Search for the Strangler Read Online Free PDF Page B

of much use, since MacDaniels
     paid most of his men under the table.
    After talking with MacDaniels, Mellon spoke with the company’s two full-time painters, both Caucasian. The men swore they
     had nothing to do with the murders and said they had not worked with any African Americans on the buildings Slesers and Blake
     lived in. Mellon sensed they were lying, but proving it would be difficult. The killers had left no fingerprints or traces
     of paint at any of the crime scenes.
    That summer, there would be no reprieve from the terror in Boston. Soon, the newspapers were linking the crimes under the
     heading “The Silk Stocking Murders,” an inaccurate description since only Helen Blake had been strangled with stockings.
    Nevertheless, the media and a frightened public now believed there was a serial killer stalking the streets. Single women
     tried to avoid walking alone. Many kept makeshift weapons by their beds—a pair of scissors, a kitchen knife, or even a ski
     pole could be used to fend off an attacker. Traveling salesmen saw their business plummet because women would no longer open
     their doors to strangers. In a 1963
Life
magazine article, Margery Byers described the effect the case was having not only on women but on men as well. A husband
     went out to buy groceries after cautioning his wife never to open their apartment door to strangers. Upon his return, he realized
     he had forgotten his key and rang the doorbell. When the wife let him in, he screamed at her for not first checking his identity.
    Some local merchants saw their business grow as fear gripped the city. Locksmiths sold more chains, window locks, and door
     bolts. Nervous women stood in line outside the animal shelter, trying to adopt a stray. The Boston Police Department set up
     a twenty-four-hour hot line number, DE8-1212, which was published in every metropolitan newspaper and aired repeatedly on
     local radio broadcasts. As a result, the switchboard at the Boston Police Department was flooded with calls from women who
     saw strange men in their buildings or even shadows moving inside their apartments.
    Eventually, the police department diverted nearly all of its resources to the strangler case. A new unit consisting of fifty
     men patrolled the streets by night, all specially trained in the martial arts and quick-draw shooting. Jim Mellon now was
     working as many as eighteen hours each day, going home only to sleep. He ate his meals at his desk or while out exploring
     new leads. The work was grueling for Mellon, who had a wife and six young children at home, but it would be time well spent
     if he could help get the killer or killers off the streets.
AUGUST 21, 1962
    In late summer, police added a fourth name to list of victims. The body of a seventy-five-year-old widow, Ida Irga, was found
     by her brother, Harry Halpern, inside her apartment at 7 Grove Street in Boston’s West End. When two patrolmen reached the
     fifth floor apartment, they found Irga lying on her back in the middle of the living room floor. She was wearing a brown nightdress,
     which was torn, completely exposing her body. Instead of a silk stocking, her killer had wrapped a white pillowcase tightly
     around her neck. Each of Irga’s legs was propped up on chairs spread four to five feet apart, and a bed pillow was placed
     under her buttocks, a display that her killer had apparently set up to mock the investigators. Dried blood covered the victim’s
     head, mouth, and ears, and a blood trail indicated that Irga had been violently attacked in the bedroom, then carried or dragged
     out into the living area of the four-room flat.
    There was no evidence that Irga had been raped. The Suffolk County medical examiner, Dr. Michael Luongo, found no trace of
     sperm in the elderly woman’s vagina or anus. On the basis of a fracture to the woman’s hyoid bone, a fragile neck bone that
     is cracked in most cases of manual strangulation, he also concluded that Ida Irga had