Hi everyone, so 2016 is behind us and we want to take a quick minute to thank you all for supporting this podcast.

The Atlantic listed us at number seven in their top 50 podcasts of 2016 and we were first in GQ Magazine's list of the seven best new podcasts to check out.

We are so proud of the recognition and we're really grateful to all of you for listening, for subscribing, for telling your friends about Stranglers and for all your comments online.

Even the criticisms, we read those too, so thank you.

We also want to very quickly thank one of the sponsors who's been with us since the very beginning, Squarespace.

Squarespace is the all-in-one solution for people who want to create a beautiful website. It's simple and intuitive, no knowledge of code required.

And if you go to squarespace.com and enter offer code Stranglers, you'll get 10% off your first purchase.

And finally, on behalf of the Stranglers production team, I want to wish you all a very happy new year and let you know that next week, Stranglers returns with the second half of our season.

Another week might feel like a long time to wait, so here's a sneak peek of what's in store.

We don't feel that the person, our person's responsible for one or more of these crimes is necessarily a hundred percent psychotic.

We feel that the person may be normal in many ways.

They called it police commissioner out of a black-tied dinner and asked him to come immediately to my office.

Coming up, the phantom materializes.

And they said commissioner, this guy looked far better than anyone we've looked at in this entire investigation and I think we should take him seriously.

After a grueling three-year search for the Strangler, investigators take a confession from Albert DeSalvo.

I say his feet are in the tissue where they went from close to Alton, but to where he was from.

Here's somebody who said, look, I can be having lunch with my family in the kitchen or walk into the living room and kill somebody and come back and sit down at the table and continue eating lunch like nothing ever happened.

Look at the history of law against rape. I mean, up until the feminist movement, you had rape seen as this insanity or deviance and then actually no, it's not at all.

These guys are acting out of the drive for power.

From the moment the tape recorder stops on Albert DeSalvo's confessions, doubts begin to circulate.

Ed Brooke wanted to offer Albert as the Boston Strangler to the public to quell his stereo.

John Boddenly said no, he's not the Strangler.

...