What's the true story of the Boston Strangler?

Between June 1962 and January 1964, 13 women were found fatally strangled with their own clothing and sexually assaulted in their homes across the Boston area. The victims – Anna Elsa Šlesers, Mary Mullen, Helen Blake, Nina Nichols, Ida Irga, Jane Sullivan, Sophie Clark, Patricia Bissette, Mary Brown, Beverly Samans, Evelyn Corbin, and Joann Graff — ranged in age from 19 to 85. Their murders were all attributed to one man, ultimately dubbed the Boston Strangler. 

Hulu's new thriller, Boston Strangler, takes audiences into the newsroom where this emerging murder spree was first recognized. Before you watch, here's a primer on the who's who, including the suspects and the Boston Globe journalists who established the connection between the murders. 

Who was the Boston Strangler? 

During this two-year stretch, women all over Boston lived in terror. They were frightened to leave home — even in daylight — and equally afraid to be at home. There had been no sign of forced entry in any of the cases, which suggested that the killer was using some kind of ploy to gain access to the victims. Feasibly, he could be anyone. 

Was Albert DeSalvo the Boston Strangler?

Albert DeSalvo is the name that’s most associated with the Boston Strangler cases, and although he was never convicted of any of the murders, he did confess to them. 

In March 1960, when he was arrested for breaking into a house, DeSalvo admitted to being "The Measuring Man." This was the moniker for a serial predator who went door to door throughout Cambridge in the guise of a modeling scout. Once admitted into their homes, he would use measuring tape as an excuse to molest his victims. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail, served 11, and released in 1962. 

For his second crime spree, he became known as the "Green Man" because of the color he wore when he committed his sexual assaults. DeSalvo was caught when one of his victims reported her assault to the police and described him. From there, he was committed to Bridgewater State Hospital for observation. While he would go on to confess to being the Boston Strangler, there was no physical evidence connecting him to any of the cases at the time. He was not identified by the women who survived attacks by the Strangler. 

It wasn't until July 2013 that his DNA was confirmed as being on the body of Mary Sullivan, the last of the Strangler victims. DeSalvo was determined to be Sullivan's rapist and murderer by the Boston Police Department's cold case team, as well as the attorney general's office, although it's still not certain that he's guilty of the other Strangler crimes. 

Ultimately, DeSalvo went to prison for the "Green Man" crimes. He was stabbed to death in his cell in Walpole Prison in 1973.

Who is George Nassar?

While in prison at Bridgewater, DeSalvo confessed to a cellmate to being the Boston Strangler. This cellmate was George Nassar, a convicted killer twice over. He'd been sentenced to life in prison for the 1948 murder of Dominic Kirmil, but was paroled in 1961. Four years later, Nassar was sentenced to death (later commuted to life in prison) for the murder of Irvin Hilton, the owner of a Texaco station in Andover, Massachusetts. 

Notably, Nassar was out of prison when the Boston Strangler murders began. When survivors were called in to identify the Strangler, two indicated Nassar as their attacker, not DeSalvo. Speculation has emerged that DeSalvo and Nassar conspired on DeSalvo’s confession to get the $10,000 in reward money for fingering the Strangler. 

As of 2018, Nassar was still in prison. 

Could there have been multiple killers? 

During DeSalvo's 1967 criminal trial for the Strangler cases, Dr. Ames Robey, a forensic psychiatrist, served as a defense witness. He claimed that DeSalvo, who was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, could not be the Strangler and was merely someone who craved attention. 

Both Susan Kelly, author of The Boston Stranglers, and FBI profiler and criminologist Robert Ressler believed that more than one person must have committed the 13 murders. In her work, Kelly points out that the errors in details of DeSalvo's match those found in newspapers of the time. This suggests that instead of actually committing the crimes, he may have simply regurgitated what was being reported. 

As for Ressler, he thought the modus operandi across the supposed Strangler cases was too varied. He told CBS News in 2001, "You're putting together so many different patterns here that it's inconceivable behaviorally that all these could fit one individual." 

Who was F. Lee Bailey? 

Later known as one of O.J. Simpson's defense attorneys, F. Lee Bailey defended several infamous defendants over the course of his career, including Dr. Sam Sheppard (who provided the inspiration for the 1993 film The Fugitive), as well as Patty Hearst and DeSalvo in 1967. 

Bailey was introduced to DeSalvo through another client, George Nassar. 

Bailey's tactic in DeSalvo's trial, which was for the "Green Man" armed robberies and sexual assaults due to a lack of physical evidence tying him to the murders, was to convince the jury that DeSalvo was both the Boston Strangler and completely insane. All four women from these attacks testified against him.

Bailey stacked up the evidence, citing DeSalvo's violent childhood and his confessions to all of the murders. DeSalvo was convicted for assault and robbery and sent to Bridgewater. However, the jury did not find him to be insane, likely because the prosecution pointed out that a person so out of sorts on a regular basis could not have the presence of mind to put on gloves in advance of committing murder. 

Who were Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole? 

So far, the information we've presented about the Boston Strangler might be familiar to you, especially if you consider yourself to be any sort of true crime buff. But did you know that the story of the Boston Strangler was broken by two female reporters at the Boston Record-American? 

Amid the minefield of sexism that was the 1960s, Loretta McLaughlin covered the Strangler murders in 1962. Together with colleague Jean Cole Harris, she connected the crimes and convinced their bosses that these killings were the work of one person. 

McLaughlin recalled that it was the fourth Strangler murder, that of 75-year-old Ida Irga, that spurred her into action and drove her to talk to her editor about writing a series. In spite of the fact that he deemed the story not worthy of more than one article, McLaughlin and Cole pushed ahead. 

Hulu's Boston Strangler focuses on the reporting by McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) and Cole (Carrie Coon) and on their tireless efforts to alert the women of Boston that their safety was in jeopardy. 

How to watch: Boston Strangler is now on Hulu.