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

by Peter Kobel

Book by Kobel, Peter

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, History, Science, Crime, Anthropology, Biography

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Peter Kobel has worked as an editor at Entertainment Weekly, ARTnews, and Premiere and has contributed articles to The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, among many other publications.

His critically acclaimed book Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture (Little, Brown) was published in collaboration with the Library of Congress. His biography of the controversial physical anthropologist John Buettner-Janusch will be published by Globe Pequot Press in July.

Kobel has also served as an advocate for conservation and social justice at several nonprofit organizations.

Reviews

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully fascinating and absorbing tale of what can only be called a mad scientist. I checked this book out of my local library after seeing the title in the library catalog. I mean, how can you turn down a title like that? I had never heard of this case before, but I'll bet it would've gone "viral" in today's age.

B-J, as he is known in the book, was a world-renowned physical anthropologist who was known for his work with lemurs. He was also a sociopath or a psychopath or a narcissist... or maybe all three! Quite simply, he had no sense of empathy. He only cared for himself. He could be charming and generous... he could also be incredibly selfish and vindictive.

This story follows his life, his career, and his crimes. It was fascinating.

[Suzette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This journalistic account of the career and crimes of renowned physical anthropologist John Buettner-Janusch is fascinating. I pursued a Ph.D. (ultimately never completed the dissertation)in the same field in the 1980s and 1990s, attended AAPA conferences, and read academic articles by B-J and others referenced and interviewed in this book, so this account was especially interesting to me. Kobel's descriptions of the academic back-biting that goes on in supposedly genteel universities, his descriptions of B-J's contributions to the scientific world, and his considered speculation that B-J's hubris and lack of empathy led to his downfall, are supported by interviews with those involved, perusal of the court records, and B-J's many letters to friends. This is an engrossing account of an intelligent individual who was considered at the top of his field, who had the respect of his peers, who made a very comfortable living doing what he loved, but threw it all away by participating in truly stupid criminal activity, and then plotted horrible revenge against his perceived enemies.

[Grace Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of Eagle River WI and a family that lived on Cranberry Lake. It is had to determine if reality is stranger than fiction in this tale. He starts in prison as a conscientious objector to WWII and then get a teaching job at Yale, travels to Madagascar for lemurs, moves to Duke where he starts the Duke Lemur center, then he moves to NYC chair position....his wife dies and he goes off the rails...starts dating men, gets AIDS, makes illegal drugs in his lab, gets arrested, goes to prison, gets out, tries to poison 4 people. Kills no one except maybe his wife (unclear whether she got liver cancer) and goes back to prison where he dies of AIDS. Bright guy with a wild life.
John Buettner-Janusch is loved or hated. Book drags a bit but there is always another chapter to the tale.

[Nathan Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a bizarre, weird tale. It operates a little from the shocked perspective of “What? educated people can commit crimes too? Shocking!”
Still, it does a very admirable job of painting a picture of the man and his life. Many of the details of the crime are lost to history, so the answer to “Why would a college professor start up an illicit drug operation?” are left to conjecture. Even so, it is well researched enough to put forth a reasonable theory.

Good if you’re a fan of true crime or stories of bizarre people.

[Nikos · Rating 3 out of 5]

fascinating but author kept using flowery words that felt kind of out of place and mostly confused me personally at least

also stylistically it went back and forth b/t maintaining a facade of objectivity and insisting on a version of events

[Beverly Hollandbeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real-life story of NYU's own "Breaking Bad" professor, John Buettner-Janusch, a non-chemist who makes LSD and other Schedule I drugs in his anthropology lab. It's a story of madness and evil, or maybe a story of extreme arrogance and invincibility.

[Leila · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great story, mediocre execution.

[Ashleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really interested in this but I got a little lost in the details.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting series of events involving an interesting individual, but I found the writing tough to get into and stick with.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

This true-crime book tells the story of John Buettner-Janusch, a respected professor of anthropology whose life went off the rails in 1979. Up until then, he had been successful in the academic world, even becoming chairman of the Dept. of Anthropology at New York University, and founding a lemur colony at Duke. But after he lost his grant, his lab tech and the professor in the next lab over started to notice strange goings-on in the lab. What exactly were his research students synthesizing ? Why were they ordering chemical precursors of illegal drugs? Why did a specialist in primate hemoglobin need to read a book about LSD? His technician and the other professor alerted the FBI, and a search of the lab revealed that it had been used as a manufacturing facility for LSD and methaqualon, the active ingredient of Quaaludes. B-J’s insistence that he was preparing for a study of neurotoxins in lemurs didn’t make sense, and he was convicted in 1980. Then the story skips a few years ahead. B-J is out of jail, trying to make a living and reconnecting with old friends and supporters. Then it is revealed that he sent poisoned chocolates to the judge who sent him to prison years earlier, as well as a few others. He pleads guilty and goes back behind bars, only to die of AIDS a few years later.

The book is slow in getting started. The full first half of the book is about B-J’s childhood, education and academic career. It reads more like a character study, and to some extent, that effort is wasted, because we don’t really understand B-J any better at the end. It is never clear why he had his research students work on synthesizing illegal drugs, and there is not even an attempt made to understand what drove him to the idea of mailing poisoned chocolates to his enemies, a mad impulse that was immediately traced back to him. By that time, all his former friends had abandoned him, and no one had any insight into his psyche. So all in all, the book is a little disappointing.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I considered this book originally for my psychedelics shelf, but, as there was only circumstanitial evidence the doctor was involved, if at all in manufacturing acid (even less for using it) (a part oof his conviction, for methaquaalone manufacture) I can't with honesty place it there. Dr. Buettner-Janusch presents an interesting study however, in sociopathy, and what can happen to people who assume too much of their lives in the competitive games that take place in halls of academia. As a study in revenge, revenge motives, and other issues, all of which combined to send him back to prison, where he eventually ended his life as an AIDS patient, it rather shows someone who exhibits symptoms of "socialized sociopathy"- a need for status, of reassurances of that status and dominance, a need for ritual and trappings of authority, and someone who cannot empathize, and only sees the wrongs of others, never his own. It only mitigates his strange case that he was one of the first, if not the first, serious scientist to study the lemurs of Madagascar, and who most signally brought them to the attention of the scientific community and primate studies, of which he was one of America's leading lights.But all that was under the bridge once he and a couple of students dreamed up an idea to fund a nonprofit for primate study funded, ridiculously, by alleged sales of LSD and Quaaludes.

[Pamela Hovanec · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is good, a bit slow in parts and yes these men are very educated it does go on a bit to much about where they studied and so forth. but all in all i dont believe in keeping animals out of their elements and in cages , but do applause the professor for his love of animals . more to read....i thinks theres too much of this person of yale, cambridge etc.. inthe book the book was very knowledgable and interesting to read i do feel BJ did do well at his job and loved his lemars and wanted the best for them. the only best for them would have been studied in the wild not a lab, but it is what it was.. glad they are free and i do disagree with animal testing so i didnt car for that but i do believe that BJ did give a lot to the community and the fields of study, too bad what happened happened.. may he rest in peace

good book overall thanks yo so much

read on and a happy Merry Christmas to you

pamela m hovanec

[Karla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy to this book through Goodreads giveaway.

I was looking forward to reading this book and enjoyed it. From the notations at the end, you can see how much research when into putting the story together. B-J was certainly a "Brilliant but Flawed" individual. The book follows briefly through his childhood and then on to a life that seemed to always have some kind of hidden back story. More going on in it than met the eye. And as he gathered a reputation with lemurs and their research, he also seemed to gather more idiosycrancies. And those idiosycrancies were just the tip of the iceberg of the madness that overcame him. I liked the way the author pulled this all together from his words and actions, interview and letters. The book kept my I interest from beginning to end.

[Sara Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read...definitely a strange case. I don't read a huge amount of nonfiction but have been reading more lately than usual. I liked that the author wrote this in a fairly casual, almost conversational style, especially when it came to the bit about the trial (I get really bored with a lot of courtroom procedural stuff). There were a lot of secondary and tertiary characters to keep track of and two of them had the same last name so it got a bit hard to keep track of at some points and there were parts where I feel like the author jumped around a bit too much. The facts of the story and the strangeness were definitely enough to keep me interested all the way through.

[Susan Keegan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not terrible, but almost unreadable to start. Too-long sentences, commas, "ands" and "buts" frustrated me early on. The story presented was interesting, but came to no real conclusions. Rather than finding "the mad professor" in all this, clearly the book shows us only an uncommonly terrible person who happened to be considered brilliant by some, extremely ambitious by others, and ruthless by most. Disappointing overall, the most interesting aspects of the book are the study of lemurs and the politics of academia.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read though air seems like the author is jazzing up a shorter story. In any case just bizarre case. It would be neat to learn more about how this all came about. The key that BJ's wife dies and he loses it seems a bit to clean

[Hilary · Rating 2 out of 5]

For some reason, I just didn't care. Maybe I read it in the wrong head space, but it didn't hold my interest.

[Landon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a crazy true story. B-J as he's called, was definitely a sociopath. The author did a great job researching this topic. I did not like the way the book flowed.

[Mark Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Without GOD all things are permitted." Raskolinikov