Loretta McLaughlin, the real-life reporter who broke the story of the Boston Strangler murders, is the subject of Hulu’s crime-drama movie. Keira Knightley portrays her in the film.

Loretta McLaughlin, a renowned reporter who broke the story about the Boston Strangler murders, became the first journalist to uncover a connection between the infamous string of killings conducted by Albert DeSalvo.
Her work has been immortalized in the recent Hulu crime-drama movie, The Boston Strangler, where she is portrayed by Oscar-nominee Keira Knightley. As viewers watch the story unfold, they may wonder where the real-life Loretta McLaughlin is today.

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Following the Boston Stranglers investigation, McLaughlin became fascinated by the psychological factors that prompted DeSalvo to kill his victims. The true crime case and the US surgeon general’s report that linked smoking to cancer inspired McLaughlin to become a medical news specialist at the Boston Globe in 1976. She subsequently published a book titled The Pill, John Rock, and The Church: The Biography of a Revolution in 1982, which won her multiple awards. Her work eventually called attention to the AIDS crisis, particularly after she became an editorial page editor at the publication in 1992.

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According to the Boston Globe, McLaughlin served as the newspaper’s editorial page editor until the end of 1993, when she reached their then-mandatory retirement age of 65. Despite retiring from her role, she continued to appear in televised interviews surrounding the Boston Strangler case, per IMDB.

On November 23, 2018, Loretta McLaughlin passed away at the age of 90 years old. Her obituary in the Boston Globe stated that she was at her Milton, Massachusetts home when she died, but did not provide further details on the cause of death.