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Official Silence. Nearly three years elapsed before DeSalvo was arrested again. On Nov. 3, 1964, he was taken into custody by Cambridge police who identified him as the "Green Man" (he wore green work pants) who had been raping women in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. On one day, between 9 a.m. and midday, he had assaulted four women in four towns. Indeed, DeSalvo told police, he had sexually assaulted perhaps 1,000 women in recent years —possibly 2,000, counting rapes in Germany, where he had been a G.I. in the occupation forces for five years.
It was while he was being held for psychiatric tests that DeSalvo identified himself as the Strangler, says Gerold Frank, who quotes extensively from a rambling, tape-recorded statement that DeSalvo made to a state assistant attorney general. According to Frank, the authorities are reluctant to name DeSalvo as the Strangler because they have nothing to offer in evidence but his uncorroborated statement. Under rules established by the Supreme Court in recent cases, the tape recording would not be regarded as a valid confession. The police, meanwhile, never discuss the case, and the only official comment comes in the form of a carefully antiseptic statement from Massachusetts' Attorney General Ed Brooke: "I have no evidence at the present time that would justify making a charge against an individual or any individuals in connection with the Boston Strangler case.
" Under the muddled circumstances, the safest thing, Frank indicates, is to leave DeSalvo in Bridgewater State Hospital for the rest of his life, where briskly and loquaciously he goes about shaving and feeding senile patients.