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A graduate student, 22-year-old Betsy Aardsma, was stabbed once amid the creaky shelves of Pattee Library. She bled to death from the chest wound.
Though a man was spotted hurrying out of the library, no one was ever caught. A state police investigation is nearing the 40-year mark without an arrest or a named suspect.
Students to this day still whisper about the unsolved slaying, one of the few in Penn State's history.
"One of my friends won't come down here because of it," said Roberta Chapman, studying this month in the library's creaky basement a few yards from where Aardsma was killed between bookshelves.
The slain woman was from Michigan, was in a stable, long-term relationship and had a clean personal history, a combination that has kept investigators grappling for decades for a motive for her death. Speculation that she was killed for interrupting a drug deal or another covert rendezvous never led anywhere.
Nearly four decades later, state police are still actively working the case, and have begun to solicit tips from a handful of amateur investigators fascinated by the mysterious stabbing.
A Web site, built by a man who sells furnaces, dangles a $2,000 reward for leads. A Penn State lecturer born years after Aardsma died doggedly pursues new information on the case and publishes what he comes up with in the university's alumni magazine. A retired Wall Street professional and Penn State alum throws himself into the case as a sort of unpaid second career, consulting retired police for investigating tips and interviewing scores of people who were around Aardsma or the investigation.
None of them knew or is related to Aardsma.
"Betsy reminds me of my sister, who went to Penn State," said Derek Sherwood, who set up the Web site
whokilledbetsy.com and heard about the killing while growing up near State College. "She told me she was terrified of the stacks [and said], 'I never went there unless I had to.' "
He was born about 10 years after Aardsma's murder and is among many too young to remember the killing yet intrigued by it.
"There's still a good deal of mythology on campus about the murder," said Penn State English professor Nicholas Joukovsky, who spoke with Aardsma in his office minutes before she was killed. "I mean, this is something that, undergraduates today, many of them are still aware of the girl who was murdered in the stacks.
"They don't associate a name with the case, but it's part of Penn State lore and has been ever since the time of the killing."
The ongoing interest has caught the attention of state police, who still regard the matter as an open case. Investigators have talked to several of the amateur sleuths about their findings and are planning DNA testing and other evidence reexamination, state police said.
"You'd think it was a cold case, but it's not that cold," said Capt. Jeffrey Watson. "We're moving forward." But he would not say in what direction.
Aardsma was pretty, good-humored and a hard worker, her friends said. She had traveled back to State College on Thanksgiving Day in 1969 after a dinner in Hershey with her medical-student boyfriend and a group of his friends.
They were on the verge of getting engaged, but each had studies to pursue at schools 100 miles apart. So they decided to part, with Betsy taking the bus back to State College.
"I always regret it," said David Wright, who had been dating Aardsma since each was a college junior in Ann Arbor, Mich.
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