Criminal - Professor Quaalude

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

John Buettner-Janusch was one of the first Americans to study lemurs. He held prestigious faculty positions at Yale, Duke and NYU, before surprising everyone with a series of increasingly bizarre crimes.  Peter Kobel's Book is The Strange Case of the Mad Professor. You can learn more about lemurs at The Duke Lemur Center, which Peter Klopfer and John Buettner-Janusch founded together. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In 1959, an anthropologist named John Butner Yonish started making trips from New Haven to Madagascar to collect lemurs. And there are all these very funny stories, local stories, in the New Haven Register about the lemurs getting out of their cages or the labs and climbing up to the top of some of those beautiful buildings and crying out. So people were getting very impatient with all of his lemurs. We're hearing about John Butner Yonish, everyone called him BJ, and his lemurs from author Peter Coble. According to one story in the New Haven Register, a pregnant lemur once escaped and crawled out the window. She climbed up a drainpipe to a fourth-story ledge. BJ tried to lure her down. He was terrified. Eventually, the fire department was called, and she was rescued. Lemurs are only found in the wild in Madagascar. Many lemur species

have become extinct, and in 2012, they were named the most endangered mammals in the world. There are more than a hundred species of lemur. They can be as little as one ounce, or as big as 20 pounds. Some have long, black-and-white striped tails. Some are kind of bald. Every lemur I've seen has round, expressive eyes. B.J. was one of the first Americans to study lemurs, and he's inspired generations of lemur researchers since. In 1964, he visited Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, to give a talk about lemurs. A biologist named Peter Klopfer attended that talk.

Back then, he was a newly tenured Duke professor. His field of study was mother-infant bonding, mostly in goats and deer. Peter Klopfer says he didn't even know what a lemur was. So he was surprised how much he enjoyed BJ's talk. He was so intrigued that he introduced himself to BJ after. The two men hit it off. They talked about research. Peter invited BJ to visit the land where he studied his goats and their babies.

B.J. was amazed that Duke gave Peter so much space to keep his animals. All he had for his lemurs at Yale were cages. And he knew that they weren't behaving normally in the cages. And he'd seen them in the wild in Madagascar. The aesthetics of a caged animal that you've known in the wild are not pretty. And he said, wow, you've got all this space. I've got these animals in tiny little cages because Yale won't let me have any space for proper facility. If I let you use my lemurs for your study, will you let me have space to house them?

He wanted to give them some freedom. Exactly. Peter Klopfer and B.J. came up with a plan to work together. It took about a year to put in motion. B.J. got a job teaching at Duke, and Peter continued researching mother-infant bonding, but in lemurs instead of goats.

BJ brought about 90 lemurs to Durham and put them in a goat barn on Peter's research land. Then they had to figure out a way to make the land safe and workable for 90 active primates, a much harder challenge than dealing with a bunch of goats. Lemurs are good climbers, which makes them very good at escaping.

And some, like mouse lemurs, are so small they can easily slip through cracks. It took almost a year. We got the facility built with sizable runs, both indoors and outdoors, and fencing that allowed us to let the larger lemurs loose altogether in the forest, which we were able to properly fence and lemur-proof. That was the beginning of what is now called the Duke Lemur Center, a sanctuary dedicated to research and preservation of lemurs, complete with a breeding program.

Peter Klopfer has been there since the very beginning, in 1966. He's still there. These days, he studies sleep patterns in fat-tailed dwarf lemurs. His hand raised generations of lemurs, some the Galagos in his home. Well, back in the day, before the federal regulations on animal care and use

became as strict as they now are, I would walk down the corridors with lemurs on my shoulder. We had bush babies running loose in my house. My children grew up with them as playmates. Well, that sounds fun. Oh, it was great fun, although it was also costly fun. The galagos are urine markers. When they urinate,

they put their hands in the urine and then mark. Do you really like lemurs? Oh, well, I'm totally sold on lemurs, yes. Peter Klopfer says that he and B.J. were building something extraordinary. It was exciting. But B.J. was not an easy person to get along with.

Peter describes him as egoistic and says BJ tended to dominate conversation. According to author Peter Coble, BJ stood out at Duke. He dressed up for everything. Bright suits from Saks Fifth Avenue, huge horn-rimmed glasses. His short hair was dyed blonde. He often wore a large button that read, I'd rather be in Paris. Here's Peter Klopfer.

He was the sort of person who captured your attention and was always on center stage. Loud, ebullient, conspicuous. He dressed in a very flashy manner. You never saw neckties as brilliant as his. And one day it would be in conjunction with a formal three-piece suit, and the next day he would be wearing a Nero jacket with a brightly colored sash. He was colorful.

During his time at Duke, B.J.'s career took off. He wrote two successful anthropology textbooks. Students loved him, voting him among the best professors on campus. He sometimes signed his letters, lemurlogically yours. Things were going well for him at Duke, but B.J. didn't like living in Durham much. He said it was a cultural backwater. His wife, Vina, agreed. They got out of town as much as they could, often flying to New York just to see an opera. The relation with Veena was more akin to the relationship between two Siamese twins. You almost never, ever saw them except together. Veena and B.J. met in school. She'd always outperformed him. She went on to become a biochemist.

She'd published some papers on her own, but most of her work appeared to be behind the scenes in her husband's lab. Author Peter Coble wonders if Veena was in fact doing most of the work that BJ got credit for. BJ himself gave her credit for the success of his most famous textbook. She supervised all of the research in his lab. Some of his students said he was rarely there. Some of his students said BJ seemed much more interested in having a social life. Veena was the one who kept the work moving forward and kept her husband in check.

Peter Klopfer remembers that BJ had one of the biggest personalities imaginable, that he would dramatically demand money from the department, even banging his fist on the table. Banging on the table and saying, I need another half million dollars or I'm going to leave this place. And he did that once too often. He went to Professor Roberts, who was head of the anatomy

department, and said, I've gotten this offer as the chair of the anthropology department at New York University. Unless you give me such and such, I'm going to go. And Robertson had heard this once too often, and I am told, responded by saying, well, John, I'm sure we all wish you well at your new job. In 1973, B.J. left Duke. He and Veena moved to New York. Taking the job at NYU meant leaving the Leimers behind. He would still study them from a distance

and would occasionally return to Duke to collect blood samples for his research. BJ and Veena got an apartment overlooking Washington Square Park. They hosted elaborate parties and were regulars at the New York Philharmonic. By all accounts, their life was where they wanted it to be. So when Veena had an abdominal complaint that couldn't be diagnosed and it was suggested that she undergo an exploratory surgery from which she did not recover, it was a stunning, stunning event.

I mean, all of us were shocked, because Veena gave every impression of being hale and hearty. She just had abdominal pain that wouldn't go away. And no one thought it was anything really serious. And then she died on the table. What was he like after she died? Well, that's where I think the problem arose. I'm Phoebe Judge.

This is Criminal. After Veena died, BJ's research nearly slowed to a halt. The National Science Foundation withdrew funding. BJ was furious. His work in the lab at NYU continued, but now on a much smaller scale. On paper, BJ was still studying lemur blood. But in practice, no one working in the lab was quite sure what he was doing. One of his graduate students described him as a social gadfly. He started

spending a lot of time in Greenwich Village, going to gay bars. His hours at work became unpredictable. And when he did come into work, his behavior was odd. One of B.J.'s research assistants was an undergraduate student named Richard Macris. One day, B.J. asked Richard Macris to meet him at the lab. It was a Saturday. There weren't many people around. When Richard got to the lab, B.J. announced that they'd be making something called an acetyl anthranilic acid. BJ said it was for lemurs. Richard didn't believe him. He started taking detailed notes of the goings-on in the lab.

He told another professor what BJ was doing, and that professor, Clifford Jolly, snuck into the lab to take photographs and collect chemical samples. He sent them to the DEA to be tested. BJ was making methaqualone, better known by its brand name, Quaaludes, a sedative that was very popular in the 1970s. Sometimes people called them disco biscuits. The DEA immediately began an investigation. Besides Quaaludes, they found traces of LSD, including something BJ allegedly planned to sell as a, quote, chemically pure form of synthesized cocaine.

He'd been using NYU's lab to make party drugs, and his students were helping him, some knowingly, others not. B.J. knew his students would be interviewed by law enforcement, so he gave them some advice. He called those students together and said, if you are quizzed by the prosecutor, before he interrogates you, go ahead and take some tranquilizers because then you can deny charges without giving yourself away, even if you're taking a lie detector test. Well, one of the students was wired. The student wearing the wire got BJ on tape, which meant that BJ was now not only charged with manufacture and possession of illicit substances,

but also with obstruction of justice. He denied everything. Here's Peter Kobel. He spread this story that he was making, quote, neurotoxins, unquote, to experiment on his lemurs, and they were going to be used for behavior modification. So, basically, when BJ's caught, he'd say, well, what's the big deal? I'm making drugs for lemurs.

Yeah, that's what he said. And the whole lewds and lemurs defense strikes me as patently ludicrous. No one had agreed to allow him to test his drugs with lemurs. The whole thing just doesn't hold water for me. BJ continued to stick to his story and said he had planned the experiments with his Duke-Lemur Center co-founder, Peter Klopfer. I wasn't exactly delighted at being implicated, but at the same time figured, well, okay, they caught him with illegal drugs. He needed an excuse. What do you think was going through BJ's head? I think that he was able to justify just about anything he did. The sense of entitlement was overwhelming.

He thought he was a genius and could get away with whatever he wanted. I think he did, yeah. And not even that he was a genius, but he was a man of privilege beyond reproach and above suspicion. Over the years, BJ's former colleagues and students have come up with all kinds of theories about why he did what he did

and how he became so self-destructive. Some say he just wasn't himself after Veena died. He became too overwhelmed with grief. Others have suggested that after she died, he realized she'd been the one doing all the work, that she'd been the real genius. But others say he was just trying to make money and have fun, a brilliant widower trying to entertain himself.

You just have to pick your explanation. BJ was convicted of conspiracy, making illegal drugs, and lying to federal investigators. Federal Judge Charles Bryant presided over the trial. He sentenced BJ to five years in federal prison at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. BJ worked on the prison newsletter called The Doin' Times. Peter Coble writes that BJ turned his cell into a tiny office. He reviewed book manuscripts for friends and continued to work on scientific papers. When a friend visited the prison, BJ introduced his fellow inmates as his colleagues. But BJ continued to say he'd done nothing wrong.

He wrote many letters to friends, outlining the ways in which he believed he'd been wronged. In one letter, he wrote that upon his release, quote, I will certainly take the most awful revenge upon certain people. The Greeks are correct. Blood is a corrective for many wrongs. Thank you. and they call these series essentials. This month they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home.

His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions.

What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. BJ was released from prison on parole in September 1983.

He went back to Wisconsin, where he grew up. He wrote in letters to friends that he spent his time baking cakes, gardening, and taking trips to Lake Superior. He wrote that he planned to return to Madagascar and that he was applying for a grant, but no university would hire him. And for some time, he was sort of an intellectual hobo, sleeping on people's couches, house-sitting

pets. And then about four years after his release, this is the second crime. On February 19, 1987, BJ went to an opera at the Met. He saw Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, an opera about revenge and attempted murder. After it ended, he headed home. He was house-sitting for a friend in Greenwich Village. When he arrived at the door, he was met by a group of police officers and arrested. A few days earlier, on Valentine's Day, a woman had received a box of Godiva chocolates in the mail. They were addressed to her husband, federal judge Charles Bryant. Inside the package, there was a Hallmark card, signed only with a question mark.

The judge's wife ate four pieces of chocolate and became extremely sick. She lost consciousness and wasn't found until Judge Bryant came home from work and rushed her to the emergency room. She was in critical condition for several days, but survived. The FBI determined that each piece of chocolate in the box had been poisoned with a different toxic substance. One piece, uneaten by the judge's wife, could have killed her. And when the FBI tested the outside of the Godiva box, they found a fingerprint. He started making these candies, and he always fashioned himself as a gourmet cook. And he made these candies. He also fashioned these poisons from fairly esoteric substances.

And he made these candies and put them all in a Godiva chocolate box and sent them to the judge out in Westchester on Valentine's Day in 1987. So it had been about four years since he'd been released. So it just goes to show how long he could hold grudges. Police later learned that BJ had sent boxes of chocolate to several other people he felt had wronged him, including someone who'd once denied him tenure. In the end, everyone recovered. At BJ's arraignment, the New York Times reported he was weary-looking,

apparently ill, and wearing a hearing aid. He pled guilty to the attempted murder of Judge Bryant. Peter Klopfer wonders if this was all part of some kind of plan. Do you think that he wanted to get caught? Oh, there's no doubt in my mind. He was inviting... I mean, this is a brilliant man. Whatever else you may say about it. You don't send poison chocolates to a federal judge

and stay free on the street to talk about it. Not if you send them in a way that invites discovery and arrest, which is what he did, of course. He practically had his return address on the parcel. In the apartment kitchen, all of the poisoned paraphernalia and the chocolates, they were laid out as if on display. That furthermore, the package was mailed from a mailbox at the corner where his apartment was.

Why did he want to get caught? My guess is that he just, Nina's dead, my life is over, let's end it. And so he sends these poisoned chocolates, knowing that that's going to send him up for life, because he did it in a way which invited discovery and arrest. This is not a mistake. B.J. was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

He was sent to the Supermax prison in Marion, Illinois, the prison that had been built to replace Alcatraz. He started working on a new book about the lemurs of Madagascar, and like before, B.J. stayed up to date on the latest scientific journals, subscribed to opera news, and exchanged letters with his friends, especially with Peter Klopfer. What was his mood in those letters? He was clearly despondent, but mind still actively working, still coming up with ideas,

kept asking me to look up particular papers, summarize the contents for him. I did ask him, what on earth led you to do this? And he said, I really don't have any recollection of having done it, but if I did do it, I deserved to be in the prison. Even though BJ had tried to implicate Peter in his Quaalude-making scheme and had attempted to murder a federal judge, Peter says he wasn't angry at his friend. He felt sorry for him and says BJ needed to be protected from himself.

They'd write long letters reminiscing about their trips to Madagascar. Peter would update BJ about what the lemurs were up to in Durham. One day, Peter got a different kind of letter from BJ. And so he wrote to me one day and said, I've just discovered that I'm HIV positive and probably have AIDS. This was back when there was no antiviral medication. When you had AIDS, you had a death sentence. BJ died at the age of 67 in a prison hospital.

He was cremated, and his ashes were spread on Cranberry Lake in Wisconsin, near where he grew up. When was the last time you heard from him? Just about the time he entered the hospital with his final bout of pneumonia, just before he died. What did he say? He knew he was dying. He said, I have severe pneumonia and I don't expect to recover.

Then he went on to talk about one of the scientific issues we'd been discussing. You know, the people throughout your lifetime, there may be five or six that are real characters that you come across. Would you say that he's up there as being one of the... Oh, he's the most egregiously colorful character of any of the many I've known. No, no doubt about it. B.J.'s obituary ran in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. It's almost two pages long. Almost all of it speaks to B.J.'s professional accomplishments, the strides he made in the anthropological world,

the love his students felt for him, his award-winning textbooks and articles, it only briefly mentions his two convictions. The obituary ends by saying that BJ, quote, made a strong impression, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Some of his actions were and will remain unfathomable to us. The world is a sadder and duller place without him. Today, the Duke Lemur Center is home to the world's largest and most diverse collection of lemurs outside of Madagascar. You can visit and take a tour. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me.

Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Susanna Robertson is our assistant producer. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Ben Sviola. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com, where we'll also have a link to Peter Kobel's book, The Strange Case of the Mad Professor.

Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia. From PRX. to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems,

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