Wow: Something's Afoot in Infamous Boston Strangler Case

The Boston Strangler occupies a unique place in crime history. On the surface, the case was solved, 13 sexually motivated homicides committed by one man. And that man was Albert DeSalvo, who confessed to the crimes. DeSalvo was murdered in prison in 1973.

If you follow certain crime stories closely, though, you quickly learn the Strangler remains an open-ended mystery, similar in some ways to the legendary unsolved Zodiac murders. Many who have written about or studied the case believe DeSalvo at the most committed only a handful of murders, still others think he was no more than dimwitted perv who wanted to establish some kind of forbidding reputation as a mass killer. He was never convicted in the case.

Now comes this, in today's Boston Globe:

Sources familiar with the case told the Globe that investigators have been reviewing evidence in the 13 murders that terrorized the greater Boston area in the early 1960s.

Officials are planning to meet with relatives of the women murdered by the Strangler sometime today. They will brief them on the latest [investigative] avenues used in the case at the meeting this morning, sources said.

The Globe describes the announcement to be made by Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis and Attorney General Martha Coakley's office today as "major."

[Boston Globe]

Who Killed Alanna Gallagher?

Alanna Gallagher / Screengrab, NBC 5

Some children playing in a Saginaw, Texas neighborhood made a horrific discovery Monday: the nude, bound body of six-year-old Alanna Gallagher. Alanna was found under a tarp, a bag around her head, in the middle of the street. The little girl had been missing for a few hours when she was found.

Crimes involving children are hard for just about anyone to write about. For me they eventually became such a deal-breaker they were a factor in backing out of writing about crime as a singular pursuit. I don't plan to cover many.

The murder of Alanna Gallagher is so strange and chilling it needs more coverage. National broadcast media seems mostly consumed with the trial of George Zimmerman and backfilling with international coverage of events in Egypt in particular, so anyone wanting more information has to go to regional, Texas based sources.

Here is some information from one of those sources, NBC 5 in Dallas, about the case so far:

Saginaw police also do not know if Gallagher was abducted, [police spokesman Officer Damon Ing] said. Her cause of death has not yet been determined, and investigators are still trying to establish a timeline of what led up to her death, he said.

Police believe the slaying is an isolated case, Ing said.

"I can assure the community of Saginaw and all surrounding areas that you're perfectly safe in this community," he said.

Pause. Reports so far indicate there are no suspects. Why, then, do police say this is an "isolated" case? A normal law enforcement desire to keep the community calm is understandable, but most police departments these days will be up front if they think a murderous sexual predator is loose in the community. They'll warn locals to lock doors and be even more wary than usual of strangers. Damon Ing isn't saying any of this.

Then there's this:

According to a FBI receipt of seized evidence, federal agents took a blue-gray tarp, electrical tape, and Wal-Mart plastic bags from a car registered to the victim's parents. The car is parked on the street in front of where the 6-year-old victim lived. Agents also searched the girl's home, where she lived with two siblings, her parents and another man.

It isn't the sketchy inventory of items taken from a car registered to the little girl's parents as the final, "and another man" that catches my attention.

In this article, no further reference is made to "another man," yet Damon Ing told NBC 5 that the family isn't under suspicion. Maybe that other man is a family member.

If he isn't, perhaps Officer Ing was being clever with words.

At the moment, make of that what you will.

With the bald facts as known it sounds like the child might have been the victim of a sexual predator. If that's the case and there are no suspects, yet police believe local children are safe--the predator is somehow hemmed in, whoever it is.

If that's the case, it sounds like the kind of crime the killer might have planned well in advance. That, or it wasn't his first time.

[NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth]

The Aaron Hernandez Investigation

Aaron Hernandez (Wikimedia, Jeffrey Beall)

It feels a little futile to begin with a post about a case as big as the investigation into former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, whom police believe may have killed one man and been somehow involved in the murder of two others. Boston media is covering the case non-stop and since moving to New England I've developed a healthy respect for the Boston news machine. Much of the time both TV and print seem provincial and a little fluffed-out here, but when big stories like the Marathon Bombings or the Hernandez case pop, Boston press crank up their game and do an amazing job--if a New England story is big enough to merit cable news coverage I usually ignore the cable nets and staying with local TV and social media updates from reporters for the Herald and Boston Globe.

Still, it's impossible to ignore Aaron Hernandez's shocking fall from the pinnacle of NFL stardom to a jail cell in North Attleborough.

So--Hernandez remains jailed on multiple firearms charges as well as charges he murdered pro-am football player Odin Lloyd in an industrial park near his home on June 17, 2013. Police have also arrested Carlos Ortiz, age 27. Police say Ortiz was a fugitive from justice. Authorities are still looking for a third man, Ernest Wallace, age 41.

Boston police were at Aaron Hernandez's North Attleborough residence overnight on Thursday, apparently seeking evidence tying Hernandez to a drive-by shooting that followed an altercation at a Boston nightclub in July of 2012. WBZ reports:

Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Teixeira Furtado, 28, both of Dorchester, were killed when someone fired at the BMW they were in near the corner of Herald Street and Shawmut Avenue.

Another person was wounded in that incident. The shots were allegedly fired from a gray SUV with Rhode Island license plates.

The kicker? The Boston Globe has reported that "officials" think the true reason Odin Lloyd was killed was he "knew [Hernandez] might have been involved" in the deaths of Abreu and Furtado.

This level of intrigue is what separates the Hernandez case from many other crimes involving pro athletes, even the various crimes and alleged crimes of O.J. Simpson.

What makes Hernandez tick, if he is guilty of any of these crimes? Watching his blank-faced, calm demeanor in the courtroom it's hard to not think he is either a cold-blooded psychopath or--as the many die-hard fans who have flocked to the North Attleborough court to support him surely hope--utterly sure of his innocence.

In the past it would have been easy to conclude he's a stone-cold killer, given the nature of the charges.

But that's the thing about crime and certainly about big cases like this: nothing is ever remotely that simple.

*Edited to add a link regarding further investigation at Hernandez's home on Thursday night.