ON JANUARY 15, REPORTERS CAUGHT wind of a fifth lie detector test being scheduled for a mystery man. It had been over a week since Jane’s death, and six days since Chief Reagan issued the press blackout. This was the first major development in days. The rumor was that it was someone close to Jane who had been previously interviewed by the cops, but whose name hadn’t yet figured prominently in the case. The lengths that authorities went to conceal his identity made reporters hopeful that a break in the case was imminent.
Peabody people speculated as to whether this mystery man was the same person as the “Harvard faculty member who was rejected by Jane as a suitor after several dates.” The Daily News’s Mike McGovern had written about him in the same article where he broke the story about Jane’s abortion: a rejected faculty member who now “figure[d] prominently in the investigation.”
Reporters staked out Cambridge Police and state police headquarters and kept the buildings under constant surveillance. They caught glimpses of Jane’s friends being called in for another round of questioning. But the mystery man never appeared. Reporters later learned he had been whisked off to an undisclosed location.
District Attorney John Droney cautioned the press not to jump to conclusions about this unprecedented level of secrecy. “You have to assume it’s a sex case,” he said, due to the fact that her nightgown was “disarranged.” But, he cautioned, that could still mean many things. “We have not eliminated the possibility that a woman was involved in this crime,” he told the press. He refused to go into specifics but he did note that the first blow to Jane’s forehead had not been strong enough to break the skin.
Jane’s father was similarly tight-lipped when he was questioned by detectives again. They wanted to know more about Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky. “Most people we talked with said that that professor was a bastard,” Detective Lieutenant Burns baited.
“All professors are bad—” Jane’s father said cryptically before the police tape cut off.