Detective Halliday: We are now in the Cambridge Police headquarters on the second floor at number 5 Western Avenue. The time is exactly 11:37 a.m. The date being January 7th—

Unidentified Male: Correction, the 9th.

Detective Halliday:—correction, the 9th. Present at this time is Lieutenant Donnie from the State Police, Detective Herbert E. Halliday, Cambridge Police, and your name, Professor?

Professor Williams: Stephen Williams, 103 Old Colony Road, Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts.

Detective Halliday: Now, Professor, we are going to talk about the murder of Jane Britton, and in my hand I hold some photos of the scene when our officers arrived. This is picture number one: a sheet that we can visibly see, a blanket, an afghan type of a bedspread, and a fur coat. Here is picture number two. Some of the material has been taken off of her at this particular time. We notice a blood-stained sheet, part of a fur coat, and the other paraphernalia has been put to the side. Now I show you this number three photo, which is very particular. As you notice, up at the head and to the left, there’s a headstone and the picture of a skull. Can you observe the skull on that headstone?

Professor Williams: Yes, I do. I see the headstone. Yes.

Detective Halliday: Now, I bring your attention back to picture number one.

Professor Williams: Oh, yeah. Here’s the—

Detective Halliday: You see the powder—

Professor Williams: Yeah.

Detective Halliday:—as it goes across?

Professor Williams: Yeah.

Detective Halliday: Now what significant thing have you observed thus far, Professor, in anthropology or archaeology in regards to these particular pictures?

Professor Williams: Well, it seems to me she’s been carefully laid out in some kind of a ceremony. This certainly just didn’t happen that she was laid out this way. It almost looks like someone had in mind some kind of—of ritual.

      It would certainly seem that in this case the person was laid out on—rather carefully with the head between the pillows, then sprinkled with this substance, and then—then—and this—this—I don’t know what it—whether this headstone was regularly here or not. It certainly again looks like a marker on a—on a grave of some sort. And certainly this—them laying these other garments over, trying—in a sense trying to—to bury her under all these things, I mean, someone certainly had in mind some kind of a burial ritual.

Detective Halliday: Ritual.

Lieutenant Donahue: Does this recall anything to you as an archaeology professor?

Professor Williams: It is quite true that red powder is usually red ochre.

Lieutenant Donahue: Can you spell that for us please?

Professor Williams: O-C-H-R-E. This is merely very high-grade iron ore, like hematite. This has been used by primitive peoples for tens of thousands of years. We can go to Maine at 3,000 BC and dig up Indian burials and find them covered with red ochre. We can go to Wisconsin and find red ochre buried. We can go to west California and find it. We can go to France, for example, and find red ochre being put in burials as much as 20,000 years ago.

Lieutenant Donahue: What would be the purpose of using the red ochre in a burial rite?

Professor Williams: Well, it varies from one place in the world to another. I mean—

Lieutenant Donahue: What are some of them? Could you give us some of them?

Professor Williams: Well, many times, for instance, in Maine, we can’t ask the people of 3,000 BC why they did it. We know they were doing something extra. And that’s all we can say. When you’re dealing with a dead civilization, we have to interpret what these people might have had in their minds. We find the burial, it has a lot of red ochre in it, and all we can say is, “Well, they thought it was important. They took the trouble to add this to their burial ritual.”

      I mean, a general answer to your question, I would say that whenever we see particular care given to a burial, yes, we generally say they’ve thought enough of the deceased person to do this extra thing. Someone took the time to do this, didn’t just kill, say, “My god, what have I done?” and run out. But we have no indications of saying that red signified good or bad in a culture.

Lieutenant Donahue: Uh-huh.

Detective Halliday: Would this be a layman’s information or a person that’s well read in archaeology?

Professor Williams: It seems to me like it could have been done by people from three different groups. Either someone who does have knowledge of archaeology and has read enough about burials. The second, and maybe this is just defense because that would mean that we’re dealing with one of my students, is a hippie who is involved in some kind of—seen enough about rituals. And the third thing is someone who is really just psychotic, a real psychotic person who we may be interpreting some of these things—reading more into it than what’s there. Now I think the last one is probably the least likely.

      Red ochre is, as I say, such a general thing that it isn’t the sort of special kind of information that I would think only an archaeologist might have. On the other hand, this whole burial ritual is certainly nothing that I know anything the hippies are working with or dealing with. So it does look to me, I must confess, like someone had done something rather special and had—as I said, used the term ritual, and I would stick with it.

Detective Halliday: Now, could this red ochre, Professor, be obtained in classrooms at Harvard?

Professor Williams: Well, I mean, Dr. Lamberg-Karlovsky has some in his office. Students are in and out of his office all the time.