Prosecutor's Son Says DeSalvo Development Vindicates Father’s Work

Other than a dust up in the early 2000s, there was little mention of the Boston Strangler murders, a string of brutal crimes which took place between 1962 and 1964, until officials dropped a bombshell of a development Thursday.

Donald L. Conn Jr., a Peabody lawyer and alderman-at-large in Melrose, has a close tie to the case: his father, Donald Conn Sr., was the prosecutor who tried the case that led to suspected Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo’s conviction in a series of rapes in 1967. DeSalvo, while detained at Bridgewater State Hospital following the conviction, escaped custody in February 1967. He turned himself in the next day, but Conn Jr. was pulled from his Winthrop Elementary School classroom in Melrose for protection against retribution by DeSalvo.

“I don’t recall any threats but when he did escape my siblings and I were brought home just as a precautionary matter,” he said in a phone interview.

Conn, 54, was eight years old at the time. He says he has no real memory of the situation, which sparked a manhunt throughout the area. But he was aware of his father’s work and is now proud that it seems authorities caught the right person.

“I know [my father] always believed DeSalvo was the Strangler,” Conn said. “It looks like the outcome is trending this way. If that’s the case, his beliefs are going to be vindicated.”

During the trial, DeSalvo confessed to committing the Boston Strangler murders, though that fact has been questioned both by authorities and the DeSalvo family, likely until now – as police say they have found a match to DNA pulled from the murder scene of Mary Sullivan, the last murder victim connected to the Boston Strangler.

While investigators exhume DeSalvo’s remains from Puritan Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Peabody, where Conn has a legal practice, he says says it will hopefully bring some much needed closure to the families of the victims.

“I’m happy to see it coming to an end…and for the people involved to know there is a definitive scientific proof” tying DeSalvo to the crime.