The DNA test that finally linked Albert DeSalvo to Mary Sullivan's murder

He confessed in 1965.

Albert DeSalvo was already in custody, held on charges unrelated to the murders of the Boston Strangler. He said he had killed Mary Sullivan and the others. His confession included details police believed only the killer could know. Small things. Private things.

No physical evidence linked him to the crime scenes. Not then. Not at the time of the confession.

DeSalvo was never charged with the Strangler murders. Some investigators doubted his confession from the start. The case had been officially closed in 1964 with no arrest. His confession was never tested in court.

So the record held a strange tension. A man said he did it. Police believed parts of what he said. And still, nothing could be proven.

It is not established that DeSalvo was the killer based on the confession alone. No physical evidence existed then to support it. The confession was believed. It was also unprovable.

What finally changed the story? A DNA test, decades later. But that test was not a court conviction. The case was never tried.

For years, that was where it sat. A confession with no proof. A closed case. A dead suspect.

Then something shifted the ground under the old file.

THE MURDERS AND THE FEAR

Between June 1962 and January 1964, a series of murders of women in the Boston area became known as the work of the Boston Strangler.

The crimes ultimately numbered 13.

The exact number attributed to the Strangler is not established beyond those 13 named in the record.

The victims were strangled, often with their own clothing or stockings.

Many were sexually assaulted.

The crimes spread fear across the region.

Police received hundreds of tips.

They pursued multiple suspects.

The final victim was Mary Sullivan, found dead in her Boston apartment on January 4, 1964.

That was the last one.

The first was found in June 1962.

Between those dates, the city lived with a pattern no one could explain.

Women were killed in their own homes.

The weapon was often something of theirs: a stocking, a scarf, a belt.

It was intimate violence.

It was also public terror.

Neighbors locked doors that had never been locked.

The fear was not abstract.

It had names and addresses.

It had thirteen women.

It had one final victim, Mary Sullivan, dead in her apartment at the start of 1964.

The case remained unsolved for years.

The tips mounted.

The suspects came and went.

The record holds the count: thirteen women, named in the file.

What the record does not hold is a proven answer.

That would require evidence.

THE INVESTIGATION AND THE CONFESSION

The investigation was hampered by jurisdictional disputes between Boston police and state authorities.

It was a case with no single owner.