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A Death in Belmont (P.S.)
by Sebastian Junger
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Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking murder that fits the pattern of the infamous Boston Strangler, still at large. Hoping for a break in the case, the police arrest Roy Smith, a black ex-con whom the victim hired to clean her house. Smith is hastily convicted of the murder, but the Strangler's terror continues. And through it all, one man escapes the scrutiny of the police: a carpenter working at the time at the Belmont home of young Sebastian Junger and his parents—a man named Albert From the acclaimed author of A Perfect Storm comes a powerful chronicle of three lives that collide in the vortex of one of America's most controversial serial murder cases.
Imagine how strange and frightening it would be to see a picture of yourself, not quite a year old, with your mother and two men, one of whom is a confessed serial killer. This is what happened to Sebastian Junger, and only a small part of what he recounts in A Death in Belmont. The quiet suburb of Belmont, Massacuusetts, is in the grip of fear. The Boston Strangler murders have taken place nearby, and now there is another shocking sex crime, right in Belmont. The victim is Bessie Goldberg, a middle-aged woman who had hired a cleaning man to help out around the house on that fall day in 1963. He is a black man named Roy Smith. He did the appointed chores, collected his money and left a receipt on the kitchen table. Neighbors will say that he looked furtive when he walked down the street, that he was in a hurry, that he stopped to buy cigarettes, that he looked over his shoulder. They didn't see a black man in Belmont very often, so, of course, they noticed him. So the story went, and on these slender threads, and his own checkered history, Roy Smith is convicted of the Belmont murder and sent to prison. On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvo, an Italian-American handyman, is also in Belmont, working as a carpenter in the Junger home, where the picture is taken. Two years after his work for the Jungers, he confesses in vivid detail to the crimes of which the Boston Strangler is accused, and sent to prison, where he is stabbed to death by an inmate. But he never confesses to the Bessie Goldberg murder. Could he have left the Junger home, committed the murder a few blocks away and calmly returned to finish his day's work? Could Roy Smith really have been the guilty party, even though his sentence was commuted after De Salvo confessed? In the grand tradition of his bestselling The Perfect Storm, Junger tells a terrific story, lining up all the elements, asking all the pertinent questions, digging into the backgrounds of both men, retelling his mother's very strange encounter with Albert when she is home alone with Sebastian. He then asks the larger questions: Was Roy Smith convicted summarily because he was black? Was Albert De Salvo really the Boston Strangler? Junger cannot answer all the questions, as no one can. Without DNA, there is no way to be certain of which of the two men might have committed the rape and murder of Bessie Goldberg, or if neither of them is guilty. While it is frustrating not to know for sure, the story is fascinating, reads like a tautly plotted mystery thriller, and Junger's close connection is downright creepy. --Valerie Ryan
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Fantastic True Crime Story |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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A well told story. Junger does a great job of laying out the facts of not only the Spring 1963 murder of Bessie Goldberg but also the Boston Strangler case. No assumptions are made and when all is said and done, we, as readers, are left with the same questions we started with - Did Roy Smith kill Bessie Goldberg? Was Albert DeSalvo the Boston Strangler? And lastly, on a more personal note for the author - What if Junger's mother hadn't left their Belmont home that Spring day in 1963?
Recommended for True Crime non-fiction fans.
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| A Death in Belmont |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This is a fascinating true story, which just proves to me that truth is stranger than fiction. Junger tells a great story, from beginning to end.
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| mixed |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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I fall in the camp of those reviewers who really enjoyed the book while reading it and then after reading the critical reviews here felt like they were duped by the author.
After reflecting on the book, I noticed more and more flaws that I will share shortly.
On the positive side, it is a very well written book. It is very interesting and spell-binding. It's too bad the author took as many liberties as he did.
Many of the criticisms have been shared elsewhere on here so I will only highlight the ones that I didn't see so much of:
- Despite some parts of the book being thoroughly researched, one must notice the glaring absence of interviews of those close to the case whose opinion on the guilt or innocence of Roy Smith would be most decisive. Since the author neglects to tell us vital information on evidence that points to Smith, it is no wonder that he chooses not to share the prosecutors story etc. Maybe that wouldn't fit into his mold that the judicial system back then in Massachussets was prejudiced against Roy Smith. Junger goes as far as to say that a black man would be more likely to have a fair trial in the south than in the north in the 1960s. I skeptical about that.
- Though Junger attempts to show how he is impartial and at one time even suspected Smith's guilt, his desire for Al to be the murderer is apparent. The simple fact is that Al never admits to killing Bessie and Junger's reasons on why he wouldn't admit to it (after confessing to be the Boston Strangler) are pitiful.
In the end, I am still unsure about just who killed Bessie. As stated in reviews here, there is evidence for Roy Smith (house in a mess still) but as stated in the book there is a lot of evidence against Roy Smith being the killer too.
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| A Very Fascinating Yet Confusing Read |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Though the reviews are quite mixed for this book, I actually enjoyed the book. It is rather refreshing when an author doesn't confuse his opinion with facts. Junger confesses that he himself doesn't know the truth and that the deeper he delves into the possibilities the more confused he became.
Junger a resident of Belmont, Massachusetts relives his own family's brush with infamy when a man that once worked in their home could very well have been the Boston Strangler.
As murders are taking place in the quiet suburb of Belmont the police are hard pressed for a suspect, that is until a black man is seen walking in the area of a recent murder. Roy Smith seems like the most likely candidate, he has a criminal record and was known to have worked in one of the victims homes. Easily convicted, the story seems to end there, that is until a man by the name of Albert DeSalvo enters the picture and the reader and author begin to question if the right man was convicted after all.
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| What is truth? |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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On March 11, 1963, an elderly housewife named Bessie Goldberg was raped and murdered in her own home in a Boston suburb named Belmont. Her death was initially attributed to the Boston Strangler, but the only suspect that emerged was a black man named Roy Smith who had done cleaning work at the house that day and left perhaps an hour before the crime was discovered.
The evidence against Smith was circumstantial. He had clearly been at the scene and in a position to commit the crime. He may have left with a few more dollars in his pocket than his wages for the day's work, based on his expenditures over the next few hours. Finally, there was not much time for someone else to get into the house and commit the crime after his departure - nor were there any other identifiable suspects.
The police tracked down Smith and arrested him. There was a lengthy interrogation, in which he repeatedly insisted that Goldberg had been alive and well when he left the house. Neither then nor later did Smith fit the profile of a serial killer, although he had been involved in lots of other criminal behavior. So if he was indeed the killer, this particular crime was not the work of the Boston Strangler(s) who had committed some 13 other unsolved murders.
Smith was tried and convicted based on the above evidence, and sentenced to life in prison. He continued to maintain his innocence. Over a decade later, his sentence was commuted and he was released - only to die of lung cancer within a couple of days.
Meanwhile, a white man named Albert DeSalvo had confessed to the Boston Strangler killings - not including the murder of Bessie Goldberg, which was viewed as a solved crime even though it followed essentially the same script as the others. And, of particular interest to the author, Albert DeSalvo had been involved in a construction project at Junger's boyhood house - just a few blocks away from the Goldberg residence. DeSalvo was in their house for part of the day on March 11, 1963, and the next day a picture was taken at their house of DeSalvo, the contractor, Junger's mother, and Junger as a baby. Pretty sobering if DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler, as he would later claim to be, particularly as DeSalvo had once tried to talk Mrs. Junger into coming down in the basement.
The central issue of the book is who killed Goldberg, namely Smith or DeSalvo. Junger argues the evidence back and forth, delves into the backgrounds and psyches of both men, and ultimately suggests that the truth is unknowable at this point. Indeed, he muses, maybe the most interesting things about this story are not discovering the truth but "all the things that could be true."
Given the author's unique perspective and in-depth research, such a suggestion seems like a copout. Also, the narrative skips around in time and place, making it unnecessarily difficult to follow, and the coverage of the legal proceedings is not very thorough.
In short, this could have been a far better book than it turned out to be.
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