The Memory of James: The Lincoln-Sudbury Murder Time Forgot (Part 4)

My phone call with John Odgren.

You can read parts 1, 2, and 3 here.

On January 19th, 2025, the anniversary of the murder of James Alenson, I received a phone call from John Odgren, the perpetrator.

“I apologize for calling you on this date,” he said.

I had requested to speak to him a few months ago during a period of intense reflection on my life. I was unemployed, traumatized by my work as a public school teacher, and aimless. January 19th in my freshman year was the beginning of my school trauma, and I wanted some sense of answers. I thought perhaps some healing could come from speaking to John.

Odgren had always stuck in my mind. Yes, he had committed a heinous crime, but I couldn’t help but think of the scared, mentally ill young man who felt motivated to enact such violence upon our community. We shared an algebra class together, though his program took him away from the mainstream often. I wanted to know that the young man who made this grave error was indeed a human.

I told him about the trauma that I was carrying now. How I didn’t know if I could continue to be a teacher when I had almost been killed on the job once. How I was suffering from anxiety. He commiserated. He recognized that his actions on that day had impacted me as an educator.

Now in his 30s, having been imprisoned for 18 years of his life with now a possibility of parole, Odgren told me about how he was trying to turn his life around.

“I’m now a published poet,” he said, “Can I read you a poem now?” I said sure.

The poem was addressed to his mother. He begged her from solitary confinement that he would work to become worthy of her love. I could hear the pain in every word. The poem moved me immensely. Even in the darkest circumstances, through the trauma of prison, Odgren was still able to bring a creative spirit to his sentence.

“Every word of it is true,” he said.

I asked if he still had hope. He told me he did, every day. I wasn’t in prison, and I can barely keep holding on to hope in my own life.

“I’ve studied languages while I’ve been in here,” he told me. French, Spanish, Russian. He worked hard to learn how to read and write in them. He studied for a college degree as well, trying to sharpen his mind with the time he had.

As a teacher, one of my fears has always been not doing enough for a student who is struggling. I don’t know what to do in many situations. It’s what fills me with anxiety with returning to the classroom. In an age of unprecedented violence, I fear that my actions in the classroom won’t be enough to stop something unspeakable from occurring.

“What’s something you wish a teacher had done to help support you in school?” I asked.

“I wish they had noticed my obsession with violence, and tried to contact my parents to help support me,” he said. I suppose it’s a reasonable request, but I didn’t have the heart to tell Odgren that with the workload of most educators, it could be difficult to give that type of support to a student on top of the myriad of other tasks piled on the teacher’s desk every day. But I took it to heart.

Odgren said he wants to devote his life to making sure that nothing like what he did ever happens again. He said he is glad that he was in prison, as it was justice for what he did. He had time to reflect on his actions, and recognized the mistakes in his thought patterns.

“It sounds like meditation,” I said, telling him about my experience in Thailand with the meditation retreat.

“Yes, it is a type of meditation. I’ve learned to see my negative thoughts and recognize that they are incorrect.”

In the deep pit of depression I’m in at the moment, I’m still struggling to find the inner peace that Odgren is working towards.

The prison phone system told us we had one minute remaining.

“What message would you want to send to the LS community?” I asked.

“That I am deeply, truly sorry for what I did.”

Part of me believed it. I didn’t hear the voice of the kid who thought he was smarter than everyone. I didn’t hear the voice of a monster. I heard a man who had sat with his guilt for years, and was ready to atone.

“If you ever want to talk again, please let me know,” he said at the end of the call. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I think I had all the closure I needed. I wish the best for him, and I hope that what he said is true that he has turned his life around. But I didn’t want to befriend him. I was looking for answers, and I think I got all that I needed to feel like my pain was not in vain.

I’m grateful for his call, but I know I still have a long journey ahead of me to fix my mental health struggles. Though I have no murder to atone for, I still have an immense weight upon me that I am trying to lift day by day. I don’t know when it will get better for me, but Odgren’s hope gave me some as well. We are just two adults trying to make the best of what life has handed to us, and that’s all we can do in this world.