A Death in Belmont

A fatal collision of three lives in the most intriguing and original crime story since In Cold Blood.

In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking sex murder that exactly fits the pattern of the Boston Strangler. Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim¹s house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the Belmont murder, but the terror of the Strangler continues.

On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvo — the man who would eventually confess in lurid detail to the Strangler?s crimes — is also in Belmont, working as a carpenter at the Jungers? home. In this spare, powerful narrative, Sebastian Junger chronicles three lives that collide — and ultimately are destroyed — in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.

"Bessie Goldberg was strangled to death in her home in Belmont, a Boston suburb, in March of 1963 — right in the middle of the Boston Strangler's killing spree. Her death has not usually been associated with the other Strangler killings because Roy Smith, a black man who was working in Goldberg's house that day, was convicted of her murder on strong circumstantial evidence. But another man was working in Belmont that day: Albert DeSalvo, who later confessed to being the Boston Strangler, was doing construction work in the home of Junger's parents (the author himself was a baby). Could DeSalvo have slipped away and killed Bessie Goldberg? Junger's taut narrative makes dizzying hairpin turns as he considers all the evidence for, and against, Smith or DeSalvo being Goldberg's killer; he also reviews the more familiar case for and against DeSalvo being the Strangler — for there are serious questions about his confession. As Junger showed in his bestselling The Perfect Storm, he's a hell of a storyteller, and here he intertwines underlying moral quandaries — was racism a factor in Smith's conviction? How to judge when the truth in this case is probably unknowable? — with the tales of two men: Smith, a ne'er-do-well from a racist South who rehabilitated himself before dying in prison; DeSalvo, a sexual predator raised by a violent father who was stabbed to death in prison. This perplexing story gains an extra degree of creepiness from Junger's personal connection to it." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"An intriguing crime story that also contains painful truths about race and justice in America." Booklist

"[Junger's] ripping, highly readable drama of crime and punishment highlights the random chance that often separates victim from survivor....A meticulously researched evocation of a time of terror, wrapped around a chilling, personal footnote." Kirkus Reviews

"As usual, Junger has written a well-documented page-turner that leaves us wanting more....Highly recommended." Library Journal

Sebastian Junger is the author of Fire and the international bestseller The Perfect Storm. He has been awarded a National Magazine Award and an SAIS Novartis Prize for journalism. He lives in New York City.