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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history. And the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. On November twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine, Betsy Ardsma,
Speaker 5: a twenty two year old graduate student English at Penn State,
Speaker 5: was stabbed to death in the stacks of Patti Library
Speaker 5: at the university's main campus in State Ute College. For
Speaker 5: more than forty years, their murder went unsolved, Though detectives
Speaker 5: with the Pennsylvanian State Police and local citizens worked titlers
Speaker 5: tirelessly to find the killer. The mystery was eventually solved
Speaker 5: after the death of the murderer. This book will reveal
Speaker 5: the story behind what has been a scary mystery for
Speaker 5: generations of Penn State students and explained why the Pennsylvania
Speaker 5: State Police failed to bring her killer to justice. More
Speaker 5: than a simple true crime story, the book weaves together
Speaker 5: the events, culture, and attitudes of the late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 5: memorializing Betsy Ardsma and her time and place in history.
Speaker 5: The book De Riiver featuring this Evening is Murder in
Speaker 5: the Stacks, Penn State, Betsy Ardsma and the Killer That
Speaker 5: Got Away, with my special guest journalist and author David
Speaker 5: de Couch. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
Speaker 5: much for agreeing to this interview, David D. Kook.
Speaker 2: D Cook. Yeah, it's glad. I'm really glad to be here.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. As you write in the book,
Speaker 5: you have a special connection to this story and Betsy Ardsma,
Speaker 5: and you're a former investigative reporter noted for your beverage
Speaker 5: of this Petralia mind fires. So just tell us what
Speaker 5: your connection is here and how you came to be
Speaker 5: the author of this book Murder in the Stacks.
Speaker 2: Well, Bethy Arsma was from my hometown of Holland, Michigan,
Speaker 2: and I remember distinctly when the local newspaper, the Holland
Speaker 2: Evening Sentinel, arrived on November twenty ninth of by nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine, and her picture was on the front page
Speaker 2: and her the story of her murder was at the
Speaker 2: top of the page. And so that's that kind of
Speaker 2: got me into this, you know, But really, I mean,
Speaker 2: looking at her picture, I mean, she did not look
Speaker 2: like a murder victim. She looked like the girl next door,
Speaker 2: a very pretty girl next door. And so I never
Speaker 2: really forgot it, even though the coverage of the story
Speaker 2: dropped away. It wasn't until I moved out to Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: and had been working as a reporter for some time
Speaker 2: that I realized that, at least at Penn State, this
Speaker 2: was still something that people talked about a lot, and
Speaker 2: that kind of got me back into this.
Speaker 5: Now, tell us a little bit about Holland where you
Speaker 5: were born, to kind of describe the city and its
Speaker 5: population and tell us a little bit about it before
Speaker 5: we talk about Penn State at that time in nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty nine.
Speaker 2: Sure, Holland, Michigan was settled by Dutch religious dissidents in
Speaker 2: eighteen forty seven. They were looking for a place in
Speaker 2: the American wilderness where they could live apart from the world.
Speaker 2: Didn't really work out well for them in terms of
Speaker 2: avoiding their neighbors, but they did establish a very ethnically
Speaker 2: solid community where probably you know, seventy to eighty percent
Speaker 2: of the people that live there have Dutch last names.
Speaker 2: You know, de cook is the last is a Dutch name.
Speaker 2: Ardsman is a Dutch name. And it was always a
Speaker 2: very very pretty tidy town, very religious right along Lake Michigan,
Speaker 2: and it was just it was a good place to
Speaker 2: grow up, but it was very It was kind of
Speaker 2: culturally stifling in the nineteen sixties too, because you know,
Speaker 2: you knew all this great stuff was going on in
Speaker 2: other places and it wasn't going on in Holland, and
Speaker 2: so students like Betsrs kind of daring to get away.
Speaker 5: Now, we mentioned in the introduction, and I just like,
Speaker 5: very much like myself. I don't think a lot of
Speaker 5: people know what exactly you're talking. But when you talk
Speaker 5: about stacks, so tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 5: and again if I mispronounced it, correct me. Please the
Speaker 5: pet Library at Penn State and tell us explain the.
Speaker 2: Stacks what they call the library in many respects for
Speaker 2: lack of a better definition, that's where the books are kept.
Speaker 2: That's where they're stored. And in big academic libraries like this,
Speaker 2: they're not really like your your local public library.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: These stacks can go on for floor after floor, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're just they can be very very large and
Speaker 2: dark and a little bit scary sometimes and certainly the
Speaker 2: ones in Petite Library were like that. They were poorly lit,
Speaker 2: they were cramped, they were confined, they were claustrophobic, you know,
Speaker 2: And even before this happened, students were often a little
Speaker 2: bit nervous about going in there, just because it was
Speaker 2: so easy to get lost.
Speaker 5: Now, you talk about the state of Penn State itself
Speaker 5: and the state of the nation in November nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 5: so as you do in the book, give us a
Speaker 5: little bit of the background, especially in the context of
Speaker 5: the university itself, and you say that it was in
Speaker 5: the midst of racial unrest, but really vast, vast majority
Speaker 5: of white students. So tell us what the state was
Speaker 5: at that time.
Speaker 2: I lost you. Are you still there?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: I am okay.
Speaker 5: I asked basically, what.
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty nine? What was going on there? Sure, in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, obviously the Vietnam War was raging. You know,
Speaker 2: Penn State had a very small but very active chapter
Speaker 2: of Students for a Democratic Society, you know, the left
Speaker 2: wing student protest group, And it also had a very
Speaker 2: small but active group of black students who were trying
Speaker 2: to get more black students to Penn State, which had
Speaker 2: a scandalously small black enrollment for the size of the
Speaker 2: school and the number of blacks in the state.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: And and so there were at the same time the
Speaker 2: anti war things were going on. UH, there were also
Speaker 2: you know, efforts by the black students to gain more recognition.
Speaker 2: You know, there were protests during football games, you know
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. It seemed like something is always
Speaker 2: going on. There were you know, takeovers and buildings by
Speaker 2: by students.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: It was just it was not that unusual in terms
Speaker 2: of what was happening at other colleges and the universities
Speaker 2: around the United States, but it was for Penn State.
Speaker 2: It was definitely something new.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about the library itself, the pat Library,
Speaker 5: and you know, the times being much much different. There
Speaker 5: were reports before this incident and before we talk about
Speaker 5: that of the goings on at this library, and we
Speaker 5: just scratched at the surface to describe the scenario in
Speaker 5: this library where people would be doing research and at
Speaker 5: this time it was just just Thanksgiving. But let's talk
Speaker 5: about some of the incidents and some of the things
Speaker 5: that just seemed to be as the police dismissed at
Speaker 5: the time as sort of routine and nothing to really
Speaker 5: be so concerned about.
Speaker 2: Sure. During the year nineteen sixty nine, there were increasing
Speaker 2: numbers of obsessionally related incidents. You know. This could be
Speaker 2: you know, anything from somebody a man exposing himself to
Speaker 2: female students, you know, or you know, masturbating or you know,
Speaker 2: you know, touching them, you know, groping them. These sort
Speaker 2: of things were going on, and they had a real
Speaker 2: problem in dealing with them because they had no at
Speaker 2: that time, for at least for part of that year,
Speaker 2: they had no security guards devoted to the library. The
Speaker 2: campus patrol at Penn State this you know, the beyond
Speaker 2: campus security force. The leader that refused to dedicate any
Speaker 2: of his patrolmen just to the library. He said, look,
Speaker 2: I've got you know, fifty some more buildings to the patrol.
Speaker 2: I can't give you just your your own h campus
Speaker 2: patrol guy. Even though all these things were happening and
Speaker 2: they weren't stopping. I mean, in the in the weeks
Speaker 2: leading up to to Betsy's murder, you know, there were
Speaker 2: several incidents like this, you know, and the director of
Speaker 2: the library you know, would find himself you know, comforting,
Speaker 2: you know, weeping, hysterical, you know, female students who had
Speaker 2: been you know, groped or you know, in other ways
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted by these people, and and they would just
Speaker 2: uh he would he would call the campus patrol, and
Speaker 2: they wouldn't arrived in time. You know, by the time
Speaker 2: or by the time they got there, the person who
Speaker 2: did it was long gone, you know. And it was
Speaker 2: also another thing that the t Library was was known
Speaker 2: for at the time was gay cruising.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: It was seen by gays from around the region as
Speaker 2: a fairly safe place to look for sexual partners. And
Speaker 2: so this was going on. You know, some of it
Speaker 2: was non controversial and semi legitimate, but in other instances,
Speaker 2: you know, it was pretty weird stuff that was happening.
Speaker 2: And so there was this this was all a backdrop
Speaker 2: what happened Number twenty eight nine library, and there were
Speaker 2: the local the campus patrol was not really doing anything
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about it being the Thanksgiving weekend, that
Speaker 5: there was a one third less people that would have
Speaker 5: been in attendance, But this does not mean that this
Speaker 5: library was deserted in any way. Tell us how busy
Speaker 5: this library was before we talk about the individual you've described,
Speaker 5: where a person could be just inches away from somebody
Speaker 5: else and not be able to hear or see that
Speaker 5: other person. So tell us about the library. It's a
Speaker 5: little bit more about the library set up itself.
Speaker 2: Sure, the stacks. Unlike in some big libraries, anybody could
Speaker 2: go down to the stacks and look for the books.
Speaker 2: There are libraries, probably more of them today where you
Speaker 2: have to ask the librarian to go get the book
Speaker 2: for you. But Penn State was not like that, and
Speaker 2: students can just wander the stacks. But as I had
Speaker 2: said before, they were very dimly lit. And because you know,
Speaker 2: the roads, the stacks of bookshelves were so close together,
Speaker 2: it was entirely possible that you could be on one
Speaker 2: side of a stack and somebody else could be on
Speaker 2: the other side and you wouldn't even know it. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, was assuming they weren't making any noise. It
Speaker 2: was just that claustrophobic.
Speaker 5: Now let's talk about Betsy ruth Ardsma, her parents, and
Speaker 5: a little bit about her background. We always talk about
Speaker 5: how good the person is after they passed away, and
Speaker 5: how innocent this person is. But tell us, as you
Speaker 5: do in the book, what was Betsy ruth Ardsma really like?
Speaker 2: Well, she was as one of her neighbors, and one
Speaker 2: of my high school classmates described her, you know, she
Speaker 2: was smart to be kind, and she was. She was
Speaker 2: six years older than me. I didn't know her personally,
Speaker 2: but you know, we went to the same high school,
Speaker 2: and and so she was. She was a very good student,
Speaker 2: you know, near the top of her class. You know,
Speaker 2: always look in the you know, the top, you know,
Speaker 2: five or six at the at the very very lowest,
Speaker 2: you know. And so she was. She was intelligent, she
Speaker 2: was driven, you know, she wanted to go to college,
Speaker 2: you know, to you know, do something to save the world,
Speaker 2: you know. And and she was just I mean, you
Speaker 2: can't find anyone to say anything bad about her. She
Speaker 2: was just, you know, one of those young women who
Speaker 2: you know, did everything right. And that's why it was
Speaker 2: so unusual that she became a murder victim. Her parents
Speaker 2: were also college educated, which they have both of your
Speaker 2: parents college educated in Holland at that time. Was not
Speaker 2: out of the not out of the question. I mean,
Speaker 2: my parents were both college educated, and but it was
Speaker 2: fairly unusual. And they had both parents had gone to
Speaker 2: Hope College, which is in Holland, Michigan, and that's where
Speaker 2: Betty started out and she even when she was in
Speaker 2: high school, she had dreams of becoming a physician, not
Speaker 2: a nurse, but a physician, which was very unusual in
Speaker 2: the late nineteen sixties. I mean that the percentage of
Speaker 2: women in American medical schools at that time was in
Speaker 2: the single digits, you know, and it was so she
Speaker 2: was unusual in that way. She was an early feminist,
Speaker 2: her friends told me when I was doing the research
Speaker 2: for this book, you know, and so, but she was
Speaker 2: also very trusting h and kind of have that small
Speaker 2: town outlook, you know, where you don't really think of
Speaker 2: that person you med as being a potential threat, even
Speaker 2: though they might be a little bit you know, different
Speaker 2: than you're used to.
Speaker 5: H And but.
Speaker 2: You know, she was just all, like to say, she
Speaker 2: was really a good person, you know. And it's funny
Speaker 2: that state who investigated her, the one who went out
Speaker 2: to Michigan, uh to find out what she was like
Speaker 2: fresh frustration that they couldn't find any you know, moral
Speaker 2: failings in her life, because that's what police do a
Speaker 2: lot of times, you know, moral failings in the victim's
Speaker 2: life often leads them to the killer. But there was
Speaker 2: nothing in her life that led them to the man
Speaker 2: that killed her.
Speaker 5: The very ironic thing was that she could have went
Speaker 5: to another school, but she was afraid of because it
Speaker 5: was a serial killer. Loosen an Arbor in Michigan tell
Speaker 5: us about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she in the period from about nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: you know, through the summer of nineteen sixty nine, but
Speaker 2: mostly in nineteen sixty nine, there was a serial killer
Speaker 2: who we now know by the name of John Norman Collins,
Speaker 2: who was killing young women in and around the University
Speaker 2: of Michigan and in and around Eastern Michigan University, which
Speaker 2: is maybe ten miles from UVM in Ipsilanti, Michigan. And
Speaker 2: he always went for brunettes, for pretty brunettes, and that
Speaker 2: was always stressed in the stories about, you know, the
Speaker 2: latest victim being found, you know, and and these were
Speaker 2: And I looked through the newspapers in Michigan from that time,
Speaker 2: and nearly all of them ran all the stories about,
Speaker 2: you know, about the killings in ann Arbor, certainly the
Speaker 2: Holland Sentinel. Did you know the Arsma family read that
Speaker 2: read those stories and were totally freaked out because Betsy
Speaker 2: was a pretty brunette. Wow, if you if you look
Speaker 2: at the nitty gritty of this. She was actually quite
Speaker 2: several inches taller than most of Collins's victims. But if
Speaker 2: you're a parent, you're not going to make, you know,
Speaker 2: a distinction like that. You know, all you can think
Speaker 2: of is that your daughters are and some madman is
Speaker 2: gonna kill her. Uh So, she she could have gone
Speaker 2: the University of Michigan for graduate school in English. She
Speaker 2: had wanted to actually to go into the Peace Corps,
Speaker 2: but she had the study boyfriend, David Wright, who was
Speaker 2: in the going off to medical school in Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 2: he basically had said that he would really rather she
Speaker 2: didn't go into the Peace Corps. And and and Kane
Speaker 2: followed him to Pennsylvania. And at the same time her
Speaker 2: parents were were putting a lot of pressure on her
Speaker 2: to get out of ann Arbor, you know, because of
Speaker 2: the serial killer. Now, Collins was actually arrested in I
Speaker 2: think it was August of nineteen sixty nine, before she
Speaker 2: actually started at penn State. But at the time, no
Speaker 2: one was really sure if he had acted alone, you know,
Speaker 2: they didn't because he had been seen in the company
Speaker 2: of other men, you know, on the Knights that he
Speaker 2: killed somebody and so there was still a lot of
Speaker 2: doubt as to whether, you know, maybe there was out
Speaker 2: there still. But in any case, Betsy decided, you know,
Speaker 2: for you know, personal romantic reasons and given under the
Speaker 2: pressure you know, from her parents and from her uncle
Speaker 2: and aunt, that she would go to Penn State in
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania and essentially follow her boyfriend you know there, And
Speaker 2: and that's how she ended up at Penn State, and
Speaker 2: ironically that's where she was killed.
Speaker 5: Let's get to November twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine, as
Speaker 5: you write about a woman, another graduate student, Merrily Early
Speaker 5: and she's in the Level two core area in the
Speaker 5: basement stacks of the Pati Library that evening, and she
Speaker 5: knew Betty from a couple of classes. So tell us
Speaker 5: what she's she experiences with Betsy that evening.
Speaker 2: So Merrily uh open the English five of one class,
Speaker 2: which was kind of a boot camp for new graduate
Speaker 2: students in English. You know, it taught you how to
Speaker 2: to research and write you know, papers like a like
Speaker 2: a true scholar. And and all of the students in
Speaker 2: that class had paper zoo shortly after the Thanksgiving break,
Speaker 2: and so many of them had not gone home because
Speaker 2: they needed to finish the paper. You know, Merrilee was one.
Speaker 2: You know, Bessie was another, and there were there any
Speaker 2: number of other ones, other members of that class who
Speaker 2: were in the library that day. Merrily saw that's in
Speaker 2: the library before all this happened. But at around five
Speaker 2: or five pm, in in the stacks of the library,
Speaker 2: the level two stacks, Merri Lee and another student by
Speaker 2: the name of Juahua Finda who was a foreign student
Speaker 2: from Mozambique. He they they heard what basically what sounded
Speaker 2: like a fist hitting a chest. Uh And and there
Speaker 2: there was no no other noise, There was no no screams,
Speaker 2: no argument, just that's sign of a fist hitting a chest,
Speaker 2: which we now believe was the knife in his hand
Speaker 2: going into a chest. And so Merrily is standing there
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, out of the sacks comes
Speaker 2: this man racing who I call him the book, the
Speaker 2: running man and the stacks. He was dressed better than
Speaker 2: a typical student. He was wearing khaki kaki pants and
Speaker 2: a sports jacket. And he looked up at at at
Speaker 2: Merrily Early and Johafinda and said, somebody better helped that girl.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't going to be him. He kept on going,
Speaker 2: and so juah Offinda whose English was so so his
Speaker 2: native language was h was Portuguese. He knew a little
Speaker 2: bit of French and he but he hadn't learned English
Speaker 2: until he came to this country, and so he was
Speaker 2: he could get along, but it wasn't perfect English. And
Speaker 2: but anyway, so he thinks that he heard the killer
Speaker 2: say somebody better, we need to go help that girl.
Speaker 2: So he starts following him, you know, and and they
Speaker 2: he kind of runs after him as that the killer
Speaker 2: runs around you know, the core area and then heads
Speaker 2: out probably the other door of the library and will
Speaker 2: finda lost him and then just you know, kind of
Speaker 2: gave up and walked home and didn't know for several
Speaker 2: days that he had been in the aftermath of a murder. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Mary Lee is by herself there in the stacks, and
Speaker 2: she kind of goes to investigate where she heard that
Speaker 2: sound of the fist. And then I as I should
Speaker 2: have mentioned before, there was also the sound of falling
Speaker 2: books and so and there was no more than about,
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen twenty feet that she had to go.
Speaker 2: And she goes around the corner of one of these
Speaker 2: you know, Florida ceiling stacks of books and sees Betsy
Speaker 2: Arisma laying on the floor. And she knew Betsy, she
Speaker 2: knew who it was, and she and she freaks out
Speaker 2: and she goes over. She you know, she touches Betsy.
Speaker 2: She you know, you know, tries to, I guess, move
Speaker 2: her a little bit, you know, and and then it's
Speaker 2: kind of sits down screens, you know. And and meanwhile,
Speaker 2: librarians on the floor above had heard the sound of
Speaker 2: the falling books through a floor resister and two event
Speaker 2: came down to him. They saw the body there and
Speaker 2: see you know, on her about the mat resuscitation. They
Speaker 2: thought she was still alive, in fact, by the floor.
Speaker 2: But they call an ambulance and they take her off
Speaker 2: to written our student medical center.
Speaker 5: Now the thing is is that they think she thinks
Speaker 5: that and the librarians think that she's just passed out,
Speaker 5: she had some kind of seizure. Nobody really knows. There's
Speaker 5: no blood. There's a puddle of urine as you write,
Speaker 5: but still it and again you write that the police
Speaker 5: for years believe, I think something's amiss. When this woman
Speaker 5: that finds Betsy is so hysterical, when she thinks he's
Speaker 5: just fainted. So let's tell us more about what happens
Speaker 5: at this crime scene after her friend finds her.
Speaker 2: Well, the crime scene was a disaster. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was nothing like you see how TV today. I mean
Speaker 2: it was I mean, you know, Merrily moved the books
Speaker 2: around and had fallen from you know, the shelves, you know,
Speaker 2: when Betsy collapsed to the floor. Uh, you know, people
Speaker 2: walk through the crime scene, you know, there were the
Speaker 2: campus patrol came over finally when they heard that a
Speaker 2: student had passed out, you know, and by the time
Speaker 2: they got there that you know, Betty had been removed
Speaker 2: to the student heal center. But they didn't. They just
Speaker 2: kind of stood around waiting for directions. I mean, they
Speaker 2: were they were not trained police officers. They were just
Speaker 2: security guards and and people crime scene students did university
Speaker 2: officials did, you know? And by the time the state
Speaker 2: police got there, you know, maybe a little over an
Speaker 2: hour after the murder, and it was just totally bolloxed up.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was really very little they could do anymore,
Speaker 2: although they certainly made an effort. They they ended up
Speaker 2: calling a woman a local member of the Penn State
Speaker 2: faculty by the name of Mary Willard, who was kind
Speaker 2: of I refer to her in the book as a
Speaker 2: miss Marvel of State College, because you know, that was
Speaker 2: her of thing she she did, you know, crime scene
Speaker 2: investigation work for various police agencies before there was even
Speaker 2: really a name for what she did. And she'd been
Speaker 2: doing it since the time of prohibition. She was fairly old,
Speaker 2: in your seventies, I think that time, and and she
Speaker 2: she looked things over, she came back, you know, and
Speaker 2: the black light, and that's where they discovered all the
Speaker 2: Stemens games, you know, on the floor in the books,
Speaker 2: you know, throughout that area around where the murder took place.
Speaker 2: And then the state police found all sorts of of
Speaker 2: porn paperbacks, you know, tucked in the stacks they found.
Speaker 2: And this was considered to be a something that Sergeant Keebler,
Speaker 2: the lead investigator, still thinks about a lot today. They've
Speaker 2: done an expensive Dutch porn magazine, a magazine that sold
Speaker 2: for ten dollars or so in the in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: which was a lot of money at that time, and
Speaker 2: it had been abandoned on the one of the carols,
Speaker 2: one of the desks that the students used in the library.
Speaker 2: And and so Sergeant Keebler thought that and still thinks
Speaker 2: today that it was either you know, left by the
Speaker 2: killer or left by somebody who saw the killing. And
Speaker 2: but in any case, uh, it was just a hellish place.
Speaker 2: It was this This is a library. You know, you
Speaker 2: don't expect to find this kind of stuff in a library.
Speaker 2: You don't expect Stemen stays on books, you know. And
Speaker 2: so it was just a kind of a place of
Speaker 2: horror that she had wandered into, you know, looking for
Speaker 2: a book that her professor wanted her to bring back
Speaker 2: so he could take a look at it. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's that's what happened with the crime scene.
Speaker 5: The other fascinating part of this is that Mary Lee
Speaker 5: uh follows basically gets into the ambulance and goes to
Speaker 5: the hospital. But at the hospital, the doctor Reid comes
Speaker 5: out after pronouncing Betsy dead and finds.
Speaker 2: What he finds merrily going through her purse, through Betsy's purse,
Speaker 2: and and he kind of snaps at her, you know,
Speaker 2: to stop that, you know, and and and and takes
Speaker 2: the purse from her. But it was just another weird thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, uh, apparently has passed on some years ago,
Speaker 2: but her her husband, you know, told me that. But
Speaker 2: she considered herself at least briefly to be, if not
Speaker 2: a suspect, then a person of interest in all of this.
Speaker 2: You know. The state police were just so perplexed by
Speaker 2: her behavior that they had a wonder, you know, whether
Speaker 2: she knew more than she was letting on and so,
Speaker 2: and she kind of phased from the scene after that.
Speaker 2: I mean, they interviewed her under hypnosis, you know, to
Speaker 2: try to get more out of her. The interview Johala
Speaker 2: finda under hypnosis especially, you know, and they had a
Speaker 2: Portuguese speaker do the you know, the the interview under hypnosis.
Speaker 2: But yeah, she kind of phased from the scene, you know,
Speaker 2: after that as they did a finda because there was
Speaker 2: never any arrest.
Speaker 5: As police would do and they do in this case,
Speaker 5: they look at people close to Betsy in her life.
Speaker 5: Of course you alluded to and talked about that they
Speaker 5: would look into her background to see if any part
Speaker 5: of her lifestyle would have contributed to her murder. But
Speaker 5: in that they have to speak with her boyfriend, David L.
Speaker 2: Wright.
Speaker 5: So tell us what people think of the relationship and
Speaker 5: what the Phillies find if anything about that relationship and
Speaker 5: its connection to this potential to this murder.
Speaker 2: Well, David Wright and Bessie had been dating for at
Speaker 2: least a year, you know, before they both graduated from
Speaker 2: the University of Michigan. And he was pre mad, you know,
Speaker 2: very very dedicated to his studies. And he was actually
Speaker 2: at the Penn State Medicals School, fairly new medical school
Speaker 2: at the time. It was in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the same
Speaker 2: place where the Hershey Park and the chocolate factory are
Speaker 2: so and that's about one hundred miles from the Penn
Speaker 2: State campus. So he and Bessie didn't see each other
Speaker 2: except really high weekends when she take us down he
Speaker 2: might get up. But her friends, their friends considered the
Speaker 2: relationship to be good. Uh, some of her girlfriends really
Speaker 2: thought that he wasn't right for her, that he was
Speaker 2: just too too conservative, kind of a you know, a Nixon,
Speaker 2: a Republican type, and she was a you know, a
Speaker 2: Eugene McCarthy senator, Eugene McCarthy Democratic type, you know. So,
Speaker 2: but you know, love matches have happened under stranger circumstances.
Speaker 2: But in any case, the that that night, uh, a
Speaker 2: couple of Pennsylvania State Police detectives went to David Wright's
Speaker 2: uh living quarters uh in at the ath Medical School
Speaker 2: and they uh, this was a cottage kind of building
Speaker 2: that was occupied by you know, maybe a half dozen
Speaker 2: you know, other male medical students. And they woke him up,
Speaker 2: and this was like in the early morning hours, and
Speaker 2: and they questioned him for a good long time and
Speaker 2: finally told him, according to him, uh, you know, your
Speaker 2: girlfriend's been murdered. We're sorry, you know, and and and
Speaker 2: so it was I mean, nothing they did was out
Speaker 2: of the ordinary for what police do. But I think
Speaker 2: none of us really know what it would really be
Speaker 2: like to be questioned in a murder case, you know,
Speaker 2: and the things that might go on, you know, in
Speaker 2: that questioning.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: But so he he basically had to provide an alibi,
Speaker 2: and he actually did have a good one. He was
Speaker 2: in his gross anatomy class, you know, where they operate
Speaker 2: on the cad where they you know, dissect the cadavers.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: And there were several people that saw him in there
Speaker 2: around the time, you know, of of the murder, you know, uh,
Speaker 2: And and from Hershey, it would have taken a good
Speaker 2: two hours to drive up to the Penn State and
Speaker 2: two hours to drive back, you know. Uh so the
Speaker 2: alibi was was pretty solid, you know. But they kept
Speaker 2: on questioning him for several weeks really until finally the
Speaker 2: the dean of the medical school told the state police
Speaker 2: not to come back to the campus, but they David Wright,
Speaker 2: continued to talk to him. They just moved to a
Speaker 2: restaurant across the highway, you know, from from the medical school.
Speaker 2: But eventually they stopped. They cleared him. Their republic statements
Speaker 2: at the time from Lieutenant Kimmel, who was the head
Speaker 2: of the Rocky Barracks of the State Police where investigation
Speaker 2: was centered, stating that he was not a suspect and
Speaker 2: so he kind of went on and lived the rest
Speaker 2: of his life.
Speaker 5: Now, we didn't talk about the parents being notified of
Speaker 5: their daughter's death and their reaction, but also what exactly
Speaker 5: did between Willard a little bit later through this contaminated
Speaker 5: crime scene, what she found, what she believed she found,
Speaker 5: and also talk about the internal bleeding, the real injuries
Speaker 5: that she incurred in this fatal stabbing.
Speaker 2: Sure they did. They took her first to written our
Speaker 2: Health center, which is it is a hospital. Is certainly
Speaker 2: not an emergency room, you know. In fact, there wasn't
Speaker 2: really a good emergency room even close to pemp State,
Speaker 2: you know. They they would have had to take her
Speaker 2: to Altuna, which is across a mountain forty two miles away,
Speaker 2: or to again to Hershey, or to guys in your
Speaker 2: medical center, which you are about eighty or one hundred
Speaker 2: miles away, depending on which one. But it didn't matter
Speaker 2: because she was dead already and the knife had penetrated
Speaker 2: her breast and then and then went through her breastbone
Speaker 2: into her heart. The general consensus was that she was
Speaker 2: probably dead by the time she hit the floor. Her
Speaker 2: The bleeding was all into her her chest cavity, you know.
Speaker 2: There was my I think I forget what the figure was,
Speaker 2: maybe three liters of blood you know, in her chest cavity.
Speaker 2: And because that that entry wound was so narrow and tiny,
Speaker 2: there was really no exit for the blood to come
Speaker 2: out onto the floor, you know. So there was a
Speaker 2: little bit of blood stain on her her blouse, you know,
Speaker 2: but nothing nothing that anybody really noticed, you know. And uh,
Speaker 2: I mean there was certainly not a pool of blood
Speaker 2: you know, around her like you saw on some of
Speaker 2: the press coverage, the more sensationalistic press coverage you afterwards.
Speaker 2: But in any case, they did the autopsy and they
Speaker 2: found out exactly, you know, what had happened. It had
Speaker 2: been a small knife wound, but very deadly, very effective
Speaker 2: and just in the right place to kill her almost instantly.
Speaker 2: Now at the time that that she was declared dad
Speaker 2: at the at the student health center. Uh, the doctor
Speaker 2: there made a phone call to university officials, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: one of whom had the duty then of calling uh
Speaker 2: the Yardsma family or in this case, actually they called
Speaker 2: uh doctor Gordon van Ostenberg, the family minister, and he
Speaker 2: told ven Ostenberg what had happened, and Ben Osenberg agreed
Speaker 2: to go to the Arisma home and inform the family
Speaker 2: and so and they were all, I mean, this was like,
Speaker 2: you know, the day after Thanksgiving. You know, they were,
Speaker 2: you know, Carol Arsman and her husband Dennis Wagner, were
Speaker 2: getting ready to go out to a movie. It was
Speaker 2: just kind of a casual, happy time. When the doorbell rings,
Speaker 2: and you know, the they opened the door and there's
Speaker 2: their minister with probably the worst news that any parent
Speaker 2: can ever receive, and and so everything fell apart for them.
Speaker 2: From there, and they they made preparations early the next
Speaker 2: morning to to fly to State College from Holland to
Speaker 2: uh to bring her body home. And you know that's
Speaker 2: kind of where that went.
Speaker 5: Now, how do police proceed You talk about the number
Speaker 5: of leads or lack of leads. Tell us about the
Speaker 5: status of the investigation in terms of physical evidence and
Speaker 5: leads and probable suspects.
Speaker 2: Well, they had no physical evidence because of the destruction
Speaker 2: of the crime scene early on. As far as you know,
Speaker 2: tips and leads, well they had. They had a bunch
Speaker 2: of those, from the you know, the crazy to the
Speaker 2: you know, the semi saying uh, you know, I mean
Speaker 2: there were there were people who thought that it was
Speaker 2: a cult of Satan worshippers that had done it. There were,
Speaker 2: you know, just all sorts of you know, crazy stuff
Speaker 2: like that. And the sergeant Keebler, Sergeant George Keebler told me,
Speaker 2: you know, they had to chase down everyone, you know,
Speaker 2: at least for a while. One of the problems early
Speaker 2: on was that Corporal Brody, one of the criminal investigators,
Speaker 2: was was certain that that Bessie's killer had been the
Speaker 2: same guy who had a duck and then raped a
Speaker 2: couple of teenage girls from the Nitney mall over the
Speaker 2: past couple of years. And uh and he thought, I mean,
Speaker 2: and this this was I mean, even looking at it today,
Speaker 2: you think, really they they thought this because you know,
Speaker 2: this was the was believed to somebody from the country,
Speaker 2: you know, a man who seemed to be like a
Speaker 2: like a farm laborer or something like that. And you
Speaker 2: have to if for him to have killed Betsy would
Speaker 2: mean that he would have to have found the tee library,
Speaker 2: wandered his uh, wandered down into the stacks, and then
Speaker 2: and then killed her there. You know, I'm it was
Speaker 2: just a crazy, crazy thing. But again, Keebler gave Brody
Speaker 2: some latitude and and and let him pursue it for
Speaker 2: a while before he kind of rained him back in. Uh.
Speaker 2: And today Keeler says, I shouldn't let him go on
Speaker 2: go on as long as he did. But I mean,
Speaker 2: they tried. They looked at everything. I mean, they sent
Speaker 2: troopers to Michigan to check her out to see if
Speaker 2: there were any connections, you know, with between her death
Speaker 2: and the markets and ann Arbor. You know, they interviewed
Speaker 2: her friends around the country. You know, they they had
Speaker 2: weird things like a postcard you know, that arrived from Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. Saying look for the man in the khaki
Speaker 2: pants or the work pants I think it was, and
Speaker 2: h and that it had turned out to be have
Speaker 2: been sent from the same post to substation as one
Speaker 2: used by one of Betsy's friends, Peggy Wick, who who
Speaker 2: just happened it was this pure coincidence, but you know so,
Speaker 2: but she got a visit them from you know, a
Speaker 2: state trooper and a couple of DC cops who questioned her,
Speaker 2: you know about that. They just they did everything they could,
Speaker 2: they did, they did all the right stuff, but they
Speaker 2: were hampered in one great way because they didn't know
Speaker 2: what had happened after the murder in terms of what
Speaker 2: the killer did.
Speaker 5: You talk about the incredible effort that's put into solving
Speaker 5: this case by the Pennsylvania State Police. Lieutenant Wems, You've
Speaker 5: got Broad and Simmers and Kimmel and Keepler here, so
Speaker 5: and everybody's involved with this. So let's let's talk about
Speaker 5: that effort and how many officers and how exhaustive and
Speaker 5: extensive this investigation was.
Speaker 2: Sure, they started out with just you know, Simmers and
Speaker 2: Brody and Keybler and a few of the other troopers
Speaker 2: from the Rocky New Barracks, but they very quickly, you know,
Speaker 2: brought in troopers from around the central region of the state,
Speaker 2: you know, from Hollidaysburg, from Carlisle and Harrisburg. So in all,
Speaker 2: at its peak there were about forty state troopers on
Speaker 2: the campus interviewing students and factory just looking for clues.
Speaker 2: They interviewed around twenty six hundred student you know, five
Speaker 2: hundred or more faculty and somebody they bought me something
Speaker 2: to say, so be able to tell them something, you know.
Speaker 2: They everybody that was in that English five oh one class,
Speaker 2: well Betsy and Merrily Early were in they were all questioned,
Speaker 2: you know, in turn by the state police. They were
Speaker 2: just looking for something anything, you know, and they just
Speaker 2: I mean, they really tried hard. But what they it
Speaker 2: was what they didn't know. They didn't allow him to
Speaker 2: go down, you know, the right road.
Speaker 5: Here you talk about a professor, Well, first you talk
Speaker 5: about a case of course that took this story of
Speaker 5: Betsy Ardsma, which you know, captured national attention and it
Speaker 5: took it off the front pages with Manson family murders.
Speaker 5: But you also talk about a professor that had been
Speaker 5: doing some work that was connected to Penn State that
Speaker 5: done some work in the Death Valley, very close to
Speaker 5: where the Madson family was hiding out. So first tell
Speaker 5: us about the Manson family phenomena briefly, and then that
Speaker 5: tie in with the graduate student and the professor in
Speaker 5: Death Valley.
Speaker 2: Sure, the infamous Tate La Bianca murders by the Manson
Speaker 2: family had occurred in August of nineteen sixty nine, and
Speaker 2: there were no arrests. Immediately they got away. They retreated
Speaker 2: back to their hideaway at the Barker Ranch in Death Valley,
Speaker 2: and they were Charlie Manson believed that there was a
Speaker 2: hole in the desert that would lead down to this
Speaker 2: paradid underground where they could hide out during Helter Skelter
Speaker 2: when he believe that the blacks in America would rise
Speaker 2: up and kill and kill all the whites and take over.
Speaker 2: And but you know, Manson, who was profolily racist, UH
Speaker 2: just believe that they wouldn't be able to run things.
Speaker 2: So it would turn to him. Charlie Mannon be there
Speaker 2: either Helter Skelter and UH, and so Manson and and
Speaker 2: his h his deputies would uh would ride through Delli uh,
Speaker 2: just looking for the hole in the desert, you know.
Speaker 2: Uh so, and they they would the Manson women like
Speaker 2: Susan Atkins, would would sometimes go into this town about
Speaker 2: fifty miles away, which is actually close in death valley terms,
Speaker 2: uh called Shoshonee, California, where where they would panhandle on
Speaker 2: the streets and uh so and Shoshawnee was where doctor
Speaker 2: Lauren Wright, the Penn State geology professor, uh would stay
Speaker 2: during about six months out of the year when he
Speaker 2: would do his death value research. And uh he had
Speaker 2: a house trailer there and he would often take uh,
Speaker 2: you know, graduate students out there to to do work
Speaker 2: for their their theses. Uh and and sometimes a second
Speaker 2: student to kind of act as the assistant you know.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 2: And the one I talked about in the book was
Speaker 2: a fellow by the name of Richard Hafner, who ultimately
Speaker 2: becomes the prime suspect in the Betsiers the murder. But he, uh,
Speaker 2: he was out there. He was there at the time
Speaker 2: that the Manson family was cruising around. I just found
Speaker 2: it the proximity interesting. There was about a week period
Speaker 2: of a week where where Lauren Wright and the student
Speaker 2: assistant went away and just you know, and I mean,
Speaker 2: did he run into Manson, you know when he was
Speaker 2: out in the desert, uh, you know, Uh he was
Speaker 2: a geologist, better to talk to for tips on where
Speaker 2: this hole in the desert might be, you know. And
Speaker 2: Manson did like to take you know, young men back
Speaker 2: to the Barker ranch, you know, to be entertained by
Speaker 2: his women, to do drugs, to listen to Charlie's philosophizing,
Speaker 2: you know, on life and death. So back a whole
Speaker 2: lot snaking this, but it was just an interesting juxtaposition,
Speaker 2: you know. And and Haifner later talked in some of
Speaker 2: the same philosophical terms about life and death than Manson did.
Speaker 2: And so it's got me wondering whether, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: there was some tie between the two. But but ultimately
Speaker 2: what Hafner did was all his own.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about Richard Haifner and what was found about
Speaker 5: what his background is sure.
Speaker 2: Richard Hafner was from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is famous in
Speaker 2: the tourism world as kind of the headquarters of you
Speaker 2: know where the the Amish live in Lancaster is the
Speaker 2: biggest city in Lancaster County. You know, the Amish live
Speaker 2: in the city of Lancaster. But they live all around it.
Speaker 2: And but it's a it's an interesting town. It's it's
Speaker 2: very very German, very very very religious.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: And hey, this is where Haefner grew up. He was
Speaker 2: a descendant of a beer baron who had operated a
Speaker 2: brewery in in Lancaster. H his ancestor had come from
Speaker 2: Bavaria and and set up for a brewery in Lancaster.
Speaker 2: And but by the time Richard came along, the family's
Speaker 2: fortune basically was gone, you know. Uh, but they still
Speaker 2: had this lingering reputation as being, you know, a solid family,
Speaker 2: a family of of.
Speaker 5: Now you know.
Speaker 2: And and Richard was was an intelligent guy. He was
Speaker 2: he was book smart, you know. He he wanted to
Speaker 2: be a Jiles and was certain that he was going
Speaker 2: to be, you know, one of the great ones, you know,
Speaker 2: and he wanted He had done his undergraduate at Franklin
Speaker 2: and Marshall College in Lancaster and then had been accepted
Speaker 2: to the Penn State for his graduate study in geology there.
Speaker 2: But OPI was that he was a pedophile, a very
Speaker 2: bad one. He he there I found documented incidents going
Speaker 2: back to Franklin and Marshall College. And the thing was
Speaker 2: was that it's clear that the police knew about it,
Speaker 2: but he was never prosecuted, you know. And and these
Speaker 2: were you know, like like one of the incidents, the
Speaker 2: one I talked about probably the most in the book
Speaker 2: was he was working as a kind of a recreation
Speaker 2: aid at at a city summer camp, city day camp
Speaker 2: in a supernation sixty five and towards the end of
Speaker 2: the summer, he invited two boys, two brothers, sons of
Speaker 2: a single mom to go to Ocean City, Maryland, you know,
Speaker 2: with him for a week of fun in the sun
Speaker 2: and seashore. Well, and the mom's sure, you know, and
Speaker 2: this is the more trustled thing. And he takes them
Speaker 2: down there, molests them both, and they come back. They
Speaker 2: tell their mom, who's furious. She goes to the head
Speaker 2: of the recreation commission and tells him, you know, and
Speaker 2: he starts looking into this and you know, and horrified
Speaker 2: at what he what he finds. And what I found
Speaker 2: particularly galling and fascinating at the same time was the
Speaker 2: debate that was held. And it's all in the documents,
Speaker 2: you know, whether they should turn Richard over to the police,
Speaker 2: and the psychiatrist they encountered said no, you must not
Speaker 2: do that, you must not turn them over to the police,
Speaker 2: because you were ruined his life. And so they didn't.
Speaker 2: They didn't turn them over to the police. They just said,
Speaker 2: you psychiatric care, you know, when you go off to
Speaker 2: Penn State. And and then there was a final document
Speaker 2: in this file that I was able to get and
Speaker 2: where the Recreation Commission had noted that he had followed
Speaker 2: up and that Richard had not gotten any psychiatric help,
Speaker 2: you know, at Penn State. And this would go on
Speaker 2: throughout his life, you know, you know, because he was
Speaker 2: never arrested in Betsy's case, he was able to go
Speaker 2: on and molest many many more, many many more boys
Speaker 2: who win many more wives. And but he was I
Speaker 2: mean he was also he was a psychopath. He knew
Speaker 2: how to fool people, you know, he could come off
Speaker 2: as he was handsome, you know, he was smart, he
Speaker 2: was well spoken, you know, and and he could fool
Speaker 2: the best of them. And that was why he was
Speaker 2: able to get away with this, you know, for so long,
Speaker 2: you know, Plus again the fact that this is a
Speaker 2: more trusting era as far as you know, pedophelia goes.
Speaker 2: But Yeah, that's Richard Hayner and he was Doctor Lauren
Speaker 2: Wright was his thesis advisor. In fact, just a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks before Betsy's murder, doctor Wright had signed off
Speaker 2: on Richard's master's thesis in geology, which was based on
Speaker 2: the research work that he had done in Death Valley.
Speaker 5: Incredible, Now what do police do? We will go back
Speaker 5: to this case that's baffling them and they have no leads,
Speaker 5: but they've done incredible amount of work, including hypnotizing u
Speaker 5: Offinda and Merri Lee and also interviewed six hundred people
Speaker 5: and everybody that came in and out of that library.
Speaker 5: So what's the next move for police? What area do
Speaker 5: they go? How far do they go with that wild
Speaker 5: goose chase for broad and what is their direction and
Speaker 5: what kind of progress do they make?
Speaker 4: What the.
Speaker 2: Critical things that happened, you know during the about Well,
Speaker 2: when they were about maybe three four weeks into the investigation,
Speaker 2: they come upon a student by the name of Larry
Speaker 2: Paul Mauer. And uh Mauer was was also a student
Speaker 2: in the English five oh one class, and he uh,
Speaker 2: he was he was an idbord, he really was. I mean,
Speaker 2: they wanted to question him ask Marble. And he lived
Speaker 2: in Betsy's dorm Afterton Hall, and it actually had been
Speaker 2: briefly a roommate of har So they go to Maher's room,
Speaker 2: two troopers do you know, and and there, and this
Speaker 2: was just a routine visit because he was in that
Speaker 2: English five oh one class. And and they're talking to him,
Speaker 2: and the trooper who's not doing the talking, just looks
Speaker 2: around the room and he sees this wooden desk chair,
Speaker 2: you know, with arms on it, and and on one
Speaker 2: of the arms of the desk chair was carved here
Speaker 2: sits death in the guise of man. And the trooper thinks,
Speaker 2: holy shit, you know. And and so they they asked
Speaker 2: him about it, and and and Maert says, oh, I
Speaker 2: thought that was a neat saying. And and they said, well,
Speaker 2: do you do you have a knife? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I carry a knife. I used to cut cheese. And
Speaker 2: it was like he was taunting them, you know. And
Speaker 2: and ultimately, looking at all this, I I just came
Speaker 2: to the conclusion that that for some reason he just
Speaker 2: got on pretending and maybe he was involved in Bessy's murder,
Speaker 2: you know. But he was very he was very convincing
Speaker 2: I mean, he did everything he could and makes him
Speaker 2: think that he was the killer, and they put him
Speaker 2: on a lie detector and he passed with fine colors.
Speaker 2: He dropped out of Penn Stay almost immediately and disappeared
Speaker 2: into First Army and then into the National Security Agency.
Speaker 2: And there was a group of state troopers who were convinced,
Speaker 2: and many of them are still convinced of this day.
Speaker 2: But he was the killer, you know, I don't believe
Speaker 2: he was. I think he just had his own special
Speaker 2: set of problems and made him behave that way. But
Speaker 2: you know, because and I get into into it in
Speaker 2: more detail in the book as to you know, why
Speaker 2: I don't think he could have been the killer. But
Speaker 2: but again, I mean, you look at things like he
Speaker 2: was there, He told the same He was there in
Speaker 2: the I Mary the same stacks where the murder took place,
Speaker 2: not well and before it happened, you know, but didn't
Speaker 2: see anything. And so I fully understand why they some
Speaker 2: of them believed still believed that he was the real killer.
Speaker 2: But I believe that for a number of reasons, that
Speaker 2: Richard Hafner was was the actual killer.
Speaker 5: The police fill in all kinds of other areas too.
Speaker 5: They interview a person named Spencer, and then they have
Speaker 5: they hear a rumor that she might have posed for
Speaker 5: some Betsy might have posed for some art, for art paintings,
Speaker 5: or appeared in the nude anyway, peered nude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what Yeah, that was another thing to start.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, go ahead?
Speaker 5: When do when do police give up officially on this
Speaker 5: and when does it become a cold case.
Speaker 2: It started becoming a cold case in January of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: right around the time that the state police became involved
Speaker 2: in the investigation of the murder of United Mine Workers
Speaker 2: dissident Joseph Yablonski and his wife and daughter out in
Speaker 2: western Pennsylvania. They were it was ultimately determined that they
Speaker 2: were murdered by thugs hired by Tony Boyle, the head
Speaker 2: of the United Mineworkers Union, to eliminate you know, rival
Speaker 2: meaning of Blonsky, And that kind of stuck all yere
Speaker 2: out of the yards of investigation. So they started taking
Speaker 2: troopers away from Teebler, and he told me he didn't
Speaker 2: really mind, because he thought he had too many to
Speaker 2: begin with, and a lot of these guys were, as
Speaker 2: he put if they were traffic cops that were kind
Speaker 2: of drafted in because they need a feet on the ground.
Speaker 2: But in other words, they were not trained criminal investigators.
Speaker 2: But so yeah, and throughout in the first six months
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy, the state Police car started kind of
Speaker 2: whittling down the investigation, you know. And then there were
Speaker 2: campus riots at Penn State relating to the Vietnam War
Speaker 2: right around it was not related to Kent State, but
Speaker 2: it was around the same time as the Kent State massacre.
Speaker 2: And then you know, by about the summer of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: it was just down to Tabler, you know. And and
Speaker 2: he he kept it up, you know, as well as
Speaker 2: he could, and he would for the next fourteen years.
Speaker 2: But really by by the summer of nineteen seventy, it
Speaker 2: was it now, tell.
Speaker 5: Us how you get involved or when you get involved,
Speaker 5: and why you get involved. Tell us about the progression
Speaker 5: to lead to the discovery of this Richard Hefner as
Speaker 5: a probable or possible suspect.
Speaker 2: Sure, in the fall of two thousand and eight, I
Speaker 2: had written a two part series for my newspaper, the
Speaker 2: Harrisburg Patriot News and Harrisburg Pennsylvany Am about the arts mccays.
Speaker 2: And at that time, there was no ending to the story.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've been my story, you know, basically reviewed
Speaker 2: everything that was known, the various theories of why, why
Speaker 2: and how she was killed, and but at that point
Speaker 2: Richard Hafner was was totally unknown. And and so I
Speaker 2: didn't really think about I mean, I thought about writing
Speaker 2: a book, but I didn't think I could because there
Speaker 2: was no ending to it, and so I just kind
Speaker 2: of put it aside, and you know, working on a
Speaker 2: different book. And and but then comes the summer of
Speaker 2: twenty ten. One day, I think it was in August,
Speaker 2: I get an email from Peggy Wick, Betsy's friend, saying
Speaker 2: that Kathy Hafner, her younger sister ben in Holland for
Speaker 2: her high school class reunion, and it was telling people
Speaker 2: that the case was solved. And I'm thinking, oh wow.
Speaker 2: And so I contacted a friend of mine who was
Speaker 2: also a friend of Kathy Hafner, confirmed you know, what
Speaker 2: was going on, got the name of the suspect as
Speaker 2: had been delayed to my family by Lieutenant Leep Arrow's
Speaker 2: a female and officer. And at that point that's when
Speaker 2: I decided, Okay, now there's an ending. I think there's
Speaker 2: an ending anyway, and so I immediately set out, you know,
Speaker 2: to just start writing the book. You know. I traveled
Speaker 2: out to Death Valley to you know, interview people that
Speaker 2: knew Hafner out there, you know, and do that part
Speaker 2: of the story. And you know, started going through the
Speaker 2: archives of the courts in Pennsylvania, you know, looking for
Speaker 2: cases in which Hafner was involved, and he was involved
Speaker 2: in a lot of him because he loved to sue people,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, it just kind of, you know, progressed
Speaker 2: from there. And Sergeant Keebler, who who for the newspaper series,
Speaker 2: had had declined to speak to me. He later told
Speaker 2: me it was because the state police had asked him
Speaker 2: not to speak to me because there were thoughts at
Speaker 2: that time that they might be indicting Larry palm Auer.
Speaker 2: But they didn't, you know, They they looked at him,
Speaker 2: decided they had no evidence.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: But in any case, Sergeant Keebler was was kind of
Speaker 2: to sit down for five or six lengthy interviews. And
Speaker 2: I went out and I interviewed, you know, every trooper
Speaker 2: I could find who had worked at case. Even in
Speaker 2: a small way, I find that even if you just
Speaker 2: get one big fact out of somebody. It's it's a
Speaker 2: worthwhile interview, you know, because all those facts, you know,
Speaker 2: meld together into the narrative that you tell about how
Speaker 2: the case played out. You know. So that's not the
Speaker 2: book came.
Speaker 5: Pardon me, I did miss that last part.
Speaker 2: Oh, in August of twenty fourteen, my book was published.
Speaker 5: Now since that time, well, maybe we'll talk about your interviews.
Speaker 5: What was the you say, if you learned one thing
Speaker 5: from interviewing any of these officers, but with Keebler, what
Speaker 5: was the what was the most surprising thing you learned
Speaker 5: from those interviews? The most important thing.
Speaker 2: Was yeah, most important thing? Well, what was? What was it?
Speaker 2: What was most important with with George Keebler was his
Speaker 2: ability to tell me what really went on. There were
Speaker 2: a lot of rumors, a lot of myths that had
Speaker 2: grown up over forty some years.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, for example that for a long time, you know,
Speaker 2: it was just assumed that there had been two people
Speaker 2: who ran out of the stacks, and you know, on
Speaker 2: November twenty eighth of Matthew sixty nine, and Keebler said, no,
Speaker 2: I looked into that. And the second one was with
Speaker 2: finda you know, and the other one was was the killer,
Speaker 2: you know, and so you know, he was able to
Speaker 2: demolish the myths and and give me the correct facts,
Speaker 2: you know, of of everything that he knew and was
Speaker 2: willing to tell me. There were a couple of areas
Speaker 2: where he was always reluctant to to give me names
Speaker 2: of witnesses if he had promised the man a messy
Speaker 2: even you know, forty five years ago, but there weren't
Speaker 2: a lot of that. He was he was generally very open,
Speaker 2: uh and uh got along well, you know, and I was, uh,
Speaker 2: just really pleased with my interviews with him.
Speaker 5: What did he think of your ideas about the killing?
Speaker 3: He was he didn't dismiss them. Uh, you know, you
Speaker 3: could have solved this, but didn't you know. Uh, But
Speaker 3: he he was not He was not dismissive. He thought
Speaker 3: they were interesting ideas. Uh and uh, you know, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't willing to give me the ultimate you know,
Speaker 3: pat on the back, you know, as far as you
Speaker 3: know my my theories, you know. But he certainly did
Speaker 3: not ridicule of him or or even speak harshly of them.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: It was just he thought they were good ideas, interesting ideas.
Speaker 2: But he just wasn't willing to necessarily say that they
Speaker 2: were correct, even though I believe they are.
Speaker 5: What would you attribute your narrowing down the suspects enough
Speaker 5: to name in this book? What would you attribute but
Speaker 5: without giving away too much for for those that are
Speaker 5: going to pick up this book and read it, what
Speaker 5: would you attribute most for this progress in finding a
Speaker 5: viable suspect?
Speaker 2: Well, an hour after the murder, h Richard Hafner shows
Speaker 2: up at Lauren Wright's house on the edge of State College.
Speaker 2: And and he's all kind of frantic and out of
Speaker 2: breath and discombobulated. Uh and and and and he, you know,
Speaker 2: Lauren Wright opens the door and there's Hafner.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: And he invites him inside. And and Hafner says, is
Speaker 2: there anything in the paper about that they're all being
Speaker 2: killed in the library? Uh? That was a little differ one, right,
Speaker 2: a different cages. And he was pretty tall on what
Speaker 2: had happened happened that night? Uh, And so he stayed.
Speaker 2: Cathner stayed at at doctor Wright's house for you know,
Speaker 2: maybe half an hour forty five.
Speaker 5: Minutes or so.
Speaker 2: And then and then leaves is as quickly as he
Speaker 2: as he arrived. And so there was there was that
Speaker 2: very strange incident which well, uh and and then uh.
Speaker 2: The other the other important things came from Paper's cousin,
Speaker 2: Christopher Hasner, who told me in a series of interviews
Speaker 2: about what he had overheard his cousin and uh, his
Speaker 2: aunt talking about one summer day in the in the
Speaker 2: summer of nineteen seventy five. This was right after Richard
Speaker 2: Hagner had been arrested finally for molesting two boys who
Speaker 2: worked for him at his rock shop in Lancaster. And
Speaker 2: you know, and Chris, who musso worked at the rock shop,
Speaker 2: was inside and they just a few feet away from
Speaker 2: the conversation that ensued, and Aara Hafner, Richard's mother, was
Speaker 2: furious with him about the arrest and and she saw
Speaker 2: him just kind of lively, you know, out in the
Speaker 2: alleyway between the house and the rock shop, and came
Speaker 2: out and started screaming at him. You know, you did
Speaker 2: this again. You got away with it once, but you
Speaker 2: did it again. And you know, why don't you just
Speaker 2: kill me the way you killed her? And and so Chris,
Speaker 2: here's this, you know, and you know, and he isn't
Speaker 2: quite sure what to think, you know, and and he hears,
Speaker 2: and he hears, you know, Richard yelling back at his
Speaker 2: mother her and and then in the weeks to come,
Speaker 2: you know, Richard tried to make him believe that he
Speaker 2: hadn't heard what he knew that he had heard. And
Speaker 2: so there was that, Uh, there was the fact that
Speaker 2: that Lauren Wright believed that Richard Hafner was to kill her,
Speaker 2: you know, based on the fact that he knew that
Speaker 2: Richard that carried a knife, and in fact, he told
Speaker 2: this to people over the years. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: he also maintained a least a professional relationship with Hair
Speaker 2: went out together, you know, the crazy situation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's amazing. What has been the response from any
Speaker 5: camp that again would have shocked you or impressed you
Speaker 5: or concerned you. Since twenty fourteen, since his book was released.
Speaker 2: The Pennsylvania State Police seem completely uninterested in in pursuing
Speaker 2: any of this. They they wouldn't interview Chris Hafner in
Speaker 2: person about if they were somewhat harsh and abusive to
Speaker 2: him over the phone, and uh, it was just it
Speaker 2: was this strange. I mean, you think that you get
Speaker 2: a credible tip like this, you're gonna you're gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: the work the hell out of it, you know. But uh,
Speaker 2: but they didn't, you know, and and and they would
Speaker 2: make statements like, oh, we think that Hafner knew something,
Speaker 2: knew who the killer was, but wasn't the killer himself. Uh,
Speaker 2: and you know, based on what and and then and
Speaker 2: they would make statements like, well, we have some good
Speaker 2: leaves and and and we're going to probably been making
Speaker 2: an arrest in a couple of months, while they never did.
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 2: I just I don't know, I mean, are they so
Speaker 2: worried that you know, there's something in the files there
Speaker 2: that would would would cast them in a bad light,
Speaker 2: you know? Or is it just pure institutional defensiveness. I
Speaker 2: don't know, but yeah, that's that's that's probably what disturbed
Speaker 2: me the most, just the lack of interest really in
Speaker 2: pursuing any of this. And uh and then State itself
Speaker 2: certainly has no interest in in pursuing this any further.
Speaker 2: In fact, will not you know, make their records available,
Speaker 2: you know about the r as an investigation.
Speaker 5: Have you heard back as sometimes it it you do
Speaker 5: with an unsolved case like this officially unsolved case from students,
Speaker 5: from anybody from that time contacted.
Speaker 2: You, yes, several several did uh, you know. And what
Speaker 2: they basically, what they told me was was a creative
Speaker 2: you know, it added to what I what I already knew,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't you know, narrative changing. Really it was
Speaker 2: interesting stuff. And in fact, in the audio version of
Speaker 2: Murdering the Stacks, I added a chapter that includes some
Speaker 2: of what I heard from students, you know, like the
Speaker 2: guy who worked for the campus radio station you know
Speaker 2: that night, and how he heard about that something was
Speaker 2: going on at the te library and what he did
Speaker 2: and you know, that sort of thing. And there was
Speaker 2: also a very interesting call from a detective at the
Speaker 2: Lancaster Police Department, the one who had investigated Rick Haefner
Speaker 2: back in nineteen seventy five when he was arrested for
Speaker 2: molesting the two boys. I tried six ways to Sunday
Speaker 2: to try to find him an interview, and you know,
Speaker 2: when I was doing the research for the book, but
Speaker 2: was unsuccessful. Well after he read the book and then
Speaker 2: he calls me up and said, well, I got a
Speaker 2: good story to tell you, you know, and and he basically,
Speaker 2: you know, filled in a lot more details about about
Speaker 2: Hafner as a pedophile, and you know, and what had
Speaker 2: happened when he had in the police station, you know,
Speaker 2: that night. And but but ultimately, to make a long
Speaker 2: story short, nobody's come forward to say, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: I know who did it, you know, I you know
Speaker 2: it was Hafner, it with somebody else, you know, it
Speaker 2: was it was just you know, I mean, there were
Speaker 2: so many students who were affected in one way or
Speaker 2: another by this. I mean students were terrified. A lot
Speaker 2: of them were terrified to go into the stacks for
Speaker 2: a long time afterwards. You know, women's students would say, well,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to listen to the boyfriends that was
Speaker 2: with me, you know, because it had never been solved.
Speaker 2: And so for all them, the killer was still lurking,
Speaker 2: lurking around, and ironically he was. But anyway, so that's
Speaker 2: that's kind of I guess the best way I can
Speaker 2: answer that, as far as you know, people live contacted
Speaker 2: me afterwards.
Speaker 5: It's an incredible story too, because we really didn't capture
Speaker 5: as as you do in the book, the the juxtaposition
Speaker 5: by the culture, this murder in the small community, all
Speaker 5: the events nationally that were happening, the Vietnam War, and
Speaker 5: then sort of the rise of the super killer, the
Speaker 5: Zodiac and the serial killer columns that you talked about,
Speaker 5: the Mansion family and quick there pardon me, sorry, I
Speaker 5: didn't catch that.
Speaker 2: S right, and you you've blanked out there. I didn't
Speaker 2: get in your question at all. Yeah, you were talking about,
Speaker 2: you know, the events that were going on at the
Speaker 2: same time, but then you just cut out.
Speaker 5: Well, what I've talked about was the juxtaposition that you
Speaker 5: do capture between the culture at that time and then
Speaker 5: the effect of this murder in the small community and
Speaker 5: at the same time the rise of the serial killer
Speaker 5: phenomena itself.
Speaker 2: The fact.
Speaker 5: Yes, anyway, we will dis We'll have to give credit
Speaker 5: to the cell phones for a little bit of a
Speaker 5: disturbance in the interview tonight. So but I want to
Speaker 5: thank you very much David for coming on and talking
Speaker 5: about murdering the Stacks, the Penn State debtsy, ARDSMA and
Speaker 5: the killers that got away. For those that people that
Speaker 5: might want to do you have a Facebook page or
Speaker 5: a website, how might people contact you or see your
Speaker 5: other work?
Speaker 2: I d e. K okay their website and there's a
Speaker 2: there's an email link on there.
Speaker 5: Okay, can you give it that information one more time?
Speaker 2: Okay. My my author website is David Dcook one word
Speaker 2: dot com. Uh and uh and that will take you
Speaker 2: to uh, you know, my uh, my website that tells
Speaker 2: you about my various books and and uh and there
Speaker 2: is an email link, you know, on that site where
Speaker 2: you can contact me through that.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much for this and talking about
Speaker 5: murdering the stacks. Thank you very much, David de Cook
Speaker 5: and uh, thank you for this, and have a great
Speaker 5: evening and good night, okay, thank you, good night. Thanks