For my first blog post, I decided to start with an unsolved murder that took place in a location all too familiar to all of us- the Penn State University Pattee library, within the stacks. To ease all nerves, it’s important to know this crime was committed over 40 years ago on November 28th, 1969. An infamous murder crime has not occurred at Penn State since then.

Betsy Aardsma was a 22-year-old American graduate student studying English at Penn State. Betsy attended grad school at Penn State because her boyfriend at the time was in pre-med and was attending Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey. The only way that she would be able to stay with her boyfriend was if she followed him to Pennsylvania, while he chased his medical dream. This way, she frequently was able to visit him during the weekends by taking a bus from Penn State to Hershey. Ironically, Betsy’s parents were pleased she was leaving her undergraduate school, Ann Arbor, because during that time reports had been circulating about a serial killer targeting young women, and they believed that Penn State was the safer option for their daughter. Betsy was described as a friendly, artistic, poetic, and empathetic person. She had many friends and was described as delightful by many teachers and citizens who knew her throughout her life.

The day of her murder, her boyfriend, David L. Wright, drove her to the train station after spending Thanksgiving together, so she could return to school to work on an English paper, while he worked on his own medical work. She returned to school, and simply decided to head to the library with her roommate, Sharon. When they got to the library, Besty and her roommate split and Betsy reported to the second floor to write her paper. Betsy was stabbed in the left breast once with a hunting style knife. There was one witness who reported hearing a man and woman having a conversation, and then hearing books hit a metal shelf, no reports of any yelling. By the time someone found Betsy lying on the ground, people thought she had a seizure or passed out because the amount of blood was very minimal. It wasn’t until she went to the hospital, medical professionals discovered she had been stabbed and there was foul play with the positioning of her body. By the time police and criminal investigators reported to the crime scene, janitors had already cleaned up the area, leaving it nearly impossible to gather important evidence in the case.

Numerous people of interest were called into question including Betsy’s boyfriend, and several students in the library at the time of the crime. After long hours of interrogations and approving alibi’s, everyone was cleared. Betsy’s case did not receive a lot of media attention. Eventually, many theories developed over time, but the case is officially still open, however, it is now considered cold.

In my opinion, I know it’s easy to consider Betsy’s boyfriend as the prime suspect in the case. After research, it had been reported David L. Wright was distraught after her death and he admitted to wanting a life with Betsy after her death and regrets letting her return to campus alone. Also, his alibi was extremely tight and he had multiple witnesses claiming he was studying with them over 100 miles away from the Penn State campus during the time of the murder. One thing that is interesting to me is it seems criminal investigators were very focused on only investigating men at the library that day. Since there were no defense wounds on Betsy’s body, it is highly likely she knew her assailant. I have been wondering about her roommate Sharon, who has been very vaguely mentioned in the case. Also, the janitor was vaguely mentioned and he was very quick to clean up around the area Betsy allegedly passed out in, which made it nearly impossible to ever solve this case with sufficient criminal evidence.

Unfortunately, I believe this case will remain cold because investigators ruled out most people closest to Betsy and the crime scene was wiped before investigators had a chance to analyze and collect evidence.

I am always open to hearing new theories and ideas about this case!!!