Kenneth Alessio Bianchi is an American serial killer, kidnapper, and rapist. He is known for the Hillside Strangler murders committed with his cousin Angelo Buono Jr. in Los Angeles, California, as well as for murdering two more women in Washington by himself. Bianchi is currently serving a sentence of life imprisonment in Washington State Penitentiary for these crimes. Bianchi was also at one time a suspect in the Alphabet murders, three unsolved murders in his home city of Rochester, New York, from 1971 to 1973. He is up for parole in 2025.
Albert Henry DeSalvo was an American murderer and rapist who was active in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1960s. He is known to have confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", a serial killer who murdered thirteen women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. Lack of physical evidence supported DeSalvo's confession, and he was only prosecuted in 1967 for a series of unrelated rapes, for which he was convicted and imprisoned until his death in 1973. DeSalvo's claims to have murdered multiple women was disputed, and debates continued regarding which crimes he truly had committed.
The Boston Strangler is the name given to the murderer of 13 women in Greater Boston during the early 1960s. The crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo based on his confession, on details revealed in court during a separate case, and DNA evidence linking him to the final victim.
A Rose for Mary: The Hunt for the Real Boston Strangler is a 2003 book about Mary Sullivan, the last victim of confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo. Written by Sullivan's nephew, Casey Sherman, the book presents DNA evidence that suggests DeSalvo was not the Boston Strangler.
Richard Owen Fleischer was an American film director. His career spanned more than four decades, beginning at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood and lasting through the American New Wave. He was the son of animation pioneer Max Fleischer, and served as chairman of Fleischer Studios.
Rising Sun is a 1993 American buddy cop crime thriller film directed by Philip Kaufman, who also wrote the screenplay with Michael Crichton and Michael Backes. The film stars Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel, Tia Carrere, Mako and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. It was based on Michael Crichton's 1992 novel Rising Sun.
Harvey Murray Glatman was an American serial killer and rapist during the late 1950s known as the Lonely Hearts Killer or the Glamour Girl Slayer. He would use several pseudonyms, posing as a professional photographer to lure his victims with the promise of a modeling career.
Pieter van der Hurk known as Peter Hurkos, was a Dutchman who claimed he manifested extrasensory perception (ESP) after recovering from a head injury and coma caused by a fall from a ladder when aged 30. He went to the United States in 1956 for psychic experiments, later becoming a professional psychic who sought clues in the Manson Family murders and the Boston Strangler case. With the help of businessman Henry Belk and parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, Hurkos became a popular entertainer known for performing psychic feats before live and television audiences.
Murray Hamilton was an American stage, screen and television character actor who appeared in such films as Anatomy of a Murder, The Hustler, The Graduate, Jaws and The Amityville Horror.
A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. When some degree of coercion is involved, studies have found that subjects with highly sophisticated intelligence or manipulated by their so-called "friends" are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, and have a significantly higher rate of false confessions than adults. Hundreds of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit—but years later, have been exonerated. It was not until several shocking false confession cases were publicized in the late 1980s, combined with the introduction of DNA evidence, that the extent of wrongful convictions began to emerge—and how often false confessions played a role in these.
George Henry Nassar was an American murderer, known for his claim that Albert DeSalvo allegedly confessed to being the Boston Strangler to him in late 1965, while both were cellmates at a prison psychiatric ward. Nassar contacted his lawyer F. Lee Bailey and informed him of this confession, which led to DeSalvo becoming the prime suspect in the unsolved Strangler murders.
Eyewitness is a 1981 American neo-noir thriller film produced and directed by Peter Yates and written by Steve Tesich. It stars William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Plummer, Morgan Freeman and James Woods. The story involves a television news reporter and a janitor who team to solve a murder.
The Night Stalker is an American made for television horror film which aired on ABC on January 11, 1972, as their ABC Movie of the Week. In the film, an investigative reporter, played by Darren McGavin, comes to suspect that a serial killer in the Las Vegas area is actually a vampire.
Benjamin Thomas Atkins , also known as The Woodward Corridor Killer, was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered, tortured, and raped 11 women in Highland Park and Detroit, Michigan, during a period of eight months between December 1991 and August 1992. He was apprehended after being arrested for rape charges and soon after he confessed to the murders. He was ultimately found guilty and given several life sentences in April 1994. He died from AIDS in 1997.
Crack in the Mirror is a 1960 drama film directed by Richard Fleischer. The three principal actors, Orson Welles, Juliette Gréco, and Bradford Dillman, play dual roles in two interconnected stories as the participants in two love triangles.
The Strangler is a 1964 American psychological thriller film directed by Burt Topper and starring Victor Buono, David McLean, Davey Davison, and Ellen Corby, with a screenplay by Bill S. Ballinger. It follows a disturbed lab technician who embarks on a serial killing spree of young female victims. The film was inspired by the Boston Strangler, a serial killer who murdered several women in the 1960s, and went into production while police were still attempting to solve the crimes.
At 12:30 a.m. on January 7, 1969, Jane Britton, a graduate student in Near Eastern archaeology at Harvard University, left a neighbor's apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, to return to her own. The next day, after she had failed to answer her phone and missed an important exam, her boyfriend went to the apartment and found her dead. The cause of death was found to be blunt force trauma from a blow to the head; she had been raped as well.
John Joseph Droney (1911–1989) was an American politician who served as district attorney of Middlesex County, Massachusetts from 1959 to 1983.
Charles Edward Terry was an American murderer and suspected serial killer convicted of the 1963 strangling of Zenovia Clegg, and a suspect in two murders in his native Maine. It is also suggested that Terry could have perpetrated even more killings in Massachusetts and Louisiana. He died in prison in 1981, from pulmonary embolism, after suffering from lung cancer.
Boston Strangler is a 2023 American true crime film written and directed by Matt Ruskin. It is based on the true story of the Boston Strangler, who, in the 1960s Boston, killed 13 women. The film stars Keira Knightley as Loretta McLaughlin, the reporter who broke the news for the Boston Record American, with Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, Chris Cooper, David Dastmalchian, and Morgan Spector.
