BOSTON, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Forensic scientists were studying the exhumed body of confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo in hopes of finding evidence that might help prove who stabbed him to death in prison in 1973, according to reports on Monday.
The reports also said DNA from DeSalvo could also help determine if he in fact was the killer of 13 women in the early 1960s.
"The family has been unsatisfied all these many years concerning the death of Albert DeSalvo and failure to find anyone guilty in the death," James E. Starrs, professor of forensic sciences at George Washington University, told the Boston Globe.
Starrs is leading a team of scientists performing the autopsy at York College near Harrisburg, Pa.
DeSalvo's body, at his family's request, was exhumed from his grave in Peabody, Mass., on Friday to allow a second autopsy on the man who claimed to have murdered 13 women between 1962 and 1964.
George Burke, a retired Norfolk County, Mass., district attorney, said there's no mystery over who murdered DeSalvo, despite claims to the contrary by attorneys representing DeSalvo's family and that of the last victim attributed to the Boston Strangler, Mary Sullivan.
"We knew exactly who killed him, and we knew why they killed him and we tried them for it," Burke told the Globe.
Burke said DeSalvo was stabbed more than 70 times by three other inmates at the state prison in Walpole. He claimed Carmen R. Gagliardi, Robert M. Wilson and Richard L. Devlin killed DeSalvo to keep him out of the prison drug trade.
Those three were tried but their cases ended without convictions.
Elaine Whitfield Sharp, representing the DeSalvo and Sullivan families, said DeSalvo's case "is still an unsolved murder," and that prison officials may have actually helped set up his slaying.
"Whoever killed Albert had help from the people in charge of the prison," Sharp said. She said he was in protective custody at Walpole at the time and his killers had to go through "about six levels of security" to get to him.
DeSalvo was serving a life term for other sexual assaults, but was never tried for any of the slayings attributed to the Boston Strangler. His relatives claim DeSalvo confessed to the crimes in order to profit from book and movie deals.
The DeSalvo and Sullivan families have been involved in a stalemate with the state attorney general's office over access to evidence they believe might clear DeSalvo.
Shark said DeSalvo's confession to killing Sullivan in 1964 did not agree with evidence found at the scene.
"There is some large discrepancy between every DeSalvo confession and every crime scene," Sharp's husband, Dan, told the Boston Herald. "Albert's confessions are at odds with every murder."
DeSalvo's brother, Richard DeSalvo, has offered to provide a DNA sample to prosecutors to help resolve the dispute, but only if the district attorney provides some of the semen sample from the crime scene so that the DeSalvo legal team could conduct its own DNA investigation.
Prosecutors have refused saying to do so would compromise the official investigation.
