Events
Between June 14, 1962 and January 4, 1964, 13 single women between the ages of 19 and 85 were murdered in the Boston area. Most were sexually assaulted and strangled in their apartments. Without any sign of forced entry into their dwellings, the women were assumed to have either known their assailant or have voluntarily allowed them into their homes, believing them to be an apartment maintenance man, delivery man, or some other service man. Despite enormous media publicity that would presumably have discouraged women from admitting strangers into their homes after the first few murders, the attacks continued. The killings panicked and frightened many Boston-area young females, causing some to leave the area. Many residents purchased tear gas and new locks and deadbolts for home doors.
The murders occurred in several cities, making overall jurisdiction over the crimes unclear. Massachusetts Attorney General Edward W. Brooke helped to coordinate the various police forces. He controversially permitted psychometrist Peter Hurkos to use his alleged extrasensory perception to analyze the cases, for which Hurkos claimed a single person was responsible. When Hurkos provided a "minutely detailed description of the wrong person," the press ridiculed Brooke. While the police were not convinced that all the murders were the actions of one person, much of the public believed so; the connection between a majority of the victims and hospitals was widely discussed.
Read more about this topic: Boston Strangler
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)