The Memory of James: The Lincoln-Sudbury Murder Time Forgot (Part 1)
How a murder on LSRHS campus became lost to time...and why current students should remember it.
This post is dedicated to the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School Class of 2010 students who have tragically passed. On the LSRHS Facebook alumni page, the Class of 2010 has a shocking number of students who have already died. For context, I am about to turn 32:
James Alenson '10
Derek Azzolino '10
Jacki Bramberg '10
Robert Bunting ‘10
Tyler Cyr '10
Emma Franchek '10
Nivela Hassan ‘10
Daniel Sawyer '10
Malcolm Sledge '10
Robert Stuckey '10
I would like to also dedicate this post to Leia Lanza (’11) and Gareth Perkins (’09), close personal friends of mine from LS who are also sadly no longer with us.
On January 19th, 2007, John Odgren (’09), a 16 year old boy diagnosed with the dated term Asperger’s Syndrome, came to school with a knife in his backpack. Though premeditated, Odgren did not plan who specifically would be his victim. Early in the morning, before classes began, he waited in the boy’s bathroom in the ‘B-C connector’ hallway on the third floor. James Alenson (’10), was unfortunately the first to enter. Odgren stabbed him with the carving knife multiple times. The two boys spilled out into the hallway, where Odgren said to educators on the scene “I did it, I did it” and told police “I don’t want him to die”, despite an officer cautioning him to remember his Miranda Rights.
At the time, I had left my friends, who hung out at our sanctuary “The Spot”, located on the second floor of C Building near Central House, to collect my books from my locker on the third floor, ready to walk through the ‘B-C connector’. However, I was stopped by two girls urging folks not to enter B Building.
“Stay in C,” they said, waving their hands towards me.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, teachers are saying we can’t go there.”
Through word of mouth, students were told to get into the nearest classroom. Students gathered with their friends, discussing which teacher would be the coolest to go hang out with during this time. No one was expecting that anything was amiss. I cannot recall what we thought was happening, but we could have assumed there was simply a medical emergency, or that a minor fight had broken out.
A group near me insisted I should join an English teacher’s room, who folks said was a “cool teacher”. When I entered his room, I could see why. He had Magic Eye puzzle books, fun decor, and shelves full of books and other goodies. He had a TV on a wheelie cart. Some girls were excited to pick out a movie to play to pass the time.
We waited what felt like hours and hours. No students acted as if a tragedy had just happened. In our suburban state of mind, I believe none of us could fathom that our ‘lockdown’ was due to a murder. Throughout the classroom, we played games, caught up on homework, and chatted casually about the typical teen issues of the day: crushes and classes.
Around 10:30AM, the PA crackled on. The principal/superintendent of LSRHS stood up to the mic: “LS staff and students, it is with deep sadness and regret that we must inform you that James Alenson has been killed.”
We were informed that busses had already been called to take all members of the student body back home for the day. When I finally arrived home, I watched as the ‘Lincoln-Sudbury murder’ dominated the local and national news: the photos of Ogdren and Alenson, helicopter shots of the building, and discussions of Odgren’s mental health and Asperger’s diagnosis.
The case consumed my brain for days. When we gathered together for a service to unpack the community’s trauma, a woman whom I believe was a child psychologist stood up and named some of the thoughts we might be having: “’I don’t want to talk about it’,” she gave as an example, “or, ‘It’s all I want to talk about’”. I was in the latter camp fully.
In high school, I was, as I am today, an amateur content creator. My first foray into video production was making “WAV videos” of Harry Potter memes. I would download audio files of famous movie clips or songs, pirate all the Harry Potter movies that were released through LimeWire, and use Windows Movie Maker to edit it all together in weird inside jokes. I privated or unlisted most of them due to the cringe factor. Here’s one of my most popular with 13k views:
And just for laughs, here’s my fan-made music video of Harry Potter characters dancing to Lemon Demon’s “Dance Like An Idiot” with 25k views, another expressing my deep passion for Draco Malfoy to Britney Spears’ “Toxic” with 20k views, a Draco-Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) fanfic crossover waiting to happen (that thankfully no one else watched), and a video of me dancing that I submitted to the Vlogbrothers during their “Brotherhood 2.0” era that actually made it into a compilation video.
Though YouTube was a new phenomenon in 2007 when the murder took place, I was already becoming what the kids call ‘terminally online’, and thus I consumed plenty of content on the brand new internet.
Both John Odgren and James Alenson had classes with me. Odgren was in I believe a computing class I took, however, his IEP and other factors of his program meant he mostly did not attend with us. I saw him maybe once or twice talking to the teacher. Alenson was in my Wellness class, where we learned how to use gym equipment such as weights and treadmills in our state-of-the-art facility. He was often paired up with a boy I had a crush on throughout middle school.
You can spot Odgren in the background of this student-made movie “The Search for the Crimson King”, around the 3:48 minute mark:
When we returned to school after the unexpected break, all our classes were devoted to talking about our emotional response to the tragedy. Although the concept of “restorative justice circles” didn’t exist, we were essentially told we could go around the circle and discuss our responses. During our gym class, the same one where Alenson had been a peer with my friends and I, one good friend, a shy band student, broke down in sobs.
“I can’t believe he isn’t here anymore,” she said through tears.
In 2010, our class’ graduating year, Odgren’s trial began. The case caused endless fascination from ‘law & order’ media. Here’s two videos of a show called Juror 13: In Session discussing the case:
It’s clear that adults calling in were furious with Odgren. They were horrified by his behavior, his phone calls from prison, and his dark thoughts. They were upset that Odgren’s lawyers tried to plead ‘insanity’ by using his Asperger’s diagnosis in the proceedings. Folks were happy to lock him up and throw away the key.
In my senior year class, Biblical and Classical Studies, our class came to a halt on the day the verdict was read. Odgren was sentenced to life in prison. Our teacher, a veteran of the school who loved expressing openly her hatred of George W. Bush and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, allowed us space to discuss our thoughts on the case. My classmates expressed raw emotions. We were still reeling from the trauma of Alenson’s death. In some ways, we felt relief with Odgren’s sentencing. Though us teenagers couldn’t fathom what ‘life in prison’ really meant for Odgren, we at least felt secure in the idea that our school had protected us from him, and that he would not be released any time in the near future.
Every year that my graduating class was in school, we held a moment of silence on January 19th in honor of James, who was meant to graduate along with us.
My friend in the year below us told me, as soon as we all graduated, that the moment of silence abruptly ended. He found it especially odd, as James’ younger sister had been in his graduating class, and they had witnessed her anguish at learning about the death of her beloved brother. The Alenson family moved not long after the murder, probably due to a mixture of trauma and anger.
Our graduation ceremony was very much of the times. We had the songs “For Good” from Wicked and Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody” sung and played by graduates. We were meant to have our ceremony outside, but weather did not permit us to go on as planned. We crowded into the gym instead. Clips of the ceremony are on YouTube here:
Although the murder had been a recurring theme throughout our time at LS, I was surprised to learn that the institutional memory of this event had been lost to time.
Just recently, I saw a current LS student at a library book fair wearing an “LS Music” sweatshirt. He told me it belonged to his older brother, who had graduated a few years prior. We got to chatting, and I asked him if he had ever heard of this event. He and another student at the fair told me that they had never heard of Odgren, never heard of this case, and that the school did not have anything posted in the building related to the murder. He seemed shocked when I told him it was a collective trauma of the entire LS community.
What happened? Why has this event been forgotten? In a world where mass school shootings are on the rise, when LS students could rally with other teens across the nation for school safety measures and better access to mental health supports, why wasn’t this case being discussed in the halls of Lincoln-Sudbury?
I have my own theories, which I’ll discuss in a part 2.