Albert DeSalvo Investigators in Boston have made a major breakthrough in one of America's most infamous unsolved killing sprees with the help of advances in DNA technology and a water bottle discarded by an unwitting relative of the main suspect.
Fifty years after the city was gripped by fear of
the Boston Strangler, prosecutors said new forensic evidence identified the late Albert DeSalvo as the likely killer of the last of the 11 victims killed between 1962 and 1964.
Mary Sullivan, 19, was found strangled in her flat in January 1964, just three days after she moved to the city. Specimens taken from the crime scene provided a "familial match" to DNA recovered from a water bottle thrown away by a nephew of DeSalvo, authorities said.
DeSalvo's body will be exhumed in coming days to confirm the findings. He was stabbed to death in prison in 1973 where he was serving a life term for armed robberies and sexual assaults.
DeSalvo had confessed responsibility for the Strangler murders to a fellow inmate, but he was never prosecuted and he later recanted his confessions. The killings terrorised the city and long fascinated America. Tony Curtis played DeSalvo in a 1968 film about the murders and the Rolling Stones song Midnight Rambler is based on the story of the Boston Strangler.
