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The investigators have finally denounced a case of cold murder that has haunted the Boston area for nearly 50 years.
The Middlesex District Attorney's Office on Tuesday identified a local man, Michael Sumpter, as responsible for the violent death of Harvard University student Jane Britton in 1969, after investigators had passed numerous reports. Medico-legal tests on DNA evidence collected at autopsy decades ago and more recently.
Sumpter died of cancer in 2001 while he was serving time to rape a woman in Boston in 1975, just six years after the murder of Britton. He has since been involved in five sexual assaults in the Boston area, three of which resulted in the deaths of victims, including Britton.
According to prosecutors, none of the victims would have known or maintained a relationship with Sumpter.
"The murder of Jane Britton has raised many questions and aroused the interest of community members over the past 50 years," Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan told reporters at from a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
"Several teams of investigators have been assigned to this case, seeking public advice and eliminating several suspects," she said. "As a direct result of their perseverance and the use of the latest advancements in forensic technology by the Criminal Police Laboratory of the State of Massachusetts, I am now confident that the mystery of Jane Britton's murder has finally been resolved and the case is officially closed. "
Middlesex District Attorney's Office
Britton, a 23-year-old anthropology graduate student from Harvard University, was found dead in her fourth-floor apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the frosty afternoon of January 7, 1969. She had was sexually assaulted and was given a baton to death. , according to Cambridge police records.
Britton, from Needham, Mass., Went to dinner with classmates at a restaurant in Cambridge the night before. She went back to her apartment after dinner to change her clothes before going skating with her boyfriend at the time, according to the attorneys.
After the ice skating, the couple went to a nearby pub for a beer and then returned to Britton's apartment around 10:30 pm. tonight. Her boyfriend stayed about an hour before leaving. Then Britton crossed the hall to visit her neighbors, who had watched her cat while she was out. She had a glass of sherry with them before returning to her unit, prosecutors said.
The next day, Britton's boyfriend came to watch her after she did not show up for a major exam and that he could not reach her by phone. When he was unable to enter his apartment, he sought the help of his neighbors, who finally managed to enter and discovered that Britton had been brutally murdered, according to prosecutors.
Middlesex District Attorney's Office
An autopsy concluded that Britton had been sexually assaulted and hit on the head by a blunt object several times. A subsequent toxicological test showed that the alcohol that she had eaten the night before had not yet metabolized and that it had penetrated into her blood, indicating that she had been killed shortly after returning to his apartment, prosecutors said.
Red ocher powder was found scattered on the walls, ceiling and floor of his apartment, as well as on Britton's body, suggesting that the murderer might have performed some sort of funerary rite ancestral, according to the prosecutors.
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This case posed many problems for the investigators.
Police questioned several people at the time and learned that a neighbor had heard someone on the emergency passage who was connecting to Britton's apartment. A second witness told the police that he saw a tall man running down the street near the building early in the morning of January 7, 1969.
"This case has posed many challenges for investigators," Ryan said at Tuesday's press conference. "We followed up many leads about people suspected of having ties to Jane Britton, and there were several" red herrings "in the case, including the presence of red ocher at the scene of the crime. , which was ultimately unrelated to crime.Over time, the memories of faded people and witnesses are dead, it has become even more difficult to follow new lines of investigation. "
The case has been frozen for decades as investigators are unable to identify a suspect – until now.
Middlesex District Attorney's Office
The pause in the case came after the Middlesex District Attorney's Office received several applications in 2017 to make the Britton case public, prosecutors said. A team of investigators began to review the file for possible disclosure of certain information and, with a fresh eye, sought to determine if there was an investigation work. to be added in this case.
After consulting the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory, the investigators finally decided to perform additional DNA testing with the latest technology on the remaining samples.
In October 2017, the lab was able to obtain for the first time a man-specific DNA profile from archived samples of the original tampons. In July, investigators were informed that there was a match between the genetic material and Sumpter, which appeared in the database of the FBI's CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), according to the prosecutors.
WCVB
Investigators learned that Sumpter had several ties to the area where Britton had been killed, prosecutors said. He lived in Cambridge as a child, had several feuds with the local police and had a girlfriend who lived there in the late 1960s. Investigators also learned that in 1967, less than two years before Britton's murder, Sumpter was working less than two kilometers from his apartment, according to prosecutors.
Although Sumpter died several years ago, investigators were able to locate and obtain a DNA sample from his biological brother. Additional tests confirmed that Sumpter was the only person responsible for Britton's death, prosecutors said.
"We are now certain that the man identified as Michael Sumpter has entered Jane 's apartment by the window, assaulted her, murdered her in bed and then assaulted her. "Is fled from the apartment," Ryan told reporters on Tuesday.
Middlesex District Attorney's Office
In addition to finding the murderer of Britton, the prosecutor said that the DNA tests also excluded other people of interests likely to live under a "cloud of suspicious" for years.
"Today we are able to secure the closure of Jane's family, her friends and those who knew her," she said. "This is the oldest case that the Middlsex District Attorney's Office was able to solve."
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Half a century of mystery and speculation has darkened the brutal crime that has broken the promising young life of Jane and our family … Learning to understand and forgive remains a challenge.
Britton is survived by Reverend Boyd Britton, Vicar of the Anglican Church of Our Savior in Santa Barbara, Calif., Who said that obtaining pardon for the murder of his sister "remains a challenge."
"Half a century of mystery and speculation has darkened the brutal crime that has broken the promising young life of Jane and our family," he said in a statement released Tuesday by the Middlesex District Attorney's Office. . "As a surviving Britton, I want to thank all those – friends, public officials and journalists – who have persevered in maintaining this investigation, especially Sergeant Peter Sennott, of the state police." Learning to understand and forgive is a challenge. "
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