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How a Harvard Doctor's Sordid Murder Launched Modern Forensic Anthropology

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How a Harvard Doctor's Sordid Murder Launched Modern Forensic Anthropology How A Harvard Doctor's Sordid Murder Launched Modern Forensic Anthropology Aug 26, 2016 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/08/26/how‐a‐harvard‐doctors‐sordid‐murder‐launched‐modern‐forensic‐anthropology/#6e1dd3e9be9f The history of modern forensic anthropology is a bit murky. As an applied science rather than a "pure" one, forensics was shunned for decades, its findings inadmissible in court. But the 19th century murder of a Harvard Medical School doctor launched the field, revolutionized law in the process, and began our longstanding fascination with TV shows like CSI and Bones. The story starts just before Thanksgiving in 1849, when Dr. George Parkman went missing. Parkman was from a wealthy Boston family, an old‐timey Doogie Howser who entered Harvard at age 15. He went to medical school in Scotland, returning after the War of 1812. Parkman donated some land in Boston to Harvard Medical College so that the school could relocate from Cambridge. He was also well‐known for lending money from his considerable fortune and for walking around town to collect on those debts. Left: Dr. George Parkman. Right: Dr. John Webster. Images from: Trial of Professor John W. Webster, for the murder of Doctor George Parkman. Reported exclusively for the N.Y. Daily Globe (1850). Images in the public domain, via NIH National Library of Medicine. A professor of chemistry and geology at Harvard, John White Webster, was one of those debtors. He had been having financial problems, requiring him to give up his family's Cambridge mansion. Webster's salary as a lecturer at Harvard simply didn't cover his grandiose lifestyle. So Webster borrowed $400 from Parkman in 1842. Seems like a paltry sum, but the equivalent in today's dollars is nearly $10,000. Webster kept putting off repayment, and in 1847, Parkman totalled up the principal and interest and served Webster with a bill for $2,432 ‐‐ nearly $60,000 in today's dollars. When Webster still hadn't paid in 1849, he borrowed money from another friend to pay back part of the loan to Parkman. But Webster used as collateral some holdings that were already collateral for his debt to Parkman. This really ticked off Parkman, who went to confront Webster a few days before Thanksgiving. On November 23, 1849, Dr. Parkman was seen entering Harvard Medical College in the early afternoon, to rendezvous with Webster who claimed he had the money to settle the debt. Later in the afternoon, the college janitor, Ephraim Littlefield, noticed Webster's laboratory and office suite locked, with water running, but no sign of Webster. The next day, Parkman had not returned home and his family was beside themselves with worry. For days, the family and the police posted notices about Parkman, assuming he had been kidnapped for ransom, mugged for the money he carried when collecting debts, or worse. Within a few days, the search party turned into a recovery party, as the police dragged the Charles River and Boston Harbor in an attempt to find Parkman's body, to no avail. But Littlefield, the janitor, became suspicious of Webster just as the police were eyeing Littlefield for the murder. Prof. Webster had been behaving oddly a few days before ‐‐ getting angry at Littlefield for seemingly no reason, but then apologizing and giving him a giant turkey the day before Thanksgiving. This was all completely out of character. The same day he received the turkey, Littlefield decided to investigate on his own. He followed Webster to his anatomy lab, watching him under the door. Webster moved curiously, between the furnace and the fuel closet several times. When Webster finally left, Littlefield broke in and found the kindling containers empty. Ephraim Littlefield, the Harvard Medical College janitor who followed Dr. Webster and did some digging on his own. Image from: Trial of Professor John W. Webster, for the murder of Doctor George Parkman. Reported exclusively for the N.Y. Daily Globe (1850). Image in the public domain, via NIH National Library of Medicine. With Webster away from Harvard for Thanksgiving, on November 29, Littlefield brought some tools and his wife to stand guard, and tunneled through the wall of Webster's private bathroom. Ignoring the stench of the privy, Littlefield kept digging ‐‐ until he ran into a human pelvis. And then a dismembered thigh. And a lower leg. Littlefield was beside himself with terror. He told his wife, and then another trusted Harvard professor, and they called the cops and the coroner. Several men went back into Littlefield's tunnel to retrieve the rest of the remains. Police arrested Webster immediately, and although he initially denied it, he then admitted to it. As soon as he got to prison, Webster fell ill ‐‐ he had attempted to poison himself with strychnine but failed. Police then worked to find the rest of the body, as it wasn't in the privy. They searched Webster's lab and opened a large chest ‐‐ out came a headless, armless, hairy, partially burned torso, with a thigh stuffed inside. Poor Mrs. Parkman was asked to identify the body, which she did based on birthmarks on the lower back and genitals. In spite of the fact that investigators had a body, the body had been identified by Mrs. Parkman, and Webster had basically confessed, the case went to trial and forensic specialists were called in. At the time, forensic anthropology didn't exist ‐‐ and the practice of analyzing human remains to determine identity and cause and manner of death was rudimentary. But Harvard anatomists Dr. Jeffries Wyman and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., were asked to look at the body. (see image on next page) Wyman was in charge of looking at the bones and ID'ing them. He described the ones that had been found and presented at trial ‐ which began on March 19, 1850 ‐‐ evidence that the deceased was 5'10", which matched the description of Parkman. Holmes was in charge of cause and manner of death, testifying that the body had been dismembered by someone with a deep knowledge of anatomy and that the wound found between the ribs on the torso was likely the fatal knife blow. Parkman's dentist, Dr. Nathan Keep, who would go on to found the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in 1867, was also called to testify. A jawbone with false teeth was found in the furnace of Webster's lab. Keep recognized the dental work that he had done on Parkman two years prior. He even demonstrated for the court how the bone fit into a mold that he'd made of Parkman's mouth during life. The prosecution in the case had called two experts in human anatomy to testify about the identity, manner, and cause of death of the deceased, an expert in teeth to discuss the jaw found, and even experts in handwriting analysis to talk about the notes Webster claimed demonstrated he had repaid Parkman. This 1850 court case was the first to involve forensic anthropology, forensic odontology, and a forensic document analyst. The defense picked this evidence apart, though, putting other medical professionals on the stand to say that the ID and manner of death could not be determined conclusively. Before the jury deliberated, the judge ‐‐ Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court Lemeuel Shaw ‐ ‐ gave an unprecedented instruction to the jury. The standard in murder cases in the mid‐19th century was "absolute certainty" of guilt. Under this burden, the prosecution would have to prove conclusively that the body was Parkman's, that Webster had killed him, and that he had done so on purpose. Judge Shaw, though, instructed the jury that they only needed to find "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the body was Parkman's. While this phrasing has become standard today, and was a part of European law for centuries, it wouldn't be until 1880 that the U.S. Supreme Court would discuss and define the term "reasonable doubt." Dr. Parkman's skeleton. Image from: Trial of Professor John W. Webster, for the murder of Doctor George Parkman. Reported exclusively for the N.Y. Daily Globe (1850). Image in the public domain, via NIH National Library of Medicine. The jury deliberated for less than three hours on March 30. They were unanimous in concluding that the remains were Parkman's, that Webster had killed him, and that he had done so deliberately. The verdict was guilty, and Webster was sentenced by Judge Shaw on April 1 to death by public hanging. Webster's legal team mounted an appeal and also requested commutation of his sentence. But the governor was unmoved. Prof. John White Webster was hanged publicly on August 30, 1850, and buried at Copp's Hill. Although a conspiracy theory circulated in 1884 that Webster's hanging was staged, and that he was actually alive and living in the Azores, there is no evidence for that. The Parkman murder case is held up as the earliest example of modern forensic anthropology at work. Even though Wyman and Holmes were not trained the way we are today, their methods were sound for the time and still largely represent the way forensic anthropologists work now. More importantly, though, this case represents the first time in U.S. legal history that dental evidence and forensic science were admissible in a murder trial. And even though this case involved the murder of one Harvard doctor by another, the university became the forerunner of academic forensic anthropology in the second half of the 19th century. Thomas Dwight succeeded Oliver Wendell Holmes and became the "father of forensic anthropology" in the 1870s, and George Dorsey was granted the first PhD in anthropology awarded by Harvard in 1894 (it was only the second PhD in anthropology to be awarded in the entire U.S.).
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