Stabbed in the Stacks

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Discretion, is it by ten immediate
murder. Betsy Ardsma was born on July

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eleventh, nineteen forty seven, in
Holland, Michigan. She was born into

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a middle class, religious conservative family. As a child, she showed great

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talent in both art and poetry.
As a teen, contrary to the way

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she had been raised, Betsy started
embracing some rather liberal and feminist views.

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After her graduation from Holland High in
nineteen sixty five. She wanted to become

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a physician and give something back to
those less fortunate. That fall, Betsy

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attended Hope College. After two years, she transferred to the University of Michigan.

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They was there that she met David
Wright. Right was Betsy's first real

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boyfriend, and he had also planned
on becoming a physician. Betsy graduated from

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the University of Michigan with honors in
nineteen sixty nine and planned on joining the

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Peace Corps to go to work in
Africa, although her relationship with Wright would

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set her plans on a different course. She could picture a future with him,

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but he wasn't seeing that same picture
if she left for another country.

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Right would be attending school in Hershey, Pennsylvania, so Betsy enrolled at Penn

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State to stay closer to him.
She took school very seriously, but only

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eight weeks in she had already fallen
behind on an English assignment. She spent

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the day before Thanksgiving and part of
Thanksgiving Day with Right, his roommates and

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their girlfriends. They even discussed getting
engaged around Christmas. That afternoon, on

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November twenty seventh, Wright drove Betsy
to the bus stop so that she could

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head back to school. She had
a meeting scheduled with a professor to get

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advice on her research paper. At
four pm on Friday, November twenty eighth,

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Betsy met with university professor Nicholas Dukovski. They spent a few minutes exchanging

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ideas, then she headed towards the
campus library. She stopped and talked to

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friends that she passed along the way. By four thirty pm, Betsy was

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entering the dim light Patty Library and
walking towards Level two to search for the

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books that she needed. While the
library wasn't nearly as busy as usual,

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there was still plenty going on.
An assistant supervisor walked by Betsy and a

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couple of young men two miles over
another man was using the photocopier and heard

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quiet conversations nearby. Around four fifty
pm, the library was suddenly filled with

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a sound of crashing bookshelves. A
young man came running from the direction of

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the noise, yelling that there was
a girl that needed help. Two students

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saw the man running and jumped into
action. One of them went to find

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the girl in need, and the
other followed the man running. That man

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went out the stairwell and continued running
outside. He was too fast and the

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student couldn't keep up with him.
In the library, the other student got

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down by the girl on the ground. It appeared she had fainted or had

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a seizure. She was unresponsive and
laying in a pool of urine. The

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students started administering mouth to mouth resuscitation. Soon other students had gathered to watch

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the efforts to revive the girl.
At five oh one pm, a call

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was made to the campus hospital for
help with a student that they believed had

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fainted. Two student paramedics showed up
and put the female on the gurney and

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into the ambulance. They continued to
do CPR. She was wearing a white

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turtleneck under a red dress. The
sweater was pretty thick, and no one

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had noticed a small spot of blood
that was seeping through the red dress.

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It was a stab wound, a
stab wound that wasn't noticed until she was

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being looked over by senior medical staff. They immediately observed a small spot of

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blood and ordered the CPR to stop. They cut her clothes off, and

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once the red dress was pulled back, they saw a blood soaked sweater.

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Once her clothing was removed, the
stab wound was revealed. At five nineteen

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pm, Betsy was pronounced dead.
An autopsy started at eleven PM and ended

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at four a m. The next
morning. Betsy had a single stab wound

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that had penetrated her breastbone and pierced
her heart, severing the pulmonary artery.

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It was noted that she had died
within five minutes from being stabbed. It

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also stated that there was extensive hemorrhaging
in her chest cavity. She essentially drowned

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in her own blood. There were
signs of bruising behind her ear and on

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her head, indicating that she fell
pretty quick and hard. From the injury's

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location, it's believed that the assailant
was right handed and aimed for the heart.

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By the time they realized that Betsy
had been killed and sent an investigator

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to the scene, it was hard
to tell that anything had happened there.

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The janitors had already cleaned up the
urine, pushed the bookshelves back up,

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and restacked the books. Any physical
evidence that once existed had been destroyed or

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compromised. The investigator still taped off
the area while searching for any clues.

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The two students that saw the man
yelling and running away were interviewed. They

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reported that the man's right hand was
concealed. He was wearing khakis, a

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sports coat, and had styled brown
hair. He was around six feet tall

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and weighed about one eighty five.
Blood droplets were found that matched Betsy's in

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the staircase. Both of the students
helped in a drawing of the man that

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could be released to the public,
and the police released a bulletin asking for

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the man to come forward for an
interview, but he never did. Thirty

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five investigators were assigned to look into
the murder. Over the next few months,

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they interviewed hundreds of students. Any
other Friday, about four hundred students

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entered or exited the Pattee Library between
four thirty pm and five pm. However,

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on that Friday, there were only
about ninety students present, and none

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of those students that were questioned seemed
like viable suspects. The entire campus was

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searched, but the weapon was never
found. A twenty five thousand dollar reward

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was offered for any assistance in the
arrest. Theories started to circulate. It

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was determined that Betsy must have known
the murderer. She was stabbed in the

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front and the library aisles were very
narrow, and when the person approached her,

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she didn't run or scream. Although
any evidence of the actual crime was

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ruined, police did find other interesting
things on that aisle. Over two dozen

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pornographic magazines were found shoved in between
the books. A light showed that seamen

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was on the floor, walls,
and shelves. They realized that the isle

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had concealed illicit sexual encounters. Maybe
a fellow student was there enjoying himself and

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Betsy surprised him, or a homosexual
encounter taking place, and they wanted to

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make sure that she didn't tell anyone
what she had witnessed. There were fingerprints

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everywhere, but they were smudged or
otherwise unusable. The police interviewed David Wright,

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her boyfriend, about his alibi,
and it was confirmed. Even though

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they didn't have a real reason to
assume right to have killed Betsy, they

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visited the campus so many times that
they were eventually asked to stay off the

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property. There were a few other
people that were considered suspects. William Spencer,

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a forty year old sculptor that had
moved to Pennsylvania with his second wife.

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She had just started working on her
PhD, and Spencer was teaching a

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sculpting class there. In nineteen sixty
nine, at a Christmas party, he

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told someone that he had killed the
girl in the library. When the police

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interviewed him, he admitted that he
was indeed at the library on Level two,

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but that the only conversations he had
with the slightly prudish Betsy were about

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her becoming a nude model for his
class to make extra money. They also

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questioned a man named Larry Maherer,
a fellow student. He admitted that he

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had coffee with Betsy and they were
acquaintances, but that was as far as

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their relationship went. He did take
a polygraph, but the results were never

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released, He did not match the
physical description of the person that was running

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away, and eventually cleared as a
suspect. Then there was Richard Hafner,

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a twenty five year old geology student. He lived across the courtyard from Betsy.

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He told the police that they had
started a pretty serious friendship. The

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week before she died, she told
them that they needed to quit talking because

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she wanted to be faithful. To
write, he did kind of match the

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sketch. He also often wore khakis
and sports coats. Hafner was known for

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having erratic behavior and a bad temper. Betsy's roommate even told the police that

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she suspected him. He claimed that
he was in a student building eating lunch

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at the time. He said that
when he heard rumors that his former girlfriend

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was killed, he felt physically ill, but Betsy was never his girlfriend,

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so maybe his cheese had slid off
his cracker, or he was trying to

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conceal his homosexual desires, a theory
that seemed true in nineteen seventy five,

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when two young boys around the age
of twelve accused him of molesting them.

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One of those cases went to trial, but ended up with a hung jury.

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Hafner sued everyone involved in the case. Investigative journalists and independent authors have

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delved into the possibilities. Although he
was never formally accused of the crime involving

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Betsy, multiple people have claimed that
he is the murderer. It was later

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reported that he told an acquaintance that
Betsy had been killed far before the name

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or details had been released. His
nephew even claimed he overheard a fight where

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the subject came up. Two books
have been published, one by Derek Sherwood

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and won by David Decock that both
indicate Hafner was the assailants, even if

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all the evidence was circumstantial. Pennsylvania's
most famous unsolved murder took place in a

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quiet library, but the cry for
better security echoed across many college campuses in

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the nation. Prior to Betsy's murder, the penn State campus had already seen

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an increase in violent crimes and sexual
assaults, but the death of Betsy Ardsma

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was a major factor in the university
forming a police force and increasing public safety.

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Many other universities and colleges followed in
their footsteps. We may not know

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who stabbed Betsy between the stacks that
day, but as we know with many

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unsolved murders, people will continue to
search for answers. That's ten Minute Murder

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