John Buettner-Janusch

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John "BJ" Buettner-Janusch (born December 7, 1924 in Chicago , Illinois ; died July 2, 1992 in Springfield , Missouri ) was an American anthropologist , primatologist , geneticist , biochemist , evolutionary biologist, and university professor. He was considered one of the most important physical anthropologists of his time and was a pioneer in the use of molecular genetic methods. After serving a multi-year prison sentence for producing narcotics in his New York University laboratory , he attempted to murder the federal judge of the United States District Court for southern New York who convicted him and several former students and colleagues with poisoned chocolates . He was sentenced to an additional twenty years in prison and died while in custody.

childhood

John Buettner-Janusch was born in Chicago , Illinois in December 1924 . He was the son of the Vienna-born architect Frederick Wilhelm Janusch and his Chicago-born wife Gertrude Clare Buettner. The younger sister was born in 1926. Because of the Great Depression , Frederick had Janusch by the collapse of the company's empire of Samuel Insull suffered huge financial losses, the family in 1931 moved to Eagle River , Wisconsin . There Frederick Janusch built a house for his own family on a piece of land provided by his parents. John attended public schools in Eagle River from 1931 to 1942 and was considered an outsider because of his interest in classical music and opera and because of his condescending demeanor towards his classmates, but was a very good student and was involved in the school newspaper and school theater. He later spread that he had left high school at the age of 16 because of his talent. In fact, he stayed until he was 18 and then enrolled at the University of Chicago . There he showed only mediocre performance during his first year of study. He began to use the double name Buettner-Janusch because he found him dignified, and was appropriately called "BJ" in the circle of friends.

Conscientious objection and imprisonment

Even before the United States entered World War II , in November 1941, Buettner-Janusch had spoken out publicly against the Selective Training and Service Act , which initially required all men between the ages of 21 and 45 to register. After the start of the war, all men between 18 and 44 years of age were obliged to do military service . Buettner-Janusch explained that if there was any possibility to refuse, he would not serve in any army or under any flag in the world. Apart from his anti-militarism he was seen in his circle as an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler , who regarded the Germans as a superior race and who advocated German world domination. In his later life he clearly took positions that are incompatible with National Socialist ideology, so that in retrospect his Hitler-friendly statements are viewed as a youthful aberration and as an expression of his craving for recognition.

On his 18th birthday, Buettner-Janusch fulfilled his obligation to register as a conscript. On November 13, 1943, however, he did not appear at the local Selective Service System for drafting. He was arrested a month later and sentenced to three years in federal prison in Sandstone , Minnesota , in February 1944 . He served only six months of that prison sentence and was paroled to serve the remainder of the sentence through community service. According to Buettner-Janusch's own account, he had submitted an application for recognition as a conscientious objector in good time , but had been rejected. Recognition as a conscientious objector had religious reasons, and he was an avowed atheist . Later Buettner-Janusch was proud of his imprisonment as a conscientious objector, but occasionally he explained the gap in his résumé with confused stories about an activity for an unspecified secret service “behind enemy lines”.

From September 1944 to January 1946 Buettner-Janusch worked according to his probation as a nurse in the psychiatry of the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor . At the same time he attended courses at the university, but was dismissed because of poor work performance and psychological problems. In their assessment, his supervisor called him a very sick young man who should never have been employed in the neuropsychiatric department. She recommended that he seek psychiatric treatment. After his release, Buettner-Janusch went to New York City and worked at Mount Sinai Hospital on the Lower East Side until August 1946 . He then worked at Sydenham Hospital in Harlem until the end of his probationary period in March 1947 .

Education

Buettner-Janusch now returned to the University of Chicago and continued his studies, but again only performed well in physiology . In September 1949 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science . At the same time he developed an interest in scientific anthropology and gained an important sponsor in Sherwood L. Washburn . Buettner-Janusch's academic performance improved immediately and Washburn hired him as a laboratory assistant. During this activity Buettner-Janusch first came across baboons , as these primates were of great importance for Washburn's work. Buettner-Janusch graduated with a Magister Artium in 1953 . By then, his good relationship with Washburn had cooled and he needed a job.

In 1952 and 1953, Buettner-Janusch and his colleague Howard Winters led excavations in Randolph County , Illinois, which were carried out by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and the Illinois State Museum . The team discovered an Indian village in Abris on Barbeau Creek , which they estimated to be 7,000 to 10,000 years old. The discovery caused a sensation, also in the media, and was the reason for Buettner-Janusch's first scientific publications.

From September 1953 Buettner-Janusch worked as a research assistant in the Department of Medical Prevention at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City . In the following semester he was hired part-time as a lecturer in anthropology. He was only given this position because of the false statement that he was still enrolled as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago and intended to submit his dissertation there in August 1954 and defend it a few months later. The duration of the commitment in Utah, which lasted only one year, he stated from then on at two years. Since then, Buettner-Janusch has falsified his résumés to an increasing extent.

In the summer of 1955, the Buettner-Janusch couple moved to Ann Arbor , where John began his doctoral studies at the University of Michigan . He received his doctorate in June 1957 with a dissertation on the role of blood groups in the natural selection for Ph.D. His dissertation was supervised by Frederick Thieme and James Spuhler and William Schull sat on the examination board . During his studies Buettner-Janusch took the opportunity to give an introductory anthropology course during a semester at Wayne State University in Detroit , Michigan .

research

Buettner-Janusch performed his most important achievements in the molecular biological and cytogenetic research of primates. He gained recognition with his research into the different karyotypes of different species of lemurs and with his work on the genetic structure of natural and semi-wild populations of primates. This included the investigation of the rhesus monkey colony maintained by the University of Puerto Rico on the island of Cayo Santiago . Buettner-Janusch was one of the first researchers to use serum electrophoresis to study genetic variation in natural animal populations. With his research on primates he is one of the founders of modern primatology. The Duke University Primate Center , which he founded , has been the most important institution for researching lemurs for more than half a century and, as the Duke Lemur Center, plays an important role in international species protection.

Buettner-Janusch published more than 80 scientific publications and more than 100 essays and book reviews. The conference volume The relatives of man published by Buettner-Janusch in 1962 . Modern studies of the relation of the evolution of nonhuman primates to human evolution and the volumes Evolutionary and Genetic Biology of Primates published in the following two years were groundbreaking in that they treated the evolution, genetics and ecology of primates together for the first time. Buettner-Janusch published only to a very limited extent during his prison sentence, but he worked on the revision of the Origins of Man and on a book about the lemurs of Madagascar until his death .

Teaching

Yale University

After graduating, Buettner-Janusch moved with his wife to New Haven , Connecticut , to teach anthropology as an assistant professor at Yale University . Within a few years he built up a keeping of primates, which he needed for molecular biological investigations and which, because of the limited capacity of his own laboratory, spread over several buildings on the campus. He traveled to Africa several times, where he made the acquaintance of the couple Louis and Mary Leakey in Kenya . Their son Richard Leakey caught primates for Buettner-Janusch as a teenager.

The primates in Buettner-Janusch's laboratory quickly became a valuable resource for research. She also became aware of Elwyn L. Simons , who had come to Yale in 1960 to head the department of vertebrate paleontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History and to teach as professor of geology at Yale University. Many years later, Simons became director of the Duke University Primate Center, which Buettner-Janusch's menagerie developed into. One of the first significant research in primatology was Alison Jolly's dissertation on the use of the hands of "lower" primates. In 1962, John Buettner-Janusch was promoted to associate professor . In the same year, the Buettner-Janusch couple took a sabbatical , which they used for a long trip to Madagascar.

When he returned to Yale in the early summer of 1963, the situation had changed dramatically. Sidney Mintz had replaced Irving Rouse as head of the anthropology department. Mintz and Buettner-Janusch did not get along and in November Buettner-Janusch was asked to look for a new job. This development had to surprise Buettner-Janusch, because Mintz had disregarded a number of the rules applicable at the time in Yale for the termination of a fixed-term professorship. Nonetheless, Buettner-Janusch managed to find a new position at Yale University during the last year he was allowed to do.

Duke University

Buettner-Janusch went in 1965 as an Associate Professor at Duke University in Durham , North Carolina and taught in the departments of anthropology and sociology, anatomy and zoology. Buettner-Janusch campaigned for civil rights , trade unions and against the Vietnam War . He represented extremely liberal political convictions and thus established a lifelong friendship with Peter Klopfer , professor of zoology at Duke University. Thumper was previously part of a protest against the few years segregationist arrested at a local restaurant and for trespassing been charged. He brought his method to Klopfer v. North Carolina up to the United States Supreme Court and won. Buettner-Janusch was also interested in primates. Before Buettner-Janusch moved to Durham, both had decided to establish the Duke University Primate Center , today's Duke Lemur Center .

At Duke University, Buettner-Janusch wrote two textbooks, Origins of Man in 1966 and Physical Anthropology: A Perspective in 1973, both of which were published by John Wiley & Sons . Origins of Man is still considered a classic in scientific anthropology.

Buettner-Janusch's extravagant appearance with dyed blonde hair and expensive suits caused a sensation in the small town of Durham and at his university. His outstanding professional competence and his suitability as a teacher were undisputed at the university, and he was voted one of the five best professors on campus by the students. But Buettner-Janusch was also considered unpredictable and a tyrant among colleagues and employees. In addition, the Buettner-Januschs felt very uncomfortable in the more provincial North Carolina, both of them moved to a metropolis during the Durham years. After Duke University denied him additional funds, Buettner-Janusch quarreled.

29 Washington Square West, home of the Buettner-Januschs in New York City

New York University

1973 Buettner-Janusch became head of the department of anthropology at New York University . NYU was one of the leading universities in the field of social anthropology . Buettner-Janusch was only considered because two social anthropologists were unable to win a majority in the process to appoint a new head. In New York, he not only received a newly established laboratory on Waverly Place and an unusually high salary, but also a representative official residence in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village , in the immediate vicinity of the laboratory and the university.

In New York, too, Buettner-Janusch quickly earned the reputation of a gifted researcher and teacher, but also of a ruthless power man. After a very short time, he began to discriminate against scientific anthropology in the field of social anthropology, disempower social anthropologists and drive them out of NYU. Among the colleagues he ousted was the medical anthropologist Charles M. Leslie , who went to the University of Delaware in 1976 . In order to further his goals Buettner-Janusch often hinted at unspecified dark secrets of colleagues and promised to reveal the whole truth for a later date. That never happened, but it was just as effective a means of defamation as his frequent comments with which he portrayed colleagues as less sane. Buettner-Janusch followed a definition of the term civilization ascribed to himself, according to which a group increases the number of individuals identified by the terms we and ourselves and decreases the number of individuals identified by them and them until the latter have completely disappeared . In fact, Buettner-Janusch had a large number of followers who either belonged to his personal circle of friends or were in contact with him professionally and never got into conflict with him. In the academic world, he was considered a very successful head of his department, although this assessment was based less on facts than on the picture constructed by Buettner-Janusch.

Buettner-Janusch's achievements as a researcher at New York University lagged well behind his achievements at Duke University, where he could fall back on the Primate Center , in terms of quality and quantity . Since the time span from the implementation of a research project to the appearance of related publications in the renowned specialist journals can be several years, Buettner-Janusch continued to draw on his earlier work for a few years. But in 1976, the generous funding he had received from the National Science Foundation for a decade was canceled. he responded immediately with the suspicion that he had made enemies who were now seeking revenge as part of his work on the NSF's advisory body on anthropology from 1971 to 1974. In fact, the National Science Foundation has a rigorous review process, but the only reason a funding application may be rejected is lack of scientific relevance. Buettner-Janusch himself contributed to this by relying on the work of his students. Instead of doing research himself, he concentrated on managing the department, teaching and traveling more privately. Buettner-Janusch responded to the cancellation of the funding by partially financing his laboratory from his own resources.

Buettner-Janusch remained professor for anthropology at New York University until 1980. He was suspended as head of the anthropology department in connection with the investigation against him, but continued to hold lectures until he was convicted.

Criminal offenses

Manufacturing and distribution of narcotics

background

The laboratory, headed by John Buettner-Janusch, was on the third floor of the university building at 25 Waverly Plaza. When he was appointed to New York University, existing laboratories had to be divided up. As a result, there were two laboratories on this floor, that of John Buettner-Janusch and that of his colleague Clifford Jolly , also a professor of anthropology. Jolly's rooms could only be reached through the Buettner-Janusch laboratory, and there were practically no access controls.

On May 9, 1977, Buettner-Janusch submitted an order to the university to procure two chemical substances that usually serve as precursors for the production of LSD . Throughout the summer a book from the Bobst Library , the university library , describing the synthesis of LSD, lay on the desk in his office for everyone to see . On October 26, 1978, Buettner-Janusch again ordered two precursor substances, now for the production of methaqualone . He later stated to his students and colleagues that he had not produced LSD, but only similar substances for his lemur research, and that the production of methaqualone was an accident. During the trial, however, Buettner-Janusch's laboratory manager Danny Cornyetz and his assistant Richard Dorfman testified that they had been informed about drug production to raise funds and had participated out of concern for their jobs. While Buettner-Janusch always protested his innocence, the testimony of his two employees lost weight because of the guaranteed lower sentence and those of the other witnesses from university operations because of the poisoned climate at New York University.

In addition to the manufacture and sale of the drugs, Buettner-Janusch and some of his employees were investigated for the founding of Simian Expansions , a non-profit organization for money laundering allegedly serving primate research . However, apart from the production of stationery and four T-shirts with advertising imprints, no activities could be verified for this organization and no expenditure or income could be assigned. Possibly it was a serious species protection project that Buettner-Janusch only supported but then did not realize.

Investigations

A nineteen-year-old anthropology student who had been commissioned by Buettner-Janusch to synthesize chemical substances in the autumn of 1978 became suspicious and first informed Professor Clifford Jolly. Both of them subsequently collected evidence against Buettner-Janusch. In April 1979 the student reported sick because he was now convinced of the true nature of his work and did not want to participate in it. Jolly had meanwhile forwarded a sample of the manufactured substance through a lawyer to the responsible public prosecutor. The analysis in an FBI laboratory showed that the substance was extremely pure methaqualone. Jolly and the student now sought a conversation with John C. Sawhill , President of New York University, to inform him of their suspicions and the evidence available. Sawhill and the NYU legal counsel immediately advocated full cooperation with the FBI and the search of the labs without a court order.

In mid-May 1979, the Buettner-Janusch laboratories were searched by six drug investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Extensive contaminants were seized, including more than two pounds of methaqualone of various degrees of purity in the fume cupboard and on a laboratory table, marijuana in the refrigerator, various LSD derivatives and LSD precursors. In the early evening of the following day, Buettner-Janusch was given a subpoena by a DEA agent in his apartment . Buettner-Janusch made false statements at the first interrogation, as did a few days later when he was interrogated by federal prosecutors in the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse . These lies later led to the charges of false testimony in federal court and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

In the following months, Buettner-Janusch was subject to telephone surveillance by the FBI, which, however, did not produce any further evidence. In addition, several people were provided with recording devices by the FBI, including suspects who were now recording conversations with Buettner-Janusch and with each other. In one case, Buettner-Janusch asked his colleague Jolly, who worked closely with the FBI, to act as a witness for him in the proceedings. This conversation was also recorded by Jolly. On August 2, 1979, the laboratory was again searched by the FBI, again without a search warrant and with the consent of the university.

Indictment and Trial

On October 4, 1979 Buettner-Janusch was indicted on six counts, which were threatened with a maximum sentence of thirty years:

  • Conspiracy to manufacture and distribute LSD, methaqualone, and other narcotic drugs;
  • Manufacture and possession with intent to sell 1.185 kilograms of methaqualone;
  • Sale and possession with intent to sell pemoline , a drug with a stimulant effect ;
  • Conspiracy to obstruct justice;
  • two cases of willful false testimony to federal prosecutors.

Known and unknown co-conspirators were also named in the indictment. Buettner-Janusch was released on bail of US $ 50,000 after the indictment , but had to surrender his passport. In the days that followed, the story of the university drug lab filled the front pages of the press well beyond New York. Buettner-Janusch was on leave as head of the anthropology department, but continued to teach two courses and initially remained a professor at New York University. In a Christmas letter to friends and colleagues, he complained about the injustice of his treatment and the wickedness of arresting him on the very first anniversary of his wife's death.

From December 3, 1979 to January 3, 1980, several preliminary judicial hearings took place. Initially, the admissibility of the evidence seized by the FBI in Buettner-Janusch's laboratory during the searches was contested, but since the accompanying university members had unrestricted access, everything except the material from Buettner-Janusch's personal storage room was allowed. Buettner-Janusch denied all allegations and his lawyer put in the room that his students had set up the drug laboratory and that when it was discovered, Buettner-Janusch was responsible. In the months that followed, Buettner-Janusch's friends collected money for the expected legal fees. He himself wrote numerous letters to his personal circle in which he asked for support and described the prosecutor as a " cunt ", "fascist whore", "Nazi whore", " bitch " and "disgusting crazy fanatic". The judge is a “fascist pig” and a “madman”, the student who initiated the investigation, and Professor Jolly are “a worm and a jackal”.

The main trial against Buettner-Janusch began on June 30, 1980 in federal court in New York. Not only the local tabloids, but the entire daily press in the country reported in detail on the process. Buettner-Janusch had entrusted his defense to a star lawyer who had become acquainted with criminal tax matters. The defense asserted that the drugs were produced within the framework of permissible research and that the drugs had been foisted on Buettner-Janusch by third parties. Among the witnesses were numerous colleagues and employees of Buettner-Janusch, who appeared in his favor as witnesses of repute. Peter Klopfer and Richard W. Sussman testified that Buettner-Janusch had actually planned experiments with primates under the influence of drugs in the past. The witness Elwyn L. Simons did not show up for his appointment because he was injured while gardening the previous evening. When the public prosecutor tried to blame Simon's absence from Buettner-Janusch, the presiding judge had the note deleted from the protocol and instructed the jury to ignore it. The prosecutor's emphatic protest almost led to a failure of the trial. On July 16, 1980, the jury reached its verdict after a four-and-a-half hour deliberation. Buettner-Janusch was found guilty of producing and possessing drugs, conspiracy and false testimony before federal prosecutors. One charge of drug possession and one of the conspiracy to obstruct the judiciary were dropped, with possible sentences of up to 20 years.

Sentence, Imprisonment, and Life After Release

After the guilty verdict, the management of New York University made the decision to end Buettner-Janusch's employment and thus his academic career. However, this was initially not announced. On November 13, 1980, Buettner-Janusch was sentenced by a federal judge to five years ' imprisonment, which consisted of three years for drug offenses and another two years for false statements. In his judgment, the judge sharply criticized New York University, which had made Buettner-Janusch's actions possible. Buettner-Janusch initially remained at large and appealed, which was rejected on April 6, 1981. He began serving his sentence on May 28, 1981 in a federal prison on the grounds of Eglin Air Force Base , Florida . On October 5, 1981, the Supreme Court decided not to accept Buettner-Janusch's last appeal. Instead of the usual two-page form, the probation committee received a 13-page brief from the public prosecutor, in which she quoted in detail Buettner-Janusch's correspondence with the threats and insults directed against her. The parole board initially set the expected release date to be November 27, 1983. Buettner-Janusch was able to continue his scientific work with the support of a few colleagues who procured literature for him or worked with him on publications. In one case he published an article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology , the publisher of which named his "institution" as Federal Prison Camp, Eglin AFB, Florida . The probation committee finally shortened the sentence by two months, so that Buettner-Janusch was released from prison on September 27, 1983.

After his release from prison, Buettner-Janusch moved for two months to the Salvation Army dormitory in New York's Bowery , where Jack Henry Abbott had stayed two years earlier after his release. He lived in the Chelsea Hotel and in various locations in New York City for short periods of time . In the following years he led an unsteady life without the chance of a new job in research and teaching. His friend, primatologist and paleoanthropologist, Ian Tattersall , head of the anthropological department of the American Museum of Natural History , gave him the opportunity to volunteer at the museum and catalog the lemur collection. Their joint publication appeared in November 1985. In the summer of 1986 he finally moved to the family home in Eagle River , Wisconsin , where he had already spent his childhood.

Attempted murder

Sequence of events

Ian Tattersall was one of those employees of the American Museum of Natural History who traveled extensively on lecture tours around the world to raise funds for the museum. In February 1987, Tattersall was on one of these expeditions for most of the month , this time to Indonesia. During this time, John Buettner-Janusch was supposed to take care of the fiance's miniature poodle in Tattersall's apartment on Gay Street in Greenwich Village and brought his own miniature poodle there with him. During the first weeks of February, the hobby chef Buettner-Janusch made pralines in Tattersall's kitchen that he had poisoned with the three alkaloids atropine , sparteine and pilocarpine . He packed them in boxes of chocolates from a well-known manufacturer of luxury chocolate and anonymously sent them with cards for Valentine's Day to four recipients on whom he wanted to get revenge:

  • Federal Judge Charles L. Brieant , who convicted him in 1980. Brieant's wife suffered life-threatening poisoning from atropine and sparteine ​​from eating four chocolates. The FBI toxicologists found pilocarpine in a praline that had not been consumed ;
  • J. Bolling Sullivan , an associate professor of biochemistry at Duke University's marine research laboratory in Beaufort , North Carolina . Sullivan had worked with Vina Mallowitz in Buettner-Janusch's laboratory at Duke University twenty years earlier, but had no close contact with the couple. Sullivan's wife and daughter ate the chocolates and fell ill, but believed they had food poisoning from other causes. Only after the media reports about the poison attack on the federal judge did Sullivan inform the FBI, which identified the chocolates as a shipment from Buettner-Janusch;
  • Sidney Mintz from Yale University was the third addressee, and the item could be intercepted in the mail. Buettner-Janusch blamed Mintz for having been denied permanent employment at Yale more than twenty years earlier;
  • Buettner-Janusch was also hostile to Charles M. Leslie from New York University, this fourth poisoned shipment was also intercepted in the mail.

Buettner-Janusch was quickly convicted. When Judge Brieant was questioned, he was one of the named suspects, his probation officer in Wisconsin named Tattersall's apartment as his whereabouts, the items containing the chocolates were sent from a post office very close to Tattersall's apartment, and the box for the judge pointed out numerous The fingerprints of postal workers also include the print of Buettner-Janusch's little finger. He was arrested on the late evening of February 19, 1987 on his way back from an opera performance at the Metropolitan Opera and charged the following day.

Legal proceedings

On March 5, 1987 Buettner-Janusch appeared for his preliminary hearing before the federal court in New York, before which his drug offenses were already tried and which included the target of the assassination. To rule out any bias on the part of the judge, the presidency was transferred to Federal Judge Joseph Lord of the United States District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania . The four charges against Buettner-Janusch at the time were threatened with prison sentences totaling 63 years, plus a possible fine of up to one million US dollars:

  • Attempted murder of a federal judge;
  • Attempted murder of a family member of a federal judge;
  • Posting dangerous substances with intent to harm or kill;
  • Manipulation of consumer goods.

Buettner-Janusch initially pleaded not guilty . According to an agreement between his lawyers and the prosecution, he pleaded guilty to two attacks against Briant and Sullivan and intent to cause extensive physical harm in a further preliminary hearing on June 9, 1987 . A main hearing with extensive evidence was thus ruled out, the admitted acts were threatened with sentences of up to 40 years in total plus fines of 500,000 US dollars. In return, the public prosecutor's office declined to prosecute two cases of mail. Through this preliminary hearing, the public first learned of the full scope of the allegations against Buettner-Janusch, but the names of the victims Mintz and Leslie were not mentioned. Immediately before the sentence was announced, the ABA Journal , the American Bar Association's magazine , published a report entitled Danger in the Courts , which also featured Federal Judge Briant, addressing attacks and threats against federal judges.

When the sentence was pronounced on July 14, 1987, Judge Lord emphasized that he had also been guided by the expectations of hundreds of colleagues in his judgment. Although he does not generally recognize the concept of deterrence, there is no question that this defendant has shown no respect for the law and is in need of individual deterrence. The sentence was twice twenty years in prison, the maximum sentences for the two counts to be served in a federal prison, one after the other. Ten years have been set as the minimum length of detention up to a possible suspended sentence. In December 1987 the sentence was reduced to twenty years by granting simultaneous serving of the individual sentences originally to be served one after the other. This also made an earlier parole possible.

Buettner-Janusch was detained in a federal prison with no special security requirements in Otisville , New York during his trial . From August 1987 he served his sentence first in the United States Penitentiary Marion in Illinois , which was built in 1963 to replace Alcatraz and in the 1980s was still the prison with the highest security standard in the prison system of the United States . After two murders of prison officials, a system of total isolation of prisoners was introduced in Marion, which almost completely excluded direct contact with other people. Buettner-Janusch subscribed to the journals Science and Nature as well as several journals for operas and other classical music. He carried on professional correspondence with a number of colleagues and friends and continued to take an active part in anthropological research. However, many of his letters also reveal a pronounced loss of reality in that he accused federal judge Brieant of a plan to destroy it and blamed the United States Postal Service for the wrong delivery of the packages for the three poisoned items to other recipients . In October 1989, Buettner-Janusch was transferred to the federal prison in the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex , where the prisoners were subject to significantly fewer restrictions and were able to work.

Marriage and personal life

While studying at the University of Chicago, Buettner-Janusch met his future wife, Vina Mallowitz. They married in September 1950 and lived and worked together for 27 years. Vina Mallowitz was the head of his laboratory and his most important collaborator during Buettner-Janusch's teaching activities at Yale University and Duke University. They undertook their research trips together and often wrote scientific papers together. Buettner-Janusch himself attributed the great success of his book Origins of Man to the collaboration with Mallowitz, who had supported him as much as possible. The professional collaboration ended in 1971 when Vina sent her husband a letter of resignation and never again worked in his laboratories at Duke University or New York University. The reasons for this step are not known even to close friends.

Although the professional relationship was over, the Buettner-Janusch couple stayed together and continued to organize impressive parties for colleagues and other guests. The couple quickly adopted an elaborate lifestyle after moving to New York City, with frequent visits to the Metropolitan Opera and parties for members of the New York cultural scene. Buettner-Janusch explained his lavish and, despite his high salary, striking lifestyle to friends with a large inheritance from his wife, whose parents had died in 1974 and 1975. Vina Mallowitz died on October 6, 1977 at the age of 46 in a New York hospital. Just a few weeks earlier, she had been diagnosed with liver cancer, the metastases of which had already spread. In the year after the death of his wife, Buettner-Janusch repeatedly traveled to the places in Europe and Africa where he had been with Vina. He became increasingly depressed .

Buettner-Janusch was always dressed very extravagantly, without this allowing any conclusions other than expensive but bad taste. After Vina's death, however, he was occasionally seen in clothes that easily identified him as a member of the Greenwich Village gay scene . Students referred to the amyl nitrite in his laboratory , which had no scientific use, as "Colonel B-Js Poppers ". After his first imprisonment, when his office at the university was cleared, records were found of men whose sexual preferences Buettner-Janusch had documented for himself.

Shortly after Buettner-Janusch's arrival at the federal prison in Marion, at the end of 1987, he learned of his HIV infection. In the following years he informed his correspondents about it and stated that he must have become infected in a laboratory accident. But he also used the fact of his infection and the history of the laboratory infection to specifically harass former students and colleagues. With the made-up reference to several infected colleagues at Duke University or citing his own infection, he suggested that they should have an HIV test , also in greeting cards for Christmas or the upcoming birth of a child .

Different information is available about Buettner-Janusch's death. According to the published obituaries , he had tried to obtain early release. In April 1992 he learned from the pardons committee that he was likely to remain in custody until January 1999 and that the pardon committee's next hearing would take place in April 1994. He then went on a hunger strike and was most recently force-fed . He contracted pneumonia and died in July 1992 at the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield , Missouri . The prison files show that Buettner-Janusch's HIV infection was properly treated, for example with the regulation from AZT . In April 1992 he reported in a letter to Peter Klopfer that he was now suffering from AIDS . In late May 1992, he was transferred to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. In June the doctors informed Buettner-Janusch's sister about his poor condition, who was able to visit him again. John Buettner-Janusch died on July 2, 1992, the official cause of death given was pneumonia with advanced HIV infection. Buettner-Janusch's ashes were scattered on a lake at his family home in Eagle River, Wisconsin.

Publications (selection)

  • John Buettner-Janusch: Use of Infrared Photography in Archaeological Field Work . In: American Antiquity 1954, Volume 20, No. 1, pp. 84-87, doi : 10.2307 / 276728 .
  • John Buettner-Janusch: The ABO Blood Groups and Natural Selection: A Review . Dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 1957.
  • John Buettner-Janusch and Harold E. Wipple (Eds.): The relatives of man. Modern studies of the relation of the evolution of nonhuman primates to human evolution (= Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Volume 102, No. 2, pp. 183-514). New York Academy of Sciences, New York 1962.
  • John Buettner-Janusch: Hemoglobins and Transferrins of Baboons . In: Folia Primatologica 1963, Volume 1, No. 2, pp. 73-87, doi : 10.1159 / 000165783 .
  • John Buettner-Janusch (Ed.): Evolutionary and genetic biology of primates . 2 volumes. Academic Press, Cambridge, MA et al. 1963-1964.
  • John Buettner-Janusch and Robert L. Hill: Molecules and Monkeys . In: Science February 19, 1965, Volume 147, No. 3660, pp. 836-842, doi : 10.1126 / science.147.3660.836 .
  • John Buettner-Janusch: Origins of Man. Physical Anthropology . Wiley, New York et al. 1966.
  • John Buettner-Janusch: Physical Anthropology: A Perspective . Wiley, New York et al. 1973, ISBN 0-471-11785-4 .
  • John Buettner-Janusch et al .: Models for Lineal Effects in Rhesus Group Fissions . In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology 1983, Volume 61, No. 3, pp. 347-353, doi : 10.1002 / ajpa.1330610309 .
  • John Buettner-Janusch and Ian Tattersall : An Annotated Catalog of Malagasy Primates (Families Lemuridae, Indriidae, Daubentoniidae, Megaladapidae, Cheirogaleidae) in the Collections of The American Museum of Natural History . American Museum Novitates No. 2834, November 12, 1985, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fdigitallibrary.amnh.org%2Fhandle%2F2246%2F5239~GB%3D~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~ double-sided%3D~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D .

Academic and honorary positions

literature

  • Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor. A True Tale of Endangered Species, Illegal Drugs, and Attempted Murder . Lyons Press, Guilford, CT 2013, ISBN 978-0-7627-9656-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 1–10.
  2. ↑ a b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 12-14.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Linda Wolfe: The Strange Case Of Dr. Buettner-Janusch . In: New York September 15, 1980, pp. 18-22.
  4. ^ A b c Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 15-19.
  5. ↑ a b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 20-23.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Robert W. Sussman, Alison F. Richard and Jeffrey Rogers: Obituary: John Buettner-Janusch (1924-1992) . In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology 1993, Volume 91, No. 4, pp. 529-530, doi : 10.1002 / ajpa.1330910411 .
  7. ↑ Robert W. Sussman: Buettner ‐ Janusch, John . In: The International Encyclopedia of Biological Anthropology . John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ 2018, doi : 10.1002 / 9781118584538.ieba0080 .
  8. ↑ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 24-33.
  9. ↑ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 34-38.
  10. ↑ a b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 44-50.
  11. ↑ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 51-55.
  12. ^ A b c Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 56-70.
  13. ^ A b c d Robert D. McFadden: Judge is Sent Tainted Candy. Man He Sentenced is Charged , The New York Times , February 21, 1987, accessed April 1, 2019.
  14. ↑ a b c d Bruce Lambert: John Buettner-Janusch, 67, Dies. NYU Professor Poisoned Candy , The New York Times , July 4, 1992, accessed April 1, 2019.
  15. ^ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 44-50.
  16. ↑ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 77-88.
  17. ^ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 89-93.
  18. ^ A b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 98-102.
  19. ↑ a b c d e R. Jeffrey Smith: Drug-Making Topples Eminent Anthropologist. An anthropology professor turned in the chairman of his department at NYU, who claims he's been framed . In: Science October 17, 1980, Volume 210, No. 4467, pp. 296-299, doi : 10.1126 / science.210.4467.296 .
  20. ↑ a b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 102-114.
  21. ↑ a b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 114-133.
  22. ^ A b c Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 133-138.
  23. ^ Selwyn Raab: Colleagues Offer Views on NY. U. Professor in Drug Case , The New York Times , November 23, 1979, accessed April 1, 2019.
  24. ^ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 139–164.
  25. ^ John Buettner-Janusch et al .: Models for Lineal Effects in Rhesus Group Fissions . In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology 1983, Volume 61, No. 3, pp. 347-353, doi : 10.1002 / ajpa.1330610309 .
  26. ↑ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 165-181.
  27. ^ R. Jeffrey Smith: Buettner-Janusch Is Sentenced . In: Science November 28, 1980, Volume 210, No. 4473, p. 993, doi : 10.1126 / science.210.4473.993-a .
  28. ^ John Buettner-Janusch and Ian Tattersall : An Annotated Catalog of Malagasy Primates (Families Lemuridae, Indriidae, Daubentoniidae, Megaladapidae, Cheirogaleidae) in the Collections of The American Museum of Natural History . American Museum Novitates No. 2834, November 12, 1985, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fdigitallibrary.amnh.org%2Fhandle%2F2246%2F5239~GB%3D~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~ double-sided%3D~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D .
  29. ↑ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 181-183.
  30. ^ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 189–193.
  31. ^ A b c Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 193-200.
  32. ↑ a b c d Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 200-203.
  33. ^ A b Arnold H. Lubasch: Poison Candy Brings 40-year Prison Term , The New York Times , July 15, 1987, accessed April 1, 2019.
  34. ↑ Anonymous: Sentence Reduced On Tainted Candy , The New York Times , March 22, 1988, accessed April 1, 2019.
  35. ↑ a b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 204-211.
  36. ^ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 93-94.
  37. ↑ Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 95-97.
  38. ↑ a b Peter Kobel: The Strange Case of the Mad Professor , pp. 211-214.
  39. ↑ Anonymous: Obituary. John Buettner-Janusch . In: Anthropology Today 1992, Volume 8, No. 4, p. 18, doi : 10.2307 / 2783534 .
personal data
SURNAME Buettner-Janusch, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES BJ (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH 2nd July 1992
Place of death Springfield , Missouri