365:84 (a death in belmont)
by sam on 11/23/2009finished another analog book today, A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger. It’s ultimately a pretty interesting meditation on the limits of our justice system to find out who is actually guilty of any particular crime, but the specifics are pretty amazing. In 1963, a woman was strangled to death in Belmont. An african-american man who had been working at her house was convicted of the crime. Except…
Except, that down the street, at the author’s own home, some carpenters were working on the author’s mother’s new studio, and one of those workers was Albert DeSalvo, who later confessed to being the Boston Strangler. I think the creepiest part of the whole book is the photo at the very beginning, of a baby Sebastian Junger sitting in his mother’s lap, with DeSalvo standing behind them. DeSalvo never confessed to committing the particular crime in Belmont, but still…
