Production trivia
Ty Burr reported in the 2/27/2005 edition of the Boston Globe that the former state attorney general Ed Brooke, who at the time of the film's production was a US senator from Massachusetts, refused a roughly $100,000 offer to play himself. The then sitting state attorney general, Elliot Richardson, also turned down a request to film in his offices and made no secret of his desire for the whole thing to go away.
Once DeSalvo (who was in jail for other crimes but was never tried for the stranglings) learned that his family members wouldn't be recompensed, he sued unsuccessfully to halt the film's release.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/02/27/reel_boston/