West Roxbury Detective Shares The Story of The Family Business

The Boston Strangler has had an odd grip on John DiNatale’s family for years. 

John’s father, Phil DiNatale, a longtime West Roxbury resident, worked the infamous case of the Boston Strangler in the Boston Strangler Bureau.

His father shared the stories of Albert Desalvo, who was identified as the Boston Strangler this past summer after new  evidence was found.  It was John’s father who knew all along that Desalvo was the killer, despite many who doubted him.

“One of my father’s favorite quotes was, ‘people can say in three sentences that  Albert Desalvo was not the strangler, and I can show files for three days that show he was.'”

When his father opened his own detective agency in the the 1960’s, John became his father’s apprentice. It was as a detective where he was hired to work crime scenes, follow cheating husbands, and dig up information on people, before the days of social media and search engine databases. 

DiNatale recorded many of his life stories in his newly released book,  The Family Business.

The non-fiction novel not only shares many details of his father’s encounters with Desalvo but it tells John’s story of growing up in West Roxbury and becoming a detective and running his family's detective agency.

Recently, John’s nephew, Myles Jewell made a documentary of his family’s story, "Stranglehold: In the Shadow of the Boston Strangler" which won best editing at the Boston's Film Festival.

Now DiNatale hopes Hollywood will come calling to make a movie of his recent story.

Patch sat down with DiNatale to learn more about the Family Business.

Patch: Why did you decide to write this book?

DiNatale: To get people interested in the Boston Strangler. My dad’s files of the Strangler case would be enough to fill this room (sitting in his living room).

Patch: Are you basing all you stories on the Boston Strangler?

DiNatale: No, I had all of these files from my father which some are letters from Desalvo.  Desalvo would write my father from jail and talk about his family, talk about the case, and talk about his need to get psychiatric help.  Desalvo didn’t know why he did the things he did and he thought if he was evaluated, people could find out why he committed so many crimes. He would say a rage and urge would come over him.

I was on this mission to tell this Boston Strangler story.  This is more of a story about my father and me.

I started working on a memoire of myself of when I was a teenager, following my father around when I was 16-years-old.

The story mentions what it was like being a detective in the 70’s and 80’s.  It’s entirely different than what it is today.  Today, if I needed to find you, I could just throw your name into a database.  Back then, I would put on a jacket and I would walk down to the library and start going through phone books and start calling people on your street, hoping someone would know you.

Back then it was an art, following people and not being seen. Investigators back then knew how to extract information from people. 

Nowadays, so-called investigators are just good at extracting information from computer databases from people. 

If you think of every major accident in Massachusetts, we’ve investigated it.

The story describes how the private investigation business affected my life and how I grew up.  I’ve been in the poorest homes, I’ve been in the wealthiest mansions, I’ve sat across from parents of victims; It affects how you live, and that’s what the story is about it.  We saw that bad things that we thought always happened to somebody else.

Patch:  Are there many scenes in the book that take place in West Roxbury?

DiNatale: There’s an expression, West Roxbury is the center of the universe.  I still see families of people who are my close friends that I walked to Kindergarten with.  You don’t see that in other communities.  It’s a family story of the  families of West Roxbury and how we  grew up in the 60’s and 70’s.

Patch: You have stories of the Boston Strangler.  At one time it was one of the greatest unsolved crime stories.  Where do you want to be in ten years with this story?

DiNatale:  I want to be sitting at a director’s chair watching someone film this story. 

The Family Business is available on Amazon.com.