State Supreme Court denies latest appeal from ‘Boston Strangler’ confidant

BOSTON – The state’s highest court has rejected another appeal by the man who was the jail house confidant of the man reputed to be the Boston Strangler, perpetrator of a series of murders in the earlier 1960s which panicked the local population while gaining worldwide attention.The case has many links to the Greater Lynn area.Last year, the Supreme Judicial Court denied an appeal from George Nassar in a 1967 murder conviction for killing an Andover gas station attendant. On Thursday, the court denied his latest appeal.Nassar himself also was implicated by various people as the real Boston Strangler, who killed 13 women between 1962 and early 1964. The third victim murdered during the two-year spree was Helen Blake, 65, a nurse who resided on Newhall Street in Lynn. Evidence has allegedly linked only 11 of the murders to one suspect.Nassar has repeatedly denied any involvement in the Strangler crimes.While in jail in the 1960s, Nassar befriended Chelsea native Albert DeSalvo, who was considered the prime suspect in the Strangler murders but was never charged. DeSalvo had been convicted of multiple sexual assault charges and sentenced to life in prison in 1967.Nassar told his attorney, F. Lee Bailey of Lynn, that DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. DeSalvo later confessed to Bailey, who then became his attorney.DeSalvo escaped from Bridgewater State Hospital with two fellow inmates on Feb. 24, 1967, but was caught about 36 hours later when, wearing an old Navy uniform, he walked into Simons Shoe and Uniform store, then located on Western Avenue in Lynn, and asked to use the phone to call “F. Lee.”Following his capture, DeSalvo was transferred to the maximum security wing at Walpole State Prison. There he recanted his confession to Bailey. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in his cell in 1973.Fueled by DeSalvo’s on-and-off-again confession, controversy has long dogged the Boston Strangler case and continues to this day. Earlier this decade the families of DeSalvo and the Strangler’s last victim united for various court proceedings to seek the release of more evidence in the case and led to the exhumation of DeSalvo from his grave in Peabody and also of the body of Mary Sullivan, 19, who was found murdered in her Beacon Hill apartment on Jan. 4, 1964. Further tests revealed the DNA evidence gained did not match in the Sullivan murder. North Shore attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp represented the DeSalvo family during these proceedings.In another local twist, two Lynn police detectives were investigating a reported stolen bike near High Rock Tower in 1963 and came across a small shack in the woods in which they found two suitcases containing compelling evidence possibly tied to the Strangler case including women’s stockings and underwear and diagrams to the homes of each victim.The detectives staked out the shed and arrested a suspect, but after a visit from the FBI, were ordered to return the suitcases to the suspect, a Lynn man and former classmate of one of the detectives, and cut him loose. One of the detectives, William Mancinelli, by then retired, insisted to The Item in 2000 that the man they arrested that day and who an eyewitness identified as being on Newhall Street the day of Helen Blake’s murder, was the real killer.(Material from The Associated Press and Item staff was used in this report).