Longtime Boston Strangler suspect Albert DeSalvo's DNA tied to 1964 slaying, prosecutor says Updated at 11:48 a.m. BOSTON Advances in DNA technology have allowed investigators to link longtime suspect Albert DeSalvo to the last of the 1960s slayings attributed to the Boston Strangler, a prosecutor said Thursday. The DNA produced a "familial match" with DeSalvo in the rape and murder of Mary Sullivan, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said. DeSalvo's remains were being exhumed, and Conley said he expected investigators to find an exact match when the evidence is compared with his DNA. Sullivan, 19, was found strangled in her Boston apartment in January 1964. Sullivan, who had moved from her Cape Cod home to Boston just three days before her death, had long been considered the strangler's last victim. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told reporters during a late-morning news conference Thursday that authorities were able to extract DNA from a preserved semen sample that was found on Sullivan's body. Officers were then assigned to follow members of the DeSalvo family and retrieved a water bottle that one of them discarded. "That water bottle was tested, and the match came back," Davis said. The announcement represented the most definitive evidence yet linking DeSalvo to the case. Eleven Boston-area women between the ages of 19 and 85 were sexually assaulted and killed between 1962 and 1964, crimes that terrorized the region and made national headlines. DeSalvo, married with children, a blue collar worker and Army veteran, confessed to the 11 Boston Strangler murders, as well as two others. Represented by F. Lee Bailey, DeSalvo was never convicted of the Boston Strangler killings. He was sentenced to life in prison for a series of armed robberies and sexual assaults and was stabbed to death in the state's maximum security prison in Walpole in 1973 - but not before he recanted his confession. Officials stressed that the DNA evidence links DeSalvo only to Sullivan's killing and that no DNA evidence is believed to exist for the other Boston Strangler slayings. State Attorney General Martha Coakley, however, said investigators hoped that solving Sullivan's case might put to rest doubts about DeSalvo's guilt. Conley said the "familial match" excludes 99.99 percent of suspects but isn't enough to close the case.