Strange Case of the Mad Professor: A True Tale of Endangered Species, Illegal Drugs, and Attempted Murder
It was one of the biggest scandals in New York University history. Professor John Buettner-Janusch, chair of the Anthropology Department, was convicted of manufacturing LSD and Quaaludes in his campus laboratory. He claimed the drugs were for an animal behavior experiment, but the jury found otherwise. B-J, as he was known, served two years in prison before being paroled, emerging to find his life and career in shambles. Four years later, he sought revenge by trying to kill the sentencing judge and others with poisoned Valentine’s Day chocolates. After pleading guilty to attempted murder, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison, where he died in mysterious circumstances.

But before he was infamous at NYU, B-J, a scientific luminary, had also taught at Yale and Duke. One of the world’s foremost authorities on lemurs, our distant primate relatives on the remote island of Madagascar, he brought international attention to these endearing and endangered creatures. He cofounded the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina and inspired a whole generation of scientists to study them and conservationists to save them and their habitat. His trials captured national headlines, but the mad scientist’s full story has never been told—until now.

"1116325369"
Strange Case of the Mad Professor: A True Tale of Endangered Species, Illegal Drugs, and Attempted Murder
It was one of the biggest scandals in New York University history. Professor John Buettner-Janusch, chair of the Anthropology Department, was convicted of manufacturing LSD and Quaaludes in his campus laboratory. He claimed the drugs were for an animal behavior experiment, but the jury found otherwise. B-J, as he was known, served two years in prison before being paroled, emerging to find his life and career in shambles. Four years later, he sought revenge by trying to kill the sentencing judge and others with poisoned Valentine’s Day chocolates. After pleading guilty to attempted murder, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison, where he died in mysterious circumstances.

But before he was infamous at NYU, B-J, a scientific luminary, had also taught at Yale and Duke. One of the world’s foremost authorities on lemurs, our distant primate relatives on the remote island of Madagascar, he brought international attention to these endearing and endangered creatures. He cofounded the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina and inspired a whole generation of scientists to study them and conservationists to save them and their habitat. His trials captured national headlines, but the mad scientist’s full story has never been told—until now.

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Strange Case of the Mad Professor: A True Tale of Endangered Species, Illegal Drugs, and Attempted Murder

Strange Case of the Mad Professor: A True Tale of Endangered Species, Illegal Drugs, and Attempted Murder

by Peter Kobel
Strange Case of the Mad Professor: A True Tale of Endangered Species, Illegal Drugs, and Attempted Murder

Strange Case of the Mad Professor: A True Tale of Endangered Species, Illegal Drugs, and Attempted Murder

by Peter Kobel

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Overview

It was one of the biggest scandals in New York University history. Professor John Buettner-Janusch, chair of the Anthropology Department, was convicted of manufacturing LSD and Quaaludes in his campus laboratory. He claimed the drugs were for an animal behavior experiment, but the jury found otherwise. B-J, as he was known, served two years in prison before being paroled, emerging to find his life and career in shambles. Four years later, he sought revenge by trying to kill the sentencing judge and others with poisoned Valentine’s Day chocolates. After pleading guilty to attempted murder, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison, where he died in mysterious circumstances.

But before he was infamous at NYU, B-J, a scientific luminary, had also taught at Yale and Duke. One of the world’s foremost authorities on lemurs, our distant primate relatives on the remote island of Madagascar, he brought international attention to these endearing and endangered creatures. He cofounded the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina and inspired a whole generation of scientists to study them and conservationists to save them and their habitat. His trials captured national headlines, but the mad scientist’s full story has never been told—until now.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780762796571
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date: 07/02/2013
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 288
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Peter Kobel has worked as an editor at Entertainment Weekly, Saveur, ARTnews, and Premiere and has written for the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other publications. The author of the critically acclaimed Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture, he now writes about environmental and conservation issues and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Read an Excerpt

Defense attorney Jules Ritholz argued that the illicit drugs found in the lab were part of a legitimate research project, to be used in behavior modification experiments on lemurs. Somewhat contradictorily, he also tried to build a case that the prosecution’s star witness, B-J’s colleague Clifford Jolly, had been jealous of B-J’s success and had conspired with lab assistant Richard Macris to plant the drugs to bring down B-J and perhaps even usurp his job as department chair.

Ritholz also argued that there was no discernible, reasonable motive. B-J was one of the best-paid professors at NYU and had inherited a large sum of money when his wife, Vina, died. In his opening statement, Ritholz said: “What is there in this that would leave probably the most prominent physical anthropologist in the world to risk reputation, career, prison, the loss of everything he has worked for by performing a criminal act? Why in the world?”

Why in the world, indeed.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 Origins 1

2 Island Ecology 24

3 Going South 51

4 Alpha Male 72

5 The Tangled Web 95

6 Above Suspicion 140

7 Punishment and Crime 165

8 Descent of a Man 204

Epilogue 215

Acknowledgments 220

Notes 222

Further Reading 263

Index 265

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