Speaker 1: Membership, peace, apply after free trial, cancel anytime. Can I
Speaker 1: be real with you for a second. That goal you
Speaker 1: have to exercise and eat better? You really can do it,
Speaker 1: but nobody is going to do it for you. Nobody
Speaker 1: is going to push you out of bed to work out,
Speaker 1: Nobody is going to make you eat better. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Nobody has to because you can do it
Speaker 1: if you have the right tools and a community that
Speaker 1: cares about helping you get results. And that's us beach Body.
Speaker 1: Two and a half million people each doing the Beach
Speaker 1: Body program that fits our own goals over eighty to
Speaker 1: choose from some that take just twenty minutes a day,
Speaker 1: nutrition plans that teach you how to eat healthy and
Speaker 1: still enjoy food. What we all have in common is
Speaker 1: we know it's not easy, so we help each other.
Speaker 1: It's as convenient as your TV or laptop, but you
Speaker 1: need to decide that you're worth it. That's why I'm
Speaker 1: inviting you to try our amazing Beachbody fitness and nutrition programs.
Speaker 1: Let us help you succeed. Here's al Go to beachbody
Speaker 1: dot com to claim your free membership and start feeling great.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained, Season five, episode eighteen, Learning to
Speaker 1: See Part two. Peter Herkos arrived at T. F. Green
Speaker 1: Airport in Providence, Rhode Island, on Wednesday, January twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, just after eight pm, accompanied by Jim Crane,
Speaker 1: a wealthy speculator who'd offered to provide security for Peter
Speaker 1: as a favor. Waiting for them at the airport was
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General John Bottomley and Detective Sergeant Leo Martin.
Speaker 1: With the authorities keen to avoid any unwanted press, Herkos
Speaker 1: and Crane were quickly whisked through arrivals and out into
Speaker 1: the bitterly cold night air toward a waiting vehicle. From there,
Speaker 1: they were taken to the Green Inn Motel in Lexington
Speaker 1: and checked in under false names. This would be their
Speaker 1: base for the next week, where the police could utilize
Speaker 1: Peter in secret, with doctor Andrea poo Harrich also present
Speaker 1: throughout their time at the motel to supervise the proceedings.
Speaker 1: It was early the following morning when Detective Julian Soshnik
Speaker 1: from the Strangler Task Force arrived at Peter's room carrying
Speaker 1: two large boxes and a stack of envelopes. Inside the
Speaker 1: boxes were a series of items that once belonged to
Speaker 1: the murdered women, and inside the envelopes over three hundred
Speaker 1: photographs of the various crime scenes. With Peter sitting opposite him,
Speaker 1: Soshnik removed each batch of photos from the envelopes one
Speaker 1: by one and placed them carefully faced down in piles
Speaker 1: on the coffee table, as per Peter's instructions. Then Peter
Speaker 1: leant forward and placed a finger on the back of
Speaker 1: one of the piles. This is phony, he shouted, suddenly
Speaker 1: shooting up from the seat, pointing at Soshnik. Why are
Speaker 1: you playing tricks? Detective Soshnik shuffled uncomfortably in his seat,
Speaker 1: then got up and removed a photo from the pile.
Speaker 1: It was an image of an unrelated crime that he'd
Speaker 1: placed there as a test, as he tried to explain,
Speaker 1: he just wanted to see if Peter could be trusted.
Speaker 1: Grabbing the first photo from a pile without looking at it,
Speaker 1: he held it up to the detective. This is a
Speaker 1: dead woman, her legs far apart like this, said Peter,
Speaker 1: theatrically throwing himself to the ground in a strange exaggerated pose.
Speaker 1: The startled, Soshnik looked on in amazement her coos had
Speaker 1: positioned himself identically to the body in the image. After
Speaker 1: finally calming down, Peter began picking his way through the photographs,
Speaker 1: describing details of each murder as they apparently came to him,
Speaker 1: while Soshnik captured it all with the tape recorder. Sometimes
Speaker 1: Peter would sit naturally deep in concentration as he held
Speaker 1: the objects in his hands or studied another photograph. Other times,
Speaker 1: whenever he found it difficult to concentrate, or if he
Speaker 1: found the presence of the others in the room too distracting,
Speaker 1: he covered his eyes with washcloths and wrapped a towel
Speaker 1: around his head to block out the light. It was
Speaker 1: a condition of the Assistant Attorney General that members of
Speaker 1: the task force keep an eye on Peter the entire time,
Speaker 1: even when he was sleeping, just in case any crucial
Speaker 1: evidence cropped up, but also to make sure he wasn't
Speaker 1: messing them around. It was a few nights in after
Speaker 1: another eighteen hours spent working with the items with little
Speaker 1: headway made that day that an exhausted Peter decided to
Speaker 1: try something different. After preparing himself for bed, He opened
Speaker 1: one of the boxes of items and took out a
Speaker 1: blows and a nightgown that it belonged to one of
Speaker 1: the victims, then took them into bed with him and
Speaker 1: promptly went to sleep. It was sometime around two forty
Speaker 1: am that he began talking in his sleep, Hello, Enginero
Speaker 1: W two d K one, W two d K one.
Speaker 1: Sophia Mortar, Sophia Mortar. The others present looked about in confusion.
Speaker 1: An hour later it started again. I take the shoes off,
Speaker 1: here is the body. I undress her. I go to
Speaker 1: the church. I do nothing wrong, the words tumbling from
Speaker 1: Peter's mouth in a strange, exaggerated, high pitched voice. Then
Speaker 1: Peter's usual voice returned. Killed that bastard, he shouted, as
Speaker 1: he went on to seemingly have a fight with someone
Speaker 1: in his sleep, who he later identified as the killer.
Speaker 1: Moments later, Peter announced that he was inside the man's
Speaker 1: residence in his dream, describing it as a junk pile
Speaker 1: in which oddly there was a spring bed with no
Speaker 1: mattress on it. There was a diary there too, he said,
Speaker 1: there would reveal everything about the murderer's crimes. Then he
Speaker 1: mumbled something about how the women let the man in
Speaker 1: because he claimed to be selling shoes, and then he
Speaker 1: would grab them when they least expected it. It was
Speaker 1: just approaching three thirty am when Peter screamed, suddenly, get
Speaker 1: out of my mind, then shot up awake with a
Speaker 1: look of great torment on his face. Peter jumped quickly
Speaker 1: out of bed and lit a cigarette, appearing rattled by
Speaker 1: the experience. After pacing the room for a few minutes,
Speaker 1: he took a final drag, then stubbed out the cigarette
Speaker 1: and went back to sleep. The following morning, Peter attempted
Speaker 1: to describe the man he'd seen in his dream. He
Speaker 1: is not too big, maybe five foot seven or eight,
Speaker 1: a high hairline with thin hair, a mark or spot
Speaker 1: on his left arm, and something wrong with his thumb.
Speaker 1: Heard an accent, not American French. I think he has
Speaker 1: something to do with a hospital. He is a homosexual
Speaker 1: and a misogynist. He takes their blood and washes his
Speaker 1: hands in it. He has blue gray eyes and a
Speaker 1: sharp pointed nose, a big Adam's apple too. He has
Speaker 1: the energy of a twenty seven year old, but is
Speaker 1: more like fifty two. After he kills he offers the
Speaker 1: women to God. They are clean in his eyes because
Speaker 1: he doesn't touch them after he's killed them. He has
Speaker 1: strange habits, like washing his hands in the toilet and
Speaker 1: sleeping in his clothes. He practices extreme sexual things on himself.
Speaker 1: As for the bed with no mattress, sometimes he sleeps
Speaker 1: naked on it as a penance for his crimes. If
Speaker 1: he doesn't kill, he sleeps on the mattress, but if
Speaker 1: he kills, he takes it off. He takes the victims
Speaker 1: shoes and keeps them in a basement, and sometimes he
Speaker 1: tries to sell them. Then Peter stopped and took a
Speaker 1: moment to think, that is all I have, he said.
Speaker 1: About the same time, Soschnik had the recording of Peter
Speaker 1: talking in his sleep from the night before sent to
Speaker 1: Bottomley's office to see if any one could decipher a
Speaker 1: meaning behind the term W two d K one or
Speaker 1: find any relevance to the other words he'd spoken. Later
Speaker 1: that afternoon, he received a reply they hadn't been able
Speaker 1: to find anything matching W two d K one, but
Speaker 1: they did find a listing for a small ham radio
Speaker 1: station operating out of New Jersey using the call sign
Speaker 1: W two D k Incredibly, it belonged to the cousin
Speaker 1: of Sophie Clark, one of the victims whose murder they
Speaker 1: were investigating. The language Peter had been speaking at the
Speaker 1: time was determined to be Portuguese, with the phrase Sophia
Speaker 1: mortar translating as Sophie dead. This had been confusing at first,
Speaker 1: until it was later discovered that Sophie Clark's father was
Speaker 1: Portuguese as well as the victims. Detective Soshnik also brought
Speaker 1: photos of potential suspects to Peter to see if he
Speaker 1: might have an opinion on them too. Peter discarded them more,
Speaker 1: telling Soshnik that none of them were the killer. Then
Speaker 1: one afternoon, Peter was examining the crime scene photos once
Speaker 1: more when he looked up suddenly, as if struck by
Speaker 1: an epiphany, then demanded a map of Boston and an
Speaker 1: object belonging to one of the victims be brought to him.
Speaker 1: Soshnik hurriedly pulled out a comb from the box and
Speaker 1: handed it to him, along with a map of the city.
Speaker 1: Peter flipped it over, then quickly began tracing a line
Speaker 1: with the comb on the back of the map. Here,
Speaker 1: he said, flipping the map back over here you find
Speaker 1: the killer. Peter was pointing at the Newton, Boston area,
Speaker 1: close to Boston College. Then another vision apparently came to him.
Speaker 1: I see him dressed like a priest. He said, he
Speaker 1: has a French accent, and he's a pervert. Then Peter
Speaker 1: bent his wrist in an offensive homophobic gesture, implying again
Speaker 1: that the man was gay. Then he dropped down into
Speaker 1: an armchair and announced he was done for the day.
Speaker 1: The following morning, Detective Soschnik picked up her Cos and
Speaker 1: his chaperone, Jim Crane, from the Green Inn motel, and
Speaker 1: drove them into Boston to meet with Assistant day John Bottomley.
Speaker 1: Bottomley was keen to meet with the man himself to
Speaker 1: go over again what he claimed to know. While Peter
Speaker 1: and Jim sat waiting outside Bottomley's office, Detective Sergeant Leo
Speaker 1: Martin approached them with a letter and asked Peter what
Speaker 1: he thought of it. Peter grabbed it from him and
Speaker 1: without opening it, held it tightly in his hands. By God,
Speaker 1: he said, this is from the murderer. The letter was
Speaker 1: addressed to the nurse director of the Boston College School
Speaker 1: of Nursing, the headquarters of which was located in almost
Speaker 1: the exact spot that Peter had pointed out on the
Speaker 1: map of Boston only the day before, where he claimed
Speaker 1: the killer would be found. According to journalist normal Lee Browning,
Speaker 1: who wrote about Peter's life in her nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: book The Psychic World of Peter Herkos, Peter never once
Speaker 1: looked at the letter. It read as follows, Dear Madam,
Speaker 1: I have a difficulty. Perhaps you'll smile when you read
Speaker 1: about it, but I'm coming to you because I think
Speaker 1: you can help me. I'm a Boston College grad, and
Speaker 1: when I look at the years I've been out of school,
Speaker 1: I stroke my longish beard. I've tried selling off and
Speaker 1: on for quite some time, and I'm still in the
Speaker 1: selling field. My reason for writing now is to say
Speaker 1: I am a bachelor, and for some time I've wanted
Speaker 1: to meet a good Catholic nurse who might have graduated
Speaker 1: from nursing school about nineteen fifty. Even an undergrad about
Speaker 1: that time would be okay, one who is working near Boston.
Speaker 1: I've even had the idea of doing an article on
Speaker 1: this class, interviewing as many as possible to learn their
Speaker 1: opinions and experiences in training and in the field since graduation,
Speaker 1: then offering the article to a nursing publication. Perhaps while interviewing,
Speaker 1: I might see a nurse who might like me as
Speaker 1: much as I'd like her, and if so, we could
Speaker 1: begin a friendship that might lead to the altar. Chances
Speaker 1: may be, however, the very few nurses of the year
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty are eligible or might even consider me eligible. Okay,
Speaker 1: if there are such, maybe there is a better way
Speaker 1: to meet them than the way I have suggested here.
Speaker 1: I'd be glad to call at the office to see
Speaker 1: you about this if you wish at any rate, may
Speaker 1: I hear from you? If you'd like to, you could
Speaker 1: call doctor Richard H. Wright of Beacon Street, Brookline. He's
Speaker 1: known me for many years. With every best wish, I
Speaker 1: am sincerely yours. The name of the man who wrote
Speaker 1: it has never been disclosed, though he is often referred
Speaker 1: to as Thomas P. O'Brien. The letter had arrived that morning,
Speaker 1: sent to the police by a concerned member of Boston
Speaker 1: College who was struck by the writer's peculiar request, with
Speaker 1: Peter insisting it was written by the killer. John Bottomley
Speaker 1: called doctor Richard Wright whose name the pseudonymous Thomas O'Brien
Speaker 1: had given as a character reference to find out more Wright,
Speaker 1: who was surprised by the call, was also troubled by
Speaker 1: the letter, as he went on to explain the so
Speaker 1: called Thomas was a long standing patient in his fifties,
Speaker 1: similar to the age of the man that Peter apparently
Speaker 1: identified in his sleep, who had a history of severe
Speaker 1: psychiatric illness. Things quickly escalated when, after looking back at
Speaker 1: their records, police discovered that a call had been made
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty two suggesting they look into Thomas
Speaker 1: as a possible person of interest in relation to the
Speaker 1: sexual assault and murder of Anna Slessers. Without wasting any
Speaker 1: more time, police soon procured an address for the man,
Speaker 1: who was found to be rooming at a boarding house
Speaker 1: not far from the Back Bay area of Boston where
Speaker 1: Anna Slessers lived. At the first attempt, Detective Soshnik, joined
Speaker 1: by a Detective Tommy Davis and Officer Stephen Delaney, knocked
Speaker 1: on the man's door, only for him to open it
Speaker 1: and then promptly close it again, telling them he didn't
Speaker 1: want to be disturbed. Though it was only the briefest
Speaker 1: of encounters, Soshnik couldn't help but be struck by how
Speaker 1: similar the man looked to what Peter had described, from
Speaker 1: his thinning hair right down to his large, Adam's apple
Speaker 1: and sharp pointed nose. Now convinced more than ever that
Speaker 1: he might be their man, the Strangler Task Force needed
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to find some evidence before
Speaker 1: making a formal arrest. Although they could take him in
Speaker 1: for questioning, it would require something tangible to keep him
Speaker 1: in custody. Such a move would be risky, since if
Speaker 1: he failed to give them anything, if he was indeed
Speaker 1: the murderer, the man would soon be free to kill again. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: the state provided a loophole by granting the police the
Speaker 1: ability to have suspects committed to a psychiatric hospital for
Speaker 1: ten days provided a formal assessment who had been made
Speaker 1: of them. With the man removed from his apartment, the
Speaker 1: police would be free to search it for as long
Speaker 1: as they needed in order to find the evidence that
Speaker 1: Peter was convinced would be waiting for them inside. The
Speaker 1: following day, the three men returned to Thomas's apartment with
Speaker 1: the warrant to search the premises and a doctor to
Speaker 1: carry out the psychiatric assessment. Peter was also invited, but
Speaker 1: told to wait in the car until the coast was clear.
Speaker 1: This time, things went a little differently. Once again, Soshnik
Speaker 1: knocked on the man's door, this time brandishing a warrant
Speaker 1: to search the property and bracing himself for the inevitable resistance.
Speaker 1: Then the door opened. I'm so glad you came, said Thomas, suddenly,
Speaker 1: catching them all off guard. Then, without further ado, he
Speaker 1: pulled the door back wider and divided them all inside.
Speaker 1: The men stepped through into the tiny room no more
Speaker 1: than ten feet by eight as the shy, nervous Thomas
Speaker 1: tried to make room for them. The place was littered
Speaker 1: with books and notepads and piles of junk. Just as
Speaker 1: Peter had seemingly foreseen, Soshnik couldn't keep his eyes off
Speaker 1: the wire bed with no mattress on top of it,
Speaker 1: but also the oddly deformed shape of the man's thumb,
Speaker 1: again just as Peter had described. As the doctor proceeded
Speaker 1: to make a psychiatric assessment of Thomas, he quickly volunteered
Speaker 1: that he'd once tried to have himself committed to an asylum,
Speaker 1: giving the doctor all he needed to have him detained.
Speaker 1: Thomas was promptly removed and taken to the Massachusetts Mental
Speaker 1: Health Center for a minimum stay of ten days. With
Speaker 1: the man removed, Peter was invited up to the room. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: detective Soshnik picked up one of the notebooks. It appeared
Speaker 1: to be a diary. Always run from temptation, it said
Speaker 1: in bold capital letters. Then he scanned another page. I
Speaker 1: get angry, So angry. It read women sitting in doctor's
Speaker 1: offices exposing their legs, wearing tight fitting dresses and highly
Speaker 1: scented erotic perfumes. Then Peter appeared at the door. Within seconds,
Speaker 1: he was on his knees frantically searching through the piles
Speaker 1: of books. He put all the killings on paper. We
Speaker 1: will find it, he said to the permused detectives. Then,
Speaker 1: spotting something, he pulled out a book from a pile
Speaker 1: by the man's closet. Here it is, he cried triumphantly.
Speaker 1: Is there something interfering with your happiness or preventing you
Speaker 1: from achieving your goals? Better help will assess your needs
Speaker 1: and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. Sign
Speaker 1: up today and start communicating. In less than forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: you'll get timely and thoughtful responses. Plus you can schedule
Speaker 1: weekly video or phone sessions so you won't ever have
Speaker 1: to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room. You can also
Speaker 1: log into your account any time to send a message
Speaker 1: to your counselor. Better Help is not a crisis line
Speaker 1: nor self help. It is professional counseling done securely online,
Speaker 1: with a broad range of expertise available, and with better
Speaker 1: helps commitment to facilitating great therapeutic matches, they make it
Speaker 1: especially easy and free to change counselors to help you
Speaker 1: find the right fit. This podcast is sponsored by better
Speaker 1: Help and Unexplained. Listeners get ten percent off their first
Speaker 1: month at better help dot com. Forward slash Unexplained, That's
Speaker 1: better HLP dot com. Forward slash Unexplained joined the over
Speaker 1: one million people taking charge of their mental health with
Speaker 1: the help of an experienced professional. Better Help wants you
Speaker 1: to start living a happier life today. The book Peter
Speaker 1: picked out was a textbook on yoga, filled with diagrams
Speaker 1: to illustrate the various positions. The first half of the
Speaker 1: book displayed images of male figures, while the second half
Speaker 1: showed female figures, a significant number of which had been
Speaker 1: deliberately blotted out with ink. Peter counted them and found
Speaker 1: precisely eleven figures had been marked in that way, eleven
Speaker 1: for each of the eleven victims, he said. Meanwhile, Officer
Speaker 1: Delaney was examining the contents of a draw when he
Speaker 1: found half a dozen ties and scarfs knotted tightly together.
Speaker 1: In another set of drawers, they found a notebook brimming
Speaker 1: with sketches of what looked like apartment buildings and their interiors.
Speaker 1: In one sketch, a bath tub had been drawn with
Speaker 1: an X marked on top of it. Soshnik thought for
Speaker 1: a moment of sixty seven year old Jane Sullivan, one
Speaker 1: of the eleven victims whose murders they were investigating. She
Speaker 1: had been found dead in her bath. Another drawing depicted
Speaker 1: a bedroom with an X marked on the bed at
Speaker 1: the base of the headboard, just like where the body
Speaker 1: of nineteen year old Mary Sullivan had been found. Soshnick
Speaker 1: was dumbfounded. Mostly the diaries displayed the inner thoughts of
Speaker 1: a deeply unhappy and unsettled man who had likely struggled
Speaker 1: all his life with sexuality, and who was doing, as
Speaker 1: he wrote, all that is humanly possible to master human nature.
Speaker 1: A section in one diary under the heading remarks made
Speaker 1: to Me by others listed numerous insults such as, you're
Speaker 1: a menace, You're no good, You're a goddamn liar, you're
Speaker 1: a disgrace to Boston College, you're a womanish man. I'd
Speaker 1: rather see you dead drunk in the streets than see
Speaker 1: you as you are. When are you going to get married? Eh?
Speaker 1: So you like that boy? As for the rest of it,
Speaker 1: the similarity of his body and facial characteristics to what
Speaker 1: Peter had described the misogyny, ink blots and strange apartment
Speaker 1: diagrams were certainly more than a little hair raising under
Speaker 1: the circumstances. All in all, it was arguably a smoking
Speaker 1: gun at least, but it wasn't the bullet. With the
Speaker 1: pseudonymous Thomas P. O'Brien undergoing his assessment at the mental
Speaker 1: health center, police took the opportunity to question him over
Speaker 1: the next few days. The man was told he didn't
Speaker 1: have to answer the questions if he didn't want to,
Speaker 1: and was also offered a lawyer. However, since he didn't
Speaker 1: believe he had anything to hide, he declined the offer.
Speaker 1: Over three separate sessions, Detective Soshnik, assistant Da Bottomley, and Peter,
Speaker 1: under the guise of being a doctor of psychiatry, each
Speaker 1: took it in turns to ask the questions. The man
Speaker 1: was sat huddled over on the edge of his bed,
Speaker 1: looking anxious and scared. When they entered his room. A
Speaker 1: hospital psychiatrist was also present to supervise. Soshnik asked first
Speaker 1: why he'd written the letter to the nurse director of
Speaker 1: the Boston College. Thomas replied that it was a desperate ploy,
Speaker 1: the last of many, to try and meet a Catholic woman.
Speaker 1: When pressed on his relationship with doctor Wright, he explained
Speaker 1: that the doctor had once treated him for a persistent
Speaker 1: ear problem that he was suffering from, in contradiction to
Speaker 1: what right himself had said. The man also confirmed that
Speaker 1: he'd once spent time with French Trappist monks and had
Speaker 1: once been a shoe seller, as Peter had suggested, at
Speaker 1: which point Peter saw his opportunity. You lose a button
Speaker 1: once in a lady's apartment, he said, when he went
Speaker 1: inside to sell shoes. Thomas looked confused. No, he insisted,
Speaker 1: he never sold door to door and he'd never been
Speaker 1: inside an apartment under those circumstances. Peter then pressed him
Speaker 1: on why he'd recently been sacked from a job at
Speaker 1: a shoe store after only working for half the day.
Speaker 1: It was because they excited you, wasn't it, he said
Speaker 1: the female customers. You couldn't control yourself, That's why they
Speaker 1: fired you. But Thomas denied the accusation and insisted that
Speaker 1: he just wasn't cut out for the job. Then he
Speaker 1: changed the subject and began talking about how he'd become
Speaker 1: convinced that the police were following him. Why they asked,
Speaker 1: but Thomas wasn't sure. Maybe, as he explained, it was
Speaker 1: because he once thought about approaching a woman in the
Speaker 1: street to introduce himself, but just as he got close
Speaker 1: to her, he turned away, realizing it might be strange
Speaker 1: for her. Perhaps a police officer had seen him do this,
Speaker 1: he said. Also, a man had once sat next to
Speaker 1: him on a bench and asked him forcefully if he
Speaker 1: was gay. He thought the man might have been a
Speaker 1: police officer trying to catch him out. Puzzled by this
Speaker 1: meandering answer, Soshnik turned the conversation to the yoga book
Speaker 1: and the peculiar sketches of apartments they'd found in his
Speaker 1: note books. You don't have to worry any more. We
Speaker 1: know everything. We've searched your room, said Soshnik. Thomas looked up,
Speaker 1: confused the sketches, replied Soshnik, the ink blots, but Thomas
Speaker 1: insisted they were nothing, just a legacy from the time
Speaker 1: he spent studying to be a commercial artist. The sketches,
Speaker 1: he said, was something he liked to do from time
Speaker 1: to time, part of a game he used to play
Speaker 1: with his brother, where they challenged each other to draw
Speaker 1: places they'd lived in from memory. And as for the
Speaker 1: ink blots, that was just something he diared out of habit.
Speaker 1: He always covered the female form whenever he saw it.
Speaker 1: Soshnik and Bottomly glanced at each other. Unconvinced by his explanation.
Speaker 1: Thinking it was time to move things up a notch,
Speaker 1: Soshnik reached inside an envelope, then pulled out a photograph
Speaker 1: and held it in front of Thomas. It was an
Speaker 1: image of the body of Mary Sullivan. Thomas turned away
Speaker 1: in disgust. Don't be afraid, don't you remember, asked Soshnik.
Speaker 1: The more Thomas squirmed, refusing to look at it, the
Speaker 1: more Soshnik pressed him, demanding to know what Thomas knew
Speaker 1: about the woman in the picture. Thomas began to shake.
Speaker 1: Soshnik pulled out another photo and then another, imploring Thomas
Speaker 1: to look, but each time he refused, repeating only that
Speaker 1: he didn't know anything about any of them. With little
Speaker 1: else to go on, Assistant Attorney General Bottomley drew the
Speaker 1: interview to a close. The next morning, with Peter's work finished,
Speaker 1: Detective Soshnik drove him back to the airport as Peter
Speaker 1: reiterated his absolute conviction that they had the man they
Speaker 1: were looking for. The following day, the story broke in
Speaker 1: the press that the Strangler Task Force had been consulting
Speaker 1: with a self proclaim psychic. The story was a huge
Speaker 1: embarrassment for the police, with particular scorn reserved for Attorney
Speaker 1: General Edward Brooke, who was publicly rebuked for sanctioning Peter's involvement.
Speaker 1: A few days later, Peter was arrested by the FBI
Speaker 1: for impersonating an FBI officer on a very flimsy charge
Speaker 1: that some saw as an effort to embarrass him and
Speaker 1: Edward Brooke, who was due to begin a campaign to
Speaker 1: run for reelection. After ten days, the man known as
Speaker 1: Thomas p O'Brien was kept in for another thirty five days,
Speaker 1: after which he was given the opportunity to leave the
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Instead, he voluntarily committed himself to
Speaker 1: the institution and his thought to have remained there ever since.
Speaker 1: No further sexual assaults or murders related to the apparent individual,
Speaker 1: by then commonly referred to as the Boston strangler a
Speaker 1: thought to have occurred after this point in time. It
Speaker 1: was just over a year later, on March sixth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, the thirty one year old defense attorney Francis
Speaker 1: Lee Bailey arrived at Bridgewater State Hospital in southeastern Massachusetts
Speaker 1: to answer an unusual request. The hospital was a psychiatric
Speaker 1: facility housing convicted criminals judged by the state to be
Speaker 1: criminally insane, as well as all those whose state judged
Speaker 1: sanity had yet to be evaluated. Bailey was already making
Speaker 1: a name for himself after getting involved in the case
Speaker 1: of physician Sam Shephard, who in nineteen fifty four was
Speaker 1: found guilty of murdering his wife, Marilyn Reese. The case,
Speaker 1: which garnered huge media attention at the time, provided the
Speaker 1: inspiration for the TV show and later the film the
Speaker 1: fugitive in nineteen sixty three, after taking Shepherd on as
Speaker 1: a client, Bailey filed the writ that took his appeal
Speaker 1: all the way to the Supreme Court, resulting in the
Speaker 1: retrial that eventually overturned his conviction. That morning, in March
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, however, Bailey was on a decidedly different mission.
Speaker 1: Another of his clients, George Nassa, who was currently under
Speaker 1: assessment of Bridgewater Hospital, had suggested he come and interview
Speaker 1: a fellow patient of his who he believed had something
Speaker 1: big to tell the world. Despite Nassa being a suspected
Speaker 1: paranoid schizophrenic who had recently been arrested for murder, Bailey
Speaker 1: couldn't help but be intrigued by the request. After arriving
Speaker 1: at the hospital and being led through the various security checkpoints,
Speaker 1: Bailey was eventually shown into a dimly lit room where
Speaker 1: he was greeted by a thirty three year old man
Speaker 1: measuring about five foot nine in height, with broad muscular
Speaker 1: shoulders and a thick head of dark brown hair combed
Speaker 1: back in a slick pompadour style. The man introduced himself
Speaker 1: as Albert de Salvo, who, according to himself was also
Speaker 1: the Boston strangler. Over the next hour or so, De
Speaker 1: Salvo proceeded to outline to Bailey in minute detail all
Speaker 1: the murders and sexual assaults he'd committed, as unemotionally, as
Speaker 1: Bailey later put it, as if he were describing a
Speaker 1: trip to the supermarket. At the time, De Salvo, who
Speaker 1: lived in Malden, six miles north of Boston with his
Speaker 1: wife and two children, was awaiting trial after confessing to
Speaker 1: raping several women, as well as committing something in the
Speaker 1: region of three hundred other sexual assaults and around four
Speaker 1: hundred home breakings. Dsalvo had a long history of committing
Speaker 1: sexual offenses. In nineteen sixty one, he was arrested for
Speaker 1: masquerading as a model agency rep who door stepped women,
Speaker 1: telling them he'd come to measure them up for future
Speaker 1: photo shoots. When some of them believed him, he proceeded
Speaker 1: to take their measurements and sexually assault them in the process.
Speaker 1: After spending only twelve months in prison for the crime,
Speaker 1: being released two months before the first apparent Boston Strangler murder,
Speaker 1: Dussalvo was arrested again in November nineteen sixty four, ten
Speaker 1: months after the last for his suspected involvement in the
Speaker 1: sexual assault of another woman who'd been left tied to
Speaker 1: her bed after being molested by a man who'd broken
Speaker 1: into her apartment. After being arrested, Dassalvo was picked out
Speaker 1: in a line up by the woman. A few days later,
Speaker 1: a number of other women had been similarly attacked in
Speaker 1: Connecticut identified Dsalvo as their attacker to a short time
Speaker 1: after that, Dasalvo confessed to the countless other crimes in
Speaker 1: his confession to Francis Bailey, Dsalvo is said to have
Speaker 1: listed numerous details about the crime scenes that were yet
Speaker 1: to be made public. In spite of this, however, no
Speaker 1: physical evidence connecting him to the apparent Boston Strangler crimes
Speaker 1: was ever established. As a result, in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: with f Lee Bailey, as he would come to be known,
Speaker 1: representing him, Dasalvo was only put on trial for the
Speaker 1: earlier offenses he was already accused of. He was found
Speaker 1: guilty and sentenced to life in prison, and although DA
Speaker 1: Edward Brooks and Boston police were keen to draw a
Speaker 1: line under the Strangler case, many remained unconvinced by the conviction.
Speaker 1: In a later interview about the incident, George Nassa, who
Speaker 1: had first alerted Francis Bailey to Albert DeSalvo, made a
Speaker 1: startling revelation. Though he claimed he was certain that DeSalvo
Speaker 1: was the strangler, according to Nassa, his confession was actually
Speaker 1: part of a bigger plan to get reward money for
Speaker 1: information leading to the strangler's arrest. He and DeSalvo assumed
Speaker 1: wrongly that they would receive ten thousand dollars for each
Speaker 1: victim in return for the confession, which Nasso would claim
Speaker 1: and then secretly split with DeSalvo. DeSalvo apparently agreed to
Speaker 1: the deal because he knew he was already facing life
Speaker 1: in prison and wanted to make some money to send
Speaker 1: back to his family. Some have also claimed that DeSalvo's
Speaker 1: earlier confession to have committed hundreds of offenses was also suspect.
Speaker 1: Suggested that DeSalvo was often prone to boasting and fantasized
Speaker 1: about being notorious. The fact that no physical evidence or eyewitnesses,
Speaker 1: of which there were said to be many, linked him
Speaker 1: to any of the crime scenes was also hugely controversial.
Speaker 1: And then there were the cigarettes. As author Susan Kelly
Speaker 1: pointed out in her book The Boston Stranglers, The Public
Speaker 1: Conviction of Albert de Salvo and The True Story of
Speaker 1: Eleven Shocking Murders. Three fresh Salem's cigarette butts were found
Speaker 1: in an ashtray next to the bed that Mary Sullivan's
Speaker 1: body was discovered in. Neither Mary nor her roommates was
Speaker 1: said to have smoked this brand, While a Salem cigarette
Speaker 1: butt was also found floating in the toilet of Apartment
Speaker 1: four S at three one five Huntington Avenue, where Sophie
Speaker 1: Clark's body was found. Albert de Salvo didn't smoke. Sam
Speaker 1: also believed that George Nassa, a man considered highly intelligent
Speaker 1: and manipulative, may actually have been the strangler himself. In
Speaker 1: February nineteen sixty seven, Albert DeSalvo escaped from Bridgewater State
Speaker 1: Hospital in an apparent protest at conditions there, before eventually
Speaker 1: turning himself in. As a result, he was transferred to
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts maximum security prison known at the time as Walpole,
Speaker 1: where not long after, he recanted his confession to being
Speaker 1: the Boston Strangler. Six years later, in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: while at Walpole, Dsalvo was stabbed to death in an
Speaker 1: altercation with a fellow inmate. In the years since Dasalvo's
Speaker 1: confession to fth Lee Bailey, two other victims were did
Speaker 1: to the list of those thought to be murdered by
Speaker 1: the so called strangler, taking the total number of suspected
Speaker 1: victims to thirteen. The first was eighty five year old
Speaker 1: Mary Mullen, who was found dead in her apartment in
Speaker 1: June nineteen sixty two from a suspected heart attack. Albert
Speaker 1: DeSalvo claimed in his confession that she had actually died
Speaker 1: after he broke into her apartment and tried to grab her.
Speaker 1: The next was twenty five year old Beverly Salmons, who
Speaker 1: was found stabbed to death at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: in May nineteen sixty three. With the victim seemingly so unrelated,
Speaker 1: differing significantly by age and appearance, many have also questioned
Speaker 1: whether they were all murdered by the same individual. Peter
Speaker 1: Hurkos certainly remained convinced that the man he had identified
Speaker 1: as the killer had been responsible for at least some
Speaker 1: of the crimes. Her Coos would continue to offer his
Speaker 1: services to police, and was invited to consult on many
Speaker 1: other cases. Including the nineteen sixty nine murders committed by
Speaker 1: members of the Manson family. He died of a heart
Speaker 1: attack in nineteen eighty eight at the age of seventy seven.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, incredibly, so convinced were they that Albert
Speaker 1: de Salvo's confession was not the full picture, both de
Speaker 1: Salvo's relatives and those of Mary Sullivan, thought to be
Speaker 1: the last of the strangler's victims, joined together in requesting
Speaker 1: that de Salvo and Sullivan's bodies be exhumed for DNA testing.
Speaker 1: Attorney A. Lane Whitfield Sharp, who represented both families in
Speaker 1: the case, also found a series of inconsistencies between DeSalvo's
Speaker 1: apparent confession and the facts of Sullivan's sexual assault and murder.
Speaker 1: After years of trying, in twenty twelve, Mary Sullivan's remains
Speaker 1: were exhumed, from which the DNA taken from the seaman
Speaker 1: of an unknown male was successfully extracted. The same DNA
Speaker 1: was also found on the blanket she'd been lying on
Speaker 1: at the time of her death. Without probable cause, however,
Speaker 1: d Salvo's body could not be exhumed, so Boston police
Speaker 1: hatched a plan. After tailing a nephew of Albert de
Speaker 1: Salvo's They managed to confiscate a bottle he had drunk
Speaker 1: out of and had its sent for testing. His DNA
Speaker 1: was found to be a match for the DNA found
Speaker 1: on Mary Sullivan, suggesting that at the very least he
Speaker 1: was related to her killer. Now in possession of the
Speaker 1: evidence they needed, in twenty thirteen, Boston Police crime Lab
Speaker 1: dug up what remained of DeSalvo's body and extracted teeth
Speaker 1: and a section of bone from his left arm. After
Speaker 1: examining his DNA, investigators found it to be a significant
Speaker 1: match for that found on Mary Sullivan. Odds that the
Speaker 1: DNA had come from anyone else was said to be
Speaker 1: one in two hundred and twenty billion. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now
Speaker 1: do so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes,
Speaker 1: just go to patron dot com, forward Slash Unexplained Pod
Speaker 1: to sign up, or if you'd like to make a
Speaker 1: one time donation, you can go to Unexplained podcast dot
Speaker 1: com forward Slash Support. All donations, no matter how large
Speaker 1: or small, are greatly appreciated. Unexplained the book and audiobook
Speaker 1: featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on
Speaker 1: the show. Is now available to buy worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and water Stones, among
Speaker 1: other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music,
Speaker 1: are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and
Speaker 1: rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel
Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com,
Speaker 1: or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast