Boston Strangler: The True Story Behind Hulu’s New Movie Starring Keira Knightley

tThe first victim of the Boston Strangler, Anna Slezer, was found dead on June 14, 1962. The 55-year-old was killed with the belt of her blue coat.

In the months that followed, more women were found, apparently murdered by the same perpetrator. By some counts, the person known as the Boston Strangler killed 11 women; Others estimate the number of his victims at 13 or 15.

Six decades after Sellers’ death, the story of the Boston Strangler remains partially shrouded in mystery. It’s a dark, thrilling true-crime epic that includes a controversial confession, hacked DNA evidence, and a groundbreaking journalist who was the first to connect the dead together. Boston Stranglera new movie on Hulu, features Keira Knightley as Loretta McLaughlin, the journalist in question, and explores her role in covering the story.

The killer’s next victim, 85-year-old Mary Mullen, was found on June 28, 1962. Bear, USA Boston GlobeTwo other women, 68-year-old Nina Nichols and 65-year-old Helen Blake, were found two days later, on 30 June; 75-year-old Ida Irga was found on August 19, 67-year-old Jane Sullivan on August 21, 20-year-old Sophie Clarke on December 5, and 23-year-old Patricia Bisset on December 31, 69- Mary Brown on March 6, 1963, 23-year-old Beverly Samans on May 6, 58-year-old Evelyn Corbin on September 8, 23-year-old Joan Graff on November 23, and 19-year-old Mary Sullivan on January 4 1964.

The women were found in their homes. Most of them died of suffocation. Mullin is found to have died of a heart attack, and Saman is stabbed to death.

It was not clear at first whether all the killings were committed by the same person. From June 1962 to January 1964 Boston and its suburbs had eleven more or less similar oddities, Atlantic Ocean books in 1964. “The police are not at all certain that those strange things were the work of one man; but until they have caught the offender and, if possible, obtained a confession, they cannot be positive. The unknown always carries a certain element of terror, and because so much about the Strangler is unknown Absolutely, and because what is known is so strange, it had a far-reaching effect on the city.”

Atlantic Ocean She stated that she spoke to “several young women” who said that some of their friends had left Boston as a result of the killings. “Others live under severe stress that progressively undermines their health,” the magazine wrote. “In each case, these young women enter their apartments when they return from work afraid of what might happen and, despite their emotional control, fearful. There was a run in hardware stores for locks, bolts and other safeguards.”

For years, the Boston Strangler remained unknown. Then a man confessed in 1965. Per CBSAlbert DiSalvo, a factory worker, was held on unrelated charges at Bridgewater State Hospital, a facility for inmates who were deemed not responsible for their actions due to mental health issues.

However, the confession did not provide enough evidence to charge DeSalvo with the murders. for every WNYCHe never faced charges in the cases related to the Boston Strangler’s murder, and eventually recanted his confession.

In 1967, DeSalvo was convicted of another series of attacks — “armed robbery, assault, and sexual offenses involving four women,” New York times I mentioned at the time. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. His attorney in this case was F Lee Bailey, the same attorney who would later represent Patty Hearst and OJ Simpson.

a Boston Globe A 1967 article stated that Bailey, speaking on behalf of his client in court, “did not directly state that his client was the Boston Strangler, but said that the 13 murders occurred after DeSalvo was released from the Billerica House of correction in the spring of 1962.” Bailey referred to these killings in an effort to convince the jury that DeSalvo could not be held responsible for his actions, on one occasion referring to them as “thirteen murders by a completely uncontrollable plant wandering around the human body.”

The question remained of whether DeSalvo was really the Boston Strangler. I’ve found some partial answers over the years. In 2001, as indicated in A The New York Times In an article published at the time, DNA from the exhumed bodies of DiSalvo and Sullivan (the woman believed to have been the Boston Strangler’s final victim) indicates that DiSalvo did not kill her.

These results, however, were reversed in 2013. That year, per hv newsFurther testing was done using DNA found on a water bottle that DeSalvo’s nephew had discarded. DiSalvo was dead by then (he died in prison in 1973 after being stabbed to death in prison). The purpose of collecting his nephew’s DNA was only to establish a familial match through a relative.

Preliminary tests are involved [Albert] DeSalvo and excluded 99.9 percent of the male population,” according to L National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a division of the US Department of Justice. This, per ABC, giving authorities an excuse to exhume DeSalvo’s body. They did so in July 2013 and bought a fresh DNA sample from one of his bones and three of his teeth. According to the NIJ, “DNA specialists calculated the odds that a white male other than DeSalvo contributed crime scene evidence as one in 220 billion—leaving no doubt that DeSalvo raped and murdered Mary Sullivan.”

New York times welcomed the test as[bringing] An element of modern scientific evidence for a single murder in a case that appears to never be solved.” But the tests said nothing about the other murders in the Boston Strangler case. “We don’t claim with certainty that Albert DiSalvo is a suspect in each of them,” he said. County Attorney Daniel F. Conley New York times then. “But we believe we stand on the threshold of unprecedented certainty about Mary Sullivan’s murder.” Some have assumed that more than one person could be responsible for the Boston Strangler murders.

Loretta McLaughlin, the reporter portrayed by Keira Knightley in the Hulu movie, passed away in 2018 at the age of 90. Boston Globe In an article published at the time of her death, McLaughlin said the fourth killing in Boston Strangers “provoked [her] Attention”, leaving her wanting to write a series of articles about the murders.

She eventually wrote in the paper: “One editor questioned the value of a series about the four dead women, noting that they were ‘nobody’. I felt that was just that. Why should someone kill four dark women? That’s what made them so interesting.. Faceless sisters, like all of us.”

Boston Strangler is streaming on Hulu starting March 17th