Science Vs - Murder in the Ivory Tower

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

It’s 1849, and a gruesome murder has just happened at Harvard. As body parts turn up, the science of the day is put to the ultimate test to find out: who committed this brutal killing? Prof. Paul Collins tells us how this morbid mystery unfolds.   Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsMurderInTheIvoryTower In this episode, we cover: (00:00) The murder that shocked Harvard (02:35) A very rich man disappears (06:08) The tea chest of horrors (07:34) The professor (09:33) The janitor (12:00) The case against the professor  (14:25) The trial (17:48) 1800s forensics enter the picture (25:29) The verdict This episode was produced by Kaitlyn Sawrey with help from Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn and Odelia Rubin. Editing by Blythe Terrell, with help from Caitlin Kenney. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to Jessica Murphy and the team at the Harvard University Archives, plus Lars Trembly and Matthew Nelson, Frank Lopez, Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zukerman Family. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, the story of a weird and gruesome murder. It's one that shocked America and put science to the ultimate test. If you've got little kids around, maybe tuck them in at night before you listen to this one. Alright, let's jump in. The abdomen had been opened and the intestines taken out. That's senior producer Rose Rimler. She just said, the abdomen had been opened and intestine taken out.

She's whispering because we're in a library right now. We're poring over the details of the murder. First, the thorax and left thigh of the corpse had been subjected to the action of fire, as shown by the singed hair and the partially roasted state of the skin. Ew, I feel like we have better words than roasted. It's upsetting. This crime went down in 1849. And we first made this episode a couple of years ago, but wanted to share it again because, oh boy, is it a goodie.

And this murder, it had the perfect setting. The very prestigious Harvard University. And there's everything that you would want in a sordid crime story. There's a cast of characters that included one of the richest men in Boston, a suspicious janitor, a noted professor, and then at the center of it all, this mysterious mutilated corpse. So we have this like half roasted.

Half dissolved, but not quite. Body. Who could have done this? Some sick motherf***er. Rise. And we're breaking open this case because to catch the killer and bring them to justice, it took all the cutting-edge science that the 19th century had to offer, and it broke new ground

as Harvard scientists used early forensics to crack this case. So, come with us as we put on our trench coats, grab our magnifying glass and find out who done it. When it comes to podcasts, there's lots of true crime, but then there's... I'm sick of mother... Science vs Murder in the Ivory Tower is coming up just after the break it's really not important to me to have a lot of things to show off fancy cars

you know a giant home those things are just not part of who I am. But I've been coached and I've learned through my advisor that it's not one size fits all. Everyone has their own preferences. Everything that I do with Edward Jones is tailored to who I am. Edward Jones. We do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology and what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI.

And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. Welcome back. We start our story in Boston on Friday, November 23rd, 1849. The streets are full of horses and carriages. There's a chill in the New England air. Good day, sir. Thanksgiving is right around the corner. And one of Boston's richest men is out collecting rent money.

His name is Dr. George Parkman. Bostonians knew him as a really, really, really rich landowner in Boston. This is Paul Collins, a professor at Portland State University, and he's written a book about this murder mystery that we're telling you today. It's called Blood and Ivy. And so, Paul told us more about this George Parkman fella. He was known as being kind of a miser. And he would actually go around and collect the rents himself on foot because he did not want the expense of a horse.

He was known as being really tough with his tenants. Like your classic kind of Mr. Scrooge. Yeah, I mean, there is something very Scrooge-like about him. A money-grubbing Scrooge. Sounds like a guy with a lot of enemies. And Mr. Parkman, he was very recognizable. He had a jutting lower jaw. It was very distinct.

And he tended to walk around with it up in the air. So, you know, he's almost like the caricature that you would imagine of a somewhat stuffy, snooty, rich guy. And this Friday in chilly November, it seemed like a regular day for Mr. Parkman. With his jutting jaw, he was out doing his rounds, collecting money. He's later seen at the grocery jaw, he was out doing his rounds, collecting money. He's later seen at the grocery store, and he told the man at the counter, I've got to go to the Harvard Medical School. I'll be back in five to pick up my things. And then he leaves behind a head of lettuce. From here, Mr. Parkman is spotted trotting off

to the school. He's actually seen walking up to the medical school building, which is not an unusual thing. He would often stop by there. But on this day, an unusual thing does happen. After Mr. Parkman goes to the school, he vanishes. And there's like some scattered seeming sightings of him around the city after that, but they're hard to confirm. Nobody actually speaks to him

after he's seen at the medical school. When Mr. Parkman doesn't return home, his family isn't sure what happened. Maybe he'd gone for a wander in the woods? After several days, he still doesn't return. The family starts thinking, well, perhaps he had some kind of mental breakdown. He'd had breakdowns in the past, even talked about suicide. So perhaps he jumped off a bridge.

Some suspected foul play. After all, Mr. Parkman was carrying a lot of money with him at the time. Perhaps he was murdered for the cash. The family plasters the city with missing persons posters and a $3,000 reward, which is roughly a hundred grand today. And so the town goes nuts searching for this man. They scour through Parkman's properties, vacant lots, railway stations. They sweep the medical school and even drag the river for his body. And yet, nothing. Things are looking hopeless. A week goes by and finally, a breakthrough.

It comes from a janitor who lives in the basement of the Harvard Medical School. And this janitor seems to know about everyone's comings and goings in the building. So he tips off the police. He's like, Oi, you missed something in one of the labs at Harvard. And the police, they don't mess around. So they break the door down and they tip over a tea chest,

a large tea chest that was in the lab. And an entire human thorax basically falls out. If you didn't catch that, he said an entire human thorax fell out of the T-chest. That's right. A chest was in the chest. And if that wasn't enough... The thorax was sort of hollowed out and had had, like, a thigh shoved into it in order to just shove it all into this chest. What? So what whoever did this did was ultimately cut the body up into various bits

and then scooped out the innards of the torso and then shoved a thigh in there and put it in a case? Yeah. They just found all these parts that had been kind of pulled apart in a very bizarre manner. Parts of the thigh and thorax had been soaked in some chemical and then burnt. And these details would end up being really important.

There was also a furnace in the lab and when police raked through the ashes, they found the remains of a human skull, a lower jaw, gold fillings and artificial teeth. Whoever had access to this lab is now looking very, very suspicious. And the police learn that there is one man who has a key, a professor of chemistry who'd been at Harvard for 25 years. This was actually his private laboratory.

And his name is John Webster. But he doesn't seem like an obvious suspect for murder. He's a family man married with four kids. Webster is this sort of strange figure in a way because he seems to be a fairly competent professor. He's made some attempts at inventions that kind of don't go anywhere. He's just not all that great.

He's like the rest of us, mediocre. Yeah. So by all accounts, John Webster was a fairly average chemistry professor. It's just that now he's a fairly average chemistry professor with a hollowed out thorax in a tea chest in his lab. And the police don't waste any time. They see the body parts and immediately arrest the professor, dragging him back to the medical school and asking him to explain why a dismembered corpse is scattered around his lab.

And they lay out these parts that they've been finding in front of him and say, what is this? What is this doing in your lab? And he can't explain. And the only thing he says over and over again is that the janitor has betrayed him, that the janitor is somehow behind this. Uh-huh. So the janitor emerges as suspect number two. The janitor's name is Ephraim Littlefield. And remember, he was the person that led the police to the professor's lab in the first place. Which I guess is a bit suspicious. And now the professor has turned around and said, I've been framed.

It's the janitor that you want. And I can even tell you how he snuck into my lab. Webster was telling his team, you guys have to go look at the door to my lab because you'll discover that you can pry it up in such a way that someone could break into the lab and plant something. So that's how the janitor got in. And even though Mr. Littlefield is a professional janitor, we found some dirt on him.

In fact, he doesn't look nearly as squeaky clean as the professor. He's often described as a swamp Yankee. He is fond of a drink or two. And he allegedly had been quietly running some card games at the medical school late at night. So in his downtime, he's a drinker and a gambler. But the real killer piece of evidence against him was what he did at work. Besides cleaning the premises, he helped to procure dead bodies.

He literally knew where the bodies were buried. At the time, anatomy students at Harvard were desperate for bodies to dissect. And getting those corpses was dirty business. It often meant paying off body snatchers who literally dug corpses out of graveyards. Yeah, this janitor was really kind of the middleman. He's the guy that would get the money from the professors and then go talk with the body snatchers. So clearly this janitor didn't have a big issue with handling corpses for cash. And we know that Mr. Parkman had a lot of money on him when he disappeared. Plus, since there was a reward, if the janitor did this dirty deed, he would now

get paid twice when he stole the cash and again when he led the police to the body. With that kind of money, this janitor could have made a killing. So, who is responsible for the chopped up body at Harvard? Was it the professor in the laboratory with the chemicals or the corpse collecting janitor in the basement? Who knows? But soon, evidence starts piling up against one of our suspects, the professor. Turns out he has a motive too, and it's the oldest in the book.

You see, the professor owed lots of money to the missing Mr. Parkman. He was, in fact, flailing in a quicksand of debt. Deeply, disastrously in debt. And in debt to Parkman in particular. He owed him thousands of dollars. He had literally signed away every book, every piece of clothing, right down to the bed linens in his house. Just all his property.

It turns out that the professor had a taste for the finer things in life. He spent all of his inheritance on a stupidly fancy house, and with what Harvard was paying him, it wasn't nearly enough to keep up with his lavish lifestyle. And so the professor was in the red to the Scrooge of Boston, owing more than a yearly salary to the bloke. It then emerges that this chemistry professor was no mild-mannered nerd.

Newspapers report rumours that he had such a quick temper that his nickname while he was a student was Sky Rocket Jack. OK, and then finally, there's his job. The professor studies chemistry, right? But he's not cooking up new life-saving medicines at the medical school. Oh, no. He studies what chemicals do to the human body. Chemicals like arsenic.

The chunks of body in the professor's lab and the fact that he owed the dead man lots and lots of money, it looks bad for the professor. Bad enough for prosecutors to take this case to trial. Yes, the professor would be charged with the murder of Mr George Parkman. After the break, the trial against the professor. 19th century forensic science gives this case everything it's got. We'll learn how to dissolve a human body, 19th century style, and try to identify a corpse

from the hairiness of its legs. Hair raising science, coming up. Welcome back to The Biggest News in 1850. We've learnt that a wealthy Scrooge type, aka Mr Parkman, has gone missing, and the last place he was seen was at Harvard Medical School. A mutilated corpse has been found in the lab of a chemistry professor who's now on trial for murder. And this case goes 19th century viral. New railroads were built and brand-new telegraph poles strung up, allowing news of the Parkman case to travel to Wisconsin, Texas, and Florida. In fact, the story of Mr. Parkman's murder even made it to

Australia. And back in Boston, the locals couldn't get enough. Here's Professor Paul Collins again. They had a real problem at the courthouse. People fighting each other, punching each other in the face trying to get in. It was pretty nuts. So many people wanted to witness the trial of the Harvard professor that officials had to rotate people through the courtroom. By the end of the trial, about 60,000 spectators had passed through the courthouse. Oh my gosh, 60,000! It's equivalent to almost half the population of the city.

It seems that everyone wants to sticky beak on the trial of the chemistry professor accused of killing one of the richest men in Boston. And you could understand why this was one of the hottest seats in town. I mean, this trial, it's got a fancy professor, a dodgy janitor and a missing rich man. All the trimmings of a Broadway show. One that you'd kill to see. And with all the evidence lined up against the professor, you'd think that this case was a slam dunk. But things take a rather curious turn when the professor's legal team came up with a rather intriguing argument.

They basically say, look, you are accusing our client of killing Mr George Parkman, but you don't even know if the body that you found in his lab is Mr Parkman. I mean, think about it. You've got a thorax without a head, chunks of a skull and parts of a leg. That could be just about anyone. On top of that, this corpse was found in a medical school, and there were dead bodies all over the place. They said, well, this could be anybody.

It's a whole building full of cadavers. Like we had mentioned, there were cadavers around for the students to dissect. And in fact, the students at this school cut up so many bodies that Harvard literally built the place to deal. And in fact, the students at this school cut up so many bodies that Harvard literally built the place to deal with all these corpses. They had this dissecting room, in effect, over the river or over an area that was very accessible to the river so that they could just dump this stuff out. So yeah, I mean, they literally designed the building with cadavers in mind. And every now and then, the odd body part would be found around Harvard.

Like, leading up to the trial, some hands were found in the river near the medical school, and the police thought, aha, these are Mr. Parkman's hands. But then a sheepish medical professor comes forward and says, Sorry, oh mate, that one's mine. I put it into the river to see how it decomposes. Hmm. Touche, defense team. But seriously, though, in 1850, how would you prove that these body parts are Mr. Parkman's? At the time, there was, of course, no DNA evidence. In fact, scientists wouldn't even understand what DNA was for another hundred years. And fingerprinting wouldn't be used in courts for decades. Not that it mattered.

They didn't even have this corpse's fingers. And so in a desperate attempt to prove that the body in the professor's lab was in fact Mr. Parkman, the prosecutors turned to some rather bizarre legal strategies. For example, one of the legs found was particularly hairy, and so they tried to identify him that way. That was one of the weirder moments of the trial. So they talked to Parkman's brother-in-law, and they asked him, well, were his legs hairy? And his brother-in-law is a bit embarrassed about being asked about this. He says, well, you know, there was this one time where he pulled up his pant leg for some reason, and yeah, he had kind of hairy legs.

It's amazing to think about that in a trial today because we have dna evidence but to imagine that in order to identify someone as a legitimate piece of evidence they're like how hairy was these legs the prosecutors are gonna need a hair more proof and so they find some evidence that we can really sink our teeth into. Bits of dentures and a jaw were found in the furnace of the professor's lab. And so the prosecution thinks, perhaps we can prove this is Mr Parkman by his teeth. And they catch a lucky break.

So shortly before his disappearance, Mr Parkman had visited a dentist to be fitted for dentures. And that dentist had a cast of exactly what Mr. Parkman's jaw looked like. So the prosecution calls the dentist to the stand, and they say, basically, do you recognize these bits? And the moment the dentist saw the jaw, he knew exactly what he was looking at. He said, quote, Dr. Parkman is gone. We shall see him no more. Tears fell down his face and some people in the crowd broke down crying.

And you see, the dentist could identify Mr. Parkman's jaw because it was so odd looking. This is what we've come for we're currently looking at the casts that the dentist made of mr parkman's jaw i got to see the cast of mr parkman's Jaw with senior producer Rose Rimler because it's still kept in the archives at Harvard. And so this became this critical piece of evidence to say that that body in the professor's laboratory, that must have been Mr. Parkman because he had this weird jaw. It is kind of protuberant.

But it wasn't just that his jaw was so protuberant. We got to see a cast of his dentures as well and it turns out they were even weirder because Mr. Parkman only had a few teeth left and so his dentist actually made dentures that would fit around them. This is such a specific cast. You would absolutely be able to identify someone based on this. Yeah, there's like three clustered on one side and one by itself on the other side. You could just have this like scraggly remains of teeth. That would be pretty, yeah, totally like a fingerprint almost.

You might think that this would have clenched the case. But at the time, introducing this kind of evidence was a total gamble. It was the first time that dental evidence was introduced into a murder trial in America. And just the idea of identifying a whole person based on pieces of their body was all pretty new and untested science. On top of all that, the defense team had their own dental expert. Here's Paul again. The defense brings in another dentist

and says, could you look at a tooth or at a piece of jaw or at a bit of a denture and actually identify who it came from? And the guy says, no. So there's almost this battle of the dentist that basically happens in the courtroom. And it goes on and on.

These are definitely his teeth. No way. You'd never know. You couldn't know. Then finally, the dentist for the chemistry professor crumbles and admits, well, it might be Mr. Parkman. What seemed like this wild and untested new form of evidence suddenly becomes very, very powerful. Okay, so the prosecution seems to have convinced people that this body

is indeed Mr. Parkman's. But there is one more hurdle. The prosecution now needs to explain why, if it was the professor who'd done it. Why did he leave the body in this weird, dismembered state? After all, he's a chemistry professor. If he did commit the murder, surely he would have done a better job of getting rid of the body. Well, yeah, he's a chemistry professor. Why didn't he just dissolve the body? An expert in chemicals takes the stand and says,

yes, you can dissolve a body using strong chemicals. But here's the thing. You need a ton of them, particularly to dissolve an entire human body. Parkman was not actually a very heavy guy. He was maybe only 140 pounds. Just all chin. Right.

But I mean, that's like industrial quantities. He doesn't have anything like that. And he doesn't have any containers in his lab that are remotely big enough to do that. And there was evidence that someone had tried to dissolve the body. So an expert on the stand, along with this dream team of other Harvard alumni, had done a cutting-edge chemical analysis of the dismembered corpse. This was really, you know, CSI Boston 1800s. And, well, remember how there were those weird chemicals

on the body parts found in the lab? Well, the analysis revealed that some of Parkman's body parts had been soaked in this chemical called potash lye. But there clearly wasn't enough there to disappear an entire body. So that would explain why Mr Parkman's body hadn't been completely destroyed by chemicals. The professor simply didn't have enough. Parts of the corpse, if you'll remember, had also been roasted by fire. And there was a small furnace in the laboratory. So then the question became, why weren't the body parts burnt completely? Another learned doctor takes the stand.

One who has a lot of experience getting rid of bodies. And he says... Well, yeah, I burn lots of bodies. And actually, you need a good big stove for it and you need lots of kindling and you don't want to use the wrong kind of coal. And, you know, he goes over all these details. And basically what he points out is that the professor really doesn't have the right kind of stove or the right kind of fuel.

The prosecution argues that this fairly average chemistry professor did a fairly average job of getting rid of a body. The crowd in the court gasped. Or so we imagined. After the professors totter off the stand, the jury had to work out what the Charles Dickens to do with all this newfangled scientific evidence. The scientific testimony about the teeth, the chemicals and the fire, it all seemed to add up to the professor having done it.

But at the same time, there were no witnesses who saw the professor kill anyone. No one heard a scream, and this professor's never fallen afoul of the law before. And he's pleading innocence, insisting that a sketchy janitor has pulled one over everyone. And, you know, there's no conclusive evidence of any kind. Just some toffee professors, a protuberant jaw, a weird set of dentures and a curious chemical analysis. Would the science be enough?

At around 8pm, the jury retires to consider the verdict. Just two and a half hours later, they come back and declare him... guilty. The professor was sentenced to death and the papers went wild. The excitement at this juncture was intense. The prisoner sank back in his chair and wept. An awful and unbroken silence ensued. The jury, as well as the prisoner, trembled and grew faint.

May God, of his infinite goodness, have mercy on your soul. But for anyone who still had doubts about the professor's guilt, the truth would soon be revealed. As Professor John Webster sat in his cell awaiting his hanging, he confessed to his minister, and the whole sordid tale was later published in the papers. Here's what the professor said happened. Mr Parkman, the Scrooge of Boston,

came hassling him to repay his debts. He'd always hassled the professor for money, but on that day in November, Mr. Parkman took it one step further and threatened to have the professor fired. By Webster's account, he picks up the nearest thing, which is basically a large sort of stick of wood, and just hits him as hard as he can in the head, Parkman drops dead, and Webster panics. And that's where everything then unravels. And without the dental evidence, the chemical analysis, the scientists, this fancy professor might have gotten away with it. He might have been able to hide behind the reputation of such a prestigious college. After all, at first, who would believe that a family man and a respected professor at

Harvard could commit murder? But in the end, at least this time, the science convinced them and won out. I guess murder was on the syllabus. That was my David Cruz. I can see a sign. Who are you? Looks like the dentist took a bite out of crime.

Who are you? What about, um, maybe Mr. Bachman shouldn't have been so mouthy. Who are you? Bachman shouldn't have been so mouthy. Ooh! All right. That's Science vs Murder in the Ivory Tower.

If you want more gory details about this trial, you have to check out Paul Collins' book. It's called Blood and Ivy, the 1849 murder that scandalised Harvard. It's a really great read, so I do think you should check it out. Also, on our Instagram, which is science underscore VS, we've got photos of Mr Parkman's strange jaw, at least the cast of it,

and some fun shots of Rose and I hanging out in Boston. Also, if you are on TikTok, come and say hello. I'm at Wendy Zuckerman. I'd love to hear from you. This episode was produced by Caitlin Sori with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler, Meryl Horne and Odelia Rubin. We're edited by Blythe Terrell with help from Caitlin Kenney. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.