Strangled - Brian McGrory [109]
The second box was filled with newspaper clippings on every one of the eleven murders, all of them yellowed, some of them crumbling, each one more fascinating than the last. I love reading old papers, partly for the simplistically done ads for products that probably no longer exist, partly for the more formal writing tone that reporters used to take. I had to convince myself not to get lost in the stories or I’d end up spending the night in Vegas, which may or may not have been a bad idea. Edgar Sullivan would have probably advised me to stay.
The third box was a collection of official-looking police reports, transcripts of interviews with witnesses and perhaps suspects, and minutes of various meetings convened by the state attorney general and a group of police and prosecutors dubbed the Boston Strangler Commission. I gave it a quick scan, but had neither the time nor the patience to give it a thorough review.
Should this stuff have been walked out the police department doors — read: stolen — and be hidden away for years in some anonymous garage in the middle of a sun-baked housing development? Absolutely not. But was it a common occurrence for police to grab documents and other various trinkets from cases that were dear to their hearts? It happened every day, and Bob Walters appeared no different than anyone else.
The last box contained many of Walters’s personal mementos and correspondence that he undoubtedly pulled from his desk when he walked out of the homicide bureau that final time, at the end a bitter man. There were plaques from various victims’ groups, awards from civic associations, framed letters of commendation from the commissioner. I was about to pack them all away, call it a day, and head for the airport, when a leather-bound scrapbook in a corner of the locker caught my eye, and I flipped it open.
In it were various notes and letters. The first was from Hal Harrison, then a homicide detective, urging Bob Walters to take some time off in the midst of the Boston Strangler case. Right after it was a hand-scrawled note from a detective by the name of Mac Foley — yes, I believed, the same Mac Foley — telling Walters he was absolutely right about DeSalvo and to keep pounding away on the issue. It didn’t elaborate.
I flipped through page after page of what seemed to be meaningless material until I arrived at a handwritten note that gave me pause for reasons I can’t fully explain. Maybe it was the penmanship, which seemed vaguely, oddly familiar, or maybe it was something else. I honestly don’t know.
Regardless, the letter, dated November 1976, began, “Dear Detective Walters, I agree with you completely that Albert DeSalvo did not kill my mother. Thank you for telling me what you know, and for being honest about what you don’t. My dying grandfather, though, needs to believe that my mother’s killer has been caught and killed. He’s been very sick with cancer, and as he tries to cope with his pain, it helps him to think that DeSalvo was the murderer. That’s why your package was so helpful to him. Thank you for sending it. Me and my family truly appreciate all that you have done. Sincerely yours.”
I had to read the signature twice, and then a third time, to make sure my eyes or my brain weren’t playing tricks on me. It was jarring to see it there, like seeing an apparition, only this was the opposite: a living person so closely, unexpectedly associated with the dead.
I read it yet again, following the curve of the many letters with my eyes, picturing how old he must have been when he wrote his name across the bottom. And then I said it out loud, just to hear it, to put it in the public realm.
“Vincent Mongillo.”
My colleague, my friend, a victim of the Boston Strangler, and he kept it secret all these years and, as important, all these crucial days. I reread the letter, which had to have been written when he was about fifteen years old.
I recalled being surprised at his breadth and width of knowledge on the Strangler case, and I recalled asking him why he knew what he