Jean Cole Harris, 89, Former Newspaper Reporter

Obituary from Finnerty & Sons Funeral Home

Jean (Cole) Harris, newspaper reporter and columnist for nearly forty years in Boston, Ma, died at her daughter’s home in Housatonic, Ma on Saturday, August 8. Mrs. Harris has lived full time in Anna Maria, Fl, since 1999. She was the wife of Frank P. Harris, who was a reporter at the Boston Globe for over thirty years. He predeceased her in 2001. He is the namesake for the popular local restaurant “Poppo’s”. She is survived by two daughters, Julie Harris Donovan and Jane Harris Coleman,, both of Anna Maria, Fl, ten grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren.

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 WWII. She soon became a reporter in her own right, eventually earning a byline and winning numerous awards. From 1972 until her retirement in 1981, she wrote for the Boston Herald American as part of the Hearst newspaper chain.

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 aid. Also, as part of a reporting team, she helped expose criminal elements operating in Boston’s theater, restaurant and entertainment district, which she named “the combat zone”. In the early sixties, Ms Cole collaborated to write a series which first identified what police were treating as unrelated homicides of single women in the area as the work of a single, serial, killer who became known as the infamous “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, of course, their early intuitions were discovered to be facts.

Mrs. Harris grew up in Scituate, on Boston’s south shore, one of six children of Scituate fire chief Howard Cole and his wife Margaret. At the time of her death she was a Parishioner at St Bernard’s Catholic Church in Holmes Beach, Fl.