by Becky Cooper
15 including with steel wool: Report re: silver plated ashtray by Det. Lt. Joyce, May 23, 1969 (MSP file).
16 fingerprinted Powers…Needham funeral home: Report of Det. Lt. Charles Byrne of MSP re: James Powers, May 23, 1969 (MSP file).
17 expert failed to find Powers’s fingerprints: Report of Lt. David Desmond re: thumb print on ashtray, May 29, 1969 (MSP file).
18 a lot of people had handled the ashtray: Exchange from Report of Lt. David Desmond re: thumb print on ashtray, May 29, 1969 (MSP file).
19 “CONCLUSION: The blackish impression”: Report of Asst. Chemist Melvin Topjian re: ashtray, May 30, 1969 (MSP file).
20 convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt: Letter from Det. Lt. Joyce to Cecelia Powers, Dec. 3, 1969 (MSP file).
Crumbs
1 Lieutenant Joyce issued his report: Report to Daniel I. Murphy, Captain of Detectives by Det. Lt. Joyce of MSP, June 2, 1969 (MSP file).
2 “an unwaiverable conflict of interest”: Letter from DA Martha Coakley to Commissioner Ronnie Watson (CPD), Aug. 23, 2005 (MDAO file).
3 Fulkerson, who says he was kept in the dark: Interview with Fulkerson in 2018.
4 Connolly’s notes: Notes of Det. Lt. Connolly re: M. Michael Giacoppo, Oct. 4, 2005 (MSP file).
5 Four years ago, Boyd told me: Interview with Boyd Britton in 2014.
6 Adrienne Lynch herself spelled out: “Additional Notes ADA on Investigation 2017,” undated (MDAO file).
7 our 2018 phone call: Interview with Michael D. Giacoppo in 2018.
8 responsible for overseeing the investigations and records units: CPD Annual Crime Reports for 2004 to 2006 lists Michael D. Giacoppo as the Superintendent of Support Services for all three years; the CPD website breaks down the responsibilities of this superintendent.
9 “two-generation commitment”: Interview with Mary McCutcheon in 2017.
10 Any evidence that Giacoppo was even suspended: I spoke to Philip Cronin in 2019, Cambridge city solicitor at the time, who said he was never consulted about the alleged misconduct even though Chief Reagan said as much in Joyce’s report. Cronin was more comfortable concluding the report was wrong about Reagan’s actions than the possibility that he misremembered fifty years later. Therefore, I do not feel comfortable taking Reagan’s word in Joyce’s report about Giacoppo’s suspension without corroboration.
11 president of the Massachusetts Association of Italian American Police Officers: E.g., “Welcome to the 45th Annual Massachusetts Italian American Police Officers Association Awards Banquet,” Oct. 19, 2013, p. 6.
12 leadership of the Middlesex County Deputy Sheriff’s Association: The Guardian: A Publication of the Middlesex Deputy Sheriff’s Association, Jan. 2010, lists M. Michael Giacoppo as president, p. 2.
13 teach a fingerprinting course: The Guardian: A Publication, p. 18.
14 lifetime achievement award: “Mass Association of Italian American Police Officers Lifetime Achievement Awarded to Mike Giacoppo,” Somerville News Weekly, Dec. 8, 2018.
Mythmaking
1 I got an email from Brian Wood: Email from Brian Wood, Aug. 3, 2018, 4:23 p.m.
December 2018: Karl
1 Karl and I walk gingerly: This chapter is from an interview with CCLK (Dec. 6, 2018) unless otherwise noted.
2 Reich’s work…is controversial: “Is Ancient DNA Research Revealing New Truths—or Falling into Old Traps?” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 17, 2019.
Reconstruction
1 “If the identity of the suspect”: Email from Boyd Britton to Peter Sennott, Aug. 13, 2018, 6:59 a.m.
2 cellar door…still unlocked: “Harvard Defends Housing,” Boston Globe, Jan. 12, 1969. Per article, this door led to the back staircase.
3 the candles in Jane’s candelabrum: Report of Asst. Chemist Joseph Lanzetta, Apr. 1, 1969 (MSP file).
4 climbed the back stairwell: Per Arthur Bankoff’s statement, p. 19, “Jane surprised me once…by walking along the fire escape to my window. Anyone could have come in that way, via the back stairs to the fire escape door behind our apartment and thence to Jane’s.”
5 As described in a police report: “Report from M/M Stephen Presser (table leg),” Jan. 14, 1969 (CPD file).
6 That door opened into Jane’s kitchen: Scene scale diagram, Det. Edward Colleran, Jan. 8, 1969 (CPD file).
7 trace of grease on her right hand: This and “twist of wool” from Report of Asst. Chemist Joseph Lanzetta, Apr. 1, 1969 (MSP file).
8 contusion on her right arm: Autopsy Report, Drs. George Katsas and Arthur McGovern (MSP file).
9 the greasy frying pan and the kitchen sink: Report of Asst. Chemist Joseph Lanzetta, Apr. 1, 1969 (MSP file).
10 [Photo]: Jane Britton police file.
Jane Sanders Britton
1 what would have been Jane’s seventy-third birthday: May 17, 2018.
2 Boyd asked for a picture of the grave: Email from Boyd, May 11, 2018, 1:37 p.m.
3 Don asked me to read a note to her: Email from Don Mitchell, May 11, 2018, 2:58 p.m.
4 VIGIL HOPES TO HEAL: “Vigil Hopes to Heal after Hate Incident,” Needham Times, May 17, 2018.
5 “You’ll find her eventually”: Dan Bear, in 2017.
6 Elisabeth had emailed: Email from Elisabeth Handler, May 17, 2018, 12:05 p.m.
7 [Photo]: Photograph by Becky Cooper.
8 When I had spoken to Iva Houston: Interview with Iva Houston in 2017.
9 restorative justice, restorative methodology: For restorative justice from an anthropological perspective, see Ann Kingsolver, “Everyday Reconciliation,” American Anthropologist 115, no. 4 (Dec. 2013): 663–666.
10 I’m down to my very last MSP file in the stack: This scene took place on Dec. 29, 2018.
11 “Book 1 1968. J.S. Britton. British Inst of Persian Studies Box 2167. Tehran IRAN”: MSP file.
12 “Jim,” it begins: From here to end, Jane’s journal entry, June 6, 1968.
13 [Photo]: Jane Britton police file.
About the Author
Becky Cooper is a former New Yorker editorial staff member and Senior Fellow of Brandeis’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Reporting. Her undergraduate thesis, a literary biography of David Foster Wallace, won Harvard’s Hoopes Prize, the highest undergraduate award for research and writing. She is also the author of Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers (Abrams, 2013). Research for this book was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.
Reading Group Guide
Not all murders become myths. Why do you think Jane’s did?
This book is as much about investigating a crime as it is about who has the right to reconstruct the past and call it history. How does Becky navigate this question, and what parallels are there with the work of anthropologists and archaeologists?
How were the reverberations of the larger world felt at Harvard and Radcliffe in the ’60s? In what ways have the institutions changed––or not––since Jane’s time?
The most consistent thread in the book is Becky’s obsession with Jane. In what ways do Becky’s boundaries start to blur with Jane’s? Is this a necessary part of writing a biography or a sign of getting too close to one’s subject? Or is it something else entirely?
Silence is a recurring theme throughout book––from Jane’s refusal to scream to the police blackout. As Professor Kimberly Theidon asks, how do you interpret silence?
How should the investigative work of authorities––as well as the privacy of victims and their families––be balanced against the public’s right to know?
What level of responsibility do police departments have to devote resources to solving cold cases?
Elisabeth Handler has the sense that Jane “needed” her stories, and Karl is described repeatedly as a great storyteller. How do you think the two benefited from their storytelling? How did those benefits diverge?
We s
ee many different ways that individuals and groups wield Jane’s story. How does Jim Humphries resist this? What is gained by letting go, as he seems to have done, and what is lost?
As Iva Houston tells Becky, “It’s hard to admit you belong to the world you’re studying.” What does Iva mean by that? Are there ways in which Becky and the other people in the book fall short? What blind spots might you have had as you interpreted this story?
In what ways does Jane’s story act as an allegory, and how does that tale differ with Jane’s agency or victimhood?
What is the value in disentangling fact from fiction in Jane’s case? In what ways are both valuable?
How did your intuition about who murdered Jane change as you progressed through the book? Was the police’s conclusion about the murderer the resolution you were expecting? If not, did it alter your experience of the rest of the book? How?
Becky asks herself if it is ever justifiable to trap someone in a story that robs them of their truth but voices someone else’s. What do you think? In what way are Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky, Mike Gramly, and Lee Parsons trapped inside stories? In what way are the storytellers themselves trapped? What is the cost of this entrapment?
In the true crime genre, there’s always the risk of turning someone else’s grief into entertainment. Where does that line fall? Does this book strike the right balance?
Jane, in her closing journal entry, hopes she’ll be remembered for how she was, instead of how she was seen. Was Becky able to fulfill this wish for Jane? Is such a thing even possible?