Woman's Hour - Is Joint Enterprise being used unjustly? A career in virology. A true crime quest. My life in shoes

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

Is the continued use of Joint Enterprise, where an individual can be jointly convicted of the crime of another, unjust?Next week, 800,000 doses of the first coronavirus vaccine will be available. It seems female scientists scientists have been front and centre of the work. According to The Royal College of Pathologists nearly half of their members who specialise in virology are women. We hear from Dr Katrina Pollock from Imperial College, London and Professor Trudie Lang from University of Oxford Both institutions are leaders in virology and work closely together. They tell us about working in the field and what it's like as a career for a woman. Plus we hear from trainee Lydia Gale.Why did Becky Cooper spend a decade investigating the death, 50 years ago, of Harvard student Jane Britton? Plus we continue in our series of my life in shoes: Ciara Jones emailed to tell us about the shoes that have given her hope. From her mum’s high heels when she was stuck in flat black leather shoes after hip treatment, to the bubblegum pink stilettoes she’s looking forward to wearing after covid, Ciara shares her stories with us today.Presenter Krupa Padhy Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Becky Clarke Guest; Clare Warren Guest; Emma Torr Guest; Becky Cooper Guest; Professor Trudie Lang Guest; Dr Katrina Pollock Guest; Ciara Jones Guest; Lydia Gale

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever, radio, podcasts.

You're listening to Krupa Party with the Thursday edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, thank you for joining us. We're looking at a new report that finds women are being jailed for violent crimes they did not commit under what is called joint enterprise. We'll explain that all in the next in our series of My Life in Shoes. One listener will tell us about her journey from flat black leather kiddie pumps to bubblegum pink stilettos. Quite the endearing tale.

And the murder of a young graduate student at Harvard University 50 years ago. That's the subject of a new book which sheds light on that long unresolved case. The author will join us. Remember if you want to react to anything on the programme you can email us via the website or text us on 84844 or find us on Instagram and Twitter. We are on the handle at BBC Women's Hour. But first it's been all eyes on those men and women in lab coats in recent months, those scientists who let's, you know, who probably didn't think they were going to be in the spotlight, quite like they have been in recent months, but they are trying to find us a way out of the pandemic. And now they brought us some good news. Next week, the first doses of the

Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine will be available here. It's the announcement that so many of us have been waiting for since the pandemic began. But of course, we were warned yesterday of the logistical and supply challenges that do lie ahead. The search for the vaccine and understanding the virus has meant all hands on deck in the scientific world and many of those breaking ground have been women. Let's speak to some of them now. Dr. Katrina Pollock is from Imperial College London. Professor Trudy Lang is from the University of Oxford. Both institutions are leaders in virology and work closely together. And we have Dr. Lydia Gale, a virology trainee

at Nottingham University Hospital Trust. Thank you to all three of you for joining us. First of all, let's talk about the huge interest and ongoing reaction, unsurprisingly, to those vaccine rollout plans. I mean, what I want to understand is just what an exciting time this has been for you. Trudy, let's talk about you. You've got 25 years of experience working in infectious diseases. And as I was saying, one doctor told me this has been the most exciting time of his career. Do you agree with that sentiment? Yeah, it's absolutely remarkable.

And yes, I spent many years working in many different pathogens and looking at vaccine projects. And this has just been remarkable. And the science is so exciting and should stand to work for many other things beyond COVID as well so it's yeah it's remarkable. And Lydia you are a trainee in this sector I imagine that the events of recent months and these recent developments only bolster your decision to enter this field? Definitely yes it's been a really exciting time for virology, really interesting, and just shows how much it is at the kind of edges of science pushing forward, really. Yes. I want to talk about some of the potentially specific implications for women.

Katrina, you're working on the Imperial College COVID-19 vaccine project, and I spotted a line by experts in France that the vaccine is likely to be more effective for women than men. How do you understand that? Hi, and thanks for having me on. Yes, that's an interesting observation. And I'm not sure entirely what that's based on. I mean, we know that the virus itself has different effects in men and women, which are quite remarkable. And men, unfortunately, are more at risk of severe disease. And I think we need a lot more research to understand why that is, because that will help us to understand about why the virus makes people

so sick. And from the point of view of vaccines, we need vaccines to work in everybody and they need to work equally well in men and women to protect them from disease. So it's important when we do these trials that we have a big range of society coming forward and in order to study that. And it would be interesting to see if there are different effects over the long term in how men and women respond to those vaccines. But I think it's a bit early to say yet. But as you stress, there is still so much learning to do for us all. And Trudy, on the subject of women, let's talk about pregnant women making the headlines a great deal because they won't be able to take this vaccine. Can you just reiterate why? And then how soon after having their baby can they take it? I think I'm not. That's not my area, really. I think I'll refer back to Katrina. Do you want to come on in here?

Yes, sure. And I mean, pregnancy is something we've been asked about in our trials. And there is now some research that's going underway and Pfizer starting a study and I'm sure there will be more. We know that pregnant women can get severe Covid. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be quite the same as it was with swine flu. So pregnant women don't seem to be at the highest risk like they were with the swine flu pandemic, but we still are seeing severe disease amongst pregnant women. So it's important that we can vaccinate them. But in order to do that work, we have to do some slightly different route of testing the vaccine.

There's more preclinical work to do. And then we have to do specialised studies in order to test it. So it's going to take a bit longer. And so for pregnant women, it's still very important that they maintain, you know, all those social distancing and hand hygiene and so on to prevent infection. But no doubt a hugely worrying time. And also on the subject of women's role in getting vaccinated, I mean, from the nurses and the care home workers, and of course, there are many men in this field as well, to those busy mums and partners who often carry that mental to-do list in their head to ensure that their families get vaccinated. Katrina, staying with you, how big a role do you think women will play when it comes to the

take-up of this vaccine? That's an interesting question. I mean, you know, that's not specifically my remit either, but I think all of us as women will, you know, have made decisions about vaccines. And if we have children, we'll have been involved in making decisions about vaccines for our children. I think it's important that this is a shared responsibility across families. So women will have a role to play in that. But also anybody who's in a caring role who may be able to help people get to vaccination clinics, for example. And it's important that we have a conversation within families about vaccination so that we can support the national programme. Yes. Let's talk about the inner workings of your industry. I mean, this is one industry that many of us this time last year knew very little about.

And here we are trying to learn more and more about how the industry works. Trudy, when I think of a stereotypical scientist, I get an image of an older academic man, salt and pepper hair, thick glasses, a pen in his pocket. And I imagine this isn't the reality. What is the reality of being a woman in your field and the challenges that you may face? Yeah, so I think what we've seen here with COVID is that we need this whole range of scientists, immunologists, clinical researchers, social scientists, and they've all come forward and we've heard all their voices which is fantastic I think typically what's happened in the past is when we've had scientists on the radio and television it's been to talk about a

brand new breakthrough or promoting their own work but certainly most of us working on doing some media work now are doing so because we feel we've got a responsibility to explain the science and try and talk about the unknowns and what results are coming through and what's being learned because you know this is such a new situation but I think scientists have a role to try and contribute to the understanding of of what's going on. Yes and Lydia you've got young children help us understand how being a mum with little ones has impacted your career route and in this in this field specifically yes so I now work part-time but I think that's been there's lots of people that have gone before me who have been working

part-time and have been supporting young families through their career through their training um and i mean in my department i have a lot of amazing role models and who have done um everything from full-time part-time uh research clinical work um in all different fields really and so i think uh that it's i've been really supported um in trying to get that work-life balance um and progress my career at the same time but the reality of the scientific world is that grants and funding they play a huge role in this sector don't they trudy and i imagine for women that they may well pose an obstacle as well yeah i think the the trouble is is that we see lots of brilliant women coming through um as we've just heard from lydia coming through

universities and beginning their career and then the further you go um we we have to survive by being um winning grants um which support our whole teams and our salaries and also publishing and i think that sort of grant and publication system does favour the more sort of thick-skinned and sharp-elbowed. And women are naturally more collaborative and team players. You know, when I had to apply to get my professorship, one of my fantastic male colleagues said, that's great, Trudy, but can you rewrite it and pretend that you're an American man?

Because naturally, we talk about we and us. And, you know, I work with an incredible team. It's a team effort. But the way the system works rewards individuals and principal investigators, they're called. So it is difficult often for women to put themselves in that highly competitive mindset. And it's very tough and you have to keep fighting your way up through the system. So sadly, we do see a lot of attrition as we go up through the field. And it would be good to think about how we might be able to tackle that moving forward. So we get more women staying the distance.

And you talk about it being tough, but I mean distance and you talk about it being tough but i mean let's talk about it being competitive as well very specifically because katrina you're working on this uh vaccine project at imperial college um help me understand is this a kind of race against the virus or as much as it is a race against other organizations to find that vaccine yes it's interesting to hear um trudy's perspective because it's very very much my own perspective in terms of uh of going through this career path and certainly there's a huge amount of competition and i mean some of that competition is is good because um we need to reward the science that is making progress and that is going to solve clinical and public health

problems. We have limited resources and we need to spend it on the best science. But at the same time, there is a huge amount of extraneous competition and posturing, as I'm sure we're all aware in the media, and that is largely a distraction. So yes, it's first and foremost, it's a race against the virus and we're going to need many different vaccines. So I suspect that quite a few will be licensed and will help to save lives around the world. But, yeah, it's certainly the most competitive environment that I've worked in, in what is, as Trudy said, a very competitive career. Fantastic to get your insights. Thank you, Dr. Katrina Pollock there from Imperial College, Professor Trudy Lang from the University of Oxford and Dr. Lydia Gale from the Nottingham University Hospital Trust. And of course, if you do want to catch up with Tim Hartford's series on how to vaccinate the world, or the Woman's Hour special on vaccines, you'll find that all over on BBC Sounds. We're going to spend a bit of time talking about a recent report now, Stories of Injustice,

and what it has revealed about the number and experiences of women in prison under laws of complicity known as joint enterprise. It identifies 109 women convicted using these laws since 2004 and campaigners say they are serving long sentences for crimes they did not commit. Let's speak to Becky Clark, a senior lecturer in criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University, co-author of that report, and Emma Tall, barrister at the charity Law Practice Appeal. Emma, let's start with you. Let's go right back to basics here. What is joint enterprise? Joint enterprise, Krupa, and thanks for having me on this morning, is a legal principle which

allows for an accessory to a crime to be convicted of the same offence as the main perpetrator. To give an example, a person who is involved in a fight who doesn't possess a weapon themselves and who does not inflict any lethal injury can nonetheless be convicted of murder in the same way as the person who actually caused that lethal injury. Right, so very, very specific. Becky, you have co-authored a recent study on the impact of joint enterprise on women, Stories of Injustice, you've called it. And in it, you talk about these 109 women

that you know all who have been imprisoned using this law. Who are they? Well, there are a range of women. You know, they are all ages. So the first, you know, youngest person to be charged was only 13 when charged. And, you know, the women are in the late, some of them in the late 60s in prison now. They're from all over England and Wales, both urban and rural areas, from all different communities and backgrounds. I think for us, one of the most surprising findings really was how many of them

had been convicted of the most serious violent offences. So as Emma just indicated, joint enterprise allows people to be collectively punished. So multiple people convicted for one offence. And without really taking account of the differing roles they may have played, they may not have even participated or been present at the incident. So to have three quarters of these women convicted of murder or manslaughter is really quite shocking. The average prison sentence is 15 years, but, you know, over half of the women are serving life sentences with minimum tariffs of 20 years, 25 years, 30 years. Now, what's important here is they've not committed any violence. So 90% overwhelmingly not committed any violence. They're not the killer. But what happens in the courtroom is they are constructed as being in it together or in some way being a facilitator or even a bystander of the violence.

And that is how their intent becomes inferred. That's an extraordinary figure you've given us. 90% have not committed a violent crime. Becky, to launch your report, you held an online event with several MPs at the Houses of Parliament recently. And one of those taking part was Claire, whose daughter Zoe was imprisoned under joint enterprise three years ago. You interviewed Zoe in prison a couple of years ago.

Just tell us a bit about her. Sure. So we were in an event two weeks ago with MPs, and the political pressure on this is key because I think it was David Lammy who said in our event two weeks ago, the law seems to be unable to fix this. Legislation is required, is what the Shadow Justice Secretary said. But yeah, we interviewed Zoe's family and many other prisoners and families as part of the research. And I think Zoe's case is reflective of a number of other cases, you know, where a violent event occurs

and the failure of a female to act in that context. They may be a bystander or they may be in the vicinity but not act in that way. They're brought into the police investigation. Perhaps the police are unsure who has committed the act or there's a lack of evidence. So there's almost a tactic around charging a raft of people and joint enterprise is what enables this really.

But once charged with, for example, joint enterprise murder, you then stand trial for that offence, you know. And in our research, you know, over half of the women are not at the scene. So they're charged for a violent offence. And maybe they've made a phone call before the violent act took place, perhaps as part of a drug deal. You know, there are drugs and alcohol is something in these cases as well. And you'll hear about it in Zoe's case. Yes. Well, let's take a listen to Zoe's mum, Claire, giving her testimony at the event.

We are here today because our daughter Zoe is a victim of joint enterprise and a miscarriage of justice. Zoe is a loving, caring, amazing young lady. In December 2016, Zoe did not murder the victim. She was not violent and did not participate or encourage any of the violence which was carried out in any part of the non-fatal or fatal part of the attack. In fact, after the victim took a drugs overdose just a few hours earlier, it was Zoe who alerted the emergency services and cared for the victim performing CPR and saving his life. Later that night, he would be assaulted by two men and murdered by one of them. She was questioned and on release, a female police officer hugged and said to Zoe's dad,

she took no part. Zoe was NFA'd, no further action taken against her, one month before the original bail date, and the police recognised her, Zoe, as a key prosecution witness, not a suspect. The principal had been arrested and charged within the first few days of the incident. The investigation then changed due to a man contacting the police to tell them Zoe had made a confession of murder to him. Zoe was arrested from home from a bed and charged with murder. The police then labelled her as being in at the kill together. Zoe had known this man for approximately two to three years and believed this man was initially supporting her following the murder. They had grown closer since January but he became jealous and controlling if Zoe was in contact with other friends. The relationship broke

down and four days later when he realised Zoe was really certain she was not going back to him he rang the police. He had been begging Zoe to go back to him. We have all the text messages. Many texts sent to myself and Zoe's dad too. These texts are crucial to see but we have struggled with this as Zoe was charged before any analysis of this digital evidence. We know this because the two police officers in the case told us they had around 20,000 items of this type to review. They told us this just after charging Zoe when they sat with us for three whole hours telling us the investigation was a mess but dismissed any input or any explanation from us. The courts didn't hear the context or the whole story so wouldn't understand, didn't even understand Zoe's fear of violence. Zoe told us in police she was

terrified. This is the reason why she didn't act and run away. Zoe said she was terrified and the man who days earlier had threatened to murder her and the victim had now murdered the victim right in front of her. She thought she, she really thought she was next. Zoe will now spend 17 years in prison, being sentenced only two days after her 20th birthday for a murder she did not commit. We never forget the victim. We feel it's very important to say that he was probably the one person

who would have never treated Zoe in the way others did. They had been friends for approximately a couple of years. This time in prison has had an immense impact on Zoe and our whole family. We need help to address what has happened and to speak out. Previously, professionals involved with Zoe have talked the talk but failed to walk the walk. Somebody has to listen and something has got to change. And that was Claire there, Zoe's mum. And you can just hear there how much this impacts families and loved ones of all of those who have been imprisoned.

Emma, I know this is not your case, but just explain to us how difficult it is to overturn a sentence where a miscarriage of justice may have taken place. At Appeal, we receive many letters from women who are in prison for crimes they did not commit. And when a case involves joint enterprise, women have to seek leave from the Court of Appeal to overturn their convictions. And not only do they have to obtain leave from the Court of Appeal to show that there is merit in their application, they also have an additional hurdle to overcome. And that is that they need to show substantial injustice has occurred. What that means, therefore, is that the Court of Appeal has an extremely high, if not impossible, threshold. And since 2016, when the Jogi case, which changed the law on joint enterprise, took place... Just tell us what the Jogi case is.

Sure. Just to deal with that, Krupa, if I may may we've heard that many women are in prison having been convicted under joint enterprise in 2016 the supreme court accepted that the law the law had been wrongly applied and so the Jody case had a huge impact in the sense that it changed the way in which joint enterprise should be applied during the trial process and the way in which people could be convicted under joint enterprise. But that leaves little comfort for those who have been convicted under joint enterprise before the Jogi case. And just briefly explain what happened with the Jogi case? So Jogi changed the law in the sense that it was no longer possible to convict people for joint enterprise where they simply foresee the outcome of the offence. It's a change in the law which has been welcomed by many commentators and us at Appeal, but what it doesn't do is it doesn't mean that

those who have been wrongly convicted can now come back to the Court of Appeal and have those appeals, have those convictions quashed. As I referred to a moment ago, there is an additional hurdle that appellants have to reach, and that is showing substantial injustice. We believe at appeal, and in fact the report concludes, that this is an additional barrier for women. And we're talking here, as Becky referred to, women who were not present during the scene of a crime and who did not participate in any violence themselves. OK, so 2016 was meant to be a turning point.

Let's get the reaction to this report from the Crown Prosecution Service, who write, it is right that those who assist or encourage someone to commit a violent crime are also prosecuted and punished. However, prosecutors assess the evidence against each individual and have to prove to a jury beyond reasonable doubt that a defendant is guilty. Case law has clarified what the prosecution must prove regarding intention and our legal guidance on this is publicly available. Each convicted defendant

also has the right to appeal. Turning back to you Becky, what do you want to see happen now? Well I think you know it's important to say that even though the Supreme Court ruled in 2016 there's lots of evidence to suggest nothing has changed even in those cases being heard since then. So 16 of the 109 women in the research have been convicted since that ruling. There's a litany of evidence now demonstrating the unequal application of joint enterprise. I've been part of a research project

demonstrating its impact around racial disparities, so young people from the black community being swept into trials where the notion of a racialized gang is used in court and in court what's happening is prosecution teams are signaling to the juries that these women are not credible they're using some of those age-old kind of popular and cultural and mediated narratives about women as bad mothers as as failed women, as feckless, you know, Black, Asian or other minoritized women are established through racist stereotypes. And what happens in

joint enterprise cases is that the prosecution, without evidence, they tell a story to infer intent and culpability. And that must be questioned be questioned you know we would argue for the end of the use of of joint enterprise it's only re-emerged 20 years ago after being dormant for a very long time yes i was very surprised to read that its origins are in the victorian era that's right so you know we've we've sort of looked back to this legal doctrine and started to use it and i think we can see that see that it's a tool that comes into play when policing or other kind of features of the system fail, you know, and they're trying to address these failures in the system.

It is systemic, you know, women treated as victims in a criminal justice system, not believed, and also now criminalised, not believed. It's something that you clearly highlight is clearly deeply embedded. Becky Clark from the Manchester Metropolitan University, co-author of that report, thank you. Also our thanks to Emma Torr

from the Charity Law Practice Appeal for explaining that joint enterprise story for us. The trees are going up, the lights are on the street, and what more do we need? Jane. Jane is with you tomorrow, and we'll be trying to get you into the Christmas spirit by finding out how to make the perfect mulled wine and other festive drinks.

If you've got any tips for her for making the perfect festive tipple, do get in touch or reach us via the website. Text us on 84844 and of course we are over on twitter and instagram on the handle at bbc woman's hour and if you missed the live program you can catch up by downloading the bbc sounds app now many of us have that accessory that triggers a memory of something or someone it might be a hand handbag, it might be a necklace, and of course, shoes. And we've been asking you to send in your stories about your life in shoes. Keira Jones from Liverpool did just that, and her tale is one of childhood hope and adoration for her lovely mum,

and she's here to share that with us. Thank you for joining us, Keira. Thank you very much, Krupa. Lovely to be here. Absolutely. And thank you for emailing us, because I read your email. It was so endearing. Tell us about the shoes you had to wear at the beginning of your life and, of course, why? Yeah, sure. Well, I am, my accent tells you there, I'm from Dublin, Ireland originally, and I was born with a congenital dislocation of my hip, which required me to be in hospital for about a year as a baby from about age one to two to correct that problem and the follow-up treatment was that I had to wear prescribed shoes for the first seven years of my life. Now when I say prescribed this is we're going back to about

1972-73 in lovely Ireland and shoes Irish, if anyone's interested, are known as brogue, brogie. We have brogues over here as well, don't we? And they really don't refer flatteringly to shoes. So my shoes, they came in a choice, wide variety of colours, black or brown. Oh, that's wide, yeah. Yeah, it was really, really good.

Extensive. Really stretched the imagination of a little girl. And they were flat, obviously. They were laced. They were just plain leather. There wasn't so much as a little butterfly engraved on it. No sparkle. No sparkle whatsoever.

Put it this way, Krupa, the nuns that kindly educated me in my convent school, well, their shoes looked like they just came off the cash walk in the land compared to my shoes just to put it there in perspective. So you have these not so glamorous shoes at least from the eyes of a little one and you're wearing them because of the condition that you had. When was that point when you when you were finally able to put on some non-prescriptive shoes well i suppose along this little journey up to age seven i mean i looked enviously on at my older sister and her lovely shoes and my

classmates their lovely shoes and and all the rest but at home at home my mom always wore lovely shoes so i used to ask from about the age of very very young now from about the age of three I remember distinctly asking my mum I'm daring to ask her could I please borrow her shoes and have a go in them and thinking she'll say no no no you just have to wear the special shoes to get your leg better but my beautiful moment yes Ciara you can and, so I actually did stand in a, put my little three-year-old feet into a pair of ladies' high heels from page three. You stood, are you balanced? I stood balanced.

You know, I don't remember falling over though, but I vividly remember just getting ready backstage in the hall and walking across our living room and my mum just smiling. And I just, it was the feeling actually. It was the feeling more than anything, Crouppen. Describe that feeling. So much to this day of how I felt in those shoes compared to the other shoes.

Tell us about that feeling, that very moment. Yeah, that very moment was, oh my goodness, well, obviously I suddenly grew by about five inches, which itself is very empowering to a little girl. And then it was the feeling, I am on top of the world. I can see something greater better ahead I can see over the horizon of being constricted with these restricting you know brogy issues and this is a beautiful feeling I feel so empowered you know in the eyes of a three-year-old but it

was a sheer happiness and joy and my mum smiling on in the corner looking at me and you explain it wonderfully um tell us about your mum she sounds rather stylish oh my mum yeah I mean she was all my world and my dad of course as well of course to a three-year-old child growing up now I'm just you know I'm one of six children and I'm just every day I count my blessings for my folks and I didn't realize we don't at the time because our norm is our family we grow up with isn't but she was a trailblazing lady I mean she was she came from the west of Ireland she was brought up you know by her mother who was you know widowed very early on left with seven children they you know left with the business seven children to

educate did it all and then my mom she carried that through and very much I remember like as a child watching her when my dad um was on strike he worked for like telecom air and he's like British telecom over here and like this is the expression but he they went and they started a business to you know they're very innovative to keep going keep the wolf from the went and they started a business to, you know, they're very innovative to keep going, keep the wool from the door. And they were like years ahead of themselves. A business called Dial a Lunch. They were doing lunches in the 1970s in Ireland. Like, you know, it was ahead of her times, your mother sounds.

Fantastic. I know there's another pair of shoes as well, Ciara, that have been giving you a lot of joy recently. Tell us about them well yeah I mean because when I was talking to your your lovely colleague Rosie yesterday she said tell me about a pair you like now I said well actually you're not going to believe this but I am in possession of a pair of bubblegum pink about five inch stiletto heel shoes which I purchased for myself about a year ago in the run-up to my 50th birthday and I was just like beautiful I love them and I just look aesthetically and then I thought wow coming up to 50 but I you

know we all have that journey don't we absolutely bubblegum pink shoes when you're 50 why not I actually as well I do a little bit of um my kind of life journey and career journey etc i do a few talks i you know from my own personal experiences you know i'm blessed yes well son um for me who is who's autistic so i talk a lot about that and about how i've learned along the way and about empowerment and how feeling on top for me when i put on the bubble dumb pink shoes it's how i feel in them crew not so much how they look but it's how i feel and then that's what matters i can go out there and just yeah share it for some women that could be a pair of you know ellies or never trainers how do you feel and i think that's most important and i think that's

a brilliant question and one that we should always ask ourselves whatever we're wearing on our feet on our body how does it make us feel uh kira thank you for emailing us and of course if you want to stay share your life in shoes send us your story of course you can do that via our website we're going to rewind to 1969 now and the murder of Jane Britton, a young archaeology student at Harvard University. The news dominated U.S. headlines at the time. It gripped the local community. And now a new book, 10 Years in the Making, sheds light on that long unresolved case. The author, Becky Cooper, joins me now from New York. Bright and early, Becky, thank you for your time.

My pleasure. Thank you for your time. My pleasure. Hi. Not at all. You heard about this murder when you yourself were a student at Harvard University in 2009. What were you told happened to Jane and how did you learn about it? I was told by a friend who was a notoriously good storyteller and he kind of launched into it saying, do you want to hear a really great Harvard story and told it like a well-worn academic horror story fairy tale. And he said, you know, he didn't know the woman's name, but he did know that she had allegedly had an affair with her advisor on the dig they were on together in Iran. And she apparently wouldn't give up the affair when they got back. And he was married and couldn't

have that. And so according to this rumor, he went over to her apartment one night, and then they talked, and he bludgeoned her with a stone tool he had taken from Harvard's Peabody Museum. And then he lays her, he brings her back to his office, lays her on his desk, puts three necklaces on her that they had found on their dig together in Iran, and sprinkles this red powder known as iron oxide or red ochre on her. The police question the professor the next day, the school newspaper writes about it. And again, according

to this story I heard, the university caught wind of the story that the school newspaper was going to write and couldn't have one of their illustrious own connected to something so sensational and lurid and tragic and forced the newspaper to change the article. So by that afternoon, the story was completely different. And then, you know, the police stopped talking, the press stopped writing, and then for the next 40 years until I heard that story, the case remained unsolved.

So quite the rumour, and then there's this silence surrounding it. What set you on that journey to get to the bottom of what happened to her? Yeah, so, you know, the story obviously sounded embroidered to me, but there was a part of it that had barbed me from the start, which was the sense that Harvard as an institution was two things. It was omnipotent in a wonderful way. You know, there was a sense as an undergraduate that you kind of had three wishes and anything was possible. But it wasn't too hard imagining that omnipotence having a much darker side where it really could control the press or silence an unflattering story.

So then when a year later I was talking to my advisor, who happened to be an archaeologist even though I was studying literature, and I was early to a meeting where he and another student were talking about, you know, the person Harvard likes to talk about having been the inspiration for Indiana Jones. I can't help but then launch into this story for the first time in a year. And I'm accelerating through it because I'm embarrassed to be repeating it to somebody in the anthropology department. And so when I finally get to the end and they just look at me and don't say anything, I backtrack. I'm like, well, it's

just a story I heard. And then my advisor says, well, she was found in her apartment, Pivoting Museum. And the other student says, and that professor that you're talking about, he's still a faculty. It was like a story for me, really elevated from a kind of Harvard urban legend to an open secret that I felt a really take seriously. I was unwilling to relegate it to a whisper because there was the possibility that we were letting a murderer walk free or that we were imprisoning an imperfect man in a living myth that he didn't deserve. Yes. But this book, it's long and it's 10 years in the making it's full of twists and turns of suspects of motives of red herrings and I imagine it was an exhaustive and all-consuming process. It definitely was I mean I think there's a huge degree of responsibility I feel both to Jane and to her family and to the community and and to the various people around whom these constellations of guilt and suspicion accumulate.

You know, at no moment did I let slip the fact that these are very real people with very real grief and suffering. You know, I think I have a very difficult time with true crime in general when it's entertainment divorced from the suffering and grief of the people who suffered the tragedy or who were trapped in these stories. And so, you know, I think so much of what comes across as obsession in this book is really just this deep sense of dedication to needing to get the story right. And as part of that dedication, you in the book access Jane's journals and you talk to her

brother Boyd at length. Have her loved ones read the book and reacted? They have. I was extremely worried about what her brother Boyd would think because I ultimately did write a very honest book and he is, I think, you'll see if you read the book, is not very forthcoming with his emotions. So at best I expected a kind of good job kid and it was the moment when he called me and asked if I could send him the book cover and

a little summary that he could send to his friends. I recognised that, you know, that was about as close as I would ever get to him saying that he was really proud and that he had thought that I had done his sister justice. He might have been not very forthcoming, but Jane, she sounded like quite the character. Many years separate you and her and you've studied her life and death for a decade now. Do you feel a profound connection to her? I do, yes. There was this strange, almost alchemical bond, I describe it in the book, between the two of us. One of her best friends said that she was a mix between Groucho Marx and Dorothy Parker, except without the mustache. And, you know, even though 50 years separated us, reading her letters home from the dig in Iran to her parents, for example,

she wrote that she, you know, didn't mind contemplating the thought of getting married. But then again, she didn't mind contemplating the thought of pizza when she got home. And I loved the fact that all those 50 years seemed to collapse in her words. Yeah. I don't want to give away the end of the book, but the case went cold. It did come to a resolution itself in November 2018. And your investigation, in part, I imagine, put a degree of pressure on the authorities to step up their efforts and readdress the evidence they had. Yes, that's correct. I filed many, many, many public records requests to the Middlesex DA's office and my efforts in conjunction with Mike Widmer, the first journalist on the scene in 1969 who had remained haunted all these years as well, in addition to the Boston Globe spotlight teens, Todd Wallach, all put pressure on the Middlesex DA to say, you know,

this is a 1969 murder. How can you justify withholding these records? And ultimately, they couldn't justify withholding it if they weren't doing the DNA analysis that they could because there was just the minutest amount of physical evidence left from the original crime scene. Becky Cooper, thank you very much. Author of We Keep the Dead Close. That is out now. Joining me there from New York.

Thank you to all of our listeners for getting in touch with their various comments, emails, texts, etc. Here are a few of them to bring you. We've had this one on our conversation with women who work in the vaccine sector, who says, excellent to hear from these female researchers. But what a sad reflection on the research culture in top universities. Write your CV if you were an American male. That's the implication. We want you to behave like that ignore your values and conform we've also had this message in from amanda who writes my heroine and pathblazer in this field has always been professor maria brown she blasted through that glass ceiling and was rightly awarded by the queen for her amazing work with the herpes virus and some comments here on the joint enterprise conversation that we had

the women's report needs to be read by everyone. It's truly shocking to hear the voices of women and girls abused by the justice system. Lots of you also getting in touch on your life in shoes. This one from Gallus Lass on Twitter writes, I'm more flip-flops trainers and flat comfortable boots myself. Alexandra writes, I trekked up the Himalayas in crepe-soled blue suede shoes that I brought for five pounds from Dulles in 1973. Up and down the mountains into the base of Everest, I only wore those light shoes for those four weeks. Later in the heat, I hitched through India, Thailand and Malaysia, carrying them in my backpack and finally wore them again as I hitched through the Australian desert. I was

even picked up by the police there because it was illegal to hitch. When I arrived in Sydney, I replaced them with platform high-heeled pretty shoes on which I wobbled. This was a time before email or mobile phones, so no support from mummy or shoes. And Sarah got in touch to say, because my mother had to wear shoes that could be passed down to her two brothers, she always had to wear lace-up shoes. And this was in the early 40s. All she ever wanted was a pair of red shoes as a child. She never got them.

Many moons later, and when I came along, age three or four, I had a pair of glorious red shoes. They barely left my feet. One day, my mum took me to meet a nun who had taught her. We met Sister Babywool. I couldn't say Gabriel, of course I was wearing my red shoes. The nuns made a huge fuss of me and I wanted to stay there. The only way my mother managed to get me away was by telling me that nuns didn't wear red shoes. She's been regretting that ever since.

Tomorrow, the next in our series about something we've realised is a thing, worrying about reaching the age your mum was when she died. Tomorrow, it's Titania's story. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.