Episode 4: Abnormal Psychology

Stranglers

SiriusXM Podcasts

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2016

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On December 29, 1962, twenty-three-year old Patricia Bissette was found strangled in her Boston apartment. She was second young victim, and the seventh overall attributed to The Boston Strangler. But there were some who weren't so sure Bissette was a victim of THE Strangler. There was legitimate suspicion that Bissette’s boss—a married man with a motive for keeping his affair with Bissette quiet—had killed her. In this episode, host Portland Helmich reveals how one significant detail, Bissette’s address, might have helped police find the real killer in 1962. We’ll hear more about the tragic consequences of this missed opportunity, and we’ll meet Adele Roof, who believes that she befriended the Boston Strangler in 1962—and almost became one of his victims.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The following program includes descriptions of graphic and sexually explicit violence.
0:09.8	This show may not be suitable for those affected by such descriptions or for young listeners.
0:14.9	Parental discretion is advised.
0:19.4	Previously on Stranglers, five elderly women had been murdered in Boston.
0:26.5	In December 1962, another victim was found.
0:30.8	Twenty-year-old Sophie Clarke was strangled with three stockings and a half slip.
0:36.6	I remember hearing someone say, you must have hated his mother.
0:41.3	Did he hate his sisters now?
0:42.9	Because now he was killing young girls.
0:45.1	I did he just hate women.
0:47.5	The strangling of twenty-year-old Sophie Clarke confounded the police by contradicting
0:52.0	what they thought they knew about the killer.
0:55.6	With this drastic change in victim type from older white women to a young black woman, Boston
1:01.0	faced the real possibility that there was a second strangler, a copycat.
1:05.9	In effect, you had a template for murder presented to you by the press.
1:10.4	Type stocking or a bathroom sash around your neck, blaming on the strangler, and your home
1:16.8	free.
1:22.3	While the murder of Sophie Clarke raised all kinds of questions about the strangler's identity,
1:27.4	the next killing did not.
1:31.3	Three weeks after Sophie died, twenty-three-year-old Patricia Bassette was strangled in her apartment,
1:37.2	another young victim.
1:39.0	But this time, the case seemed much more straightforward.
	...

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