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    A Death in Belmont
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    A Death in Belmont
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    A Death in Belmont
    Ebook287 pages5 hours

    A Death in Belmont

    By Sebastian Junger

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A compelling portrait of 1960s America that takes as its starting point the brutal events of 11 March 1963, the day on which the lives of three complete strangers – a black handyman, an Italian-American carpenter and a second-generation Jewish housewife – collided in the leafy Boston suburb of Belmont.

    These three people did not know one another, but, by the end of the day, the housewife had been raped and strangled, the handyman had been arrested on suspicion of being the notorious Boston Strangler, and the real Boston Strangler – carpenter Al DeSalvo – had returned home to his wife and children. It was not until two years later that DeSalvo admitted to the gruesomely violent murders of thirteen women. Also unwittingly drawn into the drama were one-year-old Sebastian Junger's own family, who posed for a photograph with DeSalvo the day after the Belmont strangling, at the completion of his work on their studio.

    Taking the chilling family snap as his inspiration, Junger explores the worlds of the three protagonists and, in so doing, creates a portrait of America in the 1960s that touches on the historic themes of the era: the assassination of JFK, the rise of the immigrants and the troubling race relations that prefigured the death of Martin Luther King.

    This new work by Sebastian Junger, the acclaimed author of ‘Perfect Storm’ and ‘Fire’, is as enlightening as it is haunting. Taking as its foundation the events that shocked a quiet community in 1963, ‘A Death in Belmont’ expands to encompass an entire nation at a time of extraordinary social turmoil.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateMar 7, 2013
    ISBN9780007370573
    Author

    Sebastian Junger

    Sebastian Junger is the New York Times bestselling author of Tribe, War, Freedom, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm, and codirector of the documentary film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for Reporting.

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    Reviews for A Death in Belmont

    3.5/5

    292 ratings24 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Great listen! Enjoyed all the side journeys.
    • 5/5
      It was the finding of an odd family photograph that initially led Sebastian Junger to investigate the murder which forms the basis of this extraordinary true story. Actually, it wasn't so much the photograph itself that was strange, but who was photographed with a one-year-old Sebastian and his thirty-four-year-old mother, Ellen. The story behind the taking of this photograph is actually the most horrifying revelation of all, as this information only further highlights just how close the Jungers came to experiencing their own personal tragedy on that particular day in the spring of 1963.In 1963, residents of the city of Boston were being terrorized by a series of gruesome murders that soon became known as the 'Boston Stranglings'. However, the quiet suburb of Belmont had never experienced the same level of fear until the brutal murder of Bessie Goldberg - which happened only a few blocks from the Junger family home. While Bessie Goldberg's murder bore all the hallmarks of being committed by the Strangler, a young black man by the name of Roy Smith - who had just cleaned the victim's house that day - was arrested, tried, and convicted for her murder. And so, the Strangler continued his reign of terror.Two years later, Albert DeSalvo - a handyman who was working at the Jungers' home on the day of the Belmont murder - confessed in lurid detail to being the Boston Strangler. Much to the horror of the Jungers, this competent, punctual, and unassuming young man had often spent time alone in their home, as well as with Sebastian and his mother. This disturbing revelation, and the chilling photograph that was taken to commemorate the building of a home studio, opens into a electrifying exploration of race and justice in America during the 1960s. This extraordinary narrative chronicles the multiple lives that collide - and are ultimately destroyed - in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I found it to be very well-written and thought-provoking, if a little slow in certain parts. Although I felt that the story lost some of its momentum, it still picked up appreciably, and I would certainly give this book a strong A!
    • 4/5
      Not my usual kind of book, but very well done. Completely absorbing history combined with the author’s personal connections with the events as a child growing up in Belmont, the next town over from mine. Some questions unanswered as is always the case.
    • 4/5
      I've had this book on my shelf for ages, and suddenly it was the right time to read it. Junger is tangentially connected to the case of the Boston Strangler, and this is an insightful and somehow inconclusive retelling of the investigation. In so,e ways it reads like a mystery story, where the police are hard pressed to figure out who the murderer is, and the case is not clear even at the end
    • 3/5
      Sebastian Junger's family added an addition on to their house as an art studio for his mother. One of the construction workers was Albert De Salvo, who turned out to be the Boston Strangler. Ellen Junger spent a lot of time with Albert, sometimes eating lunch with him, when he took a break from working. There was one incident where it seemed Albert tried to lure Ellen into being secluded and alone with him, but Ellen avoided him. There was a woman murdered in the same way that many of the victims of the strangler were blocks from their home. Another man was arrested for that murder, but everyone always wondered if Albert had done it. The man arrested and convicted always proclaimed his innocence and Albert always denied he killed Bessie Goldberg. With both the accused and Albert De Salvo dead, the question remains today who killed Bessie Goldberg?
    • 2/5
      I surprised myself in purchasing this book at all. I was one of the few that did not particularly enjoy The Perfect Storm. So, I'm not entirely sure what led me to Belmont.

      Junger delivers his information well, and the idea of having housed a killer in his childhood home is tantalizing. Unfortunately, the book has the feel of conjecture -even though it's logically laid out. The sense of drama and danger I expected to develop never did.

      There are better books to spend time and money on.
    • 4/5
      ooooooohhh . . this gave me the chills.
      True story - hard to make this stuff up.
      A good read!
      Read in 2006.
    • 4/5
      This is a meticulously researched true crime novel that was born out of a family legend. The tale goes that the man who would eventually confess to being the Boston Strangler worked a construction job at the author's house when he was a child. 'Al' as he was know locally, once tried to lure the author's mother into the basement on a flimsy pretext. The incident bothered her, but she never told anyone until after he was in jail. Later, a woman was murdered right there in his sleepy hometown of Belmont. A black man was arrested - he was only in town for a cleaning job at the murdered woman's house. The family story was that the man was completely innocent. Local cops just picked up the black man in town - a stranger - and charged him because of racism. As the author investigates, this traditional lore is challenged. The case is not as cut and dry as he originally imagined. This book is heavily laden with history, interrogation transcripts, and courtroom speeches. The author's careful handling of the case does a great job of conveying the complexity of criminal proceedings and the difficulty of ever really knowing the truth.
    • 2/5
      This books is OK for a non-fiction exposition on the Boston Strangler. However, I got kind of bored and was frustrated by the relatively incomplete ending.
    • 3/5
      This is the true story of the murders that were commited in Boston in the 1960s. Sebastian Junger the author was a baby when Albert DeSalvo done some DIY work for his mother. It turned out DeSalvo was murdering women around the Boston area. This book mostly centres around the story of Roy Smith a black hanyman who was working as a cleaner for Mrs. Goldberg, she was later found dead and raped. Roy Smith went to prison for this crime. When DeSalvo was eventually caught he confessed to some crimes but not this one. There was doubt about Smiths conviction. This story tries to unravel the truth into what happened. OK Book this. I enjoyed it and it got me thinking about other crimes that has taken place over the years.
    • 4/5
      Junger wrote one of my favorite books, The Perfect Storm. (Made into a mediocre film, but that shouldn't be held against it.) I can't rate this book quite as high--that book had some absolutely awesome, spine-tingling moments I'll never forget, and this book doesn't match it. I also wouldn't agree with the blurb inside that called it reminiscent of Capote's In Cold Blood, which I read only a few days ago. It might similarly be about a gruesome murder, but their virtues are quite opposite. Capote claimed to have invented a new from, the "non-fiction novel." As a novel I'd rate it highly--the writing is first-rate and worthy of being called literature. But as non-fiction I consider it unreliable for a number of reasons. With Junger's A Death in Belmont, I'm not particularly impressed with the prose--indeed on that dimension it falls short of The Perfect Storm. But as non-fiction, as a work of journalism, it's first-rate and convincing in ways I feel Capote's classic book is not. The origins of the book lie in a piece of Junger's family lore summed up in a photograph in the book--of Junger as an infant held by his mother, and caught also in the photograph Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Stranger. While DeSalvo was working for the Jungers in the Spring of 1963, Bessie Goldberg was raped and strangled to death little more than a mile from their home. A black man, Roy Smith, was convicted of her murder. Junger's mother has always believed Smith was innocent and Goldberg another victim of the Boston Stranger. In telling the story of these two men and the crimes of which they were convicted, Junger examines the American justice system and its flaws: "Between 1973 and 200 more than one hundred people have been released from death row--over 3 percent of the current death-row population--because they were later proved to be innocent." He later adds that of those found to be innocent "one out of five confessed to the crime." Those are sobering statistics. Moreover, half-way in the book given the evidence Junger had related, I thought Smith was probably guilty--although I wouldn't have voted for conviction had I been on the jury--by the end of the book Junger convinced me he was probably innocent. Note the qualification "probably" and one thing Junger wrestles with throughout is the question not simply of guilt and innocence but doubt--particularly that elusive definition of "reasonable doubt" and how society comes to terms with it. For the "ability of citizens to scrutinize the theories insisted on by their government is their only protection against abuse of power and, ultimately, against tyranny." I do like how Junger used the cases involving DeSalvo and Smith to examine that issue. If I have any complaint, it's that I wish Junger had included his sources--there are no notes of them. At one point for instance, he stated that the polygraph has "error rates of 30 percent." I have no problem believing that--polygraphs after all don't really measure truth--only a physiological response. But I'd have liked to have known on what basis that and other claims were made. Definitely an engrossing book that asked questions every citizen that has to sit in a jury box should think about.
    • 3/5
      A good procedural is something of a guilty pleasure for me, and it always adds something when the author has a personal interest (see Robert Drewe's The Shark Net for example). And Junger does set the scene well - he describes the fear generated in Boston by the Strangler in the early 60s very well. He describes the arrest and trial of Roy Smith in relation to the Belmont murder equisitely, and tries to be as neutral as possible given the evidence rules in place at the time and the fact that most of the protagonists are now dead. But then - it sort of peters out. The fact is, noone is really sure what happened that day in Belmont. Junger doesn't really add any new evidence. What indeed can he add? He has his opinion as to what happened, and its one that I probably share, but really its just his opinion. I was left somewhat frustrated by the lack of anything significantly new being added to the evidence and even more frustrated by the pop psychologist attempt to "explain" the motivations and psyche of the putative Boston Strangler, De Salvo. A character as complex of De Salvo needs a more serous treatment of his warped motivations than this. In short, a book that falls short of the admittedly high standards it aspires to
    • 4/5
      A compelling look at the "Boston Strangler" case, the US criminal justice system, and race relations in the 1960s. Bessie Goldberg is killed in Belmont, MA -- at the height of the Strangler's reign of terror -- but the main suspect becomes a transient worker --and black-- Roy Smith. Smith is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler" never confesses to, nor is accused of, Goldberg's murder. Unger builds a pretty tight case against DeSalvo and adds a personal angle to the story.Unger, as usual, does a good job of juggling characters, asking the right questions, and building momentum. To his credit, he does not tie up things neatly with pat answers and lets the multi-layered tragedy speak for itself.
    • 2/5
      It's 1963 and a woman is strangled in her home in Belmont near Boston. Meanwhile, in a nearby neighborhood the author's parents have contracted a local builder to add a room. Every day he works on the house with another handyman, Al DeSalvo. Hmm.A black man who was doing day work for the murdered woman is eventually convicted of the killing. But could it have been....THE BOSTON STRANGLER?? Maybe! Maybe not! There isn't enough evidence to say either way, so this book is kind of a cheat.There's a description of long evening of drinking, and of a bar, that made this book almost worth while. Almost.
    • 5/5
      This is much more than a "true crime" book about a murder. This book is a compelling chunk of American history.For much of U.S. history -- and all too often, even in these more enlightened times -- justice has failed to be blind, as advertised, when it comes to the color of a person's skin. In 1963, while Boston was gripped by terror over the "Boston Strangler" murders, a killing took place in the quiet, lily-white suburban Boston town of Belmont, Massachusetts. In many ways, it fit the M.O. of the Strangler killings. It was all-too-easily blamed on an African-American workman, Roy Smith who had been hired to clean the victim's house that day.That same day, less than two miles away, a workman was putting the finishing touches on a new addition to the home of Sebastian Junger's family. (Sebastian was just a baby at the time.) The worker's name was Albert DeSalvo.Over the course of the next few years, Roy Smith was convicted of the Belmont killing; the Boston Strangler killings continued; and then, eventually, Albert DeSalvo was arrested and confessed to most of the Strangler killings (but not the one which had been "solved" in Belmont) and then the killings stopped.These are the basic facts around which this story is spun. But it is a tale of complexity and depth. Smith was no angel, and DeSalvo's identity as the Strangler has been questioned many times. But the presence of DeSalvo so close to the crime scene that day obviously raises some significant questions. While ultimately forming his own opinions, Junger fairly acknowledges the ambiguities of the situation, while reminding us of basic legal principles such as "reasonable doubt."As background, Junger takes us into the questionable history of American juris(im)prudence -- both official (2-minute jury deliberations) and unofficial (lychings) -- where alleged crimes by persons of color against whites are concerned. We're introduced to a Mississippi prison that probably killed more African American prisoners with hard labor than the death penalty ever did. We learn about the history of serial killer investigations and the origins of criminal profiling. We even re-live that pivotal event of 1963 -- the Kennedy assasination -- and see its impact on the wheels of American justice. All of this is framed against the backdrop of our changing society, as America moved into and through the tumultuous 1960's.I found this book almost impossible to put down; it was read in one sitting with only minimal pauses.
    • 4/5
      In the fall and winter of 1962-63, Sebastian Junger’s mother Ellen, who lived with her husband and one–year-old Sebastian in the Boston suburb of Belmont, employed a builder and his two assistants to add a studio to her house. The younger of the two workers was Albert DeSalvo, who eventually confessed to most of the murders the papers were calling those of the Boston Strangler. But a black man named Roy Smith had already been convicted of one of the stranglings that had occurred nearby in Belmont, while DeSalvo was working on the Junger home. This killing DeSalvo did not confess to having committed.DeSalvo was stabbed to death in a prison hospital in November, 1973, ten years after Roy Smith’s conviction. Roy Smith died of lung cancer in another prison hospital in 1976. Junger cannot prove that Smith was innocent and DeSalvo guilty of the Belmont strangling (the way it was told to him by his parents when he was a child), and during his investigation of the crimes and the people involved he is not always convinced that is the way it happened, but he seems to end with that conviction, though he admits it cannot be proved.
    • 3/5
      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 - 3 1/2 stars
    • 4/5
      I found this true life tale to be fascinating, if a bit gruesome. The story of the alleged Boston Strangler and the crossing of his path with that of the author's family. Sebastian Junger obviously did extensive research and it shows in the detail he is able to offer in descriptions of people, places, and events as well as placing them within the social context of the times.
    • 5/5
      This is a very compelling book. Over the last 10-20 years most people so be aware of the 2 sides to the question of who the Boston Strangler was. This story is about the one man arrested and convicted of what is one of the real Strangler's victims, #8 Bessie Goldberg a resident of Belmont Massachusetts. It's about the investigation into her murder and the one and only suspect the police looked at: Roy Smith, a black man raised in Mississippi who had a history of run ins with the law, tho' nothing really violent. It also has a fascinating look at Albert DeSalvo who is known as the Boston Strangler from the observation and casual knowledge of the writer's mother, who for a brief time employed Albert DeSalvo on a building project to add a room to their home. The writer pulls you into the story from the first page and keeps the story flowing and your interest peaked. I picked this book up and read it straight thru. A must read.
    • 4/5
      A spell binding read of true crimes, murder and its terrifying effect on a Boston suburb
    • 4/5
      Growing up in the 1960's while the terror of the Boston Strangler made headlines drew me to this book. The book clearer paints a picture of a community that was very prejudice and rightfully so. I am now convinced more than ever after reading Mr. Junger's intense research, the right man was put in prison.If you lived in the Boston area in the early sixties, the book is an excellent read
    • 5/5
      One of the spookiest books that I've ever read. And it's a true story about a serial killer.
    • 3/5
      Highly readable, well written account of a famous person's brush with an infamous person. When he was a child, Junger's mother had a studio built on to the house - one of the worker turned out to be the Boston strangler. Naturally this leads to all sorts of "whatifs" and "couldas" but, alas, they are not the center of the book. The focus of the book is Junger's theory that a woman killed on a nearby street was a victim of the Boston Strangler, rather than the ne'er do well African American who was convicted of the crime. I am somewhat convinced he is right - and so is he. The book is part personal and part argumentative - hences lack focus and fails at both.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating, and creepy. A nice look at the criminal justice process.