Free The Boston Stranglers by Susan Kelly Page A

and picked up the baby. Mrs. Surette got out of bed and retrieved her child from the intruder. The three of them moved to the kitchen. There the man reached under Mrs. Surette’s nightgown and again caressed her breasts; she was still cradling the baby in her arms. She glanced at the clock and said, ‘Jeez, I didn’t realize it was so late.” She added that her friend Jean was coming to take photographs. The man replied, ”Oh, you wear glasses; we couldn’t use you. I have the wrong Surette.” He ran out the door.
    This surreal and frightening incident had lasted perhaps ten to fifteen minutes. Mrs. Surette later discovered twenty-five dollars missing from the budget book in which she kept the apartment rent money.
    Virginia Thorner lived alone in Melrose, a town bordering Wakefield. Shortly before 8:00 A.M . on June 8, 1964, she heard a knock on her front door. She admitted the caller when he told her there was a leak in her apartment.
    As he was walking toward the bathroom, ostensibly to check the plumbing there, the man said, “Are you tired, Virginia?” She confessed that she was, and asked the time. “Quarter of eight,” the man informed her.
    The man found no leak in the bathroom. “I think it must be the bedroom,” he said.
    Mrs. Thorner was examining the windows for a possible leak there when the man came up behind her, encircling her body with one arm and crooking the other over her face.
    He ordered her onto the bed and then blindfolded her with her shortie pajama bottoms. Then he gagged her and blindfolded her again with a kerchief. He began kissing her breasts and pubic area.
    â€œGive me twenty dollars and I’ll leave,” he said.
    â€œI don’t have twenty dollars,” Mrs. Thorner said. “I only have one.”
    They got up, and the man forced her to lead him to the living room, where the money lay on the coffee table. The kerchief over Mrs. Thorner’s eyes had dropped to her chin, enabling her to glimpse the knife her attacker was holding to her side.
    â€œTurn around, go back to the bedroom,” the man said. He told her he’d kill her if she screamed. Mrs. Thorner would in 1967 testify that he added, “Do what I say or I will kill you. I have killed before and I will do it again. I have even got an old lady but they don’t know it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
    He pushed her down on the bed and had her fellate him.
    He tied her up and then departed, saying, “Don’t scream. You remember what I said. Give me five minutes.”
    Despite the fact that her hands were tied behind her back, Mrs. Thorner was able to telephone the Melrose police. They had to cut her free, so secure were the knots binding her.
    Around her neck were draped four scarves. They would be entered as evidence at her assailant’s trial.
    At 9:00 A.M. on September 29, 1964, Muriel LeBlanc heard a knock on the front door of her apartment in Arlington, a suburb of Boston. Dressed in underwear, a housecoat, and slippers, Mrs. LeBlanc went to the door but didn’t open it right away. She asked who was there. A voice on the other side of the door replied, “There’s a leak in the basement. The basement is half full of water and I have to get in and shut off all the pipes, the water pipes.” Mrs. LeBlanc answered that her apartment had no leaks.
    The person on the other side of the door kept rapping at it, and finally identified himself as Dave—the name of the person who was indeed the building superintendent. Mrs. LeBlanc opened the door. A man unknown to her stepped over the threshold.
    In his hand was a gun. He raised it and pressed the barrel to Mrs. LeBlanc’s forehead. “This is a holdup, lady,” he said. “I want your money.”
    â€œTake it,” replied Mrs. LeBlanc.
    The man entered the apartment, shutting the door behind him. He asked her where the money was; she indicated her handbag on