police with one very strong clue. At two twenty that afternoon, another young black woman in the same building had heard a knock on her door and had opened it to a workman who said that heâd been sent to paint her apartment. The womanâs name was Marcella Lulka; she told the man she knew nothing about it, but he just walked past her, did a quick tour of the apartment, and declared that her bathroom ceiling needed to be fixed. The man was medium height, powerfully built, and was wearing green pants and a black waist-length jacket.
You know, you have a beautiful figure, he said. Have you ever thought about modeling?
Marcella Lulka was alone in the apartment, and she knew she was in danger and that she had to think fast. She put her finger to her lips and told the man that her husband was sleeping in the next room. That was all that the stranger needed to hear; he mumbled an apology and ducked out of the apartment, and Marcella Lulka didnât think about him again until she heard police sirens.
Three weeks after Sophie Clark was killed, a twenty-three-year-old woman named Patricia Bissette was found dead in her Cambridge apartment by the superintendent of her building. She had been strangled by three stockings and a blouse and was lying in bed with her head turned to one side and the covers pulled up over her body. This was the first strangling victim to have been positioned in a discreet, peaceful way, a setting that police investigators refer to as âcompassionate.â Compassionate murder scenes are often the work of boyfriends and husbands who are filled with remorse after the initial outburst of violence. Bissette was nude except for her pajama top, which was pulled up to expose her breasts, and there was evidence that she had recently had sex. She had one boyfriend in Vermont and another who lived nearby, and the medical examiner soon determined that she was one month pregnant.
Initial news reports declared that Bissetteâs murder was not one of the âBoston Stranglingsâ because of the likelihood that one of her boyfriends had killed her. Neither man could be convincingly linked to the crime, however, which once again left authorities looking for someone who had knocked on a womanâs door, been allowed in, and then killed her. After Patricia Bissette there was a lull in the murders until March 9, 1963, when sixty-eight-year-old Mary Brown was found beaten to death in a town north of Boston. The killer had crushed her head with a length of pipe, jammed a fork into one of her breasts, and raped her as she lay dying. The murderwas so savage that it did not seem to fit the pattern of the other killings, though the public didnât have to wait long for one that did.
Two days later Israel Goldberg, rushing through his strangely quiet house, finally glanced into the living room and noticed something that looked like his wifeâs feet.
THE TRIAL
ELEVEN
A T 9:37 ON the morning of November 7, 1963, Roy Smith rose from his seat at the calling of his name and faced Judge Charles Bolster in a courtroom at the Middlesex Superior Court in East Cambridge. Smith stood in a prisonerâs dock that came up to his waist and had a small door that was locked behind him to symbolize that he was not free on bail. (That practice was eventually abandoned as too prejudicial. Defendants now sit at a table next to their attorneys.) The room had thirty-foot ceilings and tall arched windows and was possibly the most ornate piece of architecture Roy had ever stepped into. Next to Roy at the defendantâs table was his young attorney, Beryl Cohen, and across the room on his left was a twelve-person jury plus two alternates, all men. Judge Bolster was a respected but undistinguished judge who was known to be unapologetically fair toward the defense despite being an archconservative in an extremely liberal state.
âMr. Foreman, gentlemen of the jury, the case before you is the case of the
You know, you have a beautiful figure, he said. Have you ever thought about modeling?
Marcella Lulka was alone in the apartment, and she knew she was in danger and that she had to think fast. She put her finger to her lips and told the man that her husband was sleeping in the next room. That was all that the stranger needed to hear; he mumbled an apology and ducked out of the apartment, and Marcella Lulka didnât think about him again until she heard police sirens.
Three weeks after Sophie Clark was killed, a twenty-three-year-old woman named Patricia Bissette was found dead in her Cambridge apartment by the superintendent of her building. She had been strangled by three stockings and a blouse and was lying in bed with her head turned to one side and the covers pulled up over her body. This was the first strangling victim to have been positioned in a discreet, peaceful way, a setting that police investigators refer to as âcompassionate.â Compassionate murder scenes are often the work of boyfriends and husbands who are filled with remorse after the initial outburst of violence. Bissette was nude except for her pajama top, which was pulled up to expose her breasts, and there was evidence that she had recently had sex. She had one boyfriend in Vermont and another who lived nearby, and the medical examiner soon determined that she was one month pregnant.
Initial news reports declared that Bissetteâs murder was not one of the âBoston Stranglingsâ because of the likelihood that one of her boyfriends had killed her. Neither man could be convincingly linked to the crime, however, which once again left authorities looking for someone who had knocked on a womanâs door, been allowed in, and then killed her. After Patricia Bissette there was a lull in the murders until March 9, 1963, when sixty-eight-year-old Mary Brown was found beaten to death in a town north of Boston. The killer had crushed her head with a length of pipe, jammed a fork into one of her breasts, and raped her as she lay dying. The murderwas so savage that it did not seem to fit the pattern of the other killings, though the public didnât have to wait long for one that did.
Two days later Israel Goldberg, rushing through his strangely quiet house, finally glanced into the living room and noticed something that looked like his wifeâs feet.
THE TRIAL
ELEVEN
A T 9:37 ON the morning of November 7, 1963, Roy Smith rose from his seat at the calling of his name and faced Judge Charles Bolster in a courtroom at the Middlesex Superior Court in East Cambridge. Smith stood in a prisonerâs dock that came up to his waist and had a small door that was locked behind him to symbolize that he was not free on bail. (That practice was eventually abandoned as too prejudicial. Defendants now sit at a table next to their attorneys.) The room had thirty-foot ceilings and tall arched windows and was possibly the most ornate piece of architecture Roy had ever stepped into. Next to Roy at the defendantâs table was his young attorney, Beryl Cohen, and across the room on his left was a twelve-person jury plus two alternates, all men. Judge Bolster was a respected but undistinguished judge who was known to be unapologetically fair toward the defense despite being an archconservative in an extremely liberal state.
âMr. Foreman, gentlemen of the jury, the case before you is the case of the
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