Criminology - Betsy Aardsma

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

On November 28th, 1969, college student Betsy Aardsma was murdered inside the library at Penn State University. Betsy had spent Thanksgiving with her boyfriend at his campus but had returned because she had an assignment she needed to finish. It was that assignment that took her to the library that fateful day. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the mysterious murder of Betsy Aardsma. Because of the holiday, the library was not as crowded as it would have been on most days. But, there were still a good number of people inside the building. Betsy was killed in a library section known as "the stacks" due to the extremely narrow rows. Witnesses heard a crash, a young man yelling, and then saw him rush out of the library. Investigators worked hard to solve Betsy's murder but have yet to do so. But, there are a number of suspects that people have pointed to over the years. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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When Whitney and I couldn't find exactly what we wanted, we created our own. Colts Crimes in Cabernet embraces the grim realities of the world with a side of wine. Don't drink wine? That's okay too. Over the last three seasons, our true crime journey has evolved from being a listener like you to becoming advocates. Each week, we cover an unsolved case in a different state in an effort to create new leads to help advance the case. To take advocacy one step further, we also travel to locations to help families of those who have gone missing or have been murdered. Whether it's a foot search or passing out flyers, we will be there, no matter where. No matter who.

We invite you to join us, so pop a cork and grab a glass because we have work to do. Colts, Crimes, and Cabernet is available wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 233 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morford. How are you doing, man? I'm doing good. I went outside this morning. It's a little bit chilly out there.

A little Florida chill, but compared to the rest of the country, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. How's it up your way? It's snowing, dude. It's been. snowing all week. And we're in the middle of November. It's like we went here in Ohio from 70s, even into the 80s to snowing. And there was really very little in between. Yeah, I definitely don't miss that. And it could be worse. You could be Buffalo. I heard they're going to get like five feet this weekend. Yeah, weather, man. Weather's crazy. So more of no Patreon shout outs to give this week. But as always, we appreciate any support we get. Yeah, we have a lot of great patrons that take the time every month to support us and we can't thank them enough.

And if you'd like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology. So we have a great episode lined up. But before we get into that, just a reminder, we're doing a special Q&A or what we're calling an AMA episode that will air during the holidays. You can ask your questions about the show, a case we've covered, or, you know, something about Morph and I. You can also leave us a voicemail that we may. may play on the air by going to speakpipe.com slash criminology podcast.

But you have to get your voicemails, questions, your comments into us by no later than December 13th. Hit us up with your comments or questions on Facebook at facebook.com slash criminology podcast or in our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans. And you can also reach out to us on Twitter where our handles at criminology pod. I know I'm really looking forward to that episode and hearing from listening. It should be a lot of fun, but with that out of the way, we need to get into this episode. In our recent Halloween episode, we covered the case of Sherry Joe Bates, the 18-year-old college

student who was murdered outside of her college library in Riverside, California in 1966. In fact, we really went into depth into Sherry's case in season one of criminology when we covered the Zodiac case. The case of Sherry Joe Bates isn't the only high-profile murder of a college student. in her around their campus library in the 1960s. The case we're covering today happened on the opposite coast of Shuri Joe's case, and it's one that I've followed for quite some time. And as I've been known to do once or twice in the past,

I went down a rabbit hole examining whether this case could be connected to Shuri Joe's or not, due to some of the parallels. Well, in the end, I don't think there's any connection between these two cases. That doesn't make the murder of Betsy Arsma any less interesting or mysterious. There's some really fantastic resources out there about Betsy's case, which you can find online. Much of it we used in researching this episode, including two books, which we highly recommend, who killed Betsy by Derek Sherwood, and murdering the stacks by David DeCook. Elizabeth Betsy Ruth Arzma was born in Holland, Michigan on July 11, 1947 to Richard

and Esther Arzma. She had two sisters, one older and one younger, as well as a younger brother. Betsy graduated from Holland High School in 1965 with honors, fifth in her senior class. She then enrolled in classes at Hope College with the goal of one day becoming a doctor or perhaps a medical illustrator. Two years later, she enrolled at Michigan State University to study art and English. This is where she met her boyfriend David Wright, a medical student. she graduated with honors from MSU in 1969 and planned to take some time away from school. Betsy wanted to help other people and planned to join the Peace Corps on a mission to Africa. She had been inspired to help people and create change when she went on a week-long mission

to a Navajo reservation in New Mexico with the Reformed Church. But Betsy had a dilemma because she was head over heels for her boyfriend David. David had enrolled at Penn State Hershey to study at the medical college there, but he was honest with Betsy and said he didn't know if he could stay monogamous with her, being on another continent. Not wanting a chance losing the relationship, Betsy changed her plans, and she decided to continue her studies heading to Penn State University in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. She wanted to stay close to David.

Betsy's new plan was to get an MA in English and Art with the intention of teaching at the college level. She started at Penn State in October 1969. The move brought the couple closer together, and they hoped to get engaged in December 1969 over the Christmas holiday. Sadly, the couple would never realize that goal. According to Betsy's roommate Sharon Brandt, Betsy didn't do much to integrate into campus life at Penn State.

She wasn't involved in a lot of extracurriculars when she wasn't in class or studying. She was in Hershey with David. This is where Betsy was over Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving that year, she didn't go home to Michigan because she was planning to go back to Michigan when Christmas break started on December 13th. On November 27th, Thanksgiving, she and David had dinner with some other medical students. Betsy called her parents and told them that things were going well and wished them a happy Thanksgiving. She wanted to stay at David's longer, but he was

studying for finals and Betsy needed to go to the library to finish an English paper that she was behind on. So David drove her to the bus stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and she headed back to campus. It would be the last time the couple would ever see each other. And more if this is probably a great example of how times have changed. You know, think about Betsy in 1969. She has an English paper that she needs to work on. Okay. In 1969, you had to go to the library. That was it.

That was your option. You know, today, obviously, anyone in this position would just stay where they wanted to be. Because with their computer, with their laptop, they would have access to everything they needed. Yeah, we definitely know that people can take courses and stuff from home and, you know, basically attend college. from home, but I don't know. To me, there's something, maybe in old-fashioned, there's something important, special about being in that atmosphere where it's quiet, where you can go pull down the books you need and spend time there just studying and being focused on that without any outside

distractions. Are you telling me that you would rather go to the library than be able to get whatever you need on your computer? Is that what you're telling me? In some instances, yeah. No. I would. I could not disagree with you more on this subject. I would never want to go back. And I'm not this way about everything. Some things I say I would like to go back to this time. No, I do not want to go back to the point in time where I have to go to the library and pull down a book. I just don't want to do it. Yeah. Maybe that's where I'm old fashioned. Yeah. That's one thing we disagree. The next day on the afternoon of November 28th, Betsy and Sharon left their dorm room in Atherdon Hall.

Bette's he was headed to Patty Library on campus to get a specific research paper that she needed for her assignment. When she was done, they were going to meet up and catch a movie at the theater. Their choices at the time were take the money and run were easy rider. At around 4 p.m., Betsy spoke to Professor Nicholas Chikovsky about the research paper and mentioned going to the stacks at Patty Library to get it. The stacks are a section of very narrow floor-to-ceiling shells full of reference material. The rows are so narrow that two people can't pass each other without both turning sideways. From the center aisle, shells went all the way to the wall.

You had to walk back up the row you went down as they were all dead ends. The stacks weren't designed for students to use. The intention was that the students would tell a librarian what they needed, and one single person would work the stacks and find the information. With this design in mind, the narrow rows make more sense. But at some point it had been opened up to students. On her way to the library, Betsy spoke to two of her friends, Linda Marcia and Robert Steinberg. Soon after, she entered Patty Library and went to her assigned desk.

She took off her jacket and put it on the desk with her coat and a book before going to the card catalog to find the location of the book she needed. It would be easier to move around in the stacks without a coat and purse. And it also showed that her desk was being used at the moment. so no one else would sit in her seat. The paper Betsy needed was on level two in what was called the core stacks, where the English literature reference material that she and her fellow English 501 students needed was located.

She just had to go down one flight of stairs to get there. Just after 4.30 p.m., assistant supervisor Dean Brongard saw Betsy. She was identified easily by a red dress, standing in the center aisle between rows 50 and 51. There were two men in a different aisle talking to each other. At about 4.40 p.m., as another witness, Richard Allen used the photocopiers. He could faintly hear a conversation between a man and a woman, coming from the direction of row 50. Just minutes later, Alan heard a crash.

He walked over to where he heard the crash and found Betsy lying on her back near the end of the row. Books were strewn about. Apparently she had grabbed at them as she fell. The crash Alan had heard was one of the metal shells falling down. Right after the crash, students Jowal Uofenda and merrily Erdley saw a young man about six feet tall with brown hair wearing a sport coat, tie and khakis, run from somewhere near Rose 50 and 51. According to the Pittsburgh press, he yelled, somebody better help this girl. The man brought Uffendi and Erdly to the core stacks and pointed out Betsy lying motionless on the ground. Immediately, Mary Lee Erdley moved in to check Betsy's pulse.

With everyone checking on Betsy, the man in the khakis ran away from the scene. One witness chased him up one level and out of the building, but couldn't catch him. He was last seen running towards the recreation hall. Meanwhile, Mary Lee Earley performed CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation efforts on Betsy. As witnesses gathered, someone called Rittenauer Health Suss. Center, the campus's hospital. At 501 p.m., staff at Rittenauer were informed that someone had fainted in Patty Library. Minutes later, student paramedics arrived and put Betsy on a gurney. They used a service elevator to exit the library and headed to Rittenauer via ambulance, while one of the student

paramedics continued CPR. At the health center, where the staff were expecting a patient who had fainted or had a seizure or blood sugar problem, someone noticed that Betsy was bleeding. Her red dress was cut away to reveal a blood-soaked white turtle-necked sweater. When that was cut away, one single stab when Betsy's chest was discovered. At 5.19 p.m., Betsy was pronounced dead. And Morph, I want to talk about the confusion of this situation. The man in the sport coat and khakis running. Betsy laying on the ground, bookshelf falling.

Nobody really knows what's going on other than she needs help. But it's obvious that from the very beginning, no one really knows that Betsy had been stabbed because they would have relayed that information. And all that chaos and adrenaline going and everyone's trying to help, you know,

had to be pretty confusing situation. I think one thing would be different. Maybe if they heard a gunshot, then everyone would be on alert that, hey, someone just perhaps was shot. but here they didn't see any blood and they didn't have any reason to think that Betsy had been stabbed. Back at Patty Library, staff and well-meaning students in the stacks had fixed the shelving, put books back where they belonged,

and mopped up a small amount of blood and urine on the tiles where Betsy had fallen. They didn't realize that they had just disturbed a crime scene and that clues that may help catch a killer may have been lost. In fact, many people who were there in the library left, unaware that a witness statement would be helpful in solving a crime. They had no idea they had just witnessed. Once security and Pennsylvania state troopers arrived, they did what they could to secure the scene and locate witnesses.

And this is something that we see in many cases. You know, sometimes it's where people know it's a crime scene, but they didn't realize that they shouldn't do this or that, right? They shouldn't touch something or they shouldn't walk in an area and they end up contaminating the crime scene. You know, here, people didn't even realize that it was a crime scene. Yeah, they're, they're mopping up what was described as a small amount of blood and urine, but they could have thought easily that that blood came from the fall.

Yeah, I don't think you can fall to anywhere here. They were just trying to help and get the area back to, to, normal. Well, I think for a lot of people, the natural inclination is to want to put things back in order, to fix things. And to your point, Morf, I agree. You can't blame any of these individuals for rearranging, putting things back where they were cleaning up because they just really had no idea. Near the row that Bettsky was attacked in, investigators found multiple pornographic magazines spread out on a desk. Half full can of root beer was also on the desk.

That area was used for storage, so it could have made a good hideaway, especially over the Thanksgiving break, when there weren't many students. The library, in particular, the secluded stacks were somewhat of a lover's lane, a place where people could meet out of the eye of the public. It was also thought to be an area where gay men would meet when they couldn't publicly show their affection. When investigators tested the air for semen, nearly the entire row was said to have tested positive. The usual cliche is it lit up like a Christmas tree when talking about a black light or luminal. Partial fingerprints were also found and taken from the scene. It's unknown whether the prints even belonged to the suspect or were left there by countless library goers, but they've never matched to any records from any database.

The pornographic magazines were tested for fingerprints, but they were all too smudged to be useful. The can of soda would have been perfect for DNA collection if it hadn't been 1969. And we don't know whether it was taken into evidence or not, but it may have simply been tossed into the trash. Dr. Thomas McNany conducted Betsy's autopsy at Belafonte Hospital in Belafonte, Pennsylvania. The stab wound showed evidence of a deliberate attack. The weapon was believed to be a three and a half to four inch hunting knife, which had pierced through Betsy's breastbone and hit her heart. It also severed her pulmonary artery, causing hemorrhaging into her chest cavity. The blood filling her lungs meant that she was not able to scream or call for help.

If Betsy had not pulled down books and shelving in her fall, her attack may have been entirely silent. But even with that noise, some of the nine or so people that were within 70 feet of the attack heard nothing. What little blood did come out of the wound. was hidden by the red dress. Betsy was wearing. The dress and the sweater she had on underneath it were both pretty thick. It was November in Pennsylvania, and they helped hide the blood, as well as the rip in the fabric from the weapon that stabbed her.

Even if someone had realized Betsy had been stabbed sooner, she likely could not have been saved. Her autopsy revealed that the wound was so severe. She would have been dead within just five minutes. far fewer than the 30 minutes that passed between her attack and her official time of death on the record. Dr. McNanny believed that Betsy was stabbed by a right-handed attacker who was standing face to face with her in that narrow row. Police and school officials were tasked with contacting Betsy's family and boyfriend to break the devastating news to them that Betsy had been murdered. Betsy's body was sent home to Michigan and she was laid to rest at Pilgrim Home Cemetery, holding a single room.

Rose from her boyfriend David. Meanwhile, investigators turned the campus upside down trying to find clues. The entire campus of Penn State University was searched as investigators tried to find the murder weapon. Police knew that they had an uphill battle. Authorities caught a break when they learned that only about 90 people had entered or exited Patty Library between 4.30 and 5 p.m. that Friday, significantly fewer than the normal average of 400. The fact it was a holiday weekend meant that many students were away. Though the scene had been compromised, droplets of blood were found in the staircase between level two and level three. The paramedics hadn't used this route to exit the library. They used an elevator, indicating that Betsy's killer had left the library via that staircase,

and that either he was bleeding or the weapon he was carrying was dripping blood. The blood drops were tested and they matched Betsy's blood type, but that was the only testing they could do in 1969. A black and white sketch depicting a young man with wavy hair and glasses was released, but didn't lead to an arrest. News of the Penn State murder rocked students and faculty on the campus, and people hoped that the killer would be caught soon. That didn't happen. Along the way in the investigation,

investigators interviewed almost 5,000 people. In January, 1972, the $25,000 reward that had been offered for him for in the case expired. Authorities looked at David Wright immediately. He was almost two hours away in Hershey, Pennsylvania, at the time of his girlfriend's murder. David had a solid alibi. He was in a group study session in Hershey with no time for him to travel to Penn State

and back undetected. From all accounts, the pair had a good relationship. Betsy wrote David a letter nearly every single day. It was cheaper than long-distance phone calls. calls, the last letter she ever wrote him, arrived in his mail on the morning after her murder. 27-year-old English teaching assistant Robert Durgy was questioned by police. Like Betsy, he had left the University of Michigan for Penn State. They wondered if this was a coincidence, or was he stalking Betsy?

On December 19th, about three weeks after Betsy's murder, Durgy died in a single car accident in Lansing, Michigan. He had taken his own life. According to his wife, Martha, in a pen, live article. She said he had demons and struggled with depression and had been hospitalized on more than one occasion. It's been said that he had to take medical leave from Penn State and was upset that he couldn't handle teaching. Martha claims that she and Robert had left Penn State for Michigan on November 27th. Investigators cleared him as well as they could in 1969 and moved on. According to the website, front page detectives.com, there was a 40-year-old man named William Spencer

who was said to have told others at a 1969 faculty Christmas party that he killed that girl in the library. He told investigators that he knew Betsy and that she had agreed to model nude for the sculpting class, he taught. He also claimed that he had been in the level two core stacks at the time of Betsy's attack and that he had seen her killer, a man wearing an overcoat. Adortes do not believe that Betsy did or ever would. agreed a model for Spencer, and investigators didn't take his claims seriously. So I get it. They didn't take his claim seriously, but I mean, you kind of have to look at this guy and say, well, these are strange things if true. If it is true that he told people at a Christmas party that he killed that girl in the library, that would be very, very concerning.

If it's true that he was there at the time of the attack, that would be concerned. That would be concerning. And then this whole nude modeling thing, you know, everything that we've said about Betsy, everything that's known about her, does it make sense in 1969 that this girl would model nude for a whole class of students? And to me, it doesn't from what we know about her. Yeah, hopefully police did actually check this guy out to make sure that he was just, you know, BSing. And we know it's common that a lot of people just to get attention or for whatever reason, they'll inject themselves into a case.

And then we find out they had nothing to do with it. But hopefully he was checked out. But we don't know exactly what links they went to to clear him. And this is something that I have never understood more of the entire time that we've been doing, you know, the podcast that we do, the research that we do. I understand that there are killers that want to, you know, interject themselves into their own case. We've seen that time and time again.

There are also people who want to interject kind of or put themselves into a serial killer case for whatever reason. I don't understand this type of situation at all. If you were at a Christmas party, why would you tell people that you killed this girl? Now, I get saying white lies to puff yourself up, that you've done. got a fancy car or that you're going to Australia, things that you're not actually going to do or things that you don't actually own. I understand people do that.

Makes them feel better. How does it make you feel better to cop to a murder? I'll never understand that. Yeah, I'm the same way. I can't get my head around it. But even if it comes out that this guy was cleared, how does those people feel that he told that to if they've got to think this guy is a real. creeper, real weirdo to even say that even if he was lying.

So that must have affected the way they saw him, what late they saw him and after that. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and Water.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. 25-year-old Richard Hafner, a geology student at Penn State, also came under heavy suspicion. He lived just across the courtyard from Betsy and Sharon at Atherton Hall. He claimed that he heard about Betsy's death when he was eating in the Student's Union Building. Hafner also claimed that he had never been inside a Patty Library, since all the geology books were housed in a different library in another building. Richard Hafner was never arrested or charged with Betsy's murder, although many experts consider him a strong suspect in the case.

Hafterner did have a few run-ins with the law over the years, which we'll get into. Haftner received his doctorate in geology from Penn State and went on to teach the subject himself. In the early 1970s, he was an assistant professor of geology at the University of South Carolina and was poised to accept jobs as professor at the University of Southern California, as well as curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. In August 1975, he was charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and for corruption of the morals of a 12-year-old boy. Hafterner had several young boys that would help him put together boxes of rocks and

gyms in his garage to sell to the Smithsonian Institution. And it was one of those boys who was the alleged victim of Haftner. But in that incident, Haftner was not convicted due to a hung jury, but he was charged with contempt of court for announcing that he had passed a polygraph, which had been ruled in admissible at his trial. For that outburst, he was fined $500 in sentence to serve one month in the county prison. after two weeks he was released pending appeal. Hafterner also sued a slew of people involved in the morals trial.

He sued officers, a city and county, the court reporter at his trial, and the attorney who had defended him in the case. He claimed that his civil rights had been violated, but all the cases were thrown out. He then sued the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, which didn't hire him after he was charged. In that case, he was awarded almost $300,000 in damages. George Werner, an attorney who defended the city and the city police department in the suits Hafner filed recalled one particular instance of Hafner's temper flaring in public. During a deposition in which he was representing himself, Hafner actually jumped over a table and got into a physical altercation with the witness.

In 1981, Hafner was charged with disorderly conduct related to an incident in the lobby of a Pennsylvania newspaper, Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. In 1992, he was charged with interfering in child custody after taking a 13-year-old boy to Virginia. Richard Hafner's troubles continued. In 1994, he was charged with resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, aggravated assault, hindering apprehension, and disorderly conduct, trying to prevent officers from entering his house. In 1998, Richard Haftner was convicted in Delaware for kicking and punching a woman following an argument in a grocery store parking lot.

This woman had seen a dog in a shopping cart outside of Liquor World in Milltown, Delaware, and had briefly thought the dog was abandoned there. Hafner stepped up to claim it very aggressively. He used a bottle and hit the woman's car, so she followed him to try and get his license plate number. Hafner pulled her out of the car by her neck and beat her so severely that her jaw was dislocated, and several of her teeth were loose. Hafner filed a lawsuit claiming that he had been the victim in the assault, but it's thrown out as a frivolous complaint.

There were reports that Richard Haffner carried around a sharpened screwdriver in his car as well. So in kind of looking back through the life of Richard Haffner, I mean, obviously you'd have to say that this guy was in and out of trouble with law enforcement. You had this charge against him related to this 12-year-old boy. Okay, hung jury. He wasn't convicted. and then he files sued against anybody and everybody. But then in later years, you see some of the charges and the convictions and things

really kind of painting a picture of a guy who at the very least has impulse control issues. And I think at the very worst, has a very serious rage problem. I mean, he jumped over a table during a deposition to trying to get to a witness. He assaulted this woman, kicking and punching her, dislocating her jaw and knocking out some of her teeth.

Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that he definitely had some anger issues and proven track record of attacking women. So I can understand why a lot of people think he's a strong suspect in Beti's case. At the very least, he didn't seem like a great guy. I'll put it that way. In addition to Hafner's run-ins with the law, his neighbors didn't like him. His yard was filled with old metal, broken down cars, and other trash. According to Lancaster Online.com, one former neighbor claimed that he would terrorize anyone

who called the city to complain about his yard. Another neighbor recalled a time that they saw Hafner's dog poop on their lawn when they were sitting in their car. When they asked Hafner to clean up after his dog, he immediately picked it up with his bare hands and threw it at their car. Okay, I've had some bad neighbors. I've gone on record on a number of my podcasts talking about my interactions with some neighbors. None of them ever rose to the level of any party throwing dog poop. Yeah, this is not a neighbor that I want my neighborhood for sure.

No, I don't think anybody wants this guy as a neighbor. But unfortunately, a lot of us have experienced something similar. You know, you get a bad neighbor and man, it really can put the whole kind of neighborhood in turmoil. You know, people are afraid of an individual or you just have an individual who wants to stir the pot or cause trouble at every turn. That's a bad scenario. In 2009, a relative of Hafner's released a book which made him look even more suspicious.

The author, Chris Hafner, who's been credited as either Richard's nephew or cousin, depending on the source you read, recalled a conversation he over her between Richard and Richard's mom. Chris had been working in the garage on rock boxes when he heard an argument. According to Lancaster Online, Richard's mother was furious about the charges against Richard, relating to the 12-year-old boy, especially, she pointed out, after she had covered for him regarding that girl at Penn State. Chris wasn't sure what Richard's mom was referring to until he heard her say, you might as well kill me too, Rick.

That's when Chris happened to realize that she was referring to Betsy Ardzma. After realizing that Chris had overheard this conversation, it seemed like Richard tried to keep Chris in his good graces for the rest of his life. According to Lancaster online, Chris claimed to have spent hours in Richard's house after he passed away, which led to Chris uncovering the final piece of key evidence in the case, which up to this point, he has refused to share. He told Lancaster Online, Rick had a demon in him, but it was innate. It was there, but it was not his fault. For this, he must be forgiven. For this, Betsy must be forgotten. And obviously, more, if these are Chris's claims, we have no way of knowing if this stuff is true. If he overheard,

Richard's mom saying what he has said, she said, or what this final piece of key evidence that he's referred to may be. But it was this line that he said to Lancaster Online that really kind of got me. Okay, I get it. Rick may have had a demon in him. But this last line, for this, he must be forgiven. For this, Betsy must be forgotten. Why must be? Why must Batsy be forgotten? Yeah, I don't understand that all. It's almost as if he's dismissive of her mur. And just because it's possible his relative did it

and was ill in his opinion that she should be forgotten. I just don't get that. Yeah, it really jumped out at me as being a very, very strange statement. Lauren Wright, who is no relation to Betsy's boyfriend, David Wright, was a geology professor and friend of Richard Hafner's and he contradicted Richard's story of being in the student's union building when he learned that Betsy had been killed. Lauren Wright recalled that around 6 p.m. on November 28th,

the day Betsy was killed, Richard Hafner showed up at his house, winded. According to front page detectives.com, when Hafner caught his breath, he blurted out, have you heard, a girl I dated was murdered in the library. Lauren Wright didn't tell anyone about this incident until 1976 after Hafner began behaving aggressively toward him. However, he only told Penn State representatives who apparently did nothing with this information. Richard Hafner died in a hospital in Las Vegas in 2002 after his aorta tour while he was

searching the Mojave Desert for minerals. Oddly, he drowned in his own blood just as Betsy had. many believe that Richard Hafner is the strongest suspect in the murder of Betsy Ardsma. One of two sketches made of the man running from the library looks similar to Hafner, according to some opinions. David DeKook, author of Murder in the Stacks, said that Richard Hafner had an inner rage against women that manifested itself again and again throughout his life.

So we've talked about some suspects, but I think we really need to talk more about the way that the murder of Betsy Arzma played out. There are some lingering questions. Since Betsy was stabbed one single time in the heart, how could someone actually be sure that they would hit that exact spot in such a way that there was no way she could make a sound, name her attacker, or even survive? Could that indicate a killer with medical training? And this attack happened in the very narrow stacks walkway.

We mentioned that two people would have to turn side by side if they passed each other in that walkway, it was such a tight space, it would be the perfect scenario to get close to Betsy without her being alarmed and close enough to strike. The angle of the wound as well as the bruising indicates that it was someone tall who had a lot of strength behind the blow. If she was facing her attacker, as Dr. McNany believed she was, how was her killer certain that she would not run away screen and make a scene, essentially leaving them trapped in the narrow stacks with no way to get out unseen. It does seem like this attack was possibly unplanned, but somehow very precise and efficient.

In line with this theory of the attack being unplanned, someone would have had to bring a hunting knife to the library with them, whether they intended to murder someone or not, but it seems out of place for someone just studying. An all, however, which is a very sharp pointed tool, almost like a screwdriver, could have been nearby in the library. These days, we have hole punchers, but at the time, alls were commonplace in libraries. So perhaps if the weapon wasn't a knife as Dr. Magnani believed, then the weapon may not have been brought to the scene at all and may have been in the library all alone. A lot of people have considered whether this was a so-called crime of passion. But that's hard to imagine.

Here, due to the setting, there's no indication that Betsy was involved with anyone at Penn State. A theory that a lot of people buy into is that Betsy may have stumbled upon something she wasn't supposed to see. But what could Betsy have stumbled upon in a library that was worth silencing her forever? We often hear about theories and unsolved cases where someone may have seen a drug deal or another murder and they were killed or abducted. so they couldn't talk. But at 4.45 p.m. in a college library. One theory that a lot of people seem to agree with is that Betsy could have walked in on two men in the midst of a trist, maybe a teacher and a student, or someone with a lot to lose, having sex in the library. Back then, many gay men feared being outed. But if Betsy interrupted some kind of secret

Trist and one of the people she interrupted killed Betsy, then that means there's another witness out there who has never shared the secret. With a lack of logical motives, some people wonder if a serial killer could have attacked Betsy, and what if killing her was the only motive? Ted Bundy was said to have been near Temple University in Philadelphia at the time, but Betsy's murder doesn't fit in with his MO at all. Some have gone to considerable lengths to reach for the Zodiac as Betsy's killer. There are some theories that link Betsy's murder to the killing.

of Sherry Joe Bates in Riverside, California. He was killed outside of her college library. Many have speculated that Sherry Joe may be a Zodiac victim, but we're talking 3,000 miles and three years apart between the murder of Sherry Joe Bates and Betsy Ardema. So it's very unlikely that their cases are connected. However, there is one eerie thing that jumps out in both cases. In the Bates case, a morbid poem mentioning a bloody red dress

was found scrawled on a desk in the Riverside Library, and Betsy was murdered while wearing a rowing. red dress. The desktop poem that mentioned the red dress in the Bates case was found well before Betsy Arsma's murder. So it seems highly unlikely that it would somehow be connected to her murder years later. The theory of a serial killer taking Betsy Arsma's life in the stacks is an interesting one to look into. But at the end of the day, there's no evidence to support it. It's very possible that the young man who burst out telling people to get help for Betsy was actually her killer.

Then again, if someone intended to kill Batsy, why would they have gone to alert anyone? With the low amount of traffic in the library that day, they could have simply walked out calmly without anyone knowing they were connected to the murder at all. Instead, someone deliberately went up to other students and told them to help her. Could the killer have been angry

and acted on impulse in the moment only to regret, hurting Batsy immediately, after. It's certainly possible. We also have to consider the clues at the scene. The blood drops found by police were not along the same path, where one witness chased the unknown man out of the library. Looking at a map of that level, the man either doubled back after hitting the stairwell, perhaps he had some guilt about the attack, or the thrill came from knowing people were panicking about it, or the killer was not the same man that alerted people to best. If she had interrupted some type of trist, maybe the killer headed straight for the staircase.

And the other person there rushed to try to get Betsy help before running away, avoiding having to explain why they were there and how they had seen Betsy. Well, there's no evidence to support it. People have questioned whether Betsy could have been meeting someone, perhaps having a secret rendezvous herself in the library. A dress was said not to be her usual choice of attire for studying. But she seems so committed to her boyfriend, even going to Pennsylvania for school to be closer to him, that it's hard to imagine a scenario like that.

It seems the most likely scenario is that Betsy had a chance meeting with her killer, because very few people knew that she was headed to the library that day, since her professor had given her advice about the book and where to find it that same day. However, Betsy's roommate, her boyfriend, and her professor knew, and any one of the students in the library waiting for office hours with her professor, like Betsy did, could have heard the conversation. Following Betsy from her dorm room isn't out of the question either. At the end of the day, there's not enough to point in any one direction.

And that's what we run into in many of these types of cases, right? You have all of this information. You have theories. You have a lot of potential suspects that people like to talk about online and in books and things like that. But like you said, when you boil it all down, There's a lot of questions. There's a lot of possibilities, but there's not enough concrete information that points

in any one direction. I think this demonstrates how tough it was for police because they didn't have a clear motive to pursue. Usually if there's a motive, you can look in a general direction for suspects. But with no motive, I think that it was just an uphill battle from day one for them. In the years and decades following Betsy's murder, she was. was not forgotten. Some students claim to have had paranormal experiences in the stacks and the rumor that Betsy Spirit wanders the library persists. Investigators in the campus community have also

been taunted since Betsy was killed. Campus police received a postcard around Easter of 1979 that referenced Betsy's murder. It was mailed from somewhere in Atlanta. The postcard read you never did catch the guy who killed that C word in the library, did you? So there are a lot of words that I don't mind saying, Morf, if they're direct quotes, if they, you know, are written in a letter and we're just kind of regurgitating the facts. But the C word, and I'm pretty sure everybody knows what word I'm referring to, is just something that I can't say. That word to me is one of the most vile words. And I just won't say it. I'm the same way. I don't like to use that word at all because of, you know, we both have

wives, daughters and just not a not a word that we want in our vocabulary. However, in other countries, they use it very freely. I don't know if you've noticed that. Yeah, I've noticed in the UK that a lot of times they'll use that word in different shows and stuff that I want. Yeah. It doesn't seem to be as vile or mean exactly the same thing. I don't know. I don't know. It's used very freely in other countries. Here in the United States, that word has a very specific meaning.

And it's just a word I don't want to say. But I think from this postcard, questions arose. You know, was this from the killer, essentially, you know, thumbing his nose at police? we don't know. Police haven't shared much regarding the postcard, but you could go in a number of different directions. It could have been from the killer. You know, this is what, roughly a decade later after the murder. Is it the killer trying to kind of reignite, relive, get a thrill by taunting police? We've seen that in so many cases. The BTK comes to mind. just couldn't leave it alone, right?

Needed to kind of resurface things himself by writing some letters. Or, you know, is this someone not connected with the case in any way? Maybe they just read about it. And they thought, well, this will be fun. I'll taunt police by writing into them about a really horrific case. Because I can see people doing that as well. And I think we've covered cases where people have done that. On one hand, I think that it could be from the killer because 10 years later,

what would make someone write that letter at that time, the case would be out of most people's minds. But for this person that sent that letter, it wasn't. So unless there was some article published right at that time and I don't know that there was, why would they just suddenly think about it at the time? So maybe it was from the killer. If it wasn't from the killer, it's disturbing that someone out there would write such cold and sensitive postcard like that and send it using that word, that language to describe it and taunting the police, that would be even perhaps more demented.

So your thought is that maybe it was the 10-year anniversary? Yeah, it may have been that 10-year anniversary that sparked this person that made them send this, and whether that's the killer or just someone getting a kick out of sending it, we just don't No. On the 25th anniversary of Betsy's murder, November 28, 1994, staff at Patty Library found a reminder in the same row that Betsy was found in. A candle was burning next to a message written on the floor in red marker. According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, it read, RIP Betsy Arjima, born July 11, 1947, died November 28, 1969. I'm back. Nearby, there were newspaper articles about Betsy's murder and the subsequent investigation.

They were original copies of the articles, yellowed over time, as if someone had saved them for 25 years. Most of these articles would have been available in the library, so they may have been stolen for a prank shrine and not saved by the killer himself. But nonetheless, it was unnerving to library staff. In 1999, a similar memorial was found in Patty Library, but not in the same row that Betsy was killed in. Authorities don't believe that either incident was actually related to Betsy's killer. more likely pranks by students who had long heard the story of Betsy killed in the Stacks. Betsy's murder took on an urban legend type quality over the years. Everyone had heard about the murder in the Stacks.

Students, especially female students, were terrified to go to that part of the library alone. We mentioned there were whispers that Betsy's spirit lurked in the shadows of the stacks. Aside from turning into a spooky story, students told Betsy's killing also made an impact on investigators and members of the community.

Penn State English lecturer Sasha Scoocheck has written many articles on the murder and investigation over the years and he keeps a picture of Betsy and his wallet.

He has made a point to visit Betsy's grave. He told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette it's become more than a story to me. I want to solve it. Decades after the murder,

police haven't given up on the case. When Pennsylvania State Trooper Lee Barrows was assigned Betsy's case, a photo of Betsy went on her desk right next to the portrait of her daughter to remind her that Betsy deserves justice. Derek Sherwood, who once maintained the Who Killed Betsy.com website, told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, I just thought it was a spad that her whole life had been reduced to this ghost story.

I thought at the very least it would be nice to bump it up and put some facts out there. He later wrote the book Who Killed Betsy. So, you know, in looking at these two guys, Sasha and Derek, you know, it kind of reminds me that there are certain cases that people latch on to and the cases just won't let go. They become consumed with them. I think that happens for quite a few people. Now, some people end up making a podcast about the case or writing a book or just researching it to no end. But I think in some cases it becomes almost an obsession. They want to solve it.

They want to know what happened. They want to find out the real details and solve the mystery. Yeah, I know for myself with the Zodiac case, I sort of got hooked on that case and went down a rabbit hole. And so I can understand how people have become fascinated with Betsy's case and want to see justice done for her. The murder of Betsy Arzma, the stabbing in the stacks, is still unsolved today 53 years later. Although the odds may be against it being resolved, Betsy surely deserves justice. Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

You know, every time we do an unsolved case, you have a victim or victims that deserve justice. Will they get it? That's always the question. And what's it going to take for police to crack it? Now, 53 years is a long time. I know when I started podcasting, you know, when we would do these cases that were 40, 50, even 60 years old, I thought, you know, what are the chances? But we are seeing a lot of really old cases solved within the last few years.

So I'm kind of changing my tune on that. I do think there's still a lot of hope with, you know, these advances in technology and some of the things that we're seeing. Yeah, I'd love to see. Betsy's case solved, but what I worry about is we had a lot of contamination, people at the scene moving around, helping her, because at first they thought she fainted, so they were probably handling her clothes. If that stuff's still in evidence someplace, some of the DNA that potentially may be on there may not be from the killer, or it may be, and how do you differentiate which DNA is which. And also, you know, we mentioned there was a soda can sitting on the desk.

You know, if that was at a crime scene today, that would be a prime piece of evidence that might result in DNA being found. But back then, short of trying to get fingerprints, there wasn't much they could do with it. So we don't know that they even put that into evidence. If that can is in a evidence lock or someplace today, that would be worth checking to see if there's DNA on it. Well, aside from the contamination of the crime scene, you know, we, We know 53 years ago, evidence collection was a little different, right? There was no knowledge of DNA. So that wasn't taken into account.

And there's the fact that that type of evidence degrades over time, can degrade over time. So, you know, even being able to get a viable sample after 53 years becomes tough in a lot of these types of cases. But that's it for our episode on Betsy Ardma. If you love the show, haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a rating, a review, keep telling your friends about the podcast. All of that helps us out tremendously. If you want to find us on social media, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter with a handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook Discussion Group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans.

So we're wrapped on another episode of criminology, but we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.