Not every one shared the enthusiasm about Bottomly’s
qualifications. Edmund McNamara, the Boston Police Commissioner
reportedly said, "Holy Jesus, what a nutcake." Novelist
George V. Higgins, who worked for Associated Press at that time,
said that he "never heard a reference to Bottomly without the
word asshole attached "as either a suffix or a prefix. I
started to think maybe it was part of the guy’s name."
Bottomly’s top team consisted of Boston Police Department’s
Detective Phillip DiNatale and Special Officer James Mellon;
Metropolitan Police Office Stephen Delaney; and State Police
Detective Lieutenant Andrew Tuney. Dr. Donald Kenefick headed up a
medical-psychiatric advisory committee with several well known
experts in forensic medicine.
Two months later, Governor Peabody offered a $10,000 reward to
any person furnishing information leading to the arrest and
conviction of the person who had committed the murders of the eleven
"official" victims of the Strangler.
The Strangler Bureau, as the task force became known, had several
major pieces of business before it could hit the ground running. It
had to collect, organize and assimilate over thirty-seven thousand
pages of material from the various police departments that had been
involved in the case.
For the medical committee, they had the task of developing the
profile of the kind of person who would commit the murders. The
forensic medical experts saw important differences between the
murders of the older women and the younger women. For that reason,
they thought it was unlikely that one person was responsible for all
of the killings. In other words, there were copycats.
What kind of person would be capable of such murders? Dr.
Kenefick reported what his team believed the police should be
looking for:
He was at least 30 years old, a probably a good deal older. He
is neat, orderly, and punctual. He either works with his hands, or
has a hobby involving handiwork. He most probably is single,
separated or divorced. He would not impress the average observer
as crazy… He has no close friends of either sex."
|
Peter Hurkos, psychic (CORBIS) |
At Bottomly’s suggestion, Brooke finally consented to a risky
move: the involvement of Peter Hurkos, the well-known Dutch psychic.
Two private groups paid for Hurkos’ services and expenses. He was
a difficult person to work with and ultimately got into difficulty
for allegedly impersonating an FBI agent. |