Just one month after his conviction, DeSalvo managed to escape form the Bridgewater State Hospital where he was being mentally evaluated, but it didn’t take long before police caught up to him, per the New York Times. He ended up in Walpole State Prison (now called MCI-Cedar Junction), the same prison to which Aaron Hernandez was sentenced.

According to The New York Times, DeSalvo was working as an orderly in the hospital wing of the prison. On November 27, 1973, his body was discovered in his bed in the early morning. He had been stabbed multiple times, and had been dead for around 10 hours. He was 40 years old. At the time, authorities thought DeSalvo’s murder may have been drug related.

The New York Times reported he Norfolk County District Attorney, George Burke, as saying, “The only problem we had with Albert DeSalvo was his trafficking in drugs. We don’t know if this murder is drug‐connected. It’s possible … anyone who deals in drugs has enemies, because it’s competitive.”

By 1975 the Associated Press reported (via The NY Times) that a jury was “hopelessly deadlocked” after a second trial of two Walpole Prison inmates, Richard L. Devlin and Robert M. Wilson, who were suspected of conspiring to kill DeSalvo. A third inmate was also suspected of being involved, but before the second trial he died of a heroin overdose, which was ruled a homicide.