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Boston Strangler Strikes Again

Jan. 5, 1964 - Mary Sullivan (pictured), a 19-year-old girl from Hyannis, Mass., was strangled early last night in the Boston apartment she had moved into 2 days earlier, thus becoming the 13th strangulation victim in Eastern Massachusetts in the last 19 months. Miss Sullivan’s partially clad body was found in the bedroom of the apartment at 44A Charles Street, in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, by her 2 roommates, Patricia Delmore, 19, and Pamela Parker, 18, both employed by a Boston department store. Part of Miss Sullivan’s underclothing was wrapped tightly around her neck. Lieut. John Donovan, chief of the Boston Homicide Bureau, said, “It is quite apparent that this little girl has been strangled.” Dr. Michael A. Luongo, medical examiner, said late last night that Miss Sullivan was strangled by a nylon stocking and two nylon scarfs around her neck. She had been dead several hours.

Miss Sullivan’s roommates were returning from work at 6:15 p.m. to the second-floor apartment when they found her body. In hysterical condition, they rushed back to Charles St. where their screams were heard by passing Motorcycle Patrolman John Vadeboncour. He rushed up to the apartment, viewed the body, and called for detectives. Lieut. Donovan said an unspecified sexual aberration noted in several of the previous strangle murders was also evident in Miss Sullivan’s death. Both Donovan and Capt. Cornelius O’Brien, District Two commander, said the murder possessed “the earmarks of some of the others.” The last previous strangle slaying occurred Nov. 23, 1963, when the body of Joann M. Graff, 23, was found in her Lawrence apartment where she lived alone. The first six victims were 50 years old or older. Four of the last five have been much younger. All the victims were molested.



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