Sometimes crime does pay. Someone else's crime, anyway.

Back in the early 1960's, before I lived here, the Boston Strangler murdered nine Boston-area women. His final victim was killed on Charles Street, just around the corner from my home.

In 1975, shortly after I moved to Beacon Hill, the manager of a Baskin-Robbins on Charles Street died while trying to blow up a "real" ice cream store across the street. Because who would want gummy, nasty B-R ice cream when they could get the real deal across the street?

In the late 1980's or early 1990's (Google's got nothin'), the manager of the Mrs. Fields Cookie store on Charles Street - I believe this is the very address where the Baskin-Robbins once was - was killed during a robbery. The eerie thing is that my husband, my sister, and I had walked past the store while the body was in there, undiscovered. 

One morning in 2008, I walked out my front door and noticed a couple of government-looking black SUV's outside a building a few doors down. Turns out it was the FBI, searching the place where Christian Gerhartsreiter, a.k.a., Clark Rockefeller, was living when he kidnapped his daughter. (He's now in prison in California, for murder.)

In 2009, the Craigslist Killer (a medical school student) killed a woman in a hotel that's about a 15 minute walk from where I live. The next year, he committed suicide in the jail that's about a 10 minute walk from where I live. 

There may be other crimes associated with my neighborhood, but these are the ones I have top of mind. Overall, it's a pretty safe place to live. (Way more property crime than violent crime.)

Nonetheless, there is a Beacon Hill Crime Tour. It naturally includes the Boston Strangler, but also harkens back in time to John Webster's murder of George Parkman. This crime was quite the sensation because it involved two scions of Beacon Hill Brahmin families who were both professors at Harvard Medical School. 

My interest is piqued, and I may sign up for the tour. It's even free!

You have to pay forty bucks to go on Joe Leeman's true crime tour.

Join Retired Boston Police Detective Joe Leeman on his gritty tour of Boston’s criminal underworld, by way of an old-fashioned Police Ride Along. Detective Leeman points out numerous crime scenes from Boston past, while enjoying the many historical and architectural locations Boston has to offer. In addition, Detective Leeman will explain several cases where he was assigned as the lead detective, he will speak of these investigations in depth, and explain their ultimate dispositions. (Source: Boston Detective Tours)

Leeman, who was inspired by a London Jack the Ripper tour he took years ago:

...describes [his] tour as “60 percent crime, 40 percent history.” He doesn’t want to be “all doom and gloom” even though he acknowledges some customers often lobby for more blood and guts. (Source: Boston Globe)

But seems as if there's plenty of blood (c.f., Whitey Bulger) and guts (c.f., Sacco and Vanzetti) already. Anyway, the ex-cop angle is a good differentiator from the competition. 

And, amazing as it seems, there is competition.

The Boston Crime Tour is a heavy-on-the-Whitey-Bulger walking tour that costs thirty bucks. And the Original Boston Mob Tour that has plenty of Whitey, but gives equal time to the Italian, Jewish, and Irish mobs, for a hefty price of $79.

Seems like crime does pay. Someone else's crime, anyway.