Please be advised the following episode contains graphic scenes of sexual assault and murder. Parental discretion is advised. On the morning of Saturday, January fourth, nineteen sixty four, nineteen year old Mary Sullivan woke up early on the sofa and smiled. Sullivan had arrived in Boston from Cape cod after accepting a job at Filene's department store down on Washington Street.
Being confident and personable, it didn't take her long to start making friends, and after a few months, was invited by two of her colleagues, Pat and Pam to move in with them. Mary didn't mind that with only two single beds and one bedroom, the best they could offer
her was a couch in the living room. She was just grateful to be moving in with two people she liked and into an area that she'd come to A door forty four A. Charles Street was situated on the top floor of a three story building, just a stone's throw from her favorite pub, a small but lively place called The Sevens. The street itself cut a line through the vibrant Beacon Hill neighborhood, a picturesque Bohemian mix of old moneyed wealth and new immigrant communities complete with cobbled
stones and ornate gas lamps. Mary's smile that morning was one of contentment and new beginnings, not to mention excitement of what the new year might bring. While her flatmates would be spending a grueling day at the store for the first weekend of the January sales, Mary who was due to start a new job at a bank on Monday,
had the week end all to herself. At roughly the same time, about seventy miles to the south, at Mary's family home in Cape Cod, a letter arrived through the door from Mary, addressed to her seventeen year old sister, Diane. Of her four siblings, it was Diane who Mary was closest to, and the letter was the first Diane had heard from Mary since she left for Boston. Diane opened it with excitement and was soon buried in her sister's words.
It was a thrill to hear how much Mary was loving life in her newly adopted home, and even more so to read Mary's invitation for Diane to come and visit her as soon as possible. It was some time around six p m. Later that evening back in Boston when Pat and Pam returned home from work to find the door slightly ajar. Assuming Mary had carelessly left it open, The pair pushed on into the apartment, making sure to
lock the door behind them. Inside, the hall light was on while the rest of the apartment were shrouded in darkness. Pam was just about to call out for Mary when she caught the shape of someone in their bedroom, lying propped up on one of the beds. It was Mary, sat with her eyes open, staring vacantly into space. Come on, we're putting dinner on, said Pam, a little bemused that Mary hadn't said hello when they came in. Mary said Pam again, stepping into the room, but Mary didn't move.
Pam flicked on the light, then screamed. Mary Sullivan had been strangled to death with a stocking tied tightly around her neck. Two other pairs of stockings were also found tied tightly around it. Ejaculate was said to have been found in her mouth and on her body, while a broom was left inserted three inches into her vagina at the end of the bed by her right foot. A card had been placed that read simply Happy New Year. To the police called in to investigate, it was clear
there was only one culprit. As it happened, Mary was the eleventh woman in eighteen months to be found dead in similar circumstances in and around the wider Boston area, apparent victims of a single vicious serial sex offender and murderer. Dubbed the Mad Strangler by the press. In the course of those eighteen months, the Boston police had made little headway in their efforts to apprehend him. Throughout the city, dog pounds struggled to keep up with demand for guard dogs,
while home security devices were flying off the shelves. So lacking was the local faith in law enforcement to put an end to the horror. Previous possible victims of the so called Mad Strangler ranged in age from twenty to eighty five. The fact that Mary Sullivan, the youngest victim, was only a teenager, provoked particular fury from the public. As a result, recently elected Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke
stepped in personally to take over the floundering investigation. Within days, he set up a dedicated Strangler task force to concentrate solely on the case, appointing Assistant Attorney General John Bottomley, to oversee the day to day running of it. After looking closer at the case history, Brooke was alarmed by just how little progress had in fact been made, and resolved to leave no stone unturned in his efforts to
find the perpetrator. Even still, few could have guessed that the force would become so desperate they would turn to a supposed psychic to help crack the case. Yet incredibly, that's exactly what they did. It isn't known precisely who suggested it, but not long after the task force was set up, the name Peter Herkos began cropping up in
their regular meetings. Herkos, whose nineteen sixty biographical documentary One Step Beyond had catapulted him into the public eye along with a series of public performances over the last few years, was already somewhat of a celebrity. By the time Brooks's team got in touch. There were even rumors that a Hollywood biopic was in the pipeline, with Herkos set to
be played by Glenn Ford. Attorney General Edward Brooke received widespread condemnation for allowing a self described psychic anywhere near the case. To others, however, who'd been follow her Coss's steady rise. There was no harm in trying. After all, it wouldn't be the first time he'd apparently helped to solve a crime. To her Coss, however, it was simply something he'd been born to do. You're listening to Unexplained,
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and save twenty percent with promo code unexplained. Again, save twenty percent with promo code unexplained at onmolecule dot com. That's o n molecule dot com. On the morning of May twenty first, nineteen eleven, another scream echoed through the halls of the red bricked terrace house on vondel Strut in the center of door Direct, an industrial port town
just south of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Inside the bed, Propped up on the bed, Apollonia herk screwed her eyes up at the pain as another wave of contractions rose up from inside her. Gripping her husband Jacobus's hand, she let out another guttural cry, straining with everything she had until finally the baby's head began to emerge. With one final push, the head was free, followed soon after by the rest of the baby as it slipped into the
grateful arms of the midwife. But as Apollonia lay back, exhausted, she saw the look of concern on Jacobus's face, and then looked down in horror at the wriggling body in the midwife's hands, at the strange membranous material completely covering its head. The midwife urged Apollonia to stay calm as she clawed desperately at the membrane, then shouted for the doctor to come and help. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the doctor succeeded in uncovering the baby's mouth, and its
cries soon flooded the room. Peter Cornelis van der Herk was borne with his head covered by part of the amniotic sac, the vessel in which the fetus develops in the womb, surrounded by amniotic fluid. Most commonly, the sac breaks open prior to birth. However, for roughly one out of eighty thousand births, the baby will be borne either still inside the sack or at least partially covered by it.
Due to the rarity of the phenomena. Sometimes known as being born with the veil or with the helm, as it is known in the Netherlands, cultures the world over have often tended to see it as a sign of good luck. Some believe babies born this way are destined for greatness, others that they will never drown, and some say those born with the veil will be gifted with
the power of second sight. For the first six months of his life, due to the complications of his birth, Peter was unable to open his eyes and left effectively blind as a result, though this would eventually be resolved and Peter's sight restored. Shaking the circumstances of his birth, however, would be a different matter altogether. To his siblings, he was always somewhat of a strange child, prone to sudden bursts of intense emotion, who would run away for days
on end whenever he got too upset. Sometimes he would disappear into the nearby woods, hiding out among the trees until he was ready to return. Other times, he would take a canoe and head off down one of the many rivers waterways that snaked their way around his hometown. In nineteen twenty five, at the age of fourteen, Peter threw a pot of ink at his teacher and was
promptly expelled from school. He ran away again soon after, except this time he kept on running all the way to the docks, where he took the first job he could find as a cook's assistant on board a merchant ship. After twelve years at sea, Peter returned home in nineteen thirty nine and settled down after meeting a woman named Bia van der Burgh, with whom he had two children. The pair moved close to Peter's old home in Door Direct with plans for a life together. The following year,
the German army invaded the country. By this time, Peter was working for his father painting houses. With the German government now effectively controlling the Netherlands, much of local production and industry was refocused to support the German war effort. For Peter and his father, that meant being forced to
paint the newly occupied government buildings. On July tenth, nineteen forty one, a by then thirty year old Herk was stood high up a ladder painting the facade of a four story building in the Hague, the seat of the newly installed Reich Commissariat for the occupied Dutch territories. Peter was stretching over to apply some more paint when the ladder suddenly gave way beneath him. After a sudden sensation
of free fall, everything went black. Moments later, he was basking in bright, warm sunshine, skipping through rich, verdant fields under bright blue skies, when suddenly all color drained away. Peter opened his eyes to find himself rounded by the cold, sterile walls of a hospital room, unable to move as a doctor soon explained, despite cracking his head on the pavement from four stories up, he'd somehow survived the fall and the subsequent operation to relieve pressure on his brain.
He'd been unconscious for five days. Peter took a moment to adjust to his surroundings, with the light seeming especially bright. As he averted his eyes from the window, more light seemed to be seeping in from somewhere, followed by a strange swirl of sound. It was muffled at first, then soon grew into a chaotic cacophony. Peter clasped his head in his hands and yelled for the doctor to make
it stop. And that was when it all began. One morning, while he was convalescing, Peter's wife, Beer, came to visit him in hospital. Peter later claimed his mind became flooded with horrific images of their young son Benny, screaming at home, surrounded by roaring flames, he scolded Beer for leaving Benny at home. Shocked by Peter's behavior, Beer eventually calmed him down, insisting that their son was being well looked after by relatives.
Later that afternoon, she returned home to find all as well. Five days later, while herk was still in hospital, a fire broke out at his and Beer's home. After becoming trapped by the smoke and flames, Benny had to be rescued by emergency services. A few days earlier, something equally strange had apparently occurred when a man that Peter didn't recognize came into his room to wish him a quick recovery. The man had also been convalescing at the hospital and
had seen Peter come on to the ward. When the two men shook hands, Peter claimed later that he was suddenly overwhelmed with grief and the utter conviction that the stranger would soon lose his life. Two days later, Peter saw a picture of the same man, identified as a British agent in a newspaper. He had been captured and killed by German soldiers, and still the cacophoner's sounds and bright lights continued to plague him as though he were
suffering a perpetual migraine. It had also become apparrot that Peter was suffering from severe amnesia, another common consequence of a serious head injury. Over time, both the chaos in his mind and the amnesia began to improve. After returning home, however, Peter's situation only got worse when he was picked up by German occupying forces and sent to Camp Foote, a
concentration camp in southern Netherlands. Not much is known about his time at the camp, only that Peter succeeded in escaping it and managed to return home when he later joined the Dutch underground resistance movement, helping in a series of disruptive campaigns blowing up bridges and railroads. It was around this time too, that Peter changed his name from
Herk to Herkos. At the end of the war, Peter received a medal from Queen Juliana for his participation in the resistance and found work in a coffee house back home and or Direct. Though he may have been hoping to live the quiet life door Direct was not an easy city in which to disappear, and rumors about his
apparent unusual powers were beginning to run rife. It was some time toward the end of nineteen forty five, with the country slowly beginning to emerge from the fog of war, that Peter and his family were woken by the door bell at three am in the morning. Staggering to the door, Peter opened it to find a woman standing alone on the street, clearly in some distress as she went on to explain her husband had gone out a few nights
before but had failed to return home. Having heard about Peter's apparent gift, she wanted to know if he would help her find him. Peter looked to the clock in the hallway, then back to the woman. Realizing just how desperate she was, he told her to go home and find an item of her husband's clothing to bring back to him. Half an hour later, she returned with her husband's jacket. Peter invited her inside to sit with him as he took hold of it and ran it through
his hands, then sat back deep in thought. I see a football, he said, Yes, said the woman, her eyes lighting up in response as she went on to explain her husband was a talented footballer, but had a few days ago discovered he was suffering from a degenerative disease that would eventually leave him paralyzed. He'd gone out drinking to drown his sorrows when he found out. Suddenly, Peter's
lips turned into a frown. What is it, the woman asked anxiously, Your husband is dead, he said flatly, I'm sorry, But how she asked As he explained she didn't have to take his word for it, but if his vision was to be believed, she would find her husband's body submerged in an anti tank trench in the outskirts of the city. Later that morning, Peter reportedly escorted the woman to the nearest police station to deliver his theory about
what had taken place. Peter is said to have then led police to the deep water filled ditch he'd seen in his mind, where after a short time looking, they found the missing man's cap caught in a nearby bush. After several days of dredging the ditch, the man's body
was found at the bottom of it. As his reputation as a possible psychic started to grow around the world, Peter Herkos, who became known as the Man with the radar eyes and the X ray Brain, began offering his services to a number of police departments throughout Europe, to various degrees of success. In nineteen fifty six, he was
contacted by American parapsychologist doctor Andrea Puharich. The early fifties, Puharich served as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, where at some point he developed a fascination in the potential military application of paranormal phenomena. In nineteen fifty five, after leaving the Army, he founded the round Table Foundation in Glen Cove, Maine, in order to study the possibilities further.
After reading about Peter's apparent abilities, Puharich was convinced he'd found the perfect subject for his experiments and invited him to have his unique skills tested under laboratory conditions. Peter, who had by then separated from his first wife, Bea, took up the invitation and arrived in nineteen fifty six to begin the study. In total, he would spend seven years visiting Puharich at his foundation to undergo a series
of unusual tests. Days would often begin with Peter being strapped down into a chair and his head covered in a mesh of wires and electrodes to monitor his brain function as Pooharich put him through his paces. In one test, doctor Pooharich bombarded Herkos with strobe lighting, then showed him a series of envelopes in which various objects had been placed, such as a butterfly or a safety pin, and invited
him to guess what was in them. According to Pooharich, under the strobe lighting, Peter guessed the correct object every single time. Intriguingly, according to Pooharich, when no strobe lighting was used but Peter was allowed to touch the envelope, his success rate was still a remarkably high eighty percent. When only allowed to look at the envelope, this dropped
markedly to forty percent. By then, Peter was attracting the attention of other well known parapsychological research, most prominently doctor
Joseph Ryan, who was responsible for coining the term extrasensory perception. Ryan, who ran a laboratory at the prestigious Duke University, was arguably the most credible scientist working in the field at the time, and made frequent requests to test Peter himself, but her Coos refused his offer, claiming later that he'd been offended by Ryan's insistence that he sit a lie
detective test as part of the study. In October nineteen fifty eight, Peter, who was then living in Miami, received a call from the Miami Police on behalf of its head of homicide, Detective Lieutenant Tom Lepp. Detective Leip's team had hit a dead end in a murder investigation, and, after hearing that her Coos was living in the city, decided to reach out to him. Without being told anything of the crime. Her Cos was invited to sit inside a bloodstained cab and simply tell the police if anything
came to him. The cab had once belonged to sixty three year old Edward Sentner, who, unbeknownst to Peter, had been shot dead in it with a point to twenty two bullet. A little irked by the whole thing, Peter nonetheless got inside the vehicle, then sat back and waited. After a short pause, he began to speak. He had a vision of a tattoo on a man's right arm. Not the victims, the murderers. He was tall and slim too, and had a peculiar loping walk. A sailor, perhaps, he said,
who was often in Detroit and Havana. Then a name came to him, Smitty, he said, And there was something else, another man set dead in the Florida Keys. The officers present turned to each other in confusion, unsure of what Peter could possibly be talking about. Clearly they thought it had all been one big charade. Then the news came in a few days later, a Navy commander named John Stewart was found shot to death in an apartment in
Key Largo. He'd also been shot with a point twenty two bullet identical to the bullet used to kill the cab driver. As police investigated further, a man was eventually identified as a potential suspect for what was now a double murder investigation. His name wasn't Smitty exactly, but Charles Smith, a merchant seaman who, incredibly, as it turned out, often shipped into Cuba and had spent time in prison in Detroit, Michigan.
About the same time, a restaurant server in Miami contacted police to say that she'd overheard a man boasting one night about killing two men. After receiving a picture of the suspect from Michigan authorities, the police showed it to the server. She recognized the man instantly, who it turned out, was tall and slim with the tattoo on his arm,
just as Peter had seemingly predicted. A few weeks later, Charles Smith was arrested for his involvement in an armed robbery and eventually put on trial for the murders in Miami and Key Largo. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Orby Parker was founded with a rebellious spirit and a lofty goal to create bootique quality I wear at a revolutionary prize point. Glasses start at ninety five dollars. Including prescription lenses, sunglasses, progressives and blue
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free and includes a prepaid return shipping label. Try five pairs of glasses at home for free at warby Parker dot com. Forward slash unexplained that's w a r by Parker dot com. Forward slash unexplained. It was four years later, in nineteen sixty two, on the evening of June fourteenth, that Euras Less arrived at his mother, Anna's home at seventy seven Gainsborough Street, an apartment block located in the
Back Bay area of Boston, Massachusetts. Twenty five year old Euras knocked on his mother's door, but got no response from inside. It was strange that his mother would leave him waiting, since it was her that insisted on Eurys getting there early that night. Anna had plans to attend a memorial service at her church to commemorate her fellow Latvians that were deported to Siberia by the government of
the Soviet Union during the Second World War. She'd asked Euras to take her there after knocking again to no avail. Euryas headed back down to the pavement to wait for her. There thirty minutes later and there was still no sign of her. Suddenly concerned, Eurys returned to his mother's apartment. Hearing nothing from inside, he pounded on the door as hard as he could, but still nobody came. In desperation, Eurys threw his shoulder against it, back and forth until
eventually it flew open with a loud bang. Running inside, he almost stumbled into a chair that had been left out oddly in the middle of the hall. He called out again for his mother, but still there was no reply. The place was in complete darkness, except for a soft chink of light emanating from the kitchen. Eurys made a quick sweep of the living room, then headed into the bedroom, where he found the dresser drawers had been left open, something his mother would never have done if she'd left
the property. He headed back out into the hall and turned towards the light at the far end. With his heart pounding in his chest, he headed on toward the kitchen and then he saw her. Fifty five year old Anna Slesser's body was found lying outstretched on a runner on the kitchen floor, naked save for a blue taffeta housecoat left open at the front. Her left leg was lying stretched out, while the right was bent at the knee and positioned at almost a right angle to the other,
leaving her completely exposed. The blue cord from her housecoat had been tied tightly around her neck, the ends of it seemingly left turned up to resemble a bow. Forensics later determined that she'd been sexually assaulted with an object. Anna Slesser's would become the first in a series of similarly horrific crimes over the next eighteen months. Nina Nichols, Helen Blake, Ida Erger, Jane Sullivan, Sophie Clark, Patricia Bissett, Mary Anne Browne, Marie Corbyn, and Joanne Graff would be found.
Most were raped or sexually assaulted and then strangled to death, and all were believed to be potential victims of a single vicious sex offender and murderer operating close to or within the Boston area. On January fourth, nineteen sixty four, Mary Sullivan became the eleventh woman suspected of being sexually assaulted and murdered by the same perpetrator, by then being referred to in the press as the mad Strangler. Two weeks later, Peter Hercos received the call from Assistant Attorney
General of Massachusetts John Bottomley. As Bottomley explained, the police was struggling with the investigation and wanted to know if he would be interested in trying to help. Herkos was reluctant to get involved at first, having been asked to assist in another brutal and high profile murder case in Virginia back in nineteen sixty involving a couple and their
two young children. Though Peter had apparently made a number of startlingly accurate predictions, he'd failed to identify the correct murderer and was publicly ridiculed for it in the press. But Bottomley persisted, and eventually Herkos caved in. On January twenty ninth, Peter Herkos landed in Providence, Rhode Island, to see what he could do. You'd been listening to Unexplained
Season five, episode eighteen, Learning to See Part one. The second and final part will be released next Friday, June twenty fifth. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now do so via Patreon to receive access to add three episodes. Just go to patron dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up, or if you'd like to make a one time donation, you can go to Unexplained podcast dot com Forward Slash Support.
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