On March 18, 1967, Albert DeSalvo, the man who had confessed to a string of killings commonly attributed to the "Boston Strangler," was sentenced to life imprisonment. DeSalvo’s legal saga was complex: while he had admitted to committing multiple sexual assaults and had confessed to the Boston-area murders, his conviction at that time was for a series of rapes known as the "Green River" rapes and other sexual offenses rather than for the strangulations themselves. The sentence reflected the culmination of a highly publicized investigation and a controversial set of admissions and legal proceedings. DeSalvo first came to public attention in 1964 after he was arrested on unrelated charges. While in custody, he provided detailed confessions to numerous murders of women in the Boston area spanning 1962–1964, and to a larger set of sexual assaults. His confessions, recorded by police and relayed in media reports, included specific details about some crime scenes that matched aspects of the cases; however, law enforcement and later forensic reviewers noted inconsistencies and disputed elements within his statements. At trial, prosecutors pursued charges that could be most reliably proven with available evidence. DeSalvo was convicted in late 1967 of multiple counts of robbery and assault with intent to commit rape (charges arising from the same pattern of attacks) and subsequently received a life sentence. He was not tried in Massachusetts for the murders commonly attributed to the Boston Strangler; the absence of a direct murder conviction left unresolved questions about whether DeSalvo acted alone, had accomplices, or whether some killings were committed by others. The case remained contentious in the decades that followed. Advances in forensic science, shifting interpretations of DeSalvo’s confessions, and differing views among investigators and legal scholars all contributed to ongoing debate. In 2013, DNA testing linked DeSalvo to the 1964 murder of Mary Sullivan, the last of the Boston Strangler victims, providing strong evidence that at least one of the killings was committed by him. Nonetheless, the DNA result did not settle disputes about responsibility for the other murders in the series, and some historians and investigators continue to consider the possibility of multiple perpetrators. DeSalvo was never sentenced for murder; his life term grew out of convictions for sexual offenses and related crimes. He was incarcerated in Massachusetts and later moved to other institutions. In 1973 he was killed in prison, a development that closed his direct involvement in further inquiries. The legal outcome on March 18, 1967, marked a pivotal moment in a case that had gripped the Boston area and the nation. It underscored limitations in mid-20th-century investigative and prosecutorial methods and left a legacy of unresolved questions that have been revisited as forensic techniques evolved. The DeSalvo case remains an important and contested chapter in American criminal history, illustrating challenges in attributing serial crimes, the evidentiary weight of confessions, and the evolving role of DNA in confirming historical suspicions.