Campus Alert Archive
Penn State

Stabbed Between the Stacks: A Library Murder That Penn State Never Solved

PAassaultadvisorylow confidence
Confirmed Threat

On the Friday after Thanksgiving 1969, 22-year-old English graduate student Betsy Ruth Aardsma was stabbed a single time through the left breast in the Level 2 core stacks of Pattee Library at Penn State's University Park campus. The attack occurred between 4:45 and 4:55 PM EST between rows 50 and 51 of the dimly lit Stack Building. A call to the campus Ritenour Health Center at 5:01 PM EST reported that a 'girl had fainted'; she was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. The killing went unannounced over any campus-wide channel and remains unsolved more than five decades later.

Alerts
2
Response
—
Killed
1
Injured
0
Institution
The Pennsylvania State University
Public R1 · PA
~27,000 students
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

2 messages in sequence

Some alert texts below are approximate reconstructions from news coverage, not confirmed verbatim transcripts. Reconstructed texts are shown in italic with a dashed border. Verified verbatim texts have a solid border and are marked accordingly.

INITIAL ALERTPhone
Approximate reconstruction120 chars
Ritenour, this is Pattee. A girl has fainted in the stacks. We need a stretcher right away. Level 2, in the core stacks.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

The call to Ritenour Health Center at 5:01 PM EST on November 28, 1969 — between six and sixteen minutes after the stabbing — was the only formal 'alert' triggered by the killing
Responders arrived believing they were treating a fainting; the small puncture wound through Aardsma's red wool dress was not visible, and CPR was attempted on the assumption she had collapsed from natural causes
Penn State had no campus-wide emergency notification system in 1969; the Clery Act was 21 years away
FOLLOW-UPUnknown
Approximate reconstruction290 chars
A 22-year-old Penn State graduate student, Betsy Aardsma of Holland, Michigan, was stabbed to death yesterday afternoon in the stacks of Pattee Library. Pennsylvania State Police are investigating. Anyone with information should contact campus police or state police at the Boucke Building.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

Penn State assigned approximately 35 state troopers and used the Boucke Building as a temporary command center
No 'timely warning' or 'emergency notification' existed as a legal category in 1969; the public learned of the killing the next day through the student newspaper and local press
The university's failure to widely publicize the killing in the days that followed has been criticized for decades; many students returning from Thanksgiving break first heard about it from rumor
Context

Background

The murder of Betsy Aardsma is the oldest unsolved homicide at Penn State and one of the most cited pre-Clery campus killings in American higher education. Aardsma was an English graduate student from Holland, Michigan, working on a paper in Pattee Library when she was attacked in the Level 2 core stacks between rows 50 and 51. The killer apparently used a small fixed-blade knife and inflicted only one wound, which pierced the right ventricle of her heart but produced almost no external bleeding through her red wool dress. Two student bystanders — Joao Uafinda and Marilee Erdley — observed a man running from the direction of the disturbance; Erdley attempted CPR before student paramedics arrived. Because there was no emergency-notification system at Penn State in 1969, and because responders were initially told only that 'a girl had fainted,' no campus-wide warning was issued in the hours after the killing. Author David DeKok, in his book Murder in the Stacks, identified geology graduate student Richard Haefner as the most plausible suspect, but Haefner died in 2002 without being charged. The case is regularly cited alongside the 1986 murder of Jeanne Clery at Lehigh as evidence that pre-Clery universities routinely declined to inform their communities about violent crime.
Analysis

Key Findings

Penn State had no emergency notification, mass-warning, or timely-warning system in 1969 — the law requiring such systems was 21 years away
Responders were initially told a 'girl had fainted,' delaying recognition that a homicide had occurred and contributing to evidence loss
The University's reluctance to publicize the killing in the immediate aftermath foreshadowed exactly the type of institutional silence the Clery Act would later forbid
More than five decades later the case remains the oldest unsolved murder in Penn State's history
Outcome
No arrest has ever been made. Investigative journalist David DeKok identified geology graduate student Richard Haefner as the most likely suspect in his 2014 book 'Murder in the Stacks'; Haefner died in 2002 without being charged. Penn State did not issue a campus-wide warning in the immediate aftermath.
Provenance

Sources

  1. Source
    Murder of Betsy Aardsma (Wikipedia)
    en.wikipedia.org
  2. News
    NBC News Dateline: Unsolved murder of Penn State student Betsy Aardsma haunts community 52 years after she was stabbed in library stacks
    nbcnews.com
  3. News
    Centre County Gazette: Echoes in Pattee Library
    statecollege.com
  4. Source
    Murder in the Stacks: Penn State, Betsy Aardsma, and the Killer Who Got Away — David DeKok (book listing)
    amazon.com
  5. Source
    A&E: Murdered at Penn State: Betsy Aardsma's Unsolved 1969 Death
    aetv.com
Tags
assaulthomicidelibraryunsolvedpre-cleryno-alert-systemhistorical1969graduate-studentfounding-event
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion