Can the Murder of Jane Prichard Ever Be Solved?
The young botanist was slain in the woods in a killing apparently without motive.
It was 1986 and 28-year-old Jane Prichard was hard at work on her Master’s degree at the University of Maryland. She had been a keen botanist for many years and was specialising in plant behaviour for her thesis, which involved long hours spent in the great outdoors between New Castle and Kent Counties in neighbouring Delaware.
However, she would never complete the work on which she had been so focused. That autumn, Jane was found murdered in the woods in a crime that has never been solved. Thirty-five years later, will advances in forensic technology ever bring justice to the Prichard family and ensure her killer is caught?
A dedicated scientist
Jane Prichard grew up on a farm in Maryland and her brother Keith recalled in an interview with the Delaware News Journal that this instilled a love of nature in her from an early age.
She became valedictorian of her high school class in 1976 and, after getting her degree, moved to the University of Maryland to do her Master’s in botany with a view to becoming an environmental lawyer.
