In the summer of 1962, a palpable fear had begun to creep into the city of Boston as a series of baffling and brutal murders targeting women living alone left the public on edge. It was during this time of heightened anxiety, on August 19th, that 75-year-old Ida Irga, a shy and retiring widow, became a victim in her own West End apartment on Grove Street.
There were no signs of a forced entry, suggesting that she had, for some reason, opened her door to her killer.
When she was discovered two days later, the scene that greeted investigators was one of calculated horror. Ida was found on her living room floor, her body deliberately and grotesquely posed, a detail that would become a chilling hallmark of the elusive predator the press would soon dub the Boston Strangler. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled, the cause of death officially being manual strangulation. The brutality of the crime sent another shockwave of fear through the city, as it became terrifyingly clear that a serial killer was at large.
The investigation into Ida's murder became part of a much larger and more complex case, as the list of victims grew. The brazen nature of the crimes, with the killer leaving few clues, confounded police. For years, the case remained a harrowing mystery, a dark chapter in Boston's history. Eventually, a man named Albert DeSalvo, who was in custody for a series of unrelated sexual assaults, confessed to being the Boston Strangler, providing details of the murders, including Ida's.
Despite his detailed confession, DeSalvo was never prosecuted for the Strangler murders due to a lack of physical evidence connecting him to the crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison for the other offenses and was later stabbed to death by fellow inmates. While DeSalvo's confession seemed to close the case in the minds of many, doubts about his sole culpability lingered for decades. It wasn't until many years later that DNA evidence would definitively link him to the last of the thirteen victims, though the question of his involvement in all the murders, including Ida Irga's, remains a subject of debate. No other arrests were ever made in connection with her death.
