On November 28, 1969, 22-year-old  Betsy Ruth Aardsma was murdered in the stacks area of Pattee Library at Penn State University. Betsy was at the library doing research for a paper she had due. Later that night between 4:45 p.m. and 4:55 p.m. she was stabbed once in the left breast with a knife, severing her pulmonary artery and piercing the right ventricle of her heart causing her to bleed out. She was most likely either attacked from behind or she knew who her attacker was because she showed no signs of defensive wounds.

When she was first found lying down, bystanders began giving her mouth-to-mouth because they thought she had passed out, not that she was dead. When she was stabbed she bled out internally so there was no blood at the crime scene and her dress was red so it was hard to see any blood.

Something that happened right off the bat that made it hard to find the suspect of the murder was that when Betsy was found, she was laying in a puddle of her own urine. The janitor must’ve not been thinking about the situation and cleaned up her urine and the are around her, cleaning up any evidence that might’ve been left behind.

The woman who was the desk clerk in the library at the time said that a man told her that “somebody better help that girl” and then gestured towards where Betsy had been lying down. She could not identify the man so it is still unknown as to who that man was.

Betsy was in a serious relationship with a fellow student named David L Wright. The last time Wright saw Aardsma was the evening of the murder when he picked her up and dropped her off at the bus stop. He was ruled out of being a suspect because during the time of the murder he was working at the Hershey Medical Center, and he has alibis proving that he was not the one who murdered Besty.

The biggest suspect in the case is Richard Haefner. He was a student at Penn State at the same time as Betsy and was also living in the same accommodation building. Haefner and Aardsma became very close at Penn State. There are even rumors that they might have secretly dated before. At some point, before she was murdered, Betsy told Richard that she no longer wanted to see him or hang out with him because he started to show violent tendencies that she wasn’t comfortable with. It is said that Richard could have possibly gotten upset by this and taken it out on Betsy, killing her. The theory of it being someone she knew also tied to this theory because she knew Richard and was close to Richard so she wouldn’t scream if he approached her. He is still the biggest suspect in the case today but there is no solid evidence saying he committed the murder.