Free The Boston Stranglers by Susan Kelly Page B

a chair. The man ordered her to go sit on the couch. She didn’t move. Then she heard a click and felt something sharp pressing against her neck. “That’s a knife at your throat, lady,” the man said. She turned and he put the gun to the back of her head.
    â€œDon’t make a sound or yell,” the intruder warned. “Because if you do, I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear.” He added that he wasn’t kidding.
    Mrs. LeBlanc would tell a judge and jury that the man had asserted that he had no fear of police or prison. The cops were looking for him anyway, he said, and had been for years. “You won’t get a second chance, lady, I’ll just cut your throat. So don’t you yell or make a sound.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Mrs. LeBlanc. “I won’t yell.”
    She sat on the couch as ordered. The man then tied her ankles together with a pair of pajama pants belonging to Mr. LeBlanc. Then he bound her hands behind her back with one of her husband’s scarves.
    â€œWhy are you doing these terrible things?” Mrs. LeBlanc asked.
    â€œWhat terrible—?” The man faltered. “What things, what things?”
    â€œComing in here like this and tying me up,” Mrs. LeBlanc, a woman of uncommon courage, replied. “Why are you doing these terrible things, coming in here like this?” she repeated. “What would your mother say if she could see you now?”
    â€œShe wouldn’t like it,” the man admitted. Nonetheless, he began to unbutton Mrs. LeBlanc’s robe and to kiss her. Mrs. LeBlanc jerked her head aside and his mouth grazed her neck. He told her he wanted to feel her breasts.
    â€œI’m an old woman and I don’t want you bothering me,” Mrs. LeBlanc snapped.
    The man crossed the room and masturbated. Then he went into the bathroom. When he returned, he and Mrs. LeBlanc argued about whether there was any rent money in the apartment, she insisting there wasn’t and he insisting that there had to be because it was the end of the month. All this time he held a gun to her ear, Mrs. LeBlanc recollected.
    She won the argument about the rent money. The man took a diamond ring from her jewelry box and eleven dollars from her wallet. Then he said, “I’m going, lady,” and left the apartment.
    Mrs. LeBlanc wriggled free of her bonds and tried to call the police. When she lifted the telephone receiver, however, she got no dial tone. The wires had apparently been cut.
    She told the court that at one point during her ordeal, the man had asked her where she kept her silk stockings. “I don’t have any,” she had answered. “I don’t wear them this time of year.”
    She also told the court that she had never been so scared in her entire life.
    At 9:45 on the morning of October 27, 1964, a twenty-year-old Cambridge woman named Suzanne Macht, a Boston University student and the wife of a local university instructor, woke up to find a man standing in her bedroom. As she would tell a packed courtroom two years and two months later, the intruder said, “You know me.” She had never seen him before and replied, “No, I don’t.”
    â€œI’m a police detective,” the man stated, adding that he wanted to ask her a few questions. He began walking toward the bed. Then he told Mrs. Macht that he was in fact not one of the police but fleeing from them. They were surrounding the building at that moment.
    Mrs. Macht screamed and rose from the bed. The man yanked out a knife and told her not to look at him. He assured her that he wouldn’t hurt her. Then he bound her hands and gagged and blindfolded her.
    He pulled up her nightgown and began to fondle and kiss her breasts and pubic area. She squirmed off the bed and struggled to her feet. The man kissed her again, lifted her in his arms, and placed her back on the bed. He did not rape her, nor did he strike or