Twenty-two-year-old Penn State student Betsy Aardsma was murdered in the stacks of the Pattee Library 56 years ago on November 29, 1969. Her case remains unsolved to this day.

Aardsma was born on July 11, 1947, in Holland, Michigan. She was the second of four children and excelled in poetry and art as a high school student. She enrolled at Hope College in Holland following her high school graduation and enrolled at the University of Michigan as an art and english student to finish her degree.

Aardsma graduated from Michigan going into the summer of 1969. She wanted to join the Peace Corps and travel to Africa post-graduation, but opted to go into graduate studies at Penn State as her boyfriend, David Wright, couldn’t trust that she’d remain loyal to him while the two were physically separated. Wright was enrolled at Penn State Hershey at the time.

Once Thanksgiving rolled around, Aardsma fell into some stress over an English assignment that she had fallen behind on. She arrived back at Penn State on Thanksgiving Day after visiting Wright the day before. She wanted to consult one of her professors for advice on how to proceed with her assignment.

On November 28, Aardsma and her roommate, Sharon Brandt, left their room in Atherton Hall to go to the Pattee Library. Aardsma needed to get some research information for her English assignment, but met with English professor Nicholas Joukovsky before arriving at the library.

Aardsma entered the library around 4:30 p.m., making her way to the level two stacks area. Around 15-25 minutes later, between 4:45 and 4:55 p.m., Aardsma was stabbed once through the left side of her chest in between rows 50 and 51 of the Stack Building within the Pattee Library.

Following the stabbing, Aardsma fell to the ground at the end of the rows. She pulled several books off the shelves as two students saw a man running from the general direction of the noise with his hand concealed. He led the students, Joao Uafinda and Marilee Erdley, into the core of the stacks. He pointed out Aardsma’s body, but started to vacate the library as soon as Erdley began to check for a pulse. Uafinda followed him, but the individual left running towards Rec Hall. This individual who spoke to Uafinda and Erdley has never been identified.

Erdley attempted mouth-to-mouth and basic first aid to Aardsma as a crowd started to form in the stacks. The Ritenour Health Center, the campus hospital at the time, was informed of a fainted girl in the library. The hospital sent two student paramedics, who put Aardsma on a gurney as they performed CPR.

The accounts of a “fainted girl” at the time were largely attributed to Aardsma’s attire. She wore a white turtleneck sweater and a red dress over that sweater, leaving behind a very small trace of visible blood. The thick material of her attire also masked the tear of the knife, leading bystanders to believe she suffered some sort of non-critical affliction.

A senior medical professional took notice of Aardsma’s blood seeping through her clothing once she got to the medical center, ordering the two student paramedics to stop their CPR efforts. Aardsma was pronounced dead a little over an hour after her stabbing at 5:50 p.m.

According to her autopsy done by Dr. Thomas Magnani at Bellefonte Hospital, the stab wound severed Aardsma’s pulmonary artery and pierced her heart. The knife caused substantial hemorrhaging in her chest. Magnani also commented that the hemorrhaging Aardsma suffered basically drowned her in her own blood, leaving her unable to scream for help or communicate verbally in the five-or-so minutes it took for her to die.

Pennsylvania State Police immediately got involved in the case, sending 35 troopers to investigate the murder. Troopers took control of the Boucke Building as their headquarters, interviewing hundreds of students in the following weeks. They searched the entire campus for the murder weapon with no luck. The investigators also offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the murderer’s arrest, which is around $217,000 adjusted for inflation.

Because the surrounding people at Aardsma’s death prior to the time the student paramedics arrived believed that she had only fainted, library staff ordered Aardsma’s urine to be cleaned and the shelves to be restocked and fixed with the fallen books. Police were not able to fully evaluate the crime scene as some physical evidence was heavily compromised or completely destroyed as a result of the cleaning.

With not a lot to go off of, the case eventually grew cold as investigators failed to recover fingerprints from the scene. Three suspects did eventually make it to the forefront of the case, most notably then 25-year-old geology student Richard Haefner.

Haefner got on the investigators’ radar after Brandt told police to interview him. She said that he had swung by their room more than once in the weeks prior to the murder.

Haefner admitted he and Aardsma had become friends in October, but Aardsma ended their friendship, stating she wanted to remain loyal to Wright. He said he heard of the murder while eating dinner elsewhere on campus, and even said he felt “physically ill” when he learned it was Aardsma who was murdered, referring to her as his “former girlfriend”.

However, Lauren Wright, an acquaintance of Haefner’s with no relation to David Wright, said Haefner returned to his residence around 6 p.m. on November 29. He said that a girl he dated was murdered in the library. Wright’s report directly contradicted with what Haefner told authorities about his dinner on the evening of the murder.

He also told investigators he rarely entered the library, as geology research was stored in the Deike Building. However, Uafinda’s identikit image made in collaboration with a library desk attendant closely resembled Haefner.

Despite some more evidence geared towards Haefner’s involvement in the murder, even from his mother, neither he or anybody else was ever arrested. Haefner died in 2002 following a tear in his aorta that bled into his lungs, sort of echoing Aardsma’s death. Two other main suspects named by private investigators and experts on the case are William Spencer and Larry Maurer.

Aardsma was buried in the Aardsma family plot at Pilgrim Home Cemetery in her hometown on December 3, 1969. She was laid to rest with a rose from Wright placed between her hands.

Rest in peace, Betsy Aardsma.