(Destroyer – originally, torpedo-boat destroyer; a small, swift, and powerfully armed warship)
Nearing the end of his life, Boston confided in Russell that he had killed a staggering 33 people. Russell believes this number to be accurate because his father never shielded him from knowing the kind of person he was. Assuming that number is correct, it puts Boston in the category of being one of America’s most prolific serial killers. He also holds the dubious distinction of avoiding capture for one of the longest periods of time. Starting from Mary Lou’s murder in 1968, 48 years elapsed before he was finally arrested in 2016.
In our face-to-face meeting, Russell told me about his childhood and growing up with his father. With their mother dead, he and Vince had a chaotic upbringing: ‘In 1969, one year after killing Mom, Dad went to Vietnam as a volunteer private contractor “for fun”, with his brother, Kevin. He told us the people he killed in Vietnam didn’t count because they were “gooks” [foreigners, especially Southeast Asians] and it was war. There is a photo in our family photo album that Dad took of a dead, mangled body in Vietnam, and in the white margin, Dad wrote: “Kill for peace, war is fun”.’
Boston spoke of Vietnam as a shooting gallery, and enjoyed describing the carnage. He reminisced about fun pranks to play, such as separating tracer rounds. Tracers, built with a small pyrotechnic charge in their base, are usually loaded as every fifth round in machine gun belts in order to light up the trajectory of the bullet. Boston filled his machine gun with just tracers, then shot people with what he described as a rocket powered road flare.
On returning to California, he took control of the boys but in 1970, Russell aged four, accidentally ate some pills that his father had left lying around. He was taken to hospital to have his stomach pumped. At the same time, Boston spent six months in jail for stealing guns so the two boys were placed in foster care. Russell describes it as: ‘The one and only time that I experienced anything like a proper childhood.’ But this was not to last – the foster parents had two daughters, whom they favoured over Vince and Russell in winning races and games. The boys made a mild complaint to their social worker, who overreacted by moving them to a long-term foster family. The new family were harsh and the mother would regularly beat them. Out of jail, Boston visited Vince and Russell and when they told him about the beatings, he decided to take the law into his own hands [as he was to spend a lifetime doing] and he took them back into his care, saying he couldn’t do a worse job. Vince, along with his elder sister, Vicki, was raised largely by their grandmother, interspersed with occasional stays with Boston.
Vince recalled: ‘He would walk around nude all the time and he had a lot of pornography that he would leave lying around, Swedish erotica and weird stuff like that. One time, hidden under a blanket, he took us to an adult movie that was playing at a drive-in. Dad would often hit us with a belt but he didn’t do anything sexual to us. We all knew what he was capable of. He would just party and give us a little bit of money and tell us to go to a friend’s house. That was his idea of raising us – letting us wander the streets.’
Russell says: ‘That I had an unconventional childhood is a massive understatement,’ he says. ‘All my life, my father dragged me around when he was running from the law, with no regard for my education or well-being. I was left to fend for myself, often knocking on the doors of neighbours for food. He taught me how to fish and forage for food but it wasn’t unusual to go days without eating, and as a child, I learned how to ignore the hunger pangs.
‘Dad loved terrifying us. When I was eight, he took Vince and I into the Trinity County Mountains. He told us the story of Bigfoot [in North American folklore, a hairy, upright-walking ape-like creature that lives in the wilderness, akin to the yeti of Tibet], and how he lived in the woods, dismembering people, ripping off their limbs, which were seen floating in the river by picnicking families. After going into gory detail, he told us to bring firewood in from the barn. We begged him to let us wait until sunrise, but he forced us out. In the darkness, we heard a large animal growling and moaning in the trees. As we lugged the large box of firewood towards the house, Dad jumped out of the forest and ran towards us, snarling and pretending to be Bigfoot. He laughed and laughed over that one.’
Relating what a first-class marksman his father was, Russell told me how he could shoot pistols and rifles with pinpoint accuracy from either hand: ‘Dad invariably carried a firearm, either in a holster or in his vehicles. He also had an assortment of weapons – clubs and truncheons, like the one he beat Chris with, maces, knives and a folded Buck knife in a leather belt holder. He had “stash” places at home to store his guns and stolen items. In our house on 57th Street, Sacramento, he pulled up the carpet in his room, took a thin blade and cut away the seams in the wooden floor underneath. It was an irregular shaped section of the floor, about a foot wide. Then he reinforced it with a frame, boxed it in and used magnets to keep it shut, in case the authorities showed up with a search warrant.’
As adults, both sons despised their father in equal measure, but their responses were polar opposites. Both reactions are plausible and understandable. Russell, being the youngest and possibly more malleable, retained contact with Boston up until 2014, but Vince, after being severely beaten by his father, at the age of sixteen joined the Navy in 1982 to get away.
‘Once I joined the Navy, I had my own money and independence,’ explains Vince. ‘I didn’t need Dad anymore. He came to my boot camp graduation in San Diego and he was really nice to me but I wasn’t buying it. I didn’t talk to him for over a year and then he came up to Washington, where I was stationed. He kept asking me for money, but then it was a car he wanted. I took money out of my account and bought him a car just to get him out of my hair. He didn’t come back to me for money after that.’
Boston’s killing spree continued well into the eighties. Vince describes how he found out from his half-sister – Boston’s daughter Alicia (whose mother, Colleen was Boston’s girlfriend in 1986–8) that he was involved in a murder of a Mexican national in Ensenada. He got in a fight with a preacher and told him in front of Colleen and other witnesses: ‘I’m going to kill you tomorrow.’ Boston rigged the preacher’s car so that it would split in two whilst he was driving and just as he had threatened, the preached died the following day. It was reported in the local Mexican newspaper and Boston proudly gave Russell the newspaper article reporting the accident.
Vince says: ‘Dad moved to Southern California in the nineties. I visited him in Santa Ana to see if he had changed and to give him another chance but it soon became apparent that he was the same old person, so I was out of there. That was pretty much the last time I talked to Dad.’
Turning sixteen in 1982, Russell attempted, like Vince had done, to break free from his father’s clutches. He had the chance to live in the small town of Bishop, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. A family friend observed that he was missing a lot of schooling and offered him the opportunity to stay with her and her 16 year old daughter, so that he could attend high school there. Russell was keen to accept because it promised more stability than he had experienced in his entire life.
Russell says: ‘Dad finally agreed, but he had one stipulation: he would continue to receive my welfare money and food stamps. If I wanted to be on my own, I had to work and buy my own food, clothes and keep myself. Whilst I lived in Bishop, Dad lived in Baja, Mexico, but because it gets so hot, unbeknownst to me, he spent the summers up in Northern California, on the coast where he could camp, fish and be out of sight. Eventually, the welfare office in Eureka withheld my welfare cheques, insisting my father show me to them in person to prove I existed and was living with him.
‘He turned up in Bishop one day without notice. I’d been swimming with my girlfriend, Melanie, and, as I got out of her car, Dad’s girlfriend was waiting for me. She insisted I got into her car, saying it was very important. She drove me to the far side of the Indian Reservation, where I was living, and I saw my father sitting in his truck, waiting for me. Drunk, he started telling me what a wonderful time he was having in Northern California, fishing and camping, like he and I used to do. He wanted me to join him. I declined and said I was happy in Bishop. I explained I had a job as an illustrator for a local wildlife magazine and was working for a sign painter. I had just accepted a competitive internship with the US Forest Service to work in their graphics department and get on-the-job training to be a commercial artist. I told him I only had one more week of summer school to complete, and then I’d jump the entire junior high school grade. The more I resisted, the angrier he became, and he started babbling about the family I was staying with: “Who the fuck are these motherfuckers, turning my flesh and blood against me? How dare they keep my son from me! I’m going to kill every motherfucking last one of them!”’
Russell described how his father then took out his pistol, unloaded all the bullets, counted them and reloaded. The entire time he was doing it, Russell begged him not to, but Boston kept grumbling through clenched teeth he was going to ‘fucking kill ’em all’.
Knowing that he would, in a heartbeat, kill each and every one of them, Russell reluctantly relented, saying: ‘OK, OK, I’ll go with you, but please let me go home and put some clothes on.
‘The only thing I was wearing was a pair of swimming trunks. He said I could buy more clothes in a thrift store. It was Sunday afternoon and no thrift stores would be open until the following day. He said the family would try to stop me and then he would be forced to kill all of them. He finally relented, on the one condition that he would park up under a tree, down the end of the street, and if I wasn’t back by 11pm, he would kick the front door in at 11.01pm and shoot every “motherfucker in the house”. I went home, grabbed my belongings and slipped out without even telling my girlfriend I was leaving.
‘In silence, we sped north on the winding mountain roads, the sun filtering through the trees onto my dad’s old pickup, and I felt unbelievably sad. Stopping only for gas, we drove for 12 hours straight to a government welfare office in Eureka. Dad ushered me inside and stormed up to the desk of a social worker and yelled, with everyone looking: “Here he fucking is! I told you he was gathering firewood, fishing and shit, now give me my fucking cheques!” The social worker fumbled through some paperwork before handing him an envelope. It was at that moment that I realised I would never escape him. No matter what I did in life, he would always be there with his hand out, threatening to harm or kill people if I didn’t comply.
‘By this time, I totally despised him and I didn’t want to be around him. Dad threatened, and almost succeeded, in killing me several times. I put it in the category of a bad storm, and once it passed, I learned to recognise the warning signs on the horizon in order to survive future storms. He said I was worthless and he wanted to take me up into the hills and put a bullet in my head but I wasn’t worth the cost of the bullet. He kept following me around, tormenting me and trying to encourage me to talk back, so that he could “justify” attacking me. Wise to his ploy, I stayed quiet and went about my business.
‘There were many times I wished I was far away from him but Vince and I had been to the authorities so many times and been ignored. As an adult, I realised the police couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop him so I took it upon myself to protect the world from him. I explained to Dad that he didn’t need to harm people, that if he ever felt the necessity, there was always another way and I made him promise to call me first. I always maintained an open-door policy, giving him cash, buying him vehicles, giving him a sofa to sleep on. I received his mail and military retirement pay cheques for him.
‘When I was nineteen, Dad and a friend of his had sex with two underage girls. Dad was afraid that they would go to the police and they would haul his friend in for questioning, and he would in turn be implicated. So, as he had promised, my father called me in advance to tell me he was about to kill. I managed to make him see that it was totally senseless because he would then be even more under the spotlight. Thereafter, I felt I was the backstop between him and others he wanted to kill. He called me a couple of times and I talked him down from killing, so I naively thought it worked.
‘I can’t count how much money Dad extorted from me, or vehicles I’ve bought for him. I became weary of it, like a parent dispensing tough love on their teenager, who constantly has their hand out, and one time I politely refused to buy him two expensive metal detectors that he said he needed in his quest to find gold in Baja. He immediately threatened to knock on the doors of my “silk drawer” neighbours, his expression for wealthy people, then beat or kill them for the funds he needed. There was no doubt in my mind that he meant it. I relented, maxed my credit cards and bought him two Gold Bug-2 metal detectors.
‘From an early age, he tried to coax me into following his ways but I adamantly refused. It angered him, and he perpetually made derogatory jibes about me, saying that I thought I was too good for it, or I was too much of a coward. One time, when I was in Sacramento with Dad, his friends asked how I had turned out to be so normal and Dad said he did all the bad stuff, so that Vince and I would know what not to do. It angered me so much that Dad took credit for us. It wasn’t because of him we turned out OK, it was despite him.’
One might question why Russell chose to have anything to do with his father, but he was the youngest and, at the tender age of twelve, he had witnessed at close hand the brutal murders of Chris and Peta, who had stepped in to defend him from being beaten to a pulp. Remember that shocking, life-changing event, and it then becomes understandable how he spent his whole life attempting to placate his murderous father, subjugating himself to his every whim in order to stop him hurting or taking anyone else’s life.
‘I wanted to insert myself in between him and anyone he wanted to destroy,’ says Russell. And that is exactly what he spent most of the next four decades doing. ‘I hated Dad as much as Vince did, but if I found myself feeling hatred or anger, I’d push it out of my head. I’ve always believed that hate only harms the person who is hating by eating them up inside.’
In 2012, Boston was living in Mexico and, with his health failing, he wanted to return to the States. Russell drove him up to his grandmother’s house in Roseville, Sacramento, that Russell had inherited from her on her death in 2009.
‘Everyone warned me not to let him stay, but I felt it would stop him from being in a position where he needed to harm or kill. He was by now old and crippled and I stayed with him for a month, but I quickly realised he was going to do what he had done all his life: it was his nature and he could never change.’
Sitting in the living room one day and complaining about the neighbours, Boston articulated to his son his theory of the universe and explained his ‘justification’ for taking life. Russell thought this was an ideal opportunity to capture his words and pass them on to the police. So, he hit record on his iPhone.
‘Well, I could fucking kill the neighbours, Russ. It wouldn’t bother me at all, you know that. I’ve killed people and haven’t lost a minute’s sleep over it. You can’t, Russ, you’re not made that way – you don’t think that way. But I can,’ Boston told him.
‘Dad put his hands out in front of him and said: “It’s just there, it’s just there.”
‘Dad had a “code” that he had to adhere to, but he would bend it to suit himself and the situation he found himself in. The universe gave him licence to kill and that was reflected in events that did or didn’t happen, or, if the person that he wanted to kill didn’t take the “chance” that he had given them. If the universe wanted someone to die it would dictate whether it happened or not.
‘After abducting [his son] Justin in 1979 and losing visitation rights, he planned to kill his ex-wife, Kathe. He drove to San Rafael with his gun, but when she came out of work and took a left instead of a right, he decided it was fate telling him not to do it.
‘He was more than willing to kill Vince and me when he thought we would be questioned in Belize for witnessing Chris and Peta’s murders but fate intervened that day when some people who were passing by made an offer to buy the Justin B, which he accepted.
‘Dad occasionally went out of his way to protect kids or old people, if he felt someone was harming them, but he had no qualms about doing home invasions against old people, tying them up and smacking them around for valuables. I don’t know the extent he and his crew abused them. I heard them talking about it afterwards, without specifics, but I know they were tied up and “motivated” to divulge where their money and valuables were.
‘Dad was an absolute psychopath. He had feelings. I saw him cry on occasion and there are certain things he got sentimental over, but he was an insane dog that needed putting down. He should have been taken out of circulation a very, very long time ago.’
Boston’s abuse of his son continued right up until he died. In January 2014, he sold the home that Russell had inherited from his grandmother in Roseville and had allowed his Dad to stay in. As a consequence, Boston was evicted and Russell lost the house that to this day is the subject of a court case, with him trying to reclaim the property.
‘Regardless of the financial loss, I was heartbroken. My grandmother’s home was a time capsule of my past and things I held dear. It was filled with mid-century furniture, artwork and belongings, but also all of our childhood homework, drawings and loved items, such as our Star Wars T-shirts. It was an entire timeline of who we were. My grandmother had given me a box with some of my mom’s things, but she kept her larger drawings, paintings, letters and mementos. I lost it all.
‘After Dad sold my property, its contents and my vehicles, he moved to Placerville, 40 miles from Sacramento, and kept a low profile in camping grounds.
‘Before Dad left, he and I fell out because he had been talking to his cousin, Narvell, who had got wind that Vince had been going to the police about Dad. Thinking that his phone was bugged and his call was being recorded, either by me or the police, he rang me and said in his familiar, deep drawl: “Russ, Narvell says that Vince was trying to turn me in for some shit! What the fuck! He’s trying to turn me in for something with the people on the boat in Belize. Why the fuck would he say that? I don’t know what happened to them! They just left – you remember that, don’t you? And, he’s trying to say that I had something to do with your mom. Why would he say that, Russ?”
‘It was Dad trying to cover his ass – he was no idiot. He was flabbergasted that Vince was trying to turn him in and that I hadn’t told him.’
In mid-March 2014, Russell received several messages from his father saying he was in San Diego and was about to return to Mexico: ‘Russ, I’ve got a box of your grandmother’s things. If you don’t want them, I’m going to throw them in the fucking dumpster!’
‘It was my Achilles heel – he knew I was sentimental and would take the bait to pick up her belongings. I made arrangements to go down on March 20th, his birthday.
‘He looked like he was one hundred years old, but he was seventy-three. The booze, drugs, fights and his vile existence had taken its toll on his body and, living in a campground, he could barely open the door of his motorhome. I took him to lunch at a Mexican restaurant and listened to him ramble on about how he sold my property and possessions, even though he said it didn’t belong to him. I listened, but all I could hear was a lifetime of lies and selfish manipulation. He had totally abused me and betrayed my goodwill. I didn’t let him know how much I despised him and was disgusted. I asked the waitress to bring him a cake with a candle and, blowing it out, he started to weep. Following lunch, I dropped him off, and he acted like everything was wonderful again and all of his wrongdoings had been swept under the carpet. I drove away and ignored his calls, until they eventually ceased.’
Returning to Mexico in 2014, Boston retained contact with his daughter, Vicki. Mentally disabled and living in a care facility, she is aware her father killed their mother but she has forgiven him.
Russell says: ‘After devoting his life to burning all the bridges, he came in contact with, and scorching the earth around him, Vicki was one of the very few people who still accepted Dad’s calls. He told her how nobody loved or took care of him.’
Russell, as Vicki’s guardian, was able to keep some tabs on where his father was. He learnt that Boston spent several months in Mexico but then took a bus back to California. A couple of months later, he got a call from the ex-wife of one of Boston’s partners in crime, who said his father had turned up on her doorstep demanding help and that she had taken him to the convalescent home in Eureka to access medical treatment. As Russell was his next of kin, she said he needed to help him. Russell politely declined, saying he had had enough.
‘I didn’t talk to Dad on the phone, nor see him again in person until April 2017, when I drove up to Sacramento. Dying, and strapped to his hospital deathbed, I will never forget how Dad leaned forward and glowered at me with his menacing eyes. If he could have killed me, I know he would have, in a blink of an eye.’