The fact that the only time Boston faced prosecution was five months before he died at the age of seventy-six reveals just how much of an accomplished survivor he was. His was a fight-or-flight response and it worked.
When he was arrested on 1 December 2016, there was no shortage of reports stating he was a volatile, very dangerous criminal, who consistently threatened and was suspected of murder. And yet the only time he appeared on the police’s radar was when he made a mistake whilst drunk. He literally got away with murder, not just once but countless times.
His arrest and ultimate downfall in 2016 was only facilitated by his failing health (which allowed the police to finally catch up with him) and the fact that he had permitted two eyewitnesses to his murderous crimes to live. If he showed any humanity in his sick depraved life it was that he couldn’t quite bring himself, despite threatening it several times, to kill his own flesh and blood.
How did such a prolific psychopathic killer dodge justice for five decades when his crimes were known to so many people, including several law enforcement agencies? That is the perplexing question that I keep returning to.
Highly intelligent, and blessed with a devastating charm, he was a master of deception and manipulation. This was coupled with his demonic controlling personality which imbued everyone in his acquaintance with terror. Fear of retribution, which stopped nothing short of death, certainly played a large part in preventing some people from coming forward to report his crimes.
It’s doubtless unfair to compare the robust, regulated systems and computerised checks and balances that are in place today with what happened four or five decades ago. Thankfully, Sacramento Police Department and Greater Manchester Police now operate very differently and bear little or no resemblance to the organisations that were in place in 1978. But it’s undeniable that his campaign of terror was aided by a system that comprehensively failed its victims. When his crimes did occasionally appear on the Sacramento Police Department’s radar, the investigation was bungled or overlooked. The indisputable fact remains that had the police properly investigated Mary Lou’s disappearance in 1968, Chris and Peta, and countless others, would not have died, because Boston would have been in jail, serving either a life sentence or on death row.
That Boston never stayed in any one place long enough was a devious, well-executed ploy. His modus operandi of repeatedly fleeing south to Mexico when police investigations were ‘hot’ proved highly successful. There appears to have been a systemic breakdown in communication and poor leadership between the different Californian Sheriffs’ Departments involved in investigating his trail of vicious and varied crimes. This extended from the reporting of his first crime in 1961 through to the shambolic investigation into Mary Lou’s ‘disappearance’ in 1968, continuing on to Chris and Peta’s murders in 1978 and his multiple other crimes in the 1980s, and maybe even beyond.
Indeed, it seems there was a chronic lack of joined up thinking, co-operation and communication between all the different law enforcement agencies, both internally and externally and on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1970s and 80s which meant that within a shockingly brief timespan, Chris and Peta’s murders literally dropped off the radar, without trace.
Even accepting the fact that their murders happened prior to the days of computerisation, it was a massive fail that neither Interpol nor Greater Manchester Police had apparently archived their case notes or indeed, possessed any written note of Chris and Peta’s murders from 1978. This was, after all, a horrific double killing of two British citizens not some petty theft report. When Vince contacted Scotland Yard in 1982, just four years after they were murdered, either Scotland Yard failed to investigate properly or they couldn’t find any trace of the crime. How can that possibly be? Where did the file at Greater Manchester Police headquarters go? Did Scotland Yard not think of contacting Interpol about an international murder? And if they did, where did the file of original documents, that was said by San Raphael’s Police Department to be in Interpol in Washington’s possession in 1981, go? No wonder that my parent’s continued desperate enquiries fell on deaf ears and why, after summer 1981, we were never to hear from a single soul at Greater Manchester Police or Sacramento Police Department again.
No one can accurately determine how many people Boston killed after Chris and Peta but we have his sons’ testimonies that there were several others. With his wanton and wholesale disregard for others, inflicting pain and taking life came easy.
There were serious fault lines in the investigation carried out by GMP in 1979. Although a journalist and skilled at interviewing, my father was not a trained detective. It therefore seems remarkable that he was permitted to conduct telephone calls with Russell Boston (father) and Boston himself. Also, given that Boston was the last to see Chris and Peta alive, and therefore the prime suspect, it seems incredible that the British Consulate in San Francisco interviewed him initially and not the police. [Perhaps what’s even more surprising is that he agreed to subject himself to these interviews when it wasn’t mandatory. Maybe in some sick and bizarre way he enjoyed the notoriety to reinforce his sense of control and empowerment.]
In 1978, as indeed it would seem to be true still to this day, Interpol often proved itself an unnecessary hurdle to cross when expediency dictated that it would have been better to cut through the red tape and crack on with directly contacting law enforcement personnel across national boundaries. Now and then, I am sure Interpol does give legitimacy and open doors but, in our case, it was found sadly wanting on several occasions and severely hindered progress.
Even today, the protocol for police forces in the UK is that most international contact has to be initiated and channelled through Interpol, as evidenced when, following my visit, GMP first reached out to Sacramento Police Department in October 2015. It took a staggering five months before GMP and Sacramento PD had any direct contact at all. This is apparently abnormally quick and it was only because Sacramento Police Department initiated contact with Interpol at the same time as GMP, that contact was made within this time span, as normally it can take twice this length of time. Where the international crime involves a criminal who is known to have been on the run for 50 years and is aged 76, is that really acceptable? In the global village we live in today, where instant and constant communication is a facet of everyday life, a wait of five months is an anachronism, particularly where the fighting and prevention of criminal activity is concerned.
When Vince went back to Sacramento Police Department as recently as 2012, the case was again overlooked. When the enquiry came in from Sacramento Police Department to the National Crime Agency, had they picked up on Vince’s information that Chris was a doctor, with just one simple phone call to the General Medical Council they could have traced Chris and the case could have been re-opened four years earlier.
Lastly, it seems astonishing that Vince and Russell’s strenuous and credible efforts to report their witnessing of two horrific murders were time and again overlooked… no matter how old the case was or how scant the evidence.
Understandably, Boston’s sons still have a lot of unanswered questions and unresolved anger for the way the authorities chose to ignore them.
Vince wrote to me to say: ‘I am so sorry for your family’s and the Framptons’ loss. I have been trying to find your families for years. There was no trace of Chris or Peta, at least none that I could find. I called Scotland Yard in 1982 when I was sixteen and first joined the Navy. I have been calling and writing to Sacramento Police Department for years about the murder of my mother – I wanted to see this brought to justice as well. I contacted everyone I could think of, including FBI, Interpol and the Belizean and Guatemalan authorities. I spent hours in libraries in search of news accounts about Chris and Peta from 1978 but there was nothing.
‘I am extremely upset that it has taken the authorities so long to believe me and make an arrest. I am trying to piece together what happened and why it took so long. That the Sacramento Police Department dropped the ball in 1968 is an understatement. The almost non-existent way in which they “investigated” my mom’s murder was a travesty. If they had properly investigated and locked him up then, he wouldn’t have been free to destroy all the lives that he did subsequently. I know that we can never bring our loved ones back but maybe we can figure out what went wrong to prevent something like this happening to other families.’
Russell feels equally strongly: ‘I am disappointed that the FBI, in releasing a 27-page affidavit at the time of our father’s arrest in December 2016, chose to put information and details out in the public domain that I didn’t even know (and shouldn’t have known before testifying), yet they failed to say that Vince and I had been going to the authorities over the decades. They instead chose to say that we were too afraid of our dad. Absolutely, we were afraid, because there is no doubt he would have killed us but we still went to the authorities. When it fell on deaf ears, I stepped back and let Vince be the point person, because Dad didn’t know where Vince lived, but he did know where I lived. I figured the authorities would have to talk to Dad first and unless they arrested him in that meeting, he’d promptly kill me and then head back to Mexico. There was never any doubt about that.
‘They asked me at the Grand Jury testimony on October 13th 2016 whom I had previously told about my father and his crimes, and I gave them a long laundry list of people, including the authorities. The only reason I can think why they left those details out of the affidavit is because people would ask why nothing was done all these years and why it took the authorities so long to apprehend a serial killer. I don’t want revenge or punishment but I would like some answers. Lessons need to be learnt, so it doesn’t happen to other families. If the authorities keep sweeping it under the carpet, it shows they didn’t learn and it’s business as usual.’
As a family, we are grateful for the efforts that Vince and Russell Boston made to inform the authorities and, like them, we are appalled their protestations fell on deaf ears for so long.
I am not a believer in pre-destiny per se but there is an element of me that thinks if your number’s up, your number’s up. Who would have thought that a boy and girl, born in a nondescript suburb of Manchester in 1953, would grow up and travel to Central America, walk into a bar on a remote island off Belize and meet Boston, an American without even a scintilla of morality or humanity, who would prove to be their nemesis? There’s a real sense of ‘There but for the grace of God…’ When Chris and Peta’s stars aligned with Boston’s Death Star in June 1978, it was as if two alien worlds collided.
As a humanist, I am not given to fanciful interpretations, but I can certainly understand why someone might think that it was divine providence that brought about the solving of this complex case some 38 years after everyone thought it was long buried. It seems we had to wait that long for the tide of good fortune (if you will excuse the pun) to turn in our favour. So many of the circumstances surrounding the case’s resolution are based upon pure coincidence and in the end, it was all the pieces of the jigsaw converging in 2015 that brought about Boston’s arrest in 2016. GMP’s Martin Bottomley used the word ‘synchronicity’ to sum up the following events:
The launch of the FBI’s task force in the autumn of 2015 to catch the Golden State Killer in the hope that they would solve the case by June of 2016 – the 40th anniversary of the GSK’s first attack. The fact that Boston was at one time the prime suspect for the GSK series of crimes was possibly the only reason that the Sacramento Police Department took the time, trouble and money to look at our case again after 38 years. I believe it was certainly the initial driver and once they knew just how bad and guilty Boston was, they knew this time the facts could not be ignored and they would have to find a way to prosecute him.
Peta’s lengthy descriptive letters proved invaluable. Writing to her mother to say that they were on a boat called the Justin B that was owned by Boston was the key to unlocking the seemingly insurmountable problem of deciding which country, if anyone, had jurisdiction. Russell finding the 38-year-old receipt for the purchase of the Justin B, made that key turn.
Boston posting Peta’s letter to her mother following their deaths to divert the finger of blame from himself – had he not done so, we would never have known they were on his boat.
My father requesting the Belizean harbour master’s report stating Chris and Peta were on the Justin B when it left Dangriga (Stann Creek) on 29 June 1978 but not on it when the boat put into Livingston on 6 July, nor when it returned to Dangriga on 9 August.
Our private investigator, Alphonso de Peña’s chance meeting with the Catholic priest in January 1979, telling him two unidentified bodies had been buried in Puerto Barrios Cemetery seven months previous.
My epiphany in the field in October 2015, when I felt sure the internet held the key to finding Boston and his two sons on Facebook. Boston creating a Facebook page in 2012, made him discoverable to the world and more specifically… me. My taking this internet research to Greater Manchester Police put them back in touch with Sacramento Police Department after a gap of almost forty years.
The extraordinary turn of events when, finding there were no case files in the Greater Manchester Police archives, we discovered that the detective in charge of the case in the 1970s had a file copy in his garden shed.
Who would have believed that almost four decades on there were photographs of Chris and his music tapes still in existence? They represented valuable evidence that he and Peta had been on the boat.
All these coincidences coming together would not have been enough without the professionalism, dedication and tenacity of the agents who picked up the cudgels and drove the case forward. We were fortunate and blessed with the investigating teams on both sides of the Atlantic and it was an Anglo-American special relationship that truly worked. We are under no illusion that without their combined Herculean efforts and skill pushing the case forward, it would have floundered again.