey DeSalvo to trial. He was by no means convicted of the killings and was as an alternative sentenced to life in jail in 1967 for a sequence of unrelated assaults. DeSalvo recanted his confession earlier than he was stabbed to demise in a maximum-security jail, in line with the outlet.
“There are 60 hours of confession tapes from Albert DeSalvo,” Sherman mentioned. “What you hear within the documentary is just a pattern. One investigator stored the tapes — thought-about the holy grail on this case — as a result of on the time, nothing tied DeSalvo to any of the murders. I discovered that this man had them in his possession. I constructed a friendship with him over a number of months and at last bought him to let me hearken to the tapes.”
“Albert DeSalvo confessed to occasions that by no means occurred,” Sherman claimed. “There have been obvious errors in these confessions. John Bottomley, who led the interrogation, had no expertise in prison investigations — he was an actual property lawyer who had by no means questioned a suspect earlier than.
“He supplied main questions and confirmed DeSalvo images of the crime scenes, which you need to by no means do. I shared the confession tapes with veteran murder detectives, they usually have been shocked the interrogation was allowed to occur this manner.”
Sherman mentioned that in his analysis, he uncovered 40 letters DeSalvo wrote to a Massachusetts household who visited prisoners at Walpole State Jail.
“He instructed this household in no unsure phrases that he deliberate to recant his confession in entrance of a reporter from The New York Occasions,” Sherman mentioned. “DeSalvo by no means bought the prospect — he was murdered in jail.”
Skeptics, together with Sherman, have lengthy argued that there have been not less than two killers answerable for the murders — perhaps extra. They level out that DeSalvo didn’t match witness descriptions, wasn’t on the listing of greater than 300 suspects, and infrequently gave inconsistent and contradictory statements.
However not everybody agrees. A number of key investigators, regulation enforcement officers and forensic consultants have maintained that DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler — or not less than answerable for a lot of the murders attributed to the serial killer.
Sherman famous that DeSalvo was a cellmate of George Nassar, a convicted assassin and profession prison. Sherman, like others, believes Nassar might have manipulated DeSalvo into confessing to divert suspicion from himself. Nonetheless, there isn’t a conclusive proof to help that declare.
Nassar, who died in 2018, at all times denied having something to do with the crimes.
“If I had been, theoretically, on a rating with Al, and we have been in a prison conspiracy collectively, and I discovered that he was murdering girls and getting away with it, I’d have given him a fast and painless demise, proper there,” he instructed WBZ.
Sherman is adamant that there was a motive. He famous that through the top of the murders, a reward was being supplied as the town grew determined for solutions. He believes DeSalvo and Nassar might have concocted a plan in hopes of gathering the cash themselves.
DeSalvo’s lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, beforehand mentioned, “They’d the best man, past query,” Unsolved.com reported.
“Nobody has ever provide you with something significant to contradict that,” Bailey added.
Sherman mentioned he would welcome a reexamination of the case — even when it proves him mistaken.
“The victims’ households deserve solutions and the reality behind the tragic murders of their family members,” he mentioned. “There’s no statute of limitations on homicide within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
“I do assume the reply exists,” Sherman mirrored. “I’ve offered my theories on the case, and others have as properly. The killers are useless, and lots of who have been related to the case are gone. Now it’s as much as the general public to maintain elevating questions and debating the solutions.
“I’m not beholden to any single principle, and even in 2025, reexamining these murders might reveal new data that wasn’t out there only a few years in the past. It’s an ongoing quest to search out the reality.”
