Police will exhume Boston Strangler suspect, caught in Lynn

LYNN – The focus Thursday was on Boston public safety officials and their plans to exhume the body of Albert DeSalvo, but Lynn shared that infamous limelight decades ago, when the alleged Boston Strangler was arrested on Western Avenue in February 1967.Police officer Joseph Coppinger, father of Police Chief Kevin Coppinger, was part of the team that took DeSalvo down after he escaped from Bridgewater State Hospital and triggered a massive hunt.Kevin Coppinger remembers, as a kid, his father talking about the Boston Strangler.”In general terms,” he said. “We never got any of the nitty-gritty that you shouldn’t be sharing with your kid, and would probably get in trouble if you did.”DeSalvo was accused of killing 13 women between June 1962 and January 1964, one in Lynn, one in Salem and the rest in Boston.But there have always been two schools of thought on DeSalvo. One was that he was not the Boston Strangler. Retired Lynn police officer Bill Mancinelli sat down with The Daily Item in 2000 to tell the tale that he believed he and his partner uncovered the real Strangler, and it was not DeSalvo.In 1963 Mancinelli was a young patrolman, three years into a 30-year career, when he was sent to High Rock Tower on a report of a stolen bicycle. There he and his partner stumbled upon a small shack where they found two suitcases that contained stockings and diagrams of the homes of each of the women who had been murdered, allegedly by DeSalvo. Silk stockings knotted around the victim’s neck in a bow was the Strangler’s signature.Mancinelli said he even had a suspect, who it turned out he went to high school with, but the suspect and his evidence were inexplicably cut loose by the FBI.He said he knew the police were making a mistake, but he declined to discuss why the suspect was released.Nearly 50 years later, police are hoping that DNA will link DeSalvo to the murder of Mary Sullivan, who was 19 when she was raped and killed in her apartment. Her nephew, Casey Sherman, has pressed for DNA testing for more than 10 years and has kept interest in the case alive.Unfortunately, Mancinelli will not be around to see the results. He died in 2007.Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].