A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

etween two homes because - she believed - her parents preferred her sister. Ian Brady was
illegitimate and he was farmed out to another ‘parent’. Charles Manson’s mother became pregnant
at fifteen, and went to prison shortly after Manson was born. And so insecure social bonds prevent
a capacity for love and affection from being channelled into stable relationships, and the resentment
lies dormant, like a volcano, waiting to be detonated into violence by stress.
Albert DeSalvo, the ‘Boston Strangler’, provides a particularly clear example of this ‘balance of
forces’. Between June 1962 and January 1964, DeSalvo committed thirteen sex murders in the
Boston area; then he stopped killing and contented himself with fondling and rape. He was finally
identified as the Strangler only because he chose to confess.
The first four murders were of elderly women, aged between fifty five and seventy-five. DeSalvo, a
powerfully built man with a plausible manner and a certain charm, would knock on the door of an
apartment and explain that he had been sent to do some work - the ceiling, check the windows for
leaks, etc. If the women seemed doubtful, he would turn away politely, saying ‘I don’t want to
bother you’, and they would usually let him in. When the woman’s back was turned, DeSalvo
would place his muscular arm round her throat and tighten it until she was unconscious; intercourse
usually followed, then the victim was strangled with a belt or some article of clothing. The victim
was then left in a deliberately ‘obscene’ position - perhaps with legs spread apart, wearing
stockings and suspender belt, and with a brush handle inserted in the vagina; in one case he tied the
victim’s ankles to chairs and placed her with the genitals facing the door, so that this would be the
first thing that anyone would see on entering the room.
After the killing of the elderly women, there was a lull of four months; the next set of victims were
young and attractive girls. The psychiatrist Dr James Brussell propounded the remarkable theory
that the killer was actually ‘progressing’ through murder to greater maturity. The early murders
expressed resentment of his mother; then he ‘got it out of his system’ and turned to attractive girls.
Soon after Christmas 1952, a young student, Patricia Bissette, allowed him into her apartment when
he said he was her roommate’s boyfriend, and talked to him trustfully as he drank coffee. He
strangled and raped her. But - as he later admitted - he felt so ashamed that she had ‘treated him
like a man’ (i.e. like a human being) that he carefully covered the body over before leaving.
In January 1964, DeSalvo talked himself into the apartment of nineteen-year-old Mary Sullivan and
ordered her into the bedroom. She pleaded with him, but he hit her and tore off her clothes. After
raping her, he bit her all over, then strangled her; then he sat on her chest and masturbated on her
face. He explained to the dead girl: ‘I can’t help doing it...’ But this was his last murder. Like
Patricia Bissette, Mary had made him feel like a human being, and the result was a revulsion from
killing.
DeSalvo continued raping; he was sexually insatiable, capable of several orgasms one after another.
But the method had changed. He would talk himself into a woman’s home, and engage her in
casual conversation. At a certain point, he would pull out a knife, force her into the bedroom, and
tie her up. He would then kiss and fondle her, taking his time, and usually end with rape. After this
he would apologise and leave. If the woman was too distressed, he would omit the rape. DeSalvo
claimed to have raped two hundred women between January and October 1964. A description by
one of his victims reminded the police of a curious series of sexual offences in 1960, when a man
talked his way into women’s apartments by asking if they would like to work as a model; he would
then take their measurements with tape, but without any attempt at sexual assault. Some of the
women complained when his promises of modelling work failed to materialise: DeSalvo was