Is The Boston Strangler Based On A True Story? details

After the success of The Dropout, Hulu once again capitalizes on the true crime craze with another fictional version of a well-known case. However, this particular film takes a different approach.

Boston strangler does not focus on the crimes themselves, although they are of course touched upon, but on two reporters who linked the various murders. It’s a film that deals with the speed bumps that the male ego creates. So is Boston strangler Based on a true story?

The press is usually responsible for giving a nickname to a serial killer. For example acc CBS NewsRichard Ramirez was first called Night Stalker by the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. In the early 1960s, Boston was terrorized by a series of horrific murders targeting women of all ages and backgrounds. The victims all had one thing in common, they were strangled.

Two reporters were the first to suggest these crimes were related, and now Hulu is telling their story. Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) worked at the Boston record American (Now Boston Herald) when they “theorized that the crimes were the work of a single killer whom they dubbed the ‘Boston Strangler,'” per Smithsonian Magazine.

As was usual for the time, and let’s be honest today, misogyny got in the way of a very believable idea. Looking back on that time, McLaughlin would tell later The Boston Globe that “an editor denied the value of a series about the four dead women, stating that they were ‘nobody.'” For McLaughlin, that was what drew her to the story. She was also a nobody and referred to herself and these women as “sisters in anonymity”.

The first piece McLaughlin and Cole wrote together about the murders was a little cheeky but still respectful. Titled Two reporters analyze Strangler, it laid out gruesome details of the crimes. Some thought this was a roadmap for more killings, while Cole and McLaughlin saw it as a way to warn the women of Boston. Regardless, their coverage is widely considered to be the best done on the Boston Strangler.

The quick answer is yes and no. In July 2013, abc news reported that a “water bottle recovered from a construction site where Tim DeSalvo – whose uncle Albert DeSalvo had confessed to being the internationally notorious Boston Strangler – gave police the DNA evidence they needed to close a case, that has been a mystery for nearly 50 years, murders for which no one has ever been charged.”

Per The Daily News, DeSalvo was in prison on other charges when he confessed to the Boston Strangler murders. He later recanted, but DNA evidence unearthed 50 years later was enough to prove he was in fact the Boston Strangler. Although he wasn’t technically caught and charged as a Boston Strangler, DeSalvo was still caught.

Boston strangler will be available to stream on Hulu on Friday March 17, 2023.