Eerie photographs show how 'Boston Strangler' sparked fear in city's women who learned karate and carried weapons as killer is finally named five decades on
A day after Massachusetts police finally named the notorious 'Boston Strangler' after five decades, LIFE.com has released an eerie collection of photographs showing how the grisly murders sparked fear in the city, particularly among the women who were determined not to be his next victim.
Yesterday, authorities announced that incredible advancements in DNA testing technology had allowed them to prove with 99.9 per cent certainty that Albert DeSalvo killed at least one of the Strangler's victims, and likely the other 10 who were found dead in their apartments, allegedly tied up in 'frog-like' positions.
DeSalvo confessed to the slayings, which occurred between 1962 and 1964, but was never prosecuted so the unimaginable crimes went unsolved for 49 years. The string of murders - and the fact a killer was never caught - sparked intense terror in the women of Boston.
These fascinating images, some of which were never published in LIFE, show young ladies sleeping with makeshift weapons to protect themselves, chaining their doors and barricading alley ways to keep out intruders.
A woman ensures her door is chained shut after a wave of stranglings in the Boston area sparked terror in the city
In this chilling 1963 photograph that never appeared in Life magazine, a girl barricades alley outside apartment with an old door during series of Boston stranglings
Lighting a cigarette she could jam into an assailant's eye, a Boston student walks home with hatpin on her sleeve - a deadly stilleto ready for fast thrust
Other spectacularly chilling black and white pictures show Boston mounted police patrolling the area of the strangling and women learning karate in a bid to better defend themselves against an attacker.
This week, authorities are set to exhume DeSalvo's body from the ground, where it has been for 40 years, so they can prove beyond any doubt that he raped and strangled to death Mary Sullivan, 19, in January 1964.
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DNA detectives collected this year from DeSalvo's nephew proved a familial match to the semen sample retrieved from Sullivan nearly 50 years ago.
Sadly, such DNA evidence is unavailable for the other 10 victims but the similar nature in which they were murdered strongly suggests DeSalvo, as per his confession, was responsible for them all.
The blue collar worker and Army veteran who was married with children was stabbed to death in Walpole state prison in November 1973, aged 42, while serving a life sentence for an unrelated robbery and sexual assault conviction.
Albert DeSalvo, pictured in the late 1960s, confessed to the chilling stranglings but was never prosecuted. On Thursday, police said they were 99.9 per cent sure he was telling the truth
A Boston woman sleeps with an umbrella at hand for self-protection during the strangling scare
Director George Mattson shows a class of girls how to fight off a strangler in a self-dense class during the 'Boston Strangler' period in the early 1960s
At a press conference on Thursday, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said: 'The ability to provide closure to a family after fifty years is just a remarkable thing.'
Despite his confession, DeSalvo was never prosecuted for the heinous crimes because of a deal negotiated with then-Attorney General Edward Brooke and DeSalvo's attorney, F. Lee Bailey.
Under the deal, Bailey agreed DeSalvo wouldn't be prosecuted if he admitted he was the Strangler.
At his robbery and sexual assault trial in 1967, Bailey said DeSalvo was consumed by 'one of the most crushing sexual drives that psychiatric science has ever encountered.
'Thirteen acts of homicide by a completely uncontrollable vegetable walking around in a human body,' he said in opening his defense, according to The Boston Globe archives.
Improvised means of self protection included booby traps such as bottles in doorways
A date ends with a boyfriend searching under his girlfriend's bed for anything unusual during the wave of stranglings
In this picture that never appeared in Life magazine, Boston mounted police are seen patrolling the area where the stranglings occurred in 1963
His psychiatrist, Dr. James A. Brussel, testified that he was suffering from 'schizophrenia of the paranoid type.'
He said each of DeSalvo's alleged slaying would be preceded by a night during which would be tormented 'with a burning up inside... Like little fires. Like little explosions.'
According to the article, Dr. Brussel testified that DeSalvo told him he killed his victims with nylon stockings.
'He tied the victims up usually with scarves or stockings, the stockings being the terminal means by which, though unconsciousness had of course, ensured, the terminal means by which life ended,' he said.
He added the victims were tied 'in a frog-like position,' and that DeSalvo had relations with the dead or unconscious body.
See more images at LIFE.com.
A dog is trained to attack an intruder during the stranglings
A Boston girl sleeps with ski poles as a makeshift weapon in the even of a attack
Karate director George Mattson hold extra classes for girls on how to fight off a strangler
This image that was never published in LIFE, shows a rainy Beacon Hill street at dusk during the era of the Boston stranglings, 1963
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