The Boston Stranglers by Susan Kelly

ghosts in the Revolutionary War cemetery near the Commander were screaming at him. Mindful of his duty, the detective climbed out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and drove to the hotel to pick up Hurkos. Not knowing what else to do, he then brought Hurkos back to his own home. Once inside the cop’s house, however, Hurkos refused to stay. It was the presence of the detective’s children that disturbed him. Their innocent aura would prevent him from picking up the evil vibrations of the Strangler.
    It says a great deal about the Cambridge detective’s powers of self-control that there wasn’t a male strangling victim.
    Less than forty-eight hours after the psychic hit town, the Boston police officers assigned by Bottomly to work with him were pleading to be let off the hook.
    â€œNobody particularly wanted to be with him,” comments former Inspector John Moran, in a classic understatement. Moran looks thoughtful. Then he remarks, “They should have taken him down to the track and let him pick the horses.”
    Even Bottomly seems to have entertained second thoughts about Hurkos. Two days after the seer arrived in Boston, Bottomly received a confidential report that Hurkos was the defendant in a breach of contract suit in Wisconsin. He was also an adulterer. “That is conduct,” Bottomly wrote frostily, “of which I personally do not approve.”
    Hurkos did identify a Strangler suspect, and it was one whom the Task Force had already seriously considered. This individual, a shoe salesman, was as innocuous in manner and appearance as Donald Kenefick had predicted (a loaded word, in this context) he might be. Six months later Brooke wrote that this suspect was “a lifetime celibate with a history of mental illness [who] inexplicably joined three marriage clubs.” The man’s brothers had been trying to persuade him to seek professional help for some time before he came to the attention of the Task Force. Recent bizarre changes in his behavior had them worried. These changes had also worried the police in the town where the man lived.
    Hurkos was convinced of this suspect’s guilt. His mission in Boston complete, he left town assuring his hosts that in the person of the shoe salesman they had their man. They didn’t; there was no physical evidence nor any eyewitness to connect the man to any of the murders. He ended up voluntarily committing himself to a mental institution.
    Despite the departure of Hurkos, the Strangler Bureau hadn’t concluded its dealings with him. As a parting gift, someone in the office had given him a card identifying the bearer as “a special honorary assistant attorney general,” a title as high-sounding as it was meaningless. That piece of paper and a nickel would buy Hurkos a cup of coffee, but he was an avid collector of law enforcement memorabilia and added the card to his considerable store of toy credentials and badges.
    The gift would come back to haunt, so to speak, its giver.
    All the while Hurkos had been in Boston sniffing out the psychic spoor of the Strangler, the FBI had been looking for him. Not because it wanted his help in solving a case; it wanted to arrest him. For impersonating one of its agents at a gas station in Milwaukee.
    Hurkos was taken into custody in New York City.
    On February 10, 1964, a story by Bill Norton and Bob Castricone entitled HURKOS FRAMED—BROOKE AID E appeared on page one of the Globe. In it the two reporters described Hurkos’s arrest and arraignment and then went on to quote a “spokesman” for Attorney General Brooke as saying, “I think the charges [against Hurkos] are as phony as a $3 bill.” The speaker then went on to characterize the arrest as a deliberate attempt on the part of the FBI to discredit the Strangler Task Force. And, finally, the spokesman indulged in a bit of nose-thumbing: “It took us two hours to discover him [Hurkos] in an actor’s home