SOLVED MA - Jane Britton, 22, Harvard student, Cambridge, 7 Jan 1969
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Pink Panther
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This thread has not died. There are many who have come here to give information. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, they haven't been heard or they haven't fully shared what they know. I think that a lot of people think that they know who killed Jane and most likely, that they're right. Unfortunately, there seems to be no venue for them openly share their views or information.
This thread has not died.
Courage is what is required.
I'm bumping.
This thread has not died.
Courage is what is required.
I'm bumping.
Donamena
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Amen...
Pink Panther
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I'll keep bumping. A woman was murdered. Someone did it. Someone knows.
moo
moo
Donamena
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It appears as thought a whole lot of 'someone(s)' know, Pink
Pink Panther
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Bumping for Jane.
Pink Panther
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Bump.
December
Verified insider - Kathy Jones case
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I wish many people involved with this case (innocent people who were friends of Jane's to people who lived nearby and maybe saw something all the way to suspect) could be reinterviewed by a thorough investigator. Sometimes people don't tell the police things because they don't know that some little scrap of information could really help solve the crime (they've told everything they thought was important.. these would be the innocent people... and answered what questions they were asked back in 1969). There is something keeping the police from quite putting this puzzle together and maybe fresh interviews would help.
DonMitchell
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I dont have new information about the case, but I do have news thats connected with it.
For years Ive been thinking about writing something based on Janes murder.
Ive gotten a decent start on a novel. Its working title is News of Elsewhere.
It wont be a mystery, although the protagonist will not have an easy time working things out. It will be a novel of guilt, retribution, hidden and distant allies, and the connections between two cultures thousands of miles apart. And, of course, departmental politics and jealousy, sexual mayhem, love and friendship, perhaps a drug theme and perhaps a closeted gay theme. Police ineptitude and corruption, university indifference, and so on.
Heres whats going to be different about it.
As you know, when I was involved in Janes murder I was an ordinary twenty-something graduate student whose life had been pretty much spent in the academic world. I thought about creating a protagonist very much like me. But then Id end up with graduate student involved in murder . . . tries to figure it out . . . and I didnt think that would make for very interesting fiction. There are more than enough novels featuring youngish straight white male educated protagonists.
What led me to Websleuths and this thread was discovering that Ausgirl had located the website for my story collection, A Red Woman Was Crying.
It never seemed appropriate to say anything much about that book. But the novels going to build on it, so if Im going to tell you about the novel I need to tell you about the story collection.
Its set mainly in 1969-70, and includes 7 stories and six myths. Six of the stories in first person -- are narrated by a Pacific people called the Nagovisi, and one is told by the anthropologist, some 30 years later.
The narrators spin stories about their relationship with the anthropologist who has come to them, whose name is Elliot. In the six stories set in Nagovisi, Elliot never gets a voice. The narrators report what he says, but were never inside his head. His presence links the stories. The reader comes to understand Elliot and the Nagovisi -- by understanding how the different narrators interacted with him. Two of them extract secrets from him. As the stories move on, both Elliot and the Nagovisi learn about each other, and they all change.
Theres an off-stage character named Anna, an anti-war radical whos gone underground in the US.
Elliot becomes very close to a man named Mesiamo, a powerful and much-feared leader who introduces himself to the reader by saying, I dont kill people any more. Among other things, he teaches Elliot the uses of violence -- lethal and otherwise a sophisticated calculus of power, revenge and reciprocity.
Now imagine a graduate student like Elliot who becomes caught up in the murder of his close friend (perhaps lover). Before he goes to the field, his reponses wouldnt be especially interesting. But the Mesiamo-trained Elliot back from the field, who realizes that the man who killed his friend is going to get away with it, will behave very differently. Very. That student Elliot after fieldwork is a force to be reckoned with.
The first half will be set in Nagovisi. Some of the characters from A Red Woman Was Crying will be in it (Lalaga, Siro, Mesiamo, Siuwako) and there will be one new character, the teenage girl Lakabula. Elliot will have a voice and we'll be in his head.
The guilt part I mentioned is because Elliot is involved in Lakabulas death. He doesnt cause her death, but he fails to prevent it. Elliot reveals his own secrets (about Anna, in particular) but he also holds Nagovisi secrets that can explain why Lakabula died, but revealing those secrets will compromise people he loves.
I wont go into detail, but basically Elliot (with Mesiamos approval) violates his anthropological ethics for the greater good, hoping that news of what hes done to help settle matters in the village wont work its way back to Cambridge.
Not long after Elliot returns to Cambridge, Kate (thats Janes working name) is killed. Elliot, knowing some of Kates secrets, realizes too late that he might have prevented the murder. But he didnt understand the danger that Kate was in, and didnt want to interfere in what he did understand (anthropologists are very big on non-interference). There are obviously rough parallels between Kates death and Lakabulas death, although Lakabula wasnt murdered. In both cases, Elliot has to come to terms with his reponsibility.
If youre interested in meeting Elliot and the Nagovisi in A Red Woman Was Crying, you can pick up the book from any online retailer. Independent bookstores can order it. Theres also an inexpensive Kindle edition.
Im hoping for a completed first draft in about a year. It could happen more quickly.
For years Ive been thinking about writing something based on Janes murder.
Ive gotten a decent start on a novel. Its working title is News of Elsewhere.
It wont be a mystery, although the protagonist will not have an easy time working things out. It will be a novel of guilt, retribution, hidden and distant allies, and the connections between two cultures thousands of miles apart. And, of course, departmental politics and jealousy, sexual mayhem, love and friendship, perhaps a drug theme and perhaps a closeted gay theme. Police ineptitude and corruption, university indifference, and so on.
Heres whats going to be different about it.
As you know, when I was involved in Janes murder I was an ordinary twenty-something graduate student whose life had been pretty much spent in the academic world. I thought about creating a protagonist very much like me. But then Id end up with graduate student involved in murder . . . tries to figure it out . . . and I didnt think that would make for very interesting fiction. There are more than enough novels featuring youngish straight white male educated protagonists.
What led me to Websleuths and this thread was discovering that Ausgirl had located the website for my story collection, A Red Woman Was Crying.
It never seemed appropriate to say anything much about that book. But the novels going to build on it, so if Im going to tell you about the novel I need to tell you about the story collection.
Its set mainly in 1969-70, and includes 7 stories and six myths. Six of the stories in first person -- are narrated by a Pacific people called the Nagovisi, and one is told by the anthropologist, some 30 years later.
The narrators spin stories about their relationship with the anthropologist who has come to them, whose name is Elliot. In the six stories set in Nagovisi, Elliot never gets a voice. The narrators report what he says, but were never inside his head. His presence links the stories. The reader comes to understand Elliot and the Nagovisi -- by understanding how the different narrators interacted with him. Two of them extract secrets from him. As the stories move on, both Elliot and the Nagovisi learn about each other, and they all change.
Theres an off-stage character named Anna, an anti-war radical whos gone underground in the US.
Elliot becomes very close to a man named Mesiamo, a powerful and much-feared leader who introduces himself to the reader by saying, I dont kill people any more. Among other things, he teaches Elliot the uses of violence -- lethal and otherwise a sophisticated calculus of power, revenge and reciprocity.
Now imagine a graduate student like Elliot who becomes caught up in the murder of his close friend (perhaps lover). Before he goes to the field, his reponses wouldnt be especially interesting. But the Mesiamo-trained Elliot back from the field, who realizes that the man who killed his friend is going to get away with it, will behave very differently. Very. That student Elliot after fieldwork is a force to be reckoned with.
The first half will be set in Nagovisi. Some of the characters from A Red Woman Was Crying will be in it (Lalaga, Siro, Mesiamo, Siuwako) and there will be one new character, the teenage girl Lakabula. Elliot will have a voice and we'll be in his head.
The guilt part I mentioned is because Elliot is involved in Lakabulas death. He doesnt cause her death, but he fails to prevent it. Elliot reveals his own secrets (about Anna, in particular) but he also holds Nagovisi secrets that can explain why Lakabula died, but revealing those secrets will compromise people he loves.
I wont go into detail, but basically Elliot (with Mesiamos approval) violates his anthropological ethics for the greater good, hoping that news of what hes done to help settle matters in the village wont work its way back to Cambridge.
Not long after Elliot returns to Cambridge, Kate (thats Janes working name) is killed. Elliot, knowing some of Kates secrets, realizes too late that he might have prevented the murder. But he didnt understand the danger that Kate was in, and didnt want to interfere in what he did understand (anthropologists are very big on non-interference). There are obviously rough parallels between Kates death and Lakabulas death, although Lakabula wasnt murdered. In both cases, Elliot has to come to terms with his reponsibility.
If youre interested in meeting Elliot and the Nagovisi in A Red Woman Was Crying, you can pick up the book from any online retailer. Independent bookstores can order it. Theres also an inexpensive Kindle edition.
Im hoping for a completed first draft in about a year. It could happen more quickly.
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Very intriguing, love the cover art!
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/tag/i-dont-kill-people-anymore/
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/tag/i-dont-kill-people-anymore/
Pink Panther
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Bump.
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OK, did not quite read between the lines, who does everyone think killed JB?
Why has a story that big fallen under the radar?
Was the murder weapon artifact, been returned to a museum , or is it kept with other evidence from the case?
Is the presumed killer deceased, or could he/she be walking this earth amongst us?
Is the perp. decidedly male?
Why has a story that big fallen under the radar?
Was the murder weapon artifact, been returned to a museum , or is it kept with other evidence from the case?
Is the presumed killer deceased, or could he/she be walking this earth amongst us?
Is the perp. decidedly male?
Pink Panther
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We don't have answers yet…So we keep her story alive.
Pink Panther
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Is it possible that a woman murdered Jane?
It would be helpful if LE opened up this cold case just a little bit...
It would be helpful if LE opened up this cold case just a little bit...
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Bumping.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/2/7/widow-killed-near-radcliffe-dorm-police/
"Widow Killed Near Radcliffe Dorm; Police Cite Britton Case Similarities
February 7, 1969
A 50-year-old Cambridge widow was found bludgeoned to death in her apartment at 41 Linnaean St. yesterday morning, a quarter-mile from the scene of the unsolved murder of Harvard graduate student Jane Britton '67, 23, a month ago."
snip>
"The circumstances surrounding the two deaths are remarkably similar. Police said Mrs. Bean was discovered with her night clothes pulled up around her shoulders and a blanket over her head, which had been bashed in with a blunt, heavy instrument. Miss Britton was also found with her head covered.
Police speculate that in both cases the victim was asleep at the time of the murder, and that the killer was well known to the victim."
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/2/7/widow-killed-near-radcliffe-dorm-police/
"Widow Killed Near Radcliffe Dorm; Police Cite Britton Case Similarities
February 7, 1969
A 50-year-old Cambridge widow was found bludgeoned to death in her apartment at 41 Linnaean St. yesterday morning, a quarter-mile from the scene of the unsolved murder of Harvard graduate student Jane Britton '67, 23, a month ago."
snip>
"The circumstances surrounding the two deaths are remarkably similar. Police said Mrs. Bean was discovered with her night clothes pulled up around her shoulders and a blanket over her head, which had been bashed in with a blunt, heavy instrument. Miss Britton was also found with her head covered.
Police speculate that in both cases the victim was asleep at the time of the murder, and that the killer was well known to the victim."
Pink Panther
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Jane's "boyfriend" when she was killed may have had another "girlfriend" at the same time.
DonMitchell
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Interesting. What's the evidence?
SweetCharlotte
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When I lived in the area in the 1980s, people associated with Jane's department thought that a faculty curator of the Peabody Museum (Harvard anthropology museum) was the one. She was purported to have been involved with him and he had acted suspiciously, etc. He is an Eastern European national who specializes in the Middle East. That was the word on the street at the time.
Pink Panther
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Thanks SweetCharotte. We're all still here for Jane!
Bump.
Bump.
