How A 1969 Murder At Harvard Turned Into A Cold Case And A 'Cautionary Tale'

How A 1969 Murder At Harvard Turned Into A Cold Case And A 'Cautionary Tale' Enlarge this image Grand Central Publishing Grand Central Publishing The murder scene looked like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. That's the one thing that the multitudinous cast of witnesses, suspects and police detectives might agree on in We Keep the Dead Close, Becky Cooper's just published account of a murder at Harvard that took place in 1969 and remained unsolved until two years ago. After graduation, she eventually joined the editorial staff of The New Yorker; but as her involvement with the case deepened, Cooper would leave that job, moving onto Harvard's campus as a resident advisor and even embark on an archaeological dig in Bulgaria — all in an effort to get closer to the crime and its victim. Sponsor Message Cooper tells us that in 2009, when she first heard about Britton's murder, "the body was nameless." Even as she comes to learn so much about Britton's personality and family background, Cooper learns other things: for instance, that female grad students in Harvard's anthropology department until recently kept a secret file on Britton's murder that they handed down from one class to the next and that they viewed her murder as a "cautionary tale.