Authorities to Open DeSalvo Grave Friday Afternoon

By John Castelluccio, Bret Silverberg and Roberto Scalese

The disinterment, which involves about an hour or 90 minutes of work after the casket is uncovered, will take place after 2 p.m., following the final funeral of the day. Officials are waiting so the cemetery can host several funerals scheduled for Friday morning.

DeSalvo was exhumed once before, in 2001; Funeral Director Larry Glynn says he’s familiar with the public’s interest in this case and the grim circumstances surrounding a disinterment.

“The casket is inside a concrete container in a vault in the ground,” he said. “A crew will need to use a backhoe to pull off the cover to the container and then will put it back until authorities are ready to return the body.”

Glynn said visitors often ask to be shown DeSalvo’s grave but he doesn’t show them per the request of the DeSalvo family.

"People come in with a list of names and then throw Albert DeSalvo's name in the middle,” he said. “I say, 'I can take you to see all of the other names, but not Albert DeSalvo.'"

As for the exhumation, Glynn says it’s not a preferable situation for any cemetery.

"We'd prefer to leave people at rest," he said, adding

Officials Thursday cited a technological breakthrough allowing them to identify Albert DeSalvo as the killer of Mary Sullivan, the last murder in a string of 1960s killings by the "Boston Strangler."

Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley said at a press conference forensics investigators took a sample from a water bottle DeSalvo's nephew drank from and were able to match this with the DeSalvo Y chromosome. The sample from the bottle was matched with a sample of seminal fluid taken from blankets at the scene of 19-year-old Mary Sullivan’s murder in 1964.

This "familial match" allowed police to obtain a warrant to exhume DeSalvo's remains to further prove the case, Conley said.

Investigators have tried since the 1960s to find a match to Sullivan's grisly murder Jan. 4, 1964, but were unable to prove a match until now. Pulling a new sample from DeSalvo’s exhumed body should provide the factual evidence needed to put the case to rest permanently.

This is the second time investigators will exhume DeSalvo’s remains. His body was exhumed for new evidence in 2001, but police were not able to match evidence from the crime scene to DeSalvo.

A lawyer representing the DeSalvo family told The Boston Globe Thursday the family is upset with police for the way in which it obtained the new comparable sample, adding the family would have given a sample if asked.

Albert DeSalvo confessed to the killings while in prison, marking himself as the worst serial killer in Boston’s history.

The murders began in 1962, when Anna E. Slessers was found dead in her Gainsborough Street apartment. Police found a grotesque scene, with Slessers’ body posed lewdly on the bathroom floor. She had been sexually assaulted with an object and then strangled with her bathrobe’s belt. The belt had been tied in a bow.

In all, 11 murders, taking place between 1962 and 1964, were tied to the Boston Strangler.

The recent developments bear only on Sullivan’s murder and not on the 10 other unsolved associated crimes.