Later this month, Hulu will premiere their original drama “Boston Strangler,” starring Keira Knightly and Carrie Coon as Boston Record American reporters Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole. McLaughlin and Cole contributed significantly to public awareness of the violent atrocities which befell women in the greater Boston area in the early to mid 1960s. It will be exciting to see them, and their efforts as women reporters in a male dominated field portrayed as the focal point of a feature film. But this this for Beverly.
Beverly’s case in particular, and the totality of the investigation undertaken by Massachusetts authorities, are inextricably linked to the history of psychiatry and public institutions in the United States. The influence and reach of the state hospital, the state school, and the state forensic hospital permeated the lives of everyone in American society, on a national level, and to an extent that the 21st century citizen might have difficulty appreciating.
On May 6th, 1963, Boston University graduate student Beverly Samans was found brutally murdered in her Cambridge apartment. A graduate of New England Conservatory and registered music therapist, the talented mezzo-soprano was looking forward to an upcoming audition with the Metropolitan Opera, and knew that she would soon be forced to choose between a professional singing career and further pursuit of her passion for human services.
Beverly Samans began working at Fernald State School as a music therapist in September of 1959. She worked there for three years, until she began graduate work at Boston University. Two days a week, as part of her Master’s program requirements, she traveled to Medfield State Hospital for her clinical practicum training. Beverly was beloved by residents and colleagues alike, called “outstanding” by her Fernald supervisor. She, in turn, referred to the residents of Fernald as “my children,” and after she left Fernald, she broke the institution’s rules by continuing to maintain social relationships with some of her students. Further, she often allowed those among them who had been released from the institution, or who had community privileges, to visit her at her apartment. Investigators considered this a high risk undertaking, particularly for a woman living alone. Because many of Beverly’s former Fernald students were young adult men, they quickly became persons of interest in the investigation. On the second Friday of May 1963, she had been scheduled to moderate a panel called “Why Retarded [sic] Children Respond to Music.” She died on Monday.
Investigators had already begun combing the patient rosters, current and former, of Massachusetts state institutions, looking for evidence of sexual deviance among the population there in their search for the man or men who would become known as the “Boston Strangler.” The majority of the most closely pursed suspects had been institutionalized in a state facility at least once in their lifetime, and several found themselves in Bridgewater State Hospital either when or after they captured police attention. The man who eventually confessed to Beverly’s murder, and the rest of the stranglings, had been in Westborough Sate Hospital at least twice before he found himself in Bridgewater. These inpatient admissions were secondary to the commissions of the multitude of egregious sexual crimes which defined his existence. Later, during interviews, this same suspect, who had also been in prison, and a resident of Lyman School, a Massachusetts reform school for boys, would recall the pivotal experience of visiting his grandmother in Danvers State Hospital in his discussions with investigators.
In a society with an insatiable perseveration on true crime narratives, interest, especially in historic crimes, surges each time a murder, or murders, is commodified by being once again recycled into the spotlight. One of the victims of this horrible series of homicides spent the majority of her life sharing her gifts with others, dedicating her compassion and enthusiasm to reaching those most neglected and ostracized, connecting with them through her love of music. Beverly’s devotion to her students at Fernald and patients at Medfield was palpable to everyone who interacted with her in her career.
I implore anyone with an impulse to search for the case online to give less credence to the voice on the confession tapes (you’ll recognize it, he sounds like a parrot receiving a prostate exam) and think instead of Beverly’s, and how she chose to use it. I often wonder what it would have been like to hear her sing, her rich mezzo soaring through the wards, assuaging some of the anguish around her. Not just anyone is granted an opportunity to audition for the Metropolitan Opera. Her former supervisor at Fernald State School, learning of Beverly’s death, described the reactions of her former students as “heartbroken.”
Her kindness extended further still to other members of American society marginalized in 1963. A page from her Master’s thesis in progress was found in the typewriter at her apartment when detectives arrived to asses the crime scene. She had written, in the introduction:
“This paper attempts to examine some of the causative factors contributing to homosexuality in males … It will be obvious that, whatever the causation, this writer feels that the practice of homosexuality is a matter of personal choice and that part of the difficulties connected with it stem from the attitude which society maintains toward it.”
Beverly F. Samans, unfinished thesis, 1963.
Her time was so short, and she was so far ahead of it.
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