This Harvard Mystery Took 5 DECADES to Solve. The Haunting Story of Jane Britton

0:00 A Harvard student was found dead in her own apartment, but detectives couldn't find a single clue pointing to her killer. The case made headlines and even sparked some bizarre theories. But the investigation dragged on for decades. And nearly 50 years later, it wasn't the police who cracked the case. It was a group of everyday people who refuse to let the truth stay buried. Jane Britain was born on May 17th, 1945 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a vice president of Radcliffe College in Cambridge, and her mom was a scholar in medieval history. So, it's no surprise

0:45 that from a young age, Jane developed a deep interest in history. And by the time she was in high school, she'd already decided she wanted to study anthropology. She was a straight A student, played piano, loved to paint, and spent her free time horseback riding. After graduating at the top of her class, she enrolled in her father's college and quickly became one of its standout students. Eventually, her hard work paid off. She was accepted into Harvard's anthropology graduate program where she started working toward her PhD. In her second year, she got the chance to join an archaeological dig in Iran, working under a well-known scholar. She made a great impression and even contributed a few important discoveries. Outside of academics, Jane

1:32 was well-liked among her peers and she had recently started dating a fellow student named James. On January 7th, 1969, Jane was supposed to take her final exams. She was 23 at the time and looking forward to finally finishing school and starting her career. But that morning, she never showed up. Her boyfriend, James, thought it was odd. He tried calling her a few times before the exam, but she didn't pick up. No one else, neither students nor professors, had any idea why she was missing. So, after class, James decided to walk over to her apartment, which was about 15 minutes from campus. When he got to her floor, he knocked, but there was no answer. A fellow student and mutual

2:19 friend named Donald, who lived next door, stepped out when he heard the knocking. He said he hadn't seen Jane since the night before, and her apartment had been quiet ever since. James knocked a few more times, but still got no answer. That's when he started to worry. He knew Jane's front door lock was basically broken, so he tried the handle, and the door swung open. Inside the apartment, nothing seemed out of place, except for one thing. It was freezing. When James walked into the kitchen, he saw the window was wide open, even though it was in the middle of winter. Then he stepped into Jane's bedroom and saw her lying face down on the bed. Her night gown had written up, so he immediately stepped

3:04 back out and asked Donald's wife to check if Jane was okay. James thought maybe she was just sick or asleep. But when Donald's wife came out of the room, the look on her face said it all. She couldn't even speak. James went back into the bedroom and that's when he saw it. Jane's face was covered with a rug and a coat. When he lifted them, he realized she was dead. He immediately called the police and it only took one look for officers to realize they were dealing with a murder. The body was handed over to the medical examiner and detectives began processing the crime scene. One of the first things they noticed was that nothing appeared to be stolen. Jane's jewelry, cash, and other

3:50 valuables were still in place, which ruled out robbery as a possible motive. There were also no signs of a struggle, which made investigators think the killer might have caught her off guard, possibly while she was sleeping. That theory was supported by the fact that none of Jane's neighbors reported hearing anything unusual. The autopsy revealed that Jane had been struck multiple times in the head with a heavy object, likely a hammer or a rock. It was also confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted. After speaking with Jane's boyfriend, police learned that the night before the two of them had gone out to dinner with some other students and then went ice skating. James said he walked her home afterward and left around 11:30 p.m. Donald and his wife told investigators that about an hour later, Jane stopped by their

4:37 place for a quick glass of cherry wine, and that was the last time anyone saw her alive. According to the medical examiner, she had likely been killed about 10 hours before her body was found, meaning the attack must have happened not long after she returned to her apartment. The apartment didn't give detectives much to work with. Crime scene texts found a few fingerprints that didn't belong to Jane's friends or neighbors, but they couldn't match them to anyone in their records. As for how the killer got in, police had a couple of theories. For one, Jane's front door lock hadn't worked for a while, so someone could have just walked right in. But there was also another way. Jane's window locks were just as unreliable as her door, and even though she lived on the fourth floor, there was a fire

5:24 escape right outside her apartment, so anyone could have climbed up and slipped in through the window. That theory seemed more likely after detectives talked to everyone in the building and found a kid who remembered hearing noises on the fire escape that night. But there was one problem. He said it happened around 900 p.m. But Jane didn't get home with her boyfriend until almost 11:30. Another witness came forward and said he saw a man running away from the building around 1:30 in the morning. He didn't get a good look at the guy, just remembered that he was about 6 ft tall and had an average build. That account seemed a little more promising since the timing lined up with the estimated time of the murder. But without more detail, there wasn't much police could do with it. Still, based on both witnesses

6:11 statements, detectives began to think the killer might have climbed the fire escape around 9:00 p.m., then waited there for hours until Jane came home. Donald also told police something interesting. Earlier that evening, before Jane got home, he had gone into her apartment to use her fridge, where he and his wife kept some of their groceries. He said everything looked normal at the time, which meant the killer either hadn't come in yet or had been waiting outside on the fire escape. It was also possible that the first witness simply got the timing wrong. Still, detectives couldn't rule out another possibility. Maybe none of this had anything to do with the murder at all. They found out that residents in the building often left their windows open, even in winter, because the heating was way too strong. By the next

6:58 morning, news of Jane's murder had spread all over the university. And it didn't take long before the story made headlines across the country. Police were under intense pressure. Students at one of the nation's top universities were scared to be on campus while the killer was still out there. And pretty quickly, a new theory began to take shape. What if the person responsible was a fellow Harvard student? There was a pretty unusual reason behind that theory. Investigators had found a reddish powder on Jane's body and in her room, something that looked like ochre or iron oxide. One of the professors explained that in some ancient cultures, especially in places like Iran, where Jane had recently been, it was tradition

7:44 to sprinkle this kind of powder over the dead. That led to speculation that the killer might have been another anthropology student, someone who not only had that kind of knowledge, but possibly even traveled to Iran with Jane. Supporting that theory was the fact that nothing in her apartment had been stolen, not even cash, suggesting the motive might have been personal. Police weren't totally sold on the idea, but they couldn't ignore it either. Detectives made a list of around 100 students and faculty with anthropological backgrounds and checked out every single one, but it got them nowhere. Sometime later, a new theory surfaced. What if Jane had been killed by a serial offender? 5 years earlier, another female student had been murdered

8:31 in the very same building, just two floors below Jane's apartment. At that time, detectives suspected the infamous Boston Strangler might have been behind it, and he even confessed to the crime, but a lot of people had doubts. Many believed he might have falsely confessed, which isn't uncommon in high-profile cases. And besides, by the time Jane was murdered, the Boston Strangler was already confined to a secure psychiatric facility. So either way, he couldn't have been involved. While detectives still had no solid leads, local newspapers were busy spreading theories and pointing fingers at the university itself. Harvard had purchased the building a few years earlier and started housing students

9:16 there, but the place was in pretty bad shape. Most of the apartment locks didn't work or would get stuck, and the windows were just as bad. Residents said they could be pulled open from the outside without much effort. Because of that, newspapers began criticizing the university for letting students live in such unsafe conditions. Meanwhile, police kept looking for anything that might help. They gave polygraph tests to Jane's boyfriend and her neighbors, questioned several other suspects, and even placed cameras at her funeral to record everyone who showed up. Detectives identified every person in attendance, but none of them could be linked to the crime. Weeks passed and they were still no closer to finding the killer. That's how things stayed until

10:03 February 6th. Almost exactly 1 month after Jane's murder, police discovered the body of a 50-year-old woman named Ada Ben. She was found in her apartment just about a mile from Jane's. Ada was lying face down in her bed, her night gown pushed up and her head covered with several blankets. Just like Jane, she'd been bludgeoned in the head with a heavy object, and it looked like she'd also been attacked in her sleep. Local media immediately jumped on the striking similarities between the two cases. But for some reason, police pushed back against this theory. They announced that they saw no connection between the murders and didn't believe they were dealing with the same killer. That statement was met with a predictable

10:49 wave of skepticism. Most students and locals were convinced that a serial predator was out there and that he could strike again at any moment. But just like Jane's case, investigators found no solid leads, and the second murder investigation soon went cold, too. There were no new developments in Jane's case, and eventually it was shelved. Over the years, detectives revisited the file from time to time, but each attempt led nowhere. At one point, the local police department handed the case over to the state police who launched their own investigation. But again, they came up empty. In the late 80s, when DNA analysis was becoming a standard tool in forensics, detectives decided to revisit the physical evidence. That's when they

11:36 found a set of samples collected from Jane's body. The lab managed to isolate a small trace of semen, likely from the suspect, but it wasn't enough to build a full DNA profile. Years later, once the FBI's national DNA database came online, analysts searched for a match, but nothing came up. In 2006, they tried again using more advanced technology, hoping for a breakthrough, but once again, they hit a wall. The case stayed cold for several more years until a group of amateur sleuths took an interest in it. One of them was a retired writer who'd been a young reporter at the time of Jane's murder. In fact, it was only his second day on the job when he was assigned to cover the case. Decades later, he decided to

12:24 revisit it, determined to finally uncover the truth and write a book about what really happened. The second was a journalist from Harvard. When she learned about Jane's murder happening so close to her own campus, she became deeply invested and set out to help solve it. They were joined by a forum moderator who ran a site dedicated to unsolved crimes. And she too was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. They started digging into Jane's case and submitted multiple records requests to the police, but almost all of them were denied. The few documents they did receive were mostly old newspaper clippings with nothing more than surface level facts. At the time, that kind of secrecy was common

13:09 practice in Massachusetts, even though police departments in other states were far more open with cold case files. But the group wasn't ready to give up. They took the fight to an appeals court, arguing that transparency had already helped solve other decades old cases by getting more people involved and generating new leads. The court rejected their petition, but even that didn't stop them. Over the next several years, they kept filing lawsuits against the district attorney's office. One by one, each suit was dismissed, but all that pressure still made a difference. After years of being reminded about the case, authorities finally agreed to reopen it in 2017. Experts took another look at the biological evidence from the crime

13:54 scene, and this time they managed to extract a somewhat stable DNA sample. When they ran it through the FBI database, they got a potential match, a man named Michael Sumpter. The problem was the match was only partial, which wouldn't hold up in court, and the sample wasn't strong enough to extract a full profile. Still, detectives began looking into Sumpter, hoping to find something solid. He had a criminal record for three separate sexual assaults, which is why his DNA was in the system in the first place. Then in 2010 and 2012, police solved two cold case murders from the 1970s after matching old DNA samples to Sumpter's profile. All of his known crimes took place in Boston, not far from Harvard.

14:42 Investigators also learned that around the time of Jane's murder, he was dating a woman who lived near the university. On top of that, he matched the description of the man seen running from Jane's building, both in height and build. Everything pointed to Sumpter as a likely suspect. But there was one big problem. He had died of cancer back in 2001, which meant they couldn't get a direct DNA sample from him. Still, detectives weren't ready to give up. Instead of trying to test Sumpter himself, they decided to look for a close male relative and eventually found out he had a brother who was still alive. It took some time to track him down, but once they did, he agreed to provide a DNA sample. The results came back as a match, though not quite

15:29 perfect. Once again, the issue was with the degraded sample from the crime scene. It just wasn't enough to build a full genetic profile. Even so, the test was conclusive enough to rule out all but 008% of the global male population. That may still be nearly 350,000 people. But considering Sumpter lived near the crime scene and had a history of similar assaults, it was more than enough to point to him as the killer. In 2018, 49 years after Jane's murder, police held a press conference and finally announced that the case had been officially solved. They believed that on the night of the murder, Michael Sumpter followed Jane home and waited until her boyfriend left. Then he climbed up the fire

16:14 escape, came in through the kitchen window, and attacked her with the intent to assault. As for why the DNA match wasn't made until 2017, detectives had a simple explanation. Sumpter's DNA had been in the system for years, but the sample from Jane's case was so degraded that earlier technology couldn't get a strong enough profile to even find a partial match. It was only with newer, more sensitive equipment that they were able to make the connection. In the two other murder cases linked to Sumpter, full DNA profiles had been available, making those matches easier to confirm. Police were never able to link him to the murder of the second woman found a month later. The problem was there was no usable DNA from that crime scene, so detectives couldn't say for sure. But

17:01 given the eerie similarities between the two cases, many believe Sumpter was responsible for that one, too. As for the reddish powder found in Jane's room and on her body, something that sparked theories about ancient burial rituals, police believed it was most likely just pigment from the paint she used in her artwork. There was no evidence it had anything to do with the murder itself. In the end, Jane's case was finally closed, even if it took nearly five decades. And much of that was thanks to the small group of citizens who refused to let her story be forgotten and pushed the police to give the case another look. Share your thoughts on this story in the comments section and don't forget to press the like button if you enjoyed my video. Thank you for watching.