by Becky Cooper
The night that it all came to a head, though, was perhaps the quietest fight of all, leaving everyone involved exposed like live wires, ready to spark at any moment. Karl had bought an entire sheep and wanted to roast it whole. He asked Jane for advice since he knew that she’d spent a summer digging in Greece and had some experience roasting sheep.
At dinner that evening, Martie, having just eaten her first bite of the animal, turned to Jane and thrust a declarative sentence across the table like a dagger: “I thought you said you could cook.”
Karl’s Police Interrogation
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Professor, who would have the authority to decide the members of the expedition?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: This was my decision, which was taken up and discussed by other members in the department. I might say that for each individual that, you know, I am able to take, there are probably two or three other candidates who are wanting to go out with me.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Well, bearing in mind, Doctor—I’m going to promote you to a different profession, Professor—bearing in mind the fact that you knew that there was a romantic attachment prior to setting the list, and I think of the remote, possibly remote, problem that might arise in the field with a romantic attachment, and you had so many others to choose from. I was wondering why you settled on this particular girl. I know Mr. Humphries from the previous dig, but the girl herself.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: She already had experience in the field. She came to me well recommended from Professor Movius. I was one of the three faculty members on her committee to read her undergraduate honors thesis. It seemed as if she had both the necessary qualifications and the academic ability to be able to do the job.
I wasn’t particularly fearful of the kind of difficulties that might take place given the fact of a romance simply because I knew the way in which Jim operates. He’s a very conscientious individual.
This year, I asked Jim for the first time just exactly how serious that relationship is because as I began constructing the list for the people to come next year, I wondered whether or not Jane, in fact, would come again. I asked Jim what his feelings would be. Jim had been very fundamental for two years in terms of the successes of the project. I didn’t want to lose Jim on the expedition if I decided not to take Jane. I didn’t clearly state to him that I was thinking not to take Jane, but I intimated that possibility, that perhaps this year I would not.
Jim at that time told me “Look, I’m a single person. Don’t take that into consideration. Your judgment in terms of who will be going out is entirely your own.”
As it happens, however, all of these earlier considerations became irrelevant because I did in effect make that decision that I would take Jane. Jane, as the course of the semester developed, became very interested in a specific aspect of the project, the fortifications system of the early village community, which she was primarily responsible last semester for excavating. She began doing research on it. She wanted to perhaps develop this into a PhD thesis. I thought it only fair, once again, to allow her the opportunity to come out. Although, there was that period of time in which I was considering whether or not I would.
I had discussed my ambivalence with Jane and with the chairman of our department. If I didn’t take her, she would have no place to go. She would have no project on which to write her PhD thesis. She would in effect become an individual disenfranchised from the opportunity to do a research project which would result in her PhD. I asked him whether or not there would be—how his feelings were, what the—whether or not he could provide any measure of further judgment as to which way I should go.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: You’re a glutton for punishment. You know that, Professor? You really heap yourself with problems.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Well, it’s—it’s a major project. This year, in fact, it’s going to become a larger one, and in effect, you see, the director of any excavation and the results of that excavation simply are in a way the sum total of the individuals who are on that project. The better people I have, the better the project.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: You had the utmost cooperation from them in the last dig.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Absolutely.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Each and every one of them.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: There were some major problems with Arthur and Andie Bankoff. I had cooperation from every single other individual––and I, in fact, had considerable cooperation from Arthur and Andie.
Unidentified Male: Yeah. Well, anyone we talked to said they were doubtful that you were going to take Jane but according to you now, in your own mind you were, but you are the only one that—
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: That’s right. That’s right. I think that it was apparent to many of the individuals that I was doubtful in taking Jane, but I had never said to any individual that she’s not going or that she’s definitely going.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Professor, it has come to our attention, but we don’t know if there’s any basis on this or not, but there was a feeling between Jane Britton and yourself that there was a dislike present.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: I—I don’t know whether or not there was or there wasn’t. I don’t know whether Jane liked me or disliked me. It’s very difficult to know how students feel about you. There were a lot of things about Jane which—over which we had words. One of these was that she tended very often to speak in foul language.
Unidentified Male: Did you dislike her, Professor?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: No, I didn’t dislike her. I clearly couldn’t have really disliked her very much. I was bothered about some aspects of, you know, the way she behaved, but I didn’t dislike her to the extent that, you know, I wouldn’t—I didn’t allow her to continue on the project. It was her due academically, but I liked Jim a great deal more. He’s more responsible. He’s—he’s—he’s a much more—he’s a much more sort of responsible, level-headed individual than Jane was.
Unidentified Male: Of the ones that went in your dig—you liked her the least of any of them?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: No, no, I didn’t—I—I—because, you see, the—that kind of phrasing suggested that I really disliked her.
Unidentified Male: How did your wife seem towards her?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Well, my wife didn’t particularly like the way she carried herself and the kinds of things she said either.
Unidentified Male: I may be wrong, but I thought I heard from somebody that she had told them that you didn’t like her.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky:—well, you know, it’s her impression perhaps that I didn’t—as, you know, it’s my impression that perhaps she really didn’t have very much love for me.
Unidentified Male: Yeah. It wasn’t that you told her but just the way you acted towards her.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Right. She clearly knew that I didn’t like her language. She would make snide comments to another individual, which I would overhear and perhaps she said it so that I would overhear it, about the way I would react to this and the same with my wife.
Unidentified Male: Well, she was tantalizing you.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Yes, in some ways I suppose that might be fair enough to say. She was tantalizing.
Unidentified Male: Was there anything else you had to speak to her about other than the language?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: I thought that in one area in which she was carrying out her work, she was moving a little bit too slowly, and I advised her to do something else. Jane had worked in France with an archaeologist. She considered herself a good technician. She was one who didn’t take correction of the technical aspects of the excavations very well. This was another aspect in terms of perhaps why Jane didn’t like me.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Could it also be as a result of some of your previous markings of her papers?
Professor La
mberg-Karlovsky: No, no. I doubt it very much because I think the record would show that in terms of her markings, she had always received a B minus or above, which is a passing grade in the department.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: My understanding is that she was going to take a test on the morning of her death.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: That’s right.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Which of the three exams would be the hardest part? Do you know, sir?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Archaeology would—should be the easiest, and archaeology was the one on which last year she did the best. I suppose it might be social anthropology.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: That would not be your test.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: No, no. No, not at all.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: And she’d no fear of your test apparently after being on the digs and all—
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Well—
Detective Lieutenant Davenport:—and the research she’d done.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky:—all I could say is I would hope not. I would hope not.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Would you have been in a position to correct the exams then?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Yes, oh, yes, indeed. Oh, yes.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: Well, that’s what I was curious about.
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: I have, in fact, corrected them last night.
Detective Lieutenant Davenport: How did Jim do?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Jim did—I was second in line of correcting the exams. Three professors have to correct the exam, and the sum total of the three grades is representative of the composite picture. He did—he did, as I had hoped: well.
Unidentified Male: This day Tuesday that she did not show up for the exam, did anybody else not show up?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: Not to my knowledge. Not to my knowledge.
Unidentified Male: Who would give us that information?
Professor Lamberg-Karlovsky: I suppose Steve Williams because Steve Williams and the secretary were the ones who were involved in proctoring and checking off the names with the numbers. You see, we correct the exams with numbers. We don’t know who—whose exam we’re correcting. Although, clearly, you know, in some instances this is—this is pretentious because I can tell—I can tell—I can tell the handwriting of those students who are working most closely with me.
Franklin Ford
IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING JANE’S death, Karl got a call from Franklin Ford, dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Dean Ford offered Harvard’s full support without reservation.
Half a century later, Karl would recount the story to me at our first official interview, grinning over the plateful of chicken liver he’d just ordered: “He didn’t even ask me if I did it!”
Part Four
The Myth
2018: Miami
MONTHS BEFORE—IN THE LONG-ago when Sennott hadn’t yet called to say that he would be announcing a break in the case, and Don hadn’t texted, and I didn’t know how long five days could feel—I committed to going to a bachelorette party that weekend in Miami. Now, as I pack my computer and my reporting notebooks next to my bikinis, I can’t imagine anything I would want to be doing less. I email Don from the airport:
Could you sleep last night? I woke up at 3 in the morning with a feeling that’s a cross between Christmas morning and a bad dream. How indescribable it is to be excited for an unknown.
In Miami, I get fingerprinted for keyless access to the apartment of a friend of the bride. I try to be a good guest, but carrying the weight of these suspenseful five days pulls me out of the group. I pour myself a glass of wine and pretend to sip it. I can hear their heels clacking on the marble floor in one of the bathrooms, the whir of the blow dryer. I’m on the couch in the living room, my flats kicked off to one side, studying the evolution of forensic DNA technology, creating elaborate if/then charts for what to do depending on the outcome of Monday’s call.
I become the watcher I had been in middle school again––the one on the outside of the party, stone-cold sober, unable to lose myself in the fun. We have Moët and lobster on the beach and take Ubers for four blocks, and they talk about DUIs and Ambien addictions, and ramming a Vespa into a Bentley in a parking lot and getting away with it. The reckless hedonism they’re able to pull off makes me sad that the universe wasn’t as lenient with Jane.
In the afternoons, I escape to my room and try Sergeant John Fulkerson, hoping he’ll have gotten word, too, and will let something slip. But as has been the case for the last three months—since April, when he told me he was finally retiring from Cambridge PD and that I should try again in a few weeks—he doesn’t pick up. Instead, I draft my next public records request in anticipation that the case might soon be closed.
On Sunday night, the girls and I have our final dinner at Joe’s, an old-school steak house on Miami Beach where the waiters are all men who wear tuxedos and whirl trays of stone crabs and tie you with a bib. My mind is preoccupied with how the humidity must be making all the wood in the place decay. I apologize to the bride that I’ll be leaving for the airport at 6:30 a.m.; I changed my flight to the earliest one out, assuming that if there’s a press conference and I haven’t heard about it yet, I’ll at least get to hear Don’s reaction as close to live as I can get.
The crabs come, and I jam the tiny fork into the stone crab claw. It refuses to break loose and turns to pulp, and with the metal of the fork hitting against the hard shell, creating a cavity, I imagine all too easily that it’s a skull, and I’ve just turned its gray matter to soup. I feel nauseated and stop eating.
We go home, and I head upstairs before midnight, saying goodbye to the girls who are dancing to the Backstreet Boys. I try to make myself realize that this may be the last night I go to sleep not knowing who Jane saw just before she died.
Iva Houston
“I THINK IF YOU WERE to have called me a couple years ago, I would have been more coy. I’m less reticent now, because I think in the field of archaeology, it’s important to talk about these kinds of stories, especially with other ladies,” Iva Houston said.
Iva and I hadn’t seen each other since that day in 2010 when she and James Ronan had set everything in motion. Now she was sitting across from me at Le Pain Quotidien in Midtown Manhattan. I had reached out because, knowing so much more about Jane’s case and about Karl, I wanted to talk with her again.
But when I asked her to retell the Jane Britton story, she needed me to clarify which one I was referring to. I didn’t understand why she needed more prompting. How many murders could I be talking about? I gave her a few more details—the red ochre, the rumors about Karl—and she caught on, but she could see I was still disoriented by her not remembering in the first place.
“When I say, ‘What story are we talking about,’ I don’t say it in a joking way. I say it seriously,” Iva said. “There are so many stories. And what’s sad about it is it always ends the same way. It always ends with: We never hear from the girl again.”
She continued: “People will talk about female students leaving academia, going into some specialization”—plants, bones, museum work—which means they don’t go out in the field anymore. And even if it feels like their choice, that isn’t always the entire truth. “There is often a traumatic situation that precipitates her departure.”
At Harvard, when Iva started going on expeditions, she was told, “Don’t go into the field with so-and-so, because he has grabby hands”; “Don’t go into the field with X, because he doesn’t pay you.” Iva, whose scholarship has shifted to cultural studies, said she didn’t switch out of fieldwork because of the high rates of harassment and discrimination, but “I won’t lie to you. It’s a great benefit to not have to deal with that.”
Iva finished her train of thought: “People will say it in conversation, but not always out loud. There is an antagonism. There is a pressure in the
field. There is a looming danger. Sometimes it’s unsaid. Sometimes it’s made very explicit.”
I knew exactly what Iva meant. Even in high school I had teachers whom the girls warned each other about. “Don’t close the door with him,” we would say casually to each other. Or we’d whisper to a friend that a certain teacher could change her schedule if she dropped by his office, but know he’s a creep, we would add. I never thought twice about the state of awareness I had to get used to as a fourteen-year-old.
While at Harvard, Iva heard Jane’s story three times. The details hardly changed. It was usually about a girl who had an affair with her professor, and he killed her when she threatened to tell his wife. Iva never knew her name.
The first time was her sophomore year. A female graduate, striking up a conversation, asked what classes she was taking. Iva said she was in Karl’s class and found him charming, engaging, charismatic. He made archaeology very approachable.
“I want to tell you something,” Iva remembered the graduate student saying. “It’s kind of a weird story, and I don’t know how much of it is true, but I want to tell you because I feel like, with girl code—”