"I'm not the Boston Strangler or Jack the Ripper."
The Boston Strangler is a name attributed to the murderer (or murderers) of several women in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, in the early 1960s. Though the crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo, investigators of the case have since suggested the murders (sometimes known as the silk stocking murders) were not committed by one person
Between June 14, 1962 and January 4, 1964, 13 single women (between the ages of 19 and 85) were murdered in the Boston area. Most were sexually assaulted and strangled in their apartments. Without any sign of forced entry into their dwellings, the women were assumed to have either known their assailant or have voluntarily allowed them into their homes, believing them to be an apartment maintenance man, deliveryman, or some other serviceman. Despite enormous media publicity that would presumably have discouraged women from admitting strangers into their homes after the first few murders, the attacks continued. The killings panicked and frightened many Boston-area young females, causing some to leave the area. Many residents purchased tear gas and new locks and deadbolts for home doors.
The murders occurred in several cities, making overall jurisdiction over the crimes unclear. Massachusetts Attorney General Edward W. Brooke helped to coordinate the various police forces. He controversially permitted psychometrist Peter Hurkos to use his alleged extrasensory perception to analyze the cases, for which Hurkos claimed a single person was responsible. When Hurkos provided a "minutely detailed description of the wrong person," the press ridiculed Brooke. While the police were not convinced that all the murders were the actions of one person, much of the public believed so; the connection between a majority of the victims and hospitals was widely discussed.
Confession
Gainsborough Street, site of the first murder attributed to the Boston strangler.
On October 27, 1964, a stranger entered a young woman's home posing as a detective. He tied the victim to her bed, sexually assaulted her, and then suddenly left, saying "I'm sorry" as he went. The woman's description led police to identify the assailant as Albert DeSalvo. When his photo was published, many women identified him as the man who had assaulted them. Earlier on October 27, DeSalvo had posed as a motorist with car trouble and attempted to enter a home in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The homeowner, future Brockton police chief Richard Sproles, became suspicious and eventually fired a shotgun at DeSalvo.
DeSalvo was not initially suspected of being involved with the stranglings. It was only after he was charged with rape that he gave a detailed confession of his activities as the Boston Strangler. He initially confessed to a fellow inmate, George Nassar. Nassar reported the confession to his attorney, F. Lee Bailey, who also took on DeSalvo's case. The police were impressed at the accuracy of DeSalvo's descriptions of the crime scenes. Though there were some inconsistencies, DeSalvo was able to cite details which had not been made public. However, there was no physical evidence to substantiate his confession. As such, he stood trial for earlier, unrelated crimes of robbery and sexual offenses in which he was known as The Green Man and The Measuring Man respectively. Bailey brought up the confession to the stranglings as part of his client's history at the trial in order to assist in gaining a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' verdict to the sexual offenses but it was ruled as inadmissible by the judge.
DeSalvo was sentenced to life in prison in 1967. In February of that year, he escaped with two fellow inmates from Bridgewater State Hospital, triggering a full scale manhunt. A note was found on his bunk addressed to the superintendent. In it DeSalvo stated that he had escaped to focus attention on the conditions in the hospital and his own situation. The next day he gave himself up. Following the escape he was transferred to the maximum security Walpole State Prison where, six years later, he was found stabbed to death in the infirmary. His killer or killers were never identified.
Doubts
Doubts remain as to whether DeSalvo was indeed the Boston Strangler. At the time he confessed, people who knew him personally did not believe him capable of the vicious crimes. It was also noted that the women killed by "The Strangler" came from different age and ethnic groups, and that there were different modi operandi.
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the media. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, and may have been written by a journalist in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the story. Other nicknames used for the killer at the time were "The Whitechapel Murderer" and "Leather Apron".
Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard. The "From Hell" letter, received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, included half of a preserved human kidney, supposedly from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".
Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed widespread and enduring international notoriety on the Ripper. An investigation into a series of brutal killings in Whitechapel up to 1891 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the murders of 1888, but the legend of Jack the Ripper solidified. As the murders were never solved, the legends surrounding them became a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. The term "ripperology" was coined to describe the study and analysis of the Ripper cases. There are now over one hundred theories about the Ripper's identity, and the murders have inspired multiple works of fiction.
The contents of the syringe was an ordinary solution of scopalamine.
Scopolamine, also known as levo-duboisine, and hyoscine, is a tropane alkaloid drug with muscarinic antagonist effects. It is among the secondary metabolites of plants from Solanaceae (nightshade) family of plants, such as henbane, jimson weed and Angel's Trumpets (Datura resp. Brugmansia spec.), and corkwood (Duboisia species). Scopolamine exerts its effects by acting as a competitive antagonist at muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, specifically M1 receptors; it is thus classified as an anticholinergic, anti-muscarinic drug.
Although scopolamine is often portrayed in the media as a dangerous drug, its anticholinergic properties give it some legitimate medical applications in very minute doses. As an example, in the treatment of motion sickness, the dose, gradually released from a transdermal patch, is only 330 micrograms (µg) per day. In rare cases, unusual reactions to ordinary doses of scopolamine have occurred including confusion, agitation, rambling speech, hallucinations, paranoid behaviors, and delusions.
One of the earlier alkaloids isolated from plant sources scopolamine has been in use in its purified forms (such as various salts including hydrochloride, hydrobromide, hydroiodide and sulfate), since its isolation by the German scientist Albert Ladenburg in 1880, and as various preparations from its plant-based form since antiquity and perhaps pre-historic times. Following the description of the structure and activity of scopolamine by Ladenburg, the search for synthetic analogues of and methods for total synthesis of scopolamine and/or atropine in the 1930s and 1940s resulted in the discovery of diphenhydramine, an early antihistamine and the prototype of its chemical subclass of these drugs, and pethidine, the first fully synthetic opioid analgesic, known as Dolatin and Demerol amongst many other trade names.
Scopolamine was used in conjunction with morphine, oxycodone, or other opioids from before 1900 up into the 1960s to put mothers in labor into a kind of "twilight sleep". The analgesia from scopolamine plus a strong opioid is deep enough to allow higher doses to be used as a form of anaesthesia.
Scopolamine mixed with oxycodone (Eukodal), and ephedrine was marketed by Merck as SEE (from the German initials of the ingredients) and Scophedal starting in 1928, and the mixture is sometimes mixed up on site on rare occasions in the area of its greatest historical usage, namely Germany and Central Europe.
Scopolamine was also one of the active ingredients in Asthmador, an over-the-counter smoking preparation marketed in the 1950s and '60s claiming to combat asthma and bronchitis. In November 1990 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration forced OTC products with scopolamine and several hundred other ingredients that had allegedly not been proven effective off the market. Scopolamine shared a small segment of the OTC sleeping pill market with diphenhydramine, phenyltoloxamine, pyrilamine, doxylamine and other first generation antihistamines, many of which are still used for this purpose in drugs like Sominex, Tylenol PM, NyQuil, etc.
The humidity would have been stifling but for the trade winds...
The trade winds (also called trades) are the prevailing pattern of easterly surface winds found in the tropics, within the lower portion of the Earth's atmosphere, in the lower section of the troposphere near the Earth's equator.[1] The trade winds blow predominantly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere, strengthening during the winter and when the Arctic oscillation is in its warm phase. Historically, the trade winds have been used by captains of sailing ships to cross the world's oceans for centuries, and enabled European empire expansion into the Americas and trade routes to become established across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
In meteorology, the trade winds act as the steering flow for tropical storms that form over the Atlantic, Pacific, and southern Indian Oceans and make landfall in North America, Southeast Asia, and India, respectively. Trade winds also steer African dust westward across the Atlantic ocean into the Caribbean sea, as well as portions of southeastern North America. Shallow cumulus clouds are seen within trade wind regimes, and are capped from becoming taller by a trade wind inversion, which is caused by descending air aloft from within the subtropical ridge. The weaker the trade winds become, the more rainfall can be expected within neighboring landmasses.
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