Boston Strangler
unidentified serial killer or killers, however convicted rapist Albert DeSalvo confessed to many of these murders, DNA evidence links him to the final victim
The Boston Strangler is the murderer of 13 women in Greater Boston during the early 1960s. The crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo (1931–1973) based on his confession, on details revealed in court during a separate case, and DNA evidence linking him to the final victim.
In the years following DeSalvo's conviction – but prior to the emergence of this DNA evidence – various parties investigating the crimes suggested that the murders (sometimes referred to as the "Silk Stocking Murders") were committed by more than one person.
Names
Initially, the crimes were assumed to be the work of one unknown person dubbed "The Mad Strangler of Boston". On July 8, 1962, the Sunday Herald wrote that "[a] mad strangler is loose in Boston" in an article titled "Mad Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston". The killer was also known as the "Phantom Fiend" or "Phantom Strangler", due to his ability to get women to allow him into their apartments. In 1963, two investigative reporters for the Record American, Jean Cole and Loretta McLaughlin, wrote a four-part series about the killer, dubbing him "The Boston Strangler". By the time that DeSalvo's confession was aired in open court, the name "Boston Strangler" had become part of crime lore.
Events
Between June 14, 1962, and January 4, 1964, 13 single women between the ages of 19 and 85 were murdered in the Boston area. Most were sexually assaulted and strangled in their apartments.
“Boston Strangler” enters the record as unidentified serial killer or killers, however convicted rapist Albert DeSalvo confessed to many of these murders, DNA evidence links him to the final victim. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Boston, Strangler and unidentified can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Boston Strangler” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Boston, Strangler and unidentified provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2855440. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1931, 1973, 1962 and 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “Boston Strangler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.