WEBVTT - Becky Cooper: We Keep the Dead Close 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:05.600 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.520 Rather than leak incomplete information as they were going through 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.520 their investigation, they instead, i think, had faith that they 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:21.320 would be able to solve it and sort of soon 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:24.040 enough there would be information. The problem was. Soon enough 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:25.200 was fifty years later. 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:32.440 I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:35.239 in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:39.120 podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:43.120 research for my many audio and book projects has taken 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:46.400 me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:51.200 with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:55.640 and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.400 crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:02.400 good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:10.000 unpublished details behind their stories. Author Becky Cooper was a 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:13.840 student at Harvard University when she heard a curious rumor 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.959 about a murdered student in the late nineteen sixties. Cooper 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:20.760 was told that the killer was likely a professor, but 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:25.080 her investigation uncovered clues that had been buried for decades. 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.319 And who the real killer was came as a surprise 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:31.600 to everyone. The story of Jane Britten's life and her 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:35.480 murder is detailed in the book We Keep the Dead Close. 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:40.200 Let's start from the beginning. Where does it make sense 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:42.520 for you to start? Were you in journalism or why 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.160 were you at Harvard to begin with? I was at 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.760 Harvard because I wanted to be a neuroscientist. I always 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:49.720 liked writing. 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:52.960 I wasn't a particularly big reader, but over the course 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:57.360 of my four years there, I really missed literature, and 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:00.920 so I ended up a comparative literature graduate. But along 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:03.800 the way, I was having lunch with an old friend 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:07.960 of mine who had gotten swept up into this whirlwind relationship, 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:09.880 and it was supposed to be the first time that 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.240 we were having one on one lunch together in months. 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:17.960 And suddenly her boyfriend shows up, and I sort of decided, 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.600 all right, well, I'll make the most of this intrusion, 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:24.440 because I knew that this boyfriend was, among other things, 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:28.639 an incredible storyteller, So I, you know, figured i'd bait 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:32.079 him with some kind of half remembered Harvard lore about 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:36.240 some fire truck parked in Harvard Yard that involved ghosts. 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:38.480 I don't remember the story, but I do remember that 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:40.720 it worked a trick, because he said, well, if you 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.280 want to hear really crazy Harvard story, and launched into 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.720 this almost like well worn academic kind of horror story 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:54.000 slash fairy tale about this beautiful, nameless archaeology graduate student 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:56.440 who had been on a dig in Iran and had 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:59.519 had an affair with this professor, the professor who was 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:04.079 running it, and when they got back to campus, she 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:07.080 didn't want to give up the affair, and he was married, 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.160 and he didn't want the school to find out about 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:13.680 the affair. And one thing leads to another, and she 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:17.840 ends up being killed by him in the Peabody Museum, 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:21.720 which is the anthropology museum at Harvard, and he lays 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:24.560 jewelry on her that they had found at the dig, 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.560 their cigarette butts that had been burned. And then there's 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:33.959 this red ochre, this iron oxide powder that's been sprinkled 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.680 all over the crime scene. And according to the rumor 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:40.280 as I first heard it, the school caught wind the 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.040 next day that the school newspaper was going to write 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:47.440 about this professor's alleged connection to the murder, and they 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:51.000 didn't want their sort of superstar professor to be caught 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:54.280 up in something so sordid, and so they swashed the story. 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:59.040 Fast forward to forty years later, and it's still unsolved. 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:03.480 My boyfriend was also notoriously good at spinning tale, so 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:07.280 I didn't really give that story a ton of credence. 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:11.160 I think it just it lodged in my brain because 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:15.480 Harvard I loved it. It was this kind of dreamlike 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:20.039 world of possibilities. But it was that also because it 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:24.080 was so omnipotent, and so imagining it wielding that power 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.200 for bad or at least for squashing a story that 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:30.960 it didn't like, wasn't that hard to imagine. And so 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.560 it just sort of found its way into its own archetype. 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.400 And then a year later, not having looked into the 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:42.280 story at all, I happened to go to my advisor, 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:44.880 who is in the anthropology department, even though I was 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:49.480 comparative literature, and I'm early for this meeting, and I 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:54.560 overhear them talking about Samuel Warthrope, who Harvard anthropologists loved 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.440 to think was the basis for Indiana Jones, and they're 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:02.360 telling me it was very common for archaeologists to actually 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.040 be spies because it offered a very convenient cover, especially 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:08.320 between the wars, and so then I can't help myself, 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:09.680 and I'm like, well, if you want to hear a 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:14.440 really crazy Harvard story about, you know, archaeologists with double identities. 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.040 And I tell this story, which is, you know, by 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.600 this point half remembered and I have never fact checked it, 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:24.200 and I'm so embarrassed, like metacognitively, as I'm telling the 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:26.479 story to people who are in the department that I like, 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.000 wrap it up as quickly as possible, and then they 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:33.280 don't say anything, and they keep looking at me. And 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:38.080 finally my advisor says, the woman was killed not in 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:40.520 the Puberty Museum, as I had heard in the rumor, 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:45.000 but in her off campus apartment. And then his other 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.800 advisor says, and that professor that you're talking about, he's 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:49.799 still on faculty. 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:54.240 Wow, And that piqued your interest? Obviously, What is the 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:56.720 time span between when you first hear the story from 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.400 this guy you know, to then having this conversation with 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:01.839 your visor, to then saying I'm going to write a book. 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:03.120 What is the time span here? 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:07.880 It happened incrementally. I knew that my interest was piqued, 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:10.520 and I wasn't going to by that point let it 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:14.960 lie without investigating it, and so probably within six months 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.560 I graduated by that point, and so then decided to 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.679 come back to campus to audit this professor's class. Because 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.400 Harvard has this, or it used to, I think it 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:27.440 stopped it at this point. It used to have this 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:30.680 week at the beginning each semester called Shopping Period, where 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.200 you could just really essentially walk into any class and 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:36.400 there was no roster, and it was just a chance 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:39.240 to audition classes. And I realized if I was going 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.240 to be anonymous ever and just sort of like be 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:45.760 in the presence of this professor around whom a rumor 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.320 like this could linger for fifty years, but this was 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:52.760 my chance, and so I attend his class for a 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:55.840 couple of months, living with my old college roommate, and 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:57.680 still at that point I didn't know what I was 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:01.160 going to do with all this information. Just I think 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.039 there was a kind of innocence and a naivety in 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:07.359 the sense of it just felt like this hangnail or 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:12.360 this inconclusive justice that just required somebody asking the right 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:16.880 question or finally listening to the answer, rather than what 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:19.280 it turned out to be, which was me spending the 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:21.880 next ten years learning how to be an investigative journalist 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:24.360 to figure out how to actually solve this case. 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.000 Well, where do we go from here? Do we start 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.400 with Jane Britten? Who is the woman who was unnamed, 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:37.600 the victim who became the center of the story that 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:41.280 clearly was misreported and then you were determined to go 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.080 in and set the record straight. Do we start with her? 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:49.800 Absolutely? I first learned Jane's name from the newspaper reports 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:52.360 that came out right after this murder had happened. It 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:58.040 reached national news almost immediately, which isn't always the case 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:00.320 with murders. But I learned, you know, she had grown 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.000 up in Needa, Massachusetts, which is just outside of Boston. 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:08.240 She had a brother. Her father was the vice president 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:12.720 of Radcliffe Administration. Radcliffe was Harvard's sister school at this point, 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:16.760 So the murder happened in nineteen sixty nine. A lot 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:18.640 of just to preface, and a lot of what was 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.040 in that original rumor turns out to not have been 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.960 directly true. The cigarette burns, for instance, is a weirdness 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.880 translation of a single unstained cigarette butt that was inside 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:32.800 of an ash tray. But I do learn from these 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:35.240 articles that you know a number of things in the 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.760 rumor is true or are true, like that she had 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:40.800 been on a dag and a round in the previous summer. 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:45.480 So after going to a kind of boarding school called 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.240 Dana Hall nearby Neida, Massachusetts, she went on to go 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.720 to Radcliffe College. And at that point, even though Harvard 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:56.880 and Radcliffe were separate, the Harvard men and Radcliffe women 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:02.600 were taking classes together, and Jane was this absolute kick 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.600 in the pants. Her best friend, who I tracked down, 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:09.720 said that she was like a combination between Groucho Marx 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:13.520 and Dorothy Parker, except without the mustache. You know. One 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.040 of the absolute pleasures of working on a book that 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:19.960 was otherwise very dark was going through her letters and 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:23.080 reading her jokes that still land like. You know, there's 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:25.920 one letter where she says, you know, I wouldn't mind 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:29.040 getting married, but then again, I wouldn't mind having a 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.040 pizza when I get home. And so she she was 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:36.160 really not of the mold of her family, where silence 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.520 ruled and the town about it. Her mother, who had 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:42.160 been a professor and had given that up when she 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:44.800 got married and had two children and had become an 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.280 alcoholic would just get waved on by the police and 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.439 her parents. You know, her father clearly had a high 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.560 powered position within Harvard. Would it turned out to be 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:58.760 not feel of the institution, but rather having been welcomed 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.560 into it, which which then a complicated dynamic for why 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:07.440 they ended up not investigating her case. But so then 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:11.640 Jane goes from being this dynamite powerhouse at Radcliffe to 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:15.440 doing something pretty unheard of because very few people went 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.920 as a kind of feeder from either Harvard or Radcliffe 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.480 into the Harvard graduate school programs. But Jane was so 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:25.520 exceptional that she did. She went from being an undergraduate 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:29.160 in anthropology specializing in archaeology to then doing the same 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:34.240 thing at Harvard for grad school. So she was in 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.719 January of nineteen sixty nine when we're talking about she 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:41.000 was in her second year of graduate school, specializing in 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:42.480 Near Eastern archaeology. 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.520 How old is she at the time, twenty three. Do 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.200 we have any idea where she got this interest love 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:49.439 of ithropology. 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:53.200 There's nothing that I found that directly in her own words, 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:54.760 connects it. I think there is a couple of things. 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.199 She traveled a lot as a young person with her family, 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:00.400 and I think the other thing that kept coming up 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.040 time and time again is that she felt like an 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:08.199 outsider in many ways and gravitated toward people who were also, 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:11.320 as they would describe themselves, alien in some way. And 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:16.760 I think anthropology is a discipline where you're allowed to 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:23.440 buy necessity or at least aspiration, be participating in something 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:25.439 and beyond the outside of it. And so I think 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.560 it was a career that made the way that she 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:32.040 naturally felt feel critical. 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.360 What were her aspirations after she was done with grad school? 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:38.360 It depends who you ask. You know, there are a 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.640 couple of letters where she's traveling in Oxford with her 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:47.440 boyfriend at the time, another archaeologist named Jim Humphries, and 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:50.559 either're feeding the ducks in the river and they say, 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:52.520 wouldn't it be nice to just give it all up 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.480 and do this? But she was really phenomenal. She had 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:58.400 great training in archaeology, and so a lot of people 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:00.520 in her life thought that she want to go on 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:04.600 and become a professor in archaeology, though her brother, I think, 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:07.240 you know, thought it would be equally likely that she'd 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.480 go on and maybe be a cocktail pianist or something 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:12.079 like that. You know, she really had. She was multidimensional, 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.600 but she was very serious about academic archaeology. 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.480 Well, since we're talking about her death, you know, and 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:22.880 we start thinking about who her inner circle is, what 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.320 is a relationship like with her boyfriend? Who is this guy? 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:33.400 So Jim is quiet, studious, almost people describe him as, 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:36.560 you know, almost disconcertingly courteous. 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:40.840 I don't think I've ever heard anybody described like that before. 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.640 What does that mean? Like Eddie Haskell kind of courteous. 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:49.000 He would write handwrite thank you notes after a dinner party. 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:53.440 He just was like so put together, always just like 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:56.920 holding the door for people that you couldn't really get 0:12:56.920 --> 0:12:59.680 a rise out of him, whereas Jane was sort of 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:05.400 fiery and so sometimes people didn't always understand what their 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:09.600 dynamic was. But she loved him. You know. There's beautiful 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.280 journal entries and letters from their time in London, the 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:17.480 summer before just before they go to Iran, where he, 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:21.560 you know, says, go put on something nice and she 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:24.800 dresses up and he says, no, really nice And it's 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.080 because he's about to take her to the Savoy And 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.439 they go and they have a fabulous dinner and they 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.840 dance and you know, she's six foot seven, and she's like, 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:36.840 have you ever been lifted up by someone who's you know, 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:40.679 a six foot seven house? Basically, and they go skipping 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:43.480 down the street and she writes in her journal that 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:46.800 she feels, you know, about two years old, just so 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.680 raw and thrilled and in love. But you know, things 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.680 sort of get a little bit rocky over the next 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:59.880 six months, starting with in Iran when he starts to 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:04.160 maybe pull back a little bit in his normal reticent 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:07.760 way and is not this, you know, jolly, pick you 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.520 up and twirlier around London streets kind of person, and 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.240 he they're all, you know, everyone in the second year 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.600 is preparing for these huge exams called generals, which is 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:19.640 really this make or break moment in their career if 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:22.880 you fail, especially if you fail for the second time, 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:26.160 which was what Jane's position was going to be. It 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.000 wasn't a big deal to fail the first time, but 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:30.640 if you fail a second time, then you basically get 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:33.640 kicked out of the department. So Jim and Jane we're 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:38.040 both facing these huge exams within four months of coming 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:41.440 back from Iran, and they're both they've both gotten very sick. 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.720 In Iran, everyone on this dig loses like thirty pounds. 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:49.360 She blames the professor for having in part Doug. The 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:55.040 latrine's downwind from camp, so you know, he in her 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:58.960 boyfriend instead of coming back to campus after Iran goes 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.880 back to his native Canada to recuperate really and to 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:07.040 study for these exams. Jane goes back to school on 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:10.480 the other hand, and so for the next for five months, 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:14.840 they're doing long distance and they're already fairly strained. And 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.080 you know, she gets a letter from him that is 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.160 so reserved where he ends it in this kind of 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.520 not spiteful but it just feels so icy that it 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.560 feels it registers that way where he signs it health 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:30.760 and luck jim oh okay. And so they're not doing 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:33.920 super well by the time January comes around. 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:36.400 What were they studying in rural? And I know it 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.000 seems like I'm asking random questions, but this, to me 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:41.160 is the way you get to know somebody is, you know, 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:43.080 finding out what their interests are. Do you know what 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:45.120 the concentration was when they were in Neuron? 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.720 So they were at a site called Tepeyaya, which is 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:53.560 a kind of mounded archaeological site that I think was 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:58.840 inhabited for something like seven thousand years continuously, and they 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:03.200 were digging in one of the layers of this mounded city, 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.640 because you know, it's really this sort of superimposed kind 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:10.240 of one civilization on top of the other. And Jane 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:14.160 was looking for her dissertation topic, and she just it's 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:15.800 really the kind of luck of the draw when you're 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:19.080 an archaeologist. It's like whatever trench you get assigned. So she, 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.480 you know, the person next to her found this unbelievable 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.800 artifact in his trench. There was this neolithic figurine that 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:31.640 had both female and male genitaria. And you know, meanwhile 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:35.200 Jane's pulling bricks out of her trench, brick after brick 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:38.960 after brick, rat she maybe finds a tooth, but she's 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:41.960 just feeling like she's the worst archaeologist because she's not 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.400 getting anything. It turns out, she realizes belatedly as she's 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.880 mapping this out, that she probably found the outer wall 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.400 of at least one of the cities, and so that's 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:54.000 what she was going to write her dissertation on. And 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:57.600 that was a question that it would later turn out 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.520 that she was maybe not going to be allowed back 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:07.520 on this dig in Iran, So her position within the 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:11.840 university was a little bit was very dicey, because if 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.920 she wasn't allowed back to Iran, then she wouldn't have 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:18.800 been able to complete her dissertation without finding another advisor. 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:23.000 And basically you become this floating free agent. And I 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:26.719 think that really traces to this animosity between the two 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.959 of them, because the deeper I looked into who this 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.960 professor was, the less the rumor that they were having 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.280 an affair really held any water, And the more it 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:41.080 turned into this really strained relationship between the two of them, 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.679 that I was antagonistic relationship between the two of them 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:47.199 that I was trying to work out the sort of route. 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:54.119 Of Okay, so now let's get into who Karl Lamberg 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:55.399 Karlovsky is. 0:17:55.880 --> 0:18:00.240 Karl Lambert Karlovski. He in nineteen sixty nine, I think, 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:02.600 is about thirty five years old, so really young to 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:05.520 be on the cusp of being tenured. And he rides 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.720 a motorcycle, and he has long hair and he wears 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.280 a leather jacket, I think, and he seems to be 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:18.080 this kind of miraculous bridge between the older, very sort 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:23.479 of staid professors tenured professors in the anthropology department who 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:27.360 have been there forever, and then the really young professors, 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:31.040 probably his age though, who have no power within the department, 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:35.960 whereas he was of the younger generation but was well 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:39.040 on his way to becoming one of the kind of 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:43.000 welcomed in and so he sort of was this escape 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:46.040 where also he welcomed women onto his dig, which was 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:49.000 not the case for a lot of the other professors. 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.239 So if Jane, this was the other issue that if 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:53.600 she wasn't going to be allowed back to Iran, there 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:58.040 weren't that many archaeological digs with Harvard that she could 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:01.240 have gone on as a woman. That's the other issue. 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.040 So he was this kind of breath of fresh air, 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:09.680 but he had his own complications, and his wife was very, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:14.040 very very prim and did not like Jane's foul language. 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:16.359 So one of the theories is that it was just 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.399 friction between Jane and his wife and he didn't want 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:24.360 that dynamic necessarily the next year. Another theory is that 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:26.960 Jane and her boyfriend Jim were both on this dig. 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:31.480 They were a little volatile. Jim was really the professor's 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:35.159 right hand person. Jane seems like a liability and a 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:41.120 distraction and the other possibility is that Carl's tenure bid, 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.280 which is very much up for debate at the exact 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:49.440 moment of Jane's death, hinged on potentially this dig being 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:52.119 Alexander the great sloss city of Carmania. 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:53.480 Oh no pressure. 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:59.080 And one of the highly speculative theories, as people I 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:01.880 think are trying to backfill the reasons for their suspicion, 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:07.400 is did Jane know that this claim was exaggerated? And 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.440 could Carl have forced her out of the department instead 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:16.159 of facing her going to the administration of what she knew, 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:18.720 especially with a father who is as high powered he 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.920 as her father was within Harvard and acklast. 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:25.119 So there are all of these theories and accusations against 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.280 one professor who seems like he has some baggage and 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:31.879 Agela's wife, none of which I mean some could have 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:33.359 been true. We don't know if she would have been 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:35.520 invited back. We don't know. There's a lot of stuff 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.320 we don't know, right. What we do know is that Carl, 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:41.840 the professor who is now ninety right or is he? 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:42.800 Is he still alive? 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:43.359 Yeah? 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.840 Yeah, so didn't kill her, I mean we know that. 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.520 So can you tell me about the night or the 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.359 day what happens, you know, within it a few days 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:54.679 of her dying. 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:59.720 So we are now in January of nineteen sixty nine 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:04.720 and Jane's just come back to Harvard's campus from being 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:07.720 home for the holidays. Jim has just come back from 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:12.200 Canada because they're about to take their general exams and 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:14.919 they're studying, and you know, there are a couple of 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:18.560 there's some New Year's parties. Her neighbors throw a party, 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:21.439 but Jane says, I got to go home to study, 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:25.480 and she leaves the party. And then when the neighbors 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.840 go over to get some food from from Jane's place 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.159 that they were showing her friend, she's not there. So 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:34.040 there are some question marks leading up to the day 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.200 of general exams, which is this huge test that we 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.520 had talked about on which you know, they're destinying the 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:47.800 department hinges. The exam starts at around nine and Jim 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:51.760 had called Jane twice that morning to make sure she 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:55.199 was up for it. She doesn't answer either call, and 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:58.919 he thinks, Okay, maybe she's already at the exam, maybe 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.160 she fell ill, maybe she's somewhere. But by the time 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.439 he gets to the exam, which takes place within the 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:08.720 Puberty Museum. He notices she's not there, and he sits 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:11.280 for this exam for the next two and a half hours. 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:16.080 When it's over, he races over to her apartment because 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:19.000 it was not only unlike her to miss an exam 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:21.480 that's important, it was really it would have been unheard 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:24.920 of to miss a test like this, and so he 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:27.520 goes up her stairs her front door. The front door 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:30.960 of her apartment was never locked, and her front door 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:35.000 by this point, because it's January and the winter heat 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:36.960 is making the wood of the door swell so much, 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:39.280 her front door is also not locked. But he doesn't 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:41.440 go in. He just sort of knocks on the door, 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:47.359 and her neighbor hears Jim knocking, and he'd been listening 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:49.480 out because he wanted to hear how Jane had done 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:53.000 on her exam, and he's also confused why Jim, of 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:56.359 all people who knows that Jane's door can't lock, is 0:22:56.440 --> 0:22:58.800 knocking on it. So they have a little conversation in 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:02.200 the halloway. Jim finally and he comes right back out 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:05.400 and he says, I think it's a woman's problem, which 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:08.840 by which I understand he means he sees her on 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:13.880 her bed and she's not wearing underwear, again disconcertedly courteous, 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:17.879 and so the neighbor's wife walks in. She also pretty 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:22.320 immediately walks out. So finally the neighbor Dawn walks in 0:23:22.880 --> 0:23:25.320 and he sees Jane lying face down on her bed. 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:29.199 There are floccati goat hair rugs piled over her. He 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:32.080 pulls them back and he sees that her hair is 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:34.440