On Thanksgiving weekend 1849, one of Boston’s wealthiest citizens, Dr. George Parkman, disappeared suddenly. When his dismembered body was found a week later in the laboratory of John White Webster, a venerable professor at Harvard Medical College, it sparked one of the most notorious murder trials in the history of the city. Based on a book by renowned historian Simon Schama, Murder at Harvard re-examines this grisly episode to uncover why, though a guilty verdict was handed down, the case has remained an intriguing mystery for more than 150 years. Stange’s film weaves reenactments of the murder, police inquiry, and trial together with Schama’s meticulous modern-day investigation of the evidence in the case.