New York Post - USA (2020-11-15)

New York Post, Sunday, November 15, 2020

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turn. On the night of her murder the

two had dinner together but she

went home alone, then briefly vi-

sited with a friendly couple, Don

and Jill, who lived down the hall, be-

fore turning in. Her exams were the

next day.

Evidence showed that Britton had

had sex within hours of her death —

so who was in her bed later that

evening? Cops figured the killer was

someone she knew well. Two win-

dows were left open in the apart-

ment, yet nothing was stolen, and

they saw no signs of forced entry.

But they eliminated Humphries,

who discovered her body, as no evi-

dence implicated him. Cooper

crossed his name off her list as well.

Then another suspect came into

view: Mike Gramly, also a Harvard

graduate student in anthropology.

He knew the victim — Britton once

had him over for tea. What put a tar-

get on his back was another murder

seven years after Britton’s. Gramly

was suspected of killing an attractive

female student during an archaeo-

logical excavation.

Anne Abraham mysteriously van-

ished in 1976 while she and Gramly

worked by themselves at a desolate,

remote bay in Labrador, Canada.

Though the body of the 19-year-old

Abraham was never found, her par-

ents were convinced her death in-

volved foul play.

Police in Canada concluded that

Abraham likely died in a tragic acci-

dent, tumbling from a steep cliff and

into the water. Gramly never saw or

heard anything, he told cops. As for

the Britton case, he was happy to talk

with Cooper. He denied having an

affair with the young woman. What’s

more, he’d also become passionately

involved in trying to solve Britton’s

murder, peppering the police with

requests for information.

As Gramly began to fade as a sus-

pect for Cooper, he gave her a tanta-

lizing new clue. He’d found a box in

storage in a lab at Peabody that was

filled with red ochre and had one

missing handful. Gramly believed

the box belonged to the museum’s

A complicated,

mercurial man:

brilliant, imposing,

hot-tempered...

exploitative,

even

paranoid

— description of

professor CC “Karl”

Lamberg-Karlovsky

to Becky Cooper (left)

Lily Erlinger

by BRAD HAMILTON

I

t was a whispered secret

that made the rounds at

Harvard for decades: A

professor beat to death his

student in 1969 in her uni-

versity apartment, then

sprinkled red ochre dust on

her body in a macabre post-

mortem ritual.

At least that was the story Becky

Cooper heard when she was a soph-

omore there in 2009, exactly 40

years after the unsolved slaying. The

motive, she was told, involved a lov-

ers quarrel. The suspect had se-

duced his victim, 23-year-old Jane

Britton, then killed her to keep their

affair hidden.

But the professor was never

charged and he continued to teach

at Harvard all this time later, a ten-

ured faculty member in the univer-

sity’s elite anthropology depart-

ment, Cooper learned.

So she vowed to solve the crime,

launching a nine-year probe she

chronicles in “We Keep the Dead

Close: A Murder at Harvard and a

Half Century of Silence” (Grand

Central), out now.

Cooper read up on the sensational

case, which got front page coverage

in The Post and Boston papers but

soon dried up. Many believed that

cops had botched the investigation

and Harvard had muzzled the press.

In 2012, Cooper began attending

classes led by the professor, C.C.

“Karl” Lamberg-Karlovsky, who was

74 at the time. He lived under a

cloud, never having been arrested

or cleared in the savage slaying.

Karlovsky made a compelling sus-

pect. The prof, who claimed to have

discovered Alexander the Great’s

lost citadel, was known to be pomp-

ous and imposing — he sometimes

roamed the halls in a cape — and

was Britton’s faculty adviser at the

time of her death. There was ten-

sion between the two. He failed her

on the school’s all-important gen-

eral exams and warned Britton, a

graduate student in Near East ar-

chaeology, that her career could be

in trouble if she didn’t pass the next

time.

In 1968, just six months before her

death, Britton went on a dig in Iran

with Karlovsky, joined by her boy-

friend and a handful of others, dur-

ing which the professor disparaged

her work but took a keen interest in

the free-spirited beauty, who had

several lovers at Harvard and one

clandestine abortion. The married

Karlovsky was not against pursuing

female students, though he was up

for tenure at the very moment Brit-

ton died.

Did he use his position to get her

into bed? If so, could she have black-

mailed him, demanding a passing

grade in exchange for keeping quiet?

A Ph.D. student, Peter Rodman,

told Cooper he recalled hearing that

“Jane had threatened one member of

her Generals committee that she

would expose the affair they had

been having if she didn’t pass. Kar-

lovksy... was the professor at the

heart of this rumor.” Cooper found

that Karlovsky didn’t seem all that

bothered by rumors that he was a

murderer, which only enhanced his

dark, intimidating aura.

Dozens of people at Harvard’s Pea-

body museum, where Karlovsky’s

classes were held, portrayed him as

a “complicated, mercurial man: bril-

liant, imposing, hot-tempered, ambi-

tious, inspiring, flamboyant, charis-

matic, exploitative, even paranoid,”

Cooper wrote. “Some knew to stay

away from him.” Britton’s friends

were convinced that she had hooked

up with a Harvard professor, though

no one was sure if it was him.

Cooper could find no evidence

that Karlovsky and Britton ever slept

together. And while the spreading

of red ochre, which could be found

in abundance at the dig in Iran, sug-

gested the killer had knowledge of

ancient burial rites, no one could

place the professor at the crime

scene. A grand jury heard all the evi-

dence and didn’t indict him.

S

O Cooper pursued other

leads: Could it have been Brit-

ton’s boyfriend, Jim Hum-

phries, she wondered?

Their relationship had become

strained during the dig — both were

plagued by dysentery amid brutal

conditions — and Britton found

Humphries to be aloof on their re-

POSTSCRIPT Books

IN MURDER

In 1969, a Harvard student was killed and covered

in red dust. The lead suspect? Her professor.

The case went cold for nearly 50 years — until

another Harvard student demanded the truth

IN MURDER