The Boston Stranglers by Susan Kelly

beat her.
    He asked her to forgive him for what he had just done—and not to tell his mother about it. As he started to leave the room, Mrs. Macht asked him to loosen her bonds. He did so, and then he departed.
    Mrs. Macht quickly freed herself and called her husband at work. A while later, she called the Cambridge police to report the assault.
    She checked the two doors to the apartment, both of which had been locked by her husband when he’d left for school. Knife markings indicated that they had been jimmied.
    Her final statement to the court was that the man had told her he’d kill her if she screamed.
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    Suzanne Macht recited the details of her sordid and terrifying experience to Detectives Duncan McNeill, James Galligan, and Louise Darling of the Cambridge police.
    The description she offered of the clothing her attacker had worn had a familiar ring to Sergeant McNeill. Like other area police departments, the Cambridge force had been receiving Teletype messages about a distinctively clad man who’d committed a number of housebreaks and sexual assaults in Connecticut. This person invariably dressed in dark green shirt and pants; the costume was apparently some kind of work uniform. Its wearer had become known to law enforcement personnel as the Green Man.
    Later that day a Massachusetts state police technician made a sketch of Suzanne Macht’s assailant based on the information she gave him. One of the Cambridge detectives, Paul Cloran, thought that the finished portrait bore a strong resemblance to the Measuring Man they’d arrested in 1961.
    The Measuring Man, Albert DeSalvo, was now living in Malden with Irmgard and the children. Duncan McNeill arranged with the police department of that city to have Albert brought in and put in a lineup.
    Suzanne Macht, who had already identified Albert’s photograph, picked him right out of an eight-man lineup. She asked to hear him speak, and claimed to recognize his voice—which was indeed a distinctive one.
    Albert faced his accuser and calmly said, “I don’t know the woman.” When informed that she had positively identified him, he replied, “It couldn’t be.”
    McNeill advised him of his rights. Albert asked permission to make a phone call. He also requested that his brothers, Frank, Joseph, and Richard, be summoned and allowed to join him while he was in custody.
    McNeill told Albert the story that Suzanne Macht had related. “I don’t know the woman,” Albert reiterated, “and I didn’t do it. How could I admit it?” Irmgard and Albert’s sister Irene came to the Malden police station where Albert was being questioned. The three talked together for a while. McNeill said later that he overheard Irene say, “Al, tell them everything. Don’t hold back.”
    Albert turned to McNeill. He said, “I’ve committed some breaks and I’ve been all around the area. Sergeant, you have a rape or a couple of rapes you don’t know about.”
    Accompanied by Albert, McNeill drove back to Cambridge. Albert wanted to point out to McNeill the scene of one of his crimes. He was doing so, he remarked, in order that the Cambridge police might maintain jurisdiction over him. He had a specific reason for wanting it that way. “I like you guys,” he confided to one of McNeill’s colleagues. Years later he was still saying the same thing; he would always refer to Louise Darling as “that nice lady cop.”
    When McNeill and Albert drove past Suzanne Macht’s apartment building, Albert said, “That’s where the girl lived who looked at me the other night.”
    At the Cambridge station, Albert was handed over to law enforcement officials from the other New England states who wanted to question him about sex crimes committed within their bailiwicks. Some of them apparently came on like gangbusters. Albert, normally talkative and relaxed with his friends