“I’VE BEEN CONCERNED ABOUT SOMETHING that Jane told me or asked me about, about a month ago, and I didn’t know if it was relevant to this case or not, but I had a feeling it might be,” Jane Chermayeff, who had been in Lee Parsons’s Primitive Art class with Jane Britton that fall, told the Cambridge cops. “One day just before the class she took me aside in the smoker, and she said, ‘The strangest thing happened. At twelve thirty last night, the doorbell rang.’ And she said, ‘I was a little surprised because most people who know me just walk up, don’t bother to ring.’ And it was him.” After that, Jane Britton missed a couple of Lee’s lectures.
Jane Chermayeff wasn’t the only person in the Anthropology department talking about Lee Parsons to the Cambridge police. After all, everyone in the Peabody had seen the newspaper articles. Though Lee’s name was never mentioned, many felt that only one person fit the description. On January 9, two days after Jane’s body was found, the Boston Globe ran a cover story that included the line, “Also questioned was a faculty member who admitted dating Miss Britton once and attending several parties at which the murdered girl was present in the company of others.” On January 13, the Daily News reported that the “Harvard faculty member who was rejected by Jane as a suitor after several dates now figures prominently in the investigation.” Though some––like graduate student Frances Nitzberg––were certain that Lee was incapable of injuring someone, others wondered if Lee, whom many had seen wandering the streets of Cambridge drunk, might just have been strange enough to be the killer.
Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky said that he had been struck by how disturbed and upset Lee had seemed after Jane’s death.
Even the gossip-avoidant Richard Meadow told police when he was pressed, “It has come to my attention…that Dr. Lee Parsons dated her on one occasion.”
Lee’s alibi for the night Jane was killed was, according to some gossip, Pippa Shaplin, the Peabody registrar. Jill’s sister wrote about her in a letter to the Mitchells: “[One of the Peabody secretaries] told me that she was driving to work and when she drove past Shaplin’s house, she saw her and Lee Parsons coming out. She said that she then inquired around and found out that Miss Shaplin is about 10 years older than Lee and was Lee’s alibi for the night Jane was murdered. That is supposed to account for the scratches on Lee’s arms. Quite interesting, I thought.”
When police called Pippa into headquarters, she got so angry with the line of questioning about her romantic relationship with Lee, she shook in her chair. Detective Davenport had to ask her to stop because she was rocking the door.