Jean Harris, reporter chronicled Strangler
Jean (Cole) Harris of Anna Maria, Fla., formerly of Scituate, a retired Boston newspaper reporter and columnist, died Saturday at her daughter’s home in Housatonic.
Mrs. Harris was raised in Scituate. She had lived in Anna Maria since 1999.
Writing under her maiden name, Jean Cole, Mrs. Harris worked first for the Boston Daily Record, beginning as a “copy boy” in 1944, one year before the end of World War II.
She soon became a reporter, earning a byline and winning numerous awards.
Much of her work involved investigative reporting, of which she was an early practitioner.
This included twice exposing the need to upgrade the care of the elderly in the state’s nursing homes, which required her to obtain undercover employment as a nurse’s aide.
Also, as part of a reporting team, she helped expose criminal elements operating in Boston’s theater, restaurant and entertainment district, which she dubbed the Combat Zone.
In the early 1960s, Mrs. Harris collaborated to write a series that identified what had first appeared to police to be unrelated homicides of single women in the area as the work of a single, serial killer who became known as the Boston Strangler.
Despite initial ridicule and derision from police investigators, she and her colleague continued writing articles to alert women to the risks they faced. Eventually, their intuitions were discovered to be facts.
From 1972 until her retirement in 1981, she wrote for the Boston Herald American as part of the Hearst newspaper chain.
Mrs. Harris was a parishioner of St. Bernard’s Church in Holmes Beach, Fla.
Wife of the late Frank P., Mrs. Harris is survived by two daughters, Julie Harris Donovan and Jane Harris Coleman, both of Anna Maria, Fla.; 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
A private funeral service was held in Housatonic.
Burial was in Greenlawn Cemetery, Housatonic.
Arrangements by Finnerty & Stevens Funeral Home, Inc., Great Barrington.