Albert DeSalvo

Albert DeSalvo

Biography
Albert Henry DeSalvo was born on September 3, 1931. Albert and his five siblings were raised in an exceptionally violent household. Albert’s father was an alcoholic, a wife beater, and verbally abused Albert said that his father broke all of his mother’s fingers in front of him, and on other occasions he smashed a pipe into Albert’s back. When Albert turned eight his father abandoned his mother but she remarried. Albert grew into a sexually disturbed delinquent guilty of a plethora of petty crimes. He spent eight years in the army, stationed in Germany, where he met his wife, Irmgard Beck. Irmgard and Albert had two children together and he was known as a good family man, as well as a hard worker. Following an honorable discharge, Albert returned to America.

Murder
Between June 14, 1962 and January 4, 1964, thirteen single women in the Boston area were assaulted and strangled to death with an item of clothing. He was never charged for the murders because the police could not find enough evidence. All of the women were murdered in their apartments with no signs of forced entry; the women apparently voluntarily let him in their homes. Albert confessed to a series of sexual assaults committed by a man impersonating a model agency scout. He was sent to Westborough State Psychiatric Hospital and was diagnosed as a sociopath. On May 3, 1961, Albert was sentenced to two years for assault and battery and breaking and entering. His sentence was reduced and he was let out of jail in April 1962. On June 14, 1962, the first murder attributed to the Boston Strangler occurred. In September 1965, Albert confessed to the Boston Strangler murders plus two additional murders. DeSalvo was never put on trial for the Boston Strangler murders.

Albert DeSalvo was also known as the “Green Man” during the time he was “The Boston Strangler”. On November of 1964, DeSalvo, almost three years after he had been released from jail, he was arrested again. He was arrested for the Boston area Green Man rapes. On October, a newly married woman laid in bed just after her husband left for work. There suddenly was a man standing in the room that put a knife to her throat and said, “Not a sound or I’ll kill you.” He stuffed her underwear in her mouth and tied her in a spread eagle position to the bedpost with her clothes. He kissed her and fondled her, and then asked her how to get out of the apartment. He finally apologized and fled. The police brought DeSalvo to the station so that the woman would be able to identify him in a line up. After he was arrested, DeSalvo was released on bail. There were calls from Connecticut where they were seeking a sexual assailant they called the Green Man, because he wore green pants. The police arrested him at home and arranged for the victims to identify him. The Green Man had assaulted four women in the same day in different towns in Connecticut. He admitted to breaking into four hundred apartments and a couple rapes. He had assaulted three hundred women in a four-state-area. He was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for observation. In 1967 DeSalvo was convicted of the “Green Man” rapes and sentenced to a life in prison. DeSalvo was found stabbed though the heart in a prison infirmary in 1973.He wrote this poem a few years before his death.

Here is the story of the Strangler, yet untold,
The man who claims he murdered thirteen women,
young and old.
The elusive Strangler, there he goes,
Where his wanderlust sends him, no one knows
He struck within the light of day,
Leaving not one clue astray.
Young and old, their lips are sealed,
Their secret of death never revealed.
Even though he is sick in mind,
He’s much too clever for the police to find.
To reveal his secret will bring him fame,
But burden his family with unwanted shame.
Today he sits in a prison cell,
Deep inside only a secret he can tell.
People everywhere are still in doubt,
Is the Strangler in prison or roaming about?

-page author: Marissa
-left photo courtesy of http://www.mugshots.com/
-right photo courtesy of http://www.artandentropy.com/