In the summer of 1962, a palpable fear began to creep into the city of Boston. On June 28th, that fear found its way into an apartment at 1435 Commonwealth Avenue, the home of 85-year-old Mary Mullen. Later that day, she was found dead on her sofa, becoming another victim in a string of terrifying and seemingly connected crimes. Unlike the other women who would fall prey to the attacker then known only as the "Mad Strangler of Boston," an autopsy would reveal that Mary had not been strangled or
stabbed. Instead, her death was attributed to a sudden and fatal heart attack.
As the city reeled from the growing number of women being murdered in their own homes, investigators struggled to find a viable suspect. The victims were often single women, and there were rarely signs of forced entry, suggesting they had unwittingly allowed a monster into their homes. For years, the identity of the man who entered Mary Mullen's home remained a mystery, her case one of several that left Bostonians locking their doors and viewing strangers with suspicion. The series of killings would eventually be attributed to a figure who would become infamous in the annals of American crime: the Boston Strangler.
The case took a significant turn when a man named Albert DeSalvo, who was in custody for a series of unrelated sexual assaults, confessed to being the Boston Strangler. He provided details about the murders, including the death of Mary Mullen. DeSalvo claimed that the elderly woman had died of fright, simply collapsing in his arms when he grabbed her. This confession aligned with the findings of her death certificate, which officially listed a heart attack as the cause of death.
Despite his detailed confession to the murders of 13 women, including Mary Mullen, Albert DeSalvo was never tried for the Strangler killings. He was sentenced to life in prison for the other, non-lethal crimes. His confession remained the primary link between him and Mary's death. Years later, in 2013, DNA evidence would conclusively link DeSalvo to the murder of another victim, Mary Sullivan, the last of the Strangler's victims. However, no such forensic evidence tied him directly to the death of Mary Mullen. DeSalvo himself was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, taking with him the full truth of what transpired in Mary Mullen's apartment that fateful June day.
