George Nassar, 86, Killer Who Heard Confession in Strangler Case, Is Dead

Mr. DeSalvo was knifed to death in 1973 in his bed in the hospital wing of Walpole State Prison (now the Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Cedar Junction).

The police had other suspects in the Strangler cases — at least six at one point — but no one ever stood trial.

In 2013, however, Mr. DeSalvo was linked to one of the Strangler’s crimes. Seminal fluid in the Beacon Hill apartment where Mary Sullivan, 19, the last of the 13 victims, had been raped and killed was matched to the exhumed remains of Mr. DeSalvo.

Mr. Nassar was, for a time, thought of as a suspect in the killings. At least two women who had escaped the Boston Strangler were taken to Bridgewater and identified Mr. Nassar, not Mr. DeSalvo, as the assailant, according to The Globe article.

“I had nothing to do with it,” Mr. Nassar told the newspaper.

He maintained his innocence in the WBZ interview, then said, “If I had been, theoretically, on a score with Al and we were in a criminal conspiracy together, and I found out that he was murdering women and getting away with it, I’d have given him a quick and painless death, right there.”

Mr. Nassar was born on June 7, 1932, in Providence, R.I., and grew up in Lawrence, Mass. His parents worked at local mills, his father, Henry, as a weaver, and his mother, Helen, as a bobbin setter, according to “The Boston Stranglers,” a 1995 book by Susan Kelly.

He was 15 when he was charged with killing a shopkeeper in Lawrence in 1948. Convicted, he served 13 years in prison. Three years after being paroled — during the time when the Boston Strangler killings occurred — Mr. Nassar was charged with killing a gas station owner in Andover, Mass., and convicted of first-degree murder.

He soon met Mr. DeSalvo at Bridgewater.