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]

Was Jane Doe 'Lori Erica Kennedy' Really Missing Person Jennifer Marie Wictor?

Jane Doe

I was researching a Jane Doe who went by Lori Erica Kennedy (on the left). She committed suicide in 2010 in Texas. This article about the mystery woman has gone viral in the past week or so, and no wonder--she left behind a tantalizing and fascinating trail of clues. It appeared that she began her new life around age 18 or 20, first stealing the identity of a deceased child named Becky Sue Turner. Shortly after adopting the Turner identity she changed her name to Lori Kennedy, and from that point on lived a somewhat normal if cloistered, outwardly strange life.

And she had problems--by the time she killed herself, she was estranged from an apparently clueless, passive husband and her home had fallen into hoarder-like levels of disrepair.

The article I linked above tells the story well, so I'll just get to this--it's probably a coincidence, but when I did a Google reverse image search on the above photograph of Jane Doe/Lori Ruff,  the ONLY result was a photo of Jennifer Marie Wictor.

Jennifer Marie Wictor

Both women appeared to be the same approximate height, weight, age, hair color and possibly even eye color. Their noses are notably different, but according to the original report about Jane Doe, she "might have had a nose job at some point" as well as breast implants.

At the moment--and I admit, I'm resisting digging deeper, because I prefer to sleep now--it seems there is a frustrating lack of information about Jennifer Wictor's disappearance.

That leaves this (in my mind at least) in the realm of remarkable coincidence. For now.

I have no illusions that I'm the only person to happen onto this result--I'm certain sleuths on discussion boards all over the web are all over it. Regardless, I emailed a Tempe, Arizona detective listed as handling Jennifer Wictor's case about it, because why not?

Sometimes the Internet can solve things, because we're all human behind our screens, and sometimes, we just want to know.

Note 1:

I was able to turn up additional photos of a younger Jennifer Wictor, culled from her high school yearbooks. They don't necessarily help in the resemblance to Jane Doe department, but it's interesting to see how much she changed over a relatively short span of time.

Note 2:

In Maureen O'Hagan's article about Lori Kennedy/Jane Doe, she reported that the mystery woman had a post office box in Boulder City, Nevada in the late 1980s. It's a pretty tenuous link, but I did want to point out that on a map, at least, it's a straight 4-plus hour drive northwest from Tempe, where Jennifer Wictor was living when she disappeared, to Boulder City. So that connects both women to the same region around the time one vanished and the other began her new life.