Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 353: The Boston Strangler(s) Part 2

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

In Part 2 of this series, most of the murders are done and Mathas tells us about the man who confessed to the crimes and hits us with a reveal that Jesse said felt like Usual Suspects… CHILLUMINATI is a weekly comedy podcast hosted by Mike Martin, Jesse Cox and Alex Faciane. Hold on to your tin-foil hats and traverse the realms of the mysterious, supernatural, spooky and sometimes truly horrible - and your third eye will never be the same!Subscribe to our Patreon to support us and for extra content like full video episodes, weekly Minisodes, exclusive art, and more at http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPODThank you to our sponsors:Mike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBragginSources:The Boston Stranglers by Susan Kelly

Why? No, no, dude. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Eliminati podcast. I don't know why he's in that right before we started. As always, I'm one of your host, Mike Barton, joined by Sora and Sora, Alex and Jesse. Don't, I won't be involved in that. I'm all right. One second. That's the real mystery. That's the real conspiracy theory. That's the, at the end of all of this, you're going to find out that every mysterious thing that I've done on the show was to train you to finally comprehend the plot of Kingdom Hearts. And you're going to be like, you're going to be like Hugh Jackman in that one shot and true of life or whatever

yeah like William Defoe in that other shot you know yeah yeah from the lighthouse all those shots shots shots shots shut shut shut shut shut shut shut shut very very timely song reference I figured I'm going with what you would know and you did I appreciate that I didn't know I did know you're right you're completely correct you got to know your audience dude You know what would Mathis know?

That's a rule of thumb for like never being misunderstood and with a cultural reference is like you got to aim for Mathis's like level of like movie knowledge or like cultural knowledge. I'm sorry. I lower the bar. You don't lower the bar. You don't lower the bar. You make it okay for people to ask the question. All right. You're out there. In a way, you're a hero.

You know what you're right. I am. I'm kind of like a hero. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. I'm like the embodiment of hope. Yep. You're the embodiment of hoping that you watch more movies.

Yeah. Yeah. And I did. I watched back rooms last week. I could watch Disclosure Day next week. I can make you a list of like 25 movies that you could watch and then your life would change. You would never have that experience

again of like... That's it, 25 movies? I think that's all it is. Like somebody worked at Blockbuster Video for a long fucking time. I think I could, I think I could, I think I could hit that list. I like it seem like you've seen every movie. All right. I'll, I agree. Go ahead and whip me up 25 movies and watch me change in real time. Watch yourself change. Listen to your heart.

You know what I'm saying? I try my best. Watch yourself change, dude. Watch movies and pop culture change my operating brain and my working knowledge at any given moment for references. Yep. Listen, it's it is it is bummer that I miss out on some references. Just like it's a bummer if you miss out on all the stuff selling at the Yeti.com slash Chulamani. Oh my God. He's making plays. This guy's taking chances.

How many posters are sold out now? We've lost, we're running out of posters like nothing. I haven't looked recently, but we did sell out of at least one. Our comic book cover prints are 70% off. That's enough of an excuse to buy them all. All right. That's a good.

If you were like, I want to have the like gallery of these like, they're really nice. and they're at the Yeti.com slash Chaluminati. That's with two E's in Yeti and no pod at the end of Shlubanati. It's a hard one to find, but you got it. It's going to be in the show. We believe. We believe in you. We're having a spring cleaning sale.

All the posters are going to go. And to celebrate spring, we also have a brand new growth. We've got the new mantet and chill shirt from Mel. It's fucking beautiful. It's a sexy mantet with forearms. It's riding a rocket ship. Who could ask for anything more? And then we also have Mudsley's top secret stickers,

which you can only see before you buy if you head to our members only free patreon.com slash Chulamati Pod, where even the free folks, even people who are just there to find out the stickers. I just want you to go. It's free membership stuff that you still get over there. Yeah. But Mudsley, you should buy Muddly stickers

with every purchase that you make in the shop because half of the proceeds go straight to Mudsley because we're going to pay them exactly. All our artists were paying them exactly. Like 50 cents. Yeah, like 50. It's like real. It's not like you're giving them like 200 bucks at the top and then being like,

thank you. We're going to, you know, we're older. We've seen how this industry choose people up. Older. Wiser. Get money for every guy you sell. It's tight. Yeah.

It's true. It's tight. Just how do I, how do I take out of go from that to where we're about to go? That's on you, man. That's a you problem. Smitty is trying to help. He's doing his best to break attention. Oh, God, don't do it!

He's warning us not to do it. You know, they made a... Jesse and Alex, you both made a fantastic point before we were recording that I should have put a trigger warning at the beginning of episode one because we dove into the murders

kind of immediately. Yeah. Consider this a retroactive trigger warning for episode one. Oh my gosh, look, he's flying into the air. Oh, look, he's in that orbit of Earth. Oh, he's going around the Earth in the opposite direction. Counterclockwise.

Oh, my God, although... He knows this reference. Like, chasms are close. You understand the original. The 1970s Superman, he gets. I do. I do understand that reference. I got that one.

W. W. W.K. M.K. And time isn't real anyway. So who gives a shit? Yeah. We solved it. He did do a trigger warning last time. Jokes on you guys.

Jokes on you. Trigger warning for this episode as well, the way less of a degree than the first episode, because we kind of formatted this with the murders heavily front-loaded. But today, we're going to go ahead and take that tangent and move and segue into part two of the Boston Strangler slash Stranglers with the S in parentheses. The Mareemann that's actually just like a few similar crimes. Stranglers with an S.

Right. Like last week, we kind of left you, boys with like a little problem. The idea that for 60-ish years, what are you laughing about? Sorry, there's some implication now that there's stranglers with a Z. And those are the cool ones. I'm sure there is.

I'm sure there. Yeah. That's the cool guy. I think that's what it's like. Out of the knot. You think it's like when one, one strangler dies,

another one, like, rises to the prequist. Yeah. It's a prentice. But they always have to say with a Z. Like,

we're the stranglers with a Z. Yeah. Antonio Banderas. They're like, they put down some cardboard and they start like, yes,

yeah, yeah, they break dance. They like to strangle the pavement if you know what I mean. Oh, damn. I don't know exactly what you mean,

but I'll extend you the poetic license. Thank you. Yeah, no. I mean, like, you should, though.

Like, You should. Yeah. I will. You should know. Yeah. I read Smitty. I know too, dude.

I know too. He's very excitable today. Well, we left off last week saying basically for almost 60 years at this point, everybody in America has mostly known that the Boston Strangler is singular. One man that we left off last week talking about Albert DeSalvo was his name. And he confessed. He's one that confessed in the insane asylum. He's the one Tony Curtis plays in the.

the movie. Like, it's basically what everybody believes to be the true story. Let's face it. I did it. And I loved doing it. And I do it again, every single one. And then it's like, you've, you've confessed to 16 more than there were. And he's like, well, goodbye. I am the Boston Strangler. And then he leaves. Uh, no, yeah, but that's kind like, in that joke, there is like a lot of truth because like, we'll talk about it this episode. but we spent an entire episode talking about how this case was broken down. Cambridge cops, Boston detectives, lawyers, medical examiners, all that stuff. And almost to a man, every single one of them told you the same damn thing by the end of the episode.

Sergeant James McDonald said, quote, Albert de Salvo did none of the Boston stranglings nor any of the others. While police commissioner Edmund McNamara said, quote, I knew there was more than one killer the whole time. We talked about the cops themselves. internally. We're like, yeah, they were like, we knew,

we always knew. But they never pinned it on, but they never caught multiple people. They just took Albert DeSalvo and put them in. And that's where we're going to find ourselves tonight. The man, the entire world knows as the Boston Strangler. The men who hunted the Boston Strangler,

don't believe he was the Boston Strangler. And then we're going to look at, did he actually kill anybody at all? Or was he entire? innocent from the get-go. Because there is a case to be made that he actually did commit one singular murder out of all of these murders. And that one murder is the reason he admitted to all the other murders for a very bizarre

kind of like reason, which we'll talk about towards the end. There's something, isn't there a term for like the desire to be like almost kind of like, what's his name who shot John Lennon where he's like trying to insert himself into the. Oh, like, just like make your, yeah, it's called being pathetic. No, I mean, yeah, but I mean, like there's there, I swear there's like some cool mind hunter-ass word for it that there probably is. Some desire to be famous. Yeah, that's exactly where Albert DeSalvo is kind of attention.

I would say slots. Yeah, attention whore, uh, mediocre like criminally mediocre. That sounds like Hunter. That's kind of who this guy was. like we're going to we're going to go over today how an entire confession got built out of this dude who at the end of the day actually couldn't tell you how many days in June there were but he had a perfect memory for every crime he ever committed all right just for the record I'm not exaggerating by the way let's not crucify people for not knowing how many days are in June because let me tell you I'm

to be honest no it's not about that it's just let me just be honest I got no fucking idea I have may and June and July fuck me up every single time maybe I'm the Boston Strangler I don't No, no. But if I am, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to everyone. I'm sorry too if you are. That's unfortunate right realization. Yeah, that would not be helpful to this podcast. That's for sure. Maybe for one episode. It would blow up a single episode and then our podcast would be a hell of an interview. Like, how did you do all that, dude? Yeah. I'm responsible for one of the things that we cover on this show.

It's not the Boston Strangler. Thank you so much to Cash App for sponsoring today's episode. And all right, you all know I keep the money stuff pretty simple. And cash app's been my go-to for years. Splitting a tab with friends or families, sending money to people who I know need it for the never-ending pet supply run.

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C, CET terms and conditions for the Sutton Prebade card, Sutton Debit Flex card, and Bank Corp Debit Flex card. Cash App, Green Features, Savings, Direct Deposit, Roundups, Overdraft Coverage and discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.com slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. You heard it. You heard it here first. All right. All right. It's a whole ARG for the audience to figure out. I wish it was, but you know what?

I've discovered after many years of trying, they just don't care that much. They just want to feel like they're solving an ARG. Yeah. Well, on that, keeping in mind who talking about we're going to break down who Albert DeSalvo is. So we're going to actually start where we kind of always start with an episode one in a true crime episode. Albert Henry DeSalvo himself, where he was born, et cetera.

He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on September 3rd, 1931, and he was the third of six kids. and much like we've seen with basically every true crime episode we've ever done, if you want to understand the man, you have to understand the house that built him. I have to find at what age he got hit really hard in the head. Well, let me tell you. Before we move on,

do you have any like insider intel on like living nearby that about Chelsea? Chelsea again was too, I never really went to Chelsea as a kid. It was a little too far away for me. So no, nothing about Chelsea. I know of it, but that's it.

Does it have a reputation? Is it a nice place? in your mind. I think it's a nice place, but I don't, I don't, there's no reputation that I know of. Vives. So yeah, we have to understand where this dude came from. And we have gone through a lot of horrific childhoods on this show. Alberts is one of the worst. He certainly had one of the worst childhoods. His father, Frank DeSalvo, was a fisherman and a machinist. He was also a monster. And like, that's a bad combo to be. Yeah, it's not good. It's not good. Yeah. Yep.

That's a triple threat. A triple threat. Fisherman, machinist, and monster. Yeah, Frank would beat Albert's mother, Charlotte, and all six of his kids with his fists, with belts, and with pipes. He once pulled a gun. Yep. Yep, like with a metal pipe.

He once pulled a gun on his wife, Charlotte. And on another occasion, he took Charlotte's fingers and snapped them one at a time. What? Backwards, like dry twigs. so that hit for a second I don't like that yeah

and it somehow kind of gets worse Albert claimed his father once sold him and his sisters to a farmer up in Maine

for nine bucks pardon and then they lived there for the rest of their lives or clearly not because they grew up

in the house probably didn't go through yeah they probably just didn't go through his mother probably stopped them uh

frank also would bring home prostitutes and have sex with them right in front of his kids. And on top of all that, he personally taught Albert how to shoplift. Like a little, like a little 1930. He was born in 1933,

1931. Did he have rooms in his house? I mean, yeah, but there's six kids, so there's a lot of sharing rooms. And like, if you're wondering, like, did Albert embellish any of this origin story and stuff,

which, you know, you would assume maybe he did, it would be very on brand for him too. His younger brother Richard actually backs all of this up. And some of Richard's clearest memories of his entire childhood are hiding under a bed saying, quote, I recall being under the bed a lot because that was where I was safe. So, you know, the perfect evil soup. This is the soil that this little Albert man grew out of.

And by age 12, Albert was already racking up some arrests. assault and battery, robbery. Like, he had a grand total of $2.85 on a robbery. He goes off to Reform School, the lineman school for delinquent boys. And he's in and out, in and out of that the whole time. And the kid who would, like this guy one day kind of was like, he was, it became very clear in the boarding school that Albert DeSalvo was incredibly afraid. of the dark, which is pure, in my mind, PTSD from growing up in a violent household.

If I lived with somebody who was beating my shit with a pipe, I would not trust the lights being off ever. Sure. Exactly. Exactly. He was terrified to walk alone at night. And then when he's going in and out and he tries to like actually straighten up for a little while, he joins the army at 17, partly according to his brother, just to get

the hell away from his stepfather, who was apparently just continuing to be violent. Didn't matter how old and how big this kid was getting. He did two tours and was honorably discharged both times. He gets posted out into Germany where in 1949 he meets a young woman named Ermgard Beck. He marries her in 1953 and they have two kids together, daughter Judy, who was bored with a hip disease and a healthy son, Michael. In 195, while stationed in New Jersey, Albert was arrested on a charge of carnally abusing a child. So while he was trying to get himself on the straight and narrow, very shortly after having his kids, he was. Slipped up and sexually assaulted a child.

And sexually assaulted a kid. Is kids or just a kid? No, a different kid, not his kids. I'm sorry, it looks like a different, like a random kid? random kid the charge was dropped later and it's not something like worth dwelling on all that much

but just show you let's move on let's just move on from that but like the point being the general like as much as he is outwardly trying to fix himself and building a straight like go on straight and narrow quote unquote the generational trauma

and his own fucked up head and him being an own fucking asshole of a person is spilling out now because now he's an adult sexually assaulted a child exactly correct Like that's, you know, it's in the file. It's part of who this dude was.

And this is what makes Albert so hard to pin down because everyone who actually knew the man brings up the same things first. That he was a smile a lot. He was very sunny, lit up the whole damn room, very, very friendly. This is 1950s talk. 1950s talk. Yeah, yeah, a little bit of varying the lead. And even the cops who arrested the guy when they talked about him, remembered how nice of a guy he was and how he was smiling.

You had so much fried chicken to hand out. It was crazy. He dressed up like a clown. Kids loved him. It was hilarious. Everybody in the community saw him as like a devoted father. He built his nephew, an elaborate wooden fort by hand. He wrote the kid letters telling him to mind his mother and study hard.

His sister-in-law remembers nothing but sweet, quote, jaunty affection from him. and his old construction boss when he heard Albert had confessed to being the Boston Strangler was horrified calling Albert a decent kindly man who had never shown so much as a flicker of anything being wrong. That's because that guy was old.

That wasn't a shot. Point being is that everybody saw this guy as like this super nice dude, very friendly, but on the back end he was also doing monstrous things and continuing to do the monstrous things his father had clearly done to them.

while he tried outwardly to be the opposite of his father, he was failing internally, privately. By the early 1960s, Albert's got the wife, the two kids, he's got steady construction work out in Malden, Massachusetts, and he's got a little side hustle that, like, he's a little con artisty.

Albert knocks on the, basically what he does is he knocks on the door of an attractive young woman, introduces himself as Johnson from the black and white modeling agency, tells her she's got exactly the look they're casting for and all he needs to do is take a few measurements and so again he's super charming boyish is a way he's also described

very disarming modern pornography like what are you talking about? No no and a ton of women a ton of women were like sure come on in and they like he just like measured their bodies he'd thank them tell them that the agency would be calling them soon

and he'd leave the door and that's it. That he was labeled by the cops as the measuring man. The measuring man. Get that shit out of shit. The measure of a man. The measuring man. The measuring man.

It can sometimes be measured by the man. The measure. Oh, it's just the measuring man. Don't worry. It's just like, it's sexual assault, I think, like technically by law. Absolutely.

Absolutely it is. Like, that's what this is no money or anything. going in and just measuring them with the tape measure and then being like, thank you, I'm sorry, are you trying to insinuate dude was doing it for the love of the game? Is that what you're saying? Like, it was not money or getting rich.

This guy was just being a creep to be a creep, dude. I mean, kind of, right? Yeah, it's just being a creep to be a creep. You just wanted to touch them tities. Yeah, after he did enough time, the cops came to know that he was the Cambridge cops in particular, came to know that there was a guy out there doing it and they just labeled him the men.

measuring man. The measuring man. They caught him. Yes. They do. In March of 1961, they finally catch him. And in a little detail that I love, they actually catch him mid burglary, actually. And to their genuine surprise, this guy cheerfully cops to being the measuring man while he's at it.

Like, they catch him robbing a place and they get him arrested. And while he's arrested, he's like, by the way, just want you to know, I'm also the measuring man. You probably been looking for me. I'm the measuring man. That's exactly what it sounds like. Like, no, you've got some sex like. But they haven't been measuring up. Oh my God.

Another awful Batman villain. Yeah, Batman breaks in and just punches him in the face. He's turning into the Ridler. Like, you're telling me, like, this guy, like, did all this. And he had, and he just in jail decided that being the measuring man wasn't cool enough. So he wanted to be the Boston Strangler instead. Well, you'll see. You'll see.

You'll see. Yeah. The measuring man is. The measuring man is not cool enough. That is a, that is like a terrible villain. That's a terrible, like, to be the guy who's like, I'm notorious for measuring people. That sucks. You suck.

Working on yourself, getting out of jail and turning over a new leaf. The measuring man and the number. Not for the measuring man. That's not how he do. Who the fuck is the numberler, dude? It's a fucking fake Batman feeling mean a couple of friends made up a few nights ago. Whoa. Whoa.

Where he shows up and he asked Batman like, Batman, what's six plus four? And just as Batman's about to answer, he goes, doesn't matter. And he charges you. And that's his whole move. He's the number, dude. He's the number. Okay. It's dumb.

Just saying the measuring man belongs in the halls with like. The measuring man and the numberler are like perfect, like, they're like right. They work right together. And the only one who could stop the number. We determined was a man by the name of neutral Ted, who was never surprised by any of Numbler's charging actions. What? All right. Build a lawyer.

You know, we just build lore. No, yeah, no, I get it. Lore, dude. Lore, yeah. No, I understand. Lore. It's so Batman. Yeah, it's like the worst

Batman villain you could possibly think of. I think it came from Calendar Man came up at some point. And I was like, and then we just went from there. Anyway. Condiment King, bro. Condiment.

Is he in, wait, is he an actual DC? He's real. Sorry. Him and Matter Eater Lad should come together and see how that goes. Carfine.

Condiment King's exactly what he sounds like. I can't believe this one of a name Condominant King. That's fucking. awesome. It's so dumb. Okay, anyway, he's in prison. He cheerfully tells the cops he's also the measuring man. Apparently he's like delighted to tell them. And so he ends up serving about 11 months in prison after that. And by April of 1962, he is a free man once again. Two months later is when the first Boston Strangler murder happens. So he's like just two months out of prison at

that point. And while the whole city of Boston is beginning to lose their mind over the Boston stranglings, Albert is busy escalating into much worse than a tape measureer. The cops working the suburbs north of Boston start tracking a brand new predator with a brand new nickname. He's not the measuring man. Now he's the green man. Name supposedly, sorry. He's just slowly becoming the riddler. Is that what you're kind of because he's nicknamed because he wears green pants okay so not the infamous full body green suit that has been featured in numerous TV shows and on the internet like not that yes not like that joji yes yes not that no okay all right so the green man's methods according to the cops went like this he would knock on the door talk his way inside

say that there was a leak in the building and that he's like the superintendent or something here to fix it, go inside. And as soon as we let him inside, assault the person. Obviously, a lot worse than measuring man activity.

He was starting to escalate. Like, he's not, wasn't full on rape at this point, but like grope, attack, pin, you know, just like force himself on them and in a sexually assault. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. He's becoming a, he is, a serial sexual predator at this point, full stop. That's what he is at this point. He's straight up like, it is not a guy. I don't want to frame it basically saying Albert DeSalvo is a man who got railroaded for doing nothing, like framed for nothing.

They had evidence of crimes and they associated one with the other. Sure. Yeah. And the thing is too, he would brag about this shit. By the time they would caught him for good in late 1964, he's tied to a long string of home invasion sexual assaults. How does that even come up? By the way.

Because his own bragging. He starts bragging. Like literally, we're about to get to it. He brags when he gets caught, which is a very serial killer kind of activity as well, bragging to hundreds of serial sexual assaults. And one of the assaults is massive for this particular night.

June of 1964, where a woman named Virginia, a woman named Virginia Thorner, Albert talks his way into her home, attacks her, holds a knife on her, and then he says something to her, something like that she would actually end up testifying to under oath. He tells her he'll kill her if she screams, and then he tells her exactly why she should believe him, because he's done this before. He says, quote, I have even gotten, I've even got an old lady, but they don't know it, end quote, talking about him saying to her, like, I've killed an old woman. I'll kill you. it's not a big deal.

We talked about back in part one, an 85-year-old Mary Mullen briefly. This is the one Albert later claimed died of a heart attack in his arms when he broke into her home, which this might be the one and only death in his whole saga of like his serial sexual assaults. An accidental. Potentially. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Jesse, were you about to ask something? No, sorry, just looking up more information.

just really Yeah, yeah. What you're fried? Nothing yet. Literally just started looking. I'm genuinely and completely blown away by like, just another example of, I don't know, man.

Sometimes I question everything about society and about people. But I also know that if we, like, there must be good people, because we keep catching bad people. Does that make any sense? Like at some point you have to see the good and like, well, you know, eventually they got them. But in this case, I don't know if they did,

but they got a bad guy, but was it the bad guy? Like I don't, dude. Thanks to John Bottomley and his psychic friend who got arrested by the FBI last episode for impersonating me. Yeah. I'm still not okay with John Bottomley, dude.

He's outrageous. So late 1964, Albert is finally caught for good for the green man crimes, and he's shipped off to Bridgewater at the State Hospital for the criminally insane in the same lovely establishment we talked about last episode. And it's here at Bridgewater that our gentle con man meets the one kind of missing ingredient this entire legend needed to catch fire, a man by the name of George Nasser. Now, George Nasser, who is this guy?

Well, depends entirely on who you ask in the book that I used as the main source, gives a really good full spread of opinions as to who this guy actually is. So ask his lawyer and Nassar was a Sunday school teacher, a student of the Russian language, very bright with impeccable manners. Ask anybody else who knew the man and you get a slightly different review. One quote was, a man of great anger. Somebody also said that the word around Bridgewater was that during the Charleston gang wars, George Nasser may have been personally responsible for 17 murders,

maybe as high as 30. He's a retired Cambridge detective. Yeah, I, yeah, this is just, again, when I say, depending on who you ask, you get a different answer as to who this man is. But he definitely was a retired detective regardless of who you ask. Yes, yes, yes. He was a retired Cambridge detective. and calling Nassar the single scary, no,

there was also an additional retired Cambridge detective who called Nassar the single scariest guy he'd ever heard of. And one inspector said of men like him, you shoot guys like this guy first, and then you tell them to put their hands up, quote, unquote. Like, Nassar is a horrible person. He wasn't a detective. My bad.

I was like blanking on that. It's other detectives talking about him. And at 16 years old, George Nassar shot a shopkeeper four times during a stickup and his reasoning in his own words. Excitement. He got life for that one. And then got paroled, though, in 1961. And by 19. How long was he in jail?

At 16, he was in for years, like a decade. Oh, my God. So first thing you did, he shot somebody in the chest four times. Yeah, when he was 16. And then got out of jail on good behavior, basically. Yeah, got life. in prison, then in 1961, got paroled. And then by 1964, just three years out of his parole, he's right back inside, this time for

surprise, another murder. And now, this man is Albert's new best buddy in Bridgewater Prison. And when was he supposed to do those other 17 murders, like already by now? Yeah, they're already done. Wow. And wouldn't you know it, George Nasser just so happens to have himself a lawyer, a young, famous, flamboyant gun carrying flies his own plane celebrity defense attorney by the name of F. Lee Bailey.

Stop. This is the... What, okay, all right. Keep going. Please. He just... This is the guy who just got, at this point in time, had just gotten Sam Shepard's conviction thrown out. Yeah.

Yeah, like, you know, yeah, you, Jesse, you know who this guy is. Yes. Very, very famous, very famous. Very famous criminal defense attorney. He looks like. Yes. Yeah. His, like, his license...

His license plate literally read trial. That is what his license plate on his car read. Wasn't he like one of the OJ guys? Yes. He was with, he was, yeah, yeah. He defended O.J. Simpson, Patty Hurst, I think. But I also know he was disbarred in the early 2000s. And I'm trying to figure out for what.

I don't remember what got him disbarred. Well, oh, oh, for mishandling nearly six million in stock owned by his client, Claude Lewis de Bach. Well, you win some, you lose some. Well, now here's like, here's how the most, this, now that this guy is in Albert's life, it almost becomes obvious how this is like the most famous confession for the Boston Strangler is the reason it hit the historical record. And I swear to you, like, this is so perfectly on brand for, for this show, it's, it's insane.

We know what's crazy is I thought you were about to say his defense attorney Johnny Cochran, but Effley Bailey is literally almost the same. Yeah, I was thinking like, wouldn't it be funny if you said Johnny Cochran. That'd be crazy. But it's like literally the same. Like that's crazy to me.

I'm going to have you guys who wants to be Bailey and who wants to be Nassar. Because basically what we're looking at is a scene in the moment here where Lee Bailey, F Lee Bailey is sitting in a courthouse waiting for his client, George Nassar, when Nassar asks him a question.

And this is how it all happened. I've got a little scene written out here right from the book. This is how freaking Albert de Salvo even came into this guy's life with this very simple, straightforward conversation. Nassar, uh, let's see. I'll dictate. Jesse, you could be, uh, Nassar, the guy who's in prison.

Alex, you can be Bailey, the lawyer. If a man was the strangler, the guy who killed all those women, would it be possible for him to publish his story and make some money with it? It's perfectly possible, but I, I wouldn't advise it. I suspected it would be the means by which the author would put. himself in the electric chair. I'll pass on the information. I promise this guy at Bridgewater, I'd ask you. What's the guy's name? Albert DeSalvo. With that brief conversation, Albert DeSalvo was now on George Nasser's radar and things were about to get insanely crazy

for the entire Boston Strangler case. And it's like intent for like him confessing to a giant crime that he didn't do. Yeah. Also. Like this shows why like a reason. why maybe he would do it right here just based on the nature of this question. Thank you so much to Mint Mobile for sponsoring today's episode. So here's a good one. When people hear that Mint Mobile plans are only $15 a month, the first thing out of everyone's mouth is, okay, yeah, well, what's the catch? And I like, I get it, right? I ask the same exact thing, but there isn't one. No gimmicks, no gotches, just unlimited talk, text and data, fast, reliable coverage on the nation's largest 5G network and an award-winning care team when you

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Speed slower than 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional tax fees and restrictions apply. See Mintmobile for details. Like before Albert even says a single word to a single cop, two people are already discussing if money can be made on this on the story. Like that's crazy that the first time it enters the record, really. The Boston Strangler is like because of money and not even because of the crimes. When you said it was going to be a lawyer that we might recognize, I originally thought you were going to say Vincent Blyosi from a,

okay. And I was going to be like, no way. But now that it's this. again, it's like you thought Johnny Cochran, I thought Vincent Blyosie, this guy's like exactly the midpoint between those two men, pretty much. Yeah. And now with, and NASA doesn't just like introduce them and then bow wow either. Like he personally delivers Albert to Bailey and then he is in the room both times when the lawyer comes out to Bridgewater to interview Albert. Like Nassar inserts himself into this shit.

The two women connected to the case were brought out to Bridgewater to look at Albert in person. and to see if they were, he was maybe their guy. The first was a woman named Marcella Loka, and she's going to come back. She was living at 315 Huntington Avenue in Sophie Clark's building. The same building, the same smooth talking stranger had conned his way through on the very day Sophie Clark was murdered. So the same day, Sophie Clark is strangled and killed in that building. He's also in there being green man and doing green man things.

The second woman was Erica Wilson, who some cops believed had survived an attack by the strangler himself. These two women looked at Albert DeSalvo and neither one of them recognized him at all. Nothing. But there was another inmate in that room that day and both women's heads turned to him. Both of them found this other man hauntingly familiar. Loka went on as far as to say that if his hair had been just a shade lighter, this man could have been the double of the the stranger who had walked, who came to her door the day of Sophie Clark died.

And they're all talking about George Nasser. Because he's in the room with them. This is the fucking dude who was, we're just like, what the fuck? I, I know. So the cops are in the room with a witness who is

looking at one dude and saying, actually it's the other dude. If his hair was a little lighter, she could have sworn it, would have been him. Was he there in the context of like a suspect? No. No, he was there in just in the room with Albert DeSalvo and the lawyer at the time. That is crazy. It's so dumb. It's so stupid, dude. So like, like, let's take a look at this for a second. The man who said, Nassar's just sitting there like. Yeah. Yes. Is the answer yes. Just covering his fucking face a

little bit. Yeah, just turning away. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, let's set this up real quick. The man who set the entire confession in motion, the man who stands to profit if Albert takes the fall, and the man who is physically sitting in the room while Albert is busy remembering if he was the strangler or not, and the man that two separate witnesses said looked exactly like the killer, all while the man doing the confessing looked like nobody had ever seen them in their lives, is sitting there. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that George Nasser was the Boston Strangler, and even the source book doesn't ever go that far. But hold on. But hold on. onto his name because when we get to the end of the story,

to the killers who walked away free while a dead con man took the bow, George Nasser is standing right there. Like, it is, to me, the shoes almost fit too well. Like, I'm almost willing to make that jump. And I'm pretty sure you said stranglers with a Z.

So I know there's more than one out there anyway. I did. Yeah, yeah, I did. So maybe he's at least this woman's strangler, right? Like, yeah, So if Albert DeSalvo didn't strangle these women, and remember, if it's the cops who actually worked these murders telling us he didn't, then we run into the first question of that breaks everybody's brains when they do all that, when they come into this case.

Why in God's name would any man confess in graphic detail to 13 murders he did not commit? The book lays out a bunch of reasons, and we're going to go through a chunk of these right now. Tell me he was terminal and he was best friends with Nassar. No, no, he was not best friends with Nassar, fortunately. Reason one, Albert's own lawyer, Bailey, had him convinced that the green man rape and sexual assault charges and robbery charges were going to put him away for life no matter what he did. Now, other legal experts have since said that this was complete nonsense, that Albert likely wouldn't have gotten anywhere near a life sentence on those charges. But Albert believed it. So in his head, his life is already over.

The man has nothing to lose. Then there's reason to the money. Albert was told that the rights to his life story, the confession, the whole Boston Strangler saga could be worth a fortune. And every cent of that fortune could go to his wife and kids. Ermgard and the kids, remember. And that's another reason he might want to do this.

And there's reason... Is it like a good caring dad? Again, outwardly, yes. But... The kids? they have mixed stories about the man. Of course he wasn't like again, as with most people like this, the outward expression in the community in the,

in like the extended family almost feels more important to maintain that facade rather than at the core home. Then there's reason three. Bailey supposedly convinced him that if he got himself branded as the strangler, he wouldn't even go to prison. That he'd go to a nice, comfortable insane asylum like a hospital. that Albert apparently had his heart set on John Hopkins Hospital and that if he could get into it, this would be the best way to do it.

So in his head, he'd be a sick man getting world-class treatment instead of a con doing hard time in prison. He'd be often a nice hospital. And then there's reason for, and the one that more or less explains everything else you'll ever learn about Albert DeSalvo. He just simply wanted to be somebody. This is a man who's single defining trait and everyone who's single defining trait and everyone who's, knew him also agrees on this, was that he had to be the biggest and the best at everything all the time. Oh, you did 20 burglaries? Well, I did 200 burglaries. The orderlies at Bridgewater said he drove the other inmates up a fucking wall with the constant one-uping and bragging that he would do

with them. And Commissioner McNamara had an even simpler word for him. He just called him a blowhard. like this dude just wanted desperately to be somebody. So putting the whole recipe together, he basically like he's a pathological liar who's also kind of a born follower who genuinely believes he's going to go to prison no matter what and that with money on the line and the ability to inflate his own reputation for good or bad

leaves him with the only option. Confessed to it all. He doesn't run from the part. He'd like auditions for, for this thing. So obviously, you know, like, we all know, like, but that's, I know it's like a crazy way to phrase it. But when you read about this and you really look into it, like, that's how he treated this shit. Like he, there was not an ounce of seriousness in the actions between the three of these people together between Albert Nasser and like Bailey. Like, yeah, they were doing it.

But it was just, it was like three people trying to con each other. Yeah, it feels to me like it's people trying to make money off this dude and then sell him a bill of goods about how like it'll be fine don't worry about it it's okay you'll go to like uh you know yeah country club man it'll be fine just you know but like let's make money off of you though dude exactly exactly and this is before inmates couldn't make money off of it themselves like he could take that money and give it to his wife and kids and we talked about the last episode but remember too the you know a lot of people are like well he knew all the details one of the first things we talked about last episode, we'll reiterate this episode. Albert had a fucking

photographic memory. Like, the doctors tested it. Dr. Robbie actually tested this, and he walked Albert through a room full of staff members, brought him back the very next day after everybody had changed clothes and switched seats, and Albert reconstructed the original scene perfectly. Every person, every outfit, every chair, exactly the way it was when he saw it the previous day. Quote, absolute complete 100% total photographic recall. So it's one of those things where it's like, of course he has all this shit because he has memory of it. For one, the pipeline of the newspapers. But we're going to repeat it. The Boston Press printed fucking everything. The robe, the cord, the blood in the ear, wine bottle, the belt that broke mid strangling, all that stuff

was sitting right there in the Boston Globe, the traveler, the herald for any person. to read. So what's that big of a deal? No. And then remember part two, the other pipeline to it is the worksheet. They fucking published the Strangle worksheet. Right.

In the record American. That's a tutorial. Yeah. Get the literal tutorial and how to do all of this. And then the other part, there were leaks like crazy on this case. Like this shit was leaking everywhere. The medical examiner, Dr. Ford,

was handing out copies of autopsy reports at press conferences, remember. Like we briefly talked about that too. Like there was infinite ways. Why are you doing that? That's crazy. Because this shit was mishandled from moment one. Like this is a spectacular case of everybody. Like ruining this case.

Exactly. Like this is an exemplary example of just complete fuckery from bottom to top with everybody involved to trying to quote unquote solve this shit. One detective even walked in and found state house office page. passing the crime scene photographs around. We talked about it last week, remember? And like, we're trading them around with each other like fucking baseball cards. Oh, yuck.

Look at that. Yeah. Then we have another pipeline in Albert's own legwork. When Dr. Robbie asked Albert how on earth he knew the layouts of the victim's apartments, Albert basically shrugged and said it was easy that he'd been so fascinated by the murders. Then he went out and then toward the crime scenes himself. He would even let himself in the air. areas where he could get into the crime scenes.

That in he was a, like, he went, I don't know what to do with this guy. I guess he like burgled. Yeah, he burgled all the time. He broke in constantly if he couldn't talk his way in. Fucking weird. Then there's the hypnotist angle. The lawyer brought in a hypnotist who put Albert under and by the account of the people who actually watched these sessions proceeded to feed him an entire theory,

leading him in the hypnosis sessions, telling him. telling him the victims were stand-ins for his wife and daughter. Even Gerald Frank, who was the author who believed Albert was guilty, admitted the witnesses came away wondering just how much Albert was being led on by the hypnotist. Like, this lawyer did everything to muck up. So it's only, this is like true, like history is written by the victors type shit where like, oh yeah. And it worked.

It just looks shit. And then like, but if you zoom out far enough, it just looks like an opening shutcase? Yes. Yes, it worked for decades, dude. Decades before this shit even came out to the public. And then another one, when Albert finally sat down to give his official confession,

the man taking it down, John Bottomley, obviously, kept feeding Albert the answers himself. Like, and you don't need to take my word on this either. We're going to prove it. Don't worry. Because the confession itself turns out,

it's a single best piece of evidence that Albert was never actually the fucking strangler in the first place. So we have 54 hours of confessions on tape. That's how long Albert's recorded confession ran. We're going to read it all. Yeah. This is the thing that convinced the public that this was all rock solid, that this is the bedrock the entire legend stands on at this point. Now, you would expect the killer's confession to be a flood of details nobody else on Earth. possibly know.

Albert's is the polar opposite. This guy is very clearly fishing, guessing, and getting fed the answers by the man fucking interrogating him. And we, like, again, you don't take my word for it. We've got transcripts of this. So we can look a little bit at some of these transcripts here. We'll go ahead and this is a brief back and forth between Albert and bottomly. Who wants to be bottomly and who wants to be Albert?

I've always come across as a bottomly. We've got a few different little pieces here to read. And they are brief. But here's one interaction. The type of blue robe she had on was like a cloth. You know what I mean? Flannel? Yeah.

Oh, well, flannel if you want it, cotton. Cotton. Immediately he's fishing for details and bottomly just gives him answers. And it just would, yeah, oh, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, flannel or if you want it, like, cotton immediately. We also have another one that's back and forth here. that I'm going to go ahead and give you guys. Here we go.

Just a little brief moments where you could see there's like a break in his like logic here. The inside on the inside. Do you remember? As far as I can remember blue. You don't remember any different color? No. No. That's important.

That little exchange is important because the lining was red. Like we have the autopsy report playing his day written out. This man has a true photographic memory. He would have remembered because he would have been there. The newspaper worksheet had described the outer robe as blue, but never described the inner lining. So evidence that he looked at the newspaper, but maybe, you know, wasn't actually there. Then, Bottomley asks him about a waste basket in the kitchen. There was one in its contents had been dumped out across the floor, which was a detail that was never printed anywhere.

And Albert simply cannot see it. It's not in his memory. He wasn't because it was never in the fucking papers. And then we get to the exchange that would be pure, honestly, like fucking comedy if it weren't bolted to like this horrible shit. They're trying to nail down in this exchange exactly when one of the victims, Nina Nichols, died. And Albert, the man of the certified photographic memory,

confessing to a murder, supposedly committed with his own two hands, can't do it. He doesn't know the date. He does not know how many days are actually in the most. month of June. He says, quote, I'd say June 30th, if it's on a Saturday. This, he's, he doesn't know if it's even on a Saturday or not. He's reading, as he's doing these questions, he's reading Bottomleys like face and then

adjust his answer back and forth between, like he'll say if it was a Saturday. And then if he gets corrected, be like, oh, yeah, that's what I meant. It's a Sunday. You think the cops were just like, boys, let's just let this be over today. What do you guys say? Let's just go in there. That's how it feels. And give him the right answers and then he'll be the one and then we just all go get a beer.

Yeah. And it keeps going too. He mixes up which year the murders happened in. Bottomley keeps having to hand him the dates, the sequence, the details. And Albert keeps gratefully accepting every single one of the details and folding it back into his memory with air quotes. Like it was always, he always remembered it. He had just forgotten for a moment. and when it came to the victim Mary Sullivan,

the 19-year-old, the famous last victim who had gotten posed and moved around in the house, he didn't even remember that the body had been moved to from the bed to another place. He blanked. He had no explanation for that, no idea that that even happened. So again, he doesn't have any of these fucking details that he would need for him to match what the police know

beyond the stuff that was publicly reported in the newspaper. Susan Kelly's verdict on this, which is the author of the book, She says that it's basically virtually exonerates DeSalvo from these Boston Strangler crimes specifically. And honestly, I don't see how she's wrong here. We'll go into the details of like the one person he may have actually killed momentarily. But like... The old lady?

Yeah, yeah. We're going to go into that here in a minute. But like these tapes, the public did not get to see or he. hear these tapes for decades. Only short, cleaned up, doctored versions of these ever saw the light of day. Literally? Literally like edited,

like little edited parts where parts were taken out to make it sound like getting fished for for answers. Yeah, exactly. And then March 18th, 1965, while Albert is already locked up inside Bridgewater, a 50-something chambermaid named Effie McDonald is found strangled to death in a hotel room in Bangor, Maine. Two stockings around her neck, dress ripped open,

all the stuff that fit the Boston Strangler. The Strangler may very well have still been out there working while the man who claimed to be the strangler was sitting in a fucking stelle. Like the dude is in prison and there's still murders that match the Strangler happening in New England. They're actually like on him. Yeah. And you know what the final gut punch about all this fucking is? Ready?

Albert DeSalvo was never tried for a single one of those murders. Why? They couldn't do it. There wasn't a fingerprint. There wasn't a witness. There wasn't one single solitary shred of physical evidence placing him at a single one of these strangling cases. Because remember, they had partial fingerprints for some of them. He doesn't match anything.

They have nothing other than his confession. What they actually tried him for in 1967 were the Green Man crimes, the rape, sexual assaults, and robberies. And for that trial, Bailey ran a defense strategy so cynical, it loops all the way back around on all this stuff. Bailey's grand plan was to stand up in open court and brand his client, the Boston Strangler. It's like, it's an insane, it's like a publicity stunt. Yes. This whole thing sucks. Like it's insane. For him, for Bailey, the logic went, if the jury believes this man is a 13-time monster, then they'll have to find him not guilty by reason of insanity on the rape charges because who but a complete lunatic does all that. And then the judge ships him off to a hospital instead of a prison. You get your own client declared the most evil. man in the state of Massachusetts and in doing so, save him from a cell.

That was the play, which is, as Jesse just said, extremely just a publicity stunt. It's just all publicity stunt. Did the lawyer even think he was going to win? I don't think so. That wasn't the point for the lawyer. The lawyer was to get,

become known for defending the most evil man in Massachusetts and then that he saved him because that means other people are willing to pay big money for all the horrible things that they, want him to cover for. It's so crazy. But also, again, I mean, I don't want to spoil the ending, but a lot of people involved in this

end up getting in trouble much later in life for other equally dramatic crime things. So like, well, we might talk. I don't know if we'll talk about everybody so you can keep some updates on hand. But like this particular idea to get him charges at Boston Strangler backfired completely. The jury found Albert guilty on the green man charges. and the judge apparently quite convinced by Bailey's own argument that this was a profoundly dangerous human being, sentenced Albert to life in prison. Bailey's reaction to losing is a very simple quote.

He said, Massachusetts has just burned another witch. That was what the lawyer's reaction to his was. So, very whack. Off Albert goes. To invoke that for this reason. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Albert goes, ships off to Walpole. maximum security, and it's here where, like, in this prison is the final stretch of his life, that things get a little weird. Because before the end of it all, Albert recanted. He took the whole thing back, said he wasn't the Boston Strangler, after all.

And then on November 25th, 1973, the night before he was murdered, Albert made a frightened phone call to his old Bridgewater psychiatrist, Dr. Ames Robbie. A week, about a week before this call, Albert had gotten himself moved into the prime prison infirmary under a special lockup, like a man who knew something was, he like was coming for him. He tells Robbie on the phone that he needs to meet immediately and that Robbie should bring a reporter with him because Albert was finally going to tell the real story who the Boston

Strangler actually was and what this entire thing had really been about. Robbie told him he'd come in the morning. But that night, Albert DeSalvo was stabbed to death in his cell. That really happened? Yep. And everybody still thinks this guy did it? Well, I'm not going to be like, and the truth was silence forever.

No, Robbie absolutely believed Albert was killed to keep him quiet in a dead men tell, no tales kind of way. But there was a flatter, kind of just like uglier theories that could put on the table. One was a prison drug deal just went wrong. And he got stabbed for it. It's very simple as that. Or, and there's a theory that comes from George Nasser himself,

of all people, a dispute over a black market meat that Albert was selling on the inside. And three inmates were, yeah, like he was selling meat that he was getting smuggled in and like he was selling it on the side. I don't want to know how. I don't. I don't. I don't know. Three inmates were eventually charged with his murder. Not one of them was ever convicted. Uh, so kind of like, just like his own victims, his own murder remains unsolved to this day. He died at, 42 years old, having spent his final year signing autographs and selling letters to serial killer memorabilia collectors. Because there's a ton of weirdos like that.

As much as I love true crime, no interest in having like serial killer memorabilia. It's crazy. I went to one weird witchy market once and there was a table that's like they sold the dirt scooped up from like John Wayne Gasey's like found a home foundation or whatever. I'm like, why? It separates the men from the baggins, baby. Yeah, I guess so. So for 30 years, Albert's death

and the doubt was kind of the closed book. But his legend grew. And by the year 2000, the family of Mary Sullivan, who was the final victim, decided they were done waiting around for actual answers. They wanted to clear Albert's name because they didn't believe that he was the one that killed them. And at the very least, finally find the truth

and maybe find somebody the actual perpetrator of these crimes. So they had Mary's body exhumed, and a famous forensic pathologist named Michael Baden performed a full re-autopsy on her, an eight-hour procedure, and what he found seemed to blow Albert's confession wide open. Albert had claimed that he knocked Mary unconscious with a blow to the head before strangling her. Baden found no sign of skull trauma whatsoever, and on top of that, the private team recovered DNA what appeared to be male genetic material from near-male. Mary's body and it did not match Albert DeSalvo.

I know. I thought it was going to be like a lot more like, you tell me. But it really is not. It's really like, the dude was like, I didn't do this. Yeah, that's literally it. It's got fucking shank. And this is like a high watermark for every single thing that we've talked about, honestly. Then the year 2001, independent forensic testing and the science seems to be saying it

loud and clear, somebody else was the culprit here. The family's own lawyer actually just said it flat out. Somebody else was there. They were the ones that did it. For everyone else who had spent decades believing Albert was innocent, this was total vindication for them, knowing that there was other people out there who were actually the ones who killed their family members.

And if we had recorded this back in 2002, that's exactly where it would have ended. But the state had something the family didn't. The Boston police had preserved physical evidence from the original 1964 crime scene. Seminole fluid recovered the very day Mary was murdered, sitting quietly in storage for 50 fucking years. And by 2013, the technology had finally, finally caught up to it. What are you about to say? Investigators couldn't just legally walk up and grab Albert's DNA.

So instead, they put surveillance on Albert's nephew. They followed the man around. And when he tossed a water bottle, an officer trained in surveillance scooped it up. And they pulled the family's DNA right off of the bottle. They compared the nephew's DNA against the 50-year-old crime scene sample. Familiar match. What? Familiar match.

They close enough of a match that they got a court ordered. dig up Albert himself. So, July 12, 2013. They exhumed Albert DeSalvo from a cemetery. Huh? Which murder is this? Mary, I think, was the final one. Okay.

They exhumed Albert de Salvo from a cemetery in pebity, took a direct DNA sample from his remains, and it compared it against the seminal fluid preserved from Mary Sullivan's bed in 1964. It matched. And I don't mean probably matched. The DA's office, the Attorney General, and the Boston police put out a joint statement with an actual number attached to it. Basically, the odds that some other man, not Albert DeSalvo, left the evidence at Mary Sullivan's murder scene, one in 220 billion that it was someone else that wasn't DeSalvo who killed Mary Sullivan.

So the 2001 test didn't match. 2013 test matched. I don't. So how do you square that circle? Right? And that's what we're trying. And we're doing, and we're doing, like, we have to. We're doing the exact same thing.

We just spent two episodes accusing the legend makers of doing, right? So like, we, the, here's an honest answer. The 2001 sample came off of Mary's body after it had been embalmed, buried, and decomposing for 36 years. The head of Boston's own crime lab. called the evidence very questionable. The 2013 match came from biological evidence that had been properly preserved by police

since the literal night of the murder. They were very two different testing methods and testing for two different things. And only one of them was clean. Like an easy thing to accidentally do, right? Oh, yeah, exactly. So, like, talking about this honestly, like, where does that leave us?

Because the easy version of this is, like, basically the cops were right. There was no single strangler. Albert was an innocent man as far as most of these particular crimes are concerned. But the DNA wrecks it because Albert DeSalvo did do that one at least, at least one of them. He raped and strangled the 19 year old Mary Sullivan in her apartment on Charles Street four days after she moved to the city. Did he do the tying and the, did he like set it up and everything? Yeah, he did it.

And so, but like here's the thing. thing. We know for certain he did that. All right. All right. That's what I was just looking up. So we know, at least from DNA evidence that he did that one. And this is the one, as we said in the beginning, it was the last one. And it was the one that was elaborately set up for a cop to walk into. And it was like, the body was on display. But it didn't have the signature like signs. Like it was there was something tied around her neck after the fact. She didn't like die from her, her tights being around. her neck. The cop said there was no probable relationship between who killed Mary Sullivan and the likely Boston Strangler. So this was this the, you mentioned before, and I can't

remember how many were like copycat-ish? The public, so there's about five or so that were copycat-ish. There was a good eight or nine that were the actual, what could be pointed to as like an individual person doing it. And that's kind of what people feel like Albert was. was is just like one of the extra murders one of the extra murders one of the extra murders who who came who came through basically yeah we but like and he wanted to have done all of them instead yeah either bragging it or convinced to say it we will that's unfortunate is like unfortunately where the hell that leaves us is with not a clean answer it has it's like it's not like one of the other it was him or wasn't him it's fucking both the d a who announced the dna dna match was

also very careful to say out loud that the match applies only to Mary Sullivan and nobody else. The other 10 women, different ages, remember 19 all the way up to 85, different races, different religions, different methods entirely, some strangled, some stabbed, one was beaten, different knots for God's sake, like not one shred of physical evidence tying Albert to a single one of them other than the Mary Sullivan case. So the strangles with a Z is we have one guy who killed this one woman. And then there are other dudes who probably killed other women. But then there's also the Boston Strangler who's just out there in the ether still.

Well, yeah, though there. Or something like that. The probable truth is that there was no single Boston Strangler. It was so mishandled from murders one and two that the details were out in the public so fast that copycats could have happened immediately. There was no attempt at keeping this. under wraps and it was mishandled from fucking bottomly to the psychic everybody around that. I think the cops

were right on the fact that there was no single Boston Strangler all along and that the city itself kind of got swept up in separate horrors that they all tried to tidy into one clean thing so they had like a monster they could put a you know their worries too because the opposite

is way more stressful. And at the very same time Albert DeSalvo did commit horrible heinous crimes even prior to the single murder. And he didn't lie about being a killer. He lied about being the killer. Sure.

But he didn't lie about being a killer. Like he was a murder. Of all the insane thing. Like he wasn't the killer, but he was a killer. Yeah. And then there's George Nasser. Like the, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Mathis.

Sure. Yeah. Now, I am not like. Alex is more of a writer than I am. But I think Alex would even admit that if you're about to tell us that there was some sort of like Bailey, Nassar conspiracy. And that Nassar, who was already in prison, is in some way related to these murders. I'm going to lose my shit. I'm going to lose my shit.

It's like a written mystery. I slipped in recognized him down to the I slipped in a small detail when I brought I'm aware that's what I'm saying if you're about to tell us that this guy was actually involved well one one no no this is this is a movie witness this is insane

the two one the two surviving witnesses said that he actually looked like the man that attacked them and they they are believed to be survivors of a Boston strangler attack, investigators did actively wonder about George Nasser for years. Nasser himself went to his grave denying every bit of it and he died in a prison hospital in 2018 at 86 years old.

Never once charged with a single strangling insisting in his very last interview. They had nothing to do with any of it. Are you telling me there's the potential that of the stranglers with a Z, Nassar who worked with Flee Bailey a corrupt-ass dude to try and get

Albert to take the rap for all this. The two of them could make a buck actually may have been in some way associated. It may actually be the case that George Nasser was in fact

The real one you're saying not just the side guy. The actual real one? Stop. It may be the actual real strangler all along. No way. That's crazy. He was free for the years that he was out there.

He was free when the stranglings were mainly happening. And somebody who he tried to kill recognized him. Yeah. Isn't it strange how the one person who he was very, very close with who was calling his doctor, saying, I need safety. I need to tell you the truth about it all. The only person who would Nassar maybe have told it

would have gotten stabbed before he could say anything? This is, this is like I can't, like, this is like the end of the usual suspects. This is like a level of plot twist that is absolutely blowing my, like you even set it up earlier and not until you was ended with like,

and then this Nassar thing, I was like, bro, what? So this guy? Now, yeah. Now reexamine the first time they meet. Reexamine the first time Nassar brings in Albert to meet the lawyer after the first interaction between Nassar and his lawyer saying, so what do you think we, you think you can make money with the story of the Boston Strangler?

Now, you can't really enjoy that money. If you're the one claiming to be the Boston Strangler, you're going to get put away for life. But if you can get somebody to claim their Boston Strangler and, And then maybe the lawyer dirty deals and gives you a chunk of the change for introducing the two of you in a nice little finder's fee. They're like, I got this guy who loves to lie. But then after a good, good few years in prison, decades in prison, oh, it's weird. Maybe Albert doesn't really like prison all that much. And maybe this was a mistake.

Actually, we can't all this and maybe tell the truth to somebody I can trust. The one doctor I know who tested me and like I could trust. I'll call him and we'll start to and bring a, remember he told. old the psychiatrist to bring a reporter. Bring a reporter. I'm going to tell you the truth. And that night before you said, the night of the phone call, he gets stabbed to death. Three caught, three prisoners get charged.

None of them get convicted. Everybody goes free. Nobody finds out who the actual Boston Strangler is. And meanwhile, George Nassar dies at 86 years old in prison, never really knowing a life out of prison in the first place, except for four years where he could have. have actively banned a Boston Strangler. That is, the thing that's frustrating about this to me is how famous the Boston Strangler is and how clearly we kind of, like, is there not like a Netflix about this?

There must be. I mean, there, there is a movie, but not, I don't think to, I don't know if there's anything that dies into this deep. There's not like a murderer about this. I don't think there is. Like, this is crazy. This is a crazy story. It's insane.

It's true. It's like, you know, that, it was a, that like TikTok, like song. Yes, they're like, yes. Plan is revealed. That's like what's going on right now. Yeah.

The last time there was a documentary was there was a Nat Geo one in March of 2025. It's 44 minutes long. And I don't think. And it's just, the picture is just Albert DeSalvo on the thumbnail. And it's not called like the Boston Strangler, a lot, the perfect lie. No, it's called the real Boston.

strangler. But I, to be fair, I didn't watch this. I'm just, yeah, I'm just mind blown that there's not like, it's not in common knowledge that there's this crazy conspiracy here. No, I think it's because I think by the time the conspiracy came out, it was so far beyond the crimes decades later. Most people don't care anymore. It's more sensational than the fucking crimes.

There's plenty of crime. There's plenty of like serial killers out there, but how many of them are like a weird conspiracy. Exactly. And that's where we leave the episode on the Boston Strangler Boys. We don't get a clean ending. I, while the author may not be able to be willing to make that jump, I'm willing to, I would put money that George Nasser was in fact involved with the crimes while he was free. And this whole thing set up from the very beginning from him and Bailey, I famous fucking lawyer I know

For people who are audio Jesse's jaw has been open He's like I only I only realized when you pause it I realize my mouth has been open for like I don't even know how long I am dumbfounded by this This is

Like even look look I've said before When we talk about different stories That people write in or whatever Even if I don't believe it The audacity of the storytelling is like, literally, like, Kaiser Sousi. Like, we're at that point where like, a man scammed everyone and got away with it technically,

even though he was in prison, like, it's, but he's rich, maybe? I don't know. I'm more interested. Well, again, there's got, I would say there's probably an F.E. Bailey angle on this, but he would make him, he would make him a portion of the proceeds on the story. I'm like, again, that guy. guy, he was so disbarred. He tried to get rebarred, I think, in Maine.

And Maine was like, no, bro. Like, that's how bad it was for Effley-Bailey. So, like, I don't, like, man, that's crazy. While I can't say for certain that George Nasser was, in fact, him, and it all got set up, I will simply say it is certainly coincidental how all this played out. Because of the timeline, I guess it could fit. But also, I think the big takeaway should be that the number one thing that happened

was that the police released too much information which then allowed people who were, you know, all sorts of crazy to commit crimes that look the same and then to have that sort of like, ah, yes, I am the strangler. You know, like, going back to Albert, the idea of wanting to feel important to feel like you're special,

to feel like you did something in life. and sometimes it's crazy. Like, hey, oh man, what is the name of that show? Death by Lightning. Hey, if you want to see a version of this play out, there's a Netflix show back when I saw Netflix. It is called Death by Lightning, and it's about the assassination of James Garfield.

But the two main characters is one, James Garfield, but then two, the guy who killed. kills him. And you can see his, this dude sort of transformed from like, I want to be someone to, I'm going to be someone for the president, to the president doesn't want me around. So I guess I'll just kill the president. And that will get me. And he like loves the idea of that's how he'll be remembered. Yep. It's just, it's a mental. Yeah. People, sometimes people like, it's self-important. Yeah. Yeah. Like they live with a dream that I'm going to do something. I'm going to do something. And eventually that I'm going to do something morphs into, well, we'll do something terrible. And that's how he'll be remembered. And Albert de Salva for this situation, too, like his past, his history, how he was raised.

He fits the profile of a monster so easily that, like you said, when you zoom out, when the police provide only tidbits here and then, like, we've got him. He definitely is a fucking monster. You can see how if the police, like, we got him, here's our guy. Everybody's like, oh, it makes sense that he's your guy.

He's the green man. He's the measuring man. You know, like, obviously he's... The Boston City's biggest villains. Exactly. Like, so they can just put it away. And then decades later, when the records fully come out and you see this whole George Nasser Lee Bailey like situation, you're like, wait, wait, wait, whoa, wait, wait, what?

And it all just falls, it just all falls apart. Like, it just, it's insane. It's insane. I already was mad for like one reason. And then you hit me with the other thing. And I was like, you know, I kind of expect. it but I'm also furious because it is like Jesse saying it's like straight up

it's conspiracy shit of a TV show yeah it feels like yeah I'm glad you feel that way I felt the same it feels like an actor should come out you know it like I just it's like episode of the blacklist or some shit it's like so over the top

and it's like criminality and in like mastermind Moriardi eskness it's crazy it was me the whole time yeah yeah it was always yeah it was always Yeah, he's on his deathbed. I was always the Boston Strangler. And it's just that the,

and it's like the cherry on top is him getting stabbed at the night before he was supposed to tell the truth, quote, unquote. That's fucking crazy. And on that, boys, is our two-parter on the Boston Strangler slash Strangler's. We'll be, uh, we're off to go to a minisota. You bold are just shaking your head. We're off, we'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

Uh, My shirts. Go buy stickers. Go by posters. Go by tickets. Live show tickets, all that stuff. Yeah. Patreon.com slash Chulamini Pot as well. We're off to go to a minisode right now as you get one every single week. And we'll decompress about the conspiracy that I tossed on these boys' shoulders in the last minute. Insane. Thank you all so much.

And we'll see you next time. Appreciate your love. Goodbye. Bye. Welcome back to the Chulminati podcast. As always, I'm one of your host, Mike Martin, joined by the Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer. No. Neo and Trinity. Oh!

I don't understand, and I probably never will. Let me just tell you right now that there's two Kennedy and Claire Redfield. I'm telling you, I think he literally just looked up famous duos. Cheech and Chalk. And he's been going through the list ever since. I'm trying to dig deep. Which one of you is, uh... Dick Powell.

Me? Your name's Jesse Cox. Like a Like a shooting star Like a guy. That's actually a UFO.