Stranglers

Episode 3: Dead Ends and Copycats

<p>Three months with no new deaths: investigators were beginning to believe that the Boston Strangler’s killing spree had ended. Then, on December 5, 1962, a roommate found the body of 20 year old Sophie Clark, and the case took a terrifying new turn. Had the killer changed his M.O.? Were two or more Boston Stranglers at large? Host Portland Helmich digs into the details surrounding Clark’s murder, and learns much more about the obsessive patterns serial killers usually follow. She also talks to Jane Caputi, an expert who studies the ways in which society turns some serial killers into outlaw heroes.</p>
<p>This episode is brought to you by Blue Apron and First Day Back.</p>

From June, 1962 through January, 1964, women in the city of Boston lived in fear of the infamous Strangler. Over those 19 months, he committed 13 known murders-crimes that included vicious sexual assaults and bizarre stagings of the victims' bodies. After the largest police investigation in Massachusetts history, handyman Albert DeSalvo confessed and went to prison. Despite DeSalvo's full confession and imprisonment, authorities would never put him on trial for the actual murders. And more than 50 years later, significant doubts continue to surround the case. Was DeSalvo really the killer? Was there more than one Strangler? And did the Boston PD and the FBI do everything necessary to find and stop the murderer?
 
Stranglers, an original 12-part weekly documentary podcast from Stitcher and Northern Light Productions, is a fascinating, contemporary audio investigation of the Boston Strangler story. Using never-before-heard voices, interviews with actual suspects, extensive original research and new conversations with the victims' family members, host Portland Helmich will introduce you to every facet of the case, from the reporters who originally covered it to the police who worked furiously to solve it, as well as terrified witnesses who claim to have met the Strangler himself.