Den stora tråden om seriemördare [Sammanfogad]

This was a ghastly crime.

Nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan had just moved from Cape Cod to Boston, where she rented an apartment in the bustling Beacon Hill neighborhood. Within a few days of her arrival in January 1964, she was found dead. Her attacker raped her and strangled her to death.

Sullivan was one of 11 women whom Albert DeSalvo — known as the Boston Strangler — would later confess to killing. However, he then recanted, leaving lingering doubts about the possibility that the real assailant had eluded capture.

DeSalvo was never convicted of any of the Strangler killings, but he was sentenced to life in prison on other rape charges. Fellow inmates stabbed him to death in 1973. For decades after his death, experts argued about whether he really was the Strangler or whether someone else committed the crimes and got away.

Evidence that finally linked DeSalvo to the Sullivan assault emerged in July 2013.