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Stabbed in the Stacks · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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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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