Arthur Blessard

Arthur Blessard
Name	Arthur Blessard
Title	The SoHo Strangler
Affiliation	IRS (New York City branch)
Occupation	Auditor
Pathology	Serial killer Serial rapist
Status	Executed
Actor	Ken Marks
First Appearance	"Redemption"

Arthur Blessard (alias The SoHo Strangler) was an auditor with the Internal Revenue Service who moonlighted as a serial rapist-murderer for eighteen years. After a gruesome career that lasted from 1983 to 2001 and stretched from New York City to Chicago to Atlanta to Pittsburgh to Hartford and back again, he was finally arrested by Detectives John Hawkins and Elliot Stabler after claiming 21 victims. (SVU: "Redemption")

History

Arthur Blessard was a neat-freak whose large glasses and obsessive, meticulous nature tended to scare away the women (the fact that he worked for the IRS probably didn't help, either.) His frustrations built up inside him and in 1983, they drove him to rape and murder seven women in the SoHo neighborhood in Manhattan. He located his victims through their tax returns, and gained access to their homes by claiming he needed to meet them to discuss irregularities in their taxes. The murders were notable for bite marks and white roses left on the victims. As his body count grew, there was great pressure upon the local police to make an arrest, and when the then-fresh Homicide Detective John Hawkins discovered a small clue that might point to the killer (that Larissa Cutler had received flowers shortly before her murder), he followed it, desperate to get a collar. Thus, a borderline-retarded flower deliveryman named Roger Berry ended up taking the fall for Blessard's crimes, in part because Blessard falsely claimed to have seen Berry at one of the crime scenes. Blessard, meanwhile, got out of town.

Blessard's savagery continued, and grew worse. In Chicago, he began to cut away the flesh on bite marks he'd left on his victims, thus preventing the police in Chicago from tying his murders in that city to the ones in New York. In Atlanta, he made began slitting throats. 

In 2001, the IRS transferred him back to New York City. As luck would have it, Roger Berry was released around the same time, and as Blessard began to resume his career, he made sure to buy his signature white roses from the flower shop at which Berry was employed. Through misdirection, he nearly got away with the rape and murder of Jennifer Walton and Celia Mitchum. Berry was alibied for those two murders, and so the case nearly went cold, but Det. Elliot Stabler noticed that Blessard's name appeared in the datebooks of two of his 1983 victims. He and Hawk obtained a warrant to look at Blessard's IRS files and found all the victims listed. Blessard was arrested soon afterwards (though not before Hawk nearly left him to dangle from the roof of his apartment building.) He was subsequently executed after his crimes.

Known Victims

• Dates further unspecified:
  • 1983, Manhattan, New York (all bound, beaten, bitten, and strangled):
    • Marcia Johnston (first victim)
    • Larissa Cutler
    • Anne Chilsen
    • Four other unnamed women
  • 1987:
    • Chicago, Illinois: A. Jacobs (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, and strangled; removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem)
    • Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Mary McCarthy (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, and strangled; removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem)
  • 1988, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: C. Novak (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, and strangled; removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem)
  • 1994:
    • Chicago, Illinois: B. Jansen (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, and strangled; removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem)
    • Atlanta, Georgia: I. Beantey (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, and slit her throat; removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem)
  • 1998, Hartford, Connecticut: V. Daniels (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, and slit her throat; removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem)
  • 1999, Hartford, Connecticut: S. Levitt (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, and slit her throat; removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem)
• 2001, Manhattan, New York:
  • April 15: Jennifer Walton (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, and slit her throat; removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem)
  • April 16: Celia Mitchum (bound, raped, beaten, bitten, slit her throat, and removed the flesh on the bite marks post-mortem; died in the hospital)