i don't get this. even if this dude didn't kill mary sullivan, he still killed some of the others. why would the families want to help him get off for not killing mary, esp. since he's dead? that should be the unsolved mystery, why they would want to clear his name.
i just got the book, the recent book, written about him, called the boston stranglers.

I wanted to bump up this ancient thread because even though DNA proved DeSalvo killed the last canonical strangler victim in 2013, there are still claims that the case is unresolved... I was reading the Zodiac Hoax book where the author compares the police reports with the Graysmith books and claims the Zodiac crimes were committed by different people. As a minimum he has proven that the work of Graysmith is largely fiction. But for me he goes off the track by claiming "like happened in the BS case."
DeSalvo was actually convicted of two different rape sprees. For much of the 90s and 00s several true crime authors, DeSalvo's relatives and a relative of the last victim all claimed Albert's confession was false and he didn't kill anybody. But DNA proved he killed the last victim in what was the most violent and ghoulish attack. Now the claim has shifted saying he couldn't have killed the others or all of the others. (DNA proved the old saw that serial killers do not stop was wrong again, a corollary claim). Telling is that DeSalvo had confessed to a murder the police didn't even know about, an old lady who died of fright when he confronted her after breaking into her apartment in the same neighborhood in the Back Bay where there were several other murders in the spree. The main reason the belief in a copycat was because some of the murders were old ladies and some were young. But these two examples proved DeSalvo had no preference. All the crimes had the same MO and happened in three clusters (Back Bay-South End, Lynn, Lowell) all places DeSalvo was familiar with. DeSalvo had an insatiable sex drive. He was never satisfied, which led to his crimes and got him kicked out of the Army. He was often successful with women without violence, but that was not enough. He became a murderer after his first stretch in prison for rape. That spree stopped with his very violent last murder and he went back to rape until he was caught. The Boston Strangler was no hoax. But it is interesting that all the conspiracy theories revise themselves when new evidence disprove them.

you really have to wonder what the OP would think about finally getting a response to their thread after 14 years.

you really have to wonder what the OP would think about finally getting a response to their thread after 14 years.

why start a new thread when there is already one? I am a little surprised when no one commented about the case in 2013 when the DNA match was made which nullified the mystery aspects of the case shown on UM and later placed on their best of dvd.