WALPOLE, Mass. — A man who confessed to being the Boston Strangler, one of the most infamous serial killers in American history, was found brutally murdered in his maximum-security prison cell in a killing that authorities admit should have been impossible.
Albert DeSalvo, 42, was discovered dead in his locked cell at Walpole State Prison on the morning of November 26, 1973, his body bearing 28 stab wounds. The murder, which occurred despite some of the most stringent security protocols in the Massachusetts prison system, has plunged the facility into chaos and reignited decades of questions about DeSalvo’s true role in the strangling deaths of 11 women.
For nearly ten hours, DeSalvo lay dead in his cell while guards conducted routine checks, unaware that one of the most closely watched inmates in America had been slaughtered under their noses.
The grim discovery came at approximately 6:30 a. m. when correctional officers making their morning rounds found DeSalvo’s cell bathed in blood.
He was cold to the touch, unresponsive, and lying in a pool of his own blood, the victim of a frenzied attack that had gone completely undetected.
According to prison officials, the final 24 hours of DeSalvo’s life appeared, on the surface, to be entirely ordinary. The morning of November 25 began with the standard headcount that confirmed DeSalvo’s presence in the infirmary wing, where he had been housed under special lockdown six days earlier, isolated from the general prison population.
By 7:15 a. m. , breakfast was served.
DeSalvo barely touched his food, his appetite suppressed by what prison staff later described as a creeping sense of unease. Witnesses reported that the man known to the world as the Boston Strangler had grown increasingly paranoid in the days leading up to his death, convinced that he was a marked man.
DeSalvo was no stranger to the dangers of prison life. His notoriety placed him under a spotlight he desperately wished to avoid, and his status as a public figure inside a facility filled with violent offenders made him a target. He had stepped on too many toes, angered too many people, including some of the guards, and he knew that grudges and rivalries inside these walls often turned lethal.
His daily duties, which he had been performing since his transfer to the infirmary wing, involved working as an orderly. He cleaned surfaces, organized medical supplies, and occasionally assisted staff in tending to inmates seeking medical care. The job provided limited movement within the infirmary and brief respites from the suffocating isolation of his cell, but it also 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 him to others who harbored deep resentment toward him.
The irony of DeSalvo’s position was not lost on prison staff. He was suspected by many of strangling 11 women across the Boston area between 1962 and 1964, yet he had never been convicted of those crimes. He was serving time for a string of assaults committed while posing as the “Green Man,” a separate series of attacks that had led to his imprisonment at Bridgewater State Hospital and subsequently at Walpole.
His confession to being the Boston Strangler, however, had forever sealed his identity in the public eye. Even under special lockup meant to keep him safe, his vulnerability remained undeniable.
The afternoon of November 25 unfolded without incident, but for DeSalvo, the weight of a lingering decision had reached its breaking point. For weeks he had wrestled with a thought he could no longer ignore. Despite having nothing but time on his hands, he felt a strange urgency, as if the clock was ticking against him.
DeSalvo needed to contact someone he trusted. He had to make an urgent phone call.
His role as an infirmary orderly occasionally gave him proximity to staff and rare opportunities to communicate. During one such moment, DeSalvo made his move. His message was clear: he needed to speak with Dr.
Ames Roby, a forensic psychiatrist who had studied his case extensively.
Dr. Roby had long harbored doubts about DeSalvo’s confession to being the Boston Strangler. He believed that another inmate, George Nassar, was a far more likely suspect, a man whose intelligence and ruthlessness made him as calculating as he was dangerous.
The connection between DeSalvo and Nassar ran deep. The two men’s paths first crossed eight years earlier at Bridgewater, where DeSalvo had been sent for psychiatric evaluation after his arrest. Both men were held in the same ward, and their shared circumstances quickly forged a bond.
Nassar was no ordinary criminal. He had been convicted of second degree murder as a teenager and later committed a brutal execution-style killing of a gas station attendant in 1964. His cold and calculating nature, paired with a talent for manipulation and unsettling charisma, made him dangerously influential inside the prison system.
DeSalvo’s journey to infamy began long before his connection to Nassar. In March 1965, DeSalvo’s wife, Irmgard, received an alarming phone call from F. Lee Bailey, DeSalvo’s newly appointed attorney.
She was told to change her name, take her children, and go into hiding immediately.
“Something big is going to blow up about Albert,” Bailey warned. “It’ll be on the front pages of every newspaper within 24 hours. I’m flying out tomorrow to help you.”
The next day, the bombshell dropped. Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler.
Irmgard was overwhelmed and incredulous. To her, it sounded like another of Albert’s grandiose schemes for attention, perhaps even a desperate attempt to sell his story for money. She was not alone in her doubts.
DeSalvo’s confession has remained a subject of intense speculation for nearly a decade. Financial motives were evident — he hoped to secure book or film deals to support his wife and children — but his reasons appeared far more layered. DeSalvo was burdened by guilt and desperation, knowing he might never walk free again.
To him, spinning a sensational story was a calculated gamble, one that might bring his family financial security while allowing him to survive behind bars.
Others believed DeSalvo was motivated by a desire for infamy. Known for his attention-seeking behavior, he reportedly embraced the title of Boston Strangler as a way to secure lasting notoriety. His narcissism and need to stand out may have driven him to claim responsibility for the infamous murders.
DeSalvo’s taped confession only deepened doubts among victims’ families. While police insisted that he knew details only the killer could know, those who heard the recordings were struck by inaccuracies. He described events that never happened.
Critics pointed out that many of the details could have been learned from public reports or through coaching.
What he once may have embraced as a path to notoriety had instead turned into a curse inside prison walls.
At approximately 5:00 p. m. on November 25, DeSalvo was granted permission to make his urgent phone call.
Clearly distressed, he expressed fear for his safety and insisted on meeting with Dr. Roby as soon as possible.
DeSalvo asked Roby to bring a reporter, hinting at crucial information that could shed new light on the Boston Strangler case. Roby agreed to meet him the very next morning, intrigued by what DeSalvo might reveal.
Despite the tension brewing beneath the surface, the daily prison routine unfolded without a hitch. It was time for the final meal of the day — nothing elaborate, just a plain serving of potatoes. For DeSalvo, however, the moment carried a faint sense of relief.
Restless all day, he now felt a flicker of calm. The call had been made, a small but significant step toward whatever resolution he sought.
As the day wound down, DeSalvo returned to the cramped confines of his lockup. The cell door locked behind him, cutting him off from the world once more. Alone in the stillness, his thoughts likely turned to the morning ahead and the conversation he planned with Dr.
Roby. What would he say? How much would he reveal?
He never got the chance.
At approximately 9:00 p. m. , in the suffocating stillness of a prison under lockdown, Albert DeSalvo met his gruesome end.
He was stabbed 28 times.
The murder should have been impossible. Lockdown protocols were considered airtight, with every inmate confined to their cells and security checkpoints heavily guarded. Yet somehow, someone had infiltrated his cell, carried out the brutal attack, and escaped undetected.
Casey Sherman, a television producer and investigator who has studied the case extensively, told the BBC that DeSalvo’s murder was not random.
“I’m convinced he was silenced to keep the truth buried,” Sherman said. “His murder wasn’t random. It was a contract killing.
Someone needed him gone.”
The logistics of the murder defy belief. DeSalvo’s killer would have had to bypass six security checkpoints, commit the savage stabbing, and retreat — likely covered in blood — without arousing suspicion.
Sherman argued that such an act would have been impossible without inside help.
“This was a coordinated effort,” he claimed. “The attack had to involve collusion from those on the inside.”
Dr. Roby, reflecting on the situation, added another chilling layer to the story.
“He was going to tell us who the Boston Strangler really was and what the whole thing was about,” Roby said.
In the weeks leading up to his death, DeSalvo had reportedly told his psychiatrist that he had something important to reveal, something he claimed would shed light on the truth behind the Boston Strangler case. That intention may have sealed his fate.
Speculation about the motive behind DeSalvo’s murder remains divided. While some believe he was silenced to prevent the truth from coming out, others suggest a more mundane reason.
Two suspects, Richard L. Develin and Robert M. Wilson, were initially tried for the killing, but the trial ended in a hung jury.
It was later alleged that DeSalvo had been killed for selling amphetamines in prison at prices undercutting the inmate-enforced syndicate.
The investigation into DeSalvo’s murder continues, but the questions surrounding his death — and his life — show no signs of resolution. The man who confessed to being the Boston Strangler may have taken the truth with him to the grave, but the circumstances of his brutal end have only deepened the mystery that has haunted Boston for a decade.
His body was not discovered for nearly ten hours, a fact that prison officials have struggled to explain. In a facility designed to monitor every movement, every breath, one of its most famous inmates was murdered in plain sight — and nobody noticed.
The case remains open, and the Boston Strangler’s final secret may never be known.
For the families of the 11 women DeSalvo claimed to have killed, his death brings neither closure nor justice. If DeSalvo was not the Boston Strangler, as Dr. Roby and others have suggested, then the real killer may still be out there.
If he was, the full story of what happened in those dark years in Boston may have died with him in that blood-soaked cell.
What is certain is that Albert DeSalvo, a man who lived under the shadow of one of the most notorious labels in American criminal history, died exactly as he had feared — alone, in a prison cell, at the hands of someone who wanted him gone.
The question that remains is who, and why. And whether the truth about the Boston Strangler was buried alongside him.