SOLVED MA - Jane Britton, 22, Harvard student, Cambridge, 7 Jan 1969

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Ausgirl said:
Yesss. I like a good suspect list! It's been frustrating, having such sketchy/non-existent info to bounce off.

I'm not discounting a female perp, a bitter ex-lover ("if I can't have you, no-one can"), someone who feared Jane might talk about something they'd prefer to remain secret...

It would be brilliant to have some other folks to put firmly on the radar.

As for the weapon - afik, it was never found?

Her injuries are described as being caused by a hammer or hatchet-like implement, and I'm supposing this missing 'archaelogical stone' given to her by the Mitchells not long before must have been some kind of primitive axe for it to be the first thing they looked for.

Also sought was Jane's archaeology pickhammer, I think one of those little ones for delicate digging. It, too, was missing.

Also looked at was the damaged end-table found in the trash near the building, but I can't find any free-to-view info on why.
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BBM

The last line of your post #41 you said, "I read they recovered the stone that was missing, presumed to have been the weapon.. I'd like more info on that. Will be sleuthing more after the Xmas break!"

:dunno: :D :dunno:

I was hoping you sleuthed a little more!


Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - MA MA - Jane Britton, Harvard student, murdered in 1969
 
fred&edna said:
BBM

Could you locate (and can share with us) this news report about a faculty member? Many of us have been leaning in a particular direction and this might be another avenue.

TIA!
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Boston Globe, July 20, 1975, p. 4, in a column with no author listed. It says that the 'ritual' murder is still a puzzle, as much as it was 6 years ago. I'm going to paraphrase because the copy I have has a clear copyright symbol on it! Cambridge police chief Pisani says the case is still open. A grand jury spent months going over the evidence. Then it says "A Harvard faculty member was a suspect for a time." The murderer is described as having placed her clothes carefully in piles, and then put the ochre on her body in a straight line, leading to the sharp artifact brought back from a dig. This stone symbolized a headstone.

So, there you have it. The "missing" stone was never missing (news reports can be horribly inaccurate) and in fact it was an integral part of the murder scene. All of this seems to convey a sense of remorse.

I seriously doubt that the perpetrator was someone who didn't have knowledge of anthropology.

My line of thinking on this is that there is a love triangle gone bad. Think about it. Her boyfriend arrived back from Canada the same night. A neighbor reports hearing a noise on the fire escape that would lead to her room hours before the murder. Someone was mad and wanted to punish her.

Perhaps the individual is known to police, but that there was not enough evidence to move against that person.
 
Ausgirl said:
Some interesting images..

What the heck is this? It appears to be pinned up outside Jane's flat, and of interest? "anthropology department" .. something.. "Solomon Islands" - a stencil, only half completed.

And there was also this poster on her door:

The 'Oliver' I mentioned was apparently the person who found Beverly Samans' body - so I assume his picture accompanied that story. It'd be too bizarre if it wasn't so.
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Where in the world did you get these photos? Did I miss something in the thread? Wow!
 
Justice4Jane said:
Boston Globe, July 20, 1975, p. 4, in a column with no author listed. It says that the 'ritual' murder is still a puzzle, as much as it was 6 years ago. I'm going to paraphrase because the copy I have has a clear copyright symbol on it! Cambridge police chief Pisani says the case is still open. A grand jury spent months going over the evidence. Then it says "A Harvard faculty member was a suspect for a time." The murderer is described as having placed her clothes carefully in piles, and then put the ochre on her body in a straight line, leading to the sharp artifact brought back from a dig. This stone symbolized a headstone.

So, there you have it. The "missing" stone was never missing (news reports can be horribly inaccurate) and in fact it was an integral part of the murder scene. All of this seems to convey a sense of remorse.

I seriously doubt that the perpetrator was someone who didn't have knowledge of anthropology.

My line of thinking on this is that there is a love triangle gone bad. Think about it. Her boyfriend arrived back from Canada the same night. A neighbor reports hearing a noise on the fire escape that would lead to her room hours before the murder. Someone was mad and wanted to punish her.

Perhaps the individual is known to police, but that there was not enough evidence to move against that person.
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VERY interesting report, thank you!!

Links to photos:

https://www.argentaimages.com/media/...q/Dead/page/16

JHH (boyfriend) photo

https://www.argentaimages.com/media/image/q/boyfriend
 
Look what I came across here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/1278550-stuff-college-professors-say-4.html

It says "When I was at Harvard there was a professor who was really tall. He was a descendent of the Habsburg family (Austrian Royalty), and he allegedly murdered a graduate student and then laid the body in a Neanderthal funeral position and laced it with Red Ochre. We stayed away from him because not only did he murder people, he got away with it."
 
fred&edna said:
BBM

The last line of your post #41 you said, "I read they recovered the stone that was missing, presumed to have been the weapon.. I'd like more info on that. Will be sleuthing more after the Xmas break!"

:dunno: :D :dunno:

I was hoping you sleuthed a little more!


Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - MA MA - Jane Britton, Harvard student, murdered in 1969
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Bah, I am brainless with 'flu this week, forgot about that completely! :B

fwiw, I can find nothing more on the stone.. but then, I'm having trouble finding the end of my own nose atm. :D
 
I am pretty sure they mean Professor Carl (sometimes 'Karl') C. Lamberg-Karlovsky.
 
Justice4Jane said:
Boston Globe, July 20, 1975, p. 4, in a column with no author listed. It says that the 'ritual' murder is still a puzzle, as much as it was 6 years ago. I'm going to paraphrase because the copy I have has a clear copyright symbol on it! Cambridge police chief Pisani says the case is still open. A grand jury spent months going over the evidence. Then it says "A Harvard faculty member was a suspect for a time." The murderer is described as having placed her clothes carefully in piles, and then put the ochre on her body in a straight line, leading to the sharp artifact brought back from a dig. This stone symbolized a headstone.

So, there you have it. The "missing" stone was never missing (news reports can be horribly inaccurate) and in fact it was an integral part of the murder scene.
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See? I didn't even see that. Back to bed for me!

But hey - thanks for this info! Facts are good. :B The idea of the stone being missing was widely reported, though... and reported in quotes from police themselves so I wonder if that was kind of a hold-back for the real perp, iykwim?
 
Robin Hood said:
I think there might be a connection between Ada and Jane, one news article (pay per view) started to say Ada's death may have been to mis lead the investigation from Janes.

C.C. Lamberg Karlovsky - This guy has one impressive CV
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~anthro/karlovsky/docs/cv.pdf
It mentions work with James Humpries.

Still searching for more info.

Edited to add, the CV mentions ''Further notes on the Khurab Axe-Pick. Iran, Vol. VII, pp. 163-70''

Axe jumped out off the page for me.
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Yes, it does, and I found something else in the document you linked to that jumps out at me. This is from his list of pubilcations:

"1969d (With James Humphries) Cairn Burials of Southeastern Iran. East and West, Vol. 18, Nos. 3-4 pp. 269-276. Reprinted in The Memorial Volume Vth International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology, Teheran, Iran, pp. 102-11."

It strikes me as an extremely odd coincidence that Jane's professor and her boyfriend (Humphries) wrote and published a paper on burials from Iran within months of Jane's death. Even weirder is that a cairn is a pile of stones used to bury someone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairn#Asia_and_the_Pacific). Jane's body had clothing stacked on top of it, and some news reports describe it (and the ochre stuff) as simulating a Persian (Iran) burial?!? I wonder if these police ever noticed this? :facepalm:
 
A lengthy New York Times article from Jan 19, 1969 with the above title talks a lot about Jane as a person. It includes lots of quotes from her friends, including neighbors (the Mitchells) and her professor Lamberg Karlovsky. Has anyone else come across this? I have the article, but again it is copyrighted so I'm reluctant to post it as is. Is there a work-around for this problem? I'd be interested in any thoughts folks have about the people quoted in the article.
 
J4J, still a bit flu-raddled, so bear with me here if I ramble.. lol.

- Nope, not so unusual they'd publish on funeral rites, etc, as they'd all been to Iran together (with Jane) to study just that. Goes with the archaeology thing.

What I do find a bit odd is that Humphries, after steadily working toward academic success, suddenly dropped off the face of the planet just after the publication came out, and a little shy of finishing his studies IIRC. This was months after Jane's death, can't recall exactly how long. But I can't find trace of him after that.

- Jane's body at the crime scene (what I presently know of it) contains IMO less elements of an "ancient funeral rite" than it does a killer who could not bear to look at what they'd done out of self-shame (loss of control, sociopath) or remorse (crime of passion, had rage but a conscience). She was left face-down (unless that's another bit of BS put out to the media, there was SO much BS!) and her head covered. That's just killer stuff, I tend to think. The rest is "props" maybe, likely from somebody who had no real idea of what ancient funerary practises really involved and just wanted to confuse things.

Whoever did this caved her face and skull in with a sharp-edged, blunt instrument, hard repeated blows that went through bone. No rape, no robbery. That's pure rage, someone wanted to literally smash her face in, the end.

The killer risked a LOT (unless they were, like, next door..) to walk through four floors of a building, down halls where students could happen along any moment... Jane had just gone to bed after being in the company of people all night. Bold, so bold. Or waiting for her, after watching her a while. The killer IMO was in the building and watched her leave the Mitchell's place.

I think a professor bent on smashing a student's head in wouldn't walk those halls, wouldn't risk it - he'd be noticed, for sure.

- You can copy and paste 10% of an article only, per post. That's TOS here, copyright rules. Maybe we can look at different 10% sections over a series of posts, if the whole article is relevant, or you could just post short snips from it if it isn't.
 
I don't think that the killer had to walk the halls to get to her room. Some of the early news accounts mention the fire escape as one of the ways the killer could have gotten into the room. Also, one of the reports mentions that a child/teenager heard someone on the fire escape a few hours before the murder. I'll have to see if I can find those sources if they haven't already been seen here.
 
The Harvard Crimson, the day after the murder:

"There was no sign of forcible entry, but the door and window were unlocked and indications were that an intruder had entered by climbing the fire escape to the fourth floor apartment. Miss Britton lived alone."
 
Justice4Jane said:
The Harvard Crimson, the day after the murder:

"There was no sign of forcible entry, but the door and window were unlocked and indications were that an intruder had entered by climbing the fire escape to the fourth floor apartment. Miss Britton lived alone."
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Or climbing down/ up the fire escape from another apartment.

Shame about the copy write.

The head covering might have been to avoid blood splatter on the attacker.
 
Justice4Jane said:
A lengthy New York Times article from Jan 19, 1969 with the above title talks a lot about Jane as a person. It includes lots of quotes from her friends, including neighbors (the Mitchells) and her professor Lamberg Karlovsky. Has anyone else come across this? I have the article, but again it is copyrighted so I'm reluctant to post it as is. Is there a work-around for this problem? I'd be interested in any thoughts folks have about the people quoted in the article.
Click to expand...

I've had that article for awhile now, myself, but haven't been able to share it. Let me check tomorrow to see if there's a way. We are free to paraphrase, but I know it's not the same, especially with a lengthy article like the one in question.
 
Wow. Okay. Today's discovery... and just a little rehash of info, so the 'wow' factor is clear:

Ravi - the friend staying with the Mitchell's, and witness to two men running to an idling car after Jane had left the Mitchell's apartment that night, and son of an important UN official from India, who was apparently head of a rather large hash smuggling ring busted just a few months after Jane's death - this guy, right?

Well, he wasn't working alone with the drug smuggling thing. And get this --

One of Ravi's pals, who was busted at the American end of the ring, Richard Ward Ezidro, had in May 1969 been busted also in California -- for selling 200 LSD tabs to an undercover agent.

Confiscated in a subsequent search and seize were 1300 --grams-- of 'bulk' LSD (and man, that's a LOT of acid...) as well as 'several hundred capsules'. It was described as the biggest LSD bust ever in N. California at the time.

And my question here is --- how is Richard Ward Ezidro arrested as a 'principle' for THAT little haul and then free to apparently be running the US end of Ravi's hash smuggling ring a scant nine months later?

http://newspaperarchive.com/press-telegram/1969-05-05/page-15

Oh yeah, and talking of "blackouts" - another pal of Rikhye, Stephen Curwood, was photographed being hauled away by the cops during the 1970 bust. Pic below.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=p0VWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=bOsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5514,43237

So why is his face blacked out? Hell, even the mafia lords being busted in that era didn't get that level of protection.

All this says to me -- there was a LOT more to this. Probably nothing we'll ever know about. But Ravi and pals weren't small time kids dealing pot from a back-pack. This was large scale operations. And nobody seems to be doing any serious jail time.

I really want to look at the possible links between Ravi the drug smuggler and the socialist student organisations in Boston, which Jane had a few loose links to, possibly via that nutty lady I mentioned a few pages back.

Back to Jane -- yes, it could be coincidence that Ravi was among the very last people to see Jane alive. But something tells me it's worth keeping after the idea that maybe it wasn't.

A pertinent question at this point is: what was Ravi's relationship with the Mitchells, that they'd put him up in their apartment a few days?
 
Ausgirl said:
J4J, still a bit flu-raddled, so bear with me here if I ramble.. lol.

- Nope, not so unusual they'd publish on funeral rites, etc, as they'd all been to Iran together (with Jane) to study just that. Goes with the archaeology thing.

What I do find a bit odd is that Humphries, after steadily working toward academic success, suddenly dropped off the face of the planet just after the publication came out, and a little shy of finishing his studies IIRC. This was months after Jane's death, can't recall exactly how long. But I can't find trace of him after that.

- Jane's body at the crime scene (what I presently know of it) contains IMO less elements of an "ancient funeral rite" than it does a killer who could not bear to look at what they'd done out of self-shame (loss of control, sociopath) or remorse (crime of passion, had rage but a conscience). She was left face-down (unless that's another bit of BS put out to the media, there was SO much BS!) and her head covered. That's just killer stuff, I tend to think. The rest is "props" maybe, likely from somebody who had no real idea of what ancient funerary practises really involved and just wanted to confuse things.
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The odd aspect of the "ancient funerary rite" seems to me to be an essential piece of the puzzle. The person who did it might have remorsefully ad-libbed a ritual with which (s)he had some familiarity, or it was a person who knew Jane well enough to know that she was an archaeology student and had at least some knowledge of ancient burial rites. Using red ochre in burials is not performed in our own society, and not common knowledge among members our society. Trying to fake an ancient burial rite by using red ochre is very unlikely IMO. In American society, complete ignorance of anthropology is pretty widespread.

If this was done to confuse the police and put suspicion on the anthropology department, it seems to have worked, given the fact that the police seem to have honed in on it with their questioning. However, if not, it seems to me to be some sort of display of remorse, in assuring that Jane's spirit made it to the next world. Early on, the anthropology department was totally supportive of this notion, and they specifically linked it to ancient Iranian burial practices. They only backtracked later, perhaps due to pressure from police.

The other thing is that a wide array of burial types are practiced all over the world, and the variety of ancient burial types is huge. Yet here we have what could plausibly be said to resemble a burial cairn, and two of the closest people to her at Harvard are her boyfriend and professor, who specifically write about cairns at around the same time. In fact, her professor wrote a conference paper about cairn burials of Iran the summer before her death and presented it alone. Then he and Humphries coauthored it for final publication the next year.

Author Susan Kelly wrote about Jane's murder in her book "The Boston Stranglers." In it, she described the clothes piled over her body as done to resemble a cairn...again, this is a spooky coincidence.
 
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