‘Boston Strangler’ Screening Benefits Dorchester Peace Institute

All survivors of homicide violence should be treated with dignity and compassion. That is an underlying principle at the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, a Massachusetts organization that seeks to transform society’s response to homicide. An upcoming special charity screening at the Chatham Orpheum Theater will raise funds for the organization.

On Thursday, Jan. 29, Casey Sherman, the New York Times bestselling author of such books as “The Finest Hours” and “Patriots Day,” will be hosting a screening of his documentary “The Boston Strangler: Unheard Confession” at the Orpheum to benefit the institute.

The evening will feature a wine reception, followed by a screening of the film and a question-and-answer session with Sherman, Chaplain Clementina Chery, president and CEO of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, and other members from the organization. 

The topic of the Boston Strangler, according to Sherman, is relevant once again.

 “If authorities didn’t get the right guy in the Boston Strangler case, which is one of the biggest murder cases in American history, who’s to say they didn’t get the wrong guy or the wrong woman in hundreds if not thousands where they made the suspect fit the crime?” said Sherman. “You’re seeing a new wave of thinking in the public right now, especially after the Karen Reed Case, where there isn’t a lot of support and confidence in some law enforcement investigations.”

Sherman’s film details his investigation of the 1960s serial murder case. Featured within the documentary is the taped audio confession of Albert DeSalvo, the self-proclaimed killer. The new information, according to a release for the film, offers “the raw and unfiltered account of the crimes that contradict the official story and raise new questions,” with the film reigniting “the debate over the real identity of the infamous Boston Strangler.” 

Sherman’s aunt, the then 19-year-old Mary Sullivan, a 1962 graduate of Barnstable High School, was the final and youngest victim in the case.

Since his documentary was released, Sherman said he has begun to think about the case in a different way.

 “I’ve kind of reinvested myself in the case and reexamined it because I’ve been researching this case for so many years, but I’ve done so on a micro level — focused on the murders in Boston. But what I’ve found, in what’s really fascinating and nauseating at the same time, is that there were well over 61 people strangled from 1962 and 1969 across the United States and left in curious, unusual positions — all with earmarks of the Boston Strangler case,” he said. 

 “I’m not saying that the same person committed these crimes across the United States, but instead of looking at this case as a modern-day Jack the Ripper, I’ve begun to see it more as, or comparing it to, the Salem witch trials, which created a mass hysteria in the public. This is a nationwide pandemic of women being murdered, strangled, left in horrible positions by men who read about these cases in the newspapers and committed similar crimes in Oakland, California, in upstate Michigan, in Austin, Texas, in Cincinnati, Ohio.”

Coming back to investigating the Boston Strangler case, after more than 30 years since initially working on it, was a matter of changing perspectives, according to Sherman. 

 “I’m much older than I was. I was kind of a dogged, bull-in-a-china shop young journalist when I first attacked this case. I wanted to see if perspectives have changed over time,” said Sherman. “When I started to look at this, I said I’m going to look at this in a macro perspective. I started to piece together all of these other homicides across the United States. That was kind of an epiphany moment for me. This case is quite bigger than Boston, frankly, and that is a story that I’m going to continue to explore, possibly for a new book in the future.”

Access to the work that the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute offers is something Sherman said his family would have benefitted from at the time of his aunt’s murder. 

 “I wished that my family had that type of support system when we lost my cherished aunt in 1964,” he said. “We had to go it alone and didn’t really know the resources that were available to us at that time.”

According to its website, the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute was founded to honor the memory of Louis D. Brown, a 15-year-old honors student who was caught in a crossfire shootout near his home in Dorchester in December 1993. His mother, Chaplain Clementina Chery, co-founded the institute in 1994 to “honor his legacy and continue the peacemaking work he led.” 

Chery said that the organization, based in Dorchester, is three-fold. It serves as a center of healing, teaching and learning for communities impacted by murder, trauma, grief and loss. The work they do, according to Cherry, is intertwined with community violence interventions and social-ecological frameworks, and in order to address the issue of violence, intervention happens at multiple levels. 

In terms of its programs and services, the institute can begin working with a family 24 to 72 hours after a homicide has taken place, using its survivor’s family and resource guide as a point of entry. It also offers a healing support service that can provide a space in which families can begin to heal after the death and the burial. Beyond that, the institute also has a generation peace initiatives, a program that is geared towards young people to transform the narratives behind gun violence. 

The funding from an event like this, according to Chery, is very helpful. 

 “Raising funds to do this work is not easy,” said Chery. “We’re working with the families in that worst of times — when something bad happens.” She added that they have a safety relocation fund, a fund for the ancillary expenses that come with funerals, and support for the gathering of the survivors of homicide victims. 

 “Every dollar counts,” she said.

Tickets are $40 for general seating for the screening at 7 p.m. or $50 for a pre-screening reception at 6 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at Chathamorpheum.org. For more information on the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, visit ldbpeaceinstitute.org.