Acknowledgments

When I started, I didn’t know Jane’s name. I didn’t know where the research would take me. And I certainly didn’t know who killed her. But what I did know is how much luck and how much generosity it would take to get anywhere close to the end of this journey. I was gifted with both, in spades, for this book. So, after more than ten years of reaping the kindness of friends, family, colleagues, mentors, and strangers, it’s nice––if very daunting––to finally be able to say thank you to the people without whom We Keep the Dead Close would not have been possible.

First and foremost, I have to thank everyone who agreed to be interviewed, many of whose names don’t even appear in the text but whose insight was invaluable for giving me a solid understanding of the time and material. I wanted to give a special mention to a few people, though, starting, of course, with Boyd Britton. Thank you for your time, your candor, and, most of all, your trust. As I told you in California, I promised to do my very best for Jane’s story. I hope you feel like I have lived up to that promise.

To Jane’s friends from childhood through college––Karen John, Emily Woodbury, Irene Light, Tess Beemer, Brenda Bass, Jennifer Fowler, Cathy Ravinski, Jean Hendry, Lucy DuPertuis, Ingrid Kirsch, Karen Black, and Peter Panchy––as well as to Charlie Britton, I also hope you feel like I have done right by Jane. Elisabeth Handler, I could not imagine this book without you.

Don Mitchell and Ruth Thompson, I am so grateful for your friendship, your hospitality, your mochi care packages, and your unending belief in me and in this project. Don, thank you also for your photographs, not least the cover image of Jane, which sent shivers in me when I first saw it.

Mike Widmer, you are a true friend and kindred spirit.

Morgan Potts and Lily Erlinger. You are where this story began. It feels only appropriate––and very fortunate––that you also took my author photo, Lily.

Dan and Hildy Potts, Ruth Tringham, Elizabeth Stone, Mary Pohl, Sally Falk Moore, Alison Brooks, Sarah Hrdy, Sadie Weber, Bruce Bourque, and Sally Shankman, thank you for your courage and for trusting me with your stories. Dan, thank you also for your willingness to track down the answer to any Yahya question I had, no matter how detailed.

To the Abraham family, Stephen Loring, and the Fitzhughs, thank you for everything that helped me bring Anne to life in these pages. She was an extraordinary woman, and it was an honor to live so closely with her. Stephen, talking with you is always a particular joy. Thank you for my own set of eclectic postcards, which never ceased to buoy my spirits. Alice and Ted, I’m sorry this book doesn’t offer more answers, but I hope it closes more wounds than it opens.

Richard and Jane Rose, I enormously appreciate your hospitality and your trust in me. Your slides from Bolton and Monte Alto sit proudly on my shelf of treasured possessions; thank you for letting me reprint some of the images in the book.

Mel Konner, what a journey, and I’m thrilled with where we ended up. That’s one hell of a piece of writing.

Mary McCutcheon, thank you for your warmth and hospitality.

Arthur Bankoff and Richard Meadow, thank you for reminiscing with me and for your permission to reprint the 1968 Tepe Yahya photos.

Anne Moreau and Alice Kehoe, thank you for your candor.

Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky and Mike Gramly, I am very grateful not only that you agreed to speak with me, but also that you were so generous with your time. I know the conversations were difficult, and that it is not easy to be the focus of a book, in part, about the dangers of pattern-matching. I am thankful that I was able to incorporate your perspective.

Jim Humphries, Jill Nash, and Andrea Bankoff, I respect your decision not to speak with me for this book. I hope I have not caused you unnecessary pain.

And to the people who asked to remain unnamed because of fear of retaliation: I admire you, and I am grateful for your honesty.

Now for the people who brought this book into being:

Marya Spence, my agent at Janklow & Nesbit––how did I get so lucky? You understood this book––and what it could become––even before I took my reporting trip out west. You’re fearless, brilliant (a little psychic even?), and the best champion I could imagine. Thank you also to Rebecca Carter, Clare Mao, and Natalie Edwards, as well as to Jason Richman at UTA, for seeing this story’s creative potential.

Maddie Caldwell, you had me at “ritual.” I’ve loved our mind meld since the first time we met. Thank you for trusting me to tell Jane’s story in all its complexity (and length), for fighting to get me all the time I needed, for deciphering my brain dump when I needed to know how the chapter outlines were shaping up, for knowing when to let me loose and to rein me in, for editing and re-editing, and for loving Jane as much as I do. This book found its perfect home with you. A huge thank you, as well, to the rest of the team at Hachette and Grand Central Publishing, for all the in-house love and patience and for giving me this opportunity: Michael Pietsch, Ben Sevier, Karen Kosztolnyik, Brian McLendon, Matthew Ballast, Bob Castillo, and Jacqueline Young, as well as Albert Tang and Alex Merto, for the cover of my dreams.

I am also very grateful to Jason Arthur and the team at William Heinemann, my UK publisher, for taking a chance on me and for being a big supporter of the book.

Carrie Frye, thank you for your delicate, wise touch and for untangling the knots.

Jack Browning, for soothing my nerves with your calm and expertise.

My dear Sameen Gauhar. You came in at exactly the moment I needed you most and dedicated yourself with a ferocity that rivaled my own. Your brain astonishes me. (Who else would query “evening” when I meant “night,” or catch that Jane wrote “BLEUGHH” with two H’s instead of three?) This book was a Herculean amount of work to check to the level of a New Yorker print piece––about a hundred people to call, in addition to meticulously examining every source––and you did it all with your signature humanity, grace, and intelligence. Needless to say, any errors that remain are my own.

This book would not have been possible without the time and space afforded by elving in Adams House. Judy and Sean Palfrey, who embody and fight for the best of Harvard, thank you for giving me a home, both then and now. To my fellow elves: Larissa Zhou, Andrés Ballesteros, Nick Seymour, Brendan Eappen, and Lulu Masclans, your goofiness and support was a perfect antidote to the solitude of book writing. My deep gratitude to the Adams House community, in general, for welcoming me back in. And thank you to the undergrads who kept me happy and (relatively) sane, especially Catie Barr, Matt Hoisch, Maria Splaine, Kieren Kresevic, Francesco Rolando, and Tori Tong.

To my friends who read and reread every page of this giant book and heard it in all its iterations before anything existed on the page: Every writer should be so lucky to have readers like you. Gideon Wald and Miju Han. Ben and Lianna Burns. Svetlana Dotsenko. Patrick Chesnut. Cat Emil. Leila Mulloy. Elsa Paparemborde. Ben Naddaff-Hafrey. Charlie Damga. I look forward to finally being able to return the favor.

Todd Wallack, you are a gentleman and a remarkable reporter. Your work was integral to Jane’s case being solved, and your thoughtfulness in connecting me with Jane’s grave caretaker and in forwarding me messages that came in after your story was published is a model for the journalist I hope to be.

Thank you also to Alyssa Bertetto for your generosity in sharing your Lee Parsons research, and to Mechthild Prinz and Greg Hampikian for walking me through the forensic reports and the nitty-gritty of DNA analysis.

Ron Chernow, I owe so much of this book to you. Your early encouragement and mentorship, when I still knew you better as “Spinach Salad Ron,” was what motivated me to dive back into the research wholeheartedly. And thank you to Ted & Honey––the magical cafe in Brooklyn that no longer is––which fostered that serendipitous meeting and so many others.

David Remnick, I’m not sure what I said during my interview that convinced you to hire me (all I remember is blurting out that Batman: The Animated Series was my favorite TV show), but thank you for believing in me. You are as deeply kind and good as you are brilliant, and I can only imagine how much energy that asks of you.

To the community at The New Yorker, who made me look forward to going to work every day and who has stayed family even though I’ve been away now for as long as I was there: I miss you. A thank-you especially to Bruce Diones, for keeping the lights on and the candy drawer filled. Brenda Phipps, for the wisdom and the laughs. The brilliant Pam McCarthy. Adam Gopnik and Martha Parker, for taking me under your wing way back when. Fabio Bertoni, for your tireless help. Nick Trautwein, for the straight-shooting and the shit-shooting. For teaching me how to file FOIA requests and appeals: Mattathias Schwartz and Raffi Khatchadourian. For the advice and the inspiration: Patrick Radden Keefe, Ariel Levy, Paige Williams, David Grann, Sarah Stillman, John McPhee, Jill Lepore, Henry Finder, Deborah Treisman, Peter Canby. I am so grateful for your friendship Carolyn Kormann, Liana Finck, Mina Kaneko, McKenna Stayner, Sara Nics, Antonia Hitchens, Ben Taub, Nick Niarchos, Colin Stokes, Natalie Raabe, Eric Lach, Stanley Ledbetter, Anakwa Dwamena, Neima Jahromi, Jess Henderson, Emily Greenhouse…I would go on but Maddie would KEEL me.

I am also enormously grateful to law enforcement for its dedication to Jane’s case in recent years: Sergeant Peter Sennott, ADA Adrienne Lynch, DA Marian Ryan, the MSP Crime Lab, Sgt. John Fulkerson, and Sgt. Bill Doogan. Thank you also to Meghan Kelly for facilitating interviews and communication, and for handing me the files in 2018, without which this book would have looked very different.

To your support through the years, and for your understanding when I disappeared for months on end, a big thank-you to: Liz Livingstone; Anna Ondaatje; my beloved senior thesis adviser, the late Sally Livingston; Sandra Naddaff; Ama Francis; Jay Troop; Lugh O’Neill; Martin Mulloy; Zach Frankel; Dan Bear; Michelle Lee; Sol Krause; Monica Lindsay-Perez; Alex Terrien; Charlie Custeau; Ruby Awburn; Arjun Gupta (sorry for giving you that fright in Toronto); Tom Wiltzius; Nikki Donen; Grace Sun; Adam Hunt; Abe Lishansky; Meg Thompson; Sean Lavery; and Jack Pickering, whose calls felt like a lifeline.

For your help with archival research and permissions, thank you to Katherine Satriano and Patricia Kervick at the Peabody Museum archives; Jeffrey Quilter and Jane Pickering, directors of the Peabody Museum, for permission to access and publish from a closed archive; Kate O’Donnell and Bridget Manzella with Peabody Publications; Timothy Driscoll and Juliana Kuipers at the Harvard University archives; Michael Dabin for the Daily News photos and Kevin Corrado for the Boston Record-American ones; and Charles Sullivan at the Cambridge Historical Commission.

I am deeply appreciative of the Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists and the Fund for Investigative Journalism, without whose support I would have struggled to make reporting trips to Hawaii and Bulgaria. Thank you also to Peggy Engel, who went above and beyond to matchmake this project with opportunities. The Schuster Institute at Brandeis was a wonderful welcome into the Boston community. Thank you to Florence Graves and Lisa Button for believing in the importance of Jane’s story, and to Yael Jaffe for your hard work.

My darling Colin Turnbull, thank you for the design advice and the photo assistance, of course, but more importantly, for the lasting tenderness that I worried would never be mine to know.

And, most of all, thank you to my family, especially my parents, to whom this book is dedicated. To my father, thank you for your steady stream of calls, texts, dad jokes, trivia, and song recommendations that let me know I was always deeply loved. And to my mother, who listened to every chapter after I finished, who proofread every source note, who lived with me through every moment of this, and who understood before I did that this was a risk I needed to take––I love you.