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OT (sorta) "Murder in the Stacks," -David DeKok

Victor E. Bell

Victor E. Bell

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Aug 28, 2001
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I am a little more than halfway through this book. I recommend it, as it provides a lot of insight as to the mentality on PSU campus in 1969 and many parallels can be drawn to modern day. The book concerns the Aardsma murder in Pattee over Thanksgiving weekend in 1969. The author has a very specific individual (now deceased) for which he makes a case for guilt...but the surrounding goings-on are all too familiar. Read it, and if you have what were your observations? I didn't find out till I bought it that it was written by a guy who used to work for the Patriot, so I'm keeping that in mind as I go.
 
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Hopefully the conclusion is not that Joe knew about it, but didn't do enough.

Anyhow, I well remember studying in the Stacks, and having no idea that this sort of thing happened. Of course, one night I thought that maybe I was going to get laid in the Stacks, but that didn't happen either.
 
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Well I'm not trying to be too cryptic here but some may want to read it and I don't want to spoil it. The vibe is that no, Penn State didn't do enough...didn't treat the Aardsmas right after this happened, didn't want the bad pub about a murder, and the suspect this author tries to finger was a pedophile who hated women. The guy was a grad student at the time, from Lancaster. He had a well known proclivity toward young boys and was given a pass by local political figures any time he got caught, had the path smoothed for him by people all his life who didn't want to know. Author goes into more specifics that I'm not going to go into now. Football is mentioned in passing once or twice. If he's right the "cultural problem" lies in academia and politics not football. Emmert the Wise should give this a read.
 
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You know, given the events of the last few years, that is pretty disturbing. And you wonder if there is more of this kind of stuff out there, and that is the impetus for all the bullshit we've been seeing.

I'm getting the book. I wish I knew about it before I went to the shore this summer, because it sounds like a good book to read on the beach.
 
Tangential question --- I HAVE read "Who killed Betsy?" by Derek Sherwood, but I have NOT read this book "Murder in the Stacks" by David Dekok.

Has anyone (you Victor?) read both books? If so, are they different enough such that one should consider reading both books? Without naming names, is the person targeted as having committed the crime the same in both books?

FWIW, in "Who killed Betsy?" there were some between-the-lines insinuations the PA State Police "slow-played" the investigation. And also insinuations that as regards the Aarsdma case, certain Penn State people who were supposed to report things upward did NOT do so.

Kind of interesting.
 
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I didn't read the one you indicated but I have heard of it. DeKok goes into some of the roadblocks facing the investigation, most notably the lack of preservation of the crime scene. I wouldn't say that he characterizes anything as being "slow played" but another reader could draw another conclusion. They did interview the guy DeKok thinks did it but according to him there was no reason (that they knew of at the time) to lean on him any harder. The cop who interviewed the individual did say that now looking back and knowing what they know now he would have handled him differently.
 
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Unfortunately, McQueary's story of what he saw in that library has changed over the years.
 
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It should be said that there are things at play here that everybody doesn't know concerning the behavior of people at/near the scene at the outset.

There was very little blood. She died of a single, narrow stab wound to the chest and she bled internally. There was no struggle or screaming. People initially thought she fainted. She was wearing a red dress and any blood was unseen until she arrived at Ritenour where she was found to have been stabbed. All of these factors hindered the initial investigation. By the time they knew it was a murder the scene had been compromised by untold numbers of people and the killer had a huge head start.
 
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Victor E. Bell said:
I am a little more than halfway through this book. I recommend it, as it provides a lot of insight as to the mentality on PSU campus in 1969 and many parallels can be drawn to modern day. The book concerns the Aardsma murder in Pattee over Thanksgiving weekend in 1969. The author has a very specific individual (now deceased) for which he makes a case for guilt...but the surrounding goings-on are all too familiar. Read it, and if you have what were your observations? I didn't find out till I bought it that it was written by a guy who used to work for the Patriot, so I'm keeping that in mind as I go.
Click to expand...
 
Victor E. Bell said:
I didn't read the one you indicated but I have heard of it. DeKok goes into some of the roadblocks facing the investigation, most notably the lack of preservation of the crime scene. I wouldn't say that he characterizes anything as being "slow played" but another reader could draw another conclusion. They did interview the guy DeKok thinks did it but according to him there was no reason (that they knew of at the time) to lean on him any harder. The cop who interviewed the individual did say that now looking back and knowing what they know now he would have handled him differently.
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Thanks Victor. FWIW, I just looked online at websleuths.com (there is a discussion as regards Aardsma there, if anyone cares to look) and even though they are different books, both DeKok and Sherwood finger the same suspect.

Sherwood made a strong case in the book I read. If DeKok fingers him too --- it was probably him.
 
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Don't discount your observations just because of the author's relationship to the Patriot. There is another book on this topic called "Who Killed Betsy" written by Derek Sherwood, who has no connection to any local news media. In his book you also find a similarity between the actions taken by Penn State in 1969 and their actions/non-actions since 2011.
 
Victor E. Bell said:
It should be said that there are things at play here that everybody doesn't know concerning the behavior of people at/near the scene at the outset.

There was very little blood. She died of a single, narrow stab wound to the chest and she bled internally. There was no struggle or screaming. People initially thought she fainted. She was wearing a red dress and any blood was unseen until she arrived at Ritenour where she was found to have been stabbed. All of these factors hindered the initial investigation. By the time they knew it was a murder the scene had been compromised by untold numbers of people and the killer had a huge head start.
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Yep. In terms of the way it was executed (for lack of a better word) --- a near-perfect murder.

I certainly heard a lot of urban legends about this when I was at PSU in the 1990s. The girl wasn't found for 2 full days, she was murdered because (given her last name) she was listed 1st in the Penn State directory, Ted Bundy was seen on-campus earlier that same day, et cetera.
 
Some of those things are mentioned in DeKok's book. He also brings in a theory about a possible Manson connection. At the point I am at in the book it is a mere plausible speculation with no evidence whatever but more grist for the mill, all the same. I know Bundy was talked about as a suspect for awhile but the M.O. was all wrong for that.
 
Thanks for reminding me about this book. There was an article in the CDT a while ago about it coming out but my reading list has become very long and I forgot to put this one on it. Dekok also wrote a book about the failures of government that lead to the Centralia Coal Mine fire and the destruction of the town. I became fascinated with the story after driving through there several times. I remember driving through Centralia in the early 80s on the way to a dear hunting trip and the pipes venting the fumes from the fire coming up out of the sidewalk down the main street of the town. I think it is called:
Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire

I like him as an author as he was enjoyable to read.
 
I was a freshman in East Halls in '69. There were a bunch of us that simply didn't have the money to get home that weekend. Spooked us all when we learned of the murder. But the campus was so big (in my eyes) that everything seemed surreal. Then, the news candle slowly flickered out.
 
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NapaNit said:
I was a freshman in East Halls in '69. There were a bunch of us that simply didn't have the money to get home that weekend. Spooked us all when we learned of the murder. But the campus was so big (in my eyes) that everything seemed surreal. Then, the news candle slowly flickered out.
Click to expand...

I'm not pimping anyone's book Napa but if you care to, I would recommend looking into one of these books for no other reason than you were here when it happened and lived it. I was 3. It's guys like you I would love to hear their reactions to what was said in the books and what was going on at the time.

As a side note, the Vietnam war, the racial makeup of the campus, and the mistrust of the police all played into this story in one or another way. It's kind of a history lesson as well. Again, the parallels are stark.
 
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Victor E. Bell said:
I'm not pimping anyone's book Napa but if you care to, I would recommend looking into one of these books for no other reason than you were here when it happened and lived it. I was 3. It's guys like you I would love to hear their reactions to what was said in the books and what was going on at the time.

As a side note, the Vietnam war, the racial makeup of the campus, and the mistrust of the police all played into this story in one or another way. It's kind of a history lesson as well.[/QUOTE

VicBell, I consider you one of the best posters on the site. I will read both books and get back to you, via the board if the interest is there. If not, I'll do it directly. Bits and pieces in the meantime. There was SO much going on w/ Nam, civil rights, etc. Not my favorite time in life but I have a very good memory. Penn State infused me with so many good values, even though I flunked out, lost my full-ride academic ship, and became 1A with my Uncle Sam in the spring of '70. This work or is it too much?
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'69 was the beginning of my senior year. I remember when it happened, and even knew of a couple of guys that were questioned. They went through all the trash cans, and if you threw out a piece of paper, you were questioned. I worked in Findlay Dining Hall at the time, and was there for the week. If I recall, we didn't get any break for Thanksgiving, and some even had classes on Thanksgiving day. Trimester system was very different.

I don't remember it as a big thing. Pretty much someone got murdered in the stacks. Stay away from the Library. Campus life went on because it didn't effect you. The only news access we had was the Daily Collegian and 2 TV sets for the East Halls. No one watched TV, except for Laugh In. Vietnam and the draft were more of a pressing issue. We also had a football team that was doing pretty good, and I believe we were ranked #2.

At the time, it was no more fascinating to me then any of the other mysteries that have happened around campus before or since then. What ever happened to the girl that went missing a few years back? You look at the story, say "Hmm", and move on. We do it every day.
 
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VicBell, I consider you one of the best posters on the site. I will read both books and get back to you, via the board if the interest is there. If not, I'll do it directly. Bits and pieces in the meantime. There was SO much going on w/ Nam, civil rights, etc. Not my favorite time in life but I have a very good memory. Penn State infused me with so many good values, even though I flunked out, lost my full-ride academic ship, and became 1A with my Uncle Sam in the spring of '70. This work or is it too much?

I am humbled by your remarks. I get carried away at times but it's all running on emotion.

You and I have much in common. When I went to PSU I hated school so much that the only thing I wanted to do was get back home on weekends and now I have lived here for the last 26 years or so because it's such a great place to live. I didn't set the world on fire with grades either but I managed to graduate. Way smarter people than me never got their degree.
 
I was at PSU at the time. There was a lot of black humor going around -- Aardsma was listed first in the student directory, and we were speculating whether someone was going to kill us off alphabetically,
 
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wex18 said:
I was at PSU at the time. There was a lot of black humor going around -- Aardsma was listed first in the student directory, and we were speculating whether someone was going to kill us off alphabetically,
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Same here, I was a senior in 1969.

I remember it well. Thank god I had gone home to Altoona and was not in State College when it happened.

Plus, I lived off campus and it was never a big deal after reading about it.

There was the rumor that a nut job was going through the directory from the top, staring with the Aa's. I guess anyone named Aaron should have been a little nervous.

A few years ago I posted a long thread about my experience as a delivery boy for Home Delivery Pizza and State College in the late 60's.

One of the stories revolved around delivering a pizza to Simmons Hall (an older, all girls dorm at the time) at about 1:00 AM in December and having a coed afraid to open the door to the alley to get the pizza because she was afraid I might be the murderer.

It was freezing cold and I had to hold the pizza to my car lights to tell her the toppings before she would open it and OF COURSE - no tip.

I hated to deliver to dorms.
 
I've downloaded Who Killed Betsey to my Kindle, but I haven't read it yet. I should push it further up my reading list. I'll have to look for the other one as well.
 
A girl on my floor in the form (South Halls) was one of the students who got out of the library before she could be questioned. She said she didn't know anything. I said she should have stayed to be interviewed anyway. I was in the stacks all the time flipping through old magazines, but wasn't there for the murder. Kinda disappointed that I wasn't. I know I would've stayed to be questioned -- even if it was to say I didn't know/see anything.

Six weeks before the murder -- a drizzly Monday night in mid-October -- I was headed to the The Collegian offices in (what Sparks, Willard?), going through that White Hall/Atherton area along the path below the Old Main lawn, parallel to College Avenue. So I'm moseying along when this guy starts walking toward me on that path. As I get closer to him, I have a funny feeling. Sure enough, when we were passing each other he stopped and asked me something -- can't remember what. But he was totally creepy -- long face, CREW CUT (in 1969!!!) and zombie eyes. Even before I started to run, I took off -- woosh.

I'm still running like crazy when these guys walking down the mall see me and start laughing. I thought F you and got to The Collegian. Told some people there what just happened, but can't remember their reaction. On the way back to the dorm I had to stop and pick up a sub for a girl in my dorm from some shop on Allen Street. For whatever reason I took the alley behind College Avenue back to the dorm. Told everyone there. They all urged me to call the Campus Police/cops. (And, BTW, I don't remember anyone referring to them as the Campus Patrol.)

After a while I relented and called the Campus Police. Told them my story. Apparently, according to them, I did see a suspicious character. They had another girl who was approached by this guy, and wanted to know if I'd ride around with them and this other girl to see if we could find the guy. We didn't, but I did learn on that little trip around campus that creepos love cold, drizzly weather to do their thing (you'd think they'd prefer dry ground; everyone agreed that was weird), and apparently he scared the bejeemies out of still another girl -- chased her into Atherton or something.

I wrote a column about the whole episode for The Collegian and regret that maybe I was a little too flippant.

Anyway... after the murder, I was wondering if the person I saw might have been the guy who did it. But The Collegian ran a drawing of a suspect/person of interest, but it wasn't the same guy. (I can still see the guy in my mind. Fifty years later.)

I'm 10% through the book and to tell you the truth I was shocked about the goings on in the library. (OK, call me naïve.) But now I am thinking the guy I saw might have been a Stacks Regular. He would certainly qualify.

Oh, another thing: the girl in my dorm who was in the library at the time? I swear she came back and said/knew it was a murder. And this was after 5 -- we hadn't gone to dinner yet.
 
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This is all a crock of shit. Went to Patee for a "ghost watch" the year after. My class included a future PSP Major, several forensic scientists, local police, federal agents (me) and doctors and medical examiners. We found no ghosts only bullshit. Since the real files have never been released, we'll never know.

But, there were high profile students from prominent BoT families that were present.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm???????
 
Lefty Hill said:
Oh, another thing: the girl in my dorm who was in the library at the time? I swear she came back and said/knew it was a murder. And this was after 5 -- we hadn't gone to dinner yet.
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Lefty - Interesting story. Can you elaborate on what I quoted. Why is this significant?
 
Victor E. Bell said:
Well I'm not trying to be too cryptic here but some may want to read it and I don't want to spoil it. The vibe is that no, Penn State didn't do enough...didn't treat the Aardsmas right after this happened, didn't want the bad pub about a murder, and the suspect this author tries to finger was a pedophile who hated women. The guy was a grad student at the time, from Lancaster. He had a well known proclivity toward young boys and was given a pass by local political figures any time he got caught, had the path smoothed for him by people all his life who didn't want to know. Author goes into more specifics that I'm not going to go into now. Football is mentioned in passing once or twice. If he's right the "cultural problem" lies in academia and politics not football. Emmert the Wise should give this a read.
Click to expand...

The parallels to recent events are more than a little disturbing and down right creepy.
 
Yes, I'm sure Joe knew and conspired with Rip, Jim Tarman, Sever Toretti, Fran Fischer, and the old guard to conseal it for the betterment of the football team which was unbeaten and just snubbed by Nixon. Totally makes sense now but there was no social media.
 
Interesting. I recall my mom, who worked at Pattee at the time, talking about an incident a few days prior to the murder. She was pushing a cart through the stacks in the afternoon returning books to shelves when she passed an odd looking woman down an aisle. She did a double take and realized it must be a man dressed like a woman. "He/she/it" looked at her strangely and my mom continued on. She started getting nervous as the library was rather empty at the time and quickly retreated since she was at the end of the room. When she passed the aisle, the "man/woman" was gone. Weird. Now that this topic came up again, I'll have to pick her mind more this weekend.

After hearing her stories about the stacks (she worked there for about ten years) I avoided them. The lights on timers were the worst when they went out on you and the silence in the place... creepy.
 
Thank you, Victor E. Bell, for starting this thread. Your posting and the following discussion inspired me to get this book which I snagged at a local library on Friday. I’ve had a hard time putting the book down since. I hope to finish it at lunchtime today.

During my student days at PSU I “think” I knew about the Betsy Aardsma murder but only that was in the Stacks, that the victim was female and that it was in the 1960s. But I knew nothing else. This book was very eye-opening.

I figured this author knew what he was talking about where on page 2 he mentioned a gas company’s plan to detonate a nuclear bomb underground in the remote area between Moshannon and South Renovo so as to create a cavern for natural gas storage. I don’t think many today are even aware that was pitched.

This book provides terrific insight on the atmosphere at PSU during this turbulent time, for example the police vs. students/faculty situation.

The author sure doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the university administration at the time. Was Eric Walker really that clueless (reference his claim in 1972 that he was unaware that a student had been murdered during his tenure)?

I can’t get over the “goings on” that took place in the stacks leading up to the murder. And to think I used to study in the stacks, albeit in the glassed areas in the upper floors during my freshman year.

Mary Willard, the chemistry professor, must have been quite the character. I couldn’t help but laugh at her means of collecting evidence at the murder scene, complete with state police standing there (all guys, of course).

Obviously I’m familiar with the PSU campus but, as I live in Michigan I’m also familiar with Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and to a lesser extent, Holland, Mich. So I could relate to a lot of what was being described. The author’s comparison of the social/cultural opportunities between PSU and U-M, c. 1969, had me laughing.

But some of this hit a little too close to home. The guy at least believed to be behind the Michigan “Co-ed Murders” was a fraternity brother of my uncle. Also, I was a friend of a son of one of the PSU E&MS professors mentioned in the book. Yikes.

Now I want to get the Derek Sherwood book.
 
Glad you liked it. I think it's a very compelling read for anybody who went to PSU. You touched on the more interesting aspects of the book, and for somebody who was a baby when this happened, (I was 3) it paints a good picture of the socio-political climate and tells the story with a nod to that context. I think the parallels to modern day are very vivid w/r/t Penn State.
 
Victor E. Bell said:
I am a little more than halfway through this book. I recommend it, as it provides a lot of insight as to the mentality on PSU campus in 1969 and many parallels can be drawn to modern day. The book concerns the Aardsma murder in Pattee over Thanksgiving weekend in 1969. The author has a very specific individual (now deceased) for which he makes a case for guilt...but the surrounding goings-on are all too familiar. Read it, and if you have what were your observations? I didn't find out till I bought it that it was written by a guy who used to work for the Patriot, so I'm keeping that in mind as I go.
Click to expand...


Q for anybody in the know: Is there any reason that killer has to have been a male?
 
Since this thread began, I've read both books -- the one by David DeKok and the other by Derek Sherwood. Both interesting reads -- and I will say, if Sandusky is a monster, Rick Haefner is the Monster of the 20th Century. Yikes!

I googled Haefner's photo, and I'll say it probably wasn't the guy I saw that night in October, BUT, his photo looked more like that guy than the sketch that was in The Collegian.

I liked that DeKok went into detail about Betsy Aaardsma's life. At the time I just thought of her of a grad student from Michigan (no Pa. ties) who was murdered. Too bad. But now, I really, really feel for her. I wish I would've known her so I could tell her (with the "wisdom" I have now:) Follow your dream, join the Peace Corps.

And Sherwood talking about the gays making dates in the basement of Carnegie. I was a journ major. Spent a lot of time in and around Carnegie. And I didn't know that. I wonder if the professors knew that? If they did, they didn't let me in on it. Probably for the best.

As for PSU apparently always trying to shut everybody up. I just shake my head. They could've had this murder solved.
 
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