The next step for Pring-Wilson was Harvard, where he enrolled in a two-year masters program at the Davis Center.

After spending last summer in Croatia, Pring-Wilson worked this year on a thesis about reconstruction efforts in Bosnia.

The secretary of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ student council, Pring-Wilson recently received acceptance letters from several law schools, including the University of Colorado, where he planned to study environmental law next fall.

Putting His Mind to It

Pring-Wilson’s life outside of school, as friends and family describe it, shows similar streaks of independence and determination.

He has a knack for carpentry—so he built a gazebo behind his mother’s house.

One summer he decided to learn to cook, Pring-Wilson’s aunt, Dawna Wilson recalls.

After he had set his mind to it, there was no dissuading him.

“He learned how to cook out of a French cookbook so thick it was more like a doorstop,” Wilson remembers.

“He meticulously followed every recipe,” she says, and by the end of the summer had mastered the difficult chocolate mousse souffle.

Dobson, Pring-Wilson’s classics professor, says her former student enjoys outdoor activities, especially hiking.

She speculates that this love for the outdoors, and his independent nature, might explain why Pring-Wilson chose to walk several miles from the Western Front, a pub in Cambridge, to his apartment in Davis Square on the night of the stabbing.

“It doesn’t surprise me that he would walk four miles home to his house in the middle of the night,” Dobson says. “He was very free that way. He wasn’t terribly cautious.”

But logical explanations end about there, Dobson and others say. Though he once played a violent sport, Pring-Wilson was perceived differently off the field.

“Imagine a guy who is a wonderful teddy bear,” Riker says. “He’s a pretty complex guy.”