by Gill Pringle
If Jack the Ripper arguably launched the global obsession with true crime and serial killers back in 1888, then the Boston Strangler would become equally notorious.
Strangling 13 women, often with their own tights, the still nameless killer gripped that city with fear during the early 1960s.
A gruesome fascination with the strangler – or stranglers – has endured, not least because of a murky police investigation which pointed to multiple culprits despite the fact only one man, Alberto DeSalvo, confessed to the crimes.
With no physical evidence to tie DeSalvo to the victims at that time, he instead received a life sentence for a separate series of rapes and sexual assaults and was stabbed to death in prison years after his conviction.
Today, writer/director Matt Ruskin revisits the crimes with drama Boston Strangler, told through the lens of real-life pioneering Boston reporters Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon).
After the bodies of three elderly women were discovered, McLaughlin was the first journalist to publish a story connecting the crimes. As the mysterious killer claimed more and more victims, she teamed with colleague Jean Cole, although the duo would find themselves stymied by the rampant sexism of the era, not least by their own editor, portrayed by Chris Cooper.
“This is a horrific story of the brutality of the male psyche and how disturbed and awful it can be, through the eyes of two women,” says Knightley.
“It’s a fast-paced story, and a very tricky story to tell because there are many different twists and turns in it,” says the actress who hopes she pays a fitting homage to this woman who bravely pursued the story at great personal risk, putting her own life on the line in her quest to uncover the truth.
Knightley, 37, would find an ally in Coon, 42, not only on screen but also off. “I think I was just incredibly lucky with everybody that was involved in this film; it was a really lovely, unbelievably talented group of people. I felt very fortunate, particularly with Carrie, because we’re both mothers of two small children,” she says.
“There is something very nice about coming onto a set and just looking into another woman’s eyes and total understanding. That was just a joy. We could both look at each other through our completely sleepless eyes and be like, ‘I’ve got your back’.”
Coon laughs as she admits how motherhood now necessitates certain short cuts in their once devoted thespian research. “We acknowledged that, had we taken on these roles seven years ago, we would have learned shorthand, but now that we have children, we don’t prepare for films anymore; just hope that they’re well written and we rely on what’s on the page,” she laughs.
Knightley certainly agrees: “My big moment was touch typing, because I was doing a scene and I was meant to be typing and I suddenly went, ‘I don’t know how to touch type!’ I looked over at Carrie and said, ‘I haven’t learned how to touch type!’ and she said, ‘That’s because you have two small children!’”
At 71 years old, Chris Cooper remembers the rampant sexism of the ‘60s, taking a deep dive into the newspaper archives in order to portray editor Jack MacLaine. “They were terribly dismissive of the women journalists and then all this talk about the editors who have their whiskey in their lower drawer. It was not a really comfortable atmosphere for women to be in,” says the actor.
While MacLaine comes across as a grizzled, hard-boiled character, he develops a begrudging respect for McLaughlin’s indomitable spirit and unflagging work ethic, becoming a kind of mentor to her and reluctantly sanctioning her early investigative work. “He’s not easy on her, but as we progress through the film, she proves herself. And within proving herself, there are still ups and downs. She’s new to this part of the business, and there are things that she needs to learn,” says Cooper.
While the distincive Boston accent was no problem for native Alessandro Nivola in his role as homicide detective Jim Conley – even he was wary of laying it on too thick.
“Having grown up in Boston and not having a strong Boston accent, and knowing a million people in Boston who do not speak with a thick Southy accent, it was important to me to not go down that road if it felt unnecessary. I didn’t want that to get in the way of the story we were telling,” says Nivola.
Likewise, director Ruskin was determined that the accent not be a distraction in the film. “Everybody wanted to try it,” laughs Coon. “But Matt took away that pleasure and we respect why.”
“Yeah, we were all like, ‘Please let us try it!’ And Matt’s like, ‘No way. You’re not from Boston. You’re not doing it’,” adds Knightley.
“Matt [Ruskin] did the smart thing, which was just to introduce a class element to the movie by separating out who was and wasn’t speaking with a kind of Southy sound. And obviously, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone working in the police department who doesn’t sound like that, so really, we would run into authenticity problems if the cops didn’t sound like they were from Boston,” adds Nivola.
Ruskin agrees. “I think one of the reasons I wanted to film the movie in Boston was to be able to bring in a lot of the local talent. There’s an extraordinary theatre world and scene in Boston, and just a very deep pool of talent of local actors. It’s great to be able to bring them in and allow some people to speak with their Boston accents, which is not as much about class as it is just a generational thing,” he says.
Ruskin is well aware of how true crime has become an incredibly popular genre, but he hopes that his version of the story is more about the groundbreaking female reporters than it is about merely packaging up brutal real life material as entertainment.
“I think that’s part of why I felt compelled to make the film from the perspective of Loretta and Jean, rather than what we’ve all seen either from the perspective of the killer or from the hardboiled detective story. I felt like this was a worthwhile way to revisit this series of horrific events,” says Ruskin, whose 2017 drama Crown Heights also focused on true crime.
Even as Boston Strangler follows McLaughlin’s fact-finding mission, Ruskin’s screenplay also shows the ways in which her professional ambitions often conflict with her personal responsibilities: as a mother of three in the early 1960s, she frequently finds herself at odds with social conventions that expect her to place her husband and children’s well-being above her own.
“Matt’s screenplay manages to convey the complexity of the characters while telling a story at such speed,” says Knightley.
The two lead actresses were particularly horrified to learn of the extreme discrepancies between male and female salaries.
“There’s a great story about Jean, and how she wanted to get a raise because she was making $30 a week and her child care was costing $25. And she went in to appeal for a raise and all of the men in the newsroom went in with her to back her up; they felt she need a raise.
“It highlights the importance of having male allies in a space like that. I think Jean was a very practical feminist, who put her head down and did her work well. And that’s all they could do in that setting; try not to ruffle any feathers. It was extraordinary that these women put themselves out on a limb the way they did,” says Coon, known for her roles in Gone Girl, and series Fargo and The Leftovers.
“The most shocking part of it for me, was that these women were so integral to breaking the case and to forcing the police departments to share information, and their names are never mentioned in association with it. That was really shocking to me,” she adds.
“And then their stories of how they became journalists as individuals were very compelling and moving. They certainly echoed the lives of the women in my world who grew up in the Midwest. My mother was a nurse while one of my grandmothers was a teacher and the other was a homemaker. And those were the opportunities available to women – aside from secretary. So, Jean’s fight to become a journalist at all was very moving to me.
“Of course, I had seen Matt’s Crown Heights and I think of him as a really deeply moral filmmaker, so I knew that his interest in the story was feminist; that he was really interested in revealing that those women had been erased from the story… And, of course, I knew Keira was involved as well and I was really excited to get the opportunity to work with her,” she says.
Compelled to revisit this dark chapter of recent American history, Ruskin was fascinated by these two investigative journalists, doggedly chasing every lead, and even placing themselves in grave jeopardy in an effort to keep the city informed.
“The film is not just about Loretta’s reporting, but about her relationship with her family and with Jean Cole as she worked tirelessly to chase down the biggest story of her career,” he says.
“They were working to keep women informed at a time when the police department was coming up short and juggling the rest of their lives while doing so. It was important to show not only their commitment to their work but also the personal challenges and obstacles they encountered at a time when there were not a ton of women in the newsroom.”
Boston Strangler is streaming now on Disney+
