Review: Kelly, The Boston Stranglers (2013)

[truepenny]

The Boston Stranglers by Susan Kelly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the obverse face of Gerold Frank's The Boston Strangler; Kelly doesn't think DeSalvo committed ANY of the murders. (DNA proved her wrong the same year this updated edition came out: DeSalvo's DNA was matched to evidence from Mary Sullivan's murder---or was it? Kelly's response raises doubts.) Kelly makes a better argument than Frank, while uncovering evidence that says Frank had a vested monetary interest in DeSalvo being the Strangler.

I admit, I find Kelly more plausible than Frank. Even if DeSalvo committed the Sullivan murder (he got a lot of details wrong in his confession, which, since he was reputed to have a photographic memory, makes me uneasy), this does nothing to link him to any of the others, and Kelly finds other, more plausible suspects who got off on technicalities or who weren't pursued because DeSalvo confessed. (Note that he was never prosecuted, much less convicted, for ANY of the strangling cases.) And that confession is, it is painfully obvious, specious nonsense; DeSalvo was shown crime scene photographs BEFORE he made his confessions, and the transcripts reveal Bottomly (who had no qualifications to conduct an interrogation) leading his witness something fierce.

I don't know the answer. But Kelly certainly provides a more thorough investigation and opens up a lot of questions that Frank sweeps under the rug.



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