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

[Ausgirl]

Thank you, Archangel7.

It's frustrating to have so little information released and still no arrest after all these years. We must assume there's a reason for that information being held back, and the 40-year media blackout.. but as time passes, I have to wonder what purpose it can still serve.

I really did want to see her thesis & Nicholas' dissertation. I would have been able to tell if she did her illustrations herself. She must have been able to, as she was an amateur painter. As my friend said, either go up there or pay >$150 for 2 MS.

Jane did some nice illustrations for the Iran dig, and is credited for them and praised by her professor for her artistic skill, so I'd suppose it's not unfeasible for her have done the ones you mentioned.

F&E, thanks - I was aware of those links. My question is - why are they saying "ochre" and also "iodine oxide" (which is not commonly used for painting).

Was there a misindentification of the mineral, either way? Or was it both ochre and liquid iodine tincture (betadine)? It's terribly confusing.

 

[fred&edna]

Thank you, Archangel7.

It's frustrating to have so little information released and still no arrest after all these years. We must assume there's a reason for that information being held back, and the 40-year media blackout.. but as time passes, I have to wonder what purpose it can still serve.



Jane did some nice illustrations for the Iran dig, and is credited for them and praised by her professor for her artistic skill, so I'd suppose it's not unfeasible for her have done the ones you mentioned.

F&E, thanks - I was aware of those links. My question is - why are they saying "ochre" and also "iodine oxide" (which is not commonly used for painting).

Was there a misindentification of the mineral, either way? Or was it both ochre and liquid iodine tincture (betadine)? It's terribly confusing.

Sorry Ausgirl! I now realize what you were questioning. Ack, I'm two for two here, lol

I wasn't even paying attention to "IODINE" in the article. Personally, (and heaven knows I could be VERY wrong ) but I think the author meant "IRON oxide". Was the term "iodine oxide" used in any other article besides The Crimson??

Ochre (/ˈoʊkər/ oh-kər; from Greek: ὠχρός, ōkhrós, (pale yellow, pale), also spelled ocher) is a natural earth pigment containing hydrated iron oxide, which ranges in color from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colors produced by this pigment, especially a light brownish-yellow.[1][2] A variant of ochre containing a large amount of hematite, or dehydrated iron oxide, has a reddish tint known as "red ochre".

Ochre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




ETA: I also think it would be common for an artist (especially one studying archaeology) to have "red ochre" pigment on hand (either in powder/pigment form OR mixed with a liquid). Again, just my lowly opinion

 

[Kell1]

Rich, very interested in your point re staging and deflecting of blame. I have often thought it no accident she was attacked shortly after going out with her boyfriend, and have wondered if the scene was staged to suggest it was him.

As someone (F&E?) pointed out upthread, her apartment was in the middle of the 4th floor, not the easiest choice for a random attacker, but I think we can safely strike 'random attacker' from the suspect list, no?

You cant completely because we don't have enough evidence to clear it as such. But the behavior seems to indicate an interpersonal issue.

If LE was looking for that specific artifact, its because they feel it was taken by the offender, or they feel it was used, as a weapon in the crime.

If you do have an offender, who brought an axe, killed her, then took the artifact, were looking for a possible Psychotic (not psychopath) roaming the area.

But there were no other such attacks, and a true psychotic usually sticks out like a second head.

I feel this was someone she knew , I feel the artifact they were looking for was the weapon, otherwise why mention the "sharp edge" at all?

So whomever was there, wasn't there to kill her, but it happened.

If its true she always left her door and windows unlocked, someone may've even been laying in wait for her.

So someone who knew her, who knew where her apt was, and how to get to it (and away from it) without being seen. If they knew her well, they'd know the door was never locked, because she shared a fridge with the Mitchells. Therefore, I'm wondering if the killer locked or barred the door at some point, or took the risk of someone walking in on the attack.

I don't think it even crossed his mind, this doesn't appear planned. No signs of a struggle she was comfortable (or asleep) with whomever was there

The Mitchells were also the people who found her, along with Humphries, the boyfriend. The question has been raised as to why, if the door was never locked and they were in an intimate relationship, he felt it necessary to go get the neighbours before entering Jane's apartment. It has never been said, AFAIK, whether he found her door locked that morning.

I believe I read somewhere that the door was very difficult to lock, which is why she didn't. But I agree completely, why did he HAVE to go get her neighbors?, that should've raised red flags immediately.

Even if he was scared of what he might've found if he went in on his own, what would lead him to suspect anything bad happened ?

Though we can what if his behavior to death, theres definitely something that ANY experienced investigator, would've noticed,

Last to see her alive -Boyfriend
Discovered her body- Boyfriend +neighbors, (at boyfriends request.)
Violence - Apparently Personal
Body-Evidence, of staging, and undoing - usually someone close .

Id have to clear that PRETTY damn thoroughly, before I started to look elsewhere.

 

[fred&edna]

Good points, RK! I've wondered what became of Humphries. I think PPanther found a possible TX marriage link for him (not sure as I haven't gone back to find the post).

'Keeping in mind the 1976 Boston Globe article mentioned by Justice4Jane (noted below), I'm wondering if Humphries entered Jane's apartment, saw the clothing burial mound, topped with the red-ochre line leading to the artifact-headstone, obviously recognizing something horrible had happened and yelled for the Mitchells??

"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."

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - MA MA - Jane Britton, Harvard student, murdered in 1969

 

[Kell1]

So The artifact WAS at the crime scene ?

 

[Donamena]

Good points, RK! I've wondered what became of Humphries. I think PPanther found a possible TX marriage link for him (not sure as I haven't gone back to find the post).

'Keeping in mind the 1976 Boston Globe article mentioned by Justice4Jane (noted below), I'm wondering if Humphries entered Jane's apartment, saw the clothing burial mound, topped with the red-ochre line leading to the artifact-headstone, obviously recognizing something horrible had happened and yelled for the Mitchells??

"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."

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - MA MA - Jane Britton, Harvard student, murdered in 1969

Who's saying 'sharp object brought back from a dig' ? They're supposed to be filed, catalogued & archived, not in personal use. This I know because a fellow archeology student faced a great deal of trouble when she absent-mindedly put a small figurine in her pocket before washing, etc. And it's something you're told in archaeology fieldwork 101: do not remove for personal use.

 

[Donamena]

So The artifact WAS at the crime scene ?

No one knows because there are conflicting reports, & if I remember correctly, please tell me if I'm wrong, one anthro professor was brought to the scene of the crime, gave his opinion, then backed out?

 

[Kell1]

No one knows because there are conflicting reports, & if I remember correctly, please tell me if I'm wrong, one anthro professor was brought to the scene of the crime, gave his opinion, then backed out?

Confusing case

 

[Donamena]

FWIW....you don't leave an academic career, whether from Harvard or any other university, unless you have good reasons to do so. Either Humphries saw or heard something he wasn't supposed to, & it spooked him. Or he had a nervous breakdown & just walked away from it all.

In my humble anthropologicallly (not a word I know) educated opinion, a degree from Harvard, undergrad or grad, will open many doors. Just getting in is difficult enough.

David Nicholas, PhD, is teaching in Canada. No, I'm not going off the reservation on this one. Learned my lesson.

 

[fred&edna]

And, to quote PinkPanther once again, here's the post with links stating Jane's case went to a Middlesex grand jury.

** How do we find out if these court records are sealed?

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - MA MA - Jane Britton, Harvard student, murdered in 1969

 

[dotr]

Just jumping in here to note, fwiw - that red ochre has historically been used to make lipstick, often to indicate the female is a prostitute.

http://www.stylecraze.com/articles/a-complete-history-of-lipstick/

"In 1000 BC Grecian Empire, lipstick was used by prostitutes who wore lip paint, and it was mandatory, so that the people could distinguish them from “well-bred ladies”.

Grecian women in 700 B.C., used lip colours, no matter what their rank was and made lip colours by mixing together some very strange and unthinkable of ingredients: seaweed, flowers, crushed berries, red ochre, crocodile dung, and various resins."

 

[Ausgirl]

Well, at the least, we are developing a list of 'very good questions'. In another case where nothing much was clear at all and there was a lot of conflicting info at the start, we just came up with a list of VGQ's rather than beating our heads on a wall. Sometimes, just asking the right questions provides answers in itself.

So there's the ones I feel are pertinent of late:

-- What's the story with the iodine/ochre?

-- Why did Humphreys get the Mitchells and not simply walk in? / Was Jane's door locked?

--Who said what about Jane's door?

-- What 's the story with the stone artifact and its movements before, on and after the murder?

-- Where'd the Mitchells go?


As for Humphreys, he didn't quit Uni and leave the area right away IIRC - he stayed and worked for a while (several months? longer? I'll have to look it up again) on his stuff with Lamberg before suddenly quitting, and presumably moving back to Canada.

 

[Archangel7]

Thank you, Archangel7.

It's frustrating to have so little information released and still no arrest after all these years. We must assume there's a reason for that information being held back, and the 40-year media blackout.. but as time passes, I have to wonder what purpose it can still serve.



Jane did some nice illustrations for the Iran dig, and is credited for them and praised by her professor for her artistic skill, so I'd suppose it's not unfeasible for her have done the ones you mentioned.

F&E, thanks - I was aware of those links. My question is - why are they saying "ochre" and also "iodine oxide" (which is not commonly used for painting).

Was there a misindentification of the mineral, either way? Or was it both ochre and liquid iodine tincture (betadine)? It's terribly confusing.

I've never seen a Chief or Sheriff implement a media blackout. Not even sure they can other than preventing their dept's. reports from getting to the media. It takes real due process, as in a Judge to issue what I would call a "real" gag order or blackout /publication ban.

It would take but a few minutes for the local det. to send any prints to FBI for possible ID. Lots of advancement in crime scene technology since 1969.
I was wearing a Bell and Howell "wire" with my Captain in a car close by with a suitcased sized reel to reel recorder back about then, just for a comparison of technology.

 

[Ausgirl]

Some interesting quotes/snippets in this article:

Gazette Mail January 19, 1969 - Page 29


".. a former college friend of Jane's, who asked not to be identified ....described Miss Britton, as she knew her in 1966, as a "vulnerable person" who was despondent about her weight, did not date much and kept irregular hours.

"She knew a lot of odd people in Cambridge - the hangers-on and acid heads... She went to a lot of their parties and was very kind to them."

Miss Britton was also afflicted at times.. with an "odd lassitude", leaving her entire undergraduate thesis to be written in one week.

___


(Police) are also trying to identify a set of unaccounted for fingerprints in the young woman's apartment, where the body was discovered by her boyfriend, James H. Humphries, and next-door neighbor Mr and Mrs Donald D. Mitchell, all fellow anthropology students.

Last summer she accompanied a Harvard team on an archaeological dig .. in south eastern Iran. She made an important find at the site, which fired her enthusiasm, according to Prof. Clifford C. Lambert-Karlovsky, the project leader, and Prof. Stephen Williams, chairman of the anthropology department.

Lamberg-Karlovsky described Miss Britton, who served as his teaching assistant ('she was an easy grader') as an enthusiastic worker who stood up well to the rigors of life in the isolated fe3ild camp in Iran.

He minimized press reports of hostility among the nine members of the team, saying minor conflicts were inevitable. among a small, close knit group.

In the last year, Miss Britton was quite friendly with her neighbors, Donald and Jill Mitchell. Miss Britton visited them frequently and allowed them to use her refrigerator, which was quite large. The Mitchells, whose apartment adjoined Miss Britton’s, had a key to her apartment but it was hardly necessary, Jane seldom bothered to lock her door.

----

Sitting in their cluttered living room Tuesday night, the Mitchells rejected any notion that Miss Britton had been involved in drug use.

"The thing that stands out most," said Donald Mitchell, "is that it is not possible to characterize her life style because she changed it so often. She was never taken in by any ethos, but she went through a period of painting on her wall and then she would not do that, then it was music and she would not do that."

Yet was there much more to Jane Britton? "I guess if we knew more about her life we may know why she was murdered," said Mitchell. "As the police say, 'she did not get killed because she was intelligent and hard working'".

There have been reports, denied by her friends, that Jane underwent an abortion several months before her murder.

---

She smoked three packs of cigarettes a day -- often strong French brands.

http://newspaperarchive.com/us/west-virginia/charleston/gazette-mail/1969/01-19/page-29

------------------------


-- The abortion is, according to a conversation I had a while back now, factual but occurred a couple of years earlier. Assuming she only had the one.

-- Don Mitchell's comments are very.. insensitive? He's basically saying she was a bit flaky and hints darkly at a 'hidden' lifestyle. Yet they were good friends for a year? Notably absent are comments about the stone artifact.

-- Wonder if they ever id'd those fingerprints.

-- It was Stephen Williams who commented on the 'ritual' aspect and then later backtracked, stating he didn't believe there was anything ritualistic about it. My guess is, he was avoiding a pile of heat brought down on the anthropology dept by those reports..

-- Jane was a "brilliant" student, teaching assistant, incredibly smart, made an important find in Iran -- yet I percieve CC Lambert-Karlovsky to be minimising her. And in the documents regarding the Iran dig, Jane is hardly mentioned at all (for her drawings) let alone credited with an important find. But others who made important finds are lauded. I must dig up this info again.. it struck me at the time as odd, even for the 60's -- I thought hip University people wouldn't be stuck in the 'women don't matter academically' thing.

I can't recall what her important find was. I wonder if it was the same one Richard Meadows made...

 

[Ausgirl]

Donald and Jill Mitchell, graduate students in anthropology and Miss Britton's nextdoor neighbors, said last night that the door of Miss Briton's apartment was almost impossible to lock.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/1/8/grad-student-killed-ptwenty-three-year-old-jane-s/

James F. Reagan, Cambridge Chief of Police, declared a virtual black-out yesterday on all future news concerning the murder of Jane S. Britton, the 22-year-old Harvard graduate student who was found murdered last Tuesday.

Reagan told reporters at a special news conference on the killing that the police will not release any further discoveries until he personally gives his permission.

The reason for the black-out, Reagan said, was that there have been "inaccuracies" in press coverage of the killing. Reagan did not say what these inaccuracies were.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/1/10/cambridge-police-declare-black-out-on-britton/

Why not correct those "inaccuracies"? This is also the report where he says the found the stone but refused to say where..

In the aftermath of the tragic slaying of graduate student Jane Britton, Harvard was the victim of unfortunate timing. Miss Britton was bludgeoned to death in a Harvard-owned building on University Road and the building was in terrible disrepair at the time, virtually without working locks. A week after the murder the Wilson Report on Harvard and the Community was scheduled for release at a news conference. At the news conference I put several questions to Mr. Pusey regarding Harvard's real estate policies in general, and the condition of the building in particular. The President was so outraged by this line of inquiry that he instructed his top aide, William Bentick-Smith, to call the Globe management and lodge a complaint about "rude question."

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/6/12/covering-harvard-a-view-from-outside-pithe/?page=1

-- Perhaps some of the reasoning for that 40 year blackout...

 

[Ausgirl]

Last to see her alive -Boyfriend
Discovered her body- Boyfriend +neighbors, (at boyfriends request.)
Violence - Apparently Personal
Body-Evidence, of staging, and undoing - usually someone close .

Id have to clear that PRETTY damn thoroughly, before I started to look elsewhere.[/I]

Last to see her alive -Neighbours.

Jane went to spend some time with the Mitchells before retiring for the night:

The slim, petite brunette was went out to dinner Monday night, then went skating on Cambridge Common, returning to her fourth floor apartment at about 10:30 p.m. Humphries left at about 11:45 p.m., and the girl went across the hall and visited for a while with the Mitchells. She seemed cheerful, discussed an exam she had coming up, then retired to her own apartment at about 12:30 a.m.

http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/34668200/

 

[reedus23]

And, to quote PinkPanther once again, here's the post with links stating Jane's case went to a Middlesex grand jury.

** How do we find out if these court records are sealed?

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - MA MA - Jane Britton, Harvard student, murdered in 1969

Very typically, grand jury proceedings are sealed. I haven't looked into the MA state law in particular, but I'd guess it's the same.

 

[Ausgirl]

Just checked -- James Humphreys was still around at Harvard and working closely with Lambert-Karlovsky until 1975-ish, before he 'inexplicably' left.

Also, Donald D Mitchell:

http://a-red-woman-was-crying.com/A_Red_Woman_was_Crying/Don_Mitchell.html

http://heliotricity.com/matriarchalsocieties.html

mention of Jane's case:

As for the murder, "involved" is about right. It will have been 43 years in Jan 2012, and no one's been brought to justice. The most important person of interest died, but I keep hoping for something to turn up.

Read more: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4366187&page=4#ixzz34fxRTLrs


http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4366187&page=4

 

[dotr]

Just checked -- James Humphreys was still around at Harvard and working closely with Lambert-Karlovsky until 1975-ish, before he 'inexplicably' left.

Also, Donald D Mitchell:

http://a-red-woman-was-crying.com/A_Red_Woman_was_Crying/Don_Mitchell.html

http://heliotricity.com/matriarchalsocieties.html

mention of Jane's case:

As for the murder, "involved" is about right. It will have been 43 years in Jan 2012, and no one's been brought to justice. The most important person of interest died, but I keep hoping for something to turn up.

Read more: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4366187&page=4#ixzz34fxRTLrs


http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4366187&page=4

Thanks for the very interesting links, seems like academic back-biting still goes on, wonder how much of it Jane might have been subjected to back in the 60's?!
Any reason to think Humphreys ever returned to Toronto?

 

[Kell1]

Last to see her alive -Neighbours.

Jane went to spend some time with the Mitchells before retiring for the night:

The slim, petite brunette was went out to dinner Monday night, then went skating on Cambridge Common, returning to her fourth floor apartment at about 10:30 p.m. Humphries left at about 11:45 p.m., and the girl went across the hall and visited for a while with the Mitchells. She seemed cheerful, discussed an exam she had coming up, then retired to her own apartment at about 12:30 a.m.

http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/34668200/

So it then becomes, ONE of the last ones to see her alive was her boyfriend.. doesn't negate the suspicion .