The Boston Strangler by Gerold; Frank Page B

had he gone through his victims’ possessions, pulled out drawers, emptied pocketbooks, even thumbed through appointment books and personal letters? Was it to learn all he could about the woman he had killed? If—as many theorized—he attacked these elderly women because each in his deranged mind represented his mother whom he hated yet loved, he might be searching for a clue—an object, a talisman, something—to link her with himself, to identify her as his mother. Or it might be fetishism. He could be a man so terrified of women that he was driven to hunt for a handkerchief, an article of feminine apparel that would give him the essence of femininity without its menace.
    And why did he leave his victims in obscene positions, as if deliberately to debase and degrade them, why the grotesque “decoration” about their necks, the streamers, the bows, the knots? And what about the mysteriously incomplete “sexual assault” or “sexual molestation”? Was the killing incidental to the assault, or theassault incidental to the killing? Most rape-murder cases were easily reconstructed. An attractive young woman, a discarded suitor or workman who saw her, or a burglar who came upon her by accident, or a rapist who followed her—then murder in a moment of panic to silence her or prevent her from identifying him. None of these patterns appeared likely here, although all were within the realm of possibility.
    Psychiatrists tried to analyze the strangler. Dr. Philip Solomon, Psychiatrist in Chief at Boston City Hospital, suggested that he might be a Dr. Jekyll–Mr. Hyde personality—a man who worked at a menial job, perhaps in a hospital; a man who might seem quiet and well-adjusted when actually he was a “psychotic sex pervert suffering from the most malignant form of schizophrenia,” a disease in which the victim lives in a world of fantasy which he thinks is real. If not caught such a man would kill again. His obsession would give him no peace. But the forces driving him would sooner or later cause him to make a slip so he could be caught.
    Dr. Robert W. Hyde, Assistant State Commissioner of Mental Health, agreed that the Strangler might look like any other person on the streets of Boston. Neither his manner nor his habits would call attention to him. He probably had a routine nine-to-five job. That would explain why many stranglings occurred just before dusk—he probably committed them on the way home from work. No absence from his job during the day, no absence from his home during the night, to give fellow employees or neighbors reason to suspect him. That would also explain his “phantom” quality—he was invisible because he melted into the sea of faces in which everyone lived and moved without causing a second glance.
    At the Homicide Division on the second floor of police headquarters, concealed behind a screen in a small room, rested a perforated wooden board. A length of rope had been brought through each hole and a knot tied in it. If the board were turned about, one saw that name tags had been attached to each knot: Anna Slesers, Nina Nichols, Helen Blake, Ida Irga, Jane Sullivan.
    Each was a replica of the knot found in the ligatures about the women’s necks. But whether housecoat cord, nylon stocking, or pillowcase, the knot was the same: a granny knot, a square knot with a double half hitch. Lieutenant Sherry, sick at heart, stared at them. He had not seen the body of Anna Slesers because the crime took place on his day off; nor that of Helen Blake, because it occurred in Lynn, outside his jurisdiction. When he saw Nina Nichols’ body, he had shaken his head; the lack of pattern in the drunken Margaret Davis killing had first planted the idea that it might be one man; when he saw the body of Ida Irga he had thought, What a terrible death for an old woman; at the sight of Jane Sullivan, stripped of all human dignity, he had turned