Over 50 years ago, during a quiet Thanksgiving week at Penn State University, 22-year-old Betsy Aardsma was stabbed to death in the school’s library stacks – leaving a mystery that is still unsolved to this day.
“There are so many people who worked this case, doing everything they can do,” Mike Simmers, then a young trooper with the Pennsylvania State Police told NBC’s “Dateline.” “But it was a perfect storm – and we just couldn’t solve her case.”
Betsy Aardsma was found just after 04:45 p.m on 28 November 1969, covered in books in the Pattee Library.
Simmers—who had been working undercover at the college—remembers being called to the scene of what he initially believed had been a medical episode. It wasn’t until Betsy Aardsma had been taken to the hospital that the medical staff had discovered that she had been stabbed once in her left breast.
There had been little blood left at the scene because Betsy, who had been wearing a red dress, bled internally into her lung.
Simmers knew he was in “over my head” and called for backup from the state police before returning to the library. However, since no one initially thought her death had been a murder, no one had preserved the scene: the books had been cleaned up, the floor had been mopped and students were once again milling through the area.
Investigators interviewed several witnesses who had been in the library at the time, but many only recalled hearing the books fall. One witness was able to provide police with information about a man who had been seen running away around the time of the killing, but the sketch never produced any suspects.
It was believed that Betsy was killed by someone she knew as she hadn’t tried to run from her killer or fight back.
“We had a couple of people who we believed could be the suspect,” Simmers told Dateline. “But there was never enough evidence to make any arrests.”
Betsy had plenty of male suitors but was more focused on completing her studies. The day before her murder she had celebrated Thanksgiving with her boyfriend. She took the bus back to campus to finish school work.
The case was hampered by lack of physical evidence and over the decades has spawned rumours that serial killer, Ted Bundy was responsible as he was believed to be nearby at the time.
Others believe she was killed by a former suitor, Richard Haefner, who reportedly wanted a romantic relationship only to be rebuffed by Betsy Aardsma. He also reportedly went to visit a professor only hours after the stabbing, seemingly distraught, asking “Have you seen the papers?” However the murder had not yet been reported on in the paper.
Haefner, who later became a geologist after getting his doctorate from Penn State University, was charged in 1975 with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and corruption of minors in connection with an alleged incident with a 12-year-old, but the case ended in a mistrial.
George Keibler, a state police sergeant who oversaw the investigation for the first 14 years, told Lancaster Online that while investigators knew of Haefner, he was “never considered in the ‘suspect’ category.”
Haefner continued to profess his innocence until his death in 2002 at the age of 58, according to NBC News.
Sources: Oxygen, Yahoo
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