Betsy Aardsma

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2:00have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

2:16Today, I'm discussing the case of Betsy Ardsma. On a quiet afternoon in November 1969, 22-year-old graduate student Betsy Ardsma was studying in the stacks of Penn State's Petit Library when she suddenly collapsed. Despite decades of investigation, her case remains one of Pennsylvania's most haunting unsolved mysteries. This is the case of Betsy Artsma. It's the day after Thanksgiving at the main campus of Penn State in 1969. The campus is far from empty, but as you can imagine, a good number of students have gone home to see their families for the holiday weekend, but not 22-year-old graduate student Betsy Ardsma.

3:00Instead of traveling the about 500 miles home to Holland, Michigan, she chose to stay close to campus to squeeze in a little more studying before the end of the semester. She'd spent Thanksgiving Day with her boyfriend David Wright in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and planned to go back home for Christmas break to see her family after classes ended. She'd just graduated at the top of her class from the University of Michigan in the spring, and she's determined to succeed at Penn State. So she chooses her studies over a weekend at her boyfriend's house or a trip home. And like I said, she's not alone.

3:33In fact, her roommate Sharon Brandt is on campus too. They both live in the dormitory in Atherton Hall, and at about 4 p.m. they decide to head to Petit Library to get some work done. They make a quick stop in Burroughs Hall to speak with Professor Nicholas Joukowsky. He was one of Betsy's English 501 instructors, along with a man named Dr. Harrison Messerol. According to reporting by Bob Corderoni for the Center Daily Times, as they're walking, as they arrive at the library, they just talk about what they want to do later that night. They talk about maybe seeing a movie. Easy Rider and Take the Money were both showing at different theaters around town.

4:12But they aren't exactly sure what they want to do, So they just decide that they'll meet back up at 7 for dinner and go from there. Sharon goes one way and Betsy goes another. By 4.10pm, Betsy found herself a desk to study at. She puts down her coat, scarf, and notebook. Then she decides to visit Dr. Harrison Messerol. His office was in the basement of the library. She's one of several students who saw him that day. According to Dr. Messerol, Betsy asks him a few questions about an assignment for his class. Like I said, it's English 501. Introduction to Research. They mostly discussed where she could find sources for her paper, and since this is 1969, she heads to the card catalog area.

4:53After this, she goes to a lower level of the library where they kept the English and history books. And as she's looking for her books, Betsy runs into Merrilee Erdely, another graduate student and classmate from her English 434 and 501 classes. They chat for a bit and go their separate ways. The exact timeline of what happens next is unclear. And as is a theme in this case, reporting does differ. But sometime between 4.30 and just before 5 p.m., students hear a commotion. They aren't exactly sure what it is. Some reporting just uses the word commotion, while other reporting says that students heard books falling on the ground.

5:34And in some cases, students reported hearing screams or gasps. Merrily Erdely hears something too. She gets up from her desk, walks around the corner, and sees two men, one of whom says, quote, somebody better help that girl, end quote. Then they lead her back to Betsy and vanish. In conflicting reporting, one man is seen, again says something to the effect of somebody better help that girl, and then runs away without leading anyone to Betsy. It's possible that this man was holding and hiding his right hand while doing so. But what we know for sure is that Betsy is found collapsed between a set of narrow bookcases.

6:16She's on her side, with one leg propped up on the shelves, and there are books everywhere. At this point, students and staff have no idea what happened to her. Elsa Lyle is working the library desk and calls the Rittenour Student Health Center for help. When two ambulance drivers arrive, they find a library employee giving Betsy mouth-to-mouth. They check for a pulse, and she's still alive. Her face is flushed, there's urine on the floor, and there's a small amount of blood on her white turtleneck blouse. So they assume that she had some type of seizure and likely bit her tongue. From here, she's brought to the student health center where she's seen by Dr.

6:55Elmer Reed. But he can't quite figure out what's wrong at first, so he decides to inspect her body. Like I said, Betsy's wearing a white turtleneck, but over that she's also wearing a sleeveless red dress. And as Dr. Reed begins to pull back the dress, he finds a single stab wound to her chest. She is officially declared dead not long after. Betsy's family was having dinner back home in Holland when their reverend knocked on their door to tell them the news. They would later fly to Penn State to bring Betsy back home. According to reporting by David DeCook for Patriot News, at this time, local police had an agreement with the Pennsylvania State Police to respond to crimes on campus.

7:39So they're the ones who respond to the call about Betsy. The barracks serving Penn State was about 15 minutes away at Rockview State Prison, and because it was the Thanksgiving weekend, most troopers weren't working, including the head of the Criminal Investigation Unit, Sergeant George Keebler. He was gone hunting and wasn't due back until Monday. So unfortunately, they just don't have the most skilled members of law enforcement available to answer the call. Trooper Mike Simmers ends up being the responding officer. He's on the younger side, and usually works in drug crimes and crowd control during the anti-Vietnam War protests on campus.

8:16He was also taking classes at Penn State as a part of his work going undercover. When Simmers gets the call, he's told that there's been a medical emergency. But really, even if their head of the criminal investigation unit were the first to arrive, it may not have made that much of a difference, because the crime scene was completely trashed. At this point, it's been over an hour since Betsy was found in the library, and since then the floor has been mopped. A lot of the books found around her body have been returned to the shelves, and all the potential witnesses to her murder didn't really stick around, let alone her murderer.

8:52It was really just business as usual in the library. Betsy was stabbed just one time through her left breast and heart. The wound was one inch wide and three inches deep, and the knife hit her pulmonary artery. Basically, blood pooled mostly in her lungs and stayed inside her body. So no one really knew that someone had just been murdered in the library at this point. Other than the medical staff and Simmers, most people thought that Betsy just had a medical emergency of some kind. Simmers told Dateline that he knew immediately that this was just way over his head. And at this point, he calls for backup, stating that a young woman had just been murdered at Penn State.

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11:53Terms apply. Visit Disneyplus.com slash Hulu for details. Betsy's autopsy was conducted at the Center Community Hospital between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. But before it was even finished, investigators were at the door of David Wright, Betsy's boyfriend, at around midnight. Like I told you earlier, David lives in Hershey, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles away from Betsy. He was enrolled at what's now known as the Penn State College of Medicine, on track to become a doctor. He and Betsy had been dating for about a year, and there were talks of them possibly getting engaged by Christmas. But that wasn't always the plan.

12:32After her undergraduate studies, Betsy was accepted into the Peace Corps and planned to travel to Africa that fall. But after David told her that he couldn't promise he'd wait for her if he met someone while she traveled abroad, she enrolled at Penn State to stay close to him and keep the relationship going. So between David Wright just being Betsy's boyfriend and his medical knowledge, investigators put him at the top of the list of people they wanted to speak with. And they basically grill him before finally telling him that Betsy had been murdered. David says he was studying all day. According to statements from Dr.

13:08Stephen Margle, who lived in the house with David, the detectives separated all the students in the house for questioning. And they all said the same thing. David was with them studying. There was no way he traveled 200 miles round trip to kill Betsy. And remember, Betsy was there just the day before. Everyone reported that Betsy had a great time and she and David didn't fight. Despite these statements, investigators still aren't convinced that David didn't kill Betsy. But there's not much they can do at this point. They take the statements, pack it up and leave. David says that after the investigators left, the first call he made was to his father, who then called Betsy's parents.

13:49Not long after, Betsy's autopsy was complete, and some helpful pieces of information were revealed for the investigation. Betsy was not sexually assaulted. Due to her lungs filling with blood, it was extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that she would have been able to scream. There were also no defense wounds on Betsy's hands. No evidence at all was found to indicate that she tried to fight off her attacker in any way. While the weapon used to kill Betsy has never been recovered, they believe it was a hunting-style knife with a single-edge blade three and a half to four inches long. And since her killer stabbed her through her breastbone, it would have taken a lot of force to make that happen.

14:30It's also worth mentioning here that the bookcases Betsy was found between were extremely narrow, to the point that if someone needed to pass by, both people would have to turn sideways to make that happen. So this was a very intimate and close encounter. Center County pathologist Dr. Thomas Magnani wrote in his report, quote, the findings also suggest that the wound was inflicted with considerable force at the time of a face-to-face confrontation of the victim and the assailant, and that this weapon was held in the right hand of the assailant, end quote, which would match the description of the man possibly running away hiding his right hand.

15:09But investigators still do debate about whether Betsy was killed while facing her killer or grabbed from behind. In the end, they determine that Betsy was stabbed, and as she began to fall to the floor, she grabbed at the shelves and books and likely died in close to five minutes. When Sergeant George Keebler, the head of the criminal investigation unit I told you about earlier, hears that a student has been murdered at Penn State, he cancels his vacation and is back to work the next day on November 29th. Unfortunately, the investigation wasn't off to a great start. The crime scene was completely compromised.

15:48It had been mopped, items had been moved and touched, and there's no telling how many students walk through the scene. But they still want to analyze whatever they can. They bring in an expert who uses a blacklight in the area to check for bodily fluids. And despite the lack of blood, the scene lights up. We know that urine was found, which is believed to have come from Betsy. But they find something else. There's semen everywhere. It's on the shelves, on the books, and on the floor. But before we get ahead of ourselves here, Betsy was not sexually assaulted before she was killed. And there actually is a pretty reasonable explanation for this semen being everywhere.

16:31According to reporting by David DeCook in his book Murder in the Stacks, Petit Library had a bit of an issue with people having sexual relations in between the bookshelves or stacks, specifically gay men. There'd been several reports of this leading up to Betsy's murder. While there was great activism and efforts for reform, at this time, homosexuality was still a criminal offense in Pennsylvania. So it wasn't uncommon for men, students, and the public alike to use the dark aisles of the Petit Library to have sex. This was well documented, and according to DeCook's research, the library staff even requested that the college assign a member of their campus patrol, basically an internal, mostly student-run security of sorts, to the library full-time.

17:17But they were denied, saying they didn't have the resources to do so. Now, in addition to the semen, investigators also found about 20 to 30 paperback pornography books hidden in the shelves near where Betsy was killed. So what's been happening in the stacks is pretty clear. But this discovery led to a theory that Betsy may have stumbled upon a sexual encounter that the participants didn't want anyone to know about, so one of them stabbed her. But there are issues with this theory. None of the semen found appeared to be fresh. And Betsy was extremely progressive. Basically, if she saw somebody having sex in the stacks, she wouldn't have cared, let alone report it to anybody.

18:00But to be fair, if that were the case, we can assume that the participants and possible killer may have known that about her. So while it could be possible, and many people still believe it's a viable theory, Law enforcement chalks all this up finding all this semen to known sexual activity happening in the stacks, and they don't believe that there's a connection to Betsy's case. While analyzing this scene, they also notice a very tiny spray of blood droplets. It looks like someone had flicked blood off their hand, and while they didn't have the technology at this time to say that it was Betsy's blood, it did match her blood type.

18:38The theory is Betsy's killer stabbed her, pulled out the knife, and shook the blood off their hand before leaving the area. This correlates with the statements about the right hand, about the autopsy conclusion that the killer used their right hand, and it also kind of gives them an idea of what direction this killer may have headed in, but it's not definitive proof. Obviously, news that a student had been murdered in the library at Penn State spread like wildfire throughout the university, and her story was covered by the local media. It's actually how Betsy's best friend Andrea found out that she'd been killed.

19:14They were roommates at the University of Michigan. She says they did what most girls their age did at the time. They went to the movies, smoked cigarettes, and talked a lot about boys. She says Betsy had it all. She was beautiful, smart, a great cook, and she was never shy to express her opinions about social or political matters. Andrea says college boys tended to fall head over heels in love with Betsy pretty quickly. Another friend, Linda, likened Betsy to a young Catherine Hepburn, telling PennLive, quote, you know, with those kind of angular features, and this curly, reddish hair that she pinned up, lean and lanky with that same kind of sarcastic, funny, witty attitude, end quote.

19:56Andrea was home for the Thanksgiving holiday when she heard the news over the radio. Betsy Ardsma had been murdered at Penn State. She was in shock. She even called the radio station to confirm that she'd heard it correctly. After trying her best to compose herself, she went out to grab some food, but after the server took her order, she lost her composure. She broke down sobbing, saying that her best friend had just been killed. At this point in the investigation, they were trying to track down any witnesses who were in the library that day. According to early reporting by the Center Daily Times, 3 ,219 people visited Petit Library on the day that Betsy was killed.

20:39But I've seen that number drop down to about 600 in other reporting, and down to 90 in another set of reporting. So take that for what you will. And it gets complicated. Because the library was open to the public, everyone who was there that day weren't all students. So of course they can start looking through everyone enrolled in classes, but there was no way to account for the identities of each and every person who visited the library that day. So really early on, they just go back to Betsy's boyfriend David, and by all accounts, he's beyond cooperative. He meets with them multiple times a week to answer their questions, and David said it didn't really bother him.

21:20He kept talking because he was devastated and wanted to learn all he could about her murder. Dr. Stephen Margles, the one I told you about earlier, the roommate of David said, quote, Dave was a big suspect because whoever it was stabbed her in the vein of kava and because he was a medical student, he would have known where to plunge the knife. I mean, I couldn't have hit that if I tried, knowing the anatomy pretty well, end quote. David Wright is interviewed again and again and again until eventually the dean of his college stepped in and told police that they need to leave campus. While David was clearly a suspect early on in Betsy's case, investigators have never been able to link him to her murder, and most people don't believe he's the person who killed her.

22:06He's always cooperated with police, the media, and he attended Betsy's funeral along with the rest of her loved ones. One of the roses he brought was placed in Betsy's hand and buried with her. He says that's all he can remember about that day now. He's never shied away from her case, and he's been very open that he regrets putting any pressure on Betsy to not join the Peace Corps. He also regrets not pushing for her to stay with him over the Thanksgiving weekend. As investigators are working her case, they're digging into as much of her past and life as they can, both at Penn State and back home in Michigan.

22:44But they find nothing. Trooper Ron Tiger told David DeCook for Patriot News, quote, there was absolutely no motive at all to this situation. She was so damn squeaky clean, it was pathetic. End quote. At the peak of Betsy's case, there were about 45 investigators working it, and they interview thousands of people. They utilized hypnosis, polygraph tests, and there was a$25 ,000 reward which would be about$200 ,000 today. But none of this led them to Betsy's killer. Theories about what may have happened to Betsy were and really are all over the place. Some speculated that she may have witnessed a drug deal and was killed for it.

23:27Some believe that her killing may have been politically motivated. Betsy was very progressive and very outspoken about issues like equality. She even led a campus discussion group against the Vietnam War. These are more theories that have never been proven but continue to float around. Now, I do think it's important to understand what was happening in the U.S. around the time Betsy was killed. This is the time of unprecedented violent crime, and specifically brutal murders. It's the era of the Tate-LaBianca murders, and the infamously ugly serial killer Ted Bundy, who's also a pretty popular pick when it comes to theories in Betsy's case.

24:06Ted Bundy did spend a part of his youth in Pennsylvania, and attended Temple University in Philadelphia in 1969. This is a few hours away from Penn State where Betsy was. But many people have pointed to the fact that he did drive along the I-80 freeway, which goes from Philadelphia past north of Penn State and beyond. However, investigators believe Bundy made a trip down this freeway weeks before Betsy was killed, and can't place him in the area on the day of the murder. Also, while Bundy was known for targeting college-age women, he's far from the only perpetrator who did that. He also typically bludgeoned, strangled, and raped his victims, which would not align with Betsy's murder.

24:49Investigators are still divided on this theory. But in the end, like everything else, there is no definitive link between Bundy and Betsy's murder. Another serial killer named John Norman Collins has also been long suspected of killing Betsy. Between 1967 and 1969, a slew of women were killed in the Ann Arbor area. These killings were known as the Michigan murders or co-ed killings. In fact, when Betsy decided to move to Penn State, her family was relieved, feeling that she'd be safer there in light of all the killings. While many suspect that Collins killed upwards of seven women, and his crimes expanded as far as California, he was only charged with the murder of one woman named Karen Sue Bieneman.

25:33He's currently serving a life sentence, and no definitive connection to Betsy's case has ever been made. While it's important to consider all angles and that serial killers may have been in the area at that time, due to the intimacy of the crime and Betsy not fighting off her attacker, most people believe that she was killed by someone she knew and trusted.