The Mysterious Murder of Penn State Student Betsy Aardsma

DEREK SHERWOOD (Administrator of 'Who Killed Betsy?' website): Hi, welcome. How's it going?

TODD: It's going really good. It's very, very hot here in Tennessee in July. And you're in Pennsylvania, right?

DEREK: Yes. It's not much better here.

TODD: I think it's hot everywhere right now.

DEREK: It's very humid.

TODD: Now, I think you and I have something in common, I think. You sent me an email earlier this year, and we've talked, and you're working on a 40-year-old murder case.

DEREK: Yes.

TODD: Okay. Tell me a little bit about the case you're working on.

DEREK: Basically, it's a very regional case because of the fact that it happened in the Penn State University Library in 1969. Betsy Aardsma was a 22-year-old co-ed studying for her Masters in English in her first semester at Penn State, and she came back...actually she stayed home at the college over the Thanksgiving break to do some research for an end-of-term paper that she didn't feel that she had completely tied down. She was in the library on the day after Thanksgiving and was murdered around...somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00 in the afternoon, with a single stab wound. No one really knows why it happened; motive is a huge problem with this case, but she was stabbed one time through the heart and left to die in the aisle in the core of the library. And the police, from my understanding, are as baffled today as they were 39 years ago.

TODD: I mean, that quick one stab, it seems like very calculated and neatly done.

DEREK: That's the frustrating part, because I go back and forth all the time in between, was this someone that actually really knew their stuff and knew that that would be instantly fatal, or was this somebody that, you know, forgive the expression, but somebody that got a lucky shot.

TODD: Yeah. Well, you've heard the old saying, "Either they are very smart or very dumb."

DEREK: Yeah, and looking back, the hindsight is 20/20, so looking back at the whole picture of the crime and how it's still unsolved and nobody has any idea, it looks like a perfect crime. But, at the time, there would have been no way, in a college library, you know, with other people around, for you to guarantee that it would have come off like that.

TODD: Now I see that you have a website, and it's called www.whokilledbetsy.com so everybody can check it out. You've got a lot of information in here. Now why? Why are you...why is Derek Sherwood doing this? What's the connection?

DEREK: Back in the late '80s, my Dad worked for a couple of years for the college in the department of Agriculture; he did computer work for them and, as a kid living up there, I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I remember really loving the area and it's a really neat place. It was about 10 years behind the times, compared to any other city in Pennsylvania. It was almost like living somewhere in the '60s or '70s because it was so backward and quaint. We were driving through town one day and I just remembered my Dad pointed out the library to me and he said, "That's the Penn State Library, and it's so big that somebody was actually killed in there." It was kind of an off-handed statement.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: Looking back, he may have come across that because in 1987, shortly before we moved up there, there was another unsolved murder of a college student who was killed in her apartment; her name was Dana Bailey (http://www.phiaonline.org/Unsolved.html). So, you know, crimes in the State College area was on everybody's mind at the time. I kind of just got curious, back in January or February, I remember hearing about that and I looked it up online and started reading about the case and it just kind of really sucked me in. It was...on the surface, you read the newspaper articles and it seems like it should be so solvable.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: Like, you know, it's right there, why didn't they see it? But the more you dig, the more you find out that it's really complex and there's a lot of information that the police didn't release, for whatever reason at the time, and because of that, may or may not have gotten where they should have gone with the investigation.

TODD: So, you feel like, maybe, if they had been a little more forthcoming years ago, it could have been a positive...?

DEREK: I had one of the professors from back then tell me that he felt that the biggest mistake was that they didn't tell the public a lot of information that they could have right from the start. And I actually had a retired police officer tell me that he felt that the biggest problem was that, at some point, there were 20 to 30 investigators on that case, and in his words, he said, "There should have been 2 or 3."

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: Because it was so brazen and such a high-profile thing to happen to the college, they really took it seriously. And the other issue was, at that time, there were no State College Police, per se...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...there was a College Security Force, so because of that, what had happened, jurisdiction fell with the State Police, and when you've got State Police and a State University, that becomes a big, ugly mark, you know...

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: ...that they really want to try and remove, so they threw everybody at it. I mean, they actually were given one of the buildings, the Boucke Building, as an office for their investigations at the time, and there were probably 20-plus investigators running around for several months, based out of the actual building on campus. So there were a lot of people going in a lot of different directions, and because of that, you know, things may not have developed or may have been overlooked.

TODD: Now, I'm looking at your 'Theory/Rumor/Frequently Asked Questions' and you've got a pretty nice little section here. 'The Alphabet Killer' theory has been suggested because she was the first name in the student directory.

DEREK: Yes, and that one...I guess because of the nature of the crime, and of course because it's a college town and people talk, maybe more so than in a town where, you know, you don't have that kind of connection. Everybody who lives in State College pretty much goes to the university or works for the university. But the 'Alphabet Killer' thing immediately started going around and everybody was freaked out. I don't know who started it, but somehow it started and they just assumed, "Uh oh, he's going down the list."

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: You know, this is the beginning of some kind of serial crime, which never materialized.

TODD: But when you're scared, you know, a lot of these things just look like this could be, this could be.

DEREK: Right. And they're trying to find reason out of a senseless situation.

TODD: Now, her boyfriend, David Wright...

DEREK: Yes.

TODD: ...she seemed to be very dedicated to him, from what we can read. Where's David Wright now?

DEREK: He is in...it's either Indiana or Illinois. He's a successful surgeon.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: They were engaged for, not formally, but they were planning to announce it, is my understanding, and she pretty much spent every weekend with David Wright in Hershey. The reason she had come to...I'll back up...she had started college in 1967; she went to Hope College, which is a small religious-type college in Michigan, majoring in medicine. She switched out of Hope College and went to University of Ann Arbor and graduated in '69 with a degree in English. David Wright came down here to go to the Penn State Medical Center School, which is a, you know, highly-regarded, on the level with John Hopkins kind of medical training campus, so she has come to Penn State to get her Doctorate or Masters degree so that she can be closer to him. And she pretty much spent every weekend with him in Hershey, and pretty much the only person, that is my understanding, that she really talked to during the week was, you know, she might give him a call...I know she wrote him a letter every day, and at some point his parents threw out the letters, but he had one letter for every day that she had been at Penn State. So she was pretty much, I don't want to say a homebody, because she had this aspect of free-thinking; she had worked in an Indian Reservation in Arizona; she was thinking about joining the Peace Corps and going to Africa. You know, she really had a vibrant personal life, but at the same time, she was devoted to her studies and really didn't socialize, drink, do all that stuff.

TODD: And that's quite a bit of activity for someone that's 22 years old.

DEREK: Yeah, that's the amazing thing about her, as I started to read about the case, she was really somebody that cared and she was somebody that was trying to find her place in life, and that was kind of part of what frustrated me about the killing; it was so senseless. And here's a girl, I don't ever mean to demean other murders, but it's one thing like when you hear about someone that got shot in the middle of a drug deal...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...and it's another thing when you hear about someone who is basically one step shy of a saint.

TODD: Yeah. I mean, she was just minding her own business and was not bothering anybody, that we know of, and...

DEREK: Yeah. No one that I've ever talked to has ever indicated anything about her personality, or about her life, that was sordid, secretive, or un-toward. And even the police, when they cleaned out her dorm room, one of the investigators said that there was nothing in there that you couldn't show her parents, and I know of very few college students that that would hold true for, you know, when I was in school. So that makes it all the much more senseless and bizarre.

TODD: Now, I remember the first time I read about this case, the thought was that she had interrupted a homosexual or exhibitionist act or a drug deal taking place; have you thought anymore about that?

DEREK: Well, there are a couple of schools of thought on that. At first blush, if you've ever read 'Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas' or seen the movie, with Hunter Thompson talking about the drug culture of the late '60s and early '70s...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...it is very much a standard cop thought at that time. "Oh, she must have interrupted a drug deal...it's either druggies or 'homos'...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...one or the other. You know, why else would she have been murdered?" This was still before VICAP, this was still before Ed Kemper, Ted Bundy, you know, all the things we know about sexually-violent predators, sadistic predators, so it makes sense that they would have thought, "Oh well, it had to be some kind of drug burn," because Penn State did have, I guess as much as any college, a drug problem, at the time. If you read through the old newspapers, there were a lot of drug busts, and when I say 'busts,' not onesies and twosies, we're talking 8 or 10 people at a pop, but it was mostly, it was mostly marijuana, and from talking to people that were there at the time, because there was no State College Police, the university had a lot of leeway, as far as policing itself. So, if you had been busted for marijuana possession, it likely would have resulted in a slap on the wrist. Worse case, it makes the paper.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: It wasn't anything that would really be a life-or-death situation, in my mind, that if you saw someone, two anonymous people dealing drugs, you know, that you couldn't identify, what would be the reason for them to kill you? The homosexual situation is interesting. Without saying too much, I've come upon information that...that I can understand would lead the police to believe that maybe homosexuals were involved, but at the same time, it could just be coincidental. I can tell you about that off the record, only because we're currently talking with the police and trying to show them that we're cooperating with them and we want to get their permission before we mention any of this real publicly.

TODD: How interested are they in this, do you feel? Because this is a long time ago and they certainly have some very current cases that would take precedence over this, you know, in the real world. I'm all for cold cases myself, that's my thing, but you know, I can see how more current dealings would take precedence, though.

DEREK: I've spoken to the investigator in charge of the case currently; now, I guess I've heard various definitions of a cold case, but one that I've heard is that it's any case that's not solved by time the first initial investigator leaves or retires or whatever. This definitely fits that definition because Trooper Kent Bernier is probably...if you discount the original 20 guys, he's probably just the eighth person that's been on the case since the original investigation concluded. So, I think, he told me he looks at the case every day, and of course he thinks about it a lot. He's a Penn State graduate so it's kind of heavy on his mind. He's a resident of the area; he has grown up in that area. But at the same time, he was a guy who...it's his job; he has around 40 cases at any given time. I mean, there was recently, a couple months ago, a bomb threat. Someone wrote on the bathroom of the State College High School, you know, "I'm going to blow this place up." Well, Bernier gets called out for that too. So, if he's investigating bomb threats at the high school that are written on the stall walls, that's obviously taking away from any time that he might have to look at a cold case. I don't think that...(sigh)...I don't think that...I don't want to depreciate the Pennsylvania State Police, but I don't think that they have the same resources for cold cases as other states that I've heard of. You know you read about some states where they are actively pursuing these things, but just because they have a cold case squad, this is just another thing on his desk. And I imagine, the file, which is roughly 1,700 pages is kind of a legacy deal, you know, it comes with the seat.

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: You're on your first day, "Oh here, here's the Betsy Aardsma file. Work on this when you have time. It comes with the chair." So, I don't know how...I don't think that they're real, real serious in a sense, and I don't think that there's a good feeling by anybody that this is ever going to be solved. Bernier's quote to me was pretty much that he would love a confession. He thinks that's the only way that it's going to be able to be prosecuted.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: If somebody walked in, like Kevin Spacey in 'Se7en,' and said, "Hey, you better arrest me. I killed Betsy Aardsma."

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: Then they may be able to do something, but as far as that, they have some possible DNA samples from the scene, they have some possible fingerprints that have never matched up with anything in any of the violent crime databases.

TODD: And there's more. Now, there are more of those databases being developed right now, as far as DNA goes and I definitely have a friend that I want to look at this interview after we've finished to see what he has to offer.

DEREK: That would be great because I went to Bernier with Sascha Skucek, who is the author who wrote some of those articles for State College Magazine...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...and we said, "Hey, look, we know that you have DNA, it's not widely known, but we found this out from talking to people, or that you may have DNA, why don't you run it?" And he said, "Well, it's so expensive, blah, blah, blah. A rape kit costs $1,200 so cold case DNA is even more and we don't have the budget...this...that." I said, "Hey, look, I'm not rich, but will you take a credit card?" I mean, it would be worth doing...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...just to see, and he feels that because they're not sure that the DNA is necessarily related to the killer, that it might be a dead end. My view, and the opinion that Sascha and I have is, if you ran that DNA and that popped up with somebody that's in jail or somebody that's been in jail, that at least puts a butt in the seat.

TODD: Well, it's definitely a dead end if you don't do anything, right?

DEREK: Right. All of a sudden, now, you have somebody you can say, "Hey, let's take a look at you. Why don't you tell us a little more about what you were doing on the day after Thanksgiving in 1969?"

TODD: A possible person of interest, that's at least, you know. Now, this reminds me of another case in Pennsylvania, and that was Candace Clothier, and I think you've probably read about that case by now. It's from 1968, 16-year-old girl who was killed; no apparent cause of death but she was put into a...basically, a canvas bag and her body was found near Northampton Township and I found out about that case through the 'Tent Girl.' Originally, it was thought to be connected, but no connection was ever determined to be valid in that case, but you know it's the same time period.

DEREK: And there are a couple from the time period, and that brings me to one of these rumors that they come up with; I think it was Clifford York, one of the investigators, heard that Ted Bundy might have come through the East Coast on his way to try and find his real dad. Apparently, at some point in 1969, his mother told him that they weren't sure who his real father was, but she thought he was a professor and lived somewhere on the East Coast, I think Vermont, but we pretty much ruled that out based on...Ted Bundy is one of the most-widely documented serial killers ever, so it was pretty easy to go back and track his movements and where he was at certain times. And in...he came through in May of '69, and has actually, possibly been linked to a double murder that occurred...I think it was Atlantic City on Memorial Day in '69.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: But he was definitely back in California by Thanksgiving.

TODD: But the very possibility that his name came up and the fact that there is Ted Bundy DNA, and you have DNA here...one really quick way of ruling that out would be to check the DNA.

DEREK: Well, that, and they also have Ted Bundy's fingerprints.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: So, you know, if this print has been run as many times as they say it has been run, it would have come up as Ted Bundy.

TODD: So, we don't know if the fingerprint and the DNA were related either? You know, they could both be not related to each other.

DEREK: Yeah, that's the problem. See, one of the issues here, and it's a core issue so I might as well address it now...the police and myself and Sascha have been able to reconstruct Betsy's movements up until about 4:30...4:45 p.m. Roughly, 4:30-ish, she is seen at the card catalogue, which was on the first floor right inside the entrance to the library, at the time. If you were to go there now, there's a stuffed lion, it's the last mountain lion killed in Pennsylvania, it's there in a display case, but in 1969, when you came in the front doors and you went to your right, the card catalogue was there. So Betsy is seen on the first floor at the card catalogue around 4:30. She goes downstairs one level, which is another thing I should address as your painting this mental picture; the library is multiple floors...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...but if those floors are each a story, say 12 to 15 feet, each of those stories is divided in half. So, if you go down one level, you're not one whole floor down, you're kind of in between floors.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: So she goes down one level. Her professor, his office was in the basement, on the bottom floor, so if she goes up one level to get to where she was murdered, the card catalogue floor was one floor above that. And then she comes in, puts her things in her graduate study carrel, which is actually right inside the...they've renumbered the levels, so it's hard for me to picture this, but her study carrel was on Level 3, which was actually the floor above where you come in. Basically they're still there, you can see these green study carrels that you can lock. As a grad student, you get a key, if you want one, and you can lock your things in there while you're studying. So she drops her coat and her books in her study carrel, meets with her professor, goes to Level 2 and is there looking at books, and around 4:45, one of the library stack supervisors walks through on his way to find a book and sees Betsy in her aisle, and then a couple aisles over he sees two men and he describes them in a l987 interview as kind of skulking; talking amongst themselves, and he felt they looked suspicious. So he goes back up to Level 3, which is one level above where Betsy is at, and through the vents in the floor, hears books falling around quitting time; sometime after 4:45. I can't imagine he got back up to Level 3 before 5:05. So, he's up there, he hears books falling but he decides to go home for the night because it's quitting time. Shortly after, another student who was on the same level as Betsy had heard what she described as a muffled cry and books falling. About a minute after that, she claims two men exited the core, walked to the desk, you know the reference desk, and told the girl at the desk, "Somebody better help that girl," and kept walking. Those two men have never been found. They have never been identified. That's whom the composites are of. There is actually some question in our mind that there were even two men because some of the composites may have just been different people's descriptions of these guys.

TODD: But they're there. They're here on www.whokilledbetsy.com. So, anybody out there listening can take a look at it and hopefully help shed some light on it.

DEREK: Unfortunately they're not great composites; they could be pretty much anybody.

TODD: Well, it's a start.

DEREK: They're from an Ident-a-kit.

TODD: It's a start though, and I work with forensic and this type of art and, wow, it's a crazy science anyway, so...

DEREK: That's what gets confusing because the next thing that we do have documented and verifiable is that at 5:01, the Ritenour Health Center, which is the campus health center is called and they said that believe the girl had fainted. She was wearing a red dress...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...she had a little bit of blood on the dress, they assumed that maybe she had bitten her tongue and fainted. So, we know she was seen at 4:30, we know she was seen at 4:45 and we know that she is down on the floor at 5:01. She gets taken to Ritenour at 5:19, she is pronounced dead and it is considered a homicide and the police are called. But here's the real kicker, not only have a lot of people touched her in that time because paramedics came, they tried to give CPR, they picked her up and took her out of the library...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...but the library decides, because they don't know what's going on, "We better send somebody to clean that up." She had lost voluntary muscle control and urinated on the floor. So they have the scene all neatly mopped up. They have the books that she knocked down, back neatly. Nothing is left in the sense of useful forensic evidence in that aisle. And there is some question too, I mean, the police still have her red dress, but the question is, are there any hair fibers you could get? Because, how many people touched her?

TODD: Oh yeah.

DEREK: How many people sat with her? Comforted her? Tried to help her until the paramedics arrived, etc., etc., etc.?

TODD: Now, have you ever talked to any of her family members?

DEREK: I did. I spoke to her sister who still lives in Michigan. Her mother is still alive. It's very, very painful for them. It was good to talk to her sister because I wanted them to know what I was trying to do, and at this point, they're not really anxious to talk to anybody else as far as supporters or anything, but she seemed opened to possibly helping us some day. Basically, what I told her was, "Look, at some point we may need your help, because nobody can put pressure on the police in a case like this, quite like the family.

TODD: Yeah, the family is critical for something like this and hopefully they'll be appreciative of your efforts, which I'm sure they are, it's just a very difficult situation for anybody, but you know it's been 40 years, almost, and the time is near that you need to work on that while somebody is still around to actually do that.

DEREK: That's my fear. I mean, we've tracked down...the girl who was taken to her body by one of these men before they left; the girl who was first at the scene, one of her classmates, she was never identified publicly but we know who she is, she passed away in 2002. Her (Betsy's) professor has passed away, you know, so many people are gone, whose testimony was recorded, obviously, but they're not there to testify if anything could ever come to trial.

TODD: And you can't cross examine; you can't go back and re-visit and get more clarity, you know you don't know how clear the original statements was, you know, and I've seen these things and I often wondered of the state of mind of the person at the time.

DEREK: Right.

TODD: I mean, you can't go back and recapture that.

DEREK: We have reports...one of the girls who claimed to have been there, said that it took 20 minutes for the medical staff to arrive, which is obviously false, you know, it's obviously confusing because if they were called at 5:01 and she was pronounced dead at 5:19, they obviously came very quickly. So, you don't even know about some of the veracity of some of the statements...

TODD: Oh yeah.

DEREK: ...because when you're there trying to comfort a girl who is on the floor unconscious, 5 minutes could seem like 5 hours.

TODD: That's exactly true and I've seen a lot of cases where I want to ask, "Is this a measured period of time or is this an estimated period of time," because it makes a big difference. I've been in situations where it seems like hours long, like you said, and it could just be a very short period of time.

DEREK: Yes, so that's part of the problem, too. Without knowing what's in the police file, because no one is allowed to see it outside of the State Police, it's hard to even know what the real times are like, you know, we just have newspaper reports and discussions that we've had with retired officers and people that we've been able to track down. And, obviously, memory is foggy after 39 years, even in a case like this where it was a galvanizing incident, so we're kind of relying on second-hand information, at best, whereas the police have everything from everyone that they have talked to that day and then in the days following.

TODD: Did they ever really have a clear idea of the weapon itself? Were they able to really describe it?

DEREK: It is a single-edged knife...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...approximately 3½ to 3¾ inches long, with a blade width of 1 to 1½ inches. They have theorized that it may been a hilted knife. I have a problem with that because who walks around, you know, with a hilted knife?

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: You know that's a whole other issue. Even back then, even in a rural area where whittling and deer hunting and things like that are common, it's a lot harder in your daily life to walk around with a fixed blade knife...

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: ...than it is to have some kind of pocketknife.

TODD: Because, you know it made me think, "Was it something available?" Because I was thinking it was a letter-opener, maybe, which was something that popped in my mind when I was thinking library...letter-opener. Or, that makes a difference if that's something that happened on the spur of the moment or something calculated.

DEREK: They're even...and this is something that I've had to familiarize myself with, bookbinding knives...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...there are a variety of knives that are used, you know, sharp instruments that are used in bookbinding and that might have been available. But the bottom line is, they never found the weapon; they don't know really what it was, beyond that it was single-edged, based on the wound profile and the length of the blade, roughly, based on the penetration, but it's hard to say.

TODD: Now, there is a...

DEREK: We did a mock up...sorry...

TODD: Oh, I was going to say, there is a $2,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the killer. Now, that's through Crime Stoppers?

DEREK: That's through me. There was $25,000 reward that the college offered that expired without any takers, in 1971 or '72. I decided that maybe if I could shake loose some information, if someone was arrested, I would pay $2,000 out of my own pocket, which is a big thing for me, I'm not a rich guy, but I thought if we can do something about this, if it's going to make somebody change their mind 39 years later about what they saw, I would like nothing better than to write that check, but I'm realistic in that I don't think I'll ever have to.

TODD: So how do you keep going then? It's hard to keep going if you feel like it's never going to happen.

DEREK: Yeah, I mean, in the back of my mind, I don't think it is going to happen, but I keep pushing at it because I think, "Maybe I just haven't talked to the right person yet. Maybe, you know...(sighs)." In a way, the more you dig, the more suspects there are.

TODD: Oh yeah. You can suspect everybody at the end of the day, you know. I'm going to ask you a question. Now this is...I was asked this question about the 'Tent Girl' one time...I'm not sure of your age, but this probably happened before you were born?

DEREK: Yes. Yes.

TODD: Okay. And me too. Somebody asked me when they were interviewing me about the 'Tent Girl,' after we made the identification, if I was in love with her, and this is a lady that had lived and died before I was born. I know how I feel about that. I know that I had a care for her, but it wasn't that. I think that was put out there to suggest a little more mystery. Has anybody ever asked you something similar to that?

DEREK: No. They've asked Sascha that. He carries around a picture of her in his wallet to remind him that he's, you know, still got work to do on this thing. But I don't think that either of us feels that way. I think, to me it's more that my sister went to Penn State...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...and my sister was terrified of the stacks because she knew about the Betsy Aardsma case, and me I just thought, "How would I have felt if this was my sister?"

TODD: Yeah. And I can totally relate to that. I don't know how many other people there are out there like you and I that can totally relate to that, but I know exactly where you're coming from with this.

DEREK: You know, to me it was just, if it was my sister, I would never stop pushing, and you know, if it came down to it, I'd get a pair of pliers and a blowtorch to try and find information.

TODD: Oh yeah, well you've got to. It's good that there are people that are so relentless in their search and they're keeping it out there. If nothing else, you're keeping everybody from forgetting it.

DEREK: That was the other thing, it seemed really sad to me after I read those articles by Sascha, when I googled Betsy Aardsma, those two articles came up and then a bunch of, really, just crap about ghost stories and urban legends. I mean there are people that don't know...they just don't believe that it happened. You know, the kids now, they hear it and they think, "Oh, it's just a story that they try to scare you with."

TODD: Yeah, a ghost story, yeah. I think it's just as important, whether you actually are able to find anything to solve this case, I think it's important to feel an accomplishment with what's already happened, the fact that you have been able to keep it in the public eye.

DEREK: I just thought that it was bad that her whole life had been reduced to this ghost story and I thought, at the very least, it would be nice to bump it up and put some facts out there so that people could see, "Yeah, this really did happen." It's screwed up that it happened and it is a true story and this guy possibly is still out there.

TODD: Now, I called you earlier, before, you know, we had a little pre-interview that we did, and this is a funny thing, your wife seemed a little shocked that we were actually going to go through with this interview.

DEREK: I get that all the time because people are...I mean, ever since...I only started working on this in February...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...and it's really, to be honest with you, it's blown up because I'm getting calls more frequently and getting emails from newspapers, TV, and things like that, and trying to really force this back into the public eye, and she's just kind of like, "You know, look, she's dead; she'll still be dead, take the trash out."

TODD: Yeah, believe me, I was married to the same person, I assure you. My wife had the same take with the 'Tent Girl.' It did change; it will change, I have a feeling. You know she developed a respect for how I felt, and even after, after the fact, after the identification and she saw everything that happened because of that, it was then that she really got it, afterwards.

DEREK: And, you know, I have a lot of respect for what you did with 'Tent Girl,' because Betsy's family, as sad as it is, at least they got to take her home and bury her.

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: You know, it was over in the sense that there was some finality to it, there was not this question of worrying and wondering, and that to me is 10 times worse, when someone just disappears, or someone is found that's not identified, like you know, really how could this person just be reduced to basically trash?

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: You know, they get dumped somewhere and nobody cares. So that to me is even more impressive that you were able to do that because, at least in the Aardsma case, while there's no end as far as earthly justice, there's at least a beginning and an end as far as her life is concerned and as far as her family is concerned.

TODD: Well, hopefully you and I can continue working together because, to me, this case is very, very closely related, in my mind, to the Candace Clothier case in Pennsylvania. And you know you're right there so maybe I can draft you to help me out with something. That'll make your wife real happy, I think; get you started on another case.

DEREK: I live about two hours from State College, so you know, in the central PA area, there's not too much that's far away, as far as you have to go digging in an office or things like that. You know, it's prohibitive for people who live farther away, but it's not so hard for me.

TODD: Yeah, and that's what I found hard. Well, the Internet changed a lot of that; I was able to, you know, I was actually going manually back and forth throughout the '80s and '90s, and then I was able to electronically travel later on, and that was the key. It was that it was just so much faster and I was able to progress so much faster.

DEREK: The interesting thing is, I read somewhere on one of our state websites, that Pennsylvania not only prides itself on it, but it is considered one of the, if not the most progressive state, as far as putting public records available electronically online. I can go to websites, and for free, I can check criminal backgrounds going back 20 years, 30 years. I can check property records; who owns what, what's there. You know, you can track people down, you can see if they've ever been sued, if they don't pay their taxes, you can find so much information for free in Pennsylvania, especially as a private citizen, and that other states have not quite caught up with yet. And that's because of, for whatever reason, Pennsylvania's commitment to technology.

TODD: Well, I think I've got a new best friend. You know I think that you and I will work together a lot, I hope. Maybe I can even give you some tips with your wife and how to handle her a little bit with this and some of the...

DEREK: She worries.

TODD: ...it's difficult, and I know that. How long have you been married?

DEREK: I've been married 3 years...3 years as of June, so...

TODD: Well, at 38 years old, I've been married for 20 years as of the first of this month, so that's a big commitment, and so you can survive it, no matter how discouraged she gets.

DEREK: Well, this cold case thing is a new interest for me as far as...I don't pursue it really with just anything that I hear on TV or the radio, just this particular case just kind of grabbed me, but I just try and find things that I can do in my free time, that are helpful and useful, so she's like, "God, he found another hobby."

TODD: Oh well, it beats bowling, you know. That's what I tell my wife; I don't bowl, I don't hunt, I don't do any of those, and in doing this, you know, I actually found a little bit of a career; I now work with Discovery Channel and I write a column for them twice a week, a weblog. It happened and it happened because of my work with the Tent Girl. And, you know, I've not been to college, obviously I'm not a professional journalist at all, but I was capable of producing this article for them twice a week, so it worked out and I actually did get a real job working for a real, well-respected organization. You know, the radio show that we're doing now, that's all just...that's part of my 'hobby.' I want to talk to other people, like you, about the cases like the one you're working on.

DEREK: Yeah, and you know, that's the amazing thing too is, it's the background, it doesn't matter if you...it doesn't matter what your background is if you have some smarts, and obviously you're an intelligent guy, and I mean, I've been to college twice, but I've had jobs where I was a torch cutter in a junkyard with two college degrees. So to me it doesn't matter so much what your background is, something like this, besides being helpful and besides being very interesting, it also opens door, like you say. I mean, you're working now with the Discovery Channel, I guess there are still a lot of doors to be opened with me and the Betsy Aardsma case.

TODD: It all boils down to compassion that you have for what you're working on. When I first heard from you, what I had to determine...and I hear from a lot of people; is this someone that's truly committed to this case, or is this a nut? So we did talk, you know, I kept you at arm's length for a while, because we had a few email conversations and I obviously don't want to get involved with a crazy person, but it didn't take long to figure out, "This guy is really..." and I saw your website, I watched, and of course you don't want to give airtime to somebody that's totally crazy.

DEREK: Oh, and there are levels of crazy, I mean, there are like absolute weirdo nutballs, and there are also what some police guys I've talked to call 'bad bunnies,' where they just want to be involved in a case because they want to talk to somebody with power and authority...

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: ...you know they want to hang out with cops, because for whatever reason, they couldn't hack it as a cop or couldn't become a cop, so there are all levels. And I've met some interesting people in this that, quite frankly, I still keep at arm's length because it's like, you know, "What is your interest in the case?" Honestly, like the police officer told me, he said, "You know, the only thing I can say for sure, is I know you didn't kill her because you're not old enough."

TODD: Yeah, the same thing.

DEREK: Anyone old enough is a suspect.

TODD: I had the same thing. I had the same thing, you know, I think if I had been old enough to have been around when the 'Tent Girl' was around, her name was Barbara Taylor, but she'll always be 'Tent Girl' to me, but maybe I would have been a suspect, you know, because it was almost an unexplained obsession with the case.

DEREK: Yeah, the classic criminal psychology is that, in many cases, criminals are drawn to their crime, want to help the police, want to be involved in the case and get updates and hear about it and talk about it, because that's part of the psyche that they enjoy. You know, "Hey, I'll talk to the cops and I'll call them and I'll say, 'Hey, can I help you find the real killer?'" Because, for whatever reason, it makes them feel good inside that, "Ha ha, I'm smarter that you."

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: "I'm helping you look for the killer and the killer's right here."

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: So, you know, I know exactly what you mean. There's always a level of suspicion when somebody wants to get involved in one of these cases, because in America especially, and not having been to other countries, I don't know how their justice system works, but it seems like in America, crime is something we want to talk about, we want to talk about it on TV and be open about it, but at the same time, we sweep it under the rug. It's okay to want to watch the latest shooting on television or the Natalee Holloway story, but it's not okay to want to get any closer than that because that the police's job, and if you're not a police officer, you're weird for wanting to help.

TODD: So, you're just a little bit crazy. I think you'll be all right. I think I can deal with you; you're just a little bit crazy. You're the right kind of crazy, I think, with what you have to deal with with this, and you know, you can actually...obviously you've been a real help because you've got some real media involved in it. You've got a nice website put together and you know what, I never would have known about this case had it not been for you.

DEREK: And, you know, most people outside of Pennsylvania, that's why I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, it's a regional case, most people outside of Pennsylvania have never heard of this. It is not big enough to be a Ted Bundy; it hasn't crossed state lines, it's really...the college doesn't talk about it, the state police don't talk about it, it's the college's dirty little secret.

TODD: Now a lot of people...I've went into areas where the area was such a tourist area, where I'm trying to work on a crime and it's, you know, you get the feeling that they didn't really want to talk about a homicide that had occurred in that area, because it could be a negative, you know, cast a negative shadow.

DEREK: Now, at State College, they make millions of dollars a year in football alone.

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: You know Penn State is a huge football college, so besides all the money that comes in from students, and how do you convince parents to send their kids to your school when there has been three unsolved murders and one unsolved disappearance in the last 60 years? How do you convince them to come and keep giving money if people are always talking about this?

TODD: Do you know what would assure me? If my son was going to this college, if I saw that college re-instate that reward, to me, that would tell me that they still care, they're willing to acknowledge the truth and not try to hide it. If I found that out that it was something that they would rather people not know about, to give you a false sense of security, that would be negative, to me. So, to me, I feel like you should face it, it's reality, it's the truth, but we still do care, even after all of these years, we still care. I'd love to see that, so hopefully, I'm sure you've already thought of that, maybe one day, we can convince them that they need to have some type of reward still withstanding.

DEREK: That would be fantastic and I'll tell you what's interesting is, if you read the articles, back in that time...I don't know if any of them are on the site...there was some talk in little blurbs about taking that reward money and maybe putting into a scholarship...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...like a Betsy Aardsma Memorial Scholarship.

TODD: And why not? You know, why not do it? I think they can still redeem themselves. I don't think they've done anything wrong, but it's not something that you want to put on a flag and wave, "Hey, we've got this unsolved homicide," but you know, to acknowledge it, I think they can make a really positive story out of it, as awful as that sounds, you know you can still make a very positive story out of the effort that 'we still do care, even after all these years.'

DEREK: They've done exactly...you know I hate to be jaded and cynical, but they've done exactly what I would a expect an institution that's getting a lot of state money would do, and that's just like the kind of 'be like Cyclops.'

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: Don't talk about Betsy Aardsma.

TODD: Just don't bring it up; it's not...you know, I've seen a lot of people, they will talk about it, but they're not going to mention, you know, if you're in the college campus, "Oh, by the way, this is where an unsolved homicide took place." But, you know, there have definitely been some changes.

DEREK: Yeah.

TODD: It's a different place now.

DEREK: To be honest with you, a lot of them still won't even talk about it; a lot of people that worked in the library will not talk about it.

TODD: Do you think it was because they were...maybe felt that they shouldn't, or is it just still a painful thing for them?

DEREK: I think a lot of it was originally it was...it was verboten to talk about the Aardsma case right after it happened and one guy, the assistant stack supervisor, who saw Betsy in the aisles around 4:45, he actually was...the Monday after it happened, in a picture on the 'Centre Daily Times,' showing an aisle one floor above where it happened, pointing it out, and he almost lost his job for that.

TODD: Wow, now that's interesting.

DEREK: It has become just drilled into them over the years, that you don't talk about this and it's almost an impenetrable wall; so many of them just won't talk about it to anybody.

TODD: Well, I guess we'll have to see what we can do with it. I definitely think that I can create an article out of it. I don't know if you...you worked with Robert Waters, I think, now he's a good friend of mine; he's a crime writer and he has a blog...

DEREK: Yes. Yes.

TODD: ...and, you know, I can introduce you to him and hopefully you guys can work on a few things; he's a very good writer. As far as his writing skills, he's a writer, and I'm not.

DEREK: Ah, okay.

TODD: And you know he...

DEREK: He did a nice article about it; I talked to him.

TODD: So, we'll definitely link that there. He's very good. He's a writer because of skill and talent; I'm a writer because of circumstance and being in the right place at the right time. So, you know, he's good.

DEREK: And I would definitely appreciate it if you would shoot me some links to the various things that you are involved with, like your blog and things...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...I will add them to the links page.

TODD: Okay.

DEREK: Because I try and crosslink everybody that's done something about the case so things kind of flow, so if you show me what you would like me to link to, I'll link to it.

TODD: Well, there's definitely a lot of...it's a good thing to work in groups like this, you know the more things that you can lump together without making it muddy, it's good, and you have a ton of people to help you keep things out there and I'll definitely do an update with the Discovery Channel blog at some point. I'll give it a little time and I'll see what we can determine from what we're working on with this radio episode and then maybe work from there. But there are a lot of things that we can do and it's just chipping away, chipping away, chipping away.

DEREK: That's the key; every little bit.

TODD: It's going to be interesting but I hope it doesn't take you 10 years to get to some point where you feel like you're satisfied with it, but it takes time sometimes and I hope it's a lot quicker for you.

DEREK: Well, I know Sascha has been working on it since he was an undergrad, and I have to say, and no disrespect to him, but since I've come on board, I think he would agree, we've gotten further with information and with attention to the case since February, than he did probably in the previous 9 years. So, we make a good team because he's got the media outlets, as far as 'State College Magazine'...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...as far as the local radio show that he is connected with and that he's going to go on, and he's got the proximity because he lives up there. And I've got the...more of the media skills, like you know, making the website and trying to say, "Hey, let's put this up here so that we are the point of contact."

TODD: And that's the key, you know, the right fit. Everybody has their own skill and when you put these skills together and they're doing what they do best, and it really works out, you know. I think you're going to find that true, more and more and more, as you continue with this.

DEREK: And, you know, it's great too, because between the two of us, we can push each other. I find myself calling him, like I called him when I got back from vacation, and I said, you know, "Is there anything new?" "Well, no, I didn't get this or that done," and I'm like, "Come on, you're supposed to have this solved by now."

TODD: Yeah. Well, and it's good to have somebody to bounce things off of because working on something like this alone, it's really a very dark place, so he's lucky to have somebody, that's not a crazy person.

DEREK: That's what happened with Sascha and I; I started emailing him when I read his article, and I actually went so far as to get a number. I ended up calling his Mom or his Grandmother and leaving a message, and he emailed me back. And, originally, he kept me at arms length, but as we started talking, it was like, you know, he had kind of lost the fire after 9 years, to really pursue this, and I came along and said, "Hey, you've come this far, if you have someone that you think did it, you owe it to yourself, and more than that, you owe it to the case and to Betsy's family, to take this to the very end. You know, don't do like everybody else has done over the years, and kind of play with it a little bit and then drop it...

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: ...because, if we do that, we're no better than all the other people that have played with it and dropped it and left it sitting where they found it. You know, the goal is to push it forward, not just to leave it."

TODD: You know I've thought of this working on the 'Tent Girl' and working on some of the cases that I've worked on, I don't try to go into them now thinking, "I'm going to solve it," I go into it thinking, "I need to gather data, preserve, get things that are going to decay away if I don't get them now," and basically, at least, build a time capsule...

DEREK: Yes.

TODD: ...and leave something out there for other people, and you know you're doing that, whether you're able to solve it or not, you're making something for the future to work on.

DEREK: That was the first thing that was my intent with the website, was to gather all these articles, that took me a lot of time to find...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...and put them in one place, where someone with a casual interest could come along and get a really good idea of what happened, because most people, life's busy; you're not going to go spend 8 hours digging up all the articles; you're not going to go spend, you know, $20 to join newspaperarchives.com and pull up all these articles, you're just not going to do it. And by putting it all there, I made it real free and real easy for anybody that wants to come along and read about it to say, "Hey, I can do this; it's all right here." My first college degree was as a history major and primary sources are just drilled into you as a history major; that's what you want. But the problem is, you have to dig to find primary sources, especially 39-year-old primary sources.

TODD: Well you did it. You made it easy. You made it easy for me to do this. This was a very easy interview to put together as far as...

DEREK: Yeah.

TODD: ...I'm just looking at your website, you know, that's what I'm doing. I'm interviewing you directly from it.

DEREK: It's for someone like you or someone that's pulling it up on Google, to give you everything you need to look at it and you don't have to dig for anything.

TODD: Yeah. I didn't have to research, and that's what I do with these interviews, I just pull up the website, we have a conversation, it's not a real interview so much as it is an informational conversation that we're sharing with other people. And it works. So far, it works.

DEREK: Yeah. That's the key, is just to talk about. By not talking about it, you're only helping continue the cycle of the crime, and that's what I'm afraid that the police and the library and everybody not talking about it has done. They're making it easier for the killer to get away.

TODD: And what we've done within this interview, this will be available audio, but it'll also be transcribed by one of the volunteers that helps me out with the website, so we have roughly 20 pages worth of conversation that will go into the information system.

DEREK: Great. Do you have a way that you can get me like a text or something like that?

TODD: It is permanently archived on www.missingpieces.info. There are no copyrights, so I mean, you can do what you want to with it. You can chop it, edit pieces, you can do whatever you want to with it, so we're also giving people this information during this interview. Basically, it's theirs, it's theirs to work on together and people will know a little bit more about you and I've seen media actually look at the transcripts to determine whether or not they want to interview somebody else, you know. We've had some of our guest to go on and do the Nancy Grace show and things like that, but they were able to use the transcript to think, "Okay, do we even want to fool with this guy?"

DEREK: That's great.

TODD: "Yeah, he looks pretty good. He's well spoken. He has some idea of what he's doing," you know, because they run into the nuts too, and people they wish they'd never heard from.

DEREK: I appreciate that because I would like to take that, and what I've been doing too is, you know the nature of the Internet is ephemeral...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...it's here today, gone tomorrow...

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: ...so every time somebody does an article about the site or about the case, I actually take it as text...

TODD: Yeah.

DEREK: ...and I upload it to my site, so that if your website goes down or the server crashes or whatever happens, it's still there. It's not just like, "Oh yeah, that's lost forever," you know, so I kind of keep an archive that way as well, because I know, you know, one of my pet peeves is broken links. You go to a site and none of the links work because nobody has looked at it in six months.

TODD: Yeah, that's very key; preserving the data. You know, we have to generate data and then preserve the data, and I think we've done that today, I think, so at least it's a good start. Hopefully, we'll have you back with an update; hopefully there'll be an update, you know.

DEREK: I definitely have some information that I could share.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: Like I said, I'm waiting for two reasons. One is in deference to the State Police, because we just want to go to them and say, "Hey, we know this, you know this, do you care if we tell more people this?"

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: "It didn't come from you, but we're giving you that level of respect upfront." And the other thing is, I'm waiting in deference of my partner on this case that I'm working with, Sascha, because writing is his career.

TODD: Uh-huh.

DEREK: He's got an article coming up for 'State College Magazine.' We just gave some interviews to 'The Philadelphia Inquirer' and they're supposed to be doing an article on us, I think this Sunday it comes out, but I wanted to give Sascha kind of the scoop on this.

TODD: Yeah. And that's the different thing, with the type of media that I do, I'm not the scoop kind of media. You know I'm looking for the back story, and you know I have people call and give me this information, it's like, you know, I'm probably not the real outlet to put that out, you know, because I'm looking for the background and breaking news is not my thing, really. I'm looking for the old and the cold, you know.

DEREK: Especially with like the 'State College Magazine,' it's a good forum because you're hitting that area, it's something that a lot of people read, it's available, it's out there, it's respected, so by putting that stuff out in an article like that, it's kind of like a bombshell. You know you're hitting the local area and in print, it's going to be around, and you know it floats around and God knows, it'll be at the dentist's office until 2049. So there are lots of different ways to get at it but we're going to try and release it there first, simply because, you know, he's put in a lot of time, I found this new information, and have given it to him, and I want him to have the feather in his cap, so hopefully he can advance his career, because he's a professor, and you know, it's publish or perish, so it's good if he can get a magazine article out of it. It helps him get forward. He's not much older than I am, he's like two years older than me so we're both kind of in that early stage of life where you've got to make a name.

TODD: Well, hopefully, we'll have that data from you when this article actually runs so we can link it on your permanent archives on the Missing Pieces website; you'll have that. And that's just another window into your world, so to speak.

DEREK: Definitely.

TODD: And we're planning on leaving the archives there forever, but you know how long forever is, so definitely I'd like to see it copied other places, so that's really cool.

DEREK: Yeah, I mean that...once you put it out there, there's no controlling where it goes...

TODD: No.

DEREK: ...and that's what's cool.

TODD: Yeah. It's not going to go anywhere now, you know, it'll exist somewhere once we release this data. Well, that was an interesting hour. It went by really fast.

DEREK: I appreciate it. It's nice to talk to you about it.

TODD: Okay. Well, definitely I'll be touching base with you by email, and we'll just say goodbye to our audience now, and you and I will chat just for another second, and I'll be back again next week, hopefully, with another story. Goodnight, everybody.

DEREK: Okay. Thanks a lot. Thanks for your time.

UPDATE!! November 2010:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6006722/missing_pieces_the_mysterious_murder.html?cat=9